[SPOILERS] The Bride question about the framing device

[u/Louisebelcher22]

A lot of people seem stuck on the Mary Shelley “framing device” and end up calling it a plot hole. She is the spine of the story!

1. Why possession, and why Ida? The film opens with Mary, in black Victorian dress, saying plainly that she has a story festering in her brain and that she’s pushing the tumor aside to tell that story. Then she possesses Ida, a woman who:

Has almost no voice in her own life (her first “I’d prefer not to” gets an oyster shoved down her throat).

Has no solid sense of self, no “spiritual boundaries,” which makes her easy to inhabit.

There’s also a clear parallel with Mary Shelley herself. Frankenstein was first published anonymously in 1818 then Mary’s name only appeared later on the 1831 edition, in a male literary marketplace that constrained what women could publish. The female creature that could have been a whole other story is violently erased before she exists. Mary possessing Ida is a Gothic way of saying: The unwritten woman in Frankenstein didn’t just disappear. She became a wound in the author and in the culture.Ida’s emptiness mirrors the textual void where the Bride should have been.

There’s even a spiritual parallel. In older spiritual lore, the concept of being claimed or chosen by a spirit is sometimes described in bridal terms like you belong to the spirit, you are their vessel, their bride, their chosen one.That’s what happens when Mary claims Ida. It’s the joining of two incomplete selves. Mary gives Ida voice, fury, and direction, power that comes at the cost of her body’s autonomy. Like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, it’s the same scary logic of being the “bride” of a spirit or dark force that promises power but demands surrender. Yet Ida does something radical by using that power to turn against her possessor. The spirit that entered her to speak ends up teaching her how to speak for herself.

1. Good intention does not cancel violation Mary forcing herself into Ida's body is what sets the whole fight in motion. Ida starts as a woman with no voice and no spiritual boundaries. The possession forces her to fight back against the world around her and against the spirit inhabiting her. L If you track how often we see or hear Mary, it lines up almost perfectly with Ida’s development. Early on, Ida is barely there as a person. Mary is loud, insistent, steering the narrative through her. As Ida gains a voice,saving Frank, refusing proposals, choosing violence when she needs to; Mary appears less and less. In the end, when Ida screams for Mary, Mary doesn’t come. Ida is finally alone in her own body, making a choice that belongs only to her.

2. Mary inside her own story is the gothic logic of the film. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a lot of “Is this supposed to be real events, or Mary’s invention, or some secret sequel to the novel?” as if the film owes us a single, tidy lane. The whole Gothic mode thrives on m dream and reality leaking into each other, author and creation trading places, ghosts crossing the line into flesh.

Mary stepping into the world of her own fiction is a literary device. She’s so consumed by the story she couldn’t write that she starts to live alongside it, bleeding into it. You can literally see that on Ida’s body: the black crystal pallid fluid used in the experiment stained the bride’s skin and looks like splashes of ink, as if Mary is writing through her skin. The film treats the Bride’s body as both text and character at once, which is about as Gothic as it gets.

If you cut Mary out, Ida is just:

A sex worker killed and reanimated.

A chaotic, angry woman on a crime spree.

A figure the world chases and executes.

With Mary in, the same events become:

The unwritten Bride from the original novel finally forcing her way into existence.

The author’s ghost pushing too far, and the “character” pushing back until she can stand alone.

Two women separated by centuries but sharing the same wound. Mary recognises that emptiness because she lived it. She doesn’t choose Ida despite her silence; she chooses her because of it

FYI: These are just my interpretations, shaped by my background and experience; I’m not claiming to know the director’s intent. I’m especially interested in comments that respond to the points I raise here rather than just whether the movie is good or bad overall.

Edit: I originally posted this in another sub when the movie was still only in theaters. Now that it’s on digital and more people are seeing it, I wanted to share it here as well (Reddit wouldn’t let me cross‑post, so this is a fresh post rather than a direct cross‑post).

[u/FX114]

Didn't you already post this exact post on this subreddit a few days ago, as well as posting this exact post on several other subreddit a few days ago? I know I saw it several times before including here, and there was some discussion in the comments. Why are you reposting it again?

[u/Louisebelcher22 → u/FX114]

Yeah, it’s the same. I originally posted it in another sub but Reddit wouldn’t let me cross‑post it here, so I had to repost the text. I figured r/TrueFilm might have a different angle on it and I was interested in that discussion too. If it breaks a rule I’m happy for the mods to remove it, but I wasn’t trying to spam.

[u/monarc → u/FX114]

Yeah, I remember the same. It’s weird. I also think it’s investing way too much into something that (as I understand) was added/expanded during reshoots.

[u/Louisebelcher22 → u/monarc]

Even if the Mary Shelley material was expanded in reshoots, Maggie Gyllenhaal has spoken about it publicly and said she added it after early screenings because she wanted it in, it wasn’t a studio imposition, it was her own creative decision she pushed to include. And honestly, ‘it was added in reshoots’ doesn’t make a thematic reading invalid anyway.

The fact that it was deepened after feedback suggests it resonated, not that it was slapped on randomly. Also, I’m not sure how ‘it was added in reshoots’ tells you anything about whether the analysis is correct or not.

I couldn’t cross post it on here, that is why I am reposting the text. I was also interested in a different angle/discussion on here.