The real monster or villain in Frankenstein is neither Victor Frankenstein nor the being he creates. Through the novel’s nested narratives, the reader comes to sympathize and identify with both of the main characters. The sense conveyed is that the tragedy is not perpetrated by malevolent individuals but rather by reality itself, and the tragedy is rendered all the more profound because it seems to arise as a result of impulses and enterprises that are positive. Frankenstein desires to learn and to discover secrets that will be of great benefit to humanity. His is an intellectual quest to discover new realms of knowledge and his motivation is essentially altruistic or, at least, not malevolent. He sees himself as being on this great scientific quest right up until the moment that he creates life, and then it turns into a nightmare.
I think one of the major issues represented in Frankenstein is the way that, fineness and goodness held in one's inner world, become monstrous and malevolent when we try to squeeze them into the 'real' world. Something happens to these ideal good things when they are realized - made real. Intelligence is an example of this. People with higher intelligence are at greater risk of suffering from mental illness, simply because there's so much going on in their mind, which in abstract and ideal terms is good, but when it comes into contact with the realities of this world, can be destructive.
We see it in religion as well. During Jesus's life on earth, the people who were most serious about religion and righteousness were the pharisees, but they were the people who Jesus criticized and rebuked the most. He said that they were far from God. Ironically, that was because they were so serious about being close to God. They had good ideas and even good intentions, but when those ideas were translated into the real world, the result was something bad.
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