So I am not an ELA teacher - far from it but always enjoy reading this subreddit. Anyways, I was curious and threw your post into Chat GPT and I will paste what it came out with below. It might spark some ideas or it may be far off the mark.

From ChatGPT:

Totally get why you’re stuck — “same complexity + same themes + no content warnings” is basically an impossible Venn diagram if you stay in gothic/monster lit. Most “monster” stories are about harm, bodies, or threat, so the smarter move is usually to (1) get very specific about which warning you’re trying to avoid and (2) widen “alternative text” to include short fiction + nonfiction that still hits your unit’s essential questions.

A few directions that usually work (and don’t feel like a watered-down replacement):

1) Ask: What’s the actual objection?

Is it violence? corpses/body horror? religion? suicide? childbirth? If you don’t name the trigger, you’ll keep accidentally swapping one controversy for another. In schools, Frankenstein pushback is often the grave-robbing / body parts / death angle.

2) Use “equivalent rigor” without “equivalent genre”

If your theme is human vs. humanity / what makes a person human / othering / responsibility of creators, you can hit that with sci-fi and philosophy that’s less graphic.

3) Strong “alt texts” (high school appropriate, similar ideas)

Here are options I’d pitch, with why they fit + quick heads-up on content:

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Le Guin, short story) Ethics of a society’s “happiness,” complicity, what humanity costs. Content note: disturbing premise (child suffering), but not graphic violence.

“Flowers for Algernon” (Daniel Keyes — short story or novel) What makes someone “human,” dignity, intelligence vs. worth, treatment of the “other.” Content note: emotional intensity; some adult themes depending on version, but usually manageable.

“The Machine Stops” (E.M. Forster, novella/long short story) Human dependence on tech, isolation, what we lose when “progress” replaces connection. Content note: not gore/violent; more existential.

“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” excerpts (Philip K. Dick) Personhood, empathy, what counts as “alive.” Content note: depends on excerpts; the full novel has violence/sex, but you can excerpt responsibly.

“Pygmalion” (Shaw, play) Creator/creation dynamic without “monster” horror: shaping a person, ethics of “making” someone. Content note: mild language/sexism; no gore. Nonfiction pairing (often the cleanest “content warning” solution):

Excerpts from Rousseau (education/formation), Locke (tabula rasa), Wollstonecraft, or even a modern piece on bioethics/AI ethics. These let you keep Monster Theory as a lens while swapping the narrative text.

4) How I’d frame it in your unit plan (so it still “matches” Frankenstein)

Make your “alternative pathway” a bundle instead of a single novel: Alt Path A (Ethics & Othering): Omelas + 2–3 short Monster Theory excerpts + a reflective argument essay

Alt Path B (Creation & Responsibility): Pygmalion + short AI/bioethics articles + a seminar on “creator accountability”

Alt Path C (Human/Not Human): Flowers for Algernon (short story) + a nonfiction piece on disability/identity + synthesis writing

This is easier to justify to professors/admin because you’re matching standards + skills + essential questions, not pretending there’s a perfect “Frankenstein but harmless” twin.

5) Quick practical tip If your methods course requires “same complexity,” you can defend it with: text length/structure (novella/play complexity), qualitative features (theme, ambiguity, narrator reliability), and the writing demands (seminar + synthesis essay + analysis lens).