Walton raises for the first time a major concern of the novel, the aims, uses, and
potential limitations of writing. Although he affirms the importance here of a human
presence that will guarantee unmediated sympathy, still he does so in the form of
a written letter that in the previous sentence names his correspondent ("Margaret")
and in the sentence to follow strongly links her to him by a charged term of endearment
("my dear sister"). The logic of this letter, indeed, suggests the actual limitations
of the unmediated exchange. Although he admires the officers of his ship, for instance,
Walton cannot expect their sympathy in the refined emotions he here transmits to his
distant sister.
At the same time, Victor Frankenstein's retreat into obsessive study and his Creature's
enforced isolation will show the consequences of trying to fall back upon one's own
singular resources. That Mary Shelley regards the communication of emotion as fundamental
to human need and experience seems implicit in her choice of an epistolary form in
which to frame her novel.