Mary Shelley is so insistent on this point that she has Walton repeat it to Victor
Frankenstein (I:L4:6), whose formal education, by contrast, is extensive. It could
be that she is trying to make a point about the primacy of moral education or the
essential importance, in a novelistic tradition one associates with Henry Fielding,
of a good heart. But it is more likely that she is establishing a perspective by which
to engage larger questions concerning the means and ends of education. Victor Frankenstein's
Creature is also self-educated and likewise has his identity strongly molded by what
he happens to read.