Victor's highly conscious sense of the effect of his narrative, from now on, will
become a continuing motif (see also, for instance, I:3:13). That he is self-conscious
as an artist may be thought a normal attribute of Romantic texts. But Mary Shelley
may have a more specific object in mind that that of fitting smoothly into her culture's
expectations. Victor's conscious manipulation of his reader (Walton and, beyond Walton,
us) continually intrudes on the supposition of its truth.