NOTES

Electricity

Although Mary Shelley finesses the scientific instrumentation of her novel—and she could hardly do otherwise in allowing Victor to overstep the known boundaries of science—in this scene she clearly prepares us to understand that the dynamic secret of life Victor will discover is intimately connected to electricity as a "vital fluid." Her use of the term "spark of being" at the point of the Creature's coming into existence (I:4:1) seems intended to follow through on this conceptualization.