NOTES

benevolence

It is a remarkable achievement of Mary Shelley's that by this point in the Creature's narrative, this word (and its derivatives) have become fully ironized. Continually repeated as it is (see, for instance, II:7:2 and II:7:9), this Enlightenment concept stands in a kind of verbal isolation, unsupported by any examples that might convince us of its dynamic, positive value, or even (outside the Creature's own actions) that active benevolence exists. Thus the Creature's ironic conclusion seems altogether appropriate.