NOTES

friendship

As with other aspects of Clerval, his capacity for "devoted," which is to say, perfectly disinterested, friendship separates him as an ideal, both for Victor (who from his student days has been too self-absorbed for such friendship) and for Walton, whose desire for such a friend, articulated in his second letter (I:L2:1) and in his growing attachment(I:L4:21) to Victor, first introduced this theme as central to the structure of Mary Shelley's novel.