preliminary circumstances

NOTES

preliminary circumstances

Victor's holding us in suspense constitutes more than a novelist's manipulation of her readers. Frankenstein, unlike much of the gothic fiction of the previous half century, is a novel without much interest in the sensational per se, rigorously subsuming its dynamic effects to a larger narrative logic. Such a train of logical premises is here invoked by Victor, as Mary Shelley emphasizes that a major structural division in the narrative is about to occur.