corpse, had fallen into a delirium lasting two months (III:4:11). Even, after he had
regained his reason, his ranting convinced his father that he remained truly deranged
(III:5:5). The constant threading of this issue through the novel must remind Mary
Shelley's readers that they are wholly at the mercy of this autobiographical narrative
embedded in her text, a narrative told by a man introduced as "generally having an
expression of wildness, even madness" to him (I:L4:10). It is more than possible that
this is exactly her point, that Victor has been slowly descending into a madness from
which there is no escape, and that with his descent the narrative becomes increasingly
unreliable.