phrase. In the second case, although the revised edition lacks the epigraph from Milton's
Paradise Lost that marks the original title page ("Did I request thee, Maker, from
my clay / To mould me Man?"—X.743-44 ), Mary Shelley's recast diction seems to recall
it with a deliberate irony. In this reconstitution the new Adam, lacking all free
will, is animated by his own revenge, which is the pattern, the "mould," established
by Satan in Milton's epic.
On a mundane rather than cosmic level, however, we might want to contemplate what
it is to have one's entire emotional life formed by the sentiment of revenge? In accord
with the loss of "voluntary thought" mentioned in the previous sentence, Victor also
gives up any feeling, any instinctual sense of identification, that might lead him
away from his obsessive rage against his double. He thus confesses himself as being
wholly shaped, both intellectually and emotionally, by this bond of negation. As he
embarks on a pursuit of high adventure, he casts himself, ironically, as a totally
passive victim of his own choosing.