As with many of her interpolations in 1831, Mary Shelley here seems intent on an early
establishment of a pattern that will reappear and become more intense in its significance
as the novel progresses. Such psychological turmoil will produce a state of nightmare
and half-sleep on the night after the Creature is created (I:5:3) and will reveal
itself in Volumes 2 and 3 by a chronic and, in the end, debilitating fever.