Elizabeth's conformity to her female lot, staying in Geneva rather than traveling
to Ingolstadt to care for Victor, spreading contentment around her, being content
herself with "trifling occupations," has been a source of irritation to many critics
who, from this and similar evidence, see the novel as enforcing a mindless domesticity
as the only alternative to the overreaching of the male protagonists. Yet, to take
this passage at face value as the expression not of Elizabeth but of Mary Shelley,
is not really defensible as a critical reading. Elizabeth's blandness is an aspect
of her character. Her satisfaction with, broadly speaking, the beautiful is certainly
an aspect of the female role in this period, but in no way does her author resemble
her in this narrow predeliction. Nor does the novel unquestionably reinforce it. After
all, the first direct view we as readers have had of this serene landscape was as
a violent thunderstorm burst from over the Jura mountains (I:1:22). When in the second
volume Victor enters into, instead of gazing upon, this world of "snow-clad mountains,"
it will be to confront the sublime directly.