Mary Shelley here suggestively reveals that Victor's self-education involves no sense
of social responsibility for the knowledge he might attain. Victor's withdrawal from
Elizabeth and barring of Clerval from his confidence also initiates a pattern of being
secretive about that knowledge, whether it is in the construction of the Creature
(I:3:10) or the withholding of evidence from a court examining a murder (I:7:1). That
he has conducted his entire life without candor will increasingly be seen to have
implications for the veracity of the narrative, since, after such a pattern of evasion
becomes clear, the reader might well begin to wonder why we should credit what he
says in the present instance as the unvarnished truth.