Such incongruity of tone can have its value (though Mary Shelley did decide in the
third edition to remove the family presence altogether from Victor's excursion to
Mont Blanc). We will shortly be reminded that there is another part of Victor's family
he has assiduously avoided and to whom, unlike his conventional family, he has given
no solicitude whatsoever. The oddity of tone here, quickly rectified by the gloomy
weather of the next morning, almost unconsciously prepares us for the conversation
so feared and so long postponed but now, given the state of Victor's psychological
condition, clearly urgent.