• tears . . . streamed from my eyes Even as Victor thinks of himself as reacting with compassion to the assumed plight
    of Elizabeth, it is clear to any reader that he is actually weeping for himself. His
    giving in at last to his feelings is thus ironized, for rather than opening him to
    a renewal of his emotional life, his convulsive weeping results from a maudlin theatrical
    representation of his own death that wholly mistakes the threat to his future wife.