• dreaded spectre

    The phrase demonizes the Creature, lending him the aura of an otherworldly existence.
    The overwrought language of this paragraph, appropriate as it may be to Victor's hysterical
    condition, is one of the few times in the novel where Mary Shelley indulges in the
    stock properties of the Gothic. By its melodramatic indulgence it testifies, if only
    in contrast, to the general stylistic restraint with which Mary Shelley vests her
    novel.