1247
during his fourth voyage to the north in 1611 resulted in the renowned explorer's
death. Even so late as his polar exploration of 1829, Sir John Ross experienced a
mutiny on one of its ships.
during his fourth voyage to the north in 1611 resulted in the renowned explorer's
death. Even so late as his polar exploration of 1829, Sir John Ross experienced a
mutiny on one of its ships.
1246
to whom Victor originally gave "life and spirit" was so horribly mutilated in his
creation as to provoke universal aversion from all whom he met. Now, in the text,
Victor hopes in some way to rectify that lack of initial perspective and clean up
either what he once called his "filthy creation" (I:3:9), or lacking success at that
aim, at least his own image. The secondary irony is that neither he nor his Creature
can expect an individual "posterity" since each has denied the other the possibility
of procreation. The posterity that will determine their lasting reputations is thus
composed solely of readers of the present text that Victor is so assiduously determined
to rewrite.
1245
as a physiologist. What the reader cannot miss, however, is the extent of self-absorption
that could lead a man in the process of discovering his wife's corpse to note his
own bodily symptoms with such detached scrupulosity.
1244
the Creature and Victor acknowledged their similarities toward the end of the colloquy
on the Mer-de-Glace (II:8:36, II:9:2, II:9:5).
1243
the late Enlightenment. A major reason for this was the presence of the Royal Society
for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1660 shortly after the restoration
of Charles II: its periodical, Philosophical Transactions, was still in Mary Shelley's
day the principal scientific journal of the world. The president of the Royal Society
at the time of the publication of Frankenstein was Sir Joseph Banks, one of the great
explorers and botanists of the eighteenth century. Although Banks's diverse interests
would not have specifically engaged Victor Frankenstein, we can be sure that his example
would have been a guiding light for Walton. That of his successor, Sir Humphrey Davy,
however, would have equally drawn Victor's admiration, since he was perhaps the premier
scientist experimenting with the chemical effects of electricity in the first quarter
of the nineteenth century.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, it should be noted, attended a number of anatomical lectures
by John Abernethy in 1811.
1242
of the novel. His "Pains of Sleep," in which he recounts the psychic repercussions
of a nightmare induced by opium, was published in 1816, shortly before Mary Shelley
began writing Frankenstein.
1241
In the 1818 edition Elizabeth is the daughter of Alphonse's deceased sister (see I:1:7).
Although in the 1831 edition her parentage is distanced, she retains this same designation
of being "more than daughter." The terms recall the rhetoric in which she herself,
in her dungeon, addressed Justine (see I:7:23). Even more so, they echo Victor's own
description of her in their youth, in the revised 1831 edition (see 1831:I:1:10),
and thus strongly suggest that there Mary Shelley was attempting to draw together
these linguistic echoes to emphasize the inbred, almost incestuous, closeness of the
family. As elsewhere, the echoes may intimate that the bourgeois domestic affections
are not an unmixed blessing.
1240
almost wholly by its gradual character, the reader can attribute this statement either
to Mary Shelley's desire for a gothic ambience or, more consistent with her art, to
Victor's overheated imagination. Since the previous paragraphs have, through the foreshortening
of time, already hinted at his surrender to mania, this could be intended as a further
example of the slippage of his sense of reality.
1239
the statements of its narrators continues here as Walton twice—and in the formulation
of a logical proof ("conviction of the truth" . . . "Such a monster has then really
existence")—thoughtlessly borrows Victor's diction to describe the Creature. Careful
readers will remember that the "apparition . . . seen from our ship" was described
very differently at the time (I:L4:3).
1238
applicable to a true understanding of the dynamics that underlie the identification
of him as monstrous. No longer merely a "monster" in and of himself, here the Creature
is designated as being created in such a form. Victor thus tacitly acknowledges his
responsibility for making his Creature monstrous, whether in deed or by the mere utterance
of the word.