1317

  • a resolution . . . of vice This is a term with something of a history in the novel. Both Walton and Victor have
    earlier prided themselves on their resolution. See I:L1:6 and note, confirmed in I:L2:5,
    and I:3:1. Victor's resolution will become ever more unbending and even murderous
    in the course of the novel's conclusion.

    • 1316

  • even to the most repulsive among them Perhaps this statement is meant to remind us that, though Victor was originally repelled
    by the "repulsive countenance" of Krempe, the chemistry professor at the University
    of Ingolstadt (see I:2:9), in time he came to treasure "his sound sense and real information,"
    however much he was still aware of their being "combined . . . with a respulsive physiognomy"
    (I:3:1). Obviously, however, what Victor can tolerate in a human constrained by the
    normative boundaries of inherited genetic combination he is unwilling to extend to
    his Creature, who is a being of whom, from the first, he claimed "no mortal could
    support the horror of that countenance" (I:4:4), a being who himself, upon first seeing
    his reflection, "started back" from his "miserable deformity" (II:4:13). Victor's
    magnanimous identification with his fellow beings collapses here under the weight
    of the ironies of a categorical discrimination he seems unable to comprehend.

    • 1315

  • remorse Remorse is by no means an unalloyed virtue in Enlightenment usage, as Johnson's definition
    of it makes clear. Contemporary literary usage had, indeed, suggested that this was
    a tragic passion. Coleridge's Remorse, which was produced in 1813, represents the
    passion as a static rankling, and Byron, who had a hand in bringing that tragedy to
    the stage at Drury Lane, recasts its essential situation into the unavailing grief
    of Manfred.

    • 1314

  • his remembrance This confirms the sense of mortality initimated by the questions of the previous
    paragraph.

    • 1313

  • that I might remain alone Victor's retreat from society characteristically involves shutting himself up in
    an enclosed room, as he had done when engaged in creating the Creature in Ingolstadt.
    Although the former desire has turned to abhorrence, his practices do not alter.

    • 1312

  • only regretted . . . understanding

    At this point Elizabeth Lavenza is about twenty-one years old. Two years younger,
    Mary Shelley has spent a good part of her childhood in Scotland, has twice been to
    France and Switzerland, and has travelled up the Rhine through Germany and Holland
    (none of it under parental guidance or supervision). That her experiences were unusual
    is reflected in this observation, with its glancing feminist edge.

    • 1311

  • I cannot forbear recording it Walton, who cannot resist the impulse to continue a creation whose end he cannot
    predict, bears an uncanny resemblance to the obsessive Victor Frankenstein racing
    to the denouement of the Creature's birth in Ingolstadt (I:3:8). The difference, and
    it is one maintained throughout the novel's self-reflexive mirroring of its own operations,
    is that writing has no effect in the world until it is read. The writer's obsession
    with the text may seem both narcissistic and solipsistic, but this antisocial dimension
    is confined to a conceptual plane. Still, Walton's unselfconscious acquiescence in
    the claims of what seems to him irresistable reinforces our sense that what drives
    Victor is little different from the passions we all share as human beings.

    • 1310

  • The recollection of this injustice The Creature is an acute reader of his own history, aware that amid his accumulated
    experiences of victimization some cases were freer than others from any possible mitigation.
    He concentrates here on the two instances (see II:7:38 and II:8:19) where his own
    disinterested benevolence was rewarded with a violent attack on his person. For all
    Victor's repeated threats to grapple with his Creature, it is interesting to observe
    that after his creation he never again physically touches him.

    • 1309

  • a thinking and reasoning animal As in his initial creation Victor's impulse is to deny humanity to the being he would
    endow with life. What most deeply plagues his mind is the fact that his creation will
    be beyond his control. In a theological extension of this concern, the question before
    the creator is whether the new race, particularly the female member of it, can be
    trusted to exercise free will.

    • 1308

  • it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality The uncanny coincidences by which Victor comes upon the scene of Clerval's death,
    as if enmeshed in a logic over which he has no control, reinforce his larger sense
    that he has no independent will to exercise in his life's narrative. These coincidences
    may likewise remind us of the crucial role played by narrative, or having a firm control
    over interpretation of the narrative, throughout the novel.
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