The Creature once again echoes the opening soliloquy of Byron's Manfred (1817) (see
II:5:18 for the earlier instance).

The Creature, who appears to educate himself by a process of progressive binary distinctions,
here broaches his master categories, nature and humanity, both of them, given the
season of his birth and the shock of his first human encounters, seemingly inhospitable
to him.

Although Victor cannot know yet what is fully involved in his philosophical opinings,
the questions of what constitutes human identity and how humans may be free will turn
out to be major concerns of this second volume of the novel. As with the previous
sentence, Victor is here in the process of unconsciously setting the stage for a major
development in his education.

This is a nice detail in itself but not wholly devoid of further import. However boastful
the Creature may be about his advancement, the important point, and one that has been
slowly dawning on the reader, is that he is extremely intelligent. Like his "father,"
he is superior to his fellow-students (I:3:2). With his great stature, his exquisitely
fine feelings, and his mental quickness, he should have been equipped, in Victor's
early aspiration, to be a "new species" (I:3:8) of superhuman being. Instead, he has
been spurned.

The Creature's enforced loneliness has been physically brought home to him, but that
he should already conceive of himself at this early stage of his experience as flawed
seems to involve progress through social rejection to a new and not exactly liberating
stage of self-consciousness.

The reader observes a carefully registered journey from the beautiful into the sublime,
from what Elizabeth has proposed as a domestic enclosure, warding off the unimaginable
and protecting the family unit from threat, into another confrontation, at least for
Victor, with elemental nature, with destruction and with fresh creation. The transitional
point of this rite of passage is marked by the village of St. Martin in the Shelleys'
account of their excursion to Chamonix in History of a Six Weeks' Tour.

As has already been evident in earlier chapters, in Mary Shelley's perspective the
imagination is a power at once of great dynamic force and ethically neutral in its
operations, leading to good or evil ends depending on the psychological framework
in which it exists. The darker side of this mental attribute has been especially invoked
as events in the novel have taken a tragic turn: see, for instance, I:3:7 and note,
I:4:18 and note, I:6:27 and note.

The same characteristic has been the subject of our recent focus, as Victor's anguished
frustration in Justine's prison cell issues in this extraordinary physical reaction
(I:7:27). Earlier we witnessed the same phenomenon when Victor was brought aboard
Walton's ship (I:L4:10 and note), which, since it is an event almost contemporary
with his present narrative account must give us a sense of how habitual this reaction
has become; also how revelatory of psychological (and moral) disturbance it is. Two
other characters engage in the same passionate behavior: the Creature (III:3:13) and
Milton's Satan.

It is a curious coincidence that the last time Victor called upon the heavens (I:6:22)
he instantly beheld his Creature. If Mary Shelley intended to signify something through
this coincidence, she certainly left no hint, and it has not been explained by commentators.

Heavy irony attends this choice of diction. Not only are we reminded of the "ardent"
desire with which, when young, Victor (I:2:7) (and Walton—I:L1:2) eagerly pursued
scientific knowledge, but we can associate with that innocent desire the more complicated
ardency driving Victor obsessively toward the scientific breakthrough that was the
birth of this Creature: see I:3:1 and note. This is the point in the novel when the
language of intense love first is used to embody the designs of a passionate hatred.