1168
to differentiate time itself. The entrance onto the ice field seems to remove him
from all normative structures of human life.
to differentiate time itself. The entrance onto the ice field seems to remove him
from all normative structures of human life.
1167
it the vexed tension between father and son observed in the early chapters when Victor
was an adolescent. Victor's silence here, of course, is of no advantage in bringing
Alphonse to a better understanding of his by-now adult scion. Perhaps the son's reticence
is meant not just to mark his fear that the truth of his guilt would not be countenanced
by his father but also to implicate this strained history between them.
1166
so as not to have to confront their actual nature. The howl represents, indeed, a
reaction of despair following an entire year's attentuated expectation, a year spent
in solitude and without any other hope. In turn, that understanding tends to ironize
Victor's own emotional dependency on Clerval during their trip. Both creator and creature
are here at last equally alone in their solitude, unconsciously prepared to transfer
their entire gamut of emotional needs into a single-minded pursuit of the other's
destruction.
1165
III:3:6), the sublime power represented by the Creature is introduced to disturb its
tranquillity. Before, however, it was Victor who felt the effect of this natural profusion.
Here, clearly, Elizabeth is identified with a natural beneficence that Victor over
the course of the past five years has all but forsaken. What distinguishes her examples
is the ability she demonstrates to see all elements in motion; in their varied relations
with one another; and in their distinct particularity, whether distant and high (Mônt
Blanc) or near and deep (the bottom of Lake Geneva), rather than according to some
reductive model by which they are made identical and rendered inanimate. One senses
here a very different conception of nature from that manifested by Victor as scientist.
1164
own guardian spirit through this chapter. But what he foresees is grisly, himself
as one of the living dead, a zombie haunting the ongoing processes of life among the
living. Remarkable as it may seem, this final vision is, in effect, an image of one
last Creature let go from his hands as a free and frighteningly independent agent
on earth: himself. Perhaps, however, that was what he became from the point at which
he matriculated at Ingolstadt and entered into the world of his obsessions.
1163
Victor Frankenstein here as much as signs a contract for their future antagonism.
1162
principal context for this term in contemporary culture, Byron's monumental antiromance,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the third canto of which he wrote during the Geneva summer
of 1816.
1161
earlier reference, however, might be construed to have a bearing on Walton's present
insistence on its claims. This comes in Elizabeth's letter of commiseration to Victor
about his illness while in Ingolstadt. There she testified to her accord with Ernest's
desire to be a farmer, though it were a less "honourable occupation" (I:5:2) than
that of a judge. In her letter the idea of honour is tied to social and class hierarchies,
perhaps as well to distinctions between gender roles. It is clear that in Walton's
eyes his crew are, to return to Victor's formulation (III:Walton:17), lesser men than
they would be if they were possessed of a sense of honorable duty to the cause to
which their master has committed them.
1160
Holyhead, on the island of Angelsey, which lies off the northwest coast of Wales,
in the eighteenth century had developed into the major port linking Ireland and the
British Isles. It was the closest landing place to Dublin, with some 100 kilometers
of the Irish Sea intervening. Since, however, Anglesey was an island, passengers still
had to negotiate the treacherous Menai Strait linking it to the mainland. In 1810
Thomas Telford was commissioned at this site to build the first suspension bridge
in the world as part of a modernization of the coach road to Holyhead.
Mary Shelley never traced this itinerary, but Percy did, both going to and returning
from his Dublin adventure via Holyhead in 1812. Mary Wollstonecraft had also taken
this route when she took up her post as governess in the Irish seat of Lord and Lady
Kingsborough in 1786.
1159
and the willingness to engage in it has been the mark of selfless affection and respect.
We recall that Victor's mother Caroline dies from the effects of nursing Elizabeth
Lavenza through an adolescent attack of scarlet fever (I:2:2) and that Justine Moritz,
in her turn, contracts the disease from attending on Caroline Frankenstein and herself
falls "very ill" (I:5:5) as a result. Although not vulnerable to consequences so life-threatening,
Henry Clerval acts as Victor's "only nurse" during the months-long nervous fever that
incapacitates him after the Creature is brought to life (I:4:17).