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.

1307

real insanity possessed me It is easy to overlook the weight of this statement, but "real" should be given its
due meaning. Following the accounts of Victor's attempted suicide (III:4:46) and his
father's questioning earlier in this chapter whether his son was not actually mad,
(III:5:5) these symptoms, an alteration between violent rage and withdrawn lethargy,
point to a serious manic-depressive condition. For Elizabeth this has to be extraordinarily
trying: the depressed state Victor was in when he had left her, both upon undertaking
the excursion to Chamounix (II:1:10 and II:1:14) and in the aftermath of his encounter
with the Creature (III:1:1), had been serious enough, but the extremity into which
it has developed hardly bodes well for her future with him. Even so, Elizabeth reverts
to her characteristic vocation of nurse.

1306

the wildest rage of some uncontrollable passion Rage has appeared such an emotional constant of this novel that the reader may be
surprised in reflection to realize that the emotion never occurs in Volume 1, but
enters the space of the fiction in the encounter of the Creature and Victor Frankenstein
on the Mer-de-Glace of Mont Blanc. There the figure embroiled in rage is Victor (II:2:5).
In the Creature's own narration something like this present unrestrained rage occurs
when he burns down the cottagers' house (II:8:12). Thereafter, the novel evinces a
smoldering fire, ready to burst into flame at any point: we witness it in the successive
"rage" that grips Victor (II:9:3) and the Creature (II:9:6) over the question of the
creation of a companion. Beginning with chapter 3 of the third volume, rage is an
abiding emotion of Victor Frankenstein's, concomitant with the fever that wastes his
body. Now that he is dead, it is as if that violent emotion were floating free of
his body, the sole evidence of the bond driving both these figures to their destruction.
It is notable that the rage inhabiting the Creature is not against Victor but himself.

1305

I belonged to a race of human beings It requires but a moment's pause over this bland statement of relief, particularly
in conjunction with Victor's fears, expressed at the beginning of the chapter, about
propagating a race of devils (see III:3:2 and note) to realize that its premise is
a blatant racism. Mary Shelley represents it without any underscoring, all the more
suggestive of how inherent is the thinking, how psychologically embedded the attitude.

1304

a race of devils At this point Victor's demonizing of his Creature extends into a primitive form of
racism, transforming a personal vendetta into a supposedly objective ideology that
stamps this Other as inherently inferior, incapable of civilization, and undeserving
of existence. Thus positioning himself at an extreme of self-righteous justification,
Victor will fall back upon this hardened, docrinaire authority for all his subsequent
actions concerning the Creature.

1303

his queen, and son The syntax is somewhat confusing. Falkland and Gower/Goring are mentioned as companions
to King Charles I, whose queen was Henrietta Maria (1609-69)—actually Henriette-Marie,
daughter of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici, by birth and practice a Roman
Catholic. The son mentioned here probably would be Charles II (1630-85; restored after
the Commonwealth as king of Great Britain and Ireland, 1660-85); but the term could
as easily apply to his slightly younger brother James II (1633-1701), who became king
after the death of Charles II but was deposed three years later, in 1688, in what
became known as the Bloodless Revolution.

1302

I often endeavoured to put an end to the existence The matter-of-fact tone in which Victor speaks here clothes in euphemistic objectivity,
and seems meant to cushion, a remarkable statement. A person who "often" over a period
of a few weeks attempts to commit suicide, in general terms, would be considered seriously
deranged.

1301

I had had now neglected my promise for some time Since Victor and Clerval had not left London until the end of March, and as they
had "passed a considerable period at Oxford" and "two months in Cumberland and Westmoreland,"
not to mention the time spent in this lengthy journey northward, it should now be
early in July, which is to say, almost a year after Victor's promise to his Creature.
His pattern of attenuated delays throughout the novel is particularized in an earlier
note.

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