1335

  • September 9th

    In 1818 the compositor, evidently reading this as one in a series of journal entries,
    surmised that it could not follow "September 12th" and added an integer to make it
    "September 19th." But, of course, what the text intends us to understand by its idiom
    is, "On September 9th the ice began to move." Since this is the date in the manuscript
    and it is restored in 1831, the text has been emended here.

    • 1334

  • September 2d A week has elapsed since Walton's last entry in the letter to his sister, a notable
    absence in a time frame that has been previously so overcharged with event. The dating
    makes comparison almost inevitable, and the reader thus becomes conscious of the curious
    fact that the entirety of Victor's narration of his life took one day less than this
    week-long lacuna in which the late-summer ice has slowly but inexorably been heaved
    by the pressures of wind and sea into threatening mountains. The natural landscape,
    as is so often the case with Mary Shelley's treatment of the sublime Arctic wilderness,
    has a corollary in the psychological development of her characters, particularly in
    the nexus of guilt and destiny driving Victor.

    • 1333

  • sentence Officially exonerated as he has been by his trial in the previous chapter, Victor
    nonetheless carries a profound psychological sense that he has been convicted in the
    court in which his destiny has been plotted and that there is no escaping the sentence.
    That he totally misreads the result, however, is sufficient commentary on the "necessity"
    under which he feels he labors.

    • 1332

  • sensibility Victor is here being characterized as the ideal "man of feeling," in accord with
    Enlightenment cultural standards of a kind associated with the writings of Rousseau
    and, in English, Adam Smith. With the latter, see particularly The Theory of Moral
    Sentiments, 3.2-3.3, 5.2, and 6.3.

    • 1331

  • the lessons of my Seneca

    Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BCE — 65 CE). A leading philosopher and statesman of the
    mid-first century, Seneca was also a playwright, whose nine tragedies celebrate stoic
    resignation. As a statesman, his practice was anything but what such a philosophical
    stance might indicate, for he was an activist not a conservative. He was Nero's tutor
    and later acted behind the scenes to secure the emperor's power. He retired from the
    court in the year 62 to devote himself to philosophy, but three years later he was
    denounced as taking part in the conspiracy of Piso against the emperor. Ordered by
    Nero to commit suicide, Seneca took his own life with stoic resignation and fortitude.
    It is not, it would appear, in Seneca's writings but in his example that Walton looks
    for comfort in his peril.

    • 1330

  • my selfish despair If the terms in which Victor recounts his regaining a sense of responsibility cannot
    easily be reconciled with a disinterested ethics, one senses in this phrase a tone
    of self-accusation reflecting a more mature understanding of his own implication in
    the catastrophic events he has unleashed. This acceptance of responsibility is not
    uniform, returning only sporadically in the later chapters of the novel, but it testifies,
    perhaps, to a measure of moral growth; or, if Victor's vindictive diction places that
    conclusion in some doubt, at least to a sharper sense of the price that has been paid
    for his solitary ambition and withdrawal from normative human interactions. Still,
    suspecting that Victor's self-important posture as family protector will only eventuate
    in great calamities, a reader may find it hard not to cast an ironic eye upon what
    continue as usual to be good intentions never sufficiently thought through.

    • 1329

  • scent of flowers and hay As this is June, the air is suffused with the scent of Alpine wildflowers and freshly
    cut grass: this would appear a memory of Mary Shelley's from the 1816 summer.

    • 1328

  • what a scene has just taken place Characteristic of the structural ingenuity of Frankenstein, its final scene is a
    recollected flashback. Chronologically speaking, this brief paragraph, with its self-reflexiveness
    about its own artistic imperatives and capacities, constitutes something of a final
    bow, the last words of a novel that, from end to end, has held a mirror up to its
    own operations as a primary example of the creation that is its theme.

    • 1327

  • the same boat A realistic perspective on this evidence might emphasize the fact that, since both
    the Creature's and Victor's boats are Scottish in make, they would therefore in all
    probability resemble one another closely. But Mary Shelley seems to have another purpose
    in mind. Having already forced an aura of the uncanny upon this scene through the
    great distance of travel and coincidence of destination of her characters, she subtly
    reinforces the interchangeability of Creature and creator that will progressively
    intensify as the novel moves towards its conclusion.

    • 1326

  • Mont Salêve This is a nice touch on Mary Shelley's part. The attentive reader will nod in recognition
    that the previous time this mountain was reported as being in Victor's line of vision,
    two years earlier, he had descried his Creature climbing its nearly perpendicular
    face (I:6:22).
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