This appears a deliberate echo of Victor's self-exculpating claim, "I had begun life
with benevolent intentions," in the opening paragraph of this second volume.

The Creature knows about the effects of unchecked power through the account of Safie's
father's persecution (II:6:3) and the De Laceys' ruination (II:6:14), and he may have
gleaned something of its underlying assumptions from William Frankenstein's instinctive
reliance on his father's ability to punish arbitrarily (see II:8:27 and note). Yet,
it is to Victor that the Creature speaks, and, since he has used a derivative of "wantonness"
in his earlier condemnation (II:8:1 and note), it is perhaps to that particularized
sense of irresponsibility that he reverts here.

This is the Creature's first observation of human society rather than the life of
nature, and it does not exactly accord with our normative sense of the civilized.
Yet, a wandering beggar himself, he accepts this without wondering why it should be,
leaving that question to the logical instincts of a reader with greater command over
social institutions.

The Creature acknowledges his fall from an original state of grace: "virtues" seems
to be deliberately Miltonic diction, invoking Satan and Adam (and Eve). The Biblical
context aside, this claim to a prelapsarian perfection is intended to remind Victor
of his own high ambition (see I:3:8) and to affirm how well, on an internal if not
external plane, it was realized.

These lines, repeated by the Creature to Victor, apply directly to his conduct, indicting
his lack of both foresight and responsibility. They are also sadly ominous of the
further degree of alienation faced by the Creature if this present mission fails.

A few paragraphs before, the Creature was reintroduced to human society through observing
"violent gesticulations." Now Felix is seized by what is clearly an instinctive and
uncontrollable violence. This is the same youth who, inspired by the most noble motives,
has been habitually called "gentle" by the Creature in earlier chapters.

Although the Creature cannot interpret the subject of this conversation, the gestures
should be sufficient for his comprehension. They mime the reaction he elicits in all
human beings.

With pointed economy Mary Shelley returns to the context of Paradise Lost, once again
to emphasize the disparity between God's accomplishment and that of Victor Frankenstein.
This time it is centered in the figure of Eve, who is transfixed by her beauty when,
newly born, she happens to catch sight of her perfect form mirrored in a pool (IV.449-88).
In both the novel and epic, though the effect is differently pointed in each, we read
ironically against Ovid's account of the myth of Narcissus in Book III of the Metamorphoses.

Like Agatha's dress in the previous paragraph, this is another sign of poverty, but
it is likewise an indication of how close to subsistence exists this entire family.
In this they share the condition of the Creature who attaches himself to them partly
on the basis of their simplicity of manners and means.

The season is yet early enough that the produce of late-autumn is still growing even
with an early snowfall.