This phrase, which is the first written in reflexive thought about the Creature, immediately
establishes a threat to presumptions of scientific facticity, as the presence of this
alien existence casts its shadow over all facile assumptions and assurances, leaving
uncertainty in its wake. Such indeterminacy will increasingly come to dominate the
narrative of events in Frankenstein. The fact that the Creature and Victor are traveling
not over solid land but upon the fragile surface of ice is exactly emblematic of the
problematic nature of reality that Mary Shelley introduces to the novel here.

Justine discounts how much eloquence counts in her world, and in this novel (see,
for instance, I:L4:24and note). But if a plain, unvarnished recital of facts cannot
exonerate one, the novel asks, in what does truth exist? Compare Mary Wollstonecraft's
disavowal of eloquence at multiple points in A Vindication.

There have been veiled if persistent questions raised thus far about Victor's mental
stability. These will slowly increase over the course of the novel, to such an extent,
indeed, that near its end (III:WC:26), Walton has every reason to think he is himself
listening to "the ravings of insanity." Questions of conventional expectations and
of documentary evidence are present on all levels of this novel, in issues ranging
from verisimilitude in writing to justice in society.

Walton is anxious not just because his way is barred but because the icefield, in
expanding, could easily crush the hull of his ship. That process, called "nipping,"
was a major danger to wooden-hulled boats in arctic regions.

Although as a novel Frankenstein is highly ingenious in its interweaving of omens,
it also casts those who believe in them in a sharply reflexive light. In particular,
Victor's account of his life as buffeted by a continual sway of destiny tends to exculpate
him from responsibility for his choices and his actions.

Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" (1798), lines 451-56—with "who" substituted for "that"
in line 451. (In the 1817 revision, the passage occupies lines 445-450.) The second
direct allusion to this poem in the novel: the first occurs in Walton's second letter
to Mrs. Saville (I:L2:6).

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," is frequently also the subject of subtle allusion
(see, for instance, I.2.7 and note, or III.1.8 and note) casts a long shadow over
its conceptions.

There is nothing odd about this, for Coleridge bore an unusual weight in the house
in which Mary Godwin was raised. William Godwin, although separated from Coleridge
on key matters of philosophy and theology, was deeply attached to him, calling him
one of his four "oral instructors." Accordingly, Coleridge was a frequent guest in
the Godwin household. Mary Shelley never forgot the experience of hearing Coleridge
recite his "Rime" as she hid behind the sofa. Given Coleridge's brilliance in conversation,
she may have imbibed more from her youthful encounters with him than a later time
can ever know. Certainly, the implicit tribute accompanying her frequent allusions
to him in the course of Frankenstein suggests a deep and personalized admiration.

Mary Shelley's emendations of 1831 once again link early statements in Victor's narrative
with his condition when he is rescued by Walton's crew, a frantic and paranoid specter
whose otherworldly mystifications, as expressed in the late chapters of Volume 3,
are a driving force in his obsessive pursuit of the Creature. It is interesting to
note that even this late in her work on the novel Mary Shelley is recalling the machinery
with which Percy Bysshe Shelley invested his poem centering on the uncompromising
pursuit of a love object, "Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitiude," published in March
of 1816, shortly before the two left for Switzerland.

Frankenstein is a novel that centers on a transgressive birth; it is replete with
orphans and both women and men who, cut off in their youth, die without creating children
of their own. In contrast to the actual terms of the work, Victor begins his narrative
by emphasizing normative and extended family structures.

The University of Ingolstadt medical faculty and particularly the anatomy theater
would have offered Victor unparalleled resources for pursuit of this new phase of
his studies.

The medical school, which today houses the German Museum of the History of Medicine,
was known as the Anatomie upon its completion in 1736. That designation is still recalled
in the street name on which the edifice stands.

Mary Shelley's journal notes indicate that she was sporadically reading in Robert
Southey's translation of Amadis of Gaul, a Spanish chivalric romance by Garcia de
Montalvo, during the early months of 1817. At this time she was also actively working
on Frankenstein.