1323

roarings like thunder This is the sound of the "ground sea," which had also been heard some five weeks
earlier, on the afternoon of 31 July (I:L4:5 and note). The breakup of the ice on
that occasion cut Victor Frankenstein off from his Creature, and he remembered its
violent sound (III:7:24 and note) in terms similar to those used here by Walton.

1322

Leigh Hunt's "Rimini" Leigh Hunt's Story of Rimini (1816) recounts the legendary love of Francesca da Rimini
and her brother-in-law, Paolo Malatesta, which is found in Dante's Inferno (5.73-138),
in a style at once richly textured like a medieval tapestry and linguistically contemporary.
His explanation for the illicit love was that the youthful Francesca was married to
Paolo as a stand-in for his haughty older brother and fell in love with him at first
sight. This quotation comes from the beginning of Canto 2, after the groom's elaborate
wedding party arrives with the surrogate Paolo as "the very poetry of nature" (2.47)
to fetch the bride. In 1815 Hunt had become something of a mentor to both Mary Godwin
and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and he was to remain one of their warmest friends. Indicative
of how close this circle was, Hunt's Story of Rimini was dedicated to Lord Byron.

1321

revenge remains . . . food The Creature, as it were, accepts the challenge Victor offered at the beginning of
the previous paragraph, assuming mastery over his destiny. The terms in which he defines
his revenge, indeed, will be the dominating force of the later chapters, in which
vengeance becomes a single-minded obsession for both creature and creator.

1320

a restless spectre Literally, a ghost who cannot break through the barrier separating the afterworld
from the scene of actual human life. Such a being, we should remind ourselves, is
also a "dæmon," the term used by Victor in the previous sentence to distance himself
from and dehumanize his Creature.

1319

to restrain me It would appear from this statement that Victor's capacity for violence has increased
markedly since, three months earlier, he had destroyed the female creature, "trembling
with passion" (III:3:4). Again, the terminology (e.g., "restrain") seems appropriate
to a pathological condition.

1318

I grew restless and nervous As in Ingolstadt (I:3:14), Victor's health begins to suffer from his compulsive and
solitary existence.

1317

a resolution . . . of vice This is a term with something of a history in the novel. Both Walton and Victor have
earlier prided themselves on their resolution. See I:L1:6 and note, confirmed in I:L2:5,
and I:3:1. Victor's resolution will become ever more unbending and even murderous
in the course of the novel's conclusion.

1316

even to the most repulsive among them Perhaps this statement is meant to remind us that, though Victor was originally repelled
by the "repulsive countenance" of Krempe, the chemistry professor at the University
of Ingolstadt (see I:2:9), in time he came to treasure "his sound sense and real information,"
however much he was still aware of their being "combined . . . with a respulsive physiognomy"
(I:3:1). Obviously, however, what Victor can tolerate in a human constrained by the
normative boundaries of inherited genetic combination he is unwilling to extend to
his Creature, who is a being of whom, from the first, he claimed "no mortal could
support the horror of that countenance" (I:4:4), a being who himself, upon first seeing
his reflection, "started back" from his "miserable deformity" (II:4:13). Victor's
magnanimous identification with his fellow beings collapses here under the weight
of the ironies of a categorical discrimination he seems unable to comprehend.

1315

remorse Remorse is by no means an unalloyed virtue in Enlightenment usage, as Johnson's definition
of it makes clear. Contemporary literary usage had, indeed, suggested that this was
a tragic passion. Coleridge's Remorse, which was produced in 1813, represents the
passion as a static rankling, and Byron, who had a hand in bringing that tragedy to
the stage at Drury Lane, recasts its essential situation into the unavailing grief
of Manfred.

1314

his remembrance This confirms the sense of mortality initimated by the questions of the previous
paragraph.

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