1125

  • flying to solitude Elizabeth's seemingly innocent expression is remarkable for the extremity of its
    depiction. It suggests that a detached perspective on Victor's withdrawal would make
    it seem more neurotic than it might appear to us as accustomed sharers of Victor's
    point of view.

    • 1124

  • a fit of enthusiastic madness Although one of the definitions in Johnson's Dictionary describes the substantive
    of this word as "any violent affection of mind or body," in general the connotation
    emphasized is the temporary state of the affliction. In contrast, Victor's enthusiastic
    obsession was years in its gestation, and it was succeeded by another, more lethal
    obsession with the destruction of the being he created. In other words, though the
    madness he admits to may have taken several forms, it has been unremitting since he
    entered upon his studies at the University of Ingolstadt. As Victor's diction appears
    to mitigate its force, it suggests that even now, in his final assessment, he is unwilling
    fully to engage his own culpability.

    • 1123

  • The fishermen called to one another In this extreme silence the intrusion of human sounds not only testifies to the ongoing
    processes of everyday life, but reminds us that even in the farthest reaches of the
    globe human beings establish a basic community one with the other. These sounds from
    the darkness at once remind us of the Creature's yearning to participate in such a
    community and reinforce Victor's total self-exclusion from its claims. Moreover, surely
    there is an intentional irony here pitting the productive labor of the fishermen,
    who in turn depend upon it for their sustenance, against the long-postponed and now
    aborted labor of Victor, who is financially free of such necessities, as well as the
    lack of productive community in which the Creature is forced to exist.

    • 1122

  • a filthy process Victor echoes the term he used to characterize his laboratory in Ingolstadt: "my
    workshop of filthy creation" (I:3:9).

    • 1121

  • Filled with dreary imaginations

    The withdrawal is a dangerous portent, but for Mary Shelley once again to connect
    such a process with the exercise of the imagination clearly questions the value of
    this central concept of Romanticism.

    • 1120

  • a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity Here, and throughout the ensuing paragraphs, Victor indulges in a determined, almost
    compulsive hyperbole that distances himself from and demonizes his creation. In the
    process Victor comes to identify himself with "the whole human race" against the anomalous
    alien being he would cast out from it.

    • 1119

  • fiend

    As is evidenced by his once again denominating his Creature by degrading epithets,
    Victor returns to his old habits of mind as the time slips away.

    • 1118

  • a feverish joy This oxymoronic construction calls attention to itself in ominous ways. It at once
    reminds the literate reader of the "fearful joy" that the youths momentarily "snatch"
    on their school playing field in Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton
    College" (line 40) and recalls the anxiety-ridden states of fever that have furnished
    a recurrent counterpoint to Victor's experiences with the Creature (see I:3:14, I:4:17).

    • 1117

  • a feverish fire still glimmers in his eyes Victor has been described as feverish since his collapse following the death of Clerval
    (III:4:11). The symptoms point to tuberculosis, known in the early nineteenth century
    as consumption because the body wasted away under the advance of the disease. Such
    a disease would be correlative to, and even emblematic of, Victor's mental condition.

    • 1116

  • fever With this characteristic reversion to physical collapse we are reminded of how precarious
    has been Victor's physical and mental stability since his obsessive researches at
    Ingolstadt (see I:4:17). Only a few months before his marriage he had been so ill
    that a long period of convalescence was necessary to restore him to a state in which
    he could withstand his trial in Ireland (see III:4:11 and III:4:42).
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