1105
This is a direct citation of the conclusion to Satan's soliloquy upon Mount Niphates
in Milton's Paradise Lost:
Farewell, remorse! all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good. (IV.109)
1104
B. Shelley upon visiting it found little to recommend its inhabitants, it would seem
a natural destination for a honeymoon couple from Geneva.
1103
intervening between Elizabeth's death and the present scene of narration in Walton's
cabin.
1102
from Victor's, even down to the extreme hyperbole of the adjective, is another indication
that at this late point in the novel, the two of them have become a single entity
whose overriding passion is hatred and whose life force is provided by death.
1101
while living in Marlow, near Windsor and not far from Oxford, might logically have
suggested to her the value of inserting its local scenery and history into her novel.
More pointedly, her own tribute to her father, in dedicating her novel to Godwin,
would have been underscored by her including scenes associated with his most recent
novel Mandeville, centered on the English civil war in the mid-seventeenth century.
For this politically-minded group of writers (Godwin, Mary Shelley, P. B. Shelley),
the civil war had been, first and foremost, a conflict of ideologies pitting aristocratic
against republican values. Although a century and a half past, its political resonanace
was far from muted in a reactionary political climate like England's during the Regency.
Thus, the political undertones of this choice of scenery on Mary Shelley's part are
unlikely to have been in any sense innocent.
That said, there is another salient reason for the British setting of the earlier
chapters of Volume 3, which is the simple fact that the novel is designed for an English-reading
audience rather unaccustomed during the years of the Napoleonic Wars either themselves
to travel abroad or to respond with much interest to a continental setting as sweeping
as that embraced by the first two volumes. In its final volume Frankenstein goes rather
out of its way, as if designed according to formula, to embrace all three parts of
the United Kingdom.
1100
a nineteen-year-old student at the University of Geneva, perhaps to learn a more human
kind of knowledge than his brother, certainly to carry the family name forward solely
by himself. He is the single survivor of the catastrophic history surrounding Victor
Frankenstein.
1099
Ernest is at this point about nineteen years old, and, whether or not he has followed
his father's wishes and begun to study law, it is clear that he has not pursued his
earlier inclination, as expressed in Elizabeth's letter to Victor at Ingolstadt (I:5:2),
to eschew the public life and become a farmer. Whatever degree he contemplates, we
can determine from this statement that he is undertaking some extended program of
higher education at the University of Geneva.
1088
In the sense of "natural philosophy" encountered earlier (I:3:1), a physical scientist.
1087
thus not only dehumanizing him through an association with Satanic evil, but also,
by conferring on the Creature a transcendental status, absolving himself as his Creator
from any responsibility for his nature. In effect, linguistically, Victor is canceling
his own role in the formation of the Creature.
1086
paragraph of his resumed narrative (III:Walton:1 and note), we are here made conscious
of how essentially manipulative (even if it could be argued to be not wholly intentional)
is Victor's effort to insure that his perspective on events becomes the official record
handed down to posterity.