1252

  • my eyes . . . death Whatever the accruing psychological similarities between Victor and his Creature,
    this is the first indication that Victor is also growing into his physical counterpart.
    Perhaps, these signs of death are to be read from a moral perspective, as indicating
    how deeply implicated with spiritual decay is Victor's retreat from normal human interaction.

    • 1251

  • what were my duties with regard to this destroyer "Duty" has been a charged concept throughout Frankenstein, invoked in regard to family
    affairs, social obligations, legal contracts, uses of knowledge—even, in Victor's
    rationale for suspending his second creation, the human race. This occasion is different
    from all the rest, involving the question of what is the moral duty of a human to
    another sentient but alien being. This assertion of the priority of moral obligation
    requires willed self-abnegation on Walton's part. No other figure in the novel, certainly
    not Victor Frankenstein, has ever assumed that the Creature was owed anything.

    • 1250

  • such is not my destiny Victor reiterates what he has said before (III:4:43, III:7:5), accentuating the reader's
    strong sense that he has built a conceptual prison around himself. If the purpose
    of one's life is solely to bring death to another, then the notion of a vital or life
    force has been systematically inverted. Such a psychological condition is clearly
    pathological.

    • 1249

  • my destiny . . . close The wrenching shift in narrative stance into a present "now" accentuates the difference
    subtly in play up to this moment between Victor's self-accusations and his actual
    avowal of culpability. The man talking to his father knows that he is innocent of
    the crime for which he is languishing in jail. The one speaking in Walton's cabin
    nearly three years later, in contrast, has locked the key on his own imprisonment.

    • 1248

  • to shake off my chains This conception of slavery as a psychological as well as physical condition is very
    much of a piece with other literary productions by the Geneva circle during the summer
    of 1816, most particularly The Prisoner of Chillon, written by Lord Byron in the week
    after he and Percy Bysshe Shelley visited the Castle of Chillon during their boat
    trip around the lake in mid-July. Shelley included an account in the letters he appended
    to A History of a Six Weeks' Tour. In Byron's poem, at the end of his long captivity,
    François de Bonnivard, the prisoner, claims, "It was at length the same to me, / Fetter'd
    or fetterless to be" (lines 372-73) and ruefully notes, in much the same language
    as Victor employs here, that "iron is a cankering thing, / For in these limbs its
    teeth remain, / With marks that will not wear away" (lines 38-40).

    • 1247

  • the fears I entertained of a mutiny These are by no means unfounded fears. The notorious mutiny of Henry Hudson's crew
    during his fourth voyage to the north in 1611 resulted in the renowned explorer's
    death. Even so late as his polar exploration of 1829, Sir John Ross experienced a
    mutiny on one of its ships.

    • 1246

  • mutilated one The irony of the previous sentence is here almost grotesquely intensified. The being
    to whom Victor originally gave "life and spirit" was so horribly mutilated in his
    creation as to provoke universal aversion from all whom he met. Now, in the text,
    Victor hopes in some way to rectify that lack of initial perspective and clean up
    either what he once called his "filthy creation" (I:3:9), or lacking success at that
    aim, at least his own image. The secondary irony is that neither he nor his Creature
    can expect an individual "posterity" since each has denied the other the possibility
    of procreation. The posterity that will determine their lasting reputations is thus
    composed solely of readers of the present text that Victor is so assiduously determined
    to rewrite.

    • 1245

  • motion of every muscle . . . extremities of my limbs The oddity of this observation seems to be directly based in Victor's experience
    as a physiologist. What the reader cannot miss, however, is the extent of self-absorption
    that could lead a man in the process of discovering his wife's corpse to note his
    own bodily symptoms with such detached scrupulosity.

    • 1244

  • most miserable of mortals The terms here have a strongly echoing effect, returning us to the language in which
    the Creature and Victor acknowledged their similarities toward the end of the colloquy
    on the Mer-de-Glace (II:8:36, II:9:2, II:9:5).

    • 1243

  • the most distinguished natural philosophers In general terms England was the center for scientific knowledge in the Europe of
    the late Enlightenment. A major reason for this was the presence of the Royal Society
    for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1660 shortly after the restoration
    of Charles II: its periodical, Philosophical Transactions, was still in Mary Shelley's
    day the principal scientific journal of the world. The president of the Royal Society
    at the time of the publication of Frankenstein was Sir Joseph Banks, one of the great
    explorers and botanists of the eighteenth century. Although Banks's diverse interests
    would not have specifically engaged Victor Frankenstein, we can be sure that his example
    would have been a guiding light for Walton. That of his successor, Sir Humphrey Davy,
    however, would have equally drawn Victor's admiration, since he was perhaps the premier
    scientist experimenting with the chemical effects of electricity in the first quarter
    of the nineteenth century.

    Percy Bysshe Shelley, it should be noted, attended a number of anatomical lectures
    by John Abernethy in 1811.

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