1083
it would appear, his friend's later adjustment that he was then "actuated by selfish
and vicious motives" (III:Walton:28 and note).
it would appear, his friend's later adjustment that he was then "actuated by selfish
and vicious motives" (III:Walton:28 and note).
1082
the one hand, Victor's oratory energizes the crew in positive thinking and rouses
them to their tasks. Without this invigoration their situation could degenerate into
a laxity of spirit and effort perilous to their well-being. Yet, the emptiness of
mere rhetoric is likewise emphasized here, since the courage roused one day gives
in to despondency the next. Words relate to reality only tangentially or conditionally,
and when the reality remains implacable, Victor's signifying words appear hollow substitutes
for its unavoidable presence.
1081
that he is insane? Then, the magistrate would only be defusing a tense and socially
threatening situation by trying to soothe him into emotional tranquillity.
1080
We may observe how totally within a masculine prerogative lie the consummation, delay,
or even the value of a marriage. Values like "honour and utility" are not to be thought
of in relation to women's lives. Before questioning why Mary Shelley would adopt so
seemingly unfeminist a posture, we should recognize that this is exactly how Mary
Wollstonecraft saw the case: see, for instance, Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(12.25).
1079
I:1:1), and he has quite recently been on trial himself with the magistrate Mr. Kirwan
leading his defence; so therefore it is clear that he perfectly well knows what their
duties are. To state them so boldly to this judge requires something of his father's
authority.
1078
acknowledges that he had a duty toward the being he created. Earlier, we will recall,
the Creature had himself to instruct Victor on this subject (II:2:7 and note).
1077
his family or his Creature, should be able to speak in such measured terms of a balance
among multiple duties is certainly an indication of the objectivity and even wisdom
to which he may aspire when he moves outside his own narrow concerns. That he specifically
steps back from the coercive tone by which he had earlier tried to enlist Walton as
his agent in murder (III:7:26) likewise testifies to his rediscovery of a moral center
in his last hours of life.
1076
and increasingly death comes to subsume life (see III:7:4), this further jumbling
of reality and the world of dream seems particularly appropriate to Victor's slippage
into a delusionary psychic state.
1075
eroticized relationship with her has the paradoxical effect of alerting us to its
rougher corollary in events of the novel of which she is ignorant. Translated from
the level domestic plane in which she is centered to the sublime heights where Victor
and his Creature struggle, this ambivalence might seem strangely akin to the intense
love-hate dynamic in which that homosocial relationship plays itself out.
1074
The Shelleys passed the Drance during their Swiss excursion; it is described in Letter
6 of A History of a Six Weeks' Tour:
As soon as we had passed the opposite promontory, we saw the river Drance, which descends
from between a chasm in the mountains, and makes a plain near the lake, intersected
by its divided streams. Thousands of besolets, beautiful water-birds, like sea-gulls,
but smaller, with purple on their backs, take their station on the shallows, where
its waters mingle with the lake.