1043
the actual state of the world beyond his enclosed family circle—and in this case,
he seems even unable to discern what is going on within it.
the actual state of the world beyond his enclosed family circle—and in this case,
he seems even unable to discern what is going on within it.
1042
in Frankenstein. The fact of such mortality is surely what exacerbates the crew's
sense of its peril and justifies its appeal to the captain to cut short his expedition.
Although Walton expresses no guilt for the fate of these mariners under his command,
one might wonder at its lack. Certainly, it is an odd paradox that the novel can concentrate
with such intensity on the murderous consequences of the antagonism of Victor Frankenstein
and his Creature but pass by without comment the revelation that Walton's enterprise
in pursuit of knowledge has resulted in apparently greater death than has their destructive
dynamic.
1041
eighteenth and early ninteenth centuries for a sedative or sleeping potion.
1040
the side of his character that Walton finds most attractive. In an existential void
himself, one created as much by his own chosen withdrawal from social obligations
as by the pressure of catastrophic events, Victor is still able to sympathize with
the plight of Walton and his crew and to offer encouragement to their hopes. Perhaps
what would most easily explain this sympathetic posture, though it would not justify
the optimism he expresses to them, is Victor's own deep sense of helplessness before
an implacable force.
1039
it, forcefully indicate Victor's awareness of the effect he has had on his audience
over the previous six days. Walton's language, however, coming immediately upon his
assuming what purports to be a narrative objectivity, seems intended to have an even
more pronounced effect on the larger audience of Mary Shelley's novel. Where Walton
may feel he is experiencing an authentic emotionality, we in our greater detachment
may wish instead to discern in Victor's recounted autobiography an accomplished actor's
knowing manipulation of his subject matter and his audience.
1038
his double in rewording the "inscriptions" left for him, or of the symbiotic way in
which the Creature through the experience of revenge now sounds like a second self
of Victor's, this phrase recalls the masculinist bravado Victor twice indulges in
his impotent rage before the power of the Creature (see II:2:6 and III:3:16).
1037
hesitation suggests that, however morally blameless he represents himself as being,
in his deep consciousness he recognizes the similarity between his un-creative act
and murder. (See III:3:4 and note; III:3:22 and note).
1036
Given Clerval's seeming representation as a Shelleyan ideal, his desire to attach
himself to the imperialist designs of Europe upon Asia would appear to have Mary Shelley's
endorsement. And it should be said that this early in the growth of the British empire—long
before the Afghan Wars (1839-42) and the Indian Mutiny (1857-59)—when the liberal-minded
Sir William Bentinck was Governor-General (1828-35), the British saw their influence
in the Indian subcontinent as morally benign. Still, the extent to which the imperial
"native" is debased within this system has its corollary in the rejection of the Creature
by Europeans wherever he encounters them. Likewise, earlier imperial projects are
roundly condemned elsewhere in the novel: for instance, by Victor and by the Creature
himself in his reaction to the reading of Volney's Ruins of Empires.
1035
Cologny, Switzerland, lies on the southern side of Lake Geneva. It is the site of
the Maison Chapuis, the house that Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley rented during the
summer of 1816.
1034
who, two paragraphs earlier, had been unsure whether he could rid his mind of its
"passion," that is, self-interest in its own affairs. The principal cloud overshadowing
Walton is the failure of the entire enterprise to which he has been committed for
a number of years. The death of Victor has also robbed him of the only deep friendship
he has known. On professional and personal planes, then, he is equally bereft.