1006

  • the latter end of

    "August" in the 1818 text. This was changed to "September" in 1831 to avoid a jumble
    in the chronology (compare III:1 in both 1818 and 1831). The expedition to Mont Blanc
    took place "about the middle of August" (II:1:10), but then upon Victor's return,
    as this chapter opens by recounting, "Day after day, week after week passed away"
    (III:1:1) in listlessness.

    • 1005

  • I might be driven into the wide Atlantic Victor's hyperbole is characteristic of his imagination, which, whether leading him
    to create a being of abnormal stature or to envision a succesion of horrific torments
    he might suffer, is always larger than life. The remark does, however, prepare us
    for the extraordinary distance he does, indeed, travel.

    • 1004

  • assizes The Oxford English Dictionary, in its twelfth subsection under the substantive "assize,"
    explains these courts of trial as follows: The sessions held periodically in each
    county of England, for the purpose of administering civil and criminal justice, by
    judges acting under certain special commissions (chiefly and usually, but not exclusively,
    being ordinary judges of the superior courts, or, after 1875, of the Supreme Court).
    It was provided by Magna Carta that the judges should visit each county once every
    year to take assizes (i.e. try writs of assize) of novel disseisin, mort d'ancestre,
    and darreine presentment (so that the jury who constituted the Grand Assize . . .
    might not be obliged to travel from remote corners of England to appear in court at
    Westminster). Thence the names assizes, and justices or judges of assize, still retained
    by these circuit courts and itinerant judges, after their judicial functions had been
    greatly extended in various directions, especially in that of the trial of felonies
    and offences. Assizes were abolished by the Courts Act, 1971; their criminal jurisdiction
    was transferred to the Crown Courts. Of course, Ireland in the eighteenth-century
    had not yet been joined administratively to the mechanisms of the United Kingdom as
    it would become with the Act of Union of 1801. But in practical effect the nominally
    independent country, in its administration of justice, modeled itself on the English
    system.

    • 1003

  • mine is assigned to me by heaven Victor's assurance of transcendental authorization for his murderous intentions has
    become so absolute that he never questions his aims or how they are thus assured.
    Unlike Walton and his crew, he is locked into a vision as rigid and unmoving as had
    been the icefield surrounding the ship. When it breaks apart, offering an escape to
    a renewed, living community, Victor chooses to revert to the closed and solitary circle
    of his vengeance. That decision insures, indeed, is virtually the equivalent of, the
    death that forestalls his further pursuit of the Creature.

    • 1002

  • ascertain my fate From the retrospect of later chapters in the novel this seemingly innocuous phrase
    might be seen as constituting something of a floodwater for what will become an increasingly
    powerful, inescapable driving force in Victor's comprehension of the world. At the
    conceptual core of this notion of destiny one finds combined, as here, a sense of
    his own incapacity to act independently, a passivity before what he construes as superior
    power, and an abnegation of responsibility for the actions of himself or others.

    • 1001

  • ardently prayed The language of ardor, earlier associated with the scientific pursuits of both Walton
    (I:L1:2, I:L3:1) and Victor Frankenstein (I:3:2, I:4:3)—where in the latter case it
    is tinged with something approaching the eroticism only fully expressed after the
    death of Elizabeth (III:6:9)—is here transferred into the arena of hatred. In Victor
    this hatred will constitute a passion as intense and single-minded as erotic infatuation.

    • 1000

  • Embraced her with ardour After the numerous uses of this word to express a passion deflected upon mental objects
    and self-destructive withdrawal from community (see II:1:6 and its omnibus note),
    it is almost shocking to have it at last, and ironically, function within its normative
    connotations: that is to say, to represent passionate love.

    • 999

  • ardent desire The resonaces of this phrase for both Victor (see I:2:7), his Creature (see II:5:7
    and III:Walton:43), Walton (I:L3:1), and even the beneficent Mr. Kirwin (III:4:20)
    are another indication of how carefully Mary Shelley, in this final chapter of Victor's
    narration, is engaged in marking thematic unities across the various levels of her
    fictional panorama. "Ardent desire," though if untempered it can lead to a solipsistic
    irresponsibilty, is nonetheless an essential human principle. Its abrogation here,
    which will be reinforced by Victor's repetition of this disclaimer in his last moments
    (see III:Walton:28), indicates how whole is Victor's reversal from the student who
    undertook his career at Ingolstadt because he so "ardently desired the acquisition
    of knowledge" (I:2:7).

    • 998

  • They were for ever ardent and craving In the connotations of Mary Shelley's time, this phrase, in combination with the
    "impotent passions" described two sentences earlier, would seem to suggest that the
    Creature has suffered deeply during his existence from unconsummated sexual desire.
    Ironically, his desire for intercourse has been pure and unsublimated, whereas that
    of Walton and Frankenstein has been strongly channeled away from human interaction
    and into their respective projects (see II:9:9 and note).

    • 997

  • like the archangel

    The network of subtle allusiveness that has quietly identified Victor Frankenstein
    with Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost here rises to the surface of the text. Victor
    refers specifically to the climax of Satan's soliloquy on Mount Niphates:

    Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
    And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
    Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
    To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
    (IV.75-79)

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