613
both "vitality, "human feeling," and an "independent will." The reciprocity of sensitive
beings is the foundation of all social interchange; thus, the key to creating a society.
both "vitality, "human feeling," and an "independent will." The reciprocity of sensitive
beings is the foundation of all social interchange; thus, the key to creating a society.
612
a contractual obligation between individual and family or state (I:1:1, I:3:10).
611
the central third of Milton's epic, the imprecation on his creator that follows in
the next paragraph bears comparison with the fallen Adam's indictment of God and lament
that he was ever born (X.720ff). Like Adam, although physically he does not bear the
imprint of his Creator, the Creature is indissolubly bound to Victor Frankenstein,
as is indicated by his frequent unconscious doublings in language or gesture.
610
and Victor Frankenstein vie for mastery over the other's will. Although fundamentally
psychological in its formulation, the contention, as this phrase stresses, carries
political overtones as well.
609
of this interview (II:2:8)—seems fitting in circumstances where so many mirrored prisms
are being deployed simultaneously by Mary Shelley.
608
However varied the reasons might be for the phenomenon, Frankenstein continually reverts
to the importance of documentary evidence to substantiate the truth of its events
or assertions. This will be seen as crucial in the case of the Creature's existence
and experiences (see II:6:7), of Victor's rectitude as a narrator (see III:WC:2),
even of Walton's day-to-day account of his voyage (likewise contained in letters "in
[his] own handwriting"). The pattern suggests that what is at stake here is the underlying
truth of all fictions.
607
This addition to the text seems motivated by a wish to make Margaret Saville a less
shadowy presence behind it. The implicit suggestion is that she is sufficiently older
than her brother to have cared for him when they were orphaned, though, considering
the twin facts that she has children in her own family and Robert is now 28 years
old, we must assume that the difference in age would amount to something like a decade
(III:WC:11). The added phrase also emphasizes the role of feminine nurturer assumed
by all the prominent women of the novel.
606
Age is always relative. Mary Shelley was some two months shy of her twentieth birthday
when she began writing Frankenstein and well past twenty-one when the novel appeared
in print. Moreover, before she began the novel toward the end of June 1816, she had
registered experiences highly unusual for a young woman in the constrained environment
of Britain, including eloping with a married man and twice giving birth. That said,
it is true that the author was in years yet an adolescent when she wrote this novel
and that, historically speaking, most of its readers have been struck by a range of
knowledge, maturity of conception, and intellectual ambition unusual in one so young.
605
Here what had been ambiguous in the earlier use of the word "wretch" (I:4:2) hardens
into monstrosity, a condition beyond the realm of the human. By the end of the paragraph
the Creature, in Victor's view, will once more transmogrify into a further dimension
of estrangement, the supernatural.
604
Here we encounter the first, ironic sign of Victor's bonding with his Creature. He
first called him a "wretch" in the second paragraph of this chapter (I:4:2), and has
just reiterated the epithet two sentences before this. Victor's adverb may seem innocent
enough, but when juxtaposed with the many instances later in the novel in which he
and his Creature will exchange places or nomenclature, it functions as a clear opening
signal of the complex narrative patterning to come.