1005
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.
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
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
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
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
(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
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
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
"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
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)
996
forever barred from Paradise. The angel whose "arm [is] bared" is the figure Blake
called "the Covering Cherub," assigned to make certain that no return was possible:
it is to be assumed that by this figure Victor identifies his Creature as an instrument
of divine destiny.
See also Milton's description of this banishment in Paradise Lost, XII.632-44.