1416

  • the love of virtue The Creature unwittingly echoes the language with which Victor surveyed his past
    life after the execution of Justine Moritz (II:1:1).

    • 1415

  • We travelled at the time of the vintage In this context "vintage" means the harvesting of the grapes used in making the classic
    white wines of Germany frequently designated as "Rhine wines." Mary Godwin, Claire
    Clairmont, and Percy Bysshe Shelley descended the Rhine at this same time of year
    in 1814, and this description is colored by the experiences Mary recorded in A History
    of a Six Weeks' Tour.

    • 1414

  • one vast hand was extended With his "hand . . . stretched out, seemingly to detain" his double, the Creature
    replicates the gesture in which he first appeared before Victor's eyes, in his bedroom
    in Ingolstadt (I:4:3). The reaction of Walton to his monstrous presence is in stark
    contrast to that evinced on that previous occasion by his creator.

    • 1413

  • utter carelessness . . . second Again, as in his shock over the mistreatment of Justine Moritz in the first volume
    (I:7:30), Victor's innate sense of decency is evoked to complicate our recognitions:
    in this particular case, that his own medical carelessness was implicit in his creation
    of a being with monstrous features who could not function within a conventional social
    format (I:3:7) and that his uncaring brutality has been recently marked in the wanton
    destruction of the second creature on whom he had been working in the preceding chapter
    (III:3:4).

    • 1412

  • unmingled with disbelief Victor's self-consciousness as to his effect as narrator shadows this deposition
    of his case, both for the magistrate and for Mary Shelley's readers. We cannot help
    recognizing here that the end of a novel is to make fiction appear like truth. That
    Victor in the end does not gain the credence of his judge does, of course, vindicate
    his earlier reticence; but it also in some sense impinges on his reliability as a
    witness. Does it also have a destabilizing effect on the larger narrative of which
    it is a microcosm?

    • 1411

  • the threatened fate as unavoidable Victor's constant attention to his unavoidable fate is at least partly to be construed,
    at this point in the discourse, as a justification for the blindness with which he
    worried so exclusively about himself, leaving Elizabeth unprotected. But it falls
    in line as well with his reiterated invocation of destiny during this narration to
    Walton, a rhetorical ploy by which, whether or not it is his explicit intention, he
    exonerates himself of acknowledged responsiblity for the events his actions produce.

    • 1410

  • I lay for two months It has been less than three years since Victor Frankenstein had been seized with
    a similar "nervous fever" that, after the creation of his being, confined him for
    months (see I:4:17 and note). Mary Shelley emphasizes how severely debilitated his
    physical state has become as a result of the acute psychological stress under which
    he has been laboring and from which no amount of diversion can seem to liberate him.

    • 1409

  • like the turning of the wheel When Ixion, king of Thessaly, fell in love with Hera, Zeus punished him for his effrontery
    by binding him to a wheel in Hades that revolved in perpetuity. In notable instances
    in the English literary tradition the mode of Ixion's torture is reconceptualized
    in psychological terms. Mary Shelley would surely have been familiar with King Lear's
    portrayal of himself as "bound/ Upon a wheel of fire" (IV.vii.46-47). It could well
    be that her own image influenced Percy Shelley's employment of the same figure in
    Prometheus Unbound (see I.139-42).

    • 1408

  • I tried to conceal Although Clerval has just been described as like a "former self" to Victor, the difference
    between them involves more than the effect of experience on each man's sense of well-being.
    Victor is, in effect, living a lie, and his lack of openness to Clerval is the actual
    wedge by which their division is being enforced.

    • 1407

  • concealing the true reasons

    Asked to reply candidly, Victor lies to his father. This might be considered of a
    piece with the way he recalled his solemn promise to the Creature two paragraphs earlier:
    no sooner was it invoked than he began immediately to consider what would result should
    he dare to break it.

    • Subscribe to