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rhetoric here strongly suggests a lack of candor. It also indicates that, however
self-accusing he may be, he has accepted no real responsibility for the actions of
his Creature.
rhetoric here strongly suggests a lack of candor. It also indicates that, however
self-accusing he may be, he has accepted no real responsibility for the actions of
his Creature.
1347
Although, of course, Victor will need to pursue his scientific labors by himself,
the verb "coveted" conveys a sense of profound asociality as a crucial aspect of Victor's
constitution. However eagerly he expresses his anticipation of returning to find fulfillment
in his union with Elizabeth, what his father praises as "our domestic calm" at this
point in the 1818 edition seems wholly to lack the capacity to satisfy Victor.
1346
devoted to Victor's egocentric ruminations in the interim, we are here sharply reminded
of the Creature's inner life that Victor refuses to acknowledge. In modern parlance
the Creature is engaged at this point in a deliberate repression of his anger. As
in their previous encounter Victor notably outrants his Creature.
1345
of this last trip in pursuit of the Creature, embarked on from a French Mediterranean
port (III:7:9). On its surface his sardonic comment roundly indicts the crew for moral
and spiritual laxity. Yet, on second thought, an even stronger counterforce ironically
deflates the surface terms. This ironic inversion begins as we recognize the considerable
negative connotations from earlier in the novel already adhering to this celebration
of the "glorious" (I:L1:6 and note, I:L2:3 and note, and III:Walton:6 and note). On
top of those resonances, the reference to "a southern sea" should remind the knowledgeable
reader of the last voyage undertaken by Ulysses and his crew in search of glory, a
voyage that took them far into the unknown southern sea where their ship foundered.
This is the subject of Canto 26 of Dante's Inferno, which is likewise the source upon
which Tennyson depended for his dramatic monologue, "Ulysses," written in 1833. In
Dante's rendition of this story, for all his heroic posturing, Ulysses has led his
men to their death for nothing beyond a meaningless personal glory. For this act of
essential treachery he is lodged near the bottom of hell for eternity.
It is worth remarking that, in her draft of this passage, Mary Shelley originally
wrote "summer lake," and the phrase "southern sea" was inserted above it in P. B.
Shelley's hand. This interpolation, of course, would have had to have been agreed
to by Mary Shelley, presumably after some discussion of the appropriateness of the
intertextual context the phrase evokes.
1344
This term is ominous for Victor's future relations with his Creature. It also considerably
darkens the construction of what Victor sees as his destiny, also of how he comprehends
the nature of imitative behavior, for he appears to think it achieved not through
emulation but, rather, through the exercise of coercion.
1343
The new terminology for Victor's relationship with the Creature, introduced four paragraphs
earlier (III:1:9), returns with augmented stress. The underlying notion of slavery
includes not just bondage but an absence of willed responsibility. Victor thus appears
to be distancing himself from his recognition of the awesome obligations of a deity
with which the second volume closed (II:9:18).
1342
when he called Victor his slave and demanded his obedience (III:3:11 and note). The
effect of this recantation, however, is not so much the simple reversal the diction
connotes, as an erasure of the polarizing of his terms. Both he and Victor were slaves,
mastered alike by their antagonism.
1341
Mary Shelley was the sole child of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, conceived
before they were officially married and then left motherless by Wollstonecraft's death.
She had three step-siblings: Fanny Imlay, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and
the American Gilbert Imlay, who committed suicide in 1817 while Mary was still engaged
in the writing of Frankenstein; and Charles and Claire Clairmont, children of the
first marriage of Godwin's second wife Mary Jane Clairmont. Because of their gender
and nearness of age, Mary and Claire were thrown much together and experienced considerable
sibling friction. Claire's unacknowledged pregnancy by Lord Byron was the driving
force behind the 1816 journey to Geneva, and when her condition became known it fell
largely to Mary to see her through the pregnancy without scandal. From this point
on, for the next five years, Claire lived with the Shelleys both in England and Italy.
Whatever words Victor speaks here, it is clear that Mary's closeness to her step-sister
generally increased the suspiciousness with which she regarded Claire's motives and
actions.
1340
a daemon to human proportions. In this they seem cast in the same mold as Walton's
lieutenant who, after the initial appearance of the Creature, stolidly questions Victor
about the "man" he has been pursuing (I:L4:11).
1339
his will that Walton closes his eyes; yet with eyes closed he occupies an essentially
different space from that in which he first viewed the Creature a second before. He
has unwittingly placed himself in the position of the elder DeLacey, who is the only
stranger not to have rejected the Creature at first sight (II:7:18). DeLacey's blindness
and Walton's closed eyes remove from their judgments the beautiful as a determining
aesthetic criterion. With its absence each is able to act on what purports to be an
objective moral plane, or at least not to have pre-determined aesthetic categories
prejudice their responses. Paradoxically, an act that is reflexive and therefore deterministic
in its inception becomes the means by which unexamined, normative standards of behavior,
which are truly deterministic in their impulse, can be transcended, allowing an exercise
of free will. Since Walton is not actually blind, his act in its ethical import is
unique for the novel.