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.

    • 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.

    • 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).

    • 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.

    • 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?

    • 1420

  • Wearing away his time fruitlessly The 1818 text at this point stipulates that "nearly a year had elapsed" since this
    journey had begun from Geneva, a period the 1831 text identifies as "the latter end
    of September." (There is a month's disparity between the two texts on this point—see
    III:1 in 1818 and 1831). In her revision of the novel Mary Shelley, desiring to underpin
    the professional engagement of Henry Clerval, quietly presses home the irony that
    he, who once indolently indulged himself in imitating eastern poetry (see I:6:14)
    now has, in contrast to Victor, a firm sense of personal mission and a commitment
    to the future. Of course, in Ingolstadt at one point Victor was himself posssessed
    of both traits.

    • 1419

  • the watery, clouded eyes See I:4:2.

    • 1417

  • voluntary thought Beginning with this phrase, the last chapter of Victor's long narration starts a
    subtle recapitulation and intensification of the overarching themes of his discourse.
    In this case, if we read between the lines we realize that Victor has finally given
    up all reponsibility for his own actions and, with that loss, any sense of his individual
    identity. He is now locking himself within the dyad of his adversarial relation with
    the Creature.
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