1424

  • wild and enthusiastic imagination This encomium to Henry Clerval touches virtually all the thematic stops invoked by
    the novel in its representation of an ideal character, with terms already enveloped
    with multiple associations. Although any single one in excess might reveal a flaw
    productive of personal and social difficulties, in Clerval they reside in a perfect
    dynamic and dialectical balance. Where earlier critics associate Clerval with Percy
    Bysshe Shelley, this passage would be taken as a loving tribute to him.

    • 1422

  • What his feelings were Mary Shelley at once reminds us that the Creature has feelings and that, except on
    the one occasion on Mont Blanc when he told his life story (II:3:1), they are wholly
    indecipherable to Victor, beset as he is with his calculations of revenge. She also
    prepares us for his unmediated reintroduction into the arena of the novel when in
    its last scene he comes aboard Walton's ship (III:Walton:33).

    • 1426

  • Windsor

    Percy Shelley had been living in Windsor when he first met Mary, and it was to that
    region that they moved in 1817 to set up their household in Marlow. There Mary Shelley
    wrote the principal part of this novel. It is clear that in retrospect Windsor held
    a special place in Mary Shelley's memories: it is the site, for instance, in which
    she bases the early chapters of The Last Man (1826), with their idealized portraits
    of herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

    • 1429

  • the wretch By this time, we are so aware of how this kind of terminology distances and demonizes
    the Creature that Victor's resort to it is perhaps only to be expected.

    • 1428

  • a wish . . . across me In its context this is a striking revelation of Victor's deep, antisocial isolation,
    which contrasts ironically with the passionate need for community that drives the
    Creature and that has just been denied him, it would appear, forever.

    • 1427

  • the wind was contrary, and the stream of the river was too gentle In other words, the boat was encountering a north wind blowing against their further
    progress in that direction. By the time the Rhine reaches Cologne it has broadened
    considerably, abating the strong current it bears through the mountainous country
    further south.

    • 1423

  • Who feared that if I lost all trace I should despair and die The egotism of this statement is less strange than its underlying logic, which is
    that the closed circle of revenge enacts a kind of perverse sympathy in which the
    Creature sustains Victor so that he may continue on his mission to destroy his Creature.
    Throughout this final chapter of Victor's narration Mary Shelley is ingenious in following
    through on the implications of a life cast wholly in an ironic mode.

    • 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.

    • 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).

    • 1430

  • Wretch! At this late point in the novel this vocative is literally true, and the Creature
    will acknowledge it so three paragraphs later. Still, we have to recognize that we
    have come full circle: Walton addresses the Creature with the appellation employed
    by Victor Frankenstein immediately after his creation (I:4:2 and note) and again upon
    reencountering him on the Mer-de-Glace of Mont Blanc (II:2:5 and note). Two sentences
    later he will reiterate Victor's linguistic leap into transcendental terminology,
    demonizing the Creature as a fiend. In his response the Creature picks up on the shift
    in signification, comparing himself both to Adam and to Satan.
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