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.

    • 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.

    • 1421

  • I should have wept to die It is true that the Creature's first experience of spring was joyful (II:4:19); but
    his memory is here playing tricks with him. He was created on a "dreary night of November"
    (I:4:1), and upon his escape into the woods near Ingolstadt he experienced extreme
    and uncomfortable cold. His reaction to his first day of life was, in fact, to weep
    (II:3:2).

    • 1425

  • the wind was unfavorable As would be natural in this environment, the storm descends from the west or northwest,
    picking up energy and precipitation in traversing Lake Geneva. To return to Geneva,
    Victor must drive squarely against the wind. With sails thus rendered useless, only
    manual exertion can prevail against the storm.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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).

    • 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).

    • 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.
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