1389

  • which are to cease but with life Another conspicuous feature of the final chapter is introduced here. Although we
    are close to having completed the narrative circle, returning to Walton's voice part
    way through this chapter, the continual shift of time frames does more than remind
    us of this impending closure. The sudden confrontation of past and future in a sentence
    such as this also serves implicitly to suggest that at the point where Victor locked
    himself into the hermetically sealed enclosure of his obsession, time began to lose
    its normative distinctions.

    • 1379

  • the banks of the Thames

    London is situated far up the Thames from the entrance to the river on the Kent coast.
    Victor notes the principal landmarks the travelers pass enroute.

    • 1378

  • title here

    Main text here.

    • 1380

  • that class This would appear to be another point where one senses in the conceptions of the
    novel the effects of Mary Shelley's experiences of giving birth.

    • 1384

  • She was thinner Characteristically, Victor construes Elizabeth's state of health in reference to
    himself. At the age of twenty-two she should not be so beyond her prime. Clearly,
    worry over the last two years has taken its toll. Although Mary Shelley maintains
    her undeviating focus on Victor, this momentary description illuminates the cost of
    his obsession and detachment from Elizabeth on her state of mind and body. This is
    as close to an inner life as Elizabeth ever manifests.

    • 1401

  • it did not endure the violence of the change without torture Having been created over a long period of time, then brought to life, the Creature
    has passed the nearly six years of his existence being recreated in an inverse, indeed,
    a negative manner. He describes it as viscerallly painful, a creation without anesthesia.
    The violent negation of his original being is a corollary to the way in which hatred
    replaced love as his bond with Victor Frankenstein.

    • 1385

  • this deposition did not in the least interest me A reader could sense a cultural dislocation and estrangement behind this remark.
    On the other hand, the lack of concern for the plight of others unless it bears in
    some way on his own subtly underscores Victor's egotism here.

    • 1388

  • Tintern Abbey Mary Shelley quotes lines 76-83 of the last poem in the 1798 Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth
    and Coleridge, changing first person pronouns to the third person ("or" in line 83
    was regularized by Wordsworth to "nor" only in 1836). The quotation of these celebrated
    lines about natural inspiration underscores the association of Henry Clerval with
    the Romantic poet, and more specifically, might recall Byron's remark that Percy Shelley
    "dosed" him with Wordsworth during the summer of 1816.

    • 1387

  • Tilbury Fort This fortress was erected as the major barrier to the Spanish fleet if it attempted
    to sail up the Thames. The Earl of Leicester's troops were stationed here in 1588.

    • 1400

  • tore to pieces the thing On the complex moral spectrum laid out by this novel Victor here engages in the equivalent
    of murder. His destructive burst of passion and pointed denial of humanity to the
    object of his creation, which he calls a thing, reduce him at least to the moral level
    of the Creature, who at this point has likewise been guilty of one murder.
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