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.

    • 1402

  • the tour of Scotland alone Obviously, Victor needs to isolate himself in order to carry out his scientific labors.
    On the other hand, the phraseology here may be seen as indicative of an antisocial
    instinct that has been so long indulged as to have become an essential aspect of his
    character.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 1404

  • trembled violently

    This is also the phrase used to depict Felix De Lacey upon his last appearance in
    the novel (II:8:11 and note).

    • 1407

  • concealing the true reasons

    Asked to reply candidly, Victor lies to his father. This might be considered of a
    piece with the way he recalled his solemn promise to the Creature two paragraphs earlier:
    no sooner was it invoked than he began immediately to consider what would result should
    he dare to break it.

    • 1382

  • Are you then safe Victor's first words to his father in fourteen months must, if we detach ourselves
    from his obsessive perspective, seem more than merely odd. They are the expression
    of what has become a deeply paranoid personality.

    • 1403

  • To you first entering on life In regard to this curious reminder of the present tense in which Victor narrates
    the story of his life, it is important to recall that, far from being Victor's junior,
    Walton is 28 years old at this point in the account, one year older than Victor. A
    useful point of comparison is the exchange between the simple Chamois Hunter and Manfred
    in the second act of Byron's Manfred, the dramatic poem he began in the summer of
    1816 and set in the same Alpine wilderness as the second volume of Mary Shelley's
    Frankenstein.

    • 1373

  • swear That Victor has no right to implicate Walton in his vendetta goes without saying.
    But the legalistic, contractual mode in which he assaults Walton testifies strongly
    to the closed tyranny of mind in which he has been laboring now for many months.

    • 1374

  • sympathies Although Victor dehumanizes the creature, it is interesting to recognize that, even
    so, he is unable to deny the being's fundamental claim to a primary human attribute.
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