1368

  • yet another may succeed Victor's complete self-contradiction in his last moments mirrors the novel's ambivalence
    over the conflicting claims of domestic retreat and aspiring self-assertion, which
    are in turn poles that themselves comprise a dialectical field over which Romanticism
    continually expresses much ambivalence. The particular terms of Victor's last utterance
    have a somewhat chilling effect: at what, a reader may well wonder, does Victor contemplate
    another's success? If in the realm in which he has failed, assuming the role of God,
    we may envision from Victor's experience a greater, even a catastrophic, failure.
    Even as he moves linguistically to open up possibility, the lingering effects of his
    example resist his optimism.

    • 1367

  • I generally subsisted on the wild animals In the vegetarian Shelley household this information would carry an implicit ring
    of false consciousness, as Victor charges himself with a solemn revenge for murders
    of human beings yet supports his mission by killing other sentient creatures. Readers
    will recall that, in contrast, the Creature is a strict vegetarian.

    • 1362

  • The story is too connected Doubtless, Victor, who has in numerous critical situations been unwilling to explain
    his case for fear of not being believed, worries about how he can convey his deposition
    so as to produce conviction. Yet, once again, the language reminds us that we are
    in the midst of a narrative whose truth is totally dependant on the veracity of the
    narrator. Victor likewise makes much of its internal consistency to Walton as he begins
    the narration (I:L4:30). What this detail adds is the realization that Victor's is
    truly what Nathaniel Hawthorne termed a "twice-told tale," having, with the exception
    of its final chapter, been already rehearsed in the judge's chamber. The reiteration
    of such a tale of fatally transgressed boundaries recalls the context provided by
    the same sort of obsessive repetition in Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

    • 1354

  • The spirits that guarded me Two paragraphs before Victor hypothesized the active intervention of the spirit world
    on his behalf. By this point he has convinced himself that he is under their protection.
    This is a further example of how in the last pages of his narration Victor moves further
    and further beyond the boundaries of a normative rationality.

    • 1360

  • the numerous steeples of London

    Coming up the Thames, these late eighteenth-century travellers remark the objects
    that rise above the cityscape, which in general would have otherwise been limited
    to perhaps five or six storeys in height. In these circumstances the steeples of the
    London churches would have called attention to themselves, as they include many architectural
    masterpieces.

    • 1359

  • St. Andrew's

    A coastal city in Fife, St. Andrew's is the site of the oldest university in Scotland,
    founded in 1411. However impatient Victor represents himself, he and Henry Clerval
    go well out of their way to visit medieval sites on their way to Perth.

    • 1343

  • during which I was the slave of my creature

    The new terminology for Victor's relationship with the Creature, introduced four paragraphs
    earlier (III:1:9), returns with augmented stress. The underlying notion of slavery
    includes not just bondage but an absence of willed responsibility. Victor thus appears
    to be distancing himself from his recognition of the awesome obligations of a deity
    with which the second volume closed (II:9:18).

    • 1342

  • I was the slave, not the master The Creature reverts to the terms of his last confrontation of Victor Frankenstein,
    when he called Victor his slave and demanded his obedience (III:3:11 and note). The
    effect of this recantation, however, is not so much the simple reversal the diction
    connotes, as an erasure of the polarizing of his terms. Both he and Victor were slaves,
    mastered alike by their antagonism.

    • 1347

  • the solitude I coveted

    Although, of course, Victor will need to pursue his scientific labors by himself,
    the verb "coveted" conveys a sense of profound asociality as a crucial aspect of Victor's
    constitution. However eagerly he expresses his anticipation of returning to find fulfillment
    in his union with Elizabeth, what his father praises as "our domestic calm" at this
    point in the 1818 edition seems wholly to lack the capacity to satisfy Victor.

    • 1344

  • my slavery

    This term is ominous for Victor's future relations with his Creature. It also considerably
    darkens the construction of what Victor sees as his destiny, also of how he comprehends
    the nature of imitative behavior, for he appears to think it achieved not through
    emulation but, rather, through the exercise of coercion.

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