1312

  • only regretted . . . understanding

    At this point Elizabeth Lavenza is about twenty-one years old. Two years younger,
    Mary Shelley has spent a good part of her childhood in Scotland, has twice been to
    France and Switzerland, and has travelled up the Rhine through Germany and Holland
    (none of it under parental guidance or supervision). That her experiences were unusual
    is reflected in this observation, with its glancing feminist edge.

    • 1303

  • his queen, and son The syntax is somewhat confusing. Falkland and Gower/Goring are mentioned as companions
    to King Charles I, whose queen was Henrietta Maria (1609-69)—actually Henriette-Marie,
    daughter of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici, by birth and practice a Roman
    Catholic. The son mentioned here probably would be Charles II (1630-85; restored after
    the Commonwealth as king of Great Britain and Ireland, 1660-85); but the term could
    as easily apply to his slightly younger brother James II (1633-1701), who became king
    after the death of Charles II but was deposed three years later, in 1688, in what
    became known as the Bloodless Revolution.

    • 1302

  • I often endeavoured to put an end to the existence The matter-of-fact tone in which Victor speaks here clothes in euphemistic objectivity,
    and seems meant to cushion, a remarkable statement. A person who "often" over a period
    of a few weeks attempts to commit suicide, in general terms, would be considered seriously
    deranged.

    • 1307

  • real insanity possessed me It is easy to overlook the weight of this statement, but "real" should be given its
    due meaning. Following the accounts of Victor's attempted suicide (III:4:46) and his
    father's questioning earlier in this chapter whether his son was not actually mad,
    (III:5:5) these symptoms, an alteration between violent rage and withdrawn lethargy,
    point to a serious manic-depressive condition. For Elizabeth this has to be extraordinarily
    trying: the depressed state Victor was in when he had left her, both upon undertaking
    the excursion to Chamounix (II:1:10 and II:1:14) and in the aftermath of his encounter
    with the Creature (III:1:1), had been serious enough, but the extremity into which
    it has developed hardly bodes well for her future with him. Even so, Elizabeth reverts
    to her characteristic vocation of nurse.

    • 1306

  • the wildest rage of some uncontrollable passion Rage has appeared such an emotional constant of this novel that the reader may be
    surprised in reflection to realize that the emotion never occurs in Volume 1, but
    enters the space of the fiction in the encounter of the Creature and Victor Frankenstein
    on the Mer-de-Glace of Mont Blanc. There the figure embroiled in rage is Victor (II:2:5).
    In the Creature's own narration something like this present unrestrained rage occurs
    when he burns down the cottagers' house (II:8:12). Thereafter, the novel evinces a
    smoldering fire, ready to burst into flame at any point: we witness it in the successive
    "rage" that grips Victor (II:9:3) and the Creature (II:9:6) over the question of the
    creation of a companion. Beginning with chapter 3 of the third volume, rage is an
    abiding emotion of Victor Frankenstein's, concomitant with the fever that wastes his
    body. Now that he is dead, it is as if that violent emotion were floating free of
    his body, the sole evidence of the bond driving both these figures to their destruction.
    It is notable that the rage inhabiting the Creature is not against Victor but himself.

    • 1304

  • a race of devils At this point Victor's demonizing of his Creature extends into a primitive form of
    racism, transforming a personal vendetta into a supposedly objective ideology that
    stamps this Other as inherently inferior, incapable of civilization, and undeserving
    of existence. Thus positioning himself at an extreme of self-righteous justification,
    Victor will fall back upon this hardened, docrinaire authority for all his subsequent
    actions concerning the Creature.

    • 1308

  • it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality The uncanny coincidences by which Victor comes upon the scene of Clerval's death,
    as if enmeshed in a logic over which he has no control, reinforce his larger sense
    that he has no independent will to exercise in his life's narrative. These coincidences
    may likewise remind us of the crucial role played by narrative, or having a firm control
    over interpretation of the narrative, throughout the novel.

    • 1311

  • I cannot forbear recording it Walton, who cannot resist the impulse to continue a creation whose end he cannot
    predict, bears an uncanny resemblance to the obsessive Victor Frankenstein racing
    to the denouement of the Creature's birth in Ingolstadt (I:3:8). The difference, and
    it is one maintained throughout the novel's self-reflexive mirroring of its own operations,
    is that writing has no effect in the world until it is read. The writer's obsession
    with the text may seem both narcissistic and solipsistic, but this antisocial dimension
    is confined to a conceptual plane. Still, Walton's unselfconscious acquiescence in
    the claims of what seems to him irresistable reinforces our sense that what drives
    Victor is little different from the passions we all share as human beings.

    • 1310

  • The recollection of this injustice The Creature is an acute reader of his own history, aware that amid his accumulated
    experiences of victimization some cases were freer than others from any possible mitigation.
    He concentrates here on the two instances (see II:7:38 and II:8:19) where his own
    disinterested benevolence was rewarded with a violent attack on his person. For all
    Victor's repeated threats to grapple with his Creature, it is interesting to observe
    that after his creation he never again physically touches him.

    • 1309

  • a thinking and reasoning animal As in his initial creation Victor's impulse is to deny humanity to the being he would
    endow with life. What most deeply plagues his mind is the fact that his creation will
    be beyond his control. In a theological extension of this concern, the question before
    the creator is whether the new race, particularly the female member of it, can be
    trusted to exercise free will.
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