1314

  • his remembrance This confirms the sense of mortality initimated by the questions of the previous
    paragraph.

    • 1313

  • that I might remain alone Victor's retreat from society characteristically involves shutting himself up in
    an enclosed room, as he had done when engaged in creating the Creature in Ingolstadt.
    Although the former desire has turned to abhorrence, his practices do not alter.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 1327

  • the same boat A realistic perspective on this evidence might emphasize the fact that, since both
    the Creature's and Victor's boats are Scottish in make, they would therefore in all
    probability resemble one another closely. But Mary Shelley seems to have another purpose
    in mind. Having already forced an aura of the uncanny upon this scene through the
    great distance of travel and coincidence of destination of her characters, she subtly
    reinforces the interchangeability of Creature and creator that will progressively
    intensify as the novel moves towards its conclusion.

    • 1330

  • my selfish despair If the terms in which Victor recounts his regaining a sense of responsibility cannot
    easily be reconciled with a disinterested ethics, one senses in this phrase a tone
    of self-accusation reflecting a more mature understanding of his own implication in
    the catastrophic events he has unleashed. This acceptance of responsibility is not
    uniform, returning only sporadically in the later chapters of the novel, but it testifies,
    perhaps, to a measure of moral growth; or, if Victor's vindictive diction places that
    conclusion in some doubt, at least to a sharper sense of the price that has been paid
    for his solitary ambition and withdrawal from normative human interactions. Still,
    suspecting that Victor's self-important posture as family protector will only eventuate
    in great calamities, a reader may find it hard not to cast an ironic eye upon what
    continue as usual to be good intentions never sufficiently thought through.

    • 1329

  • scent of flowers and hay As this is June, the air is suffused with the scent of Alpine wildflowers and freshly
    cut grass: this would appear a memory of Mary Shelley's from the 1816 summer.

    • 1328

  • what a scene has just taken place Characteristic of the structural ingenuity of Frankenstein, its final scene is a
    recollected flashback. Chronologically speaking, this brief paragraph, with its self-reflexiveness
    about its own artistic imperatives and capacities, constitutes something of a final
    bow, the last words of a novel that, from end to end, has held a mirror up to its
    own operations as a primary example of the creation that is its theme.

    • 1331

  • the lessons of my Seneca

    Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BCE — 65 CE). A leading philosopher and statesman of the
    mid-first century, Seneca was also a playwright, whose nine tragedies celebrate stoic
    resignation. As a statesman, his practice was anything but what such a philosophical
    stance might indicate, for he was an activist not a conservative. He was Nero's tutor
    and later acted behind the scenes to secure the emperor's power. He retired from the
    court in the year 62 to devote himself to philosophy, but three years later he was
    denounced as taking part in the conspiracy of Piso against the emperor. Ordered by
    Nero to commit suicide, Seneca took his own life with stoic resignation and fortitude.
    It is not, it would appear, in Seneca's writings but in his example that Walton looks
    for comfort in his peril.

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