| Romantic Circles

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.

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.

1293

my heart was poisoned with remorse This may seem a strange usage, but it accords with the primary meaning of "remorse"
in Mary Shelley's day. Johnson's Dictionary (1755) lists the following two definitions:

Pain of guilt
Tenderness; pity; sympathetick sorrow

In both cases, but particularly in the first, remorse involves a passionate suffering
that could be likened to the action of poison.

1296

my power is complete This curious phrase recalls us to the last colloquy between Victor and his Creature
after the destruction of Victor's second being. There, asserting his mastery over
Victor, the Creature claims that he will attain this "power" (III:3:11), which is
that of reducing Victor to the state of utter wretchedness he has now reached.

1299

I will proceed with my tale With Victor's pause to utter his encomium upon Clerval and thus intrude a strong
value judgment into his discourse, the question of narrative truth is once again brought
to the fore. Once again, Victor intrudes the notion of a "tale," a word used by him
(I:L4:28, I:3:13) and by the Creature (II:2:13, II:2:16, II:9:18) to describe their
narratives, also (with a different construction of what might constitute the truth)
in the last sentence of the novel's Preface.

1298

in a prison As the initial consequence of Victor's abandoning his Creature led to his brother's
death and Justine's being cast into the Swiss prison where he visited her, the second
wave of dark events is starkly complementary. Now his best friend has been murdered
and he has himself experienced the alienating effects of imprisonment.

1297

One paternal kind precaution

Bearing in mind the previous paragraph's emphasis on Alphonse's fears for his son's
mental stability, we may see this careful planning between father and fiancée as reflecting
a shared concern that Victor not be left alone to indulge what they see as a tendency
toward melancholy, or, in his own characterization, "lonely, maddening reflection."
Even his seemingly innocent adjective here ("maddening") takes on added weight in
the depiction of Clerval as a kind of chaperon to ensure the preservation of Victor's
mental balance.

1300

the herd of common projectors "Projector" is a term commonly used in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
to refer to inventors, often in a pejorative sense. Its ambivalence of connotation
is reflected in the double primary meaning assigned to it by the Oxford English Dictionary:
a. One who forms a project, who plans or designs some enterprise or undertaking; a
founder.

b. In invidious use: A schemer; one who lives by his wits; a promoter of bubble companies;
a speculator, a cheat.

Samuel Johnson is, if anything, less evenhanded in the double definition of "projector"
contained in his 1755 Dictionary: 1. One who forms schemes or designs.

2. One who forms wild impracticable schemes.

Perhaps the most famous literary account of projectors is that offered by Jonathan
Swift in Gulliver's tour through the Grand Academy of Lagado (Gulliver's Travels,
III.5), a think-tank populated by inventors of perfectly useless or insane conceptions
and contraptions.

Victor Frankenstein's desire to separate himself from madmen and hacks is thus easily
justifiable, whether we construe it in accord with his ambition or his achievement.
Yet, the tone of condescension in his phrasing is expressive of an arrogance and self-approbation
that verges on universal contempt. Its natural complement in a social dimension would
be a hierarchical rigidity denominated according to class, and in a psychological
field the prejudice we customarily comprehend under the rubric of racism. In other
words, there is an easy shift from this self-esteem to the denigration of the Other
expressed by Victor's continual demonization of his Creature.

1301

I had had now neglected my promise for some time Since Victor and Clerval had not left London until the end of March, and as they
had "passed a considerable period at Oxford" and "two months in Cumberland and Westmoreland,"
not to mention the time spent in this lengthy journey northward, it should now be
early in July, which is to say, almost a year after Victor's promise to his Creature.
His pattern of attenuated delays throughout the novel is particularized in an earlier
note.