| Romantic Circles

1179

immersed in a solitude This statement makes very clear that, for Victor, solitude carries psychological
consequences of considerable and dangerous weight. From this point on for many months,
with only the briefest exceptions, Victor will be trapped in a kind of solitary confinement.
What begins as a figurative condition, indeed, will become an actual physical fact.

1178

my imagination was vivid Victor's remembrance alters the emphasis of his earlier account, which contrasted
his own interest in facticity with Elizabeth's (and Henry Clerval's) delight in the
imagination (I:1:9). However much he may be inflating the record here, the reader
cannot but be aware of the ambivalence about the nature of the imagination expressed
in these lines. That Victor once "trod heaven in [his] thoughts" cannot mitigate the
hellish misery to which he has now sunk, nor even at that earlier point in his remembrance
could it guarantee that the outcome of such an introverted elation would have an essential
value. The imagination, in this analysis, might be necessary for great achievement,
but by itself it is by no means sufficient, being merely an instrument, and, as such,
easily capable of indulging a self-absorbed solipsism.

1177

the strangest tale that ever imagination formed There may be an element of self-puffery by Mary Shelley in this statement, yet it
is surprisingly prescient in its sense of the cultural impact her novel was to have.
Moreover, it is entirely consistent with the way both she and her husband represented
the work to its public. Percy Bysshe Shelley, writing the Preface to the original
edition of Frankenstein, distanced this novel from any attempt at "merely weaving
a series of supernatural terrors," insisting on its adherence to the higher aims of
the "imagination." Similarly, Mary Shelley, in writing the Introduction to the third
edition, stresses how in its initial conception her "imagination, unbidden, possessed
and guided" her. That all these statements are congruent with one another and with
an exalted notion of the Romantic imagination, however, cannot alter the ironic context
in which this particular phrase is uttered. In the previous paragraph we have been
observing Victor Frankenstein, who was once swept along by his imagination to create
a deformed and alienated being, revising with soberly rational care his account of
that act and its consequences. The actual context for this phrase in the novel would
thus appear to offset its perhaps expected paean to the imagination.

1176

imagination was dreadful

This is a further example of the dark tones in which the Romantic imagination is painted
in this novel, resembling earlier cases where an isolated mind is confronted with
a radical uncertainty. For earlier instances pertaining to Victor, see I:4:18 and
note; II:1:8 and note; for a similar construction on the part of the Creature, see
II:4:17 and note.

1154

my heart bounded within me Here the conventional associations of erotic passion intrude upon the diction, as
the closing of Creator and Creature appears to near its consummation.

1153

my heart . . . escape By this time in his experience Victor might have learned to distrust such a state
of self-induced euphoria. It is literally the case that every time he indulges himself
in such a light-headed sense that he has escaped his "destiny," he is suddenly caught
up short by a new misfortune. (See I:5:17 and II:2:1).

1158

line of high land The north coast of Ireland near Scotland is among the most formidable in the British
Isles, with high cliffs and a treacherous series of great rocks called the Giant's
Causeway upthrust from the sea. At this time, as Mary Shelley's exposition indicates,
the basic livelihood for the inhabitants was earned from these dangerous waters.

1155

the cursed and hellish monster The rhetorical overload here may be considered an appropriate expression of what
has become as well for Victor a totalized psychological overload. The "rage" that
immediately chokes off his speech is its manifestation.

1152

Havre Le Havre is a principal seaport of Normandy: Mary, Shelley, and Claire Clairmont
embarked for England from Le Havre when they returned from Geneva in September 1816
. The town would have held more than a tourist's interest for Mary. Her mother Mary
Wollstonecraft had moved to Le Havre to escape the Terror of 1794: there she wrote
her Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution
and gave birth to her daughter Fanny Imlay, Mary's half-sister, in May of that year.

In the 1831 revision Mary Shelley has Victor and his father sail directly from Dublin
to Le Havre, avoiding the lengthy coach journey across England in the 1818 novel.
This, perhaps, reflects a more sophisticated sense of the historical geography of
the British Isles gained after her return to England in 1823. Over many centuries
Ireland had maintained a commercial and cultural exchange with France that flourished
independently from the frames of reference in which the British viewed the power that
was increasingly its major antagonist. Napoleon's attempt to capitalize on the Wolfe
Tone rebellion of 1798 underscored the dangers implicit in Ireland's independent foreign
relations, leading directly to the Act of Union of 1801 in which Ireland was assimilated
to the British crown.

1159

a hired nurse Up to this point in the novel nursing has been the domain of friends and family,
and the willingness to engage in it has been the mark of selfless affection and respect.
We recall that Victor's mother Caroline dies from the effects of nursing Elizabeth
Lavenza through an adolescent attack of scarlet fever (I:2:2) and that Justine Moritz,
in her turn, contracts the disease from attending on Caroline Frankenstein and herself
falls "very ill" (I:5:5) as a result. Although not vulnerable to consequences so life-threatening,
Henry Clerval acts as Victor's "only nurse" during the months-long nervous fever that
incapacitates him after the Creature is brought to life (I:4:17).