1171

  • I called on him to stay In their monosyllabic simplicity these words constitute the moral center of Mary
    Shelley's novel. Against all his prejudices as Victor's friend, against his repugnance
    to face a multiple murderer, against his basic human instincts that revolt from such
    sublime ugliness, Robert Walton wills himself into a state of ethical selflessness
    that is truly benevolent. The Creature's "wonder" at this unique experience in his
    existence is only to be expected. He has never before been confronted by human inclusiveness.

    • 1170

  • a husband, and lovely children Until this very late point in the novel we have only been able to assume that Margaret
    Saville, because of the difference in her surname, has a husband. With this confirmed,
    we discover as well that she has children. One reason Mary Shelley may be supplying
    this information now would be to justify the emotional intensity of this outpouring
    in which Walton in solitude and dire straits reaches out to his only family connections.
    But by the same token, that connectedness contrasts pointedly with the situation in
    the Frankenstein household, where when the novel ends only Ernest, who would seem
    to have little to recommend him beyond being a dull and regular fellow, will survive
    its events.

    • 1165

  • how happy and serene all nature It appears in this novel that whenever the serenity of nature is emphasized (I:5:17,
    III:3:6), the sublime power represented by the Creature is introduced to disturb its
    tranquillity. Before, however, it was Victor who felt the effect of this natural profusion.
    Here, clearly, Elizabeth is identified with a natural beneficence that Victor over
    the course of the past five years has all but forsaken. What distinguishes her examples
    is the ability she demonstrates to see all elements in motion; in their varied relations
    with one another; and in their distinct particularity, whether distant and high (Mônt
    Blanc) or near and deep (the bottom of Lake Geneva), rather than according to some
    reductive model by which they are made identical and rendered inanimate. One senses
    here a very different conception of nature from that manifested by Victor as scientist.

    • 1175

  • I had been conversing with several persons in the island The episode remembered by Victor is not noted in the previous chapter. There, the
    events of the night before Victor departed "[b]etween two and three in the morning"
    (III:3:24) are wholly unremarked. Clerval's body was discovered approximately four
    hours earlier, some time after 10 o'clock.

    • 1172

  • I could send . . . illness The normative expression of sympathy by which Mr. Kirwin reestablishes connections
    that Victor has all but severed emphasizes the extremity of Victor's withdrawal from
    the society of those who have loved him.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 1174

  • ignorant This is a word with considerable resonance by this point in the novel. Victor has
    carefully kept Walton ignorant of the process by which he created life, and, moreover,
    excoriates him when he suspects Walton of wanting to penetrate his secret (III:Walton:3).
    He dies clearly wishing that he had himself remained in a state of innocent ignorance.
    Although it is likely that, upon reflection, Walton will broaden the range under which
    he construes knowledge to embrace a moral education, here he limits its conception
    wholly to scientific discovery. In his dejection he seems to have gone out of his
    way to miss the point of Victor Frankenstein's narration, which is itself truly a
    mark of his ignorance.
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