1135
first is in I:4:3), and in each case Victor interprets an expression of pleasure and
anticipation as alien, even diabolical.
1134
excursion along Lake Geneva, has been so far from genial that the reader is enjoined
at this point to recall the original balancing of the novel, in which the civilized
bourgeois world of the Frankenstein household represents the beautiful against the
sublime of Mont Blanc and the Creature whom Victor encounters there in the second
volume (II:2:5).
1137
given "life and spirit" to his Creature and even to his Creature as "enemy." Given
his manifest failure on the level of the actual, his desire to succeed on the level
of the merely textual may be understandable, but it is no less morally problematic.
Having the last word must be a poor substitute for acting with foresight and responsibility
in the first place.
1136
the creation of an abnormal identity through naming has become wholly habitual on
Victor's part. We have here, however, one last indication that, wherever the Creature
goes, he is immediately accorded the status of monster by the human beings he encounters.
1139
The shading here seems deliberately suggestive of Milton's Satan. From the very first,
the Satanic legions sense that the fall from heaven has diminished their spiritual
essence, and, as in these early words of Satan's chief follower Beelzebub, that loss
is expressed in terms of "glory."
the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery. (I.139-42) The most resonant identification
of diminished glory with the fall of the angels is uttered by Satan as he soliloquizes
atop Mount Niphates at the opening of Book IV. There, as he addresses the Sun, the
fallen archangel directly contrasts himself and God in terms of their manifestation
of glory.
O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Lookest from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down
Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King. (IV.32-41)
1138
in March 1816 a few months before the excursion to Lake Geneva. The protagonist of
that poem is haunted by the two eyes of a "veilèd maid" (line 151) of whom he dreamed
and whom he subsequently pursues to the end of his life. As he dies his last glimpse
is of "two lessening points of light [that] / Gleamed through the darkness" (lines
654-55), an all-consuming ideal that is the ironic cause of his destruction.
1141
was a scheming Royalist sympathizer who survived the collapse of the monarchy.
1140
reader has already identified as characteristic of his creator: see also I:L4:10,
I:7:27, and note. The Creature had earlier gnashed his teeth when shot by the father
of the girl he rescued (see II:8:20 and note): then, as here, he vowed revenge.
1143
extinguished so that the room is only illuminated by the moon, it would appear next
to impossible for Victor so sharply to distinguish a visage that would be backlit
in such circumstances. Neither the Creature's own narration in the second volume nor
his account of his struggles with Victor Frankenstein at the end accords with such
a perspective of fiendish exultation in evil. This portrait is, however, wholly commensurate
with Victor's increasing tendency to demonize the Creature. See I:6:22, II:2:6, and
III:3:2.