1122
workshop of filthy creation" (I:3:9).
workshop of filthy creation" (I:3:9).
1121
The withdrawal is a dangerous portent, but for Mary Shelley once again to connect
such a process with the exercise of the imagination clearly questions the value of
this central concept of Romanticism.
1123
processes of everyday life, but reminds us that even in the farthest reaches of the
globe human beings establish a basic community one with the other. These sounds from
the darkness at once remind us of the Creature's yearning to participate in such a
community and reinforce Victor's total self-exclusion from its claims. Moreover, surely
there is an intentional irony here pitting the productive labor of the fishermen,
who in turn depend upon it for their sustenance, against the long-postponed and now
aborted labor of Victor, who is financially free of such necessities, as well as the
lack of productive community in which the Creature is forced to exist.
1126
the first volume, only here, after the establishment of a complex doubling between
Victor and the Creature, does Mary Shelley extend the pattern to involve Clerval.
Given Mary Shelley's setting Clerval within the context of Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"
in the previous chapter (III:1:21), it is hard not to hear in this phrase the timbres
Wordsworth addresses to his sister in that poem (lines 116-19).
1125
depiction. It suggests that a detached perspective on Victor's withdrawal would make
it seem more neurotic than it might appear to us as accustomed sharers of Victor's
point of view.
1128
as "ardour" and thought his "enthusiasm" then to be essentially innocent (I:3:8).
The symptoms noted there all return here, although their neurotic character is now
much more firmly marked.
1127
the personal and more public conceptions of responsibility that can be traced through
the novel. Although Victor, and recently his father too, think of him as haunted by
a destiny over which he has no control (III:4:43), Elizabeth's language is firmly
rooted in the primacy of choice in all human relations. Her rejection of a male concept
of honor here seems to link it to stereotypes of behavior that at once shackle the
will and suspend the individual's ultimate responsibility for actions and their consequences.
1130
disinterested, friendship separates him as an ideal, both for Victor (who from his
student days has been too self-absorbed for such friendship) and for Walton, whose
desire for such a friend, articulated in his second letter (I:L2:1) and in his growing
attachment(I:L4:21) to Victor, first introduced this theme as central to the structure
of Mary Shelley's novel.
1129
and reiterated to Victor Frankenstein (I:L4:25), who replied in despondency over the
memory of his dead friend Henry Clerval (I:L4:26). In reinstating that wish, Walton
reminds us of how very little time has actually elapsed in the narrative frame of
the novel as well as of how violent and destructive such intense relationships can
become when they are based on hatred rather than affection.
1132
the reader's perspective of Victor's biography, bears connotations by which it is
unlikely he would have wanted himself represented. In essence, as he gives himself
over to the raw fury of his rage, Victor seems to be acceding to the madness that
has become progressively more accentuated in his account.