1080

  • an early marriage would at all interfere . . . utility

    We may observe how totally within a masculine prerogative lie the consummation, delay,
    or even the value of a marriage. Values like "honour and utility" are not to be thought
    of in relation to women's lives. Before questioning why Mary Shelley would adopt so
    seemingly unfeminist a posture, we should recognize that this is exactly how Mary
    Wollstonecraft saw the case: see, for instance, Vindication of the Rights of Woman
    (12.25).

    • 1083

  • his powers of eloquence and persuasion Walton refers to the last paragraph of Victor's narration (III:7:26 and note), forgetting,
    it would appear, his friend's later adjustment that he was then "actuated by selfish
    and vicious motives" (III:Walton:28 and note).

    • 1082

  • the power of his eloquence Again, a reader senses how double-edged is the idea of eloquence in this novel. On
    the one hand, Victor's oratory energizes the crew in positive thinking and rouses
    them to their tasks. Without this invigoration their situation could degenerate into
    a laxity of spirit and effort perilous to their well-being. Yet, the emptiness of
    mere rhetoric is likewise emphasized here, since the courage roused one day gives
    in to despondency the next. Words relate to reality only tangentially or conditionally,
    and when the reality remains implacable, Victor's signifying words appear hollow substitutes
    for its unavoidable presence.

    • 1085

  • He is eloquent and persuasive Mary Shelley nicely returns us to the earlier concern with the relationship between
    eloquence and truth, between the representation of action and action itself, well
    aware of how the issue impinges both on her characters (particularly Victor's desire
    to vindicate himself to the world) and on her own art.

    See also I:L4:24 and note; 1831:I:8:31 and note; I:7:5 and note; I:7:13 and note.

    • 1084

  • eloquence In the very last paragraph of his narration (III:7:26 and note) Victor warned Walton
    to beware of mere eloquence, since the Creature's eloquence had once persuaded him
    to undertake a second monstrous creation to which on sober reflection he should not
    have agreed. Should we therefore construe Walton's faith in Victor's eloquence in
    similar terms? Or does it testify to the innate sympathy that eloquence forges between
    one human being and another? Again, Mary Shelley seems to raise major questions only
    to leave them wholly ambiguous in their import.

    • 1087

  • demoniacal enemy In the third volume Victor has increasingly come to refer to the Creature as a "daemon,"
    thus not only dehumanizing him through an association with Satanic evil, but also,
    by conferring on the Creature a transcendental status, absolving himself as his Creator
    from any responsibility for his nature. In effect, linguistically, Victor is canceling
    his own role in the formation of the Creature.

    • 1086

  • endeavours to move the passions As with the attention Walton gives to Victor's theatrical "command" in the opening
    paragraph of his resumed narrative (III:Walton:1 and note), we are here made conscious
    of how essentially manipulative (even if it could be argued to be not wholly intentional)
    is Victor's effort to insure that his perspective on events becomes the official record
    handed down to posterity.

    • 1099

  • Ernest

    Ernest is at this point about nineteen years old, and, whether or not he has followed
    his father's wishes and begun to study law, it is clear that he has not pursued his
    earlier inclination, as expressed in Elizabeth's letter to Victor at Ingolstadt (I:5:2),
    to eschew the public life and become a farmer. Whatever degree he contemplates, we
    can determine from this statement that he is undertaking some extended program of
    higher education at the University of Geneva.

    • 1088

  • an English philosopher

    In the sense of "natural philosophy" encountered earlier (I:3:1), a physical scientist.

    • 1101

  • the events That Mary Shelley principally wrote Frankenstein, and certainly its third volume,
    while living in Marlow, near Windsor and not far from Oxford, might logically have
    suggested to her the value of inserting its local scenery and history into her novel.
    More pointedly, her own tribute to her father, in dedicating her novel to Godwin,
    would have been underscored by her including scenes associated with his most recent
    novel Mandeville, centered on the English civil war in the mid-seventeenth century.
    For this politically-minded group of writers (Godwin, Mary Shelley, P. B. Shelley),
    the civil war had been, first and foremost, a conflict of ideologies pitting aristocratic
    against republican values. Although a century and a half past, its political resonanace
    was far from muted in a reactionary political climate like England's during the Regency.
    Thus, the political undertones of this choice of scenery on Mary Shelley's part are
    unlikely to have been in any sense innocent.

    That said, there is another salient reason for the British setting of the earlier
    chapters of Volume 3, which is the simple fact that the novel is designed for an English-reading
    audience rather unaccustomed during the years of the Napoleonic Wars either themselves
    to travel abroad or to respond with much interest to a continental setting as sweeping
    as that embraced by the first two volumes. In its final volume Frankenstein goes rather
    out of its way, as if designed according to formula, to embrace all three parts of
    the United Kingdom.

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