1088
In the sense of "natural philosophy" encountered earlier (I:3:1), a physical scientist.
1087
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.
1100
a nineteen-year-old student at the University of Geneva, perhaps to learn a more human
kind of knowledge than his brother, certainly to carry the family name forward solely
by himself. He is the single survivor of the catastrophic history surrounding Victor
Frankenstein.
1099
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.
1101
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.
1058
1063
note). Thus, the Creature's plan to seek "the vast wilds of South America" is compatible
with this meaning.
Compare the OED:
1. An uninhabited and uncultivated tract of country; a wilderness: . . . b. formerly
applied more widely to any wild, uninhabited region, including forest-land.
See also Johnson's definition from the Dictionary of 1755:
DESERT. n.s. [desertum, Latin.] A wilderness; solitude; waste country; uninhabited
place.
Be alive again,
And dare me to the desert with thy sword.
Of trembling I inhibit; then protest me
The baby of a girl. Shakespeare's Macbeth. He, looking round on every side, beheld
A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades. Paradise Reg.
1062
usage, "desert" here means any wilderness. In classical references the land of the
barbarians is generally construed as Scythia, which is the far interior of Russia.
Fittingly, then, it is to that exact geographical region that Victor will pursue the
Creature.
1065
Whether this is seen as an attempt on Victor's part to rewrite his initial account,
as an overt expression of a megalomania earlier under firmer control, or as simply
a more commanding perspective on his youthful passion, a comparison with the first
chapter of his narrative (I:1:18) yields no sense of Victor's feeling singled out
for accomplishment, but rather a somewhat wry recollection of a self-indulgent adolescence.
Even his remove to Ingolstadt and the most advanced medical school of central Europe
is a decision totally "resolved" (I:2:1) by his parents. It is true that Victor has
consistently appealed to a ruling destiny (I:1:14, I:2:19, III:4:41) to justify the
course of his life. Indeed, it could be argued that his narrative to Walton constitutes
a writing of the plot of that destiny, so that by its end every event in his life
appears logically necessitated. In that case the force of his autobiography would
require that the early chapters be revised to accommodate this narrative necessity.
Once again the reader senses in its capacity for revision an underlying instability
in the text of the novel. This indeterminacy is finely underscored in the 1831 revision
where "I believed myself destined" is substituted for "I felt as if I were destined."
1064
and note), so here the reader is brought short by the Creature's assertion that his
series of acts have been freely willed. The very adjective he employs embodies an
internalization of Victor's demonization of him. Although he certainly bears responsibility
for his acts through an abiding remorse, at the same time we are aware that he has
been conditioned into the state of the demonic. To adapt the logic of his own rhetoric,
negated as a human being, he has been recreated as a demon by the relentless scapegoating
he has suffered.