998

  • They were for ever ardent and craving In the connotations of Mary Shelley's time, this phrase, in combination with the
    "impotent passions" described two sentences earlier, would seem to suggest that the
    Creature has suffered deeply during his existence from unconsummated sexual desire.
    Ironically, his desire for intercourse has been pure and unsublimated, whereas that
    of Walton and Frankenstein has been strongly channeled away from human interaction
    and into their respective projects (see II:9:9 and note).

    • 1001

  • ardently prayed The language of ardor, earlier associated with the scientific pursuits of both Walton
    (I:L1:2, I:L3:1) and Victor Frankenstein (I:3:2, I:4:3)—where in the latter case it
    is tinged with something approaching the eroticism only fully expressed after the
    death of Elizabeth (III:6:9)—is here transferred into the arena of hatred. In Victor
    this hatred will constitute a passion as intense and single-minded as erotic infatuation.

    • 1003

  • mine is assigned to me by heaven Victor's assurance of transcendental authorization for his murderous intentions has
    become so absolute that he never questions his aims or how they are thus assured.
    Unlike Walton and his crew, he is locked into a vision as rigid and unmoving as had
    been the icefield surrounding the ship. When it breaks apart, offering an escape to
    a renewed, living community, Victor chooses to revert to the closed and solitary circle
    of his vengeance. That decision insures, indeed, is virtually the equivalent of, the
    death that forestalls his further pursuit of the Creature.

    • 1002

  • ascertain my fate From the retrospect of later chapters in the novel this seemingly innocuous phrase
    might be seen as constituting something of a floodwater for what will become an increasingly
    powerful, inescapable driving force in Victor's comprehension of the world. At the
    conceptual core of this notion of destiny one finds combined, as here, a sense of
    his own incapacity to act independently, a passivity before what he construes as superior
    power, and an abnegation of responsibility for the actions of himself or others.

    • 1004

  • assizes The Oxford English Dictionary, in its twelfth subsection under the substantive "assize,"
    explains these courts of trial as follows: The sessions held periodically in each
    county of England, for the purpose of administering civil and criminal justice, by
    judges acting under certain special commissions (chiefly and usually, but not exclusively,
    being ordinary judges of the superior courts, or, after 1875, of the Supreme Court).
    It was provided by Magna Carta that the judges should visit each county once every
    year to take assizes (i.e. try writs of assize) of novel disseisin, mort d'ancestre,
    and darreine presentment (so that the jury who constituted the Grand Assize . . .
    might not be obliged to travel from remote corners of England to appear in court at
    Westminster). Thence the names assizes, and justices or judges of assize, still retained
    by these circuit courts and itinerant judges, after their judicial functions had been
    greatly extended in various directions, especially in that of the trial of felonies
    and offences. Assizes were abolished by the Courts Act, 1971; their criminal jurisdiction
    was transferred to the Crown Courts. Of course, Ireland in the eighteenth-century
    had not yet been joined administratively to the mechanisms of the United Kingdom as
    it would become with the Act of Union of 1801. But in practical effect the nominally
    independent country, in its administration of justice, modeled itself on the English
    system.

    • 1009

  • avoided . . . any encounter Victor's regaining a sense of community through the influence of Clerval's letter,
    as he represented himself three paragraphs earlier, seems far from certain. His shying
    from contact with his fellow humans has become virtually instinctive. That he refers
    to the fishermen by the generic term "creatures" is instructive, since it separates
    them to a marked degree within the same generic category as the being whom he created.

    • 1008

  • I did not . . . avert it The language here is curious but characteristic of Victor, who tends to exonerate
    himself by deferral to a presumed destiny he cannot alter.

    • 1011

  • a bad conscience

    The state of Victor's conscience is borne out by the perturbed dreams that, as he
    will report in the last paragraph of this chapter, continually afflict him in sleep.

    • 1010

  • the award of justice In the course of two trials and even in his final deposition to a Geneva magistrate
    Victor is exonerated from reponsibility for any criminal activity. Thus, this "award"
    is one that, in Victor's mind, exists beyond the checkered course of human justice.
    In a fine irony, it is only moments before he narrates the events of a trial from
    which he easily secures his release that Victor indicates to Walton that he has brought
    himself to the bar to be condemned.

    • 1013

  • beautiful in nature . . . sublime . . . of man At this point it is clear that it is Clerval, "the image of [Victor's] former self"
    (III:2:3) who retains this responsiveness to his natural surroundings. This is exemplified
    in the previous chapter with his enthusiastic reaction to the Rhine valley (III:1:19).
    His citing of both the beautiful and the sublime in this sentence may point the reader
    less to Victor—who sees himself no longer able to respond fully to either—than to
    a sense of inclusiveness, at once aesthetic and intellectual, that Mary Shelley seems
    to be associating with a fully realized human being.
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