982

  • actuated by selfish and vicious motives On the face of it, Victor's honest admission that he has been impelled by less than
    disinterested motives must raise him in the reader's estimation, especially since
    he is close to his death and seems to be struggling for a truthful objectivity. Yet,
    a second glance at this phrase calls for its positioning, and we realize that Victor
    is referring to the last paragraph of his narration (III:7:26), uttered on 26 August,
    not three weeks before. If the last paragraph of his account is so indelibly tainted
    as Victor admits, what are we to think of what has preceded it? In other words, by
    what has his entire narration been "actuated"? If the whole rests on nothing but "selfish
    and vicious motives," then the textual indeterminacy so continually hinted at throughout
    the novel may in fact be radical.

    • 983

  • addressed me in French For the third time in these Irish chapters (see III:3:29 and III:4:11) Mary Shelley
    emphasizes a multiple perspective associated with shifts in language. To some extent,
    she must be reinforcing our awareness of an essential affinity between Victor Frankenstein
    and Mr. Kirwin in matters of class and education. Yet, even as she evokes common bonds,
    she subtly reminds us of the differences that are lost in translation or that, on
    a larger scale, represent features by which we distinguish ourselves from others.

    • 984

  • the affections In these late frames Victor's ramblings tend to touch on themes represented early
    in the novel and subsequently rather shunted to the side by the pressure of events.
    Thus, Victor's underscoring of the domestic affections as the arena for human life's
    most cherished actions reflects the nostalgic view of his childhood expressed in his
    first chapter (I:1:9, I:1:11) and strongly reinforced by his bitter recriminations
    over his withdrawal from this arena at Ingolstadt (I:3:12 and note). That the novel's
    actual focus is rather the opposite has been remarked more than once by critics. Certainly,
    the ultimate value of what on the surface appear to be peaceful domestic affections
    is thrown into question by the behavior of the cottagers to the Creature in Volume
    2 (II:7:36) or the scapegoating of Justine conducted by the pious burghers of Geneva
    in Volume 1 (I:7:13).

    • 937

  • thy justice

    The terminology here has a curiously political edge to it, particularly so after we
    have witnessed the demonstration of social injustice in the final chapters of Volume
    1.

    • 938

  • to dress my food

    An archaic usage, meaning to prepare or cook: only the nominative form—"dressing"—is
    still retained in English with this original import.

    • 939

  • the tortures of hell

    As earlier, Victor's histrionic sputtering, even as it testifies at once to the explosion
    of long repressed emotion and to his incapacity to handle the situation with which
    he is suddenly confronted, is also revelatory on a conceptual level. His mind is totally
    bound by the binary opposition of God and Satan in which he assumes not just creative
    godhead but also the right of judgment and particularly that of damnation, appointing
    this "fiend" and "devil" to the "tortures of hell."

    • 940

  • to utter sounds

    Only at this point, at the end of the chapter, do we become aware that the Creature
    has, up to now, no ability to relate linguistically, that he is still operating on
    the non-verbal level of the sparrows and thrushes whose sounds he first discriminated
    (paragraph 4 above). Although presumably the De Lacey family speaks during the ongoing
    business of the day, except for the "few sounds" (paragraph 14 above) that were uttered
    by the young man outside the cottage and by the old man when his music elicited tears,
    this account is, as it were, rendered against a backdrop of total silence except for
    the interlude of music. Mary Shelley's artistic refinement in rendering this silence
    intensifies, in contrast, the importance of words and of communication for the world
    of her novel.

    • 941

  • towards the setting sun

    The Creature travels west for three full days. Given his stature and endurance, one
    would assume this would allow him to cover a large tract of south-central Germany.

    • 942

  • in a transport of fury

    This phrase stands with a startling contradictory purity against the elder De Lacey's
    amiable platitudes concerning "brotherly love" (paragraph 25 above). Even worse, it
    undercuts all the ideals for which Felix has stood as well as the intellectual command
    by which he has restored his family's happiness and tranquillity. In a pinch Volney's
    ideal of an open, accepting humanity gives way to an unthinking recidivism, a protective
    and brutal tribalism, a masculinist belligerence, that is the moral equivalent of
    war.

    • 929

  • the duties of a creator towards his creature

    This recognition confirms how tellingly on the mark the Creature had been in earlier
    confronting Victor with the habitual language of his father (II:2:7 and note).

    • Subscribe to