The third and fourth stanzas of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, "Mutability," published
in the Alastor volume in March 1816.

The fairly conventional notions of her husband's poem seem at first to have little
direct linkage with the circumstances into which Mary Shelley has thrust Victor at
this juncture. But if one looks back over the landscape of the first volume, the operations
of mutability as a force of destruction are everywhere evident—from the fearsome movements
of sea and ice in Walton's letters, to the sudden deaths in the Frankenstein and Moritz
households, to the unmerited reversal of Justine's fortunes. But mutability is also
the very stuff of life. Perhaps then, most of all, the subject of the poem applies
to the scientific paradigms that govern the development of the volume—in ancient alchemy
(from the various transmutations it would apply to base metals to its search for a
means of suspending mutability itself in the elixir of life); or in modern chemistry,
which increasingly saw organic changes in terms of chemical transformations; or in
contemporary electrical theory, where dialectical tensions between opposing poles
were held responsible for the essential energy of life. A later poem of Percy Bysshe
Shelley confronts these ambivalences more subtly and more directly, embedding them
in a single symbolic force that is at one and same time both "Creator and Destroyer,"
the "Ode to the West Wind," written in 1819.

Here one begins to get a glimmer of the impact of Safie's arrival on the Creature's
thoughts, as he ponders his own need for a mutuality of feeling. The novel powerfully
demonstrates that where there are not such mutual bonds, a form of bondage is substituted
instead. Neither Victor nor his Creature is able to break away from the other, even
if all that holds them together is their antagonism.

Behind this utterance, one can hear what is truly the locus classicus, the classic
statement, of how one is impelled by exile to provide sympathetic assistance to other
exiles, that of Dido before the shipwrecked Aeneas: "Non ignari mali, miseris succerere
disco—Not ignorant of evils myself, I learn to succor the miserable" (Aeneid, I.630).
Without question Mary Shelley's educated readers would have heard the resonance of
this Latin tag, an allusion few women novelists of this time would have had sufficient
classical training to make.

These exact words were uttered in the previous chapter when the Creature described
burning down the De Lacey's cottage (II:8:13 and note).

In the ongoing education of the Creature this is the point at which he is first able
to conceptualize that refinement of affection that constitutes kindness. As with much
of the ongoing development of his awareness, there is an ironic undertone here, however,
since he will never experience the sort of solicitude that, despite his poverty and
blindness, is the elder De Lacey's daily expectation and comfort.

As was the case three paragraphs earlier, here the Creature evokes essential Enlightenment
values, twice privileging the notion of sympathy, but the affirmations are so hedged
as to be ominous.

A highly resonant shift of language. Elizabeth is forced back on intuition in the
same manner as Victor had been on his return to Geneva (I:6:25). Given the miscarriage
of justice perpetrated by those who convicted Justine on the basis of circumstantial
logic, Elizabeth's intuitive knowledge of the heart seems a preferable means by which
to organize—or to transcend—social institutions. And yet, the contrasting case of
Victor's passion for revenge would suggest how unpredictable, and even dangerous,
such a course might be.

Again, the Creature uncannily picks up on the timbres of Victor's meditations. Compare,
for instance, the first paragraph of this second volume (II:1:1), where Victor reviews
what he considers is a "blasted" existence. There his remorse (note) has much the
same deleterious and lasting effect that the Creature here attributes to knowledge.

That is, the language spoken is German, not the French used by the De Laceys and the
Creature. This relapse appears to bear a symbolic connotation, as the Creature, who
had seen his efforts to acquire language as the key to his being accepted within human
society, is suddenly plunged once again into linguistic incomprehension.

Although the tonality is subtle, the Creature's education along with Safie seems to
have a bonding effect, increasing his original attachment to her. In two months' time
the linguistic disadvantage that is a shared mark of their alienation is assuaged,
preparing them simultaneously for what should be a full social integration.