Mary Shelley posits the Lockean notion that at first one's natural condition is that
of synaesthesia, an indiscriminate intermingling of sense experience: only when the
intellect begins consciously to analyze sensory data are they broken down according
to the five diverse senses. The physiological basis for this development had been
posited in the mid-eighteenth century by the French materialist philosopher Condillac,
in his Traité des sensations.

Deliberate synaesthesia is an artistic ploy often to be found among the English Romantic
poets, in none more than Percy Bysshe Shelley: see, for instance, his poem of 1818,
"Lines Written among the Euganean Hills," esp. line 285 ff.

Thus, the Creature explicitly remarks what the experience of Justine's trial and execution
had conveyed to Elizabeth, that men are universally "monsters thirsting for . . .
blood" (II:1:8). This is exactly antipathetic to the tenets of disinterested benevolence
Godwin had championed in his public writings (see Political Justice Book IV, Chapter
8 and elsewhere in that treatise) and in the instruction of his children.

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.

This phrase is ambiguous: "fellow-creatures" in this contexts appears to be limited
to his family and friends. Later, Victor will revert to what he owes the human race
as a separate entity from the Creature, and justice will be construed quite differently.

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.