This a sentiment born of Enlightenment optimism that Mary Shelley would have heard
echoed in her father's home as well as in the one she established with Percy Bysshe
Shelley. It is based on a sense of the shared values of the human community. For it
to be discovered a falsehood would profoundly affect normative ethical premises. The
very blandness of this discourse testifies to our comfortable assurances and prepares
the way for a devastating reversal of them.

The Creature has internalized the dynamics of Paradise Lost, setting himself as a
reactionary force to undo the world of his creator. That such desolation, rather than
a triumph, is inherently defeating and involves the undoing of his self is well understood
by Mary Shelley, yet to be learned by the Creature.

The combination of terms here may be accidental, but is wonderfully encapsulating
of the dynamics of the novel thus far. The Creature is denominated an Other even as
the fixed point for comparison is lodged in the established, public figure of Alphonse
Frankenstein, who, from the point of view of his sons (and of himself) is never capable
of being viewed in the light of alterity.

This instinctive gesture is part of a pattern across the novel in which those with
sight must technically blind themselves in order to endure the presence of the Creature:
see I:4:3 and note.

This could mean, narrowly, that Felix had been educated for the French diplomatic
corps or, more broadly, to function in the upper levels of the government bureaucracy.
Whatever the case, there is a clear link between his family and expectations and those
of Victor Frankenstein, whose father and forefathers, from a strong sense of civic
duty, have held positions of public trust in Geneva.

As Victor is self-conscious about the shape and impact of his narrative (see I:7:13
and note), so is his Creature. His question also curiously echoes Justine Moritz's
recognition that facts alone are not sufficient to exonerate her (I:7:5 and note);
if she is to establish her claim to innocence she must move her auditors. Aside from
such thematic continuities within the novel, this issue is likewise very much alive
in the poetry that Percy Shelley was writing contemporaneously, particularly in The
Revolt of Islam, where Cythna's eloquence is an important element in spreading political
and cultural enlightenment: see particularly Canto 8.

Mary Shelley knows from experience of what she writes. There were actually two such
huts on Montanvert above the Sea of Ice, one made of wood and erected by an Englishman
named Blair in 1779, and the other of stone constructed by a Frenchmen, Desportes,
in the year 1795 (Charles Edward Mathews, The Annals of Mont Blanc [Boston: L.C. Page,
1900]).

Not only does the Creature's terrible solitude remind us of the mental isolation into
which Victor Frankenstein finds himself plunged, but it also takes us back to the
original scene in which this narrative is being recited, upon a ship in the midst
of the Arctic Ocean, remote from either land or other human beings. As in Walton's
letters (Letter I and Letter II), so here one cannot fail to hear the echo of Coleridge's
"Rime of the Ancient Mariner": "Alone, alone, all, all alone,/ Alone on a wide wide
sea!" (line 232-3).

As earlier in his ruminations about language acquisition (II:4:9), the Creature unconsciously
adopts the exact phrasing of Victor Frankenstein (I:2:7) as he looks forward to his
education at Ingolstadt.

Heavy irony attends this choice of diction. Not only are we reminded of the "ardent"
desire with which, when young, Victor (I:2:7) (and Walton—I:L1:2) eagerly pursued
scientific knowledge, but we can associate with that innocent desire the more complicated
ardency driving Victor obsessively toward the scientific breakthrough that was the
birth of this Creature: see I:3:1 and note. This is the point in the novel when the
language of intense love first is used to embody the designs of a passionate hatred.