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.

It is a curious coincidence that the last time Victor called upon the heavens (I:6:22)
he instantly beheld his Creature. If Mary Shelley intended to signify something through
this coincidence, she certainly left no hint, and it has not been explained by commentators.

The same characteristic has been the subject of our recent focus, as Victor's anguished
frustration in Justine's prison cell issues in this extraordinary physical reaction
(I:7:27). Earlier we witnessed the same phenomenon when Victor was brought aboard
Walton's ship (I:L4:10 and note), which, since it is an event almost contemporary
with his present narrative account must give us a sense of how habitual this reaction
has become; also how revelatory of psychological (and moral) disturbance it is. Two
other characters engage in the same passionate behavior: the Creature (III:3:13) and
Milton's Satan.

As has already been evident in earlier chapters, in Mary Shelley's perspective the
imagination is a power at once of great dynamic force and ethically neutral in its
operations, leading to good or evil ends depending on the psychological framework
in which it exists. The darker side of this mental attribute has been especially invoked
as events in the novel have taken a tragic turn: see, for instance, I:3:7 and note,
I:4:18 and note, I:6:27 and note.

The reader observes a carefully registered journey from the beautiful into the sublime,
from what Elizabeth has proposed as a domestic enclosure, warding off the unimaginable
and protecting the family unit from threat, into another confrontation, at least for
Victor, with elemental nature, with destruction and with fresh creation. The transitional
point of this rite of passage is marked by the village of St. Martin in the Shelleys'
account of their excursion to Chamonix in History of a Six Weeks' Tour.

The Creature's enforced loneliness has been physically brought home to him, but that
he should already conceive of himself at this early stage of his experience as flawed
seems to involve progress through social rejection to a new and not exactly liberating
stage of self-consciousness.

In ordinary circumstances this would not seem so absurd a question. The fact that
the Creature lacks a national identity, however, throws into relief how deeply embedded
are national prejudices even among the enlightened. We have already witnessed in the
French reaction to Safie's father (II:6:3) and in his abuse of Felix's kindness (II:6:12)
how mean-spiritedness is served by national identity. Part of Volney's aim in Les
Ruines is to eradicate such defining ideological concepts. That the Creature is thus
born without them indicates his superiority and, ironically, is a further example
of how he does not fit into normative human society.

The snowdrop, a common subject of poems on fragile beauty and mutability, often associated
with young women, in the late eighteenth century. Like the crocus, the snowdrop blooms
in late winter.

In his pain and anger the Creature imitates the actions of Victor Frankenstein twice
noted in the first volume (I:L4:10 and note; I:7:27 and note) and again at the beginning
of the second (II:1:6 and note). The Creature will again be portrayed as gnashing
his teeth in the third volume (III:3:13). The prototype for this behaviour remains
the Satan of Milton's Paradise Lost, VI.340.

It is of some use to the design of Frankenstein that Victor go onto the Mer de Glace
by himself. At the same time, his rationale, that another human being would "destroy"
what he considers its "solitary grandeur," is characteristic of his constitutional
withdrawal into a contemplative introversion.