The novel's continuing self-reflexiveness is quietly underscored here, but so is the
idea of a personal library. A further step in the Creature's education and his exploration
of his identity, reading books, rather than just overhearing them being read, frees
him from another's tutelage, increasing his own sense of responsibility and maturity.
Whether such books can make him happier is another question entirely.

As Alphonse Frankenstein continually speaks from the vantage of patriarch of the family,
asserting an almost tribal sense of bonded attachment, so the Creature confronts Victor
with his unique equivalence to those blood-ties, a bond Victor has from the first
spurned.

There is an unmistakeable erotic charge to the language of these paragraphs, but it
is almost metaphysical in its conception. The Creature suggests that the rage awakened
within him, which is fired by his rejection and desperate solitude, can only be slaked
by being converted into a psychologically and socially constructive alternative, which
is to say love. There are ramifications here as well for the "ardent" pursuits of
both Walton and Victor Frankenstein.

Although the notion of channeling libidinous forces into socially beneficial relationships
might be thought particularly suited to a woman's perspective on modern culture, the
conventions of the age kept most women authors from a direct engagement with issues
of sexuality and its repression or displacement. A notable exception is Mary Wollstonecraft.
Here one senses a true family resemblance.

Twice in the paragraph stressing the word "cause," the Creature learns that pleasure
and pain proceed from the same force, a considerable development in his education
and mental sophistication. If this is the groundwork of morality, however, it is important
to recognize that it shares a common bond, as the earlier quotation from Percy Bysshe
Shelley's "Mutability" may remind us, with the scientific systems that form so conspicuous
a context for the novel (see II:2:3 and note). There are other elements emphasized
in the novel that likewise exist on a neutral ground that can result in either good
or ill: curiosity is an obvious case in point (II:2:16).

In this phrase the Creature encapsulates what will become the dynamic force of the
third volume, an intense desire turned inside out and thus ironized, so that hatred
is pursued with the single-minded obsession of passionate love.

This was the easiest route into Italy, across southeastern France from Chambery to
Turin in northwestern Italy. The Mont Cenis Pass rises to only 6825 feet. This was
Napoleon's invasion route to Italy in 1796, and thereafter the post-road was improved
to allow uninterrupted traffic between the two countries. It was this road, indeed,
that the Shelleys themselves would take shiortly after publication of the novel, in
March 1818, on their trip to Italy.

The reference seems again to be to Paradise Lost (IV.49-53), and specifically to Satan's
attempt to break the chain with which God links all his creatures in an eternal sharing
of selves.

Felix's companion is the owner of the house, who holds as security a quarter-year
deposit that because of his abrupt departure Felix will have to forfeit.

In effect, the Creature asks Victor to look the other way and listen to his story.
We will recognize the similarity of this plea to that made to the blind De Lacey when
the Creature first attempts to establish human community later in the volume (II:7:15).
Throughout Frankenstein sound, rather than sight, is the means by which human sympathy
is evoked.

An appeal to justice must necessarily depend on compassion, fellow-feeling. This is
the only occasion in the Creature's existence where, even momentarily, he has been
accorded what we assume to be that fundamental right of human beings.