Although the prolonged illness that is to follow for Victor will justify this look
as symptomatic of his physical debility, the first interpretation for many a reader
(and certainly for Clerval), that it is a sign of incipient madness, cannot be discounted.
A derangement of Victor's mental balance is too frequently insinuated later in the
text for it to be dismissed out-of-hand this early in its progress.

Mary Shelley's infant son (b. 24 January 1816) was named William after her father.
Her arranging to have his namesake in the novel murdered has prompted some wonder.
Certainly, there was no lack of maternal affection: William Shelley's death in Rome
on 7 June 1819 was a devastating blow to Mary Shelley, issuing in something approaching
a nervous breakdown.

At this point in the novel William is about seven years old. He is clearly modeled
in this description on Mary's infant son William.

Candor is an important character trait in the novel, and it is to Walton's credit
that he so naturally evinces it. His openness will elicit a similar frankness from
Victor Frankenstein, who for the first time in his existence will tell his entire
story. But that narration, then, raises a serious problem. Not only are there many
signs of instability in it, the major one being Victor's wish to revise it even as
it goes along (III:WC:4 and note); but his earlier lack of candor with his family
and friends is akin to dishonesty, which, if so common a practice throughout his mature
life, must raise serious doubts about the truthfulness of the narration that comprises
the bulk of this novel.

Candor is an important character trait in the novel, and it is to Walton's credit
that he so naturally evinces it. His openness will elicit a similar frankness from
Victor Frankenstein, who for the first time in his existence will tell his entire
story. But that narration, then, raises a serious problem. Not only are there many
signs of instability in it, the major one being Victor's wish to revise it even as
it goes along (Walton, and note); but his earlier lack of candor with his family and
friends is akin to dishonesty, which, if so common a practice throughout his mature
life, must raise serious doubts about the truthfulness of the narration that comprises
the bulk of this novel.

The "wondrous power" is magnetism. Mary Shelley, working within the accepted scientific
discourse of her time, in this second paragraph of her novel, is carefully establishing
a conceptual—the term in her time would have been "philosophical"—base for it in physics.
The key is provided by Percy Bysshe Shelley's citation, in the opening sentence of
the Preface (I:Pref:1), of Erasmus Darwin, to whom the reader may turn for further
elucidation of the scientific grounding of the novel.

This phrase recurs with frequency in the critical literature about the novel, partly
because it stands in such contrast to the almost divine attributes with which Victor
has up to now been honoring himself and his discovery. In the phrase there is not
only a sense of the irreducibly brute physical reality of what would have actually
constituted a butcher-shop but as well a decided undertone of self-loathing.

However odd this may sound to contemporary ears, it is certainly true that Percy Bysshe
Shelley deeply romanticized Mary's origins, seeing her as singled out by her birth
for great literary accomplishment. He pays tribute to her in these terms in his Dedication
to The Revolt of Islam, the epic-romance he wrote simultaneously with her composition
of Frankenstein. Although some commentators have seen the pressures to write to which
her lover/husband subjected Mary Shelley as pernicious, it did not originate with
him so much as in the milieu in which Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was raised. There,
writing (William Godwin) and publishing (Mary Jane Clairmont, his second wife) was
what one did.

The Creature has been "named" once before by Victor, in the prologue, as "daemon"
(I:L4:16). The nomenclature in which he is vested confers an initial identity upon
him that will shift overnight from this enigmatic term of alienation—meaning either
being unhappy or vile (from the Old English word for "exile")—to the wholly out of
bounds, the monstrous (I:4:3).

The University of Ingolstadt was opened on 26 July 1472 under the patronage of the
Duke of Bavaria, Ludwig the Wealthy. For centuries its various faculties—humanistic,
scientific, theology, law, and medicine—were contained in the Hoheschule (High School).
By the end of the seventeenth century plans were elaborated for new university buildings,
but these were never realized. Nonetheless, during the ensuing century the University
was forced to expand. In 1760 George Ludwig Claudius Rousseau was appointed demonstrator
of Chemistry, and in 1778 a separate laboratory was constructed for him near the Hoheschule.
Given the time scheme of Frankenstein, it seems likely that Victor would have pursued
his studies in that location.

But Ingolstadt was also very well equipped to support Victor's more elaborate scientific
ambitions. From the first, the University possessed a medical school of stature. In
1722 its faculty acquired a site for a projected school that would incorporate an
anatomy theater, botanical garden, and chemistry laboratory, and construction was
begun early in 1723 though, for want of money, it was not wholly finished until 1736.
A major botanical garden was attached to the school to support its experiments and
treatments. By 1755 the demonstration hall in the central atrium had been converted
into a two-story anatomical theater, with a dissecting table on the ground floor,
a gallery for student observers above, and a glass ceiling allowing overhead illumination.
In the later eighteenth century it was considered to be one of the finest such theaters
in Europe. Obviously, such a theater would have had ample provision for the specimens
required for teaching purposes—or for clandestine experimentation.