As understandable as this resolve is (and, perhaps more important to the reader, as
necessary to the plot line as it may be), still Victor's silence is fundamentally
problematical on moral grounds, constituting a denial of his own responsibility and,
through an absence of candor on both private and public levels, a failure of essential
human sympathy and justice.

Even as he honors Alphonse Frankenstein, Victor does so in terms that distance his
father into something of an icon for the principle of patriarchy itself.

Victor uses the same diction in thanking Walton for rescuing him: "You have benevolently
restored me to life" (I:L4:18 and note).

This long passage, almost a tirade, was omitted from the third and later editions.
It is one of the clear occasions where Mary Shelley reveals herself as her father's
daughter, justifying the Quarterly Review's attack on her novel for its Godwinian
politics. For Godwin's treatment of retribution, see Political Justice, Book VII ("Of
Crimes and Punishments"), particularly Chapter 4, "Of the Application of Coercion."