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."

Victor's life, as he narrates its events, is full of good intentions, roads not taken,
and fatal postponements. A more disinterested observer might attribute all of these
elements to a slippery sense of personal responsibility on Victor's part.

The vagueness of this reference, in contrast to the pointed citation of Erasmus Darwin,
perhaps suggests that Percy Bysshe Shelley, who at this point had only rudimentary
German, is operating here from report rather than personal experience.

The chief figure among relevant German scientists would appear to be Johann Wilhelm
Ritter (1776-1810), who conducted extensive experiments in galvanism. Other commentators
have at various times suggested J. F. Blumenbach, Friedrich Tiedemann, Goethe, Schelling,
and Lorenz Oken.

Elizabeth's conformity to her female lot, staying in Geneva rather than traveling
to Ingolstadt to care for Victor, spreading contentment around her, being content
herself with "trifling occupations," has been a source of irritation to many critics
who, from this and similar evidence, see the novel as enforcing a mindless domesticity
as the only alternative to the overreaching of the male protagonists. Yet, to take
this passage at face value as the expression not of Elizabeth but of Mary Shelley,
is not really defensible as a critical reading. Elizabeth's blandness is an aspect
of her character. Her satisfaction with, broadly speaking, the beautiful is certainly
an aspect of the female role in this period, but in no way does her author resemble
her in this narrow predeliction. Nor does the novel unquestionably reinforce it. After
all, the first direct view we as readers have had of this serene landscape was as
a violent thunderstorm burst from over the Jura mountains (I:1:22). When in the second
volume Victor enters into, instead of gazing upon, this world of "snow-clad mountains,"
it will be to confront the sublime directly.

Plain, in contrast to fancy, work consisted of hemming and other essential tasks of
household sewing. Mary Wollstonecraft discusses the place of plain-work in girls'
education in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 12.24.

Caroline wove strands of straw together to be used in basket-weaving and in the manufacture
of articles of clothing like hats or such accessories as purses.

Caius Plinius Secundus, CE 23-79, Roman naturalist.

Pliny the Elder was the author of Historia naturalis, the principal compendium of
scientific knowledge for the original Augustan age, a work to which Percy Bysshe Shelley
was introduced at Eton. He claimed there to have, for the most part, translated the
encyclopedic work on metallurgy, pharmacology, zoology, anthropology, and psychology
into English.

The Natural History is the only one of Pliny's seven writings to survive antiquity
entire. That work in thirty-seven books was an attempt to survey all natural knowledge
systematically in an unadorned style, and his methodical approach and careful regard
for citation make it a model of ancient scientific research, in spite of Pliny's superstitious
beliefs in magic. Book 1 is an introduction to the entire work. Book 2 addresses cosmology
and astronomy; books 3 through 6 are on geography. The next thirteen books treat biology:
zoology in books 7 through 11, botany in books 12 through 19. Books 20 through 22
address medicine; books 23 through 37 are concerned with metals, minerals, and precious
stones.

Pliny's authority was comparable to Aristotle's throughout the Middle Ages; only in
1492 did he come under attack in Niccolò Leoniceno's catalogue of his errors. From
then on its influence waned by degrees, and few regarded it seriously as science after
the end of the seventeenth century.

Pliny died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in CE 79, famously described in letters
by his nephew.

Mary Shelley deliberately joins the obsessiveness of artistic creation to that of
scientific pursuit. Although some commentators have assumed an implicit critique of
Percy Bysshe Shelley, he follows a similar path in "Alastor" (published in 1816).
Compare—

The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to
           heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

(Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, V.i.7-22)