These are two of the major preoccupations of alchemy. The philosopher's stone could
convert all metal into what was considered its most refined form, the element gold.
The elixir of life would instill perpetual youth. The title figure of William Godwin's
second novel, St. Leon (1799) is given both the stone and the elixir by an old man
whom he saves from the Inquisition, and they effectively ruin his life. (Godwin's
preface to the novel suggests his larger purposes here.) Mary Shelley, who, we recall,
dedicated this novel to Godwin, in its pages thus frequently nods approvingly in his
direction. The connection to the alchemical theme of St. Leon was commented on with
derision by the Quarterly Review.

Mary Shelley emphasizes what further on in Volume 1 we will recognize to be links
in the education and interests of Walton and Frankenstein. These imply large areas
of common ground in their world views.

Physiognomy is a pseudoscientific discipline that purports to find correspondences
between psychological attributes and physical features of the head, face, and body.
Victor has every reason to use the term, since his medieval mentor Albertus Magnus
wrote extensively about physiognomy and the mixture of humors in the body and mind.
As Mary Shelley would have been well aware, this discipline was resurrected in the
later eighteenth century by a countryman of Victor Frankenstein's, Johann Kaspar Lavater
(11 November 1741 - 2 January 1801), a resident of Zurich. His Essays on Physiognomy
(1775-1778; translated into English in 1789-1798) made him world-famous, inspiring
many a quack psychologist of his day, and many further days across the ensuing century.
More seriously relevant for the context of Frankenstein might be the title of an earlier
work of Lavater's, Geheimes Tagebuch von einem Beobachter seiner selbst (1772-73),
which was translated into English in 1795 under the title Secret Journal of a Self-Observer.

Compare I:2:12 and note and I:6:41 and note.

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.

Plainpalais is a promenade to the south of the city of Geneva.

A statue of Rousseau stands in the square. During the Geneva Revolution of 1792-1795,
Geneva's syndics were killed in an uprising in Plainpalais. Mary Shelley recounts
this incident in A History of a Six Weeks' Tour, Letter II:

To the south of the town is the promenade of the Genevese, a grassy plain planted
with a few trees, and called Plainpalais. Here a small obelisk is erected to the glory
of Rousseau, and here (such is the mutability of human life) the magistrates, the
successors of those who exiled him from his native country, were shot by the populace
during that revolution, which his writings mainly contributed to mature, and which,
notwithstanding the temporary bloodshed and injustice with which it was polluted,
has produced enduring benefits to mankind, which all the chicanery of statesmen, nor
even the great conspiracy of kings, can entirely render vain. From respect to the
memory of their predecessors, none of the present magistrates ever walk in Plainpalais.

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)