What Wordsworth calls the "correspondent breeze" (The Prelude, I.35), the dynamic
response of the human imagination to natural or divine inspiration, is a frequent
theme among the first generation of English Romantic poets (particularly Coleridge
and Wordsworth) and has been much discussed by critics (see, for example, M. H. Abrams,
"The Correspondent Breeze: A Romantic Metaphor"). Closer to home, the same correspondence
will become the motivating force in Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind"
in 1819.

This phrase is inserted in so unobtrusive a manner as to pass almost without a reader's
comprehension of its drift. The unmistakeable suggestion, however, is that the course
of Victor's and his family's lives might have been altered if he and Clerval had been
candid about the depth and cause of his illness. Yet, Clerval is at no fault, since
he, too, is kept in the dark. Only Victor at this point could alter the narrative
logic he has set in motion: among its other aspects, his illness constitutes a deep
refuge from both reality and his responsibility for its nature.

As with many of her interpolations in 1831, Mary Shelley here seems intent on an early
establishment of a pattern that will reappear and become more intense in its significance
as the novel progresses. Such psychological turmoil will produce a state of nightmare
and half-sleep on the night after the Creature is created (I:5:3) and will reveal
itself in Volumes 2 and 3 by a chronic and, in the end, debilitating fever.

This is the second close male friendship in as many lines (see the note to "friend").
Since friendships reflect character in this novel, the intimacy Alphonse Frankenstein
feels for Beaufort (I:1:2) and the elder Clerval (I:2:5), both of whom share a sternness
of resolve and a narrow preoccupation with business success, may suggest a comparable
rigidity, or at least a stiffness and lack of flexibility, in Victor's father. Victor
will himself shortly note these traits in respect to how his father oversees his development
(I:1:16).

Beginning here, Victor portrays himself as having an instinctive interest in science
that will drive his entire existence, particularly once he arrives within a university
setting and can devote himself to scientific investigation (I:3:1).

Frankenstein refers gnomically to Henry Clerval, whom he will introduce, in this 1831
edition, at the beginning of the second chapter of his narrative (I:2:2).

Unlike the public and the judges, Justine quietly assumes that only a man could have
committed the murder of a child.

The sense of divergent perspectives between Victor and Alphonse Frankenstein encountered
in the first chapter (I:1:15-I:1:16) here is extended to a neighboring father's shortsighted
thwarting of all his son's ambitions. Given Victor's portrayal of Clerval as a poet,
it is impossible not to feel the impress of Percy Bysshe Shelley's strained relations
with his father in this account.

Throughout the novel, with the exception of Victor's interview with his Creature in
Volume 2 (II:2:6), only the blind (II:7:16) or one who dissembles their condition
(III:WC:35) can remain unperturbed in the presence of the Creature.

Seemingly a proverbial expression, this phrase bears a strong resemblance to the Archangel
Raphael's injunction to Adam at the conclusion of his survey of God's newly created
universe:

Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid;
Leave them to God above; him serve, and fear!
Of other creatures, as him pleases best,
Wherever placed, let him dispose; joy thou
In what he gives to thee, this Paradise
And thy fair Eve; Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there; be lowly wise:
Think only what concerns thee, and thy being;
Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there
Live, in what state, condition, or degree;
Contented that thus far hath been revealed
Not of Earth only, but of highest Heaven.
-- Paradise Lost, VIII.167-178