During the latter part of the eighteenth-century the life sciences were undergoing
a radical transformation of their conduct, substituting scrupulous taxonomic categorization
and rigorous inductive experimentation for the slippery conceptual ordering and deductive
animism inherited from medieval and Renaissance paradigms. The exacting science of
chemistry influenced these developments and, in turn, was given impetus by the responsiveness
of the life sciences to their renewed systemization. When Victor speaks of a "rational
theory," he means, at least in part, such a logical ordering of constituent knowledge
within the discipline. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, particularly
in Great Britain under the guidance of figures like John Dalton and Humphrey Davy,
chemistry made enormous advances in basic knowledge, winning for the discipline something
of a cachet among educated people.

Written in 1816, this is exactly appropriate for the circumstances of the day. England
was at this point in the forefront of research and the development of systematic knowledge
in chemistry.

Although there are occasional instances in the literature of Romanticism where the
world of childhood is privileged—Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" is
a prime example—still the timbres here are unmistakeably Victorian, another sign of
the major shift in British culture during the 1820s. The nostalgic sentimentality,
however, rather veils the way in which Victor displaces upon his parents the mode
of his future conduct in life. His tacit abdication of responsibility will be repeated
in a more overt manner further on in his account.

Frankenstein is a novel haunted by the spectre of death. Not yet a quarter of the
way through the novel, the reader will encounter in Justine the fifth orphan (after
Walton and his sister, Caroline, and Elizabeth). Beyond this repeated pattern, death
has touched each chapter of the novel, first as Walton recounts how he inherited a
fortune upon the death of an unnamed cousin (I:L1:4and note), the decline of Alphonse
Frankenstein's friend Beaufort (I:1:2), the sudden demise of Caroline Frankenstein
(I:2:2), Victor's nocturnal visits to vaults and charnel houses (I:3:3), his association
of his Creature with mummies and ghouls (I:4:4), and the death of Justine's three
siblings and mother in this paragraph. The actual context for this narrative should,
of course, not be forgotten, an unexplored reach of the Arctic wilderness where the
sight of another human being (I:L4:4) provokes "unqualified wonder."

Baseless imaginings. Victor has already acknowledged that the claims of Cornelius
Agrippa were "chimerical" (I:1:16 and note).

Johnson's 1755 Dictionary defines chimerical as: "Imaginary; fanciful; wildly, vainly,
or fantastically conceived; fantastick."

Johnson also reminds his readers of the origin of the root: "the poetical chimera,
a monster feigned to have the head of a lion, the belly of a goat, and the tail of
a dragon."

An inordinate interest in chivalry, suggestive of an investment in archaic notions
of manners and social hierarchy, constitutes the moral defect of Ferdinando Count
Falkland in Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794). Here, in contrast, it seems meant to reveal
the inherently poetic imagination of Clerval.

Whether Mary Shelley, in framing her revisions, intended to give her novel a geographical
symmetry by placing an Italian sojourn in the early part of Victor's narrative to
balance that of Safie and her father at its absolute center (1831:II:14:12) can be
only a matter of conjecture. It is consistent, however, with the strong structural
patterning of the novel. By 1831, of course, she might simply have decided to translate
her own experience into the rewriting of the novel, for it was certainly the case
that she and Percy Bysshe Shelley sought Italy in 1818, just months after the publication
of Frankenstein, ostensibly for reasons of health.

One consequence of the considerable emendation made to this first chapter of Victor's
narrative is to emphasize how well off his family is. To see the sights of Italy is
one thing; to make a leisurely tour of the country, then extend the excursion to take
in France and Germany, requires substantial means as well as leisure. In the 1818
text the Frankensteins were respected members of their community; by 1831 they have
assumed something of the trappings of aristocracy.

Victor has already explained that he was by this time running a low fever as a result
of his "ardour [burning] that far exceeded moderation" (I:3:9). From this point on
in the novel, Victor is never wholly well.

Mary Shelley read this anecdote in Washington Irving's Life and Adventures of Christopher
Columbus (1828), Book V, Chapter 7, where it is used to applaud the explorer's "practical
sagacity." Her light emphasis here on the achievements of great explorers and the
uses to which their knowledge is put might be thought to press issues of considerable
importance to the novel she is introducing.