It appears from this paragraph that the only avocation in Geneva is getting married.
Victor's lack of desire to fit the pattern of his friends stands out in sharp contrast.

William Godwin, 1756-1836, political philosopher and novelist, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft,
and father of Mary Shelley.

Godwin's works, including works of political philosophy (most importantly An Enquiry
concerning Political Justice) and several novels (including Caleb Williams and St.
Leon), advocate intellectual self-development through the rule of reason, personal
freedom bordering on political anarchy, the dismantling of inherited institutions,
religious liberalism, and disinterested justice.

Political Justice emphasizes the deleterious impact of all systems of government on
the ethical and intellectual development of individual human beings. In this systematically
argued critique Godwin posits the ultimate perfectibility of mankind if freed from
repressive social structures. In his novels Godwin obliquely underscores these same
philosophical and social issues, adding to them a continuing gallery of portraits
of male figures whose obsessions and self-regard are supported by the patriarchal
institutions of modern civilization. Both his philosophical and fictional concerns
are, in turn, strongly reflected in the characterization and the events of Frankenstein.

In her revisions Mary Shelley somewhat mitigates the picture of institutional injustice
so starkly presented in the first edition. In particular, she pulls back sharply from
her earlier representation of the Church's place in this inhumane structure. The Justine
of 1831 becomes much more conventionally pious and more tranquilly submissive to what
she conceives to be the will of heaven.

The reasons for this shift in tone may be many and complicated. One obvious one is
that England was on the brink of the passage of the Great Reform Bill when her novel
was republished in 1831, and the prelude to that sweeping legislation, the repeal
of the Corporation and Test Acts in 1828, had opened an era of religious freedom and
toleration in which such attacks would have seemed truly of another age and ungenerous,
if not intolerant, in and of themselves.

If the reader can free this action of its melodramatic trappings, its intense physicality
testifies to how seriously agitated is Victor Frankenstein. It is secondarily an action
traditionally associated with Milton's Satan (e.g., Paradise Lost, VI.340).

The lieutenant's driving ambitions mirror those of Walton: the ambivalence that surrounds
Walton's invocation of glory in his initial letter (I:L1) must thus apply to him as
well.

However consonant with heroic endeavor or with an achievement beyond ordinary standards,
glory is still a word with masculinist connotations. It is a major component of the
complex that, we are told in the first sentence of the novel, Margaret Saville views
with such "evil foreboding." Within two sentences the word will become associated
with the actual fountain of evil in western myth. Later, we will discover that Victor
Frankenstein is exactly similar to Walton in representing himself as pursuing knowledge
not for wealth but for glory (I:1:18).

This collection, ascribed to Jean-Baptiste-Benoît Eyries, was published in Paris in
1812 as a 2-volume set called Fantasmagoriana, ou Recueil d'Histoires d'Apparitions
de Specres, Revenans, Fantômes. . . . Although it seems clear that the French version
was what the party amused themselves with, it was translated into English by Sarah
Utterson under the title, Tales of the Dead, in 1813.

Dragon slayer and patron saint of England. This reference would appear to be a gesture
on Mary Shelley's part to her presumptively British readership.

Although the novel was published anonymously, descriptions like this might have alerted
the astute reader to the fact that the author was a woman. Not that a man could not
have thought of such phrasing, but it is simply true that we might look far and wide
around contemporary novels before finding a man who actually would employ such a term
in like circumstances. The fact that Walton prizes "dauntless courage" (I:L2:1) may
look like a stereotyped masculinist attitude, but combining it with an emphasis on
gentleness of disposition shifts the accent considerably.

If we can take this tribute at face value, as an honest assessment of the rehabilitation
presided over by Henry Clerval, we must then read a tragic irony into Victor's expression
here. He has opened himself up once more to the generous humanity he had experienced
in his domestic circle, a humanity that might have enveloped his Creature in far different
circumstances from those attending his instant rejection at Victor's hands. As with
other sentiments in these last paragraphs of the chapter, sentiments predicated on
stable norms and humane values, we are given a last opportunity to pretend, or to
hope, that these are universal truths before the ensuing catastrophe brings us to
our senses.