Novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth century reveal many instances of the antipathy
of a second wife to the children of an earlier marriage: it is the impulse behind
the Cinderella story. More to the point is the fact that Mary Shelley was brought
up by a stepmother, Mary Jane Clairmont Godwin, for whom she felt little affection.

For the second time (see I:2:8 and note), Mary Shelley intrudes a white steeple into
a town without one, now adding a clock for good measure. However laudable the narrative
consistency, there is no such building in Ingolstadt.

Although the description here is intended to be amusing and to reflect an adolescent
student's viewpoint of his elder, behind it lie serious and even, perhaps, irresolvable
issues for the novel: particularly, the extent to which our perspectives are implicitly
molded by aesthetic criteria. By this standard the Creature whom Victor will create
in his laboratory becomes a proof text for every figure who depends upon sight for
knowledge. Even if familiarity, in the case of Victor Frankenstein, allows him in
time to overlook the ugliness of Professor Krempe or of the Creature while in the
process of his construction, it is clear from the repetitive emphasis on Krempe's
size that Victor has an aversion to littleness. In contradistinction to Krempe, his
Creature will be eight feet tall (I:3:7).

Loathe to leave the tight family circle to which he is accustomed (I:2:7), Victor,
in a sign that is a portent of the future, turns in on himself. His defensive condescension
excludes much more than Professor Krempe from his perspective.

This is a curious statement for Victor to make, perhaps indicative of how tenuous
a hold he has on reality at this point. Earlier, he had prided himself on his freedom
from this kind of childish fear: "I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale
of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit" (I:3:3).

Although the exact scientific premises are carefully obscured, this phrase, plus the
formative adolescent memory of the great thunderstorm coming down from the Jura Mountains
(I:1:22), strongly implicate electricity as the "vital fluid" that gives life.

The Cape of Good Hope (Africa) or the Cape of Horn (South America). In other words,
Walton expects, that, once cutting across the Arctic Ocean he should discover a northern
passage into the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Sea, the change of seasons might
make it impossible for him to reverse course and return to England across the top
of Siberia and Scandinavia. Thus, it might be necessary for him to traverse the Southern
Hemisphere on his return.

Walton reiterates the terms used in the preceding entry (I:L4:21 and note).

This second son is Ernest, an even more shadowy figure in the 1831 text than in the
first edition. He appears to exist simply to inherit the name and estate when the
other Frankensteins die. Victor's ignoring his name, then effusively and sharply delineating
Henry Clerval's personality, might be seen as deliberate in its characterization.

It would seem more than coincidental that the father would invoke a concept (depravity)
that entered the arena of this novel only the night before, upon the son's once again
catching sight of his Creature, "a depraved wretch" (I:6:23 and note). Also, the tone
of class condescension, although it may accord generally with contemporary attitudes
toward servants, has resonance within the larger social attitudes revealed in the
ensuing chapter.