As she does with chemistry, Mary Shelley focuses on an arena of major intellectual
development in her age. At the time she was writing, the rudiments of linguistic understanding
of what we call the Indo-European language group were coming into place but had yet
not been fully recognized and proclaimed as such. Thus, in his area of interest Henry,
the poet, should be recognized to be as intellectually ambitious as Victor, the scientist.

Walton's inability to speak other languages would presumably magnify his sense of
isolation after almost four months in Russia. Generally speaking, in this pan-European
novel Mary Shelley conveniently allows her characters, wherever they come from or
are educated, to communicate freely across national borders. The exception is the
Arab Safie, who must be taught by the De Laceys to speak their language. Since the
book chosen for that end is Volney's Les Ruines, ou meditations sur les revolutions
des empires (II:5:14), she and the Creature who secretly participates in her lessons
are educated in French. French is likewise the language of the Frankenstein household,
but Victor, in I:1:12, recounts his education in Latin, Greek, English and German:
he receives his scientific education in German, in the heart of Bavaria at Ingolstadt,
and is adept enough in English to negotiate his way around Scotland and the Orkney
Islands. While in prison there his delirious ravings revert to French, which only
Mr. Kirwin the magistrate is able to understand (III:4:11). When he hails Walton,
the mariner will tell his sister in I:L4:7, Victor does so in English "although with
a foreign accent." By the time the Creature and Walton meet one another, however,
Mary Shelley finesses her otherwise careful observation of linguistic difference in
favor of an unimpeded confrontation; yet Victor's concern that his narration be faithfully
recorded (III:WC:4) and his warning that the Creature's eloquence should be distrusted
(III:7:25) emphasize radical instability and the problematic of translation as inherent
in language.

Today, Switzerland and Italy share access to Lake Como as they do to the larger Lago
Maggiore somewhat to its west. The Shelleys and Claire Clairmont stopped at Lake Como
in the spring of 1818 and, they claimed, would have settled there had they been able
to find suitable lodgings. In the event, their fortunes led them further south, and
Mary Shelley herself was not to return to the fabled beauty of these surroundings
until well after the revised edition of Frankenstein was published. She obviously
returned there frequently in her imagination. It is on Lake Como that the small remnant
of survivors for a time is able to reestablish a human community in The Last Man,
her novel of 1826. Years later, her lengthy sojourn in the vicinity of Lake Como during
the summer of 1840 is lovingly recorded in her Rambles in Germany and Italy published
in 1844.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, feigning the author's being abroad, handled the negotiations
for a contract to publish Frankenstein, thus preserving Mary Shelley's anonymity.
That he first sought out John Murray, Byron's publisher, may indicate that Byron himself
suggested such an avenue to the Shelleys. Whatever the case, Murray declined the manuscript,
upon whose refusal Shelley reverted to his own publisher Charles Ollier. When Ollier,
too, declined to accept the book, the Shelleys were in something of a quandary. They
resolved it by turning to a publishing house—Lackington's—that had a large inventory
and specialized somewhat in sensational materials. In the two-page advertisement sheet
accompanying the novel when it was published in 1818 are representative works that
the Lackington firm apparently thought might interest the reader of the novel: these
include Francis Barrett, The Magus; or Celestial Intelligences; a complete System
of Occult Philosophy, being a Summary of all the best Writers on the subjects of Magic,
Alchymy, Magnetism, the Cabala &c. (1801); Francis Barrett, Lives of the Alchemystical
Philosophers with a Critical Catalogue of Books on Occult Chemistry (1815); Thomas
Heywood, The Life, Prophecies, and Predictions of Merlin Interpreted (1813); Joseph
Taylor, Apparitions; or, the Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted House (1814);
John Toland, A Critical History of the Celtic Religion and Learning; containing an
account of the Druids (1815); and—though officially published by another house, White,
Cochrane, & Co.—Sarah Utterson, Tales of the Dead (1813), the English translation
of Jean Baptiste Benôit Eyriès's Fantasmagoriana, the volume of ghost stories that
served as pretext for the ghost-story contest from which Frankenstein eventually came
into being (see 1831:I:Intro:6 and note).

Like Alphonse Frankenstein (I:1:15), Krempe (pronounced Krem-puh) is dismissive of
Victor's intellectual passions. However, unlike Victor's father, who employs a Godwinian
model of pedagogy (I:1:21, and note), Krempe relies on authoritarian methods that
alienate a student rather accustomed to being indulged.

In explicitly linking in the same sentence the idea of knowledge with a serpent's
venom, Mary Shelley seems to be continuing her allusion to Milton's Paradise Lost
evident in the preceding paragraph. This intertextuality reminds the reader that knowledge
can have psychological and spiritual consequences as well as technical ones, also
that human beings are required to assume responsibility for the results of their intellectual
labors. Both of these are issues of major import for Frankenstein.

Although this sentimental genre painting may seem quite conventional, it is surprising
to realize that this is the first actual detail about the Frankenstein household related
in the novel. That it should contain a scene of feminine sympathy is understandable,
but that it should be a record of death would seem to underscore the haunted character
of life in the novel.

The earnestness with which, for Victor's edification, Alphonse Frankenstein repeats
Benjamin Franklin's famous experiment of 1746 with a kite, a string, and a key has
a droll aspect to it. He is never to know what his demonstrations will wreak in Victor's
subsequent experiments with electricity.