1165

  • how happy and serene all nature It appears in this novel that whenever the serenity of nature is emphasized (I:5:17,
    III:3:6), the sublime power represented by the Creature is introduced to disturb its
    tranquillity. Before, however, it was Victor who felt the effect of this natural profusion.
    Here, clearly, Elizabeth is identified with a natural beneficence that Victor over
    the course of the past five years has all but forsaken. What distinguishes her examples
    is the ability she demonstrates to see all elements in motion; in their varied relations
    with one another; and in their distinct particularity, whether distant and high (Mônt
    Blanc) or near and deep (the bottom of Lake Geneva), rather than according to some
    reductive model by which they are made identical and rendered inanimate. One senses
    here a very different conception of nature from that manifested by Victor as scientist.

    • 1164

  • I will hover near Victor is transforming himself into the alastor, the evil spirit, that has been his
    own guardian spirit through this chapter. But what he foresees is grisly, himself
    as one of the living dead, a zombie haunting the ongoing processes of life among the
    living. Remarkable as it may seem, this final vision is, in effect, an image of one
    last Creature let go from his hands as a free and frighteningly independent agent
    on earth: himself. Perhaps, however, that was what he became from the point at which
    he matriculated at Ingolstadt and entered into the world of his obsessions.

    • 1163

  • The hour . . . arrived Ironically affirming the Creature's statement of the reversal of power in their relationship,
    Victor Frankenstein here as much as signs a contract for their future antagonism.

    • 1162

  • horrible pilgrimage Another ironic usage of religious terminology, this phrase also reminds us of the
    principal context for this term in contemporary culture, Byron's monumental antiromance,
    Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the third canto of which he wrote during the Geneva summer
    of 1816.

    • 1161

  • honour Honour is a concept that, until now, has figured only modestly in this novel. One
    earlier reference, however, might be construed to have a bearing on Walton's present
    insistence on its claims. This comes in Elizabeth's letter of commiseration to Victor
    about his illness while in Ingolstadt. There she testified to her accord with Ernest's
    desire to be a farmer, though it were a less "honourable occupation" (I:5:2) than
    that of a judge. In her letter the idea of honour is tied to social and class hierarchies,
    perhaps as well to distinctions between gender roles. It is clear that in Walton's
    eyes his crew are, to return to Victor's formulation (III:Walton:17), lesser men than
    they would be if they were possessed of a sense of honorable duty to the cause to
    which their master has committed them.

    • 1160

  • Holyhead

    Holyhead, on the island of Angelsey, which lies off the northwest coast of Wales,
    in the eighteenth century had developed into the major port linking Ireland and the
    British Isles. It was the closest landing place to Dublin, with some 100 kilometers
    of the Irish Sea intervening. Since, however, Anglesey was an island, passengers still
    had to negotiate the treacherous Menai Strait linking it to the mainland. In 1810
    Thomas Telford was commissioned at this site to build the first suspension bridge
    in the world as part of a modernization of the coach road to Holyhead.

    Mary Shelley never traced this itinerary, but Percy did, both going to and returning
    from his Dublin adventure via Holyhead in 1812. Mary Wollstonecraft had also taken
    this route when she took up her post as governess in the Irish seat of Lord and Lady
    Kingsborough in 1786.

    • 1159

  • a hired nurse Up to this point in the novel nursing has been the domain of friends and family,
    and the willingness to engage in it has been the mark of selfless affection and respect.
    We recall that Victor's mother Caroline dies from the effects of nursing Elizabeth
    Lavenza through an adolescent attack of scarlet fever (I:2:2) and that Justine Moritz,
    in her turn, contracts the disease from attending on Caroline Frankenstein and herself
    falls "very ill" (I:5:5) as a result. Although not vulnerable to consequences so life-threatening,
    Henry Clerval acts as Victor's "only nurse" during the months-long nervous fever that
    incapacitates him after the Creature is brought to life (I:4:17).

    • 1158

  • line of high land The north coast of Ireland near Scotland is among the most formidable in the British
    Isles, with high cliffs and a treacherous series of great rocks called the Giant's
    Causeway upthrust from the sea. At this time, as Mary Shelley's exposition indicates,
    the basic livelihood for the inhabitants was earned from these dangerous waters.

    • 1157

  • A high destiny This final sentence of Victor's retrospective memoir ends in a tone of great pathos
    stemming from the most innocuous of verbs: "seemed." Reversing the assurance with
    which the paragraph began, here Victor comes close to acknowledging that all his talk
    of and even reliance on a sense of special destiny is empty of signification. If there
    is no actual destiny, then there is also no particular meaning to what he has done
    that can exonerate his actions or the path of destruction left in their wake.

    • 1156

  • what remains of my hideous narration The sharp suspension of narrative line here coincides with a self-regarding emphasis
    on story-telling of a sort that we have witnessed earlier (I:L4:30, I:3:13). Such
    a mirroring of the function of narrative will become a dominant motif in the late
    pages of the novel. This act of doubling seems to entail another, identifying the
    creation that is Victor's tale with his earlier creation, the being who five paragraphs
    earlier had presented to his sight "a figure the most hideous and deformed" (III:6:10).
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