| Romantic Circles

1112

the favourite plan of your parents. This seems a slight distortion of the record. The "plan" was that of Victor's mother,
which on her deathbed she willed to her husband and son (I:2:2).

The phrasing here makes Victor sound cavalier and shallow, no longer responsive to
the weight of the universe he had felt after his encounter on Mont Blanc (II:9:19).
His aim seems less to complete a difficult assignment than to procrastinate as long
as possible. Whatever one might argue in extenuation of his motives, it seems clear
in this passage that he gives no thought whatsoever to the Creature's well-being.
Perhaps it was with some sense of mitigating these unflattering character traits that
in 1831 Mary Shelley revised this passage to suggest a greater degree of responsibility
on Victor's part.

1110

the amiable Falkland Sir Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, was one of the principal Cavaliers in the
service of Charles I. He died at the Battle of Newbury on 20 September 1643. His name
and exalted notion of honor were, it would appear, used by William Godwin as models
for the hero-villain Count Ferdinando Falkland of The Adventures of Caleb Williams.
Today Falkland's fame is sustained by his serving as one of the subjects of Ben Jonson's
enduring tribute "To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Nobel Pair Sir Lucius
Cary and Sir H. Morison," one of the first true odes in the English tradition.

The somewhat surprising emphasis on royalist values in this paragraph is suggestive
of a historical politics far removed from that elsewhere insinuated into Frankenstein
(see, for instance, II:5:16) or shared by Mary Shelley with her father and Percy.
These references are perhaps best explained within the context of the novel William
Godwin published about a month before Frankenstein appeared, Mandeville: A Tale of
the Seventeenth Century in England. The protagonist of that novel is an ultra-Royalist
who, as his cause deteriorates, retreats further and further into morbid self-obsession.
The emotional dynamics of Mandeville, if not the portraiture itself, are consonant
with the psychological makeup of Victor Frankenstein.

1109

Fairy-land This is the mature figure who at the age of nine wrote a fairy tale that captivated
his friends (I:1:11). Clerval responds in part to the many legendary associations
of the Rhine—from the siren-like Lorelei to the Rhine-maidens with their trove of
gold—in German folklore.

1108

external nature This sentence suggests that, in this novel, nature as a principle, as is often the
case with Enlightement materialist philosophy, is carrying something of the freight
associated with the deity in earlier religious formulations. Nature is acknowledged
as an enveloping principle of reality, and Clerval's feeling for it marks both his
largeness of mind and disinterested perspective.

1107

excitements to his vengeance Walton is referring to Victor's own acute sense that the spirit world that guides
him is vindictive (III:7:19) and exonerates him from normal codes of worldly justice
or, indeed, responsibility for his acts as a member of society. Yet, the emphasis
here on "his vengeance" suggests that Walton's apprehension is crucially different
from Victor's own and serves to underscore the delusional, paranoid mentality that
is now Victor's habitual mode of thought.

1106

examining my past conduct The plot of Frankenstein, with its insistent narrative mirrorings and doublings of
character, seems always to be engaged in reexamining its own conduct, a process that
contributes to the reader's skepticism about the truth of any single utterance by
its protagonists. Here, in an epitome of this structural idiosyncrasy, we are told
that Victor, after recounting his biography and then rewriting those parts of it he
felt Walton had not succeeded in capturing in the manner in which he wanted them represented
(III:Walton:4), has rethought the terms of his entire narrative and has revised it
once more. That last revision, however, we will never read: the synopsis here presented
does, however, differ in salient ways from the account we have been asked to accept
as the truth.

1105

Evil thenceforth became my good

This is a direct citation of the conclusion to Satan's soliloquy upon Mount Niphates
in Milton's Paradise Lost:

Farewell, remorse! all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good. (IV.109)

1104

Evian Evian was, even in the eighteenth century, renowned for its waters and, though P.
B. Shelley upon visiting it found little to recommend its inhabitants, it would seem
a natural destination for a honeymoon couple from Geneva.

1103

Everywhere I turn We are quietly returned to the present tense, or at least to the telescoped time
intervening between Elizabeth's death and the present scene of narration in Walton's
cabin.