1082

  • the power of his eloquence Again, a reader senses how double-edged is the idea of eloquence in this novel. On
    the one hand, Victor's oratory energizes the crew in positive thinking and rouses
    them to their tasks. Without this invigoration their situation could degenerate into
    a laxity of spirit and effort perilous to their well-being. Yet, the emptiness of
    mere rhetoric is likewise emphasized here, since the courage roused one day gives
    in to despondency the next. Words relate to reality only tangentially or conditionally,
    and when the reality remains implacable, Victor's signifying words appear hollow substitutes
    for its unavoidable presence.

    • 1081

  • this elevation . . . madness Again, Victor's excesses of language betray him. What if it were actually the case
    that he is insane? Then, the magistrate would only be defusing a tense and socially
    threatening situation by trying to soothe him into emotional tranquillity.

    • 1080

  • an early marriage would at all interfere . . . utility

    We may observe how totally within a masculine prerogative lie the consummation, delay,
    or even the value of a marriage. Values like "honour and utility" are not to be thought
    of in relation to women's lives. Before questioning why Mary Shelley would adopt so
    seemingly unfeminist a posture, we should recognize that this is exactly how Mary
    Wollstonecraft saw the case: see, for instance, Vindication of the Rights of Woman
    (12.25).

    • 1079

  • It is your duty as a magistrate Victor, we should remind ourselves, comes from a long line of magistrates (see, e.g.,
    I:1:1), and he has quite recently been on trial himself with the magistrate Mr. Kirwan
    leading his defence; so therefore it is clear that he perfectly well knows what their
    duties are. To state them so boldly to this judge requires something of his father's
    authority.

    • 1078

  • This was my duty This is paradoxically the only occasion in which Victor Frankenstein, without prodding,
    acknowledges that he had a duty toward the being he created. Earlier, we will recall,
    the Creature had himself to instruct Victor on this subject (II:2:7 and note).

    • 1077

  • the well balancing of what you may esteem your duties That Victor, who has throughout the novel been unable to fulfill his duties to either
    his family or his Creature, should be able to speak in such measured terms of a balance
    among multiple duties is certainly an indication of the objectivity and even wisdom
    to which he may aspire when he moves outside his own narrow concerns. That he specifically
    steps back from the coercive tone by which he had earlier tried to enlist Walton as
    his agent in murder (III:7:26) likewise testifies to his rediscovery of a moral center
    in his last hours of life.

    • 1076

  • I was dreaming until night should come, and that I should then enjoy reality As normative time-frames lose their distinction at the beginning of this chapter
    and increasingly death comes to subsume life (see III:7:4), this further jumbling
    of reality and the world of dream seems particularly appropriate to Victor's slippage
    into a delusionary psychic state.

    • 1075

  • dread, and yet be pleased The delicacy with which Elizabeth recognizes Victor's possible ambivalence to an
    eroticized relationship with her has the paradoxical effect of alerting us to its
    rougher corollary in events of the novel of which she is ignorant. Translated from
    the level domestic plane in which she is centered to the sublime heights where Victor
    and his Creature struggle, this ambivalence might seem strangely akin to the intense
    love-hate dynamic in which that homosocial relationship plays itself out.

    • 1074

  • Drance The River Drance, a tributary of the Rhône in Switzerland near Evian.

    The Shelleys passed the Drance during their Swiss excursion; it is described in Letter
    6 of A History of a Six Weeks' Tour:

    As soon as we had passed the opposite promontory, we saw the river Drance, which descends
    from between a chasm in the mountains, and makes a plain near the lake, intersected
    by its divided streams. Thousands of besolets, beautiful water-birds, like sea-gulls,
    but smaller, with purple on their backs, take their station on the shallows, where
    its waters mingle with the lake.

     

    • 1073

  • to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence As, two paragraphs above, time distinctions suddenly fail and in the preceding paragraph
    the living Victor casts himself as the agent of the dead, now here he begins to collapse
    the difference between the realms of life and death. His life will go on only in pursuit
    of death.
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