1042

  • many of my unfortunate comrades have already found a grave These deaths once more testify to the contingent and threatened nature of human life
    in Frankenstein. The fact of such mortality is surely what exacerbates the crew's
    sense of its peril and justifies its appeal to the captain to cut short his expedition.
    Although Walton expresses no guilt for the fate of these mariners under his command,
    one might wonder at its lack. Certainly, it is an odd paradox that the novel can concentrate
    with such intensity on the murderous consequences of the antagonism of Victor Frankenstein
    and his Creature but pass by without comment the revelation that Walton's enterprise
    in pursuit of knowledge has resulted in apparently greater death than has their destructive
    dynamic.

    • 1041

  • composing draught Literally, a drink to quiet one. "Composing draught" is the common term used in the
    eighteenth and early ninteenth centuries for a sedative or sleeping potion.

    • 1040

  • the tenderest compassion In the see-saw effect of her characterization of Victor, Mary Shelley returns to
    the side of his character that Walton finds most attractive. In an existential void
    himself, one created as much by his own chosen withdrawal from social obligations
    as by the pressure of catastrophic events, Victor is still able to sympathize with
    the plight of Walton and his crew and to offer encouragement to their hopes. Perhaps
    what would most easily explain this sympathetic posture, though it would not justify
    the optimism he expresses to them, is Victor's own deep sense of helplessness before
    an implacable force.

    • 1039

  • commanded his countenance The connotations of this verb, along with the panoply of described emotions surrounding
    it, forcefully indicate Victor's awareness of the effect he has had on his audience
    over the previous six days. Walton's language, however, coming immediately upon his
    assuming what purports to be a narrative objectivity, seems intended to have an even
    more pronounced effect on the larger audience of Mary Shelley's novel. Where Walton
    may feel he is experiencing an authentic emotionality, we in our greater detachment
    may wish instead to discern in Victor's recounted autobiography an accomplished actor's
    knowing manipulation of his subject matter and his audience.

    • 1038

  • Come on, my enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives Indicative either of Victor's own deliberate reinterpretation of the Creature as
    his double in rewording the "inscriptions" left for him, or of the symbiotic way in
    which the Creature through the experience of revenge now sounds like a second self
    of Victor's, this phrase recalls the masculinist bravado Victor twice indulges in
    his impotent rage before the power of the Creature (see II:2:6 and III:3:16).

    • 1037

  • the commission of a dreadful crime As with the language with which he earlier speaks of these "remains," Victor's skulking
    hesitation suggests that, however morally blameless he represents himself as being,
    in his deep consciousness he recognizes the similarity between his un-creative act
    and murder. (See III:3:4 and note; III:3:22 and note).

    • 1036

  • the progress of European colonisation Scholars have debated how to construe this addition to the 1831 text of the novel.
    Given Clerval's seeming representation as a Shelleyan ideal, his desire to attach
    himself to the imperialist designs of Europe upon Asia would appear to have Mary Shelley's
    endorsement. And it should be said that this early in the growth of the British empire—long
    before the Afghan Wars (1839-42) and the Indian Mutiny (1857-59)—when the liberal-minded
    Sir William Bentinck was Governor-General (1828-35), the British saw their influence
    in the Indian subcontinent as morally benign. Still, the extent to which the imperial
    "native" is debased within this system has its corollary in the rejection of the Creature
    by Europeans wherever he encounters them. Likewise, earlier imperial projects are
    roundly condemned elsewhere in the novel: for instance, by Victor and by the Creature
    himself in his reaction to the reading of Volney's Ruins of Empires.

    • 1035

  • Cologny

    Cologny, Switzerland, lies on the southern side of Lake Geneva. It is the site of
    the Maison Chapuis, the house that Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley rented during the
    summer of 1816.

    • 1034

  • my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of disappointment With a subtle touch Mary Shelley emphasizes Walton's similarity to the Victor Frankenstein
    who, two paragraphs earlier, had been unsure whether he could rid his mind of its
    "passion," that is, self-interest in its own affairs. The principal cloud overshadowing
    Walton is the failure of the entire enterprise to which he has been committed for
    a number of years. The death of Victor has also robbed him of the only deep friendship
    he has known. On professional and personal planes, then, he is equally bereft.

    • 1033

  • greater claims to my attention Victor seems to refer to the reasoning that brought him to suspend work on the female
    companion to his Creature (III:3:1). Yet, this present rearticulation of his thinking
    revises the terms used earlier, substituting what appears to be a distinction between
    natural and unnatural life forms, or at least between a majority and minority class,
    that many readers would find invidious because inherently racist. Again, if this is
    to be construed as an attempt at honest reassessment, the strained casuistry hints
    at a slanted self-exoneration.
    • Subscribe to