However obnoxious the Turk will himself appear within this account, the stress here
is on an arbitrary exercise of tyrannical state power over an individual's civil rights.

Like Caroline Beaufort Frankenstein (I:1:4, I:2:2) and Justine Moritz (I:5:5), not
to forget Clerval (I:4:17) and Walton (I:L4:10), Safie demonstrates her solicitude
and common humanity through nursing.

Numa Pompilius, legendary second king of infant Rome, and Lycurgus, legendary lawgiver
of Sparta in the ninth century B.C., are compared as founding fathers in parallel
accounts by Plutarch. It is possible that the particular emphasis of these Lives contributes
to the Creature's decision, as it were, to become a founding father himself.

Inside Victor's house the Creature had to negotiate around walls and through doors.
Outside he has no such obstacles.

The Creature, pressing his advantage, reminds Victor that the "new species" he has
created is herbivore and therefore in essence essentially non-violent.

It is significant that the Creature is the one to try to break the impasse between
himself and Victor, likewise that he understands the fateful ethical consequences
of the antagonistic course to which Victor has set himself. The primary verb of this
sentence ("tempt") assumes free will and moral responsibility as premises for all
human action, premises that Victor repeatedly endeavors to deny.

This is an open threat of mass destruction, the second such intimation of the violence
to which the Creature will resort if he is provoked: see II:2:7. Although its unethical
dimensions cannot be ignored, one should again remark how aptly congruent is the amoral
power Percy Bysshe Shelley saw embodied in Mont Blanc itself: see Shelley's "Mont
Blanc," lines 107-20.

If it occurs to a reader to wonder why the De Lacey family did not hear of such a
fearsome apparition in the nearby village, the reason is that they are, in their poverty
and separation, self-sufficient. They have no money to spend in that German community
and are likewise isolated from it by the fact that they appear to speak only French.

As this sentence might suggest, Mary Shelley was opposed to all forms of capital punishment,
a sentiment she shared with her father and husband. Perhaps, the true significance
of this statement, however, is the contrast it offers to the violent retribution Victor
would inflict on the Creature, whom, we must remember, he has as yet no evidence whatsoever
to connect with the murder of William or the framing of Justine.

Given the novel's insistence on sympathy as an essential moral attribute of an individual
human being and a just society, Victor's drawing away so wholly from normative family
intercourse is an alarming event. That he is scarcely able to speak to his family
suggests a psychological condition that in modern parlance would seem to border on
psychosis. It is ironic that the Creature's passionate demand for an end to his solitude
should result in Victor's own recoil into a solitude almost as utter and just as fraught
with danger to himself and to others.