Although Charles Perrault (1628-1703) is firmly a citizen of the seventeenth century,
his Contes des fees, popularly known as Mother Goose Stories, had by late in the eighteenth
century become staples of children's literature and had prompted many imitations.
William Lane of the Minerva Press in London, publisher of numerous fictional pot-boilers,
for instance, also brought out two-volume sets of fairy tales in 1788 and 1794. Closer
to home, Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin, under his psuedonym of Edward Baldwin,
in 1805 published a set of Fables Ancient and Modern for very young children that
went through numerous editions; and the Juvenile Library, which he ran with his second
wife Mary Jane Clairmont, specialized in children's books with useful morality appended.
This series published the first English translation of Johann David Wyss's perennial
Swiss Family Robinson in 1814. Mary Shelley was thus as a child uniquely conditioned
by contemporary notions of children's literature, and she was also encouraged to become
a writer at a very young age. The careful noting of Clerval's age (9) when he wrote
his fairy tale indicates that Mary Shelley has in mind her own debut at the age of
11, in a satirical parody about an Englishman in France, Mounseer Nongtongpaw, that
was published in January 1807.

The diction here is deliberately resonant with the conventions of a highly artificial
poetry. The "fair enemy" is the lady to whom these seductive verses would be addressed,
an "enemy" in the sense that she resists their appeal to abandon herself to the sensuousness
they invite.

Walton understandably credits Victor's condition to severe exposure; but Victor tends
to react with extreme stress to the Creature's presence and more than once falls into
a catatonic state: e.g., after the Creature's original escape (I:4:3), after the destruction
of the second creature (III:3:24), and after the death of Clerval (III:4:10). This
appears to be a psychosomatic corollary to his constitutional introversion.

Victor is originally described by Walton as having a powerful feeling for nature (I:L4:28),
which is certainly not the case here; nor is it, indeed, at many crucial points in
his narrative. Although in this novel turning away from nature may be indicative of
a moral lapse, it is true that in the present instance Victor is circumventing nature
in his creation of another sentient being. Thus, it might be said that his insensitivity
to the natural is perfectly in keeping with his commitment to a creative act independent
of its limitations.

This strange intensity of gaze seems to combine the fixated obsessiveness in which
Victor has passed the previous two years with an ominous foreshadowing of the destiny
that he will come to feel has driven him to his destruction.

Victor's account of his life, we should recall, begins with the pedigree of the male
Frankensteins in the public life of the state (I:1:1). In his youth he was clearly
inculcated with his obligation to follow in this family tradition. The issue bears
as well for Walton's sense of purpose on his expedition (I:L1:2).

An exotic Johnson, in his 1755 Dictionary, defines simply as "A foreign plant." In
modern parlance it would designate a tropical, or non-hardy, botanical specimen. As
the succeeding sentences suggest, Caroline Frankenstein's fragile health, which will
lead to her early death, justifies such care. Today's reader is likely to find such
language offensive since intrinsically patronizing, but it was a common occurence
in the fiction, and the society, of Mary Shelley's day and would have drawn no particular
attention to itself. Yet, since gender roles are of continuing significance in the
development of the novel, this early emphasis on the traditional frailty of the female
physique is noteworthy.

We will learn the reason for this rhetorical heightening through the vocative case
as we move into the next chapter. This is the last serene moment that Victor will
experience in his entire existence, but the address to Clerval in the past tense immediately
shadows its expression of joy. In retrospect, the reader may consider Victor's happiness
during this year as purchased by a willful blindness to the potential consequences
of his actions.

This point is reemphasized two paragraphs on. Given the events subsequent to this
chapter, one should stress the significance of this statement. Justine Moritz has
been so fond of Victor's mother Caroline that she imitates her tones and gestures
and to Elizabeth seems like her embodiment. That Victor can remain silent at her persecution
will thus be a signal moral failing.

Ernest is at this juncture in his seventeenth year, the same age that Victor was when
he left his home to study in Ingolstadt. Although a young man of simple decency, as
the subsequent conversation will indicate, he is lacking both the sophistication and
the probing intellect of his older brother.