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.

Victor's habitual passivity reasserts itself with a sharp irony that reminds one of
the physical deterioration he suffered in giving life to his creation (I:3:9). His
argument is that the Creature, empowered by Victor with life, has so used that power
that it has robbed Victor of his own ability to act independently.

For all Alphonse's attempt to console Victor, his being exactly wrong about the source
of Victor's grief must be indicative of some narrowness or shortsightedness of his
own. His son William is his only concern, and he assumes the same family priorities
for Victor; but Victor knows that Justine has been murdered, too, and that more than
tribal loyalty is at stake. That the father's commitment to the "public situations"
(I:1:1) in which he has passed his mature years extends so little into actual social
benevolence must in some sense affect how we take his counsel and assess his notion
of virtue.

Elizabeth's sudden plunge into a maturity born of despondency was indicated in the
last chapter of Volume 1 (I:7:25). Not events per se, but their impact on characters'
perceptions give Mary Shelley's novel its dynamic momentum. In this focus on the integrity
of mental phenomena for good or ill—concerns likewise at this time governing the productions
of both Lord Byron (Manfred) and Percy Bysshe Shelley ("Mont Blanc" and Prometheus
Unbound)—one senses Mary Shelley's equal participation in the intellectual vibrancy
of that 1816 summer.

Although the phrase appears essentially innocent, yet it illustrates how constantly
self-reflexiveness about the nature of language and communication troubles the author
-- or both these authors, Victor Frankenstein and Mary Shelley.