1151

  • a soul more in harmony with man This is very much in the spirit with which Byron represents the Rhine in Childe Harold's
    Pilgrimage, Canto 3, stanza 45ff.: see particularly his summary in stanzas 59-61.
    Clerval prefers the beautiful, with its humanistic overtones, to the sublime with
    its otherworldly and supernatural associations. It is indicative that he centers his
    descriptions of the landscape upon human images—the priest and his mistress, grape-pickers
    among the vines—who give historical or local significance to its details.

    • 1150

  • that half kind of belief With so many allusions to Coleridge's writings governing the exposition of this novel,
    including the very notion of such a reiterated self-justification as Victor is presenting
    (see III:6:21 and note), it would not be surprising to see this remark as a recasting
    of his fine distinction between truth and the "willing suspension of disbelief" in
    literature (see Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14). But, in fact, there is no assurance
    that Mary Shelley would have come upon the formulation in time to have inserted it
    into the novel. P. B. Shelley is recorded as having finished Coleridge's Biographia
    Literaria on 8 December 1817. Frankenstein was advertised as published on 1 January
    1818.

    • 1149

  • I had money with me This is not, perhaps, so innocuous a statement as it at first appears. Why should
    such a statement matter to this narrative, except by way of reminding us that the
    Creature, besides being a vegetarian, exists wholly outside the economy that links
    Victor with other human beings? This is a telling reminder of the isolation of his
    uniqueness, of how on a literal level all of humankind implicitly conspire to exclude
    him from their interchange.

    • 1148

  • my guiding spirit The assurance of a guiding spirit on Victor's part is now total, but the previous
    references in this chapter, in their shaded ambiguity, along with the context of P.
    B. Shelley's "Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude" (published February 1816), compel
    the reader to question whether that guardian is a good angel or an evil spirit, an
    alastor.

    • 1147

  • the great road The road between London and Edinburgh had in the eighteenth century been improved
    to the equivalent of a modern superhighway, allowing a speedy transit to both mail
    and passengers and the commercial consolidation of the "United Kingdom."

    • 1146

  • some great crime The reader might well wish to contemplate the oddly contradictory character of this
    formulation. Although Victor can exonerate himself by means of analytical logic, the
    process is not liberating. Instead, psychologically he finds himself in a limbo of
    uncertainty and incapacity, haunted by a dread he can neither escape nor define. Given
    the increasingly psychotic symptoms he will reveal in the later chapters of the novel,
    this early formulation may be considered a touchstone for Victor's successive mental
    breakdowns.

    • 1145

  • A ground sea The fluid undercurrent belying the solidity of this iceworld (see also III:7:20 and
    note) erupts with extraordinary effect, almost as an objective correlative for the
    "burning gush of hope" and "heart pound[ing]" remarked within Victor in the previous
    paragraphs. This ground-sea appears as almost a metaphor for the essentially human
    that even in the most extreme of circumstances cannot be repressed.

    • 1144

  • the ground sea As time has disappeared, so has the conventional security of space. Under the terrifying,
    antihuman solidity of this barren field of ice, even where mountains appear to arise
    from it, there is open and fluid water capable of erupting with terrifying sublimity.
    Victor is, in fact, at sea; he has become the ancient mariner that the continual evocation
    of Coleridge's text across the length of the novel has presaged.

    According to the Oxford English Dictionary:

    GROUND-SEA

    ground-sea. A heavy sea in which large waves rise and dash upon the coast without
    apparent cause.

    * A. 1642 Sir W. Monson Naval Tracts ii. (1704) 247/2 He met with so great a Storm
    and Ground Seas.

    * 1756 Prince in Phil. Trans. XLIX. 642 A rumbling noise was heard, like that which
    usually precedes what the sailors call a ground-sea.

    * 1835 R. S. Hawker Prose Wks. (1893) 28 On, through the ground-sea, shove!

    * 1865 Englishm. Mag. Oct. 296 A heavy ground-sea.

    GROUND-SWELL

    a. ground-swell. A deep swell or heavy rolling of the sea, the result of a distant
    storm or seismic disturbance.

    * 1818 Scott Hrt. Midl. iii, The agitation of the waters, called by sailors the ground-swell.

    * 1840 R. H. Dana Bef. Mast i. 2 The vessel..rolled with the heavy ground swell.

    * 1877 Black Green Past. xxviii. (1878) 221 Crashing its way through the rolling waves
    of a heavy ground-swell.

    b. fig. Usually with reference to mental or political agitation.

    * 1817 Coleridge Zapolya i. Wks. IV. 219 It is the ground-swell of a teeming instinct.

    * 1856 R. A. Vaughan Mystics (1860) I. 91 The religious world was rocking still with
    the groundswell that followed those stormy synods.

    * 1870 Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. i. (1873) 219 The deep-raking, ground-swell of passion,
    as we see it in the sarcasm of Lear.

    • 1143

  • A grin was on the face of the monster Careful attention to detail here renders Victor's account dubious. With all lights
    extinguished so that the room is only illuminated by the moon, it would appear next
    to impossible for Victor so sharply to distinguish a visage that would be backlit
    in such circumstances. Neither the Creature's own narration in the second volume nor
    his account of his struggles with Victor Frankenstein at the end accords with such
    a perspective of fiendish exultation in evil. This portrait is, however, wholly commensurate
    with Victor's increasing tendency to demonize the Creature. See I:6:22, II:2:6, and
    III:3:2.

    • 1142

  • The Greeks wept for joy

    Mary Shelley refers to the account of the long Greek retreat from Armenia in Xenophon's
    Anabasis, 4.7, quoted here in the translation of Carleton L. Brownson (Cambridge:
    Harvard University Press, 1918):

    {329}
    [18] Leaving this land [of the Chalybians], the Greeks arrived at the Harpasus river,
    which was four plethra in width. From there they marched through the territory of
    the Scythinians four stages, twenty parasangs, over a level plain, and they arrived
    at some villages, and there remained for three days and collected provisions.

    [19] From there they journeyed four stages, twenty parasangs, to a large and prosperous
    inhabited city which was called Gymnias. From this city the ruler of the land sent
    the Greeks a guide, in order to lead them through territory that was hostile to his
    own.

    [20] When the guide came, he said that he would lead them within five days to a place
    from which they could see the sea; if he failed to do so, he was ready to accept death.
    Thus taking the lead, as soon as he had brought them into the hostile territory, he
    kept urging them to spread abroad fire and ruin, thereby making it clear that it {331}
    was with this end in view that he had come, and not out of good-will toward the Greeks.

    [21] On the fifth day they did in fact reach the mountain; its name was Theches. Now
    as soon as the vanguard got to the top of the mountain, a great shout went up.

    [22] And when Xenophon and the rearguard heard it, they imagined that other enemies
    were attacking in front; for enemies were following behind them from the district
    that was in flames, and the rearguard had killed some of them and captured others
    by setting an ambush, and had also taken about twenty wicker shields covered with
    raw, shaggy ox-hides.

    [23] But as the shout kept getting louder and nearer, as the successive ranks that
    came up all began to run at full speed toward the ranks ahead that were one after
    another joining in the shout, and as the shout kept growing far louder as the number
    of men grew steadily greater, it became quite clear to Xenophon that here was something
    of unusual importance;

    [24] so he mounted a horse, took with him Lycius and the cavalry, and pushed ahead
    to lend aid; and in a moment they heard the soldiers shouting, "The Sea! The Sea!"
    and passing the word along. Then all the troops of the rearguard likewise broke into
    a run, and the pack animals began racing ahead and the horses.

    [25] And when all had reached the summit, then indeed they fell to embracing one another,
    and generals and captains as well, with tears in their eyes. And on a sudden, at the
    bidding of some one or other, the soldiers began to bring stones and to build a great
    cairn.

    [26] Thereon they placed as offerings a quantity of raw ox-hides and walking-sticks
    and the captured wicker shields; and the guide not only cut these {333} shields to
    pieces himself, but urged the others to do so.

    [27] After this the Greeks dismissed the guide with gifts from the common stock --
    a horse, a silver cup, a Persian dress, and ten darics; but what he particularly asked
    the men for was their rings, and he got a considerable number of them. Then he showed
    them a village to encamp in and the road they were to follow to the country of the
    Macronians, and, as soon as evening came, took his departure.

    (text from the Perseus Project, Tufts University)

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