Mary Shelley's emendations of 1831 once again link early statements in Victor's narrative
with his condition when he is rescued by Walton's crew, a frantic and paranoid specter
whose otherworldly mystifications, as expressed in the late chapters of Volume 3,
are a driving force in his obsessive pursuit of the Creature. It is interesting to
note that even this late in her work on the novel Mary Shelley is recalling the machinery
with which Percy Bysshe Shelley invested his poem centering on the uncompromising
pursuit of a love object, "Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitiude," published in March
of 1816, shortly before the two left for Switzerland.

Frankenstein is a novel that centers on a transgressive birth; it is replete with
orphans and both women and men who, cut off in their youth, die without creating children
of their own. In contrast to the actual terms of the work, Victor begins his narrative
by emphasizing normative and extended family structures.

The University of Ingolstadt medical faculty and particularly the anatomy theater
would have offered Victor unparalleled resources for pursuit of this new phase of
his studies.

The medical school, which today houses the German Museum of the History of Medicine,
was known as the Anatomie upon its completion in 1736. That designation is still recalled
in the street name on which the edifice stands.

Mary Shelley's journal notes indicate that she was sporadically reading in Robert
Southey's translation of Amadis of Gaul, a Spanish chivalric romance by Garcia de
Montalvo, during the early months of 1817. At this time she was also actively working
on Frankenstein.

This word, which as a noun entered the novel with Walton rhapsodizing over his passion
for discovery (I:L4:20), is now picked up by Victor as if deliberately to echo and
admonish the mariner. It will toll repetitively—and resonantly—through the remainder
of this chapter. It seems clear that Mary Shelley, capitalizing on her strategy in
1818, is here emphasizing the word in all its ambiguity. The complex of associations
in its definition can be tracked here.

Victor's bitterness over the law may reflect Godwin's teachings about its arbitrary
nature and conformist tendencies, as well as Percy Bysshe Shelley's own legal problems
with his father during Mary's first years living with him. We see similar sentiments
in Elizabeth's aversion to the law as a profession for Ernest, which is expressed
in a passage in the first edition (I:5:2 and note).

The doltishness with which Ernest speaks cannot obscure the moral question implicit
here. The reliance on simplistic moral absolutes will extend outward from Ernest to
involve his father (I:6:37), who has been established from the beginnings of Victor's
narrative as a citizen of consequence, and he will then in the next chapter be joined
by other men of consequence in Geneva, from the Church to the magistracy, in a miscarriage
of justice. Victor's intuition of the murderer, as well as his own intellectual research
beyond conventional limitations, isolates him from the other male upholders of establishment
values. This does give Victor a certain moral authority not apparent before, but it
is heavily shadowed by his silence as the travesty of Justine's trial unfolds. Only
Elizabeth, like Justine a woman and without effectual power, is able through sheer
human sympathy to "judge" aright in this case.

It is clear, to invoke the customary alternatives, that to Victor at this point "dead"
would be far preferable to "alive." The ugliness of the morality behind his ruminations
here seems not to occur to him.

This is how the Oxford English Dictionary represents this obsolete measure:

LEAGUE

league lig, sb.1 Forms: 4-5 leghe, 4-6 lege, leuge, (4 lewge, 5 lewke, leuke, leeke),
5-6 leege, 6 legge, le(a)que, Sc. lig, 6-7 leag(e, 6- league. Late ME. leuge, lege,
leghe, etc., ad. late L. leuga, leuca (= late Gr. leu'gh, leu'kh), according to Hesychius
and Jordanes a Gaulish word; hence OFr. liue, liwe (mod.Fr. lieue), Pr. lega, legua,
Cat. llegua, Sp. legua, Pg. legoa, Ital. lega.

An itinerary measure of distance, varying in different countries, but usually estimated
roughly at about 3 miles; app. never in regular use in England, but often occurring
in poetical or rhetorical statements of distance.

Thus, a league outside Geneva. would be, perhaps, an hour's easy walk from the town.

Albertus Magnus (1193 or 1206-1280), German monk and alchemist, known as "Doctor Universalis."

Born to a noble family in Bavaria, Albertus (Albert von Bollstüdt) became an adherent
to the newly formed Dominican Order while he was a student at Padua in 1223. After
being ordained in Germany, he traveled to Paris and in 1245 became master of theology
at the University there. His most famous student was Thomas Aquinas. Albertus had
a lifelong interest in the natural sciences (at a time when alchemy had not yet been
sharply distinguished from more legitimate sciences such as chemistry), and was an
important scholar of Aristotle, whose influence pervaded both his scientific and his
religious writings.

From 1260 to 1262, Albertus was the bishop of Regensburg, the nearest principal medieval
city on the Danube to the north of Ingolstadt. He died in Cologne in 1280. Not long
after his death, a number of writings on magic circulated under his name, although
the validity of these attributions is questionable.

Albertus was beatified in 1622. In 1931, Pope Pius XI declared him a saint and a Doctor
of the Church; in 1941, Pope Pius XII named him the patron saint of those who study
the natural sciences.