| Romantic Circles

1307

real insanity possessed me It is easy to overlook the weight of this statement, but "real" should be given its
due meaning. Following the accounts of Victor's attempted suicide (III:4:46) and his
father's questioning earlier in this chapter whether his son was not actually mad,
(III:5:5) these symptoms, an alteration between violent rage and withdrawn lethargy,
point to a serious manic-depressive condition. For Elizabeth this has to be extraordinarily
trying: the depressed state Victor was in when he had left her, both upon undertaking
the excursion to Chamounix (II:1:10 and II:1:14) and in the aftermath of his encounter
with the Creature (III:1:1), had been serious enough, but the extremity into which
it has developed hardly bodes well for her future with him. Even so, Elizabeth reverts
to her characteristic vocation of nurse.

1306

the wildest rage of some uncontrollable passion Rage has appeared such an emotional constant of this novel that the reader may be
surprised in reflection to realize that the emotion never occurs in Volume 1, but
enters the space of the fiction in the encounter of the Creature and Victor Frankenstein
on the Mer-de-Glace of Mont Blanc. There the figure embroiled in rage is Victor (II:2:5).
In the Creature's own narration something like this present unrestrained rage occurs
when he burns down the cottagers' house (II:8:12). Thereafter, the novel evinces a
smoldering fire, ready to burst into flame at any point: we witness it in the successive
"rage" that grips Victor (II:9:3) and the Creature (II:9:6) over the question of the
creation of a companion. Beginning with chapter 3 of the third volume, rage is an
abiding emotion of Victor Frankenstein's, concomitant with the fever that wastes his
body. Now that he is dead, it is as if that violent emotion were floating free of
his body, the sole evidence of the bond driving both these figures to their destruction.
It is notable that the rage inhabiting the Creature is not against Victor but himself.

1305

I belonged to a race of human beings It requires but a moment's pause over this bland statement of relief, particularly
in conjunction with Victor's fears, expressed at the beginning of the chapter, about
propagating a race of devils (see III:3:2 and note) to realize that its premise is
a blatant racism. Mary Shelley represents it without any underscoring, all the more
suggestive of how inherent is the thinking, how psychologically embedded the attitude.

1304

a race of devils At this point Victor's demonizing of his Creature extends into a primitive form of
racism, transforming a personal vendetta into a supposedly objective ideology that
stamps this Other as inherently inferior, incapable of civilization, and undeserving
of existence. Thus positioning himself at an extreme of self-righteous justification,
Victor will fall back upon this hardened, docrinaire authority for all his subsequent
actions concerning the Creature.

1303

his queen, and son The syntax is somewhat confusing. Falkland and Gower/Goring are mentioned as companions
to King Charles I, whose queen was Henrietta Maria (1609-69)—actually Henriette-Marie,
daughter of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici, by birth and practice a Roman
Catholic. The son mentioned here probably would be Charles II (1630-85; restored after
the Commonwealth as king of Great Britain and Ireland, 1660-85); but the term could
as easily apply to his slightly younger brother James II (1633-1701), who became king
after the death of Charles II but was deposed three years later, in 1688, in what
became known as the Bloodless Revolution.

1302

I often endeavoured to put an end to the existence The matter-of-fact tone in which Victor speaks here clothes in euphemistic objectivity,
and seems meant to cushion, a remarkable statement. A person who "often" over a period
of a few weeks attempts to commit suicide, in general terms, would be considered seriously
deranged.

1301

I had had now neglected my promise for some time Since Victor and Clerval had not left London until the end of March, and as they
had "passed a considerable period at Oxford" and "two months in Cumberland and Westmoreland,"
not to mention the time spent in this lengthy journey northward, it should now be
early in July, which is to say, almost a year after Victor's promise to his Creature.
His pattern of attenuated delays throughout the novel is particularized in an earlier
note.

1300

the herd of common projectors "Projector" is a term commonly used in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
to refer to inventors, often in a pejorative sense. Its ambivalence of connotation
is reflected in the double primary meaning assigned to it by the Oxford English Dictionary:
a. One who forms a project, who plans or designs some enterprise or undertaking; a
founder.

b. In invidious use: A schemer; one who lives by his wits; a promoter of bubble companies;
a speculator, a cheat.

Samuel Johnson is, if anything, less evenhanded in the double definition of "projector"
contained in his 1755 Dictionary: 1. One who forms schemes or designs.

2. One who forms wild impracticable schemes.

Perhaps the most famous literary account of projectors is that offered by Jonathan
Swift in Gulliver's tour through the Grand Academy of Lagado (Gulliver's Travels,
III.5), a think-tank populated by inventors of perfectly useless or insane conceptions
and contraptions.

Victor Frankenstein's desire to separate himself from madmen and hacks is thus easily
justifiable, whether we construe it in accord with his ambition or his achievement.
Yet, the tone of condescension in his phrasing is expressive of an arrogance and self-approbation
that verges on universal contempt. Its natural complement in a social dimension would
be a hierarchical rigidity denominated according to class, and in a psychological
field the prejudice we customarily comprehend under the rubric of racism. In other
words, there is an easy shift from this self-esteem to the denigration of the Other
expressed by Victor's continual demonization of his Creature.

1299

I will proceed with my tale With Victor's pause to utter his encomium upon Clerval and thus intrude a strong
value judgment into his discourse, the question of narrative truth is once again brought
to the fore. Once again, Victor intrudes the notion of a "tale," a word used by him
(I:L4:28, I:3:13) and by the Creature (II:2:13, II:2:16, II:9:18) to describe their
narratives, also (with a different construction of what might constitute the truth)
in the last sentence of the novel's Preface.

1298

in a prison As the initial consequence of Victor's abandoning his Creature led to his brother's
death and Justine's being cast into the Swiss prison where he visited her, the second
wave of dark events is starkly complementary. Now his best friend has been murdered
and he has himself experienced the alienating effects of imprisonment.