This reticence about the Creature will come to have a self-perpetuating momentum that
will cause widespread harm. In the case of Clerval, it would have been as easy for
Victor to narrate his story as, later, it is with Walton. His holding-back is obviously
an important plot device, but within the fiction itself it appears to reveal a deep,
if unarticulated, sense of guilt on his part.

If Mary Shelley's account of her childhood writing suggests affinities with her characterization
of Clerval, the depiction of the Scottish idyll of her adolescence similarly encompasses
her portrait of the young Elizabeth Lavenza, particularly her fondness for the "aërial
creations of the poets" (see both 1818 (I:1:10) and 1831 (I:2:1) texts, and note).

Justine has confessed in order to procure last rites and entry into heaven after death.
Yet, as a false confession cannot truly absolve a sinner, either Mary Shelley's protestant
prejudice is showing, revealing a bias against or actual ignorance of Roman Catholic
theology, or, more probably, she is quietly deepening her social critique to implicate
the immorality of those who, entrusted with the spiritual lives of humanity, sell
them out to the advantage of their own authority or of state power. It is also possible
that she emphasizes the Catholicism of the Moritz household to mark a subtle prejudice
against Justine in the minds of the Frankensteins, who seem to reflect the austere
moralistic Protestantism for which Geneva was noted.

There are 29 first-person singular pronouns in this paragraph; similarly, there are
another 29 first-person pronouns (26 singular) in I:3:3, as well as 25 in I:3:6 (where
Victor dissolves his egocentrism in pontificatory admonishment of Walton's ambition),
and a full 40 such pronouns in I:3:9. Mary Shelley thus dexterously underscores Victor's
total self-involvement in his scientific pursuit.

The desire encapsulated in this phrase will be borne out linguistically when Victor
begins his course of instruction in the next chapter. At that point various cognates
of "ardor" will echo through the text (I:3:1) and note, also I:3:6). At this early
point, however, it is sufficient for the reader to recognize that the very language
Victor uses echoes Walton's in his review of the course of his self-education (I:L1:2).

The double entendre falls heavily, since from this point on until the end of his life
Victor will be tied to his Creature with unbreakable bonds

Here in an essential form is the crux of the similarity being subtly drawn between
the conditions of Justine and the Creature. Not only has society cast her off as "guilty,"
but it has reinforced its verdict by classifying her as alien, beyond a human pale:
thus, a "monster." Yet, since individual identity is itself so deeply subject to social
construction, to find oneself termed alien is to undergo an immediate process of self-alienation.
We will witness the same process as the driving force in the Creature's education
as the next volume unfolds.

A long critical history has sprung up around this statement. Now that all the extant
manuscripts for the novel have been published in facsimile, it would appear, at least
from the written evidence, that Mary Shelley's defence of her own artistry is accurate.
Her husband read the manuscript with careful attention, here and there suggesting
variations in phrasing that Mary Shelley incorporated into the final form of the novel.
As the editor of the facsimile edition concludes, "A reading of the evidence in these
Frankenstein Notebooks should make clear that PBS's contributions to Frankenstein
were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors
or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's
works in progress." For the full statement, see Charles E. Robinson, ed. The Frankenstein
Notebooks: A Facsimile Edition (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996), I,
lxvii-lxx.

Although the first sentence of the preface to the original edition, which points to
Erasmus Darwin, has generally been thought to specify his Temple of Nature, Victor
Frankenstein's scientific concern with animal structures might suggest the relevance
to the novel as well of Darwin's Zoonomia; or, the Laws of Organic Life, published
in two volumes in 1794 and 1796. The first volume, in particular, broadly considers
the function of structure throughout the faunal species.

Human benevolence, or natural goodness (the quality stressed in the revised language
of the third edition), is an attribute believed in deeply by both Mary and Percy Bysshe
Shelley. At the same time, it cannot simply be assumed as a given in Frankenstein,
for it is severely tested by the chain of events driving this novel. Even people who
are nominally benevolent (Victor is the obvious example), act with questionable ethics.
And those who are most committed to the notion of a natural benevolence (Elizabeth,
for instance) would be hard pressed to show any evidence for it.