In order to place Walton's expedition in an objective perspective, the reader should
reflect on what it would cost for a private individual to organize and pay the complete
costs of an enterprise that in Mary Shelley's day was assumed by the British state
and, because of its not inconsiderable expense, was the subject of careful and even
suspicious scrutiny.

This phrase is accentuated by being repeated in adjoining sentences. Yet, for all
its unusual emphasis, the phrase dissipates its power, as the passive voice once again
deflects any sense of responsibility from Victor: see I:3:3 and note.

Victor's characteristic passive verb construction reasserts itself here, in circumstances
where, since he has been out of the country for so long, he is the only member of
his family without an understood obligation to the court. The passive mood does suggest
his sense that he is trapped without a means of exonerating a person he is certain
is innocent. At the same time, in being attached to his own withdrawal from family
obligations, it may also indicate a more complicated pattern of causality than Victor
might like to believe in, one in which from the first he bears responsibility.

It has been suggested that Mary Shelley models Waldman on Percy Bysshe Shelley's instructor
in science at Eton, James Lind, who was also physician to George III at Windsor Castle.
He is portrayed by Shelley as Laon's protector and teacher in the contemporary Revolt
of Islam, Canto III.

Pronounced Valt-mahn.

Accounts of explorers were frequently bound together and sold as sets. From Hakluyt's
Voyages (1589) until well into the nineteenth century these were a common genre of
publishing.

Although the emphasis here is on a Godwinian model of education, the implicit equality
and shared sense of responsibility carry political connotations as well. This is particularly
so within the democratic environment provided by Switzerland.

Or is he? As in the early chapters of Mary Shelley's careful revisions for the 1831
edition where we find her intent on accentuating the link between Victor's statements
and the exhausted, fanatic sufferer rescued by Walton's crew, this proviso may be
inserted to suggest the opposite of its import, that the man who utters it is, or
has been, mad. At the very least the statement raises the question of wherein the
truth lies, in scientific evidence or in psychological experience.

Walton's science here is demonstrably false, particularly in respect to the time in
which he writes his letter (mid-December), when at this latitude the sun is visible
for only seven hours of the day. At midsummer, of course, the phenomenon over which
he enthuses is true.

From Chapter 20 of Oliver Goldsmith's novel (1766), where Parson Primrose's son George
recounts his misadventures across the continent of Europe.