1214

  • magistrate . . . benevolent man As a magistrate, Mr. Kirwin, who treats all people with equity and compassion, contrasts
    with the Geneva judges who condemned Justine Moritz to death (I:7:14) as well as the
    rigged Paris tribunal that pronounced a like sentence on Safie's father (II:6:3).
    There is likewise to be observed here a curious symmetry, since at the other end of
    Victor's trip to the British Isles is another magistrate who, in effect, authorized
    it, Alphonse Frankenstein.

    • 1213

  • my mad schemes are the cause The notion of madness, encountered frequently in the late chapters of the novel,
    has been associated almost entirely with Victor Frankenstein's disturbed mental state.
    This small shift in rhetoric for the 1831 edition, coming as it does eight paragraphs
    after Victor's impassioned questioning of Walton's naive desire to know "the particulars
    of his creature's formation" ("Are you mad, my friend . . . ?"—see III:Walton:3 and
    note), suggests that, for this novel, madness may be less a matter of actual derangement
    than it is a kind of violation of accepted codes of social conduct whereby the individual
    becomes isolated from the community and communal obligations. Its closest synonymn
    might then be "solipsism," which is an issue with deep roots within Romanticism and
    one that is stressed in these final pages of Frankenstein.

    • 1212

  • a maddening rage The language seems scrupulously chosen to indicate a transference of madness into
    the obsession of revenge: which is to say that, though his vindictiveness allows Victor
    to focus his mind wholly on this pursuit, the aim may nonetheless be construed as
    insane. After the death of Elizabeth and his father, Victor seems not so much to recover
    his mental health as to concentrate his madness.

    • 1211

  • the mad enthusiasm As elsewhere in these paragraphs the candor of Victor's language is unexpected and
    surprising. Earlier in his narration he has used "enthusiasm" as an apology, even
    perhaps as a cover for his lack of responsibility (see I:3:3, I:3:8, I:3:14, and III:2:21).
    This linking of his obsession with creating life to a state of madness will be reinforced
    near the end of the novel where Victor will reflect on his endeavor as a "fit of enthusiastic
    madness" (III:Walton:28).

    • 1210

  • Are you mad . . . ? Alphonse Frankenstein had raised exactly the same question with Victor at the beginning
    of the fifth chapter (III.5.5), and the Genevan magistrate seems to have been assured
    of the matter from his interview at the end of the sixth (III.6.28). For readers who
    by this point in the novel might well have come to the same conclusion, Victor's questioning
    of Walton's mental stability would venture on the absurd. From the larger perspective
    of the novel's development, however, the strange echo emphasizes how relative, given
    the acute isolation in which its three male protagonists have come to exist, have
    become all grounds of reason and normalcy.

    • 1209

  • I should be supposed mad Given the past consequences on his friends and family of Victor's silence, particularly
    in his never explaining to Clerval the possible danger to his existence from accompanying
    him to Britain, Victor's continuing reticence seems perverse. Yet, at the same time,
    when he is driven at last to depose himself to the law, the fact that he is treated
    with patronizing incredulity and wholly exonerated from any responsibility for the
    wake of destruction that has visited his family circle (see III:6:24), is a subtle
    touch on Mary Shelley's part. Conventional human expectation, of necessity, protects
    itself from whatever is beyond its normal range of experience.

    • 1208

  • Do you not love another? At this juncture in the novel few readers would not be startled by the aptness of
    this question, even if none would construe the passion that consumes Victor as in
    any conventional sense, whether erotic or paternal, that of love. Whatever the problems
    of the fictional time scheme, it is apparent that for the past four-and-a-half years,
    which is the lifetime of Victor's offspring, not to neglect the months of concentrated
    labor that went into his gestation, Victor has been obsessed with the Creature to
    the neglect, even destruction, of any other relationship.

    • 1207

  • lost in darkness and distance The novel closes with a fine symmetry, repeating the verbal form ("lost") with which
    the Creature had disappeared from view in Volume 1 (I:L4:3) and Volume 2 (II:9:18).
    Given its profound association with the epic of Milton that so haunts this work, that
    term may be thought to be a marker for the Creature's entire existence.

    • 1206

  • I passed whole days . . . silent and listless

    Victor has returned to the desultory sailing on Lake Geneva that occupied him earlier
    in the summer (II:1:5 and note). To be "listless" is literally to be without desire.

    • 1205

  • listless indolence

    The near-catatonic state in which Victor exists is a sign of profound mental disturbance:
    Mary Shelley's repetition of the word "listless" from the chapter's beginning indicates
    that Victor leaves in the same state in which he has existed since his interview with
    the Creature: compare III:1:1 and note.

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