The Creature acknowledges his fall from an original state of grace: "virtues" seems
to be deliberately Miltonic diction, invoking Satan and Adam (and Eve). The Biblical
context aside, this claim to a prelapsarian perfection is intended to remind Victor
of his own high ambition (see I:3:8) and to affirm how well, on an internal if not
external plane, it was realized.

These lines, repeated by the Creature to Victor, apply directly to his conduct, indicting
his lack of both foresight and responsibility. They are also sadly ominous of the
further degree of alienation faced by the Creature if this present mission fails.

A few paragraphs before, the Creature was reintroduced to human society through observing
"violent gesticulations." Now Felix is seized by what is clearly an instinctive and
uncontrollable violence. This is the same youth who, inspired by the most noble motives,
has been habitually called "gentle" by the Creature in earlier chapters.

Although the Creature cannot interpret the subject of this conversation, the gestures
should be sufficient for his comprehension. They mime the reaction he elicits in all
human beings.

With pointed economy Mary Shelley returns to the context of Paradise Lost, once again
to emphasize the disparity between God's accomplishment and that of Victor Frankenstein.
This time it is centered in the figure of Eve, who is transfixed by her beauty when,
newly born, she happens to catch sight of her perfect form mirrored in a pool (IV.449-88).
In both the novel and epic, though the effect is differently pointed in each, we read
ironically against Ovid's account of the myth of Narcissus in Book III of the Metamorphoses.

Like Agatha's dress in the previous paragraph, this is another sign of poverty, but
it is likewise an indication of how close to subsistence exists this entire family.
In this they share the condition of the Creature who attaches himself to them partly
on the basis of their simplicity of manners and means.

The season is yet early enough that the produce of late-autumn is still growing even
with an early snowfall.

Properly Chamonix, this valley lies in France at the northern approach to Mont Blanc.
Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with Claire Clairmont, made an excursion to this
valley of almost a week from 21 to 27 July, 1816, while Mary was deep in the writing
of her novel. A long description of the excursion, written by Shelley to Thomas Love
Peacock, was included in A History of a Six Weeks' Tour (see Letter 4).

The last word of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mont Blanc" is vacancy. In that poem the
mountain is a "blank" slate upon which the mind writes the nature of reality. The
present scene, we must recall, takes place not in the hovel attached to the De Lacey
cottage, but rather in a hut above the Sea of Ice on Mont Blanc. It is here, fittingly,
that the Creature, another blank slate, lives removed from humanity and where he appeals
to his creator for identity, to be written upon.

He means this in a literal sense: there is no one who feels with or for him, who accepts
him as a fellow human being.