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Enlightenment cultural standards of a kind associated with the writings of Rousseau
and, in English, Adam Smith. With the latter, see particularly The Theory of Moral
Sentiments, 3.2-3.3, 5.2, and 6.3.
Enlightenment cultural standards of a kind associated with the writings of Rousseau
and, in English, Adam Smith. With the latter, see particularly The Theory of Moral
Sentiments, 3.2-3.3, 5.2, and 6.3.
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Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BCE — 65 CE). A leading philosopher and statesman of the
mid-first century, Seneca was also a playwright, whose nine tragedies celebrate stoic
resignation. As a statesman, his practice was anything but what such a philosophical
stance might indicate, for he was an activist not a conservative. He was Nero's tutor
and later acted behind the scenes to secure the emperor's power. He retired from the
court in the year 62 to devote himself to philosophy, but three years later he was
denounced as taking part in the conspiracy of Piso against the emperor. Ordered by
Nero to commit suicide, Seneca took his own life with stoic resignation and fortitude.
It is not, it would appear, in Seneca's writings but in his example that Walton looks
for comfort in his peril.
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easily be reconciled with a disinterested ethics, one senses in this phrase a tone
of self-accusation reflecting a more mature understanding of his own implication in
the catastrophic events he has unleashed. This acceptance of responsibility is not
uniform, returning only sporadically in the later chapters of the novel, but it testifies,
perhaps, to a measure of moral growth; or, if Victor's vindictive diction places that
conclusion in some doubt, at least to a sharper sense of the price that has been paid
for his solitary ambition and withdrawal from normative human interactions. Still,
suspecting that Victor's self-important posture as family protector will only eventuate
in great calamities, a reader may find it hard not to cast an ironic eye upon what
continue as usual to be good intentions never sufficiently thought through.
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cut grass: this would appear a memory of Mary Shelley's from the 1816 summer.
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recollected flashback. Chronologically speaking, this brief paragraph, with its self-reflexiveness
about its own artistic imperatives and capacities, constitutes something of a final
bow, the last words of a novel that, from end to end, has held a mirror up to its
own operations as a primary example of the creation that is its theme.
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the Creature's and Victor's boats are Scottish in make, they would therefore in all
probability resemble one another closely. But Mary Shelley seems to have another purpose
in mind. Having already forced an aura of the uncanny upon this scene through the
great distance of travel and coincidence of destination of her characters, she subtly
reinforces the interchangeability of Creature and creator that will progressively
intensify as the novel moves towards its conclusion.
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that the previous time this mountain was reported as being in Victor's line of vision,
two years earlier, he had descried his Creature climbing its nearly perpendicular
face (I:6:22).
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of the direst consequences, it is clear that in the ensuing months he has inflated
this act of destruction of the second being, transforming what appeared at the time
as an act of passionate homicide into a gesture of sublime heroism offered in behalf
of all of humankind. It is small wonder Alphone Frankenstein changes the subject:
such apparent delusions of grandeur are highly suspect.
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earlier, on the afternoon of 31 July (I:L4:5 and note). The breakup of the ice on
that occasion cut Victor Frankenstein off from his Creature, and he remembered its
violent sound (III:7:24 and note) in terms similar to those used here by Walton.