1264
This would suggest that the date is in early August, since it was "in the latter end
of August that [Victor] departed" (III:1:15) from Geneva.
1263
a quasi-transcendental significance. By the 1831 edition this practice is extended
(see I:2:10 or II:10:1 in that text).
1262
that it is the state he is forced to inhabit, not the condition he wishes to perpetrate
on human society.
1261
innocuous phrase. As the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge has been invoked on several
occasions in the novel, the reader may here wish to see Victor, in his passive surrender
to his obsession, as willingly assuming that character's fate. But the idea goes considerably
beyond Coleridge's prototype. The notion of the Wandering Jew, cursed to be an eternal
vagabond for having taunted Christ on his way to the cross, stands behind both Coleridge's
and Mary Shelley's conceptions; and, indeed, that myth may be being evoked here on
a particularly subtle level, as Victor's turning his back on his own will to live
assumes a psychological counterpart to that taunting of the figure of redemption.
The poet figure of Percy Shelley's "Alastor" (1815), who wanders over some of the
same terrain as Victor in search of his visionary love, suggests yet another context.
Behind that figure is probably another conceptual avatar, the peddler in Wordsworth's
Excursion (1814) who is explicitly named the Wanderer, and who in that poet's conception
is able through his internal poise and just relationship with his natural environment
to maintain his balance amid the turbulence of life. Neither of the Shelleys had much
respect for that poem, but, needless to say, Victor's balance in contrast to that
of Wordsworth's peddler is seriously awry.
1260
But surely Mary Shelley emphasizes her irony here, that the sign that Victor's vow
has been heard is not some apparition from the dead he would avenge but rather the
laugh of the Creature. It is, then, specifically the Creature who reserves Victor's
remaining months for vengeance.
1259
another item in Victor's pitiful history of sorrows.
1258
from her lover for the better part of two years. Perhaps, Mary Shelley writes with
her tongue in her cheek, wishing to stress the strange air of unreality that has become
habitual by now with Victor. His idea of "perfect confidence," after all, is to let
on that he has a "dreadful" secret and then to require that Elizabeth not ask him
a word about it. The irony is lost on him, though one assumes not on the reader. Unfortunately
for Elizabeth, she, indeed, never questions him about his odd revelation.
1257
imagination is here connected with inner torment rather than transcendence. Instead
of regenerating the psychic economy, the imagination preys across its isolated and
wholly enclosed spaces.
1256
unblinking justice. Although it is easy to dismiss this language as characteristically
hyperbolic and histrionic, to do so without maintaining a regard for the intensification
of his self-understanding would be unjust. The sense of connectedness he now acknowledges
with his Creature will become the distinguishing feature of the last movement of the
novel.
1255
where the actual threats to his well-being are lodged.