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instance in his lengthy account to Walton, is a mystery. Perhaps it is meant as another
instance of his euphemisms, suggestive of an essential insincerity in his representation
of his motives.
instance in his lengthy account to Walton, is a mystery. Perhaps it is meant as another
instance of his euphemisms, suggestive of an essential insincerity in his representation
of his motives.
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once again turns Victor's own terminology back on him.
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Oxford is famous for the way in which the structures of the university rise above
other features of the landscape to dominate the horizon. In the late nineteenth century
Thomas Hardy paints an enduring picture of the young Jude Fawley, the hero of Jude
the Obscure who has mythicized what is there denominated Christminster, venturing
far out of his village and climbing a ladder at sunset with the hope of making out
this far-off object of all his desires:
Some way within the limits of the stretch of landscape, points of light like the topaz
gleamed. The air increased in transparency with the lapse of minutes, till the topaz
points showed themselves to be the vanes, windows, wet roof slates, and other shining
spots upon the spires, domes, freestone-work, and varied outlines that were faintly
revealed. It was Christminster, unquestionably; either directly seen, or miraged in
the peculiar atmosphere.
The spectator gazed on till the windows and vanes lost their shine, going out almost
suddenly like extinguished candles. The vague city became veiled in mist. (I.iii)
1215
is commonly considered the northernmost point in the United Kingdom. There are several
small islands between this village and Pomona, the largest of the Orkneys. Exactitude
is impossible here, however, because Pomona is itself popularly known as Mainland.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.