So entwined are the fortunes of Victor Frankenstein's Creature and vampires in twentieth-century
popular culture, that to many it comes as a shock to realize that Bram Stoker's Dracula
dates from three-quarters of a century after Mary Shelley's novel. And yet, the subject
matters were entwined from the beginning. The story that Lord Byron vowed to produce
for the Gothic competition of the summer of 1816 was to be called The Vampyre. In
the end he dropped it, and the account was picked up and finished by John Polidori,
Byron's personal physician during this summer, who then published his novella with
the same title as that used by Byron so as to increase its circulation.

Vampires were rather new on the literary scene at this point: general legendary knowledge
about them actually stemmed from a single source, the incorporation of a vampire in
Robert Southey's exotic and very popular oriental romance, Thalaba the Destroyer (1801).
Although the figure appears in only one stanza, it afforded Southey the opportunity
to show off his learning in a ten-page note. Since Percy Shelley was greatly enamored
of this poem, even reading it aloud to Mary and Claire Clairmont on successive evenings
in September 1814, there is little doubt that Mary had this account in mind in drawing
upon vampire imagery for Frankenstein.

There is an unmistakeably strong resonance here of the final lines of Percy Bysshe
Shelley's "Mont Blanc," lines 139ff., written during the summer of 1816 when Frankenstein
was begun. Since the early chapters were conceived at this time, the reflection of
this particular poem would seem purposeful. That the greater part of Volume 2 of the
novel takes place below Mt. Blanc should reinforce the sense one has of a thematic
kinship between these two works.

At this point Clerval has been in Ingolstadt for a full year. Some months earlier,
as the previous paragraph indicates, he had been introduced by Victor to the "several
professors of the university." Here, as elsewhere (I:3:10), Mary Shelley quietly underscores
the ease with which Victor shirks his family duties.

Mary Shelley seems to have an adolescent's sense of what constitutes the "decline
of life." When we are introduced to Alphonse Frankenstein, a man who remained unmarried
for at least another two years after his decision to wed and and who then had three
children across a timespan of sixteen years, he seems as yet not to have begun the
decline attributed to him here. His delay in marriage is shared by Victor who finds
numerous reasons for postponing his nuptials with Elizabeth Lavenza. That this is
a family trait Mary Shelley wishes to accentuate rather than the reflection of some
antiromantic convention of her own or of her time is indicated by the case of Felix
De Lacey, who falls deeply in love at a young age.

Since study is itself customarily thought to be a passive occupation, Victor's employment
of the passive mood here calls our immediate attention to his unwillingness to accept
responsibility for a driving obsession. We have seen a like usage earlier (I:3:3 and
note).

Another way to define "unremitting ardour" would be, from the linguistic root, a perpetual
low-grade fever. The damage to Victor's bodily system becomes clear as the paragraph
unfolds.

Later Walton calls Frankenstein's eloquence "forcible and touching" (III:WC:6) and
just three weeks after the present letter the crew will witness its effect (III:WC:17).
But on that occasion the crew will not be swayed by Victor; and even Victor himself,
somewhat earlier, evinced himself as distrustful of mere eloquence, warning Walton
against the power of the Creature's speech and suggesting that it might mislead him
(III:7:26).

Eloquence as a concept implicitly assumes multiple perspectives and an underlying
uncertainty as to where truth resides. It is thus focussed as a highly vexed issue
in the novel, which reveals itself to be at once selfconscious in its employment of
manipulative rhetoric and suspicious of the effects.

The University of Ingolstadt was opened on 26 July 1472 under the patronage of the
Duke of Bavaria, Ludwig the Wealthy. For centuries its various faculties—humanistic,
scientific, theology, law, and medicine—were contained in the Hoheschule (High School).
By the end of the seventeenth century plans were elaborated for new university buildings,
but these were never realized. Nonetheless, during the ensuing century the University
was forced to expand. In 1760 George Ludwig Claudius Rousseau was appointed demonstrator
of Chemistry, and in 1778 a separate laboratory was constructed for him near the Hoheschule.
Given the time scheme of Frankenstein, it seems likely that Victor would have pursued
his studies in that location.

But Ingolstadt was also very well equipped to support Victor's more elaborate scientific
ambitions. From the first, the University possessed a medical school of stature. In
1722 its faculty acquired a site for a projected school that would incorporate an
anatomy theater, botanical garden, and chemistry laboratory, and construction was
begun early in 1723 though, for want of money, it was not wholly finished until 1736.
A major botanical garden was attached to the school to support its experiments and
treatments. By 1755 the demonstration hall in the central atrium had been converted
into a two-story anatomical theater, with a dissecting table on the ground floor,
a gallery for student observers above, and a glass ceiling allowing overhead illumination.
In the later eighteenth century it was considered to be one of the finest such theaters
in Europe. Obviously, such a theater would have had ample provision for the specimens
required for teaching purposes—or for clandestine experimentation.

In the third volume Alphonse Frankenstein will have to undertake a much longer and
more perilous journey to save his son after a similar illness. See III:4:28.

A half-year earlier Clerval had begun this same discourse with Victor, only to have
it interrupted by his friend's physical collapse (I:4:15). At that point the previous
November Victor had been out of communication with his family for something like two
years.