Ordinarily in the writings of the English Romantics, and particularly in the contemporaneous
poems of Byron (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III) and Percy Shelley ("Mont Blanc"),
a world of never-ending process is held up as far preferable to one of known or dogmatic
limitation—in the succinct formulation of Wordsworth, "The budding rose above the
rose full blown" (The Prelude, XI.121). Here Mary Shelley quietly signals the dangers
of engaging oneself totally in such a realm of "discovery and wonder."

Mary Shelley seems to understand with acuity a phenomenon that could only have just
come into general awareness in her time. We now recognize that a paradigm shift had
occured in the previous generation, one forcing the "life sciences" into a disciplinary
partnership with the physical sciences. From that point forward all notions of distinct
animistic or quasi-magical differences separating them disappear. Furthermore, under
this conceptual format nineteenth-century scientific inquiry increasingly reduces
the processes of life themselves to merely chemical reactions.

Questions of communication that have been playing on the periphery of the novel on
several levels suddenly here move to the center in a stark form. Justine, unlike Victor
(or Walton?), does not tell her story well enough to ensure its belief.

Early nineteenth-century English anti-Catholic prejudice stressed the hierarchical
conformity of the Roman Church as against the individual self-witnessing or examination
of conscience that the growing evangelical movement especially emphasized. Yet if
this confessor is manipulative and reminds one of that staple of Gothic fiction, the
obdurate inquisitor, he seems to stand in contrast to the earlier confessor, who acted
as a kindly mender of family fences to convince her mother after the deaths of her
other children to take Justine back into her home (I:5:6). Of course, he could be
the same priest, only apparently kind in his offices, but essentially superstitious
in interpreting God's will and actively supporting firm social structures to curb
errant individual desire.

Mary Shelley contorts the plot somewhat to force this detail upon it. This is of a
piece with her concentration on individual responsibility, but it also stresses the
element of social coercion that brings about this miscarriage of justice. That Justine
will prevaricate in a situation where Victor cannot bring himself to speak the truth
once more underscores how relative is the nature of truth in this novel.

It seems never to cross Victor's mind that he might not "employ" his discovery or
even that he might collaborate with others in its practical application. As the paragraph
goes on, it is also clear that the number of options Victor considers for his discovery
is very limited. To invoke the terminology of a later day, rather than publishing
his discovery, he decides to author it.

Walton raises for the first time a major concern of the novel, the aims, uses, and
potential limitations of writing. Although he affirms the importance here of a human
presence that will guarantee unmediated sympathy, still he does so in the form of
a written letter that in the previous sentence names his correspondent ("Margaret")
and in the sentence to follow strongly links her to him by a charged term of endearment
("my dear sister"). The logic of this letter, indeed, suggests the actual limitations
of the unmediated exchange. Although he admires the officers of his ship, for instance,
Walton cannot expect their sympathy in the refined emotions he here transmits to his
distant sister.

At the same time, Victor Frankenstein's retreat into obsessive study and his Creature's
enforced isolation will show the consequences of trying to fall back upon one's own
singular resources. That Mary Shelley regards the communication of emotion as fundamental
to human need and experience seems implicit in her choice of an epistolary form in
which to frame her novel.

Mary Shelley read this anecdote in Washington Irving's Life and Adventures of Christopher
Columbus (1828), Book V, Chapter 7, where it is used to applaud the explorer's "practical
sagacity." Her light emphasis here on the achievements of great explorers and the
uses to which their knowledge is put might be thought to press issues of considerable
importance to the novel she is introducing.

Victor has already explained that he was by this time running a low fever as a result
of his "ardour [burning] that far exceeded moderation" (I:3:9). From this point on
in the novel, Victor is never wholly well.

Whether Mary Shelley, in framing her revisions, intended to give her novel a geographical
symmetry by placing an Italian sojourn in the early part of Victor's narrative to
balance that of Safie and her father at its absolute center (1831:II:14:12) can be
only a matter of conjecture. It is consistent, however, with the strong structural
patterning of the novel. By 1831, of course, she might simply have decided to translate
her own experience into the rewriting of the novel, for it was certainly the case
that she and Percy Bysshe Shelley sought Italy in 1818, just months after the publication
of Frankenstein, ostensibly for reasons of health.

One consequence of the considerable emendation made to this first chapter of Victor's
narrative is to emphasize how well off his family is. To see the sights of Italy is
one thing; to make a leisurely tour of the country, then extend the excursion to take
in France and Germany, requires substantial means as well as leisure. In the 1818
text the Frankensteins were respected members of their community; by 1831 they have
assumed something of the trappings of aristocracy.