1153
of self-induced euphoria. It is literally the case that every time he indulges himself
in such a light-headed sense that he has escaped his "destiny," he is suddenly caught
up short by a new misfortune. (See I:5:17 and II:2:1).
of self-induced euphoria. It is literally the case that every time he indulges himself
in such a light-headed sense that he has escaped his "destiny," he is suddenly caught
up short by a new misfortune. (See I:5:17 and II:2:1).
1152
embarked for England from Le Havre when they returned from Geneva in September 1816
. The town would have held more than a tourist's interest for Mary. Her mother Mary
Wollstonecraft had moved to Le Havre to escape the Terror of 1794: there she wrote
her Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution
and gave birth to her daughter Fanny Imlay, Mary's half-sister, in May of that year.
In the 1831 revision Mary Shelley has Victor and his father sail directly from Dublin
to Le Havre, avoiding the lengthy coach journey across England in the 1818 novel.
This, perhaps, reflects a more sophisticated sense of the historical geography of
the British Isles gained after her return to England in 1823. Over many centuries
Ireland had maintained a commercial and cultural exchange with France that flourished
independently from the frames of reference in which the British viewed the power that
was increasingly its major antagonist. Napoleon's attempt to capitalize on the Wolfe
Tone rebellion of 1798 underscored the dangers implicit in Ireland's independent foreign
relations, leading directly to the Act of Union of 1801 in which Ireland was assimilated
to the British crown.
1151
Pilgrimage, Canto 3, stanza 45ff.: see particularly his summary in stanzas 59-61.
Clerval prefers the beautiful, with its humanistic overtones, to the sublime with
its otherworldly and supernatural associations. It is indicative that he centers his
descriptions of the landscape upon human images—the priest and his mistress, grape-pickers
among the vines—who give historical or local significance to its details.
1150
including the very notion of such a reiterated self-justification as Victor is presenting
(see III:6:21 and note), it would not be surprising to see this remark as a recasting
of his fine distinction between truth and the "willing suspension of disbelief" in
literature (see Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14). But, in fact, there is no assurance
that Mary Shelley would have come upon the formulation in time to have inserted it
into the novel. P. B. Shelley is recorded as having finished Coleridge's Biographia
Literaria on 8 December 1817. Frankenstein was advertised as published on 1 January
1818.
1149
such a statement matter to this narrative, except by way of reminding us that the
Creature, besides being a vegetarian, exists wholly outside the economy that links
Victor with other human beings? This is a telling reminder of the isolation of his
uniqueness, of how on a literal level all of humankind implicitly conspire to exclude
him from their interchange.
1148
references in this chapter, in their shaded ambiguity, along with the context of P.
B. Shelley's "Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude" (published February 1816), compel
the reader to question whether that guardian is a good angel or an evil spirit, an
alastor.
1147
to the equivalent of a modern superhighway, allowing a speedy transit to both mail
and passengers and the commercial consolidation of the "United Kingdom."
1146
formulation. Although Victor can exonerate himself by means of analytical logic, the
process is not liberating. Instead, psychologically he finds himself in a limbo of
uncertainty and incapacity, haunted by a dread he can neither escape nor define. Given
the increasingly psychotic symptoms he will reveal in the later chapters of the novel,
this early formulation may be considered a touchstone for Victor's successive mental
breakdowns.
1145
note) erupts with extraordinary effect, almost as an objective correlative for the
"burning gush of hope" and "heart pound[ing]" remarked within Victor in the previous
paragraphs. This ground-sea appears as almost a metaphor for the essentially human
that even in the most extreme of circumstances cannot be repressed.
1144
antihuman solidity of this barren field of ice, even where mountains appear to arise
from it, there is open and fluid water capable of erupting with terrifying sublimity.
Victor is, in fact, at sea; he has become the ancient mariner that the continual evocation
of Coleridge's text across the length of the novel has presaged.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary:
GROUND-SEA
ground-sea. A heavy sea in which large waves rise and dash upon the coast without
apparent cause.
* A. 1642 Sir W. Monson Naval Tracts ii. (1704) 247/2 He met with so great a Storm
and Ground Seas.
* 1756 Prince in Phil. Trans. XLIX. 642 A rumbling noise was heard, like that which
usually precedes what the sailors call a ground-sea.
* 1835 R. S. Hawker Prose Wks. (1893) 28 On, through the ground-sea, shove!
* 1865 Englishm. Mag. Oct. 296 A heavy ground-sea.
GROUND-SWELL
a. ground-swell. A deep swell or heavy rolling of the sea, the result of a distant
storm or seismic disturbance.
* 1818 Scott Hrt. Midl. iii, The agitation of the waters, called by sailors the ground-swell.
* 1840 R. H. Dana Bef. Mast i. 2 The vessel..rolled with the heavy ground swell.
* 1877 Black Green Past. xxviii. (1878) 221 Crashing its way through the rolling waves
of a heavy ground-swell.
b. fig. Usually with reference to mental or political agitation.
* 1817 Coleridge Zapolya i. Wks. IV. 219 It is the ground-swell of a teeming instinct.
* 1856 R. A. Vaughan Mystics (1860) I. 91 The religious world was rocking still with
the groundswell that followed those stormy synods.
* 1870 Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. i. (1873) 219 The deep-raking, ground-swell of passion,
as we see it in the sarcasm of Lear.