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on his behalf. By this point he has convinced himself that he is under their protection.
This is a further example of how in the last pages of his narration Victor moves further
and further beyond the boundaries of a normative rationality.
on his behalf. By this point he has convinced himself that he is under their protection.
This is a further example of how in the last pages of his narration Victor moves further
and further beyond the boundaries of a normative rationality.
1353
Victor's life throughout his long voyage, not the heaven-directed spirits that Victor
imagines. Thus, this phrase is heavily weighted with irony. The irony is in fact attenuated,
for Mary Shelley could not have written this phrase without consciousness of P.B.
Shelley's title, "Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude," the poem he published in 1816,
three months before the excursion to Lake Geneva. An alastor in Greek is an evil spirit.
1352
of the walking dead hovering around Victor and encouraging his desperate venture into
a world of death. Although such macaberie is conventional to the gothic mode, its
psychological impress here is new and startling.
1351
but it has a double edge, reminding the reader of a similar abstracted indifference
with which he has treated a being with far more substantial claims on his interest
and attention.
1350
the same language as accompanied his previous departure from Victor's ken, on the
Mer de Glace below Mont Blanc (see II:9:18).
1349
logical circle he cannot escape is as characteristic of him as the passivity into
which he actually retreats from the stress of events. Still, his figure resonates
against his contrasting application of the turning wheel a few paragraphs earlier
(see III:4:12 and note), where its every revolution was conceived as bringing new
calamities upon him.
The term "mighty revolution" cannot but retain some of its political charge in the
context of post-Napoleonic Europe, particularly if connected to the world of undiscriminated
wretchedness that Victor had been contemplating before Mr. Kirwin entered to prepare
him for his father's arrival (III:4:21).
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rhetoric here strongly suggests a lack of candor. It also indicates that, however
self-accusing he may be, he has accepted no real responsibility for the actions of
his Creature.
1347
Although, of course, Victor will need to pursue his scientific labors by himself,
the verb "coveted" conveys a sense of profound asociality as a crucial aspect of Victor's
constitution. However eagerly he expresses his anticipation of returning to find fulfillment
in his union with Elizabeth, what his father praises as "our domestic calm" at this
point in the 1818 edition seems wholly to lack the capacity to satisfy Victor.
1346
devoted to Victor's egocentric ruminations in the interim, we are here sharply reminded
of the Creature's inner life that Victor refuses to acknowledge. In modern parlance
the Creature is engaged at this point in a deliberate repression of his anger. As
in their previous encounter Victor notably outrants his Creature.
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of this last trip in pursuit of the Creature, embarked on from a French Mediterranean
port (III:7:9). On its surface his sardonic comment roundly indicts the crew for moral
and spiritual laxity. Yet, on second thought, an even stronger counterforce ironically
deflates the surface terms. This ironic inversion begins as we recognize the considerable
negative connotations from earlier in the novel already adhering to this celebration
of the "glorious" (I:L1:6 and note, I:L2:3 and note, and III:Walton:6 and note). On
top of those resonances, the reference to "a southern sea" should remind the knowledgeable
reader of the last voyage undertaken by Ulysses and his crew in search of glory, a
voyage that took them far into the unknown southern sea where their ship foundered.
This is the subject of Canto 26 of Dante's Inferno, which is likewise the source upon
which Tennyson depended for his dramatic monologue, "Ulysses," written in 1833. In
Dante's rendition of this story, for all his heroic posturing, Ulysses has led his
men to their death for nothing beyond a meaningless personal glory. For this act of
essential treachery he is lodged near the bottom of hell for eternity.
It is worth remarking that, in her draft of this passage, Mary Shelley originally
wrote "summer lake," and the phrase "southern sea" was inserted above it in P. B.
Shelley's hand. This interpolation, of course, would have had to have been agreed
to by Mary Shelley, presumably after some discussion of the appropriateness of the
intertextual context the phrase evokes.