1182
larger, disinterested justice is, however, the stronger ethical position, as Walton
himself understood when his crew presented its case to him earlier (III:Walton:16).
larger, disinterested justice is, however, the stronger ethical position, as Walton
himself understood when his crew presented its case to him earlier (III:Walton:16).
1181
enters into the Frankenstein household, as the natural daughter of a revolutionary
Milanese aristocrat who had been imprisoned by the Austrian government and had had
his property confiscated (see I:1:9) for being too ardent in the cause of his country's
liberty. Although Alphonse Frankenstein's dealings here might be construed as an honorable,
duty-bound attempt by a citizen of a neutral nation to right a wrong and restore to
Elizabeth what had been rightly hers, it is hard to imagine Mary Shelley, who abhorred
the Austrian occupation of Italy and represented Elizabeth's true father as "nursed
in the antique glory of Italy," not thinking this detail commensurate with the essentially
conservative, state-oriented political views Alphonse exhibits elsewhere (see, for
instance, I:1:1 or I:6:44 and note).
1180
solemn and reiterated injunction of Victor Frankenstein to exact vengeance upon his
Creature, hesitates before the presence of the other being. In essence, he substitutes
a reality for an abstraction, his own actuality for the vicarious experience provided
by Victor's narrative. Implied in this act is the priority of individual responsibility
for independent judgment. That Walton is preoccupied by his "impulses" in the plural
may indicate how difficult, complex, and responsive to particular circumstances such
a judgment must be.
1179
consequences of considerable and dangerous weight. From this point on for many months,
with only the briefest exceptions, Victor will be trapped in a kind of solitary confinement.
What begins as a figurative condition, indeed, will become an actual physical fact.
1178
his own interest in facticity with Elizabeth's (and Henry Clerval's) delight in the
imagination (I:1:9). However much he may be inflating the record here, the reader
cannot but be aware of the ambivalence about the nature of the imagination expressed
in these lines. That Victor once "trod heaven in [his] thoughts" cannot mitigate the
hellish misery to which he has now sunk, nor even at that earlier point in his remembrance
could it guarantee that the outcome of such an introverted elation would have an essential
value. The imagination, in this analysis, might be necessary for great achievement,
but by itself it is by no means sufficient, being merely an instrument, and, as such,
easily capable of indulging a self-absorbed solipsism.
1177
is surprisingly prescient in its sense of the cultural impact her novel was to have.
Moreover, it is entirely consistent with the way both she and her husband represented
the work to its public. Percy Bysshe Shelley, writing the Preface to the original
edition of Frankenstein, distanced this novel from any attempt at "merely weaving
a series of supernatural terrors," insisting on its adherence to the higher aims of
the "imagination." Similarly, Mary Shelley, in writing the Introduction to the third
edition, stresses how in its initial conception her "imagination, unbidden, possessed
and guided" her. That all these statements are congruent with one another and with
an exalted notion of the Romantic imagination, however, cannot alter the ironic context
in which this particular phrase is uttered. In the previous paragraph we have been
observing Victor Frankenstein, who was once swept along by his imagination to create
a deformed and alienated being, revising with soberly rational care his account of
that act and its consequences. The actual context for this phrase in the novel would
thus appear to offset its perhaps expected paean to the imagination.
1176
This is a further example of the dark tones in which the Romantic imagination is painted
in this novel, resembling earlier cases where an isolated mind is confronted with
a radical uncertainty. For earlier instances pertaining to Victor, see I:4:18 and
note; II:1:8 and note; for a similar construction on the part of the Creature, see
II:4:17 and note.
1175
events of the night before Victor departed "[b]etween two and three in the morning"
(III:3:24) are wholly unremarked. Clerval's body was discovered approximately four
hours earlier, some time after 10 o'clock.
1174
carefully kept Walton ignorant of the process by which he created life, and, moreover,
excoriates him when he suspects Walton of wanting to penetrate his secret (III:Walton:3).
He dies clearly wishing that he had himself remained in a state of innocent ignorance.
Although it is likely that, upon reflection, Walton will broaden the range under which
he construes knowledge to embrace a moral education, here he limits its conception
wholly to scientific discovery. In his dejection he seems to have gone out of his
way to miss the point of Victor Frankenstein's narration, which is itself truly a
mark of his ignorance.
1173
"By the utmost self-violence": Victor lacks the modern vocabulary that would term
this act mere repression. He likens it to suicide, an active, even extreme, assertion
of violence against the self. Yet again, the reader may wish to ask, which self is
it that he would destroy, that of the Creator or of his extension who has destroyed
those whom Victor loves? The doubling of selves is insistent even where, as here,
it is merely insinuated.