The terminology here has a curiously political edge to it, particularly so after we
have witnessed the demonstration of social injustice in the final chapters of Volume
1.

The additional element that Safie brings to the emotional dynamics by which the Creature
learns what it is to enjoy a full humanity is erotic love. That Felix responds so
wholly to her presence as to seem physically transfigured perhaps underscores the
emphasis the Creature will hereafter place upon the creation of a mate that may, he
might hope, in some small part have a similar effect on him.

Not only a vegetarian, the Creature is likewise naturally (like the Shelley household
in general) averse to alcohol.

It is now early spring, the first spring for the Creature, and he observes its characteristics
without any previous example for comparison. The reader, however, already has experienced
Victor's transports over this "divine spring" (see I:4:19 and note) in the first volume
of the novel.

Since this noun and its derivatives tolls like a bell through the novel after it is
first used by Victor to name the Creature (I:4:3), there is a very real sense, on
a linguisitic plane, in which the condition is already broadly shared.

Victor reverts, as if by instinct (or psychological regression), to the nomenclature
in which he first invested his Creature on that dreary November night some twenty-one
months earlier when he brought him to life: see I:4:2-3 and note.

Although Victor continually flagellates himself for the deaths of William and Justine,
yet the hardening of his language as a means of self-exculpation and displacing his
guilt continues. As he interchanges "fiend" and "monster," he combines the diabolic
and the unnatural to objectify and distance his Creature from the norms he accords
his family.

This is a new term for the Creature, in its extremity indicating how far beyond "all
bounds of moderation" (as Victor puts it in the next paragraph) his hatred has carried
him. He will repeat it, virtually like a mantra, in that ensuing paragraph.

This recognition confirms how tellingly on the mark the Creature had been in earlier
confronting Victor with the habitual language of his father (II:2:7 and note).

The modern descriptive term for Victor's experience would be awesome. Although he
dwells on how satisfying is this kind of response to nature (and in the third edition
it is particularly accentuated), it is probably so because of its reliable alterity
from his own situation. In a few paragraphs, with startling irony, he will have that
dependability rudely broken, and the sublime will come directly home to the human
who, thinking to master it, had fled from its tremendous power.