by Mary Shelley
I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart.
I shall continue my journal concerning the stranger at intervals, should I have any fresh incidents to record.
August 13th, 17—.
My affection for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated; and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence. He is now much recovered from his illness, and is continually on the deck, apparently watching for the sledge that preceded his own. Yet, although unhappy, he is not so utterly occupied by his own misery, but that he interests himself deeply in the employments of others.53 He has asked me many questions concerning my design; and I have related my little history frankly to him. He appeared pleased with the confidence, and suggested several alterations in my plan, which I shall find exceedingly useful. There is no pedantry in his manner; but all he does appears to spring solely from the interest he instinctively takes in the welfare of those who surround him. He is often overcome by gloom, and then he sits by himself, and tries to overcome all that is sullen or unsocial in his humour.54 These paroxysms pass from him like a cloud from before the sun, though his dejection never leaves him.55 I have endeavoured to win his confidence; and I trust that I have succeeded. One day I mentioned to him the desire I had always felt of finding a friend who might sympathize with me, and direct me by his counsel. I said, I did not belong to that class of men who are offended by advice. “I am self-educated, and perhaps I hardly rely sufficiently upon my own powers. I wish therefore that my companion should be wiser and more experienced than myself, to confirm and support me; nor have I believed it impossible to find a true friend.”
“I agree with you,” replied the stranger, “in believing that friendship is not only a desirable, but a possible acquisition. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. But I—I have lost every thing, and cannot begin life anew.”
As he said this, his countenance became expressive of a calm settled grief, that touched me to the heart. But he was silent, and presently retired to his cabin.
Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit, that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.
Will you laugh56 at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine wanderer? If you do, you must have certainly lost that simplicity which was once your characteristic charm. Yet, if you will, smile at the warmth of my expressions, while I find every day new causes for repeating them.57
August 19th, 17—.
Yesterday the stranger said to me, “You may easily perceive, Captain Walton, that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. I had determined, once,58 that the memory of these evils should die with me; but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the relation of my misfortunes will be useful to you, yet, if you are inclined, listen to my tale.59 I believe that the strange incidents connected with it will afford a view of nature, which may enlarge your faculties and understanding. You will hear of powers and occurrences, such as you have been accustomed to believe impossible: but I do not doubt that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed.”
You may easily conceive60 that I was much gratified by the offered communication; yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by a recital of his misfortunes. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative, partly from curiosity and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate, if it were in my power. I expressed these feelings in my answer.
“I thank you,” he replied, “for your sympathy, but it is useless; my fate is nearly fulfilled. I wait but for one event, and then I shall repose in peace. I understand your feeling,” continued he, perceiving that I wished to interrupt him; “but you are mistaken, my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you; nothing can alter my destiny: listen to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined.”
He then told me, that he would commence his narrative the next day when I should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks. I have resolved every night, when I am not engaged,61 to record, as nearly as possible in his own words, what he has related during the day. If I should be engaged, I will at least make notes. This manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure: but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his own lips, with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day!62
43. We will argue that the evidence of various remarks of the protagonists requires that the year is 1799; however, July 31 was not a Monday in that year, and the most proximate year meeting these conditions—1797—is not possible in light of other intervals. Walton must have miscalculated his days. Charles Robinson contends for 1797 on the basis of the chronological match that July 31 was a Monday in that year but dismisses the evidence regarding quotations from works published later.
44. “Sea room” means space for passage. Such incidents, in which a ship is captured by and, if unfortunate, crushed by pack ice, are common in history and frequently occurred during the search for the Northern Route. For example, Henry Hudson’s Discovery spent the winter trapped by ice in James Bay in 1610–11; William Parry’s ships were trapped in 1821; Sir John Ross was stranded for four winters when his ship was crushed in 1829; and Sir John Franklin had to abandon his ships the Terror and the Erebus in 1848 when they were captured by the Arctic ice. It was not until 1893 that a Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, sailed north in a crushproof ship, the Fram, deliberately allowed it to be frozen in the Siberian ice pack, and stayed aboard as it drifted to Spitsbergen (where it arrived in 1896), thereby demonstrating the motion of the ice pack.
In later centuries, the Antarctic also claimed many victims. For example, in 1915, Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance was crushed by ice in the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea and sank. As late as 1986, the New York Times reported that a British expeditionary vessel was crushed by Antarctic ice, fortunately without loss of life. In January 2014, a Russian research ship and Chinese icebreaker were trapped by Antarctic ice, only to finally break free.
45. Compare the fogs recorded by Pytheas, note 6, above.
46. Ships have for centuries kept time on a schedule of “bells,” signifying half-hour intervals in a four-hour duty watch. “Two o’clock” (whether morning or evening) is “four bells.” In light of the visibility of the sledge, we must conclude that the time is four bells in the afternoon watch. Walton is evidently translating naval time for the benefit of his sister.
47. The Thomas Text adds the following intriguing sentences: “Are we then near land, and is this unknown wast [sic] inhabited by giants, of which the being we saw is a specimen? Such an idea is contrary to all experience, but if what we saw was an optical delusion, it was the most perfect and wonderful recorded in the history of nature.”
48. A heavy but temporary swell at sea, with large waves, possibly the result of a distant storm.
49. The dog promptly disappears from the narrative—eaten?
50. As we will see later, the stranger—Vict
or Frankenstein—also speaks French, German, and Latin.
51. Use of a compound of two parts brandy to one part salt was hailed by William Lee, in a pamphlet published in 1840 (The Use of Brandy and Salt as a Remedy for Inflammation [London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.]), as a remedy for a wide variety of ailments. Lee, who claims to have discovered the compound in France a few years prior to publication of his book, explains in detail how the medicine is to be used, both externally and internally. For cases of dizziness and even insanity (as in an attack of nerves), he recommended rubbing the crown of the head with the preparation and then dosage of a few spoonfuls, diluted with hot water.
52. The preceding phrase is omitted in the 1831 edition, and the following is substituted: “From this time a new spirit of life animated the decaying frame of the stranger. He manifested the greatest eagerness to be upon deck[.]”
53. The balance of this paragraph and the entirety of the next have been substantially revised in the 1831 edition, as follows:
He has frequently conversed with me on mine, which I have communicated to him without disguise. He entered attentively into all my arguments in favour of my eventual success and into every minute detail of the measures I had taken to secure it. I was easily led by the sympathy which he evinced to use the language of my heart, to give utterance to the burning ardour of my soul and to say, with all the fervour that warmed me, how gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. As I spoke, a dark gloom spread over my listener’s countenance. At first I perceived that he tried to suppress his emotion; he placed his hands before his eyes, and my voice quivered and failed me as I beheld tears trickle fast from between his fingers; a groan burst from his heaving breast. I paused; at length he spoke, in broken accents: “Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!”
Such words, you may imagine, strongly excited my curiosity; but the paroxysm of grief that had seized the stranger overcame his weakened powers, and many hours of repose and tranquil conversation were necessary to restore his composure. Having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally. He asked me the history of my earlier years. The tale was quickly told, but it awakened various trains of reflection. I spoke of my desire of finding a friend, of my thirst for a more intimate sympathy with a fellow mind than had ever fallen to my lot, and expressed my conviction that a man could boast of little happiness who did not enjoy this blessing. “I agree with you,” replied the stranger, “we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves—such a friend ought to be—do[es] not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. But I—I have lost everything and cannot begin life anew.”
In this eloquent disquisition by Walton, beautifully expressed in “the language of [his] heart,” the explorer reveals his lofty ideals, only to have them dashed by Victor. In this version, Victor appears to believe that his tale is an important lesson; he reveals the “madness” that drove him to cure Walton of a similar obsession. Yet as will be seen, Mary Shelley altered her original depiction of Victor: In the 1818 edition, he is a man led astray by overly high ambitions, racked with guilt, while in the 1831 edition, he excuses his conduct on the grounds that he was an unfortunate victim of fate, and therefore not responsible for the outcome.
Anne K. Mellor’s “Choosing a Text of Frankenstein” (in Stephen C. Behrendt’s Approaches to Teaching Shelley’s Frankenstein) makes a compelling case that Mary Shelley’s philosophical views themselves changed between 1818 and 1831—the cumulative effect of the deaths of two of her children and Percy Shelley, as well as her difficult financial situation. “These events convinced Mary Shelley that human events are decided not by personal choice or free will but by an indifferent destiny or fate,” Mellor writes. “The values implicitly espoused in the first edition of Frankenstein—that nature is a nurturing and benevolent life force that punishes only those who transgress against its sacred rights, that Victor is morally responsible for his acts, that the creature is potentially good but driven to evil by social and parental neglect, that a family like the De Laceys that loves all its children equally offers the best hope for human happiness, and that human egotism causes the greatest suffering in the world—are all rejected in the 1831 revisions.” Specific instances of these revisions will be noted below. Even the Introduction added to the 1831 edition (see Appendix 1, below) reflects this shift in Mary Shelley’s views, as she describes herself as having been “compelled” to write by an imagination that, “unbidden,” possessed and guided her.
54. The ancient Greeks posited that a person’s outlook and behavior were dictated by the four fluids, or humors, circulating in the body: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. Not discredited until the nineteenth century, the philosophy led physicians to attempt cures for physical and mental illnesses through reductions or rebalancing of one or more humors, often through bleeding or purgatives. “Humor” became synonymous with mental condition or temperament.
55. This and a portion of the previous sentence (beginning following the word “gloom”) are replaced in the Thomas Text with the following: “Which veils his countenance like deep night—he neither speaks or notices anything around him, but sitting on a gun will gaze on the sea and I have sometimes observed his dark eyelash wet with a tear which falls silently in the deep. This unobtrusive sorrow excites in me the most painful interest, and he will at times reward my sympathy by throwing aside this veil of moral woe, and then his ardent looks, his deep toned voice and powerful eloquence entrance me with delight.” This florid addition, which, in the view of some critics (see text accompanying note 20, Appendix 5, below), suggests the arousal of homoerotic feelings in Walton, was cast aside in the 1831 edition.
56. The word “laugh” is replaced by “smile” in the 1831 edition.
57. This sentence and the preceding sentence have been replaced in the 1831 edition by the following:
You would not if you saw him. You have been tutored and refined by books and retirement from the world, and you are therefore somewhat fastidious; but this only renders you the more fit to appreciate the extraordinary merits of this wonderful man. Sometimes I have endeavoured to discover what quality it is which he possesses that elevates him so immeasurably above any other person I ever knew. I believe it to be an intuitive discernment, a quick but never-failing power of judgment, a penetration into the causes of things, unequalled for clearness and precision; add to this a facility of expression and a voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music.
Victor here is credited with characteristics not evidenced by his actions—far more so than is the character revealed in the 1818 edition. There, his “power of judgment” regarding the consequences of his own actions is highly questionable, and he is criminally slow to understand that the creature’s threats are leveled not at him but at the people around him. Furthermore, this is the only place in either edition in which Victor’s voice is described as being pleasing and sonorous. It is also the only place in which observations of Victor are expressed to a listener.
58. The word “once” is replaced by “at one time” in the 1831 edition.
59. This sentence and the two following sentences are replaced in the 1831 edition by the following:
I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to
the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale, one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking and console you in case of failure. Prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually deemed marvellous. Were we among the tamer scenes of nature I might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule; but many things will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions which would provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of nature; nor can I doubt but that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed.
Here Shelley makes Victor into a moralizer. He tells his tale not to unburden himself but rather to explicitly convey “an apt moral.” Frankenstein apparently has learned nothing from his own “disasters”: Rather than expressing feelings of guilt regarding his tragedy or attempting to persuade Walton from his course, he hopes only to aid Walton in his endeavors. Shortly—at least in the time frame recounted by Walton’s letters—Victor will exhort Walton’s men to move ahead recklessly with their expedition.
60. The word “imagine” is used in place of “conceive” in the 1831 edition.
61. The word “engaged” is replaced by “imperatively occupied by my duties” in the 1831 edition, an effort, perhaps, to justify why Walton’s record is incomplete.
62. The letter concludes with the following paragraphs in the 1831 edition:
Even now, as I commence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; I see his thin hand raised in animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the soul within.