The New Annotated Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

  The report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. I pointed to the spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats; nets were cast, but in vain. After passing several hours, we returned hopeless, most of my companions believing it to have been a form conjured by my fancy. After having landed, they proceeded to search the country, parties going in different directions among the woods and vines.

  I did not accompany them;11 I was exhausted: a film covered my eyes, and my skin was parched with the heat of fever. In this state I lay12 on a bed, hardly conscious of what had happened; my eyes wandered round the room, as if to seek something that I had lost.

  At length I remembered that my father would anxiously expect the return of Elizabeth and myself, and that I must return alone. This reflection brought tears into my eyes, and I wept for a long time;13 but my thoughts rambled to various subjects, reflecting14 on my misfortunes, and their cause. I was bewildered in a cloud of wonder and horror. The death of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly of my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now might be writhing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his feet. This idea made me shudder, and recalled me to action. I started up, and resolved to return to Geneva with all possible speed.

  There were no horses to be procured, and I must return by the lake; but the wind was unfavourable, and the rain fell in torrents. However, it was hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I hired men to row, and took an oar myself, for I had always experienced relief from mental torment in bodily exercise. But the overflowing misery I now felt, and the excess of agitation that I endured, rendered me incapable of any exertion. I threw down the oar; and, leaning my head upon my hands, gave way to every gloomy idea that arose. If I looked up, I saw the scenes which were familiar to me in my happier time, and which I had contemplated but the day before in the company of her who was now but a shadow and a recollection. Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain had ceased for a moment, and I saw the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before; they had then been observed by Elizabeth. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour; but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness: no creature had ever been so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man.

  But why should I dwell upon the incidents that followed this last overwhelming event. Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have reached their acme, and what I must now relate can but be tedious to you. Know15 that, one by one, my friends were snatched away; I was left desolate. My own strength is exhausted; and I must tell, in a few words, what remains of my hideous narration.

  I arrived at Geneva. My father and Ernest yet lived; but the former sunk under the tidings that I bore. I see him now, excellent and venerable old man! his eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and their delight—his niece,16 his more than daughter, whom he doated on with all that affection which a man feels, who, in the decline of life, having few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain. Cursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs, and doomed him to waste in wretchedness! He could not live under the horrors that were accumulated around him;17 an apoplectic fit was brought on, and in a few days he died in my arms.18

  What then became of me? I know not; I lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes, indeed, I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth; but awoke, and found myself in a dungeon. Melancholy followed, but by degrees I gained a clear conception of my miseries and situation, and was then released from my prison. For they had called me mad; and during many months,19 as I understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation.20

  But liberty had been a useless gift to me had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge. As the memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect on their cause—the monster whom I had created, the miserable daemon whom I had sent abroad into the world for my destruction. I was possessed by a maddening rage when I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed head.

  Nor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes; I began to reflect on the best means of securing him; and for this purpose, about a month after my release, I repaired to a criminal judge in the town, and told him that I had an accusation to make; that I knew the destroyer of my family; and that I required him to exert his whole authority for the apprehension of the murderer.

  The magistrate listened to me with attention and kindness: “Be assured, sir,” said he, “no pains or exertions on my part shall be spared to discover the villain.”

  “I thank you,” replied I; “listen, therefore, to the deposition that I have to make. It is indeed a tale so strange, that I should fear you would not credit it, were there not something in truth which, however wonderful, forces conviction. The story is too connected to be mistaken for a dream, and I have no motive for falsehood.” My manner, as I thus addressed him, was impressive, but calm; I had formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death; and this purpose quieted my agony, and provisionally21 reconciled me to life. I now related my history briefly, but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with accuracy, and never deviating into invective or exclamation.

  The magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as I continued he became more attentive and interested; I saw him sometimes shudder with horror, at others a lively surprise, unmingled with disbelief, was painted on his countenance.

  When I had concluded my narration, I said. “This is the being whom I accuse, and for whose detection22 and punishment I call upon you to exert your whole power. It is your duty as a magistrate, and I believe and hope that your feelings as a man will not revolt from the execution of those functions on this occasion.”

  This address caused a considerable change in the physiognomy of my auditor. He had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was called upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his incredulity returned. He, however, answered mildly, “I would willingly afford you every aid in your pursuit; but the creature of whom you speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance. Who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice, and inhabit caves and dens, where no man would venture to intrude? Besides, some months have elapsed since the commission of his crimes, and no one can conjecture to what place he has wandered, or what region he may now inhabit.”23

  Pinel, médecin en chef de la Salpêtrière, délivrant les aliénés de leurs chaînes (Pinel, chief doctor at la Salpêtrière, releasing the hysterical women from their chains), by Tony Robert-Fleury (nineteenth century, date unknown).

  “I do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which I inhabit; and if he has indeed taken refuge in the Alps, he may be hunted like the chamois, and destroyed as a beast of prey. But I perceive your thoughts: you do not credit my narrative, and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the punishment which is his desert.”

  As I spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated; “You are mistaken,” said he, “I will exert myself; and if it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear, from what you have yourself described to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable, and that, while every proper measure is pursued, you should endeavour to24 make up your mind to disappointment.”

  “That cannot be; but all that I can say will be of little avail. My revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is unspeakab
le, when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand: I have but one resource; and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction.”

  I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a phrenzy in my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness, which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness. He endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child, and reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium.

  “Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease; you know not what it is you say.”

  I broke from the house angry and disturbed, and retired to meditate on some other mode of action.

  1. Chapter 23 in the 1831 edition.

  2. The Thomas Text deletes the balance of the sentence up to the phrase “and contemplated” and inserts the following:

  leaving the shore we sought the retreat of our house and garden. but Again as I entered the iron gates of the demesne, an unres unexplainable feeling bade me hold—yet Elizabeth unwarned, and fearless passed on, and I, again half ashamed—& for the first time dreading lest any unholy sight should meet her sense, any shadow of the fiend, should cross her, I hastily walked on, and passing my arm round her prayed with a feeling of bitter tenderness, that she might never suffer ill. Thus we entered the ar mansion—and still not speaking, for both our hearts were too full, we went to a balcony that overhung the lake

  3. The phrase “relax the impending” is revised to “shrink from” in the 1831 edition.

  4. In place of the phrase “at length she said,” the 1831 edition reads, “but there was something in my glance which communicated terror to her, and trembling, she asked,”[.]

  5. The word “dreadful” is replaced by “fearful” in the 1831 edition.

  6. Victor’s abandonment of Elizabeth in pursuit of knowledge may be seen, notes Chris Baldick, in In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), as an “unusually condensed résumé of the action of the novel as a whole.”

  7. The scene is said by some to conjure Henry Fuseli’s famous painting The Nightmare (1781). Fuseli (1741–1825) was Swiss but resided most of his life in England; he was a fixture in the circle of radical artists and thinkers that included Mary Shelley’s parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. There is evidence of an amorous relationship between Fuseli and Wollstonecraft, known to Mary Shelley, and she certainly knew Fuseli’s work. Yet as William Veeder points out in Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, any mirroring goes only halfway: Unlike in the Fuseli painting, the woman’s features are “half covered” by her hair, contrary to the normal expectations of the effects of gravity. Veeder, in chapter 6, “The Women of Frankenstein,” suggests that this is Mary Shelley’s symbol of acceptance of the death of her stepsister Fanny Imlay, found with her hair around her face, and that Elizabeth’s “relaxed” posture indicates her acceptance of death and her escape from male dominance.

  8. In the 1831 edition, the narrator relates that he “fell senseless on the ground,” not that he “fainted.”

  9. Veeder, in Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, chapter 4, “The Divided Self and Woman,” points out that the wedding night scene has strong parallels to the earlier scene (see note 9, Volume I, Chapter IV, above) in which the creature penetrates Victor’s bedchamber: Both occur in the “yellow light,” and in both scenes, the creature grins and extends a hand. Veeder suggests that the parallel is deliberate, signifying that while Victor sought consummation of his male and female halves (androgyny), his female half being represented by the creature, he could not achieve such until Elizabeth’s death.

  10. In the 1831 edition, Victor “fired” rather than “shot.”

  11. The preceding phrase does not appear in the 1831 edition, which expands the narration to read as follows: “I attempted to accompany them and proceeded a short distance from the house, but my head whirled round, my steps were like those of a drunken man, I fell at last in a state of utter exhaustion.” Thus Victor’s failure to take an active part in the hunt becomes less reprehensible.

  12. “Lay” is replaced with “was carried back and placed” in the 1831 edition.

  13. The preceding portion of this sentence and the preceding sentence are deleted from the 1831 edition, and the following appears: “After an interval I arose, and as if by instinct, crawled into the room where the corpse of my beloved lay. There were women weeping around; I hung over it and joined my sad tears to theirs; all this time no distinct idea presented itself to my mind,”[.]

  14. The word “confusedly” is inserted here in the 1831 edition.

  15. The word is “now” in the Draft and there is no period preceding it.

  16. “Elizabeth” is substituted for “niece” in the 1831 edition.

  17. The balance of the sentence is omitted from the 1831 edition and replaced with the following: “the springs of existence suddenly gave way; he was unable to rise from his bed, and in a few days he died in my arms.”

  18. With the death of Alphonse, all three of the principals of the drama—Walton, Victor, and the creature—are orphans, and in the final scene, “All three … are on their own, lost, and without roots of any kind …” observes Christopher Small, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Tracing the Myth (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1973). With Alphonse’s death, suggest some of the psychoanalytic critics, Victor at last achieves his goal of parricide and is free to become his own father. William Veeder, in Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, chapter 5, “The Divided Self and Man,” notes that Victor’s indirect extermination of his family—by means of the creature—has occurred in tellingly reverse-alphabetical order, W(illiam), J(ustine), H(enry), E(lizabeth), and (A)lphonse, with A (Alpha) for the last.

  Why does Victor’s brother Ernest survive the slaughter of the Frankenstein extended family? Veeder argues that it is precisely because he is “earnest.” Mary Shelley, Veeder suggests, could not publish a bleak vision in which the Promethean urges of Victor conquered all; rather, the domestic ideal must endure in some form.

  19. The duration of this period of “many months” is impossible to measure, but it is reasonable to assume that Victor’s presentation to the Geneva magistrate that follows his recovery took place late in 1797.

  20. Although the historical record is not clear, it appears that as late as the French Revolution, the primary response to the insane throughout Europe was confinement in private “madhouses” and public institutions that were little more than prisons. In 1790, the revolutionary government decreed that within six weeks “all persons detained in fortresses, religious houses, houses of correction, police houses, or other prisons, whatsoever … so long as they are not convicted, or under arrest, or not charged with major crimes, or confined by reason of madness, will be set at liberty.” The mad were to be examined and either released or “cared for in hospitals indicated for that purpose.”

  In Paris, arrangements were made for insane men to be sent to the Bicêtre Hospital, which had been established in 1642 as an orphanage and would famously house the Marquis de Sade for three years in the early 1800s. Insane women were confined in the Salpêtrière, formally called the General Hospital but named informally for the gunpowder, or saltpeter, once produced on the site (a former arsenal). Under Louis XIV, the mandate of both hospitals was effectively to keep beggars off the streets; initially the insane were confined with criminals. After a short while the criminals were removed, and the institutions were dedicated to the insane. In 1793, Philippe Pinel was appointed physician superintendent of the Bicêtre. Under his supervision, Jean-Baptiste Pussin, a former tanner who had somewhat improbably become “governor” of the mental ward (following his treatment there for a tuberculosis-related medical condition, lymphadenitis of the cervical lymph nodes), wa
s given permission to institute what became known as “moral management” of the mad. In 1797, after Pinel had moved to the Salpêtriere, Pussin unshackled the lunatics. Three years later, Pinel and Pussin instituted much the same policy; the latter had moved to the women’s asylum with his former mentor. Straitjackets were retained at both institutions for cases that proved intractable.

  Pussin’s professional development occurred hand in hand with that of his wife, Marguerite Pussin, who was similarly untrained. The Pussins had a natural affinity for dealing with the deranged, kept detailed notes, and recorded many stories of the use of calm, methodical conversation to effect change in the fortunes of their patients, providing Pinel with a wealth of case histories. In A Treatise on Insanity: In Which Are Contained the Principles of a New and More Practical Nosology of Maniacal Disorders Than Has Yet Been Offered to the Public (Sheffield, UK: W. Todd, 1806), Pinel credits the Pussins with nothing less than having changed the course of psychiatry. He cites, essentially, a single factor crucial to their success—proximity: They “lived amongst the insane day and night,” learning both their patients’ ways and the “chief art of managing maniacal patients”: that of “administering consolation” while simultaneously employing “stratagems” such as humor and diversionary logic (unsigned review of the original French edition of Pinel’s book, Traité Médico-Philosophique sur l’Aliénation Mentale, ou la Manie, 8 vols. [Paris, 1801], in The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal: For April 1803 … July 1803 [Edinburgh: Constable; London: Longmans, 1803], 165). In 2003, Ivan Berlin, MD, of the Salpêtrière, described the discrete populations housed at the end of the seventeenth century, and the hospital’s inner workings and organizational logic: “four categories of women were placed there. ‘Bad’ adolescents were kept enclosed in the ‘Correction’ section, with the idea that they could be rehabilitated. Women labeled as prostitutes filled the ‘Common’ section. Women who had been imprisoned with or without sentences were quartered in the ‘Jail,’ and inhabitants within the ‘Quarter of the Insane’ were those who usually had been sent there by their families. In 1679, the institution housed 100 women who qualified as ‘mad’ and 148 women with seizure disorders. By 1833, the numbers had increased to 117 insane women under treatment, 105 insane women labeled as sick, 923 women with mental illnesses characterized as incurable, and 266 women with seizure disorders” (Ivan Berlin, “The Salpêtrière Hospital: From Confining the Poor to Freeing the Insane,” American Journal of Psychiatry 160, no. 9 [September 2003]: 1579).