Quotes from Frankenstein, and corresponding themes

1. NAME THAT QUOTE!

2. FOR THE QUOTE YOU’VE
BEEN GIVEN:
 Who said it?
 What’s the context?
 What you can say about the language/ narrative technique?
 What links can you make to themes/ ideas/ context?

3. FOR EXAMPLE...
 ‘I was their plaything and their idol, and something better – their child,
the innocent and helpless creature bestowed upon them by Heaven...whose
future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery.’
• Victor on his parents in early chapters.
• Hindsight imbues a sense of poignancy, but also establishes difference between
Victor’s creation and natural
• God-like of his own birth. Theme of responsibility destiny, implied by ‘future
lots’.
• Ominous nouns ‘idol’ / ‘plaything’; V seeks to break suffocating love?)

4.  ‘What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I
may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the
needle...I may satiate my ardent curiosity...’
 (Walton to his sister, embarking on voyage. Romanticises his
voyage/ language mirrors Victors/ establishes parallel between the
two/ verbs suggest both discovery and desire)

5.  ‘The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a dedicated lamp in
our peaceful home.’
 (Victor on Elizabeth/ overly idealised imagery/ verb ‘dedicated’
suggests selfless nature/ located within domestic sphere, quickly takes
on the mother’s role)

6.  ‘When I reflect...on the miserable death of Justine Moritz, I no
longer see the world and its works as they appeared to me me...now
misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters
thirsting for each other’s blood.’
 (Elizabeth to Victor, following the execution of Justine. Sense of irony
as Victor ‘true murderer’/ enlightenment of Elizabeth breaks domestic
idyll/ education of Elizabeth enlightens to an extent; link to
Wollstonecraft/ dark imagery; Gothically ominous)

7.  ‘Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds, but
was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my
own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke
from me frightened me into silence again.’
 (Creature on early days. Sense of pathos/ narrating the birth
experience/ exploring empiricist ideas of learning/ sensation based/
creature presented as ‘good’; supports argument that he is a product of
environment)

8.  ‘Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind,
when it has seized on it, like lichen on a rock.’
 (Creature on knowledge that he is ‘ugly’ and therefore will be rejected/
highlights aesthetic prejudice/ implies knowledge can be singular and
consuming/ his simile demonstrates skill and clarity; has insight very
quickly, unlike Victor?)


9.  ‘The thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within me – not I,
but she, shall suffer; the murder I have committed because I am
forever robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone!’
 (Creature’s justification for murder of Justine/ pivotal moment;
descent into ‘Satan’ or becoming monster/ allusion to PL and destruction
of Eve/ Biblical language mirrors PL and sense of almost Old Testament
vengeance)

10.  ‘His words had a strange effect on me. I compassionated him
and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon
him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart
sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and
hatred.’
 (Victor on listening to creature/ Highlights aesthetic prejudice/
contradictory clauses or parallel phrasing highlight contradiction/ outlines
central tragedy of creature’s fate)

11.  ‘Could I enter into a festival with the deadly weight hanging
around my neck and bowing me to the ground?’
 (Following Victor’s agreement to create a female mate, he must
delay wedding until it’s done/ allusion to ancient mariner/
responsibility/ suspicious delay to marriage with Elizabeth?)

12.  ‘Great God! If for one instant I had thought what might be the
hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have
banished myself forever from my native country, and wandered a
friendless outcast over the earth, than have consented to this
miserable marriage.’
 (Victor suggests he misread the creature’s threat to be with him on his
wedding night/ raises questions of narrative reliability/ trying to
exonerate himself?)

13.  ‘Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for
the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds
until death shall close them forever.’
 (some of creature’s final words to the dead Victor/ closure and
perhaps moral superiority afforded to the creature/ interestingly, the
‘remorse’ and awareness of his sin is his greatest ‘wound’ which directly
contrasts Victor’s final words!)

14. FRANKENSTEIN – MARY
SHELLEY
Revision

15. SOME IDEAS
 A novel of doubling and reversal – Walton/Victor,
Victor/Monster, Victor/Clerval, beauty/ugliness. Home or the
domestic/wild nature and the laboratory
 masculine science wrests secrets from feminised nature
 Monstrous moral and legal systems – Justine
 The monster’s treatment creates his desire for revenge and murder

16. KEY IDEAS
 Knowledge
 Women
 Sublime
 Family/Parenthood
 Education
 Science/Technology

17.  Victor seeks knowledge for his own
reasons
 Does not consider the ramifications
 Walton also does this
 Victor focused on Alchemy before going
to university and learning about new science
 Rime of the Ancient Mariner about the
death of imagination in man and embarkation
on quest for spiritual and intellectual
knowledge.
KNOWLEDGE

18. KNOWLEDGE
 “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.”
 Victor cautions Walton against seeking knowledge – can be linked to
concerns in the industrial age that unbridled use of knowledge can lead to
disaster – “ I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not
be a serpent to you as mine has been” 4th letter to MS
 We see Victor’s obsession with learning in ch.2

19. EDUCATION
 Romantic education – self taught
 Adventures provide a source of growth
 Walton self educated “my education was neglected, yet I was
passionately fond of reading.”
 Walton, however, also had a practical education aboard a whaling
ship.

20. EDUCATION
 The creature learns from the DeLacey’s
 Typical Romantic reading list
 No- one to guide him in his learning
 ‘There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or
assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I
declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had
formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery’
 Safie is educated also by the De Lacey’s

21. PARENTHOOD/FAMILY
 Elizabeth’s mother died early during childbirth
 Her family taught her to care for the poor (another key concern of the novel)
 Victor does not care for the creature he ‘parented’
 Rousseau’s ideas on education – children should learn naturally – Shelley
critiques this
 Victor is the real monster – he neglects his own ‘child’
 Critiques the cult of the individual, of solitariness and introversion of the time.

22.  Walton asserts that he will keep going
over the ‘untamed yet obedient’ regions
 Nature, or the stars will witness his
success.
 Eerie arctic setting
 Elizabeth – “none could behold her
without looking at her as a distinct
species, as being heaven sent, and bearing
a celestial stamp on all her features”
SUBLIME/NATURE

23. SUBLIME/NATURE
 Creature feels uplifted by the natural world
 Victor rows on Lake Geneva
 Victor wants to ‘pursue nature to her hiding places’ – this leads him to neglect
his friends and family
 Once he achieves his dream ‘now that I have finished, the beauty of the dream
vanished, and breathless horror and disgust fill my heart’
 Landscapes in ch. 10 are icy, barren and inhospitable, as alien to warm humanity
as Frankenstein’s manic desire. Sublime becomes dangerously inhuman.

24.  Humphrey Davy, Luigi Galvani,
Giovanni Aldini and Erasmus
Darwin
 Science to describe or science to
intervene
 Monster made from parts of
animal as well as human –
monstrous
SCIENCE

25.  Background figures here – not
considered as confidants
 Elizabeth is Victor’s “sister” he takes
it for granted she is his
 Justine takes the blame for the death
 We never meet Margaret Saville
 Elizabeth’s wedding night – Victor
things primarily of revenge – she dies
 Women as mothers – Victor is clearly
not this
WOMEN

26. FREUDIAN
INTERPRETATION
 Victor as the id, who acts out his sexual and aggressive natures by seeking to become God.
 Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic aparratus defined in Sigmund Freud’s
structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and
interaction mental life is described. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of
uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the
organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.[1] The super-ego
can stop you from doing certain things that your id may want you to do.[2]
 The creature then, represents the ego which must work with the demands of the real world and come
to terms with societal rejection.
 Walton becomes the superego or the conscience that relates the acceptable and unacceptable
behaviour.
 These three characters represent the struggle of man and his conscience with the good and the bad,
the learned and the ignorant.

27. FRANKENSTEIN
Themes

28.  The Elements
 Nature
 Good and Evil
 Death and Destruction

29.  The supernatural
 Dreams
 Sanity and insanity
 Revenge

30.  Exploration
 Imprisonment and confinement
 Mans inhumanity to man
 Loneliness and Isolation

31.  Ambition
 Journeys
 Science

32. THE ELEMENTS
• In a novel which deals with power and raw, elemental emotion, it is
not surprising that Shelley makes extensive use of the elements. The
power of the natural world is an apt representation of the characters’
shifting emotions. These are often externalised using the elements,
such as when Frankenstein observes after Elizabeth’s murder: ‘the sun
might shine, or the clouds might lower; but nothing could appear to
me as it had done the day before.’

33. THE ELEMENTS
 Shelley’s use of the elements is highly significant, especially her
deployment of pathetic fallacy ( use of the weather or the landscape
to reflect events, moods etc) to create atmosphere. The most striking
use of the elements occurs at moments in the novel where rationality
and balance are least in evidence.

34. THE ELEMENTS
 The elements are a central part of the nature that Frankenstein
loves so much. At times however they are part of his punishment.
The physical punishments of cold and exposure on the sea of ice, for
example, and the hardship of the elements on the Scottish isle, are
like divine retribution for his presumption in creating life and his
foolhardiness.

35. THE ELEMENTS
 The power of the electrical storm when Frankenstein returns to
Switzerland starts a thread of elemental imagery which runs
throughout the novel. The electrical storm makes possible
Frankenstein’s experiments with galvanism and the creation of the
monster: the awesome, destructive power of the storm represents the
destructive power of Frankenstein’s own desires.

36. NATURE
 Shelley had very close connections with the Romantic movement,
which was profoundly engaged with the natural world. Her husband,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, was one of the great Romantic poets, as was his
close friend Lord Byron. Wordsworth was also a major figure, and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner had a
particularly profound influence on the novel.

37. NATURE
• The Romantics saw nature with its abundance and wildness as
symbolising everything they admired and wished to promote. They
rejected what they saw as the restrictions of balance, order, and
objectivity and profoundly mistrusted the advances of empirical
science. Frankenstein, the empirical scientist, wishes to apply rigid,
scientific rules to the act of creation, producing an object not
beautiful but hideous.

38. NATURE
 The range of extreme and dangerous locations that Shelley
employs reflects the nature of her tale and the perilous moral
dilemmas it deals with. These landscapes and locations also resonate
with the key themes of isolation, death and destruction. They
symbolise the inner turmoil and upheaval of the monster,
Frankenstein and other characters.

39.  The ambiguity of nature – both beautifully creative but powerfully
destructive is key to understanding Frankenstein.

40. GOOD AND EVIL
• The tale is an exploration of good and evil in the human soul. The
novel explores how good can be turned into evil. The monster initially
loving and benevolent is transformed by his rejection by humanity
into a vengeful predator. The monster’s initial loving and kind nature
is corrupted by his association with man. It also considers the
potential of human science and human nature for both good and evil.

41. DEATH AND DESTRUCTION
 Death, destruction, putrefaction and disease are closely linked in
Frankenstein. From early on we know that Frankenstein cannot
survive for long after his rescue from the drifting ice; he is mortally ill.
Death constantly hangs over events; one by one Frankenstein’s family
dies at the hands of the monster. It is ironic, however that these
deaths spring from Frankenstein’s driving desire to create life.

42. DEATH AND DESTRUCTION
• Physical death and destruction can symbolise the death of Frankenstein’s moral
responsibility, the destruction of his hopes and dreams and the breakdown of the
monster’s innocence. It is therefore fitting that the novel should end with the deaths of
both creator and created. Life becomes a living death for both the monster and
Frankenstein. Frankenstein wishes for death after the murder of Clerval.
• ‘I was overcome by gloom and misery, and often reflected I had better seek death’
• ‘ [I am] they creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the
annihilation of one of us.’

43. THE SUPERNATURAL
• The supernatural in Frankenstein is unusual. While the novel fits
within the Gothic genre, which frequently deals with the supernatural and
refers to the supernatural on many occasions, it deals not with ghosts and
spirits but with reality. The consequences of Frankenstein’s scientific
experiments. The monster is superhuman – taller, stronger than his
human counterparts- but he is not supernatural. The monster is flesh and
blood (albeit constituted from the reanimation of various parts of
corpses).

44. THE SUPERNATURAL
 Shelley is restrained and mysterious in her description of the
monster except for Frankenstein’s brief description of the monster’s
watery eyes and yellow skin allowing the contemporary readers to
paint a picture for themselves.

45. THE SUPERNATURAL
• Although the creature is a creature of flesh and blood with genuine
human emotions, other characters often react to him as if he were a
ghost. As he stalks Frankenstein across Europe, he shares many ghost-like
qualities. The ability to appear almost out of nowhere being one of them,
his ability to survive on barely any food (nuts and berries), his ability to
traverse Europe with no money, presumably stowing away on ships. He
can be compared to other Gothic wanderers like Dracula, Melmoth and
the Wandering Jew.

46.  Other typical supernatural elements are incorporated into
Frankenstein through Shelley’s use of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner
with its supernatural occurrences and Paradise Lost with its angels and
demons.

47. DREAMS
• Dreams are important in two ways: first as hopes and aspirations;
secondly as sleeping visions. For Victor, they impinge on each other -
in trying to live out his aspirations as a scientist, he creates a living
nightmare.
• ‘The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I
sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented
itself to my mind with the force of reality.’

48.  ‘The past appeared to me in the light of a fearful dream.’
 ‘Towards morning I was possessed by a kind of nightmare’

49. SANITY AND INSANITY
• On many occasions in the novel we question the sanity of what we
observe and the characters often do so themselves. Frankenstein’s and
Walton’s frantic pursuit of their dreams creates an atmosphere of
unpredictability and fear. At the outset Frankenstein alerts us to the
unbelievable (insane?) nature of his story. The persistent presence of
madness also serves to emphasise the dangers inherent in Frankenstein’s
enterprise. Frankenstein breaks down after the death of Elizabeth and
literally ends up incarcerated in an asylum.

50.  ‘For they had called me mad; and during many months, as I
understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation.’

51. REVENGE
• Frankenstein and the monster are locked in an endless cycle of vengeance.
Frankenstein’s refusal to care for the creature makes this inevitable. The monster
wishes to avenge the lack of care and love that he rightly considers is his due.
Frankenstein’s failure to do this leads to the monster’s isolation and loneliness. The
monsters seeks revenge not in killing Victor but in destroying everything he loves.
In his turn Frankenstein wishes for vengeance, seeking to destroy his creation. ‘[I]
ardently prayed that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal
revenge on his cursed head.’

52. EXPLORATION
• Frankenstein is full of explorers and exploration. Walton is seeking
to find the Polar passage, Frankenstein is exploring the mysteries of
science. Shelley herself explores human experience and the dark
recesses of the human mind. Nearly a century before the work of
Freud and Jung Shelley is exploring the divided self and the shadowy
world of dreams. The novel is also exploratory taking the Gothic into
new psychological depths and paving the way for science fiction.

53. IMPRISONMENT AND
CONFINEMENT
• Frankenstein is increasingly imprisoned within dreams and fantasies that resolve
into nightmarish reality. He finds himself trapped into a relationship with the
monster and a promise to create a partner for him which he then disastrously
breaks. Both Frankenstein and the monster are trapped in a cycle of revenge and
hatred. Frankenstein is literally imprisoned in Ireland after being wrongfully accused
of Clerval’s murder (echoing Justine’s wrongful imprisonment and death). But
declares ‘to me the walls of a dungeon or palace were alike hateful.’ And later put
into solitary confinement in an asylum.

54. IMPRISONMENT AND
CONFINEMENT
 The monster, rejected by Frankenstein and society, and trapped in
isolation. His kindly benevolent nature is trapped by the ugliness of
his body. The hovel where he lives next to the De Laceys is a pathetic
symbol of his confinement, he can only leave when it is dark. The
monster’s rejection is universal so the world becomes for him a prison
he can only escape through death.

55. IMPRISONMENT AND
CONFINEMENT
• Elizabeth is trapped by her barren relationship with Victor.
Frankenstein leaves her alone on her wedding night in a blind attempt
to protect her from the monster. Safie’s father is incarcerated in a
Parisian prison, the victim of racial discrimination. Safie is trapped by
her father’s desire to control her destiny. De Lacey is trapped in a
world of blindness, although ironically this enables him to be the only
person to see the monster’s essential humanity.

56. HUMAN AND INHUMAN
• Humans are often guilty of great inhumanity. The monster is shot
after rescuing a girl from drowning, he is chased out by Felix after he
finds him talking to De Lacey. Shelley’s treatment of this issue causes
us to question humanity’s ability to treat others with kindness and
love. The monster in a Marxist interpretation can be seen as symbolic
of the oppressed working classes, trying to better himself but treated
with disdain and horror by those in a better position than him.

57. LONELINESS AND
ISOLATION
• Frankenstein isolates himself in his studies in Ingolstadt from his
family and friends and later from his fellow researchers. Walton laments
his own isolation and lack of companionship. The monster is rejected by
society due to his ugly appearance. Clerval, left alone by Frankenstein, is
murdered. Elizabeth is left alone fatally on her wedding night. The De
Laceys become social outcasts. Justine is isolated in prison and threatened
with excommunication by a priest. Safie is left alone in Paris, then forced
to travel alone to find Felix.

58. AMBITION AND
DETERMINATION
• Sometimes noble and sometimes less so. Frankenstein and Walton
are determined to pursue their dreams. Frankenstein is later
determined to pursue the monster and kill him. The monster shows
determination in his ability to survive, his acquisition of knowledge
and language and later in his own determination of revenge. The De
Laceys and Safie show great loyalty and determination in the face of
hardship.

59. JOURNEYS
 Frankenstein and other characters make repeated journeys. In the
later stages of the novel, Frankenstein and the monster are engaged in
a perpetual journey. Their physical journeys often into rugged
inhospitable places reflect the characters psychological journeys into
the dark interiors of their minds.

60. SCIENCE
 Wordsworth, like other Romantics, decried what he called the
‘meddling intellect’ and looked for meaning in the human heart. He
argued that science, with its tendency to dissect the natural world and
its endless desire to define and categorise, was the negation of poetry.
How far do you think this idea is useful when thinking about
Frankenstein?

61. NOBLE SCIENCE
• There are clear signs that the pursuit of science can be both noble and
elevating. The ability to explore and to analyse the world in which we live
symbolizes the power of the human intellect, and at its best elevates the
individual and improves the mass of humanity. Both Frankenstein and
Walton begin their explorations in the hope of benefiting the world
through their work. Frankenstein initially aspires to finding a way of
preserving life while Walton wishes to find a quicker and safer trading
route than those currently used by sailors.

62. DANGEROUS SCIENCE
 While Shelley is never overtly critical of the practice of science,
she is keenly alert to its many potential pitfalls and dangers. Science
seeks to extend the bounds of human knowledge, and this extension
of the frontiers of conventional understanding is risky; it leads to
moral choices, which may or may not be made sensibly. Walton and
Frankenstein both struggle to contain their passion.

63. • They are swayed by arrogant desire. Hearing of Walton’s dreams of
finding a polar passage, Frankenstein observes: ‘Unhappy man! Do you
share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught?’
• The monster symbolises the destructive potential of irresponsible
science. The monster symbolises Frankenstein’s uncontrollable thirst for
knowledge, externalising his monstrous desires and their hideous
potential.

64. SCIENCE AND TABOO
• Shelley demonstrates that the human race is on the brink of the
unknown, and questions the wisdom of pressing heedlessly into it for
fear of the ‘monsters’ that may emerge. Shelley’s use of Milton and
the stories of Adam and Eve suggests the forbidden nature of the
scientific discoveries that Frankenstein pursues. Like Adam and Eve,
he finds himself tempted to reach for the forbidden. He wants to
push on to enter the secret citadels of science.

65. • At the end of his life, Frankenstein recognises something of the
error of his ways and the impact the pursuit of the forbidden has had
upon him. He observes to Walton:
‘A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and
peaceful mind, and never to allow his passion or a transitory desire to disturb his
tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this
rule.

66.  If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your
affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can
possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the
human mind.’

67. OUTSIDERS
 The outsider is a classic figure of Gothic fiction, representing
 The unknown
 The unacceptable
 The damned
 The fearsome
 The horrific

68.  Mythical figures such as the Wandering Jew, the vampire and
Frankenstein’s monster are central to both literary and popular
tradition.
 All Shelley’s major characters are outsiders, disempowerment, loss
of identity, loss of cohesion, loss of relationships and the destruction
of familial and societal ties are all significant contributing factors.

69.  Frankenstein has a large number of outsider figures. Why do you
think that is?

70.  In pairs – decide on how these characters could be seen as
‘outsiders’
 Frankenstein
 The monster
 Safie’s father

71.  Safie
 Walton
 Clerval
 Mrs Saville

72.  Elizabeth
 Frankenstein’s father
 Justine Moritz
 The De Laceys

73. FRANKENSTEIN
• Victor Frankenstein, largely through his own fault, is isolated in his
own family, then at the university, and finally left alone in the world. His
choice to isolate himself from his loving and protective family is both
surprising and ominous. The contrast between domestic security and
extreme isolation is stark and heightens his personal tragedy. The monster
reduces him to the ultimate life of the outsider, chasing backwards and
forwards across Europe, with no security and no hope of refuge.

74. FRANKENSTEIN
 He is an outsider within the natural world, separated from the
beauty of godly creation; he is an outsider separated from his creator
by means of his own presumptuous desires and rebellion. In
transgressing acceptable boundaries, Frankenstein suffers
psychological and societal exlusion.

75. THE MONSTER
• Human society will not accommodate the monster because of his
looks; people reject him on the assumption that his character is
reflected in his features. His rejection by Frankenstein, his creator,
serves only to compound his sense of isolation. His life in the hovel
next to the De Laceys’ loving and caring home captures the pathos of
his situation as he desperately seeks to fit into the world around him.

76. THE MONSTER
• He is isolated from his creator and from the rest of creation by the
absolute will of Frankenstein, and is therefore condemned to a life
outside the bounds of society. Realising that the conventional happiness
of human existence and companionship are not to be his, the monster
offers to live voluntarily as an outsider in the wilds of South America if
Frankenstein will create him a mate, but is further isolated when
Frankenstein destroys the companion he has been creating for the
monster.

77. SAFIE’S FATHER
 Safie’s father is an outcast in Parisian society simply because he is a
foreigner. He goes on to alienate himself from his own daughter by
his ungrateful and churlish betrayal of the De Laceys.

78. SAFIE
 Safie shares her father’s isolation in Paris. As a Muslim woman,
Shelley explores her lack of rights in a patriarchal society. When her
father betrays the De Laceys, she finds herself separated from her
own flesh and blood, preferring to risk all in her attempt to be
reunited with Felix.

79. WALTON
 Walton is isolated from his family and from the security of home
by his travels. Like Frankenstein, he is a self-imposed outsider burning
with ambitious desire. On board ship he is isolated from the crew by
his position as captain and by his desire to press on towards the pole,
even in the face of the most extreme danger. He recognises his lack
of a good companion and the potential dangers of this.

80. CLERVAL
 Clerval is marginalized in Frankenstein’s affections during the
creation of the monster, and is again distanced from him, in spite of
his great loyalty, on their trip to England. Clerval’s desire to go to
university is opposed by his father, but unlike Frankenstein, Clerval
resolves the difficulty and does not alienate himself from those he
loves.

81. MRS SAVILLE
 Mrs Saville is an outsider who is given no voice. She is simply the
intended recipient of Walton’s correspondence. This correspondence,
owing to Walton’s being on a ship, can only be one-sided, and as such
is scarcely a correspondence at all. As Walton is Frankenstein’s sole
audience, so Mrs Saville is Walton’s.

82. ELIZABETH
 Elizabeth is an orphan – an archetypal outsider figure. She gains
the love and acceptance of the family, but is increasingly marginalised
in Frankenstein’s affections by his studies. Her acceptance (like Justine
Moritz’s) in the Frankenstein household contrasts starkly with her
treatment at Victor’s hands.

83. FRANKENSTEIN’S FATHER
 Frankenstein’s father is profoundly changed by the death of his
wife. This is further aggravated by the way Frankenstein shuts him
out of his confidence when he goes to Ingolstadt. As his family
members are killed one by one at the hands of the monster, he is
more and more acutely isolated, until at last he pines away.

84. JUSTINE MORITZ
 Like Elizabeth, Justine is an orphan. She becomes an outsider to
society when charged with William’s murder, although she never loses
the faith of her adoptive family.

85. THE DE LACEYS
 The De Laceys lose both social position and wealth when they
courageously support Safie’s father in the face of popular prejudice.
When Safie’s father treacherously betrays them, they are forced to flee
Paris and to live a humble and lonely life in Switzerland, a situation
exacerbated by their poverty.