First, apologies for the lengthy delay. Turns out covid makes your brain not work, even if you really, really want it to. Wear a mask. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to regular updates with actual content in them from here on.
That said, let’s get on with the recap!
Previously on: Victor Frankenstein gets over his ~nervous fever~ and decides to change his major so he can condescend to “Oriental” languages and sit next to his devoted friend Henry Clerval, who has been instrumental in his recovery and the happiness and gaiety so newly returned to his angst-filled existence; foreshadowing foreshadows; we are treated to the mental image of Victor “bounding along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity”.
Boing.
But into each life a little Obviously Telegraphed Tragedy must fall, and so it is that when Victor gets back he finds the following letter on his desk waiting for him:
“My dear Victor,
“You have probably waited impatiently for a letter to fix the date of your return to us; and I was at first tempted to write only a few lines, merely mentioning the day on which I should expect you. But that would be a cruel kindness, and I dare not do it. What would be your surprise, my son, when you expected a happy and glad welcome, to behold, on the contrary, tears and wretchedness? And how, Victor, can I relate our misfortune? Absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and griefs; and how shall I inflict pain on my long absent son? I wish to prepare you for the woeful news, but I know it is impossible; even now your eye skims over the page to seek the words which are to convey to you the horrible tidings.
“William is dead!—that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered!
I WONDER WHO OR WHAT COULD HAVE DONE THIS TERRIBLE THING
“I will not attempt to console you; but will simply relate the circumstances of the transaction.
I don’t think I’ve seen murder described as a transaction before, precisely. Victor’s dad, whose name (hilariously) is Alphonse, proceeds to relate: he, Elizabeth, William, and Ernest, Victor’s other brother, were out for an evening stroll; William and Ernest decided to play hide-and-seek; William did not return. They search in gathering distress, return to the house in case he somehow decided to go home on his own, find no trace of him, return with torches to keep looking, until:
About five in the morning I discovered my lovely boy, whom the night before I had seen blooming and active in health, stretched on the grass livid and motionless; the print of the murder’s finger was on his neck.
I’ll give Alphonse a pass on “murder” instead of “murderer” here. If it was only one finger, what a peculiar finger it must have been.
They carry the kid home, and Elizabeth demands to see his body, only to shriek “O God, I have murdered my darling child” because nobody in the Frankenstein family is capable of not chewing scenery at crucial points, whether they are a sister or a cousin or a ward or all three.
“She fainted, and was restored with extreme difficulty. When she again lived, it was only to weep and sigh. She told me, that that same evening William had teased her to let him wear a very valuable miniature that she possessed of your mother. This picture is gone, and was doubtless the temptation which urged the murderer to the deed. We have no trace of him at present, although our exertions to discover him are unremitted; but they will not restore my beloved William!
Funny you should say that, Dad, since your prodigal son is kind of extremely knowledgeable in terms of restoring life to the dead. In fact you might say he’s the reigning world champion.
Alphonse entreats his son to return to the bosom of his family with the following bang-on-the-nose bit of advice which, of course, Victor is constitutionally incapable of pursuing:
“Come, Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin, but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of festering, the wounds of our minds. Enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies.”
But of course we know exactly what he feels toward the assassin, and part of that is entirely made up of unexamined treacle-thick guilt. Clerval has watched Victor read the letter and now poses what is possibly the most trenchant query in the whole book:
“My dear Frankenstein,” exclaimed Henry, when he perceived me weep with bitterness, “are you always to be unhappy? My dear friend, what has happened?”
Keep up, Clerval, of course he is always to be unhappy, his wretched life is wholly shaped and governed by dark forces of forceful darkness that incessantly turn in upon themselves to damn him to an existence of such pure angst it interferes with radio waves, dur.
Victor informs him of his little brother’s death, and Clerval is like “damn, that really sucks, I’m sorry, dude” and on the way to go catch a carriage to Geneva he offers Victor some Condolences Bingo (he’s with his mother and the angels now, his sufferings are over, he sleeps peacefully and is not to be pitied unlike his mourning survivors). Victor’s like “whatever, I’m out” and off he goes on another Melancholy Journey:
My journey was very melancholy. At first I wished to hurry on, for I longed to console and sympathise with my loved and sorrowing friends; but when I drew near my native town, I slackened my progress. I could hardly sustain the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind. I passed through scenes familiar to my youth, but which I had not seen for nearly six years. How altered every thing might be during that time! One sudden and desolating change had taken place; but a thousand little circumstances might have by degrees worked other alterations, which, although they were done more tranquilly, might not be the less decisive. Fear overcame me; I dared no advance, dreading a thousand nameless evils that made me tremble, although I was unable to define them.
make up your miiiiiind
oh wait, it’s you, Victor, you’ll change it in a few hours like you always do
I remained two days at Lausanne, in this painful state of mind. I contemplated the lake: the waters were placid; all around was calm; and the snowy mountains, “the palaces of nature,” were not changed. By degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me, and I continued my journey towards Geneva.
See what I mean? He goes on and on about how he is of this mindset or opinion and how deeply felt and embraced it is, why he is so sure of X over Y, and then he goes “wait, nvm, I actually think something completely different instead” and it is tiring.
He continues serving up scenery porn like whoa:
The road ran by the side of the lake, which became narrower as I approached my native town. I discovered more distinctly the black sides of Jura, and the bright summit of Mont Blanc. I wept like a child. “Dear mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?”
Because it’s all about him, as well we know. The mountains and the lake are totally looking so beautiful to mock his unhappiness instead of simply existing in blissful, unremarkable serenity, dreaming on against the sky as they have done forever with absolutely no awareness of Victor Frankenstein or his angst.
(One of the Anne Gwish comics from JTHM has the characters playing a TTRPG named Vampire: The Eternal Hassle, and this is entirely and completely Victor Frankenstein.)
Here comes another of the infrequent and somewhat suspect flashes of self-awareness he is capable of from time to time:
I fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling on these preliminary circumstances; but they were days of comparative happiness, and I think of them with pleasure. My country, my beloved country! who but a native can tell the delight I took in again beholding thy streams, thy mountains, and, more than all, thy lovely lake!
Wait, weren’t you just whining about how the landscape is mocking your unhappiness? PICK ONE AND STICK WITH IT.
Yet, as I drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me. Night also closed around; and when I could hardly see the dark mountains, I felt still more gloomily. The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings. Alas! I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single circumstance, that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure.
So we’ve had, in the space of five small paragraphs of text, dread and melancholy; calm and peace; unhappiness; pleasure and delight; and dooooooom. Victor, honey, this gives the reader a hint of whiplash, and serves to render us doubtful about the intensity or honesty of any of these emotional responses since they reverse polarity so many times so quickly.
We seem to have settled on dread and doom and grief and evil, as we tend to (“I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings” since of course it is all about Victor), but let’s see what happens next: he gets to Geneva too late to actually enter the city, so decides he’s going to go see where they found William’s body, because he is goth af. In order to do so, he has to paddle across the lake, giving us more scenery porn, again like whoa:
During this short voyage I saw the lightning playing on the summit of Mont Blanc in the most beautiful figures. The storm appeared to approach rapidly, and, on landing, I ascended a low hill, that I might observe its progress. It advanced; the heavens were clouded, and I soon felt the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its violence quickly increased.
I quitted my seat, and walked on, although the darkness and storm increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. It was echoed from Salêve, the Juras, and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant every thing seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself from the preceding flash. The storm, as is often the case in Switzerland, appeared at once in various parts of the heavens. The most violent storm hung exactly north of the town, over the part of the lake which lies between the promontory of Belrive and the village of Copêt. Another storm enlightened Jura with faint flashes; and another darkened and sometimes disclosed the Môle, a peaked mountain to the east of the lake.
God I love it when Mary Shelley lets her description off the chain. Victor’s having a self-contradictory blast watching the storm:
While I watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, “William, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!”
BUT WAIT
As I said these words, I perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy dæmon, to whom I had given life.
Fancy seeing you here, monster! Incidentally, maybe this bit is where the legend connecting the monster’s being brought to life with a lightning storm has its roots, since at no point in the actual text does Victor mention using electricity in any way other than I think at one point he does briefly talk about Galvani’s experiments with frog legs. He does not, in fact, explain a bloody thing about how exactly he brought the monster to life, or at least not in any memorable fashion.
Back to our hero, whose mind is racing to an inevitable conclusion:
What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth; my teeth chattered, and I was forced to lean against a tree for support. The figure passed me quickly, and I lost it in the gloom. Nothing in human shape could have destroyed the fair child. He was the murderer! I could not doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact.
I mean, okay, it’s likely the monster is to blame, if he’s hanging around here all skulking-like, but I do think it’s a bit much to assume that no human could have done it. Humans have killed innocent children basically since the very beginning, and there haven’t been monsters like this one to blame until right now. Victor’s conviction that his monster is the only possible murder suspect basically turns right back around to the master-control-program core of his own identity and self-image: everything is all about him. Of course it couldn’t have been a random human lunatic: only Victor’s creation could be capable of such devilry, because (sing it with me) evil forces of destruction are constantly shaping his life such that he will become the most wretched of men. He considers running after the monster, not that he has any way of settling his unearthly hash:
I thought of pursuing the devil; but it would have been in vain, for another flash discovered him to me hanging among the rocks of the nearly perpendicular ascent of Mont Salêve, a hill that bounds Plainpalais on the south. He soon reached the summit, and disappeared.
Fortunately for the monster, he is adept at parkour and mountaineering, and thus does not have to have an awkward conversation with his estranged creator.
Victor does a bit more angsting in the rain about how terrible it is that he has made this creature, woe:
I revolved in my mind the events which I had until now sought to forget: the whole train of my progress toward the creation; the appearance of the works of my own hands at my bedside; its departure. Two years had now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was this his first crime? Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my brother?
You don’t know that. You have literally no way of knowing what the monster has been up to over those years since you so completely and flailingly refused to take any responsibility for the process of creating said monster. You think he’s killed your brother, but you have no actual evidence whatsoever to back up this gut feeling.
No one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the night, which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air.
me me me me meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
But I did not feel the inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in scenes of evil and despair.
Of course it was.
I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind, and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to me.
Hey maybe you should have thought about that BEFORE YOU FUCKING BROUGHT HIM TO LIFE AND ABANDONED HIM COMPLETELY
Day dawned; and I directed my steps towards the town. The gates were open, and I hastened to my father’s house. My first thought was to discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature of the animal would elude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited as to persuade my relatives to commence it. And then of what use would be pursuit? Who could arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of Mont Salêve? These reflections determined me, and I resolved to remain silent.
This represents an unusual amount of foresight and strategic thinking on our hero’s part. Given Victor’s self-reported history, the part where he stops himself doing an impulsive thing because hey that impulsive thing might have some actual consequences I don’t want is a little bit better than I think I can do this impulsive thing so I’m gonna do it, fuck you, hold my beer. He’s taking into account factors like his sharp attack of ~nervous fever~ as potential evidence against his sanity, which is a bit more grown-up than I might have expected from our Mr. Frankenstein. I’m not actually sure I like the change; instead of being a self-aggrandizing hyperambitious tool with no concept of consequences, now he shows signs of becoming crafty.
He arrives at his family home and waits for everybody to get up, because of course he has not slept all night for wrestling with his terrible destiny.
Six years had elapsed, passed in a dream but for one indelible trace, and I stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before my departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and venerable parent! He still remained to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the mantel-piece. It was an historical subject, painted at my father’s desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling by the coffin of her dead father. Her garb was rustic, and her cheek pale; but there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly permitted the sentiment of pity.
Literally every member of this family is an edgelord. Who commissions a picture of their wife in an agony of despair beside her father’s coffin? Who does that?
Below this picture was a miniature of William; and my tears flowed when I looked upon it. While I was thus engaged, Ernest entered: he had heard me arrive, and hastened to welcome me: “Welcome, my dearest Victor,” said he. “Ah! I wish you had come three months ago, and then you would have found us all joyous and delighted. You come to us now to share a misery which nothing can alleviate; yet your presence will, I hope, revive our father, who seems sinking under his misfortune; and your persuasions will induce poor Elizabeth to cease her vain and tormenting self-accusations.—Poor William! he was our darling and our pride!”
Tears, unrestrained, fell from my brother’s eyes; a sense of mortal agony crept over my frame. Before, I had only imagined the wretchedness of my desolated home; the reality came on me as a new, and a not less terrible, disaster.
Wait, back up. What part of this had not occurred to you before? What about this is in any way a surprise to you, Victor? I’ll wait.
I tried to calm Ernest; I enquired more minutely concerning my father, and here I named my cousin.
“She most of all,” said Ernest, “requires consolation; she accused herself of having caused the death of my brother, and that made her very wretched. But since the murderer has been discovered—”
“The murderer discovered! Good God! how can that be? who could attempt to pursue him? It is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the winds, or confine a mountain-stream with a straw. I saw him too; he was free last night!”
OH IT GETS WORSE
Remember the other pure-as-the-driven character taken in by the Frankensteins, Justine Moritz? The one who selflessly served and loved the whole family? The one in whose mouth butter would most sincerely refuse to melt? Turns out she’s a murderer!
He then related that, the morning on which the murder of poor William had been discovered, Justine had been taken ill, and confined to her bed for several days. During this interval, one of the servants, happening to examine the apparel she had worn on the night of the murder, had discovered in her pocket the picture of my mother, which had been judged to be the temptation of the murderer. The servant instantly showed it to one of the others, who, without saying a word to any of the family, went to a magistrate; and, upon their deposition, Justine was apprehended. On being charged with the fact, the poor girl confirmed the suspicion in a great measure by her extreme confusion of manner.
You’d be confused too if you were randomly accused of murder due to someone planting a piece of evidence in your pocket, not least because how goddamn stupid do they think you’d have to be to leave the evidence there to be found if in fact you had been the one who stole it.
This was a strange tale, but it did not shake my faith; and I replied earnestly, “You are all mistaken; I know the murderer. Justine, poor, good Justine, is innocent.”
Victor’s father joins them and there is a rehash: Ernest is like “Victor says he knows who did it and it’s not Justine!” Alphonse is all “I’m totally convinced, the girl is innocent, and since she is innocent undoubtedly she will be set free because we need only to rely on the true fact that justice is a thing that happens in the court of law!” Cue hysterical laughter from anyone with two brain cells to bash together:
Ernest exclaimed, “Good God, papa! Victor says that he knows who was the murderer of poor William.”
“We do also, unfortunately,” replied my father, “for indeed I had rather have been for ever ignorant than have discovered so much depravity and ungratitude in one I valued so highly.”
“My dear father, you are mistaken; Justine is innocent.”
“If she is, God forbid that she should suffer as guilty. She is to be tried today, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that she will be acquitted.”
This speech calmed me. I was firmly convinced in my own mind that Justine, and indeed every human being, was guiltless of this murder. I had no fear, therefore, that any circumstantial evidence could be brought forward strong enough to convict her. My tale was not one to announce publicly; its astounding horror would be looked upon as madness by the vulgar. Did any one indeed exist, except I, the creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which I had let loose upon the world?
Because EVERYTHING IS ALL ABOUT YOU, VICTOR, ALL THE TIME, even someone else’s murder trial.
Elizabeth shows and Victor does some mental creeping, as usual:
We were soon joined by Elizabeth. Time had altered her since I last beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of her childish years. There was the same candour, the same vivacity, but it was allied to an expression more full of sensibility and intellect. She welcomed me with the greatest affection. “Your arrival, my dear cousin,” said she, “fills me with hope. You perhaps will find some means to justify my poor guiltless Justine. Alas! who is safe, if she be convicted of crime? I rely on her innocence as certainly as I do upon my own. Our misfortune is doubly hard to us; we have not only lost that lovely darling boy, but this poor girl, whom I sincerely love, is to be torn away by even a worse fate. If she is condemned, I never shall know joy more. But she will not, I am sure she will not; and then I shall be happy again, even after the sad death of my little William.”
“She is innocent, my Elizabeth,” said I, “and that shall be proved; fear nothing, but let your spirits be cheered by the assurance of her acquittal.”
Because why the hell shouldn’t a magistrate immediately believe someone accused of murder when they say they didn’t do it and don’t know how that miniature got into their pocket? It’s a shoo-in!
“How kind and generous you are! every one else believes in her guilt, and that made me wretched, for I knew that it was impossible: and to see every one else prejudiced in so deadly a manner rendered me hopeless and despairing.” She wept.
“Dearest niece,” said my father, “dry your tears. If she is, as you believe, innocent, rely on the justice of our laws, and the activity with which I shall prevent the slightest shadow of partiality.”
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HA
Next time: we discover the actual reach of the justice of our laws, and exactly how far a professed belief in a murder suspect’s innocence actually goes, while Victor gets to angst even harder about the fact he thinks he can prove her innocence but he dare not because his proof is unthinkable and lunatic in nature!