Part 6 - Victor and the fallen angel
Victor now pursued his studies intensively –
“examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me … I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter … I might in process of time renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption ...”
He worked away unremittingly, forgetting about his surroundings and his friends, and growing pale and emaciated in his secret toil at this one pursuit –
“but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed … I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade, than an artist occupied by his favourite employment ...”
Until …
“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils ... when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs … I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room ...”
“… Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.” [from Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.”]
Victor took refuge in the courtyard for the remainder of the night, and upon returning to his room the next day, he found that the demon was no longer there, it must have fled. His friend Henry Clerval arrived that same day, and he nursed Victor back to health from his ‘nervous fever’ – as Victor was always imagining and expecting the return of his demon to seize him. Victor remained at the university for another year, but with the lurking thought of that fatal night, he had acquired ‘a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy’.
Then Victor received a letter from his father, telling him of the murder of his youngest brother, William, and he immediately set off for home. Upon arriving at Geneva, at night during a thunderstorm, he went to visit the scene of William’s murder, and:
“perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me … it was the wretch, the filthy dæmon, to whom I had given life. 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 ...”
In the morning, he arrived at the house of his father, and he thought of telling everyone about this creature and that they should begin a pursuit of him.
“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 so Victor decided to remain silent!
And even when a servant girl, Justine, who had been adopted into his father’s household, was wrongfully accused of the murder, Victor remained silent!
During her trial, she had confessed in order to obtain absolution – her confessor threatened her with ‘excommunication and hell fire’ unless she would admit guilt. But all during the trial, and when she was executed the next day, Victor still remained silent about the creature.
And ‘the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold’, but by his silence, his remorse turned to his despair - ‘when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?’ – and now, he only wished for revenge upon the creature.
I think that Mary is telling us, that by remaining silent, his remorse was not tempered with a sense of compassion, and so that remorse turned to despair and then to revenge!
Later, while wandering along one of the Alpine valleys, to try to forget about his despair, Victor saw a large figure approaching – the wretch that he had created!
“I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach, and then close with him in mortal combat.”
Victor said to him:
“Oh! That I could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!”
The fiend replied with a threat:
“You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends …”
And here Mary begins comparing the fiend to the fallen angel [from Paradise Lost], who uses guilt and pity (instead of compassion) to persuade Victor into doing what he wants:
“Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous … Hear my tale, it is long and strange.”
And now, the demon would tell his story to Victor.