Name Us
                       A d v e r t i s e m e n t
     At the end of Shelley’s novel, enervated readers think that
Victor Frankenstein is dead. Walton writes, “Margaret, what
comment can I make on the untimely extinction of this glorious
spirit?” The mentally and morally robust reader, however, steps
back five paragraphs for some pertinent information. There Uncle
Bob says that he “often thought that life [Victor’s] was entirely
extinct”. Indeed, for at least a week, Victor  has been lapsing into a
state of “apparent lifelessness,” as the robust reader finds in the
second paragraph of the entry for September 5th. The need to
review,  retrace, reread, in order to understand present possibilities,
demonstrated by such construction in Frankenstein, shows that the
novel is a religious exercise. That is, of course, religious in the
sense of the word described on page 6. (see Brentano)
     The quoted letter on the opposite page is entirely consistent
with what Shelley had written up to that point. Uncle Bob is not a
doctor. He doesn’t know whether Victor is dead or alive. He often
thinks he knows something he doesn’t know, and sometimes he
thinks he knows better than a doctor. “The surgeon gave him a
composing draught, and ordered us to leave him undisturbed.” Did
we? To whom does Uncle Bob’s word “us” refer? Twice Victor
speaks to Uncle Bob, after “we” are ordered to leave. It is not
difficult to imagine what has been happening since the doctor
ordered that Victor be left alone. He falls into that state of apparent
lifelessness, each time eliciting from Uncle Bob expressions of grief,
which disturb Victor’s much needed rest. “Us” includes the
unthinking reader, the reader who has not been paying any more
attention than Uncle Bob has been paying to the real needs of the
person he has been attempting to save. Here Uncle Bob’s moral
tendency to restore Victor to health is having the opposite effect,
because his moral tendency is not being guided by what Godwin
calls “the principled use of knowledge already in hand”. This fits
with what was promised in the preface, which suggests that moral
tendencies may cause us discomfort.
     There is an advantage to the Saville family point of view with
regard to the actual end of Walton’s account. The novel is printed
and bound. Walton’s story in the Saville home is handwritten. The
reader who has not adopted the Saville point of view will not
imagine the scrutiny Uncle Bob’s letters underwent. The robust
reader will have to exercise those “untried resources of mind” to
arrive at some idea of what Walton’s story looked like before
Victor so altered it.
                                          12  [Next][Exit tour]
                    To a Candid World, Copyright 1998, Thomas Wolfsehr publisher