11 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2019
    1. This circumstance, added to his well known integrity and dauntless courage, made me very desirous to engage him. A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character, that I cannot overcome an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship: I have never believed it to be necessary; and when I heard of a mariner equally noted for his kindliness of heart, and the respect and obedience paid to him by his crew, I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in being able to secure his services. I heard of him first in rather a romantic manner, from a lady who owes to him the happiness of her life. This, briefly, is his story.

      In this addition to the 1831 edition, Walton turns the focus of this passage about the ship’s master onto himself and how his older sister fostered him somewhat like a mother and helped build his character. Where 1818 says little about Mrs. Saville’s character, Walton now likens her to Elizabeth, who will also act as a mother figure to Victor Frankenstein after his own mother’s death. The 1831 edition more strongly accentuates the domestic world throughout the new version.

    2. 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.

      This revision to 1831 emphasizes Elizabeth's "sensibility" and "intellect" as a full grown woman and her "slight and graceful" figure.

    3. Among these there was one which attracted my mother far above all the rest. She appeared of a different stock.

      In 1831 Shelley makes one of the most controversial revisions of the 1818 edition. In the 1818, Elizabeth is a blood relation--Victor's first cousin--since she is the daughter of his father's brother. In the 1831 edition, Elizabeth is instead "discovered" by Caroline. Caroline notices a comely blonde girl "of a different stock" among the dark-eyed, Italian "vagrants." When Caroline learns that Elizabeth is the daughter of a Milanese nobleman and a German woman she decides that Elizabeth and Victor should someday marry. Thus the potential implication of incest in 1818, when Victor eventually weds his cousin, is erased in 1831.

      See, for instance:

      Ketterer, David "Thematic Anatomy: Intrinsic Structures" in Frankenstein: Bloom's Major Literary Characters, ed. Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004), 33-54; Richardson, Alan "Rethinking Romantic Incest: Human Universals, Literary Representation, and the Biology of Mind." New Literary History 31, no.3 (2000): 553-572; Twitchell, James B. Forbidden Partners: The Incest Taboo in Modern Culture (New York: Columbia UP, 1987).

    4. All praises bestowed on her, I received as made to a possession of my own. We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin

      When Victor calls Elizabeth "cousin" in the 1831 edition, the word is a term of endearment but not a term to take literally, since they have no blood relation. The term likely carries over, but with an entirely changed meaning, from the 1818 edition where Elizabeth actually is Victor's cousin (the daughter of his father's brother).

      It is true, however, that incest was of significant fascination to Shelley. Her novella Mathilda, published posthumously in 1954, concerns the relationship of a woman with her father. After sending the manuscript of Mathilda to William Godwin, he told Shelley he found the depiction of incest "disgusting and detestable," and refused to return the manuscript to his daughter.

      See Janet Todd's edition of Mary's novel:Shelley, Mary. Matilda; with Mary and Maria, by Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 1992, p. xvii.

    5. 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. I tried to calm Ernest; I enquired more minutely concerning my father, and her I named my cousin. “She most of all,” said Ernest,

      In 1818, Ernest refers specifically to their father's grief, but in 1831 this is replaced with a more general reference to the family and Elizabeth's self-recriminations color Victor and his brother Ernest's exchange.

    6. It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning, and to rush into the thick of life. I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. I was unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained to me; and, above all, I desired to see my sweet Elizabeth in some degree consoled. She indeed veiled her grief, and strove to act the comforter to us all. She looked steadily on life, and assumed its duties with courage and zeal. She devoted herself to those whom she had been taught to call her uncle and 31cousins. Never was she so enchanting as at this time, when she recalled the sunshine of her smiles and spent them upon us. She forgot even her own regret in her endeavours to make us forget.

      In this revision for 1831 Elizabeth's comportment following her mother's death is altered slightly from an "imperious duty" to give care to her family, to a willfully "veiled" grief in an effort to forget her sorrows.

    1. In this description of our domestic circle I include Henry Clerval

      Like Elizabeth, Henry is made part of the family and shares what Mary Shelley often call its "domestic affections" that Victor's later actions imperil.

    2. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to your younger cousins

      With Victor's mother's death, her wish for Elizabeth to assume her motherly role begins a series of symbolic family roles that Elizabeth will occupy: mother to the children, "my more than sister" to Victor, and eventually wife to Victor.

    3. her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms

      Victor's intensely morbid association of Elizabeth with his dead mother, prefigured by his mother's death from scarlet fever in Chapter 1 of Book 1, associates his act of creating the Creature (whom he has just witnessed for the first time) with this disturbing disruption of the "domestic affections."

    1. When my father became a husband and a parent, he found his time so occupied by the duties of his new situation, that heAs my father’s age encreased he became more attached to the quiet of a domestic life, and he gradually

      This revised description of Victor's father in the Thomas Copy softens his character, and grounds him within a space of domestic affection that would be further emphasized in revisions to the 1831 edition of the text.

    2. No youth could have passed more happily than mine. My parents were indulgent, and my companions amiable. Our studies were never forced; and by some means we always had an end placed in view, which excited us to ardour in the prosecution of them. It was by this method, and not by emulation, that we were urged to application. Elizabeth was not incited to apply herself to drawing, that her companions might not outstrip her; but through the desire of pleasing her aunt, by the representation of some favourite scene done by her own hand. We learned Latin and English, that we might read the writings in those languages; and so far from study being made odious to us through punishment, we loved application, and our amusements would have been the labours of other children. Perhaps we did not read so many books, or learn languages so quickly, as those who are disciplined according to the ordinary methods; but what we learned was impressed the more deeply on our memories.badWith what delight do I even now remember the details of our domestic circle, and the happy years of my childhood. Joy attended on my steps—and the ardent affection that attached me to my excellent parents, my beloved Elizabeth, and Henry, the brother of my soul, has given almost a religious and sacred feeling to the recollections of a period passed beneath their eyes, and in their society.

      This revision is one of the most important in the Thomas Copy, indicating how Mary had begun rethinking the novel in substance as early as 1823. From the 1818 edition she eliminates a detailed, careful account of how Victor and Elizabeth were educated by their Enlightenment parents. The first version had made a special point of indicating how this family education was not inculcated by punishments, but presented to the children as an adventure in knowledge, as well as preparing Victor for the kind of rigorous study he would later undertake in the modern sciences. Instead of this pedagogical detail, Mary generalizes about Victor's happy childhood and replaces the details of education with the idea of a "religious and sacred feeling" that is inimical to the secular education described in 1818. While the cancelled text remains absent his section is expanded further in the 1831 edition.