2 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2019
    1. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour.

      Robert imagines the cold North Pole as a sunny garden, suggesting a kind of Paradise as the destination toward which his scientific quest is moving. This is one of many affinities to Victor, whose fall into the profane knowledge of modern science also links him to Adam's expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

    2. I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle

      Robert's expedition hopes to reach the magnetic North Pole. Contemporary scientific debates suggested magnetism as the most powerful natural force responsible for life. For a full account of magnetism and electricity in the novel and its offspring, see Iwan Rhys Morus, Frankenstein's Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early Ninteenth-Century London (Princeton University Press, 1998).