Commentaire du chapitre 10 de Frankenstein de Mary Shelly

This text is an extract from the English author Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein published in 1818. The story is about V.F a young scientist who creates a creature during an experiment. It is infused with elements of the Gothic novel but also the Romantic Movement. In this handout, the story takes place in Switzerland where Victor is trying to escape his feeling of guilty and sadness but also tries to forget the monster he created through nature and the landscapes. But, how does the description of nature tells us about V’s mind?

1) Emotional anarchy: an opposition of two natures
- It seems to be an ambivalence of feelings. In fact, Victor is enduring a hard time when it comes to his feelings: they change a lot and quickly as if himself was overwhelm by what’s going on: sometimes he seems to be in peace with himself (l12: great consolation; l14: they subdued my grief and tranquillized it) but sometimes he does not (l.24: dark melancholy; l72: my heart was swelled with joy)
-Also, the ambivalence and the anarchy of his feelings are seen thanks to the disorder and the destruction that Victor gives to the nature around him: he speaks about avalanches that will maybe crash down on his dead (l.8/9) knowing that before he was just speechless about what he is seeing.
-So his emotional state and jumps from one emotion to another (sadness, joy, fear). It is either good or bad.
-Confusion in his thoughts, he can’t bear anxiety anymore, immense melancholy: this loneliness creates the readers pity
-He seems to want to destroy this duality and to fight against all of this. In fact, he chooses to ascend to the summit of the mountain which shows his courage and his determination to overcome the difficulties he’s going through. Moreover, climbing the mountain means climbing his troubles.
-The fact that he’s totally lost is confirmed l.55/58. The fact that he talks about the wind and chance shows that he sees his life as a heap of chance and of hazard.
-his state of mind has an impact over the description of the nature. It seems to be a mix of pleasure and horror or fear.  l.32 “sublime ecstasy” l.36 “grandeur of the scene” l.69 “wonderful and stupendous scene” but then there is a lexical field of destruction and anxiety l.41 “broken” l.42 “entirely destroyed” l.49 “severity” l.52 “dark sky” l.53 “melancholy impression”

2) Natures a healing force: typical of the Romantic literature
-However, there’s an important presence of the sublime here. In fact, here Victor feel very small compared to nature but at the same time he feels important thanks to the beauty of the landscapes
-pathetic fallacy with the importance of feelings and emotions, the nature reflects the emotional state of the person and there’s an important presence of the “I” as if we were in a poem. So it seems to be very lyrical, plus as nature is the setting, it gives us the impression of reading a book of Romanticism.
-Impression that time is suspended thanks to the meticulous details that V gives us l.44-48 and l.50-53.
-nature restores and refreshes his soul, the beauty is restorative. Admiration for nature seems a little bit ironic as we know that his wish was to unlock nature’s secret as he wanted to create life. Also it is a romantic tradition to seek solace in nature.
-The chaos of the landscape shows to V that if he escapes from his responsibility he will die soon (tragedy). It is typical of romantic literature that humans are worried about their short-life.

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