Frankenstein

Robert Walton writes to his sister Margaret Saville from an expedition seeking a northern passage and new geographical knowledge. In Arctic ice his crew first sees a gigantic figure traveling by sledge and later rescues an exhausted stranger. The stranger, Victor Frankenstein, tells Walton his history. Victor describes his Genevan childhood with Elizabeth Lavenza and Henry Clerval, his early attraction to older natural philosophers, and his later studies at Ingolstadt. He discovers a method of giving life to lifeless matter, constructs a large human form, and animates it, but immediately recoils from the being he has made and abandons it. Henry nurses Victor through the nervous fever that follows.

After Victor's young brother William is murdered and Justine Moritz is condemned on circumstantial evidence, Victor sees the creature near Geneva and becomes convinced that it killed William, although direct confirmation comes later. The creature confronts Victor on a glacier and insists on telling its own history. It describes learning sensation, fire, language, reading, and human relationships while secretly observing the De Lacey household; Safie's arrival lets it follow language lessons, and books including Paradise Lost deepen its understanding of itself and society. It also reads Victor's laboratory journal. After Felix attacks it when it tries to approach the De Laceys, the creature turns increasingly toward revenge. It later tells Victor directly that it killed William and planted the portrait that became evidence against Justine. It demands a female companion and promises that, if Victor creates one, the pair will leave Europe and human society. Victor eventually agrees.

Victor travels through England and Scotland while gathering information and materials, then begins the female creature on a remote Orkney island. He destroys the unfinished body after considering that the second being could reject the first creature, refuse an agreement made before her creation, or reproduce with him. The creature answers by warning Victor that it will be with him on his wedding night. Victor interprets the threat as directed at his own life. Soon afterward he lands in Ireland and is shown Henry Clerval's strangled body. He is detained but never tried for the murder because evidence proves that he was on the Orkneys when the body was found. Back in Geneva, Victor marries Elizabeth while preparing to defend himself. At the inn in Evian, however, the creature kills Elizabeth while Victor searches elsewhere for the attack he expects. Alphonse Frankenstein dies within days of hearing the news. After months of confinement following his collapse and an unsuccessful attempt to obtain official help against the creature, Victor devotes himself to pursuit.

The creature deliberately leaves tracks, messages, and occasional provisions that keep Victor following it across Europe, Russia, and eventually the frozen Arctic sea. When Victor comes within about a mile of his quarry, breaking ice separates them and leaves him stranded until Walton's ship rescues him. Walton records Victor's account and notes that Victor corrects and augments the written narrative. When the ship becomes trapped, Walton's sailors demand a return south if the ice opens. Victor urges them to continue, but Walton ultimately agrees to return. Near death, Victor says that he did owe his creation happiness and well-being, yet still judges his duty to humanity greater and renews, with explicit qualifications, his wish that the creature be destroyed. After Victor dies, the creature appears over his body and speaks with Walton. It acknowledges killing Clerval and the other violence of its revenge, describes its remorse, and says that no further human death is necessary. It declares that it will travel farther north, build a funeral pyre, and burn itself. Walton does not witness that death. The creature leaves on an ice raft and is lost in darkness and distance.