Frankenstein

The stranger begins his account by describing his Genevese family, one of the republic's distinguished families. His father, a respected public official, searches for his impoverished friend Beaufort and finds him only after months of concealment and illness have reduced the household to dependence on Caroline Beaufort's small earnings. Beaufort dies in Caroline's arms. Victor's father places Caroline under a relative's protection, and two years later they marry. He gradually leaves public life, and the couple travels through Italy, Germany, and France as Caroline recovers from the hardships she has endured.

Their eldest child is born in Naples and remains their only child for several years. He remembers his parents as deeply affectionate and conscious of their responsibility to guide the life entrusted to them. When he is about five, Caroline visits a poor cottage near Lake Como and notices a fair-haired girl who is being raised there. The foster mother explains that Elizabeth Lavenza is the daughter of a Milanese nobleman and a German woman who died giving birth. Elizabeth's father lost his property after becoming involved in efforts for Italian liberty, and his fate is unknown.

With Victor's father's permission, Caroline persuades Elizabeth's foster guardians to let the girl join the family. Elizabeth becomes Victor's constant companion, and they call each other cousins. Victor recalls that his mother had playfully called Elizabeth a "pretty present" for him. He says he interpreted the phrase literally, regarding Elizabeth as his to protect, love, and cherish and describing her as "more than sister" and as someone he expected to be his alone.

Victor recalls that he and Elizabeth grow up in harmony despite contrasting dispositions. Elizabeth is calmer and delights in poetry and the beauty of the natural world, while Victor is drawn to investigating causes and the hidden laws of nature. After the birth of a second son seven years younger than Victor, his parents end their wandering life and settle in their native country, dividing their time between a house in Geneva and a country residence at Belrive. Victor avoids crowds and forms his closest friendship with Henry Clerval, a merchant's son fascinated by chivalry, adventure, and heroic action.

Victor describes his childhood as exceptionally happy but says his own intense temperament turns toward the desire to learn the secrets of heaven, earth, nature, and the human soul. At thirteen, while detained by bad weather near Thonon, he finds a volume by Cornelius Agrippa. His father merely glances at the title and calls it "sad trash." Victor later argues that a real explanation of why Agrippa's principles had been superseded might have redirected him, but the casual dismissal instead leaves him unconvinced. He obtains more of Agrippa along with works by Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus and becomes absorbed in the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and attempts to raise ghosts or devils. Wealth interests him less than the possibility of banishing disease and making human beings invulnerable to any death except a violent one.

At about fifteen, Victor watches lightning destroy an oak near Belrive. A man knowledgeable in natural philosophy explains a theory of electricity and galvanism that makes Victor's older authorities suddenly seem insignificant. Victor abandons those studies and, for a time, turns away from natural philosophy toward mathematics. Looking back, he describes this change as a possible last chance to avoid the course that later destroyed him, but says it did not last.

At seventeen, Victor is preparing to leave for the University of Ingolstadt when Elizabeth contracts scarlet fever. Caroline initially agrees to stay away from the sickroom, but when Elizabeth's life is threatened she resumes nursing her. Elizabeth recovers, while Caroline becomes ill and dies. On her deathbed, Caroline joins Victor and Elizabeth's hands, says that her hopes for future happiness rest on their eventual union, and asks Elizabeth to take her place with the younger children.

Victor's departure is delayed while the household mourns. Elizabeth suppresses her own grief to comfort the family and devotes herself to those she calls her uncle and cousins. Henry Clerval spends Victor's final evening with them after failing to persuade his father to let him accompany Victor and pursue a liberal education. Victor leaves reluctantly, but during the journey his anxiety about strangers gives way to renewed excitement about entering the world and acquiring knowledge.

At Ingolstadt, Victor first visits Professor Krempe. Krempe contemptuously dismisses Victor's alchemical authors as obsolete and gives him a list of modern works, but Victor returns home neither disappointed nor more inclined toward those studies. The following week he attends Professor Waldman's chemistry lecture partly from curiosity and idleness. Waldman's account of modern chemistry's achievements awakens Victor's ambition to explore unknown powers and the deepest mysteries of creation.

Victor then visits Waldman privately. Unlike Krempe, Waldman credits the old alchemists' efforts as part of the foundation of later knowledge, recommends that Victor study every branch of natural philosophy including mathematics, explains the laboratory equipment, and promises him future use of the instruments once he is prepared. Victor identifies this day as the one that decides his future destiny.

Victor devotes himself increasingly to natural philosophy and chemistry at Ingolstadt. His application becomes so intense that he often works until dawn. Krempe recognizes his progress despite retaining the manner Victor dislikes, while Waldman becomes a true friend and helps make difficult inquiries understandable. During two years in which Victor does not visit Geneva, he advances rapidly and earns university esteem for improvements to chemical instruments.

As Victor is considering returning home, his interest turns to the structure of living bodies and the origin of life. He studies anatomy, decay, and corruption, spending days and nights in vaults and charnel houses. After sustained work he says he discovers the cause of generation and life and becomes capable of giving animation to lifeless matter. Speaking retrospectively to Walton, Victor refuses to disclose the secret and warns him against pursuing knowledge without restraint.

Victor decides to create a human being and, because small anatomical parts would slow his work, chooses a form about eight feet tall. He imagines a new species blessing him as its creator and hopes that his discovery might eventually permit the restoration of life after apparent death. He gathers bones and other materials from charnel houses, dissecting rooms, and slaughterhouses and works in a secluded chamber at the top of his residence.

As the project continues through the seasons, Victor increasingly neglects correspondence and his former pleasures. He grows pale and emaciated, develops a slow fever and painful nervousness, shuns other people, and recognizes the damage his work is doing to him. Nevertheless, he continues because he believes the project is close to completion and expects exercise and amusement to restore him afterward.

On a rainy November night at about one in the morning, Victor succeeds in animating the body he has constructed. The creature opens a dull yellow eye, breathes, and moves convulsively. Although Victor had selected features he considered beautiful, their combination in the living being fills him with horror and disgust. He leaves the room, eventually falls asleep in his clothes, and dreams that Elizabeth becomes the corpse of his dead mother in his arms.

Victor wakes to find the creature beside his bed, holding back the curtain, making inarticulate sounds, and extending a hand toward him. Victor escapes and spends the rest of the night in the courtyard. At dawn he wanders through Ingolstadt in fear until he reaches the coach stop and unexpectedly sees Henry Clerval arrive. Henry has finally persuaded his father to let him pursue further learning, and Victor is briefly restored by the sight of his friend.

When they return to Victor's residence, Victor makes Henry wait below while he checks the rooms. The creature is gone. Victor's relief becomes uncontrolled excitement: he laughs, jumps over chairs, and behaves so strangely that Henry is alarmed. Victor then imagines the creature seizing him, struggles, and falls in a fit. A nervous fever confines him for several months.

Henry nurses Victor throughout the illness and conceals its full severity from Victor's family because of Victor's father's age and the distress it would cause Elizabeth. Victor repeatedly raves about the creature, leading Henry to conclude that some unusual event lies behind the illness. With spring, Victor gradually recovers. Henry then tells him that his family is anxious over his long silence and shows him a letter from Elizabeth.

Elizabeth writes to Victor because the family remains anxious about his illness despite Henry's regular letters. She reports that Victor's father is well, Ernest is sixteen and wants a military career, and William is thriving. She also recounts Justine Moritz's history: after Justine's father died, her mother treated her harshly, and Caroline brought the twelve-year-old girl into the household. After Caroline's death and the deaths of Justine's siblings, Madame Moritz came to regard those losses as punishment for her earlier partiality, an idea Elizabeth says the woman's confessor reinforced. Justine returned to her mother, endured renewed accusations, and has now come back to the family after Madame Moritz's death.

Victor immediately writes home, though the effort exhausts him. As he recovers, he introduces Henry to the university professors. Victor has developed such a strong aversion to natural philosophy that scientific instruments revive his distress; Henry has already removed the apparatus from sight and changed their apartment. Waldman's warm praise and Krempe's blunt compliments therefore cause Victor pain, although neither professor understands why. Henry notices Victor's discomfort and redirects the conversation without pressing him for the secret.

Henry has come to Ingolstadt to study Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit as preparation for the life he hopes to pursue. Victor joins him in these studies, not seeking the same mastery but using the literature as relief from his former scientific work and unwanted reflection. His planned return to Geneva is delayed through winter, partly because he does not want to leave Henry alone before his friend is established in the city.

In May, Henry proposes a two-week walking tour around Ingolstadt. Exercise, spring scenery, and Henry's companionship strengthen Victor's restored health and spirits. Victor says Henry draws him back toward affection for other people and pleasure in nature, and they return to the university in high spirits.

After returning from the walking tour, Victor receives a letter from his father reporting that William has been murdered. During a family walk at Plainpalais, William disappeared while playing with Ernest and was found dead the next morning with marks of strangulation. Elizabeth had let William wear a valuable miniature of Caroline, and the picture is missing. Convinced that the missing miniature may have prompted the attack, Elizabeth blames herself for letting William wear it.

Victor leaves for Geneva. As he nears home, grief and fear slow his journey, and he spends two days at Lausanne before continuing. Because Geneva's gates are closed when he arrives in the area, he stays at Secheron and crosses the lake at night to visit Plainpalais. During a thunderstorm, lightning reveals the gigantic figure of the creature. Victor immediately suspects it of William's murder and then becomes convinced of that conclusion from its presence and superhuman appearance, although at this stage he has no direct evidence of the killing itself. He watches the figure climb Mont Saleve and resolves not to tell anyone because his account would sound unbelievable and the creature would be difficult to pursue.

At his father's house, Ernest tells Victor that Justine Moritz has been accused. The missing miniature was found in the pocket of the clothes Justine wore on the night of the murder, and her confused reaction when charged increased suspicion. Victor remains certain in his own mind that Justine is innocent. Alphonse hopes she will be acquitted, while Elizabeth insists on her innocence even though others have become persuaded by the evidence.

Victor does not disclose his account of the creature. He reassures Elizabeth that Justine is innocent and will be proved so, while Justine's trial is scheduled for that day.

Justine's trial begins while Victor suffers from the conviction that his creation killed William and that his own actions have therefore placed another innocent person in danger. The prosecution presents circumstantial evidence: Justine was away from home during the night, was seen near where William's body was later found, reacted confusedly when questioned, became ill after seeing the body, and had Caroline's missing miniature in her clothing. Justine explains that she had visited an aunt at Chene, spent hours searching for William, and was locked outside Geneva overnight. She cannot explain how the miniature entered her pocket.

Witnesses speak to Justine's good character but do so hesitantly. Elizabeth then addresses the court, describing Justine's care for Caroline and her own mother, her affection for William, and Elizabeth's confidence in her innocence. The appeal earns admiration for Elizabeth but does not reverse the hostility toward Justine. Victor remains silent about the creature because he believes his account would be dismissed as madness.

Justine is condemned. Victor is then told that she has confessed, which briefly shakes Elizabeth's certainty. In prison, however, Justine tells Elizabeth and Victor that the confession was false. She says her confessor repeatedly threatened her with excommunication and hell if she persisted in denying the charge, and that, isolated and condemned, she signed a lie so she could obtain absolution. Elizabeth immediately renews her belief in Justine's innocence.

Justine is executed the next day. Victor says that both his and Elizabeth's appeals fail to move the judges and that a contemplated avowal dies on his lips because he believes it would only mark him as mad without reversing the sentence. He regards William and Justine as the first victims of the consequences of his creation and ends the chapter in remorse, horror, and fear of further grief.

After Justine's execution, Victor is overwhelmed by remorse, guilt, and fear. He believes that by creating the being he has become responsible in effect for William's and Justine's deaths, and he expects further harm. His state of mind damages his health and drives him away from other people. Alphonse tries to persuade him that excessive grief only increases the suffering of the survivors, but Victor feels that his father's advice cannot address the remorse and terror mixed with his mourning.

The family moves to Belrive, where Victor spends nights alone on Lake Geneva. At times he is tempted to drown himself, but he stops because of Elizabeth, his father, and his surviving brother, whom he fears would be left exposed to the being he created. He longs to destroy the creature and avenge William and Justine. Meanwhile Alphonse's health is shaken, and Elizabeth's grief over Justine changes her view of human justice. She tells Victor that falsehood can look like truth and laments that the murderer remains free. Victor listens in anguish because he regards himself, "not in deed, but in effect," as the true murderer.

Unable to find lasting relief at home, Victor suddenly leaves for the Alpine valleys and travels toward Chamounix, nearly two months after Justine's death. The mountains, river, glaciers, and memories of his youth intermittently lighten his distress, although grief repeatedly returns. He reaches the village exhausted after traveling first on horseback and then by mule and falls asleep to the sound of the Arve.

Victor spends a day among the glaciers near Chamounix, where the landscape subdues but does not remove his grief. The next morning his distress returns. Despite rain and mist, he climbs Montanvert alone and crosses the glacier, seeking the temporary elevation he has previously found in sublime natural scenes.

On the ice, Victor sees a figure approaching with what he describes as superhuman speed and recognizes the being he created. He reacts with rage, accuses it of murder, and tries to attack it. The creature easily avoids him and asks Victor to hear its case before judging it. It argues that Victor has obligations toward the life he made, says it was once benevolent but became vicious through misery and rejection, and warns that it can either withdraw harmlessly from human society or become a source of further destruction depending on Victor's response.

Victor initially refuses, but the creature insists on the right to tell its story and leads him toward a hut. As they cross the ice, Victor weighs its arguments. He says that until this point he has only supposed the creature to be William's murderer and wants confirmation or denial. Curiosity, growing compassion, and his first recognition of possible duties as a creator persuade him to listen before deciding what to do.

They enter the hut, where the creature lights a fire and begins its account.

The creature begins its narrative by saying that its earliest memories are confused. After leaving Victor's apartment, it enters the forest near Ingolstadt and gradually learns to distinguish sensations, seek shade, drink from a brook, eat berries, and respond to light, darkness, cold, birds, and the moon. It recalls itself at this stage as helpless, without distinct ideas or language.

The creature later finds a fire abandoned by travelers. By burning its hand, observing wet wood dry near the heat, and tending the embers, it learns that fire can warm, illuminate, and cook some foods while spoiling others. When food becomes scarce, it leaves the forest without knowing how to reproduce the fire and travels for three days into open country.

At a small hut, an old man sees the creature and flees in terror. The creature eats the food left behind, rests, and continues to a village. There, children scream, a woman faints, and villagers attack it with stones and other missiles. Bruised and frightened, it escapes into a low hovel attached to a cottage.

From the hidden shelter, the creature begins observing the cottage's occupants without yet knowing their identities or relationships. It sees a young woman, a young man, and an elderly man. Their sadness, work, music, and affectionate gestures produce emotions the creature has not previously experienced. At night it watches the younger man read aloud, although at this point it does not understand words or letters.

Following his discovery of the cottage, the creature begins to closely observe its inhabitants, learning from their daily routines and interactions. He notices their gentle manners and deep affection for one another, particularly their care for the blind old man. Through careful observation, he witnesses Agatha managing household duties while Felix works outdoors, creating a picture of their humble but harmonious life together.

The creature soon discovers that despite their apparent contentment, the family suffers from severe poverty. Their diet consists solely of vegetables from their garden and milk from a single cow, with the younger members often sacrificing their own portions to feed the old man. Moved by their plight, the creature stops stealing their food and begins secretly helping them by gathering firewood and leaving it at their doorstep, finding joy in their surprised reactions and the small ways he can ease their burdens.

As winter progresses, the creature makes significant strides in understanding human communication. Through patient observation, he learns to associate words with objects and actions, mastering basic terms like 'fire,' 'milk,' 'bread,' and 'wood.' He also learns the names of the cottagers - Felix, Agatha, and their father - though many words remain mysterious to him. His education extends to understanding the written word as he observes Felix reading to the others, though this skill remains beyond his grasp.

The creature's self-awareness grows alongside his education as he compares his own reflection to the beautiful forms of the cottagers, leading to profound despair over his appearance. Despite this, the arrival of spring brings new hope as he continues to secretly assist the family and dreams of eventually revealing himself to them, believing that his gentle actions and growing command of language might help them overlook his frightening appearance.

As spring advances, a veiled woman arrives at the cottage on horseback and asks for Felix. When she lifts her veil, Felix reacts with immediate joy and calls her his "sweet Arabian." The visitor speaks a language the cottagers do not understand, and she cannot understand theirs, but she is welcomed warmly. That evening the creature hears her name when Felix says good night to Safie.

Safie begins learning the cottagers' language. The creature realizes that he can use the same lessons and follows them from hiding. Safie's music and presence replace much of the household's earlier sadness with happiness, while both she and the creature make rapid progress. Within two months the creature says he can understand most of what the cottagers say, and he also begins learning written letters through Safie's instruction.

Felix teaches Safie from Volney's Ruins of Empires and supplements the text with explanations. By listening, the creature learns about history, governments, religions, property, wealth, poverty, rank, and social inequality. He is struck by humanity's capacity for both virtue and violence and begins comparing society's values with his own lack of ancestry, wealth, property, friends, or anyone resembling him.

The same lessons teach him about parents, children, siblings, and other family relationships. Because he has no remembered childhood, parents, or social kinship, increased knowledge deepens his sense of isolation. He continues to admire the cottagers and calls them his "protectors," but recognizes that his education has intensified his longing to belong among others.

The creature learns that the blind old man's name is De Lacey and that the family once lived comfortably and honorably in Paris. Their ruin began with Safie's father, a Turkish merchant whom the French government imprisoned and condemned to death. Felix happened to attend the trial, judged the sentence flagrantly unjust, and vowed at once to free the prisoner. Only afterward, while arranging the escape, did he meet Safie and fall in love with her. Her father encouraged Felix by promising Safie's hand in marriage, although Felix would not formally accept such a bargain.

Safie's letters to Felix explain that her mother was a Christian Arab who had been enslaved before marrying Safie's father. Her mother taught Safie her religion and encouraged independence of mind, leaving Safie strongly opposed to returning to the restricted life she expected in Turkey. Felix helps Safie's father escape from Paris using passports in the names of De Lacey, Agatha, and himself, then escorts the fugitives through France to Leghorn.

French authorities discover Felix's role. De Lacey and Agatha are imprisoned, and Felix returns to Paris and gives himself up in the hope of freeing them. The effort fails, and the family ultimately loses its fortune and is condemned to perpetual exile. Meanwhile Safie's father, learning of Felix's ruin, withdraws his support for the marriage. He later decides to leave Leghorn immediately for Constantinople, intending Safie to follow later with a trusted servant rather than taking her with him.

Safie instead chooses to seek Felix. Using papers that reveal where the exiled family lives, she leaves Italy with money, jewels, and an attendant. The attendant becomes ill and dies about twenty leagues from the De Lacey cottage. A local woman, knowing their intended destination from the attendant, helps Safie complete the journey. Her arrival therefore explains the sudden happiness the creature had observed in Felix.

The creature says the De Laceys' history deepens his admiration for benevolence and his dislike of human vice. In August he finds a portmanteau containing clothing and three books he can now read: The Sorrows of Werter, a volume of Plutarch's Lives, and Paradise Lost. Werter expands his understanding of emotion and death, Plutarch directs his admiration toward public virtue and peaceful lawgivers, and Paradise Lost affects him most deeply because he reads it as true history and compares himself with both Adam and Satan.

He also studies papers that had been in the clothes he took from Victor's laboratory. They are Victor's journal from the four months before the creature's animation and describe the process of creation and Victor's revulsion. Reading the account intensifies the creature's hatred of his own appearance and his bitterness toward his absent creator.

Despite these fears, the creature continues hoping the cottagers will accept him. He waits for months while improving his language and understanding, then decides to approach De Lacey when the blind man is alone, believing that appearance is the principal cause of other people's horror. When Felix, Agatha, and Safie leave on a walk and the servants are away, the creature enters the cottage and speaks with De Lacey. Without seeing him, De Lacey responds kindly and offers help to the friendless stranger.

The creature finally reveals that the people whose protection he seeks are De Lacey's own household. At that moment Felix, Agatha, and Safie return. Agatha faints, Safie runs from the cottage, and Felix tears the creature away from De Lacey, throws him down, and strikes him with a stick. The creature says he could physically overpower Felix but does not retaliate; overwhelmed by pain and anguish, he escapes to his hovel.

After fleeing the De Lacey cottage, the creature spends the night in rage and briefly imagines destroying the household. By daylight he calms enough to think he may have approached them too abruptly and resolves to try again through De Lacey. When he returns, however, the cottage is empty. He overhears Felix tell the landlord that the family will never live there again because of the danger and horror caused by the encounter. The creature says their departure breaks his only link to the world. That night, after destroying the garden, he sets the abandoned cottage on fire.

The creature decides to travel toward Geneva because Victor's papers, found earlier in clothing taken from the laboratory, identify Geneva as his creator's native city. He travels largely at night. Near Switzerland, spring briefly revives gentler feelings, and he rescues a young girl who falls into a river. A man then takes the girl from him and shoots him. After recovering from the shoulder wound over several weeks, the creature renews his vow of revenge against humanity and continues toward Geneva.

Near Geneva he encounters a young boy and initially imagines taking the child as an unprejudiced companion whom he could educate. The boy recoils from him and says his father is M. Frankenstein. Learning that the child belongs to Victor's family, the creature declares him his first victim and kills him by grasping his throat. This is the first direct confirmation in the narrative that the creature murdered William.

The creature removes a portrait from William's body, later finds a young woman asleep in a barn, and places the portrait in a fold of her dress with the deliberate thought that she should suffer for the murder. He then wanders in the mountains and tells Victor that only a companion like himself can end his isolation. He demands that Victor create a female of the same kind.

After the creature finishes its request for a female companion, Victor initially refuses. The creature argues that its malice comes from misery and rejection and says that if another being could return its affection, it would withdraw from humanity. It promises that the pair will leave for the wilds of South America, live on simple plant foods, and avoid human settlements.

Victor is moved by parts of the argument but repeatedly recoils from the creature and worries that a second being could join it in violence. The creature insists that companionship would remove the cause of its crimes and swears that, if Victor complies, both beings will leave the neighborhood of humanity forever. Victor weighs the creature's earlier capacity for kindness, the effects of rejection, its physical power, its threats, and what he sees as obligations both to it and to other people.

After prolonged reflection, Victor agrees to create a female on the condition that the creature swear to leave Europe and every place near human habitation once she is delivered to him. The creature takes the oath, says it will watch Victor's progress, and departs across the ice.

Victor descends from the mountain through the night and returns immediately to Geneva. His family is alarmed by his haggard appearance, but he barely speaks. He feels separated from their companionship while still loving them intensely and resolves to perform the task he abhors because he believes doing so will protect them.

Back in Geneva, Victor cannot bring himself to begin the promised female creature. He knows that the work will require months of study and that information from an English philosopher is important to the task, but he repeatedly delays taking the first step. As his health and ordinary spirits improve, Alphonse becomes hopeful, although Victor still retreats into solitude whenever the memory of his promise returns.

Alphonse eventually asks whether Victor's unhappiness comes from reluctance to marry Elizabeth or love for someone else. Victor answers that his future hopes remain bound to Elizabeth, but the proposal of an immediate marriage alarms him because he believes he must fulfill his promise first. He therefore asks to travel to England, concealing his actual purpose. Alphonse agrees, hoping travel will restore him, and he and Elizabeth arrange for Henry Clerval to meet Victor at Strasbourg.

Victor leaves Geneva in late September, taking his chemical instruments. He meets Henry at Strasbourg, and they descend the Rhine toward Rotterdam before traveling by sea to England. Henry delights in the landscapes and towns while Victor is preoccupied by the work ahead, though even Victor experiences brief tranquility on the Rhine.

As Victor describes Henry's joy in nature, his retrospective narration breaks from the journey to mourn his friend explicitly, asking where Henry now exists and saying that Henry's physical form has decayed while his spirit remains in Victor's memory. The narrative then returns to the trip, which ends with their approach to London.

Victor and Clerval remain in London for several months. Clerval seeks contact with people of learning and pursues preparations for a long-standing plan to visit India, believing his language knowledge and study of society could assist European colonization and trade. Victor's principal purpose is different: he uses letters of introduction to natural philosophers to obtain information needed for the companion he has promised to create. He also begins collecting materials for that work. Social company is painful to him, while solitude and Henry's presence sometimes provide temporary peace.

After receiving an invitation from an acquaintance in Scotland, the two plan a northern journey through Windsor, Oxford, Matlock, Cumberland, and Westmorland before reaching Scotland. Victor can still respond briefly to historical associations and natural scenery, but memories of William, Justine, Chamounix, and the unfinished promise repeatedly interrupt his pleasure. As the journey continues, he becomes increasingly anxious that delay may expose his family or Henry to the creature's revenge.

They reach Perth after visiting Edinburgh and other Scottish locations. Victor tells Henry that he wants to tour Scotland alone for a month or two. Henry reluctantly accepts. Victor then travels into the northern highlands and chooses a remote Orkney island, where he rents and repairs an empty hut so he can work without observation.

Victor begins constructing the female creature there. Unlike his first experiment, he says he now works without the earlier enthusiastic frenzy and is fully conscious of how repellent the process feels to him. His labor advances unevenly as he alternates between avoidance and prolonged work. He grows restless and nervous, believes the creature is following him, and expects it to appear when the companion is finished.

While working on the female creature in the Orkneys, Victor pauses to consider consequences he says he had not fully faced before. The new being could have a different disposition from the first, reject the earlier creature, refuse a promise made before her creation, or join him in producing children whose descendants might threaten humanity. Concluding that his earlier promise was selfish and dangerous, Victor sees the creature watching through the window and tears the unfinished female to pieces.

The creature later enters Victor's dwelling and demands that he keep his promise. Victor refuses permanently. The creature threatens to make him suffer and ends the confrontation with the warning, "I shall be with you on your wedding-night." Victor interprets this as a threat to kill him on that night and resolves to resist rather than yield. After the creature departs by boat, Victor remains frightened about who might become its next victim.

A letter from Clerval asks Victor to rejoin him at Perth before Henry returns toward London and possibly continues with his Indian plans. Victor decides to leave the island, but first removes his chemical instruments from the laboratory and places the remains of the unfinished female in a weighted basket. He does not discard the instruments. During the night he rows several miles offshore and sinks the basket containing the remains.

Victor then falls asleep in the skiff. A rising wind drives him far from the island, and after hours of fear, thirst, and uncertainty he eventually sees land. He reaches an Irish harbor, where the local crowd reacts with suspicion. A man tells him he must go before the magistrate, Mr. Kirwin, to account for a gentleman found murdered the previous night. The chapter ends before the victim is identified.

In Ireland, Victor is brought before the magistrate Mr. Kirwin. Witnesses testify that fishermen found the body of a young man who appeared to have been strangled, with finger marks on his neck. Daniel Nugent says he saw a single man in a boat near the shore, and other testimony suggests that Victor's boat could have been driven back toward the same coast. Victor's visible agitation at the description of strangulation increases suspicion, although he knows people on the Orkney island can account for his whereabouts at the relevant time.

Kirwin has Victor taken to see the body. The victim is Henry Clerval. Victor immediately connects the death with the chain of destruction he attributes to his creation, collapses in convulsions, and develops a fever that leaves him near death for two months. During his ravings he calls himself the murderer of William, Justine, and Clerval and asks for help destroying the creature; only Kirwin understands the language in which he speaks.

When Victor recovers awareness, he is in prison under the care of a nurse and physician arranged by Kirwin. Kirwin has also examined Victor's papers, found a letter from Alphonse, and written to Geneva. Alphonse arrives and reassures Victor that Elizabeth and Ernest are safe. Victor gradually regains enough strength for the legal proceedings to continue, though he remains consumed by grief and repeatedly wishes for death.

No murder trial takes place. After Victor has spent about three months in prison, the grand jury rejects the bill because evidence proves that he was on the Orkney Islands when Clerval's body was found. Victor is released. He insists on returning toward Geneva to protect his remaining family and seek the creature. He and Alphonse sail from Ireland for Havre-de-Grace. Victor, who has been using a small nightly quantity of laudanum to sleep since his fever, takes twice his usual amount on the voyage and wakes from a nightmare under his father's watch.

Victor and Alphonse reach Paris, where Victor must rest before continuing. Alphonse tries to relieve his suffering without knowing its cause. Victor repeatedly calls himself responsible for William, Justine, and Henry, but refuses to explain the creature because he expects to be judged mad and fears burdening his father with the secret. Alphonse therefore treats the statements as lingering effects of illness and tries to redirect him.

Elizabeth writes from Geneva after hearing from Alphonse. She asks Victor to tell her honestly if he loves someone else and makes clear that she would rather release him than marry him from obligation. Her letter reminds Victor of the creature's wedding-night threat. Victor continues to interpret that warning as a promise to kill him, and he decides that fear for his own life should not delay a marriage that might make Elizabeth and Alphonse happy. He writes reassuring Elizabeth of his love and promises to tell her his secret on the day after their marriage.

About a week later Victor and Alphonse return to Geneva. Victor's periods of rage, torpor, and confused distress continue, but Elizabeth can sometimes calm him. When Alphonse again raises the marriage, Victor agrees that it should occur in ten days. He arms himself with pistols and a dagger because he expects the creature to attack him on the wedding night.

Victor and Elizabeth marry. Their ultimate plan is to go to Villa Lavenza on Lake Como, but on the wedding day they travel by boat only as far as Evian, where they intend to spend the night before continuing the next day. Elizabeth is intermittently joyful and uneasy during the voyage. As they land at Evian around sunset, Victor's fear of the threatened night returns.

Victor and Elizabeth spend their wedding night at an inn in Evian. Victor, still convinced that the creature intends to attack him, keeps a pistol ready and searches the passages and possible hiding places. Believing that a fight would terrify Elizabeth, he sends her to her room while he continues searching. A scream from that room makes him understand the threat too late. He finds Elizabeth dead on the bed with the creature's hand marks on her neck.

Victor then sees the creature at the open window, grinning and pointing toward Elizabeth's body. He fires a pistol, but the creature escapes into the lake. People from the inn join a search by boat and on land, without success. Victor, exhausted and feverish, is taken back inside. Fearing that Alphonse and Ernest may also have been attacked, he returns toward Geneva as quickly as the weather permits.

Alphonse and Ernest are alive, but Alphonse cannot recover from the news of Elizabeth's death and dies in Victor's arms within a few days. Victor then loses clear awareness of his circumstances. He later understands that, after being called mad, he spent many months confined in a solitary cell before being released. The source does not identify this confinement as an asylum.

Once his awareness returns, revenge becomes Victor's dominant purpose. About a month after his release he tells a criminal judge the history of the creature and asks for official pursuit. The magistrate listens with partial belief and promises to use appropriate measures, but says that the creature's described powers make capture likely impracticable. Victor interprets this as disbelief and leaves angry, resolving to devote himself personally to the creature's destruction.

Victor leaves Geneva and swears at the graves of William, Elizabeth, and Alphonse to pursue the creature until one of them dies. The creature hears him and deliberately keeps the chase alive, sometimes leaving tracks, inscriptions, or information that prevent Victor from losing the trail. Victor follows through the Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, Tartary, Russia, and finally the far north. At times he receives food or other relief that he attributes to the spirits he has invoked, while the creature also explicitly leaves provisions on at least one occasion to sustain the pursuit.

Near the Arctic Ocean, Victor obtains dogs and a sledge and eventually comes within about a mile of the creature. The sea ice breaks before he can reach it, leaving him stranded on a diminishing floe until Walton's ship appears. Victor boards because the vessel is traveling north and tells Walton his history. He asks that, if Victor dies and the creature later appears, Walton not let it survive, but he also acknowledges that he cannot demand that Walton undertake the entire pursuit.

Walton's continuation records the consequences of Victor's story. Walton says letters from Felix and Safie and the crew's earlier sighting of the creature strengthen his belief in Victor's account, and he notes that Victor reads, corrects, and augments Walton's written record of the narrative. When the ship becomes trapped in ice, the sailors demand a promise that Walton will turn south if a passage opens. Victor urges them not to abandon the expedition, but Walton ultimately agrees to return. As Victor's health fails, he reexamines his conduct: he says he owed his creature happiness and well-being but believes his duty to humanity was greater and still judges his refusal to create a companion as right. He renews his wish that the creature be destroyed while explicitly leaving Walton to weigh his own duties and admitting that Victor's judgment may still be affected by passion. He dies after warning Walton to seek happiness in tranquillity and to avoid ambition, then immediately qualifying the lesson by acknowledging that another person's ambition might succeed where his failed.

After Victor's death, the creature appears over his body. In speaking with Walton, it directly acknowledges killing Clerval, as well as the other violence of its revenge, and describes the remorse and self-hatred that accompanied and followed its crimes. It does not deny responsibility, though it again recounts the rejection and misery that preceded its turn toward vengeance. The creature says that no further human death is necessary and declares an intention to travel farther north, build its own funeral pyre, and burn its body so that no one can use the remains to create another being like it. Walton does not witness that death. The creature leaves the cabin through the window, steps onto an ice raft, and is borne away until it is lost in darkness and distance.