Summary

Several weeks pass, and Victor is still unable to gather the courage to begin work on the creature’s mate. He has heard of an English philosopher whose knowledge he believes would prove essential to his task, but he procrastinates on asking his father for permission to visit England. At the same time, Victor feels his health and mood improving, especially when he is able to temporarily forget about his promise to the creature. When his melancholy does return, he rows out alone on Lake Geneva and takes comfort in nature as he has so many times before. One day when he returns from the lake, his father approaches him and says he believes he has guessed the reason for Victor’s unhappiness. Reminding him that he and Caroline always hoped Victor and Elizabeth would marry, Alphonse asks Victor if his misery stems from feeling pressured to marry Elizabeth against his will. Victor assures his father that he loves Elizabeth and that all his future happiness depends on marrying her. Relieved, Alphonse asks if Victor would consider holding the wedding right away, as he believes the marriage would help to dispel the gloom that lies over the family. Victor, however, doesn’t want to marry Elizabeth before he has freed himself from his deal with the creature. In addition, he still needs to travel to England and is horrified by the idea of conducting his grotesque work on the creature’s mate in the family home. Victor tells his father he wants to visit England before he marries but conceals his true motives for the journey. Alphonse gladly agrees, hoping the holiday will cure Victor of the last of his melancholy. He and Elizabeth arrange for Clerval to meet Victor in Strasburgh so that he won’t be alone. Although this interferes with the solitude he craves, Victor is glad he will have Clerval to distract him from his depressing thoughts and to prevent the creature from approaching him. It is agreed that Victor and Elizabeth will marry immediately upon his return, and Victor looks forward to a peaceful future with Elizabeth as the reward he will claim for all his suffering. Although Victor is troubled by a fear that the creature might attack his family while he is away, his intuition tells him the creature will most likely follow him to England.

Analysis

Just as he did after recovering from the illness that followed his creation of the creature, Victor is able to find temporary relief from his misery as long as he distracts himself from the reality of his situation: that he must now build the creature a companion or face dire consequences. “My spirits,” he says, “when unchecked by the memory of my unhappy promise, rose proportionably.” His attempts to forget his promise to the creature, while in some ways understandable, can also be seen as dangerously irresponsible. The extreme reluctance Victor feels toward his task continues to affect him when he begins to assemble the female creature in the Orkneys and can no longer hide from the reality of his situation.