Summary

Victor and Elizabeth spend that evening walking along the lakeshore, then enjoying the view from the inn. As soon as night falls and a storm breaks out, Victor feels his fears revive. Elizabeth notices his agitation. Hoping to spare her the sight of the combat he expects to engage in with the creature, Victor asks her to wait for him in a separate room while he keeps watch. Just as he is beginning to think the creature won’t appear after all, he hears Elizabeth scream. Victor bursts into the room to find his wife lying dead on the bed. He faints, and when he regains consciousness he finds himself surrounded by the terrified guests and staff of the inn. He immediately rushes over to Elizabeth’s body, where he finds the telltale marks of strangulation on her neck. As he embraces his wife’s corpse in despair, he is horrified to see the creature standing at the window in the moonlight, grinning and pointing at Elizabeth’s body. Victor fires his pistol but misses, and the creature runs into the lake. He and the other guests and staff of the inn spend several hours unsuccessfully attempting to track down the creature by boat. When Victor tries to help a search party scour the countryside on foot, he collapses from exhaustion and is carried to bed. After a while he returns to the room where Elizabeth’s body has been laid out, where he realizes he needs to return to Geneva to protect his remaining family members.

Victor finds his father and brother safe at home, but the news of Elizabeth’s death proves too much for Alphonse, who dies a few days later. Victor suffers a breakdown and spends the next several months in a solitary cell in an asylum, where he gradually recovers and resolves to seek revenge on his creation. A month after his release he tells his story to a local magistrate and demands that the creature be made to answer for his crimes. The magistrate does not appear to believe the story but, intimidated by Victor’s rage and apparent madness, promises to try to bring the creature to justice. He warns Victor, however, that this will probably prove impossible given the creature’s superhuman powers and unknown whereabouts. Sensing that the magistrate is not taking him seriously, Victor flies into a rage and vows to destroy the creature himself before storming out of the house.

Analysis

Elizabeth’s murder forms the climax of the novel and deals Victor the fatal blow that destroys any chance he had at finding happiness. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth has been portrayed as “saintly,” pure, infinitely kind, caring, compassionate, and good—an embodiment of all the feminine ideals of the era and of the archetype of the passive, virtuous woman. She has shown Victor nothing but love and acceptance—something Victor never showed to his creation—and a peaceful future with her has constituted the sum of Victor’s hopes. Now, through the creature, Victor finds himself responsible for the death of the woman he loved, idolized, and once thought of his own “cherished possession.” In murdering Elizabeth, the creature has achieved revenge for the destruction of his own intended companion as well as destroyed the living embodiment of the feminine affection and kindness he has longed to receive, thereby symbolically destroying all that remained of his desire for love and admiration of goodness. Just as the creature became entirely focused on hatred and revenge after Victor destroyed his unfinished mate, revenging himself on his hated creation becomes the sole purpose of Victor’s life when he recovers from the breakdown he suffers after the deaths of Elizabeth and Alphonse. (Incidentally, Shelley never reveals what becomes of Victor’s only surviving family member, Ernest Frankenstein.) Now almost as isolated from society as the creature, Victor seeks help by bringing his story to a local magistrate. His decision to finally share his secret, however, is rendered futile by the fact that the creature has already completely destroyed his life—and by the fact that, just as he feared after William’s murder, his incredible story is viewed as madness. Everyone who might have believed Victor’s tale is dead, at least in part because he kept his secret to himself and chose to remain passive. It appears to be too late for either Victor or the creature to find peace or redemption now.