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Most of our understanding of Victor's appearance comes from Walton. When his sailors first rescue Victor from the iceberg, Walton writes to his sister that:
His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition.
But as time goes on, Walton increasingly sees Victor as a sensitive, refined, and physically attractive man. At first, Victor's eyes are usually wild, but Walton states:
There are moments when, if anyone performs an act of kindness towards him or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance [face] is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equalled. But he is generally melancholy and despairing, and sometimes he gnashes his teeth.
Walton goes on to tell his sister that Victor's
manners are so ... gentle that the...
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sailors are all interested in him ... I begin to love him as a brother, and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable.
The lonely Walton increasingly warms up to Victor and writes to his sister:
I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart.
Walton idealizes him and also mentions the beauty of his voice:
a penetration into the causes of things, unequalled for clearness and precision; add to this a facility of expression and a voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music.
Walton's description of Victor is important for several reasons. First, as our first impression of Victor, it builds reader sympathy for this character. He is intuitive, delicate, once beautiful, suffering, a refined European from the educated classes. We are inclined to listen to his story with sympathy, and it is likely we will be biased in his favor.
Second, he fits the mold of the Byronic hero, the suffering soul tortured by a secret grief and refined, poetic sensibilities. Third, Walton's favorable response to his new friend's good looks starts to establish the importance of physical appearance, a major theme of the novel. Because Victor fits Walton's preconceived notions of looking like a sensitive European, Walton is drawn toward him. It is very possible that Walton's positive response to Victor's physical beauty (or the romantic wreck of it) leads Walton to conclude that Victor's soul is purer than it is. As we will find as Victor tells his story, he has treated the creature he made with deep insensitivity and rejection and has not been a good person towards him. Finally, we perceive how the creature's outward appearance of ugliness leads Walton to reject it, showing the difficulties faced when an outwardly monstrous form covers a soul that wants to be good.
Mary Shelley offers small clues to Victor Frankenstein's appearance throughout her novel, Frankenstein. The first description is provided in Letter IV.
He was not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but an European.
Based upon this limited description, readers can assume that Victor is white, with defined features and brown or blonde hair. He is most certainly not physically unrefined, given Walton fails to define him as a savage.
That said, later in the letter, Walton goes further in physically defining Victor. Victor is emaciated from his search for the Creature. This means that Victor is very thin and, one can assume, his facial features are even more refined given his gauntness. Walton describes Victor's eyes as being both mad and wild. At the same time, his outward disposition speaks of kindness.
Later, throughout the novel, Victor is constantly described as being ill. When working on reanimating life, Victor puts all else on hold. His own health is ignored. Therefore, one can assume that Victor has both a look of one who is educated yet thin from obsessive work.
Like the Creature, Victor's exact physical description is masked. While the missing physical descriptions of the Creature are apparent (Shelley does not want to paint a specific picture of the Creature; instead, she wants readers to create their own mental picture of him), leaving Victor's physical appearance open to interpretation makes him far more curious to us.
One could assume that the only important thing about Victor's physical appearance is that he is thin and uncommonly ill. This sets up the image of the "pale student of unhallowed arts" Shelly pictured in her dream which was the beginning of the novel.