sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in a short time I became as cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion.

Later, in chapter six, the power of nature is seen again. While better than after first seeing the creature awaken, Victor's inability to return home (due to weather and lack of strength) keeps him ill. At one point, Victor receives a letter from Elizabeth telling him of Justine's coming back to the family and her desire for him to be home. In the letter, she reminds Victor of the lake and mountains near their home--which "never change." This seems to offer Victor a sense of solace. Later, after reading the letter and waiting months to return home, Victor finds the same solace in the natural scenery around him (which Elizabeth had reminded him of in her letter).

When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy. The present season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring bloomed in the hedges, while those of summer were already in bud.

One can see from the two previous passages that nature helps Victor out of his despair. It seems that he finds hope in the life he finds in nature. The new buds symbolize the new beginnings Victor hopes to find, once he returns home. Essentially, nature is used to illustrate the hope Victor has in a new life (away from his creature and his obsession with science).

Mary Shelley was a Romantic, and to the Romantics, nature was vitally important. It was a solace, a joy, and a way to commune with the divine source.

Victor, an anguished Romantic hero, shows a great sensitivity and responsiveness to nature. After he undergoes the stress and horror of creating his physically loathsome creature, he goes on a walking tour with Clerval and remarks:

When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy ...

Like a good Romantic, Victor responds emotionally to the natural world. He no longer feels compelled to get to the underpinnings of nature, as he did when he built his creature, but to enjoy its surface.

Victor also finds solace in nature after he learns that William has been killed:

I remained two days at Lausanne, in this painful state of mind. I contemplated the lake: the waters were placid; all around was calm; and the snowy mountains, “the palaces of nature,” were not changed. By degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me, and I continued my journey towards Geneva.

Further, he has a sense of the sublime as he watches a lightning storm unfold on Mount Blanc in the Alps. The sublime is an emotion of mingled terror and awe at the power and majesty of nature, an emotion which the Romantics embraced and took to be a manifestation of divine power:

While I watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, “William, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!”

Victor, as the above quotes show, responds acutely to nature. But nature also reflects his saga. It is not by accident that he has his first real meeting with his creature in an ice cave with a fire burning in it on the top of mountain, a suitably dramatic backdrop for this emotionally fraught encounter. Likewise, as he grows more alienated from society in his lonely pursuit of the creature, the isolated, icy Arctic setting in which he finds himself reflects his desolation.

On one level, I think that a clear argument could be made that nature is significant in Shelley's work because it represents a restorative condition. Nature is equated with restoring that which was once healthy.  Victor's state of mind associates nature with a pristine condition.  It is telling that the man of science sees something beyond rational clutches in the natural setting.  Victor's state of mind is predisposed to seeing nature as pure and representative of holistic:

I feel pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self . . . I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys. 

The "mountain river" contains a condition of being that is beyond what Victor can ever replicate.  Nature is a domain of childhood innocence for Victor:  "I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth . . ."  Nature is a domain that Victor can only aspire, a star in the constellation that guides his very being because it is a part of it. This is how it impacts his state of mind.  For Victor, the power of the natural world is key to his own restoration when the trials of his creation begin to take him over: "We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress."  Victor's state of mind is one that associates nature with the very best of healing qualities. Nature is developed as a refuge from the world, a place where restoration is evident.  In this regard, Shelley embraces a view of nature commonly associated with the Romantic thinkers.

In this novel, the emphasis on the natural world helps to show that Romantic values are far preferable to those associated with the Enlightenment. Victor actually falls ill as a result of his too-intense focus on scientific endeavors; he says that his human nature "turns with loathing" from his activities while he engages in his pursuit. He isolates himself and literally becomes so sick that it takes months, under the tender care of his best friend, Henry Clerval, for him to recover. Only when his fever subsides does he begin to appreciate the beauties of nature again, and just the sight of a scientific instrument makes him feel absolutely ill.

Victor is happiest when he is in nature and miserable when he must go back into the lab to create a companion for his first creature. Henry is always associated with Romantic values and pursuits, but he is eventually destroyed by Victor's Enlightenment creation. One of the only things that has the power to comfort people in the text is nature; knowledge, by contrast, seems dangerous, especially when wielded by someone whose ambition is unchecked. There is no such danger or destruction that results from the Romantic value placed on nature, companionship, and creativity.

Resonating with the credo of the Romantics, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein explores the conflict of science and its accompanying lure of ambition against what is natural.  Chapters 12 and 13 of the novel reveal that Victor's creature is innately the "noble savage" of Rousseau who is inspired by the beauty of nature; he is sensitive and altruistic, and he grows to love the Delaceys with whom he experiences vicariously some of the joys of family.  In short, he has been born to be good, but the evils of his artificial assemblage by Victor's electrical experiment cause his deformity which turns others against him as they perceive only an aberration from nature.  The creature then becomes torn between tenderness and vengefulness against his creator.

Mary Shelley's work became one of the triumphs of the Romantic movement because readers and philosophers alike identified with the themes of alienation from nature and its warning relevant to their Industrial Age against the destructive power of technology that is "unfettered by moral and social concerns." Throughout Frankenstein, those who are close to nature such as Henry Clerval, Victor's friend, balance their lives with study and the enjoyment of nature and personal relationships. 

With Henry, Victor is always at peace.  As they travel through Switzerland, Victor enjoys the beauty of Mt. Blanc and the Alps and the beautiful Lake Como, Italy.  In Bavaria, he travels on the beautiful Danube; in England he and Henry visit Oxford and other historic sights.  Nevertheless, while there is beauty in the Alps, the whiteness of this natural setting also symbolizes the spiritual absence in Victor's life. The barren island and the "appalling landscape" and cave in which Victor begins to fashion a second creature, symbolize the "detestable occupation" in which Victor is involved.  Clearly, throughout the narrative of Frankenstein, actions against nature are symbolized by "appalling" sights, indicating the corruption of the soul which results from scientific endeavors that exclude moral responsibility.