been destroyed
Victor suddenly shows a political consciousness that has not been active
up to this point. The context suggests that the enclosed world of the
domestic affections, governed by a feminine sensibility, is threatened --
and through history actually destroyed -- by the masculinist drive for
power. This is a sentiment with which both her father William Godwin and her husband
Percy Bysshe Shelley would have
agreed. In the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars and the reinstitution of
reactionary monarchies across Europe, it is a sentiment not in accord
with the prevailing state of political opinion in England.
It could be argued that Victor simply serves momentarily as mouthpiece for
the author's pointedly liberal views to surface. What would complicate
that supposition is the fact that this series of political failures is
identical with those the Creature derives from the oral reading of
Volney's Ruins of Empire by Felix De
Lacey (see 2.5.4). If we focus on that
identity retrospectively, we are suddenly confronted with the amazing fact
that Victor, whether he registered it or not, will actually learn
something concrete from the Creature's narration in the second volume of
the novel.
