dreaded spectre
The phrase demonizes the Creature, lending him the aura of an otherworldly
existence. The overwrought language of this paragraph, appropriate as it
may be to Victor's hysterical condition, is one of the few times in the
novel where Mary Shelley indulges in the stock properties of the Gothic.
By its melodramatic indulgence it testifies, if only in contrast, to the
general stylistic restraint with which Mary Shelley vests her novel.
