He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger
There is no explanation for why Mary
Shelley remakes Henry Clerval in so
robust an athletic mode, replacing the dreamy, poetical (and Shelleyan)
figure of the first edition. Perhaps it is Victor who renders the
substitution, mindful of Walton's commitment to "enterprise," a word
that, starting with the first sentence of the novel (Letter 1.1), he
uses six times in his initial letters to his sister (see also Letter 1.4, Letter 2.1, Letter 2.3 twice, and
Letter 4.6). (A context in Milton's
Paradise Lost is noted in
the latter.) Admittedly, it requires some stretching of the imagination
and the text to force a Satanic context upon Henry Clerval: it may well
be that by 1831 the original contextual referents for Mary Shelley have
diminished or have been replaced by new emphases, in this case that of
masculine heroism -- the ardour so repetitiously invoked by her male
protagonists.
- Characters:
- Contexts:
- Themes:
