mine -- mine to protect, love, and cherish
How well Victor Frankenstein fulfills what he considers his obligation by
Elizabeth will unfold in the sequel. To some extent Mary Shelley is
playing to a sentimental conception of ellective affinity in this
portrayal, and certainly she is attempting from the start to strengthen
the romantic attachment Victor feels for Elizabeth. At the same time,
the extreme possessiveness of Victor's attitude is a characteristic from
which, in her personal life, she would have recoiled; and it is therefore
no unusual stretching of the rhetoric that would lead a reader to see in
Victor's sense of duty an implicitly demeaning condescension that
reinforces an inherently masculinist notion of power.
- Critical Approaches:
- Themes:
