conversed with my family
Such incongruity of tone can have its value (though Mary Shelley did
decide in the third edition to remove the family presence altogether from
Victor's excursion to Mont Blanc). We
will shortly be reminded that there
is another part of Victor's family he has assiduously avoided and to
whom, unlike his conventional family, he has given no solicitude
whatsoever. The oddity of tone here, quickly rectified by the gloomy
weather of the next morning, almost unconsciously prepares us for the
conversation so feared and so long postponed but now, given the
state of Victor's psychological condition, clearly urgent.
