I could not collect the courage
When one examines the chronology of this novel, Victor's inaction or
procrastination or incapacity, however one denominates it, almost seems
more its impetus than his earlier obsessiveness. After a six months'
illness at Ingolstadt, Victor spends
an entire year doing almost nothing there (1.5.8). Urgently recalled to Geneva by William's death, he is stopped
for two days when he reaches Lausanne by a sense of undefined dread
(1.6.5). Although he is certain of
Justine's innocence, he is incapable of doing anything to support it and
watches her trial and execution in helpless frustration. There ensues, as
the first sentence of the second volume indicates, a "dead calmness of
inaction and certainty" (2.1.1) from
which Victor is roused by the expedition to Mont Blanc. In all, this trip takes just
four days, and he returns from it to his family "passive to all their
arrangements" (1818: 2.9.7). The way
in which a sort of psychotic trauma wholly blocks the ability to act is
likewise a major theme of Byron's Manfred (1817), which also grew out of the
Geneva summer of 1816.
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