the amiable Falkland
Sir Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, was one of the principal Cavaliers
in the service of Charles I. He died at the Battle of Newbury on 20
September 1643. His name and exalted notion of honor were, it would
appear, used by William Godwin as
models for the hero-villain Count Ferdinando Falkland of The Adventures
of Caleb Williams. Today Falkland's fame is sustained by his serving
as one of the subjects of Ben Jonson's enduring tribute "To the Immortal
Memory and Friendship of That Nobel Pair Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H.
Morison," one of the first true odes in the English tradition.
The somewhat surprising emphasis on royalist values in this paragraph is
suggestive of a historical politics far removed from that elsewhere
insinuated into Frankenstein (see, for instance, 2.5.5) or shared by Mary Shelley with
her father and Percy. These
references are perhaps best explained within
the context of the novel William Godwin published about a month before
Frankenstein appeared, Mandeville: A Tale of the Seventeenth
Century in England. The protagonist of that novel is an
ultra-Royalist who, as his cause deteriorates, retreats further and
further into morbid self-obsession. The emotional dynamics of Mandeville,
if not the portraiture itself, are consonant with the psychological makeup
of Victor Frankenstein.
- Contexts:
- People:
- Themes:
