the image of my former self
Although there is some small hint of this function for Clerval in various
parts of the first volume, only here, after the establishment of a complex
doubling between Victor and the Creature, does Mary Shelley extend the
pattern to involve Clerval. Given Mary Shelley's setting Clerval within
the context of Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" in the previous chapter
(3.1.8), it is hard not to hear in this
phrase the timbres Wordsworth addresses to his sister in that poem (lines
116-19).
