You will not hear
It goes without saying that if Margaret Saville hears nothing of her
brother's fate, we will never read this novel. Thus, even as Walton is
apprehensive about his future, we know that he will survive. This is
something more, however, than a conventional expression of fear or a plea
for pity, being rather another instance of Mary Shelley's accentuating the
instability of her text and the innumerable contingencies surrounding all
authorship, whether we think of the result as her novel or Victor's Creature.
