I would rather . . . friendless outcast over the earth
Here, as Victor recognizes how wholly inverted was truth from
expectation, the ironies become heavy indeed, for, however
extreme his rhetoric, he seems wholly unconscious that this is
the fate he has bestowed upon his Creature. And given that what
he utters here comes with the burden of a sudden shift to the
total retrospect of Walton's cabin, he seems strangely unable to
acknowledge that this is the fate he has bestowed upon himself as
well. From a few days after the marriage onward, Victor does, in
fact, desert Switzerland for ever to
pursue the Creature far and wide across national borders, the two of them
sharing a state of permanent "exile."
