heart-rending eloquence
Both Elizabeth and Victor, endeavoring to alter the verdict through a
rhetoric that would move the judges' hearts, completely fail in their
attempt. Once again, eloquence is placed at the center of the discourse
and in a highly problematic light. Why it is so problematic might best be
gauged by comparing this work to the major poem that Percy Bysshe Shelley
was writing simultaneously with it, The Revolt of Islam. There the
heroine Cythna so moves the hearts of her auditors through her eloquent
appeals to their common humanity as to foment a radical revolution that
overthrows the tyranny that has oppressed them. Although it is a
conspicuous feature of Cythna's presence, Canto 8 of that poem is exemplary
since it is entirely devoted to this process.
In the Shelleys' household, then, eloquence holds a privileged place as a
tool of non-violent political reform. Where it fails so grievously as
here, the consequences may be very great. That Mary Shelley is herself
aware of this dimension may be inferred from her letter of June 1 1816 where she calmly notes of
the French "liberation" of Switzerland
in 1798 that all "the
magistrates . . . were shot by the populace during that
revolution." It may give the reader pause to realize that one of those
actual magistrates, were he still himself among the living, would have
been Alphonse Frankenstein.
