monsters thirsting for each other's blood
The echo here is pronounced. Only two paragraphs earlier (2.1.2) Victor had recounted his fear
"lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new
wickedness." In Elizabeth's perspective, on the other hand, there is no
alien being to consider as a scapegoat and in whom to localize and therefore
objectify evil. Instead, the potentiality for monstrousness
exists in all human hearts, and in their collective aggregate that is human
society, as Justine's fate demonstrates, this monstrousness can be
institutionalized as an underlying, unrecognized and therefore
dangerous formation. In other words, the monstrous is not external but
within.
