that half kind of belief
With so many allusions to Coleridge's writings governing the
exposition of this novel, including the very notion of such a reiterated
self-justification as Victor is presenting (see 3.6.6 and note),
it would not be surprising to see this remark as a recasting of his fine
distinction between truth and the "willing suspension of disbelief" in
literature (see excerpt from Biographia
Literaria, Chapter 14). But, in fact, there is no assurance that
Mary Shelley would have come upon
the formulation in time to have inserted it into the novel. P. B. Shelley is recorded as having
finished Coleridge's Biographia Literaria on 8 December 1817. Frankenstein was
advertised as published on 1 January 1818.
