Frankenstein; or, the modern prometheus

The evidence was damning: she had been out all night; a market-woman had seen her near the spot at dawn; she had returned distracted; she had fallen into hysterics at the sight of the body. Elizabeth herself proved the miniature was hers. Justine defended herself—she had spent the evening at an aunt’s in Chêne, returned at nine, searched for William, and taken shelter in a barn when the gates closed. Concerning the picture she could give no account. “I commit my cause to the justice of my judges,” she said, “yet I see no room for hope.”

Elizabeth addressed the court, vouching for Justine’s character as the most amiable and benevolent of human creatures. A murmur of approbation followed—but turned back to fury against Justine, charged with the blackest ingratitude. The popular voice and the judges’ countenances condemned her. Victor rushed out in agony, his tortures exceeding hers; she was sustained by innocence, but his fangs of remorse tore his bosom.

In the morning the ballots were all black. Justine was condemned. Worse, she had confessed. Elizabeth broke: “How shall I ever again believe in human goodness?”

They visited Justine in her gloomy cell. She threw herself at Elizabeth’s feet. “I did confess,” she said, weeping, “but I confessed a lie. I confessed that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins. Ever since I was condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was.” She begged Elizabeth to submit in patience to the will of heaven.

Victor hid in a corner, gnashing his teeth. The never-dying worm was alive in his bosom. Elizabeth could hardly tear herself away: “I wish that I were to die with you.”

And on the morrow Justine died. Elizabeth’s eloquence failed; Victor’s passionate appeals were lost. He might proclaim himself a madman, but not revoke her sentence. She perished on the scaffold as a murderess.

From his own tortures Victor turned to Elizabeth’s voiceless grief. “This also was my doing! And my father’s woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling home—all was the work of my thrice-accursed hands!” His prophetic soul foretold more woe: “Again shall you raise the funeral wail. Frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your early, much-loved friend—he bids you weep.”

Thus, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, Victor beheld his loved ones spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to his unhallowed arts.

Frankenstein: Victor’s Despair and the Creature’s First Tale

After Justine’s death, a crushing weight of despair and remorse settled on Victor Frankenstein’s heart, unshakable no matter what he did. Sleep eluded him entirely; he wandered like a tormented evil spirit, haunted by unnameable acts of mischief, even as his heart ached with the love of virtue he had once longed to practice. His father watched the change with clear pain, and gently pleaded with him: “Do you think, Victor, that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved your brother—but is it not a duty to the survivors that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief?” The advice was sound, but it fell flat: remorse and terror had tangled with every other feeling Victor had, and all he could offer his father in return was a look of hollow despair.

They retired to the family home in Belrive. The strict 10 o’clock gate closure had made Geneva feel stifling for Victor, but now he was free. Often, after the rest of the family had gone to bed, he would take a boat out onto the lake and lose himself in miserable reflection. Sometimes, when all around him was peaceful and he was the only unsettled thing in a scene so beautiful and serene, he felt tempted to plunge into the silent lake and let the waters close over him and all his calamities forever. But the thought of Elizabeth, whom he loved tenderly, and of his father and surviving brother stayed his hand—how could he desert them, leaving them exposed to the malice of the fiend he had set loose?

At those moments he wept bitterly, wishing peace would return to his mind, but remorse snuffed out every flicker of hope. His abhorrence of the creature was beyond words; whenever he thought of it, his eyes burned, and he ardently wished to extinguish the life he had so carelessly bestowed. He would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes just to hurl the creature from its summit.

Elizabeth was no longer the happy girl who had wandered the lakebanks with him in better days. She was sad and despondent now, and every hint of pleasure felt like a sacrilege against the dead. “When falsehood can look so like the truth,” she said, “who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. The murderer of William and Justine walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with such a wretch.”

Victor’s anguish was extreme. Elizabeth, kindly taking his hand, said, “My dearest friend, you must calm yourself. There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance that makes me tremble. While we love, while we are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, we may reap every tranquil blessing—what can disturb our peace?” But such words could not redeem his soul from woe. The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake was but a type of him. He sought relief in bodily exercise, bending his steps toward the Alpine valleys and the magnificence of such scenes. He wandered toward the valley of Chamounix, which he had visited in boyhood. Six years had passed: he was a wreck, but nought had changed in those savage and enduring scenes. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung him, the sound of the river raging among the rocks, the dashing of the waterfalls—all spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence, and he ceased to fear or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created the elements.

A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure came across him during the journey, but the kindly influence soon ceased, and he spurred on his animal, striving to forget the world, his fears, and more than all himself. At Chamounix he stood beside the sources of the Arveiron, where vast glaciers approached the road and Mont Blanc raised its tremendous dôme over the valley. These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded him the greatest consolation he was capable of receiving; they elevated him from all littleness of feeling, and though they did not remove his grief, they subdued and tranquillised it.