To Suggest That Victor’s Fainting Spells (which Contrary To Popular Belief Only Occurred Twice, But

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victor's grief for henry

in all of the frankenstein analysis ive read here, be it you interpret the creature as ugly or only uncanny valley or just a baby with scary eyes, ive not once seen someone mention this line, just after the creature’s awakening:

like?? this should be pivotal, shouldn’t it? that victor acknowledged that the creature was ugly before he brought him to life?

my take on dorian gray. hi

i can be your angle...or yuor devil

it's immediately clear that both the creature and victor find some of their greatest comforts in nature and that's one of the key features that connects them and proves they're not so different from each other, but i've also noticed that they tend to admire different TYPES of nature

victor tends to amaze at "the high and snowy mountains [...] immense glaciers [...] the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche [...] the supreme and magnificent mont blonc" (65), typically finding the most comfort in the "savage and enduring scenes" (64) which tend to be colder and rougher yet unchanging; while the creature found that his "chief delights were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of summer" (94). there is probably something to be said about the creature's affinity for spring and summer, the seasons of rebirth, of NATURAL and beautiful life, a direct contrast to his unnatural, coldly scientific, "wretched" rebirth that he abhors so much

i was discussing this idea with a friend, who added that victor finding solace in the frozen and dead beauty of wintery environments, a typically less-favoured season, could reflect how victor often refuses himself the typical joys of life. throughout the novel, he struggles with his self-worth because of the guilt induced by his creation of the creature and the deaths that then followed, and the only reason he even desires peace and comfort is because he knows he needs to present himself that way to his family in order for them to be happy ("i [...] wished that peace would revisit my mind only that i might afford them consolation and happiness" [62]). i built on her idea by noting how the creature acknowledged that he "required kindness and sympathy; but [he] did not believe [him]self unworthy of it" (94), a completely contrasting stance from victor, who finds himself undeserving of the many comforts offered to him by his family

furthermore, it seems that victor finds beauty in glory & majesty ("[the scenery] spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence--and i ceased to fear, or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements" [64]), while the creature finds beauty in warmth & growth. both characters seem to find what they desire(d) in the versions of the natural world that they admire most

to reference what i said in the beginning about the connections between victor and the creature, this observation only contributes to my understanding that victor and the creature are incredibly similar, and many of their identical traits involve a rejection or a reversal of the other; they both ardently wish for each other's destruction, they both ruined each other, they're the reason that the other is simultaneously a victim and a villain in their own sense, they both hate themselves but for reversed reasons (victor hates himself for what he's done rather than what he is, while the creature hates himself for what he is more than what he's done), and now this--they both find solace in nature, just opposing kinds. like father, like son

I want to preface this with that it is all in friendly debate, for the sake of media analysis, and I don’t mean to come off too strong or as if I am upset/angry - I’m just passionate !!

Why can you sympathize with the Creature, literal murderer 3x over, but not Victor, who had realistic (and at times reasonable) reactions given the circumstances? Do Victor’s very genuine and understandable pains and sufferings condemn the Creature as well, then? Why can we apply this logic to the Creature but not to Victor? And do Victor’s pain and sufferings both pre-Ingolstadt (weird and wacky childhood, excessive expectations from family, mother dying) and post Ingolstadt (grieving the recent loss of his mother, a big life change that he necessarily didn’t want [college in foreign area], severe mental and physical illness) not explain HIS actions and make him more sympathetic?

“He spent months looking at his creation, why the sudden reaction, when he succeeded at bring him to life?” Looking at a still corpse on a table is much different then looking at an Alive, Moving corpse. 

Also, he wanted or considered stopping several times but was so out of it and had severe obsessive compulsions that kept him from eating and sleeping. He could not, in his own mind, have easily stopped at any time nor was of sound enough mind to realize the extent of what he was doing. And Victor just generally lacks foresight and what is obvious to the reader (that you should prepare to take care of your reanimated corpse) was not obvious to Victor at the time. He didn’t know or consider, nor was he in the right state of mind to know or consider, that the Creature was going to rely on him.

He didn’t suddenly up and flee from a lack of backbone. Victor was sick, manic, hallucinating and dying and had been for MONTHS. He’d been sticking his unwashed, grubby hands in gore pre-germ theory, for, like, two years by now. He didn’t just see the Creature’s spooky eyes and scream and run away. It was so bad he literally didn’t have the strength to hold a pen for months afterwards, writing a letter took everything out of him.

Also - why are we condemning Victor for having a sudden and strong reaction (fleeing the scene and leaving Creature) but not the Creature (being rejected by DeLaceys, burning their house down and going off on a murder spree)?

Yes, Vic made Creature and he was therefore responsible for him, but it would have been bad for Creature and Victor both for Vic to be solely responsible and care for Creature. Even if Victor was physically well enough to care for a newborn (he wasn’t) he was NOT mentally well enough or in the right mind to care for another being, and that would have been damaging for the both of them. It was better for them to be separated for the good of both Vic and Creech. 

Now, Creature shouldn’t have been abandoned, but in the best case scenario someone should have intervened and/or Victor asks someone for help (Henry), but even Henry and Victor alone couldn’t have cared for Creature properly. They’re two teenagers in college classes. Henry spent all his free time nursing Victor back to health from the brink of death after a mental health crisis. They would have had to get outside help - and who would have helped them with their corpse experiment? There was no chance of a stable upbringing for the First Reanimated Corpse no matter the outcome or choices made.  

I don’t think Victor had ‘several opportunities to interfere in the Creature’s life and do the right thing.’ They only met face-to-face about three times: notably, when the Creature first woke, their confrontation in the alps, and while Victor was creating the bride. The first time Victor was deathly sick, feverish and hallucinating that the Creature wanted to kill him. The second time was after Creature killed William, and Victor was actually very charitable for the circumstances IMO. I don’t blame him for starting off swinging - I’d do the same if I thought someone else killed my little brother. And, AFTER the murder of his little brother, Victor still wound up agreeing to make the Creature a wife, even if he went back on the deal. I’ll elaborate more on the Bride later.

You say Creature showed remorse but that Victor failed to feel remorse or compassion entirely, only self-pity. I disagree. Victor was canonically so moved (he literally admits to being moved) by the Creature’s story to the extent that he went from trying to pummel him to agreeing to make him a wife (the creation of which nearly killed him in the past). This is all AFTER Victor believes the Creature killed William. Let’s look at a few quotes during their confrontation in the alps:

“For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his demand”

“His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle these sensations; I thought that, as I could not sympathise with him, I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow.”

“I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my consent; but I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of fine sensations; and did I not as his maker owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow?”

Victor both takes accountability here (owns up to his duties as creator to owe him the happiness he had the power to bestow) and feels compassion towards him, he tries to wrangle down his own horror and hatred to at least hear the Creature out fairly.

“The only thing he felt was self-pity. Even his attempts at killing the Creature weren’t really motivated by responsibility and stopping the killings. It was pure self-indulgent revenge.” Revenge for… killing his family members, right? Wasn’t his motivation to stop the murders of his family (or at least avenge them), then?

I think it’s an unfair expectation in the first place for Victor to make the Creature a bride. The toll it took on Victor’s physical and mental health nearly killed him the first time around, and left him bedridden with fever, chronically ill, hallucinatory, and traumatized. That’s enough reason to not do it alone, on top of Victor being frightened of two creatures existing. Is Victor supposed to go through that again? Your proposition for Victor to stop the killings (something the Creature, uh, shouldn’t be doing in the first place and can stop anytime LOL) is for Victor to what - risk killing himself? And even if Victor’s reasoning for destroying the Bride were wholly rooted in hate, pride, cowardice and selfishness -  what of the Bride’s autonomy? She’s just supposed to wake up and live as Creature’s ready-to-go-GF and be perfectly happy?

The Creature already knew right from wrong without Victor’s influence by the time he killed William. While yes, he was only ever met with violence himself, he observed and understood, from the outside, love and affection. He understood society and dynamics and morals well enough from his time watching the DeLaceys, and still chose to burn down their house and murder an innocent child - Creature knew better, and he chose violence and he chose revenge. You say it could have been prevented ‘with an ounce of decency’ on Victor’s part. But the Creature was at fault in the first place for understanding the gravity of what he was doing, and still choosing to murder. This shouldn’t have been something Victor was expected to prevent - Creature zsimply should not have done it. Also, if my son murdered my little brother, my best friend/boyfriend, and my sister-cousin-wife, I’d hate him too. That’s justified. 

Also are you genuinely trying to tell me you would be super understanding and reasonable and forgive the murderer of your little brother had you been in Victor’s shoes??

‘I don’t believe revenge is ever justified. If Victor had killed the creature from a sense of justice or wanting to protect others, I could have accepted that.  But, it wasn’t that, imho.’ But you can accept (not condone, but accept) and sympathize with Creature’s actions, who murdered innocent people for revenge? What horrible act of revenge did Victor even perform? He realized that people shouldn’t make ready-to-go-GFs and went back on a deal that could have killed him or made him deathly sick?  

I think pinning the responsibility of Justine’s execution wholly on Victor is wrong, and blaming his inaction entirely on pure cowardice is wrong as well.

Victor had just barely recovered from a near death experience where he was feverish and hallucinating (and possibly still hallucinating just days before, after walking out all day and night in the rain). He was not thinking clearly and certainly not in a proper state to testify for someone on trial and/or defend himself on trial if he put the blame on himself.

Also, I don’t expect Victor to be the beacon of morals and sound reasoning not only after his brother was just MURDERED, but also after just recovering from a near-death experience, while suffering from untreated severe mental illness that actively disrupts reality.

Victor’s reasoning for not speaking up about the Creature in court was this:

“My first thought was to discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity… These reflections determined me, and I resolved to remain silent”

His original intent WAS to tell everyone the truth, so that the Creature could be condemned. He immediately told his family - the people closest to him - that he knew the murderer, and that it couldn’t be Justine. They all dismiss him immediately (apart from Elizabeth, who was bent on Justine’s innocence). If his own family won’t believe him, how is he supposed to sway the court? 

So Victor decides not to tell the court, because he believed that they would take him (a person who had been recently sick, hallucinatory and feverish for months) and think it the ramblings of a madman or of the ill (which was exactly what Henry did to him, what his family did to him, and what the police did to him). And while we don’t know what would have happened had Victor actually told the court, we do have a similar circumstance after Elizabeth’s death where, after a similar bout of illness, Victor goes straight to the magistrate and tells them the story. He was not believed and was dismissed. So Victor’s reasoning doesn’t really feel unfounded here, and definitely not from a place of pure cowardice and/or pride.

I don’t feel there was any good possible outcome for the trial. What struck me as the most unfair was not Victor’s actions or lack of action but the way Justine was trialed itself. The judges manipulated her into a coerced confession. Her confessor threatened excommunication and damnation until she began to think she was the monster that he said she was. Justine’s confession is what decided her fate above all else, not Victor’s lack of intervention.

You criticize Victor for 1) abandoning and hating his son, and 2) for not standing up for Justine in court. But if he had taken responsibility and viewed the creature as his child, what was Victor supposed to do? Point the finger at the Creature, his child, and condemn him for a murder in which he knows he would have been executed for had they believed him? 

The only other options Victor really had to 1) make up a feasible lie that he saw a strange man in the area, which would not be able to hold up against the literal evidence in Justine’s pocket, is easily dismissed as the ramblings of someone who was recently sick and feverish and spent the whole night walking in the rain, AND Victor wasn’t even in the area during the time of the crime or 2) Defend Justine’s character, which is what he DOES do before and after the trial (quote “my passionate and indignant appeals were lost on [the court]”), and exactly what Elizabeth does, which fails both times. He did try, just not in a way that would make himself out to be a madman and discredit everything he was saying.

At this point in the book, Victor had absolutely no evidence. Not even no evidence to present to the court - no evidence that the Creature had done it At All. Even if he made something up, it wouldn’t be as damning as the literal locket in Justine’s pocket. The only reason why Victor latched onto the idea of the Creature being the murderer of William was because, during a storm, he saw (or hallucinated) the silhouette of a tall figure that sort of resembled the Creature on his way home to Geneva. This took place OUTSIDE OF GENEVA, not even in the area William was murdered. It just so happened that Victor was correct and the Creature HAD killed William, but Victor was still jumping to conclusions at this point.

I also think it’s important to take in the context of Victor’s upbringing here. His father was a well-respected, distinguished syndic/judge. Victor grew up with a strong belief in the legal system. Before the trial he says something along the lines of “there's no WAY they would condemn Justine only on circumstantial evidence!” He had faith in it, he grew up with faith in it. If Victor had settled on a half-truth and pulled up and tried to go “I saw a big scary man” the court would have dismissed it as the ramblings of a sickly madman, and it could have tainted the Frankenstein family’s reputation and his father’s standing, who have historically for generations been counsellors and syndics. The current generation of Frankensteins including Victor were being reared and expected to carry on this legacy as well.

Justine’s explanation during her trial (essentially I didn’t do it, I wasn’t there, I don’t know how the locket got in my pocket) was much more feasible than Victor’s (I built a corpse man in my dorm room and I think I saw him in the middle of the night during a storm miles away from the crime scene so I just KNOW he killed William!) which wound up being the actual truth, and Justine was still executed.

He feels genuine remorse, guilt and self-hatred throughout the trial, and even has suicidal thoughts following it. He blames himself and thinks, paraphrasing here, “the deed [William’s murder] was not mine in name but in effect.” This wasn’t him being entirely self-pitying, self-preservational, shirking blame and sitting trembling in court here.

And while I agree that Victor is an unreliable narrator, I don’t think Victor’s reliability as a narrator matters much here about the whole ‘I’ll be with you on your wedding night’ shtick. I think Vic misinterpreted Creature here, that he genuinely thought the Creature was talking about him, not that he was making up this misinterpretation after the fact to glamorize things for Walton. And if we’re going to cherry-pick and dismiss what Victor says when it suits your argument then that same line of reasoning should apply to the Creature, who is ALSO an unreliable narrator and IMO just as unreliable if not more so.

Even if Victor married Elizabeth for selfish reasons (I don’t think this is true but I digress), he was still expected to marry her for the good of the family. It has been an expectation for them to be wed since they were six, they promised it to their mother together as her literal dying wish, Alphonse later tells Victor it would bring him happiness and unite the family in their time of mourning, etc. Even if Victor’s own intentions in marrying her were somehow selfish, its effect on the family wouldn’t have been selfish - they had told him it would make them happy. And I believe Elizabeth would have been harmed either way, had they been wed or not - he arguably loved Henry just as much as Elizabeth, and the Creature had no issues offing him, no marriage involved.

And blaming Victor and calling it an act of abject cowardice for being “terrified and traumatized” after abandoning the creature is. Uh. Let’s not blame trauma victims for. Having trauma??

The Creature made things worse, too. He could have. Y’know. Not murdered 3 people.

 I don’t think we should continue to blame Victor for making things worse when he really made very little choices (and had very little opportunity TO make choices) in the first place. /nm

So I finished reading the original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and I do not understand in the SLIGHTEST why people insist that in the book the Creature is the victim of the story and Victor is the villain. Did we read the same fucking book??!!! The Creature is literally one of the most malicious villains I have EVER seen put to paper and actively chooses to commit evil act after evil act despite KNOWING it is wrong and feeling remorse and feeling horrible and yet consistently taunts and destroys Victor’s life OVER AND OVER.

The Creature kept bemoaning again and again that Victor had no idea the extent of his misery, that he was the most miserable creature on earth and nothing could fix this and I just??? Did people take him at his word??? The Creature of course believes this, but you go through the book seeing Victor grieve his loved ones viscerally and end up in prison accused of murdering his best friend, and a mental institution for what is likely psychosis. There is so much evidence in the book that the Creature is 100% biased and knew EXACTLY what he was doing in making Victor miserable and I agree in Walton calling him a hypocrite at the end. I just don’t understand how people can say he is the victim of this book when it describes in extremely visceral detail how the Creature systematically killed four people that Victor loved, the first being his 12 year old brother, all to make him miserable for the mistake of creating him. He never even SPOKE to Victor until he killed two people. Five people died in total, not counting Victor, considering his father died of grief due to Elizabeth’s death too.

Victor’s fuckups in this book, at least in my opinion, were normal human reactions to extreme situations. His single dumbest decision was running away from the Creature in horror when he brought him to life. He is an impulsive, reckless person but NONE of what he suffered could be justified by the Creature.

This is a massive ESH situation, heavily leaning towards the Creature as the biggest asshole in this entire story. I don’t even think his age justifies this, he acts and thinks and talks like an adult. He is fully cognizant of what he is doing to Victor and it is with the purpose of torturing him. He STATES this numerous times.

I don’t know where the hell the take that he is the victim of the story comes from because holy shit I don’t think it’s from people who read Mary Shelley’s book.

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frankenstein & fatherhood

i am not immune to blasting my favourite characters with the neurodivergent beam — i think there is something very comforting about a character from a book written long before these things were understood (at least with the vocabulary we have today) articulating things about themselves that you can see something of yourself in

with that in mind, let me take you on a journey where i explain in far more detail than probably necessary

Why Captain Robert Walton from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) has ADHD (in my non-professional neurodivergent opinion)!

i’ll be going through some common ADHD symptoms and presenting evidence from the text to demonstrate how Walton, in his own representation of himself, can be interpreted as displaying these traits

this got Long so analysis under the cut!

— INATTENTIVENESS AND FOCUS

Walton has a strong and active imagination, and seems prone to excessive daydreaming and letting his mind wander, even becoming distracted by sensory input (the sublime beauty of nature, lol):

Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid.

He feels that he is set apart by his own manner of thinking, that his mind is in need of "regulation":

Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.

The "keeping" that Shelley refers to is artistic terminology meaning

The maintenance of the proper relation between the representations of nearer and more distant objects in a picture; [...] the maintenance of harmony of composition. (X)

I would interpret Walton's meaning here to be that he understands his thoughts to be somewhat "all over the place" or lacking practicality; he is aware that he has an overzealous and ambitious personality, and requires a sense of harmony (ideally, in the form of an understanding friend) who will keep him focused.

Even Victor comments on Walton seeming to become impatient with him or lose focus during his own tangent:

Victor: But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my tale, and your looks remind me to proceed.

(adhd bitches be like let me infodump my entire brain at you and tell you seven unrelated stories before getting to the point but the SECOND someone else goes off topic it's so over)

Walton's inattentiveness is best demonstrated by his lack of concentration on things like his education in favour of his interests when he was a boy:

My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night[...]

and speaking of!

— HYPERFIXATIONS

I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

^ me when i will go insane if i don't have my silly little Topics to obsess over. this guy gets it

Walton is clearly influenced heavily by his fixations; polar exploration and his "passionate enthusiasm for the dangerous mysteries of ocean" are lifelong special interests for him. He refers to his voyage as "the favourite dream of my early years", and also developed a love for poetry from a young age:

[...] for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas’ books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country;

When he is forbidden for pursuing a seafaring life by his father, and in doing so prevented from indulging his main interests, Walton becomes fixated solely on literature, attempting to become a poet himself:

These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.

Interestingly, when he fails to achieve his literary goal, his attention seemingly switches seamlessly back to his previous interests when he is finally given the opportunity to pursue them - jumping between hyperfixations in search of dopamine is often experienced by many with ADHD:

You are well acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.

Walton claims that he is “practically industrious—painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour” but this mostly seems applicable when he can hyperfocus on tasks that are stimulating to him and related to his interests - for example, when he prepares for his voyage while working on whaling ships:

I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage.

— HYPERACTIVITY, IMPULSIVITY AND RESTLESSNESS

i mean. i think most people would consider sailing off to explore as-yet unknown and extremely dangerous parts of the world completely of your own volition impulsive no matter how long you've been planning to do it

Even so, Walton seems to display a reduced sense of danger even upon "the commencement of an enterprise which you [Margaret] have regarded with such evil forebodings":

These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river.

Walton's hyperactivity can be seen in his innate restlessness and never wanting to feel “settled” or too comfortable:

My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path.

His wanderlust drives him forward, literally physically sending him to places very few have ever been:

[...] there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

To me, this line indicates that Walton has an awareness of his own overwhelming eagerness (and tbh this is also how I would describe what my own ADHD feels like sometimes):

I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties.

Walton also seems prone to excessive talking and infodumping, demonstrated even by the act of sending his sister such long and detailed letters in the first place. He is a grade A yapper and that is why we even have the story in the first place!

My favourite evidence of this is when Walton is so taken by the romantic story of his ship's master that he derails his entire letter to his sister to tell her about it, saying:

This, briefly, is his story.

Reader: the story was not brief.

My swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus.

you don't say!

— POOR PLANNING AND PRIORITISATION

Despite committing himself to his voyage for six years and having thought of it for much longer, Walton doesn't seem to have uh. much of an actual concrete plan:

I do not intend to sail until the month of June; and when shall I return? Ah, dear sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.

In relation to this, let me just leave this extract from Jessica Richard's article '“A paradise of my own creation”: Frankenstein and the improbable romance of polar exploration' here:

Shelley subtly indicates Walton’s incompetence as an expedition leader (despite his extensive reading and apprenticeships on Greenland whaling vessels) when she has him begin his journey on a rather late date, July 7th. Whether Walton is simply a poor planner, or, as Frankenstein himself fears, he “share[s] my madness,” a departure date so late in the season all but dooms his enterprise to failure from the outset. (p. 299)

ouch!

He seems to have little awareness of this aspect of his personality; he assures his sister that:

I shall do nothing rashly: you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the safety of others is committed to my care.

Yet to Victor, he describes:

how gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought[...]

Not only does he neglect his duties as captain to care for Victor, even while his ship is imperilled by pack ice…

Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest tale that ever imagination formed. My thoughts and every feeling of my soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale and his own elevated and gentle manners have created.

… he is highly averse to abandoning his voyage even when his crew threatens mutiny:

We were immured in ice and should probably never escape, but they feared that if, as was possible, the ice should dissipate and a free passage be opened, I should be rash enough to continue my voyage and lead them into fresh dangers, after they might happily have surmounted this. They insisted, therefore, that I should engage with a solemn promise that if the vessel should be freed I would instantly direct my course southwards. This speech troubled me. I had not despaired, nor had I yet conceived the idea of returning if set free.

oh robert........

— EMOTIONAL DYSREGULATION AND SOCIAL DIFFICULTIES

This seems to be a persistent issue for Walton; he continually refers to the fluctuation of his own emotions and his inability to regulate them on his own:

My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed.

I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.

He is deeply desirous of understanding and community with others, but is left feeling lonely and like an outsider, having difficulty connecting with most people including the men he sails with:

A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship:

Walton implies that he is insecure of aspects of his personality, and is in need of external validation and someone to “sympathise with and love” him:

How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!

Lastly, this line appears in the 1831 version of the novel only but it is one that, for me, ties together a lot of the book's themes especially with regard to neurodiversity and is generally one of the most affecting for me personally for that reason:

There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.

me too, buddy. me too

aaaaaaaand that's all(!) i have to say for now

most of this is really just based on my own experiences and traits (am i projecting? absolutely. but am i correct? also yes) and just my own interpretation and i’m sure i’ve left out SO much but i had fun putting my hyperfix spinterest hat on and hopefully it was interesting to read! let me know your thoughts!

i really adore the fact that by the end of the book franknestein had managed to create an equal and mate to the creature by having turned himself as such. like he has become so misshapen that he can no longer fit in human society and his internal monologue is so eerily reminiscent of the creatures. this is franknestein:

He wished me to seek amusement in society. I abhorred the face of man. Oh, not abhorred! they were my brethren, my fellow-beings, and I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism. But I felt that I had no right to share their intercourse. I had unchained an enemy among them, whose joy it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans. How they would, each and all, abhor me, and hunt me from the world, did they know my unhallowed acts and the crimes which had their source in me!

and this is the creature about the family in the cottage:

I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers—their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions: but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity.