quotes Flashcards
key quotes recall
F - new species
‘A new species would bless me as its creator and source many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.’
F - sacrificial female
‘I never beheld her so enchanting as at this time, when she was continually endeavouring to contribute to the happiness of others, entirely forgetful of herself’
F - Elizabeth description
‘docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful as a summer insect’
‘her figure was light and airy’
‘I loved to tend on her, as I should a favourite animal’
‘most fragile creature’
F - life and death
‘Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world’
F - monster entitles to female companion
‘You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being […] I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse.’
F - Walton’s isolation
‘I bitterly feel the want of a friend’
F - Monster, no Eve…
‘no Eve soothed my sorrows, or shared my thoughts; I was alone’
F - Monster, misery
‘I am malicious because I am miserable’
‘I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous’
F - role of creator and isolation
‘you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us’
‘I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.’
F - Victor and isolation
‘I shunned the face of man; all
sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation—deep, dark, death-like solitude.’
F - Hell, guilt over Justine and to Walton
‘I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish.’
‘like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.’
F - Monster and Adam
‘Like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any other being in existence’
‘I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.’
F - Monster and Satan
‘Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition’
‘Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested’
‘The fallen angel became a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone’
F - Monster and resemblance to creator
‘God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of your’s, more horrid from its very resemblance’
F - Monster and identity
‘Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come?’
‘Monster that I am’
‘miserable deformity’
‘was I then a monster? a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?’
F - Victor and suicide
‘Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest?’
‘I was doomed to live’
F - Victor and blame
‘nor do I find it blameable’
‘I did right in refusing, to create a companion for the first creature.’
F - Monster and suicide
‘I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames […] My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.’
F - role reversal
‘Slave […] You are my creator, but I am your master;—obey!’
F - Monster and power, fear
‘Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.’
‘if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear’
‘I shall be with you on your wedding night’
F - best quote
‘What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.’
F - dangers of ambition
‘I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge’
‘Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was.’
‘sorrow only increased with knowledge’
‘learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own’
‘Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition’
F - Monster and fire
‘found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain.’
- knowledge does cause sorrow, and fire does cause pain
F - Monster’s apearance
‘I collected bones from charnel houses’
‘yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath
‘lustrous black, and flowing’ hair
‘teeth of a pearly whiteness’
‘watery eyes’
‘shriveled complexion’
‘straight black lips’
‘figure hideously deformed and loathsome’ - Monster
F - Monster and nature
‘I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.’
‘The pleasant sunshine, and the pure air of day, restored me to some degree of tranquillity’
‘I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon’
‘my chief delights were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of summer’
F - Victor and nature
‘Morning, dismal and wet’
‘Black and comfortless sky’
‘patterned dismally’
‘my spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature’
‘The cold stars shone in mockery’
‘Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as naught; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.’
‘Dear mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?’
‘I was tempted to plunge in the silent lake’
‘The rain fell in torrents’ - after Elizabeth’s death to represent overpouring emotions
F - Monster, good and evil
‘Evil thenceforth became my good’
F - Victor’s superficiality
‘I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!—Great God!’
‘breathless horror and disgust filled my heart’
F - revenge
‘I devote myself to his destruction’
‘Revenge kept me alive’
F - superstition
‘the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion’
‘The furies possessed me’
HMT - motherhood
‘No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn’t do badly by one another, we did as well as most.’
HMT - it
‘That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that’s how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.’
F - early show of ambition compared to Elizabeth
‘The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own’
- An early hint at Victor’s dangerous ambition, and his naïve belief that man is powerful and wise enough to comprehend nature
