NovelGuide: Frankenstein: Novel Summary: Chapters 9-10

Chapters 9-10

Chapter 9: Everyone, but especially Victor, feels immense melancholy. Frankenstein reveals, "I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe." This theme of self-loathing remains throughout the rest of the book.

While alone, rowing a small boat in the middle of a nearby lake, Victor even contemplates suicide. Yet the thought of Elizabeth's devastation keeps him from taking the plunge. He admits that he loves Elizabeth very much.

Frankenstein's sadness is mingled with a perpetual fear that a new tragedy will befall the family. He narrates, I had been the author of unalterable evils; and I live in daily fear, lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness.

In the remaining portion of the chapter, Victor describes his solitary ascent into the Alps.

Chapter 10: This chapter continues Frankenstein's account of his trip into the mountains. To him, the Alps are a place of self-reflection and spiritual awakening. Here, Victor again alludes to the limits of human awareness-the idea that man works too hard to discover secrets he wasn't meant to find (obviously, he's thinking of himself here). He asks the "wandering spirits" if they will let him have some solace from his problems.

Soon this solace becomes impossible, however, when the contemptible "wretch" that he has created confronts him. The superhuman monster demands that Victor listen to his story; otherwise, the beast says, "I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends." Victor is horrified and disgusted by the monster's proposal, but agrees at least to listen to the being's story. The superhuman alludes to his own contempt for mankind, and especially for his creator, describing himself as a fallen angel not allowed even the faintest hint of the happiness he witnesses in humans.