Mary's fascination with the glacier near Chamonix, France ...
The Mer de Glace had dazzled Mary
when she’d seen it in the summer of 1816. Here’s what she wrote in her journal
on July 24: It is the most desolate place
in the world – iced mountains surround it – no sign of vegetation appears
except on the place from which [we] view the scene – we went on the ice - It is traversed by irregular crevices whose
sides of ice appear blue while the surface is of a dirty white - We dine on the mountain – the air is very
cold yet many flowers grow here …[1]
In Frankenstein (published about seventeen months later) Mary chose
the glacier for a key encounter between Victor and his creation. She begins
with a more elaborate description of the site:
For some time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist
covered both that and the surrounding mountains. Presently a breeze dissipated
the cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven, rising
like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts
that sink deep. The field of ice is almost a league in width, but I spent
nearly two hours in crossing it. The opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular
rock … I remained in a recess of the rock, gazing on this wonderful and
stupendous scene. The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its
dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and
glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was
before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed, “Wandering
spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me
this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of
life.”
And, sitting there, Victor (who
is narrating) sees something surprising.
As I said this I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance,
advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the
ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he
approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled; a mist came over my
eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me, but I was quickly restored by the cold
gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous
and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage
and horror, resolving to wait his approach and then close with him in mortal
combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with
disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too
horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at
first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with
words expressive of furious detestation and contempt.
“Devil,” I exclaimed, “do you dare approach me?”[2]
And then the creature begins to
speak—not, of course, in the grunts and groans that composed his language in
the 1931 film (and many thereafter) but in graceful and literate English—and he
explains what has happened in his life since his “birth.”
And so, as I type these words, I once
again regret (and curse!) the rain and snow in Chamonix in the spring of 1999,
conditions that prevented me from seeing the glacier that—some 183 years earlier—had
animated the imagination of young Mary Godwin.
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