Chapters 6 to 10

Recovery without responsibility: Chapter 6

After the creation and Victor’s collapse, Henry Clerval nurses his friend back to health. Chapter 6 begins with a letter from Elizabeth, who longs for reassurance and describes the loving household in Geneva. She introduces Justine Moritz’s history: Victor’s mother rescued Justine from mistreatment, and Justine became a valued servant and affectionate member of the household. Elizabeth also describes the healthy, smiling William. These details establish the lives and relationships that the coming deaths will destroy.

Clerval’s care is practical as well as emotional. He removes Victor’s scientific apparatus, changes his room and steers conversation away from science when he notices Victor’s distress. Victor takes up language studies with him, and their countryside walks restore his enjoyment of nature and human company. Clerval acts as a foil to Victor: his attentiveness to another person contrasts with Victor’s earlier absorption in his own ambition.

Yet recovery is not the same as taking responsibility. Victor does not tell Clerval about the creature or investigate what has become of him. His secrecy can be read sympathetically as a response to trauma: even praise from his professors brings back unbearable memories. It can also be read critically as avoidance. He accepts care while leaving his own dependent creation abandoned.

Victor’s narration ends Chapter 6 with ‘unbridled joy and hilarity’. This makes the opening of Chapter 7 especially abrupt: apparent recovery gives way to news of murder. The order of events exposes how fragile Victor’s happiness is while the consequences of his experiment remain unresolved.

William’s murder: news, evidence and assumption in Chapter 7

Alphonse Frankenstein’s letter announces, ‘William is dead!’ in Chapter 7. The short exclamation interrupts his hesitant preparation for the news, conveying a shock that careful explanation cannot soften. William disappeared during a family walk at Plainpalais, near Geneva. His father found his body the following morning: ‘the print of the murderer's finger was on his neck’. This physical detail establishes the violence of the death and makes the attack disturbingly intimate.

A miniature portrait of Caroline, which Elizabeth had allowed William to wear, is missing. Elizabeth blames herself for giving him the portrait, believing it tempted the murderer. Her guilt comes from affection rather than wrongdoing. Alphonse asks Victor to return with kindness and consolation, not vengeance: the letter offers a compassionate response to suffering that Victor will struggle to follow.

Victor travels home, but fear slows him as he approaches Geneva. Finding the town gates closed, he visits the place of the murder. During a storm, lightning reveals the creature nearby. Victor immediately concludes that he killed William, declaring in his narration, ‘Nothing in human shape could have destroyed that fair child’ in Chapter 7.

The contrast between the innocent ‘fair child’ and the creature’s supposedly inhuman appearance turns physical difference into an accusation. Victor has seen the creature near the scene; he has not witnessed the murder. Shelley therefore distinguishes an observation from the conclusion Victor draws from it. His first-person account gives us the force of his conviction while also allowing us to question how quickly appearance becomes proof in his mind.

Victor describes the creature as ‘my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave’ in Chapter 7. The Gothic image presents him as a destructive being haunting Victor’s family. But the repeated ‘my own’ also makes the creature an extension of Victor himself: he recognises that the danger originated in his actions. The image both demonises the creature and acknowledges his creator’s responsibility.

A storm that attracts and terrifies

The sublime is an experience of overwhelming greatness or power, often combining attraction with fear. It helps explain why Victor does not simply shelter from the storm. In Chapter 7, he calls the tempest ‘so beautiful yet terrific’: here, ‘terrific’ means terrifying. Lightning, thunder and the vast Alpine landscape lift his spirits even as they display forces beyond human control.

This mixture of awe and terror was important in Romantic writing. Shelley makes it relevant to Victor’s immediate experience: he seeks emotional release in nature’s power, rather than merely admiring a pretty view. The storm briefly becomes a grand funeral for William in his imagination.

The setting also shapes the revelation of the creature. Alternating lightning and darkness produce a sudden glimpse, followed by disappearance. Victor’s spirits rise before fear overwhelms him. Shelley connects the movement of the scene with the movement of his emotions: the landscape that offers consolation also becomes the setting in which the consequences of his creation return.

Justine’s trial: the failure of justice in Chapter 8

At home, Victor discovers that Justine has been accused of William’s murder. The miniature was found in her pocket, and her distressed, confused behaviour has strengthened suspicion. She was also out during the night and seen near the place where the body was found. These are forms of circumstantial evidence: they suggest guilt to the authorities without directly showing her committing the crime.

Justine explains that she had been visiting an aunt, then searched for the missing child. With Geneva’s gates shut, she sheltered in a barn. Exhaustion and anxiety explain her confusion, but she cannot explain the portrait. Her inability to account for one powerful piece of evidence outweighs her account and good character in the court’s judgement.

Victor’s narration states, ‘Justine also was a girl of merit’ in Chapter 8. Shelley has already given this judgement substance through Elizabeth’s account of Justine’s affection and care. Her death will destroy not only an innocent person but also the possibility of a happy future.

Elizabeth speaks publicly in Justine’s defence, describing her kindness and her mother-like affection for William. The crowd admires Elizabeth’s generosity but turns her testimony against Justine, treating such kindness from the family as further reason to condemn her supposed ingratitude. Shelley exposes a public judgement that absorbs even favourable evidence into its existing hostility.

Victor insists on Justine’s innocence, but he does not reveal his creation or his sighting of the creature. He fears that his account would sound like madness, particularly after his illness, and initially trusts that the evidence cannot convict an innocent person. Later, his appeals fail, and his intended disclosure dies on his lips. These motives explain his silence without removing its moral importance. Elizabeth risks speaking; Victor withholds the information behind his certainty.

False confession and consuming remorse

Justine is condemned before she makes her confession. When Elizabeth and Victor visit her in prison, she explains in Chapter 8, ‘I did confess; but I confessed a lie.’ The repeated verb and the reversal after the semicolon separate confession from truth. Her confessor has threatened excommunication and hell fire, pressuring her to confess so that she might obtain absolution, or forgiveness of sins.

Shelley thus presents a failure of both legal and religious authority. The court mistakes circumstances for sufficient proof; the confessor adds fear and coercion instead of support. Justine’s later reliance on God for courage also matters: her faith can sustain her even while a religious authority abuses his power.

Victor describes his guilt through the metaphor ‘the fangs of remorse tore my bosom’ in Chapter 8. Remorse becomes a predator attacking him from within. This makes his suffering vivid, but his claim that Justine’s suffering is less than his invites scrutiny. Readers may sympathise with his guilt while questioning a narration that repeatedly centres his anguish when she faces execution.

The outcome is brutally concise: Victor reports, ‘She perished on the scaffold as a murderess!’ in Chapter 8. The label records the public identity imposed on an innocent woman. The exclamation expresses outrage, but it cannot undo the sentence. William’s murder has now been followed by another death, produced through accusation, institutional failure and Victor’s secrecy.

The mountains offer relief, not a cure: Chapter 9

After Justine’s execution, Victor withdraws from other people. In Chapter 9 he says, ‘I wandered like an evil spirit’. The simile echoes his descriptions of the creature: the creator now imagines himself as a destructive, isolated being. He recognises responsibility for the deaths without claiming that he physically committed William’s murder.

His father sees excessive grief, but does not know the secret that makes Victor’s grief also remorse. This creates dramatic irony: readers understand why advice about ordinary mourning cannot address Victor’s guilt. Elizabeth’s confidence in love and companionship likewise cannot reassure him while he fears further attacks.

Victor travels alone towards Chamounix, seeking relief in landscapes far greater and more enduring than his human sorrow. Mountains, rushing water and avalanches display power beyond his control. Nature sometimes seems comforting and maternal, but its influence repeatedly fades. Shelley avoids a simple recovery: a change of scenery can interrupt suffering without repairing its causes.

The glacier encounter: Chapter 10

Victor ascends Montanvert and crosses the glacier beneath Mont Blanc. Its scale and danger create another sublime setting: he must move carefully over the uneven ice and deep rifts, while the creature approaches with superhuman speed. The physical contrast makes clear that Victor cannot simply overpower the being he has made.

Before the encounter, the prose narrative includes verse about changing human feelings and the instability of life. This interruption slows the action and reinforces the temporary nature of Victor’s consolation. Soon after his heart rises towards joy, the creature appears and rage takes over.

Victor addresses him with the challenge ‘do you dare approach me?’ in Chapter 10. His questions and insults deny any relationship except hostility. The creature replies, ‘I expected this reception’. His controlled opening contrasts with Victor’s furious speech and reveals an ability to anticipate and interpret another person’s response.

The creature argues that a creator owes duties to his creation. This offers a reading of him as an abandoned dependent asking for care. However, his demand also contains the threat ‘I will glut the maw of death’ in Chapter 10. The metaphor imagines death as a ravenous mouth that he will feed with Victor’s remaining friends. His appeal combines suffering and reasoning with intimidation; sympathy does not erase his threatened violence.

Victor cries, ‘Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light!’ in Chapter 10. Yet he immediately extends the curse to his own hands. His speech reveals the conflict at the centre of these chapters: he hates the creature but cannot separate him from his own act of creation.

The creature’s argument: rejection and goodness

In Chapter 10, the creature tells Victor, ‘I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel’. The allusion, or reference to another story, contrasts Adam, the first man created by God, with the angel cast out of heaven. The possessive ‘thy’ makes Victor responsible for the relationship: the creature believes he should have received a creator’s care but has instead been excluded from happiness. The contrast also complicates Victor’s description of him as a devil, presenting rejection as something that has happened to him rather than simply defining what he is.

The creature states, ‘I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend’ in Chapter 10. The balanced clauses distinguish his claimed original kindness from his later condition. By making ‘misery’ the force that changed him, he argues that cruelty and exclusion produce destructive behaviour. This challenges Victor’s assumption that his appearance reveals an inherently evil nature.

He then appeals, ‘Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous’ in Chapter 10. The command places the power to change his future conduct in Victor’s hands, while ‘again’ insists that goodness can be recovered. Readers may hear a genuine plea for affection and belonging. Alongside his threats, however, it can also sound like an attempt to make Victor responsible for whatever violence he chooses to commit. His suffering gives reasons for compassion without removing his own responsibility.

From condemnation to a hearing

The creature asks to speak before Victor condemns him, explicitly invoking the right of an accused person to defend themselves. This connects the encounter to Justine’s trial. Justine was allowed to speak, but her explanation did not overcome prejudice; Victor initially refuses even to hear the creature. Both episodes ask whether justice is possible when judgement comes before meaningful listening.

Victor finally agrees through a mixture of curiosity, emerging compassion and a first recognition of his duties as creator. He wants confirmation or denial of his suspicion about William’s murder. This is a significant movement away from his earlier insistence that the creature’s appearance and presence were sufficient proof.

Chapter 10 ends with the pair entering a hut and the creature beginning his story. Structurally, this opens an embedded narrative inside Victor’s account, which is itself contained within Walton’s letters. The being previously described from outside now receives space to explain his experience. Shelley asks readers to hear another perspective before reaching a judgement.

Turning evidence into an exam paragraph

Edexcel’s novel question separates two skills. Part (a) assesses AO2: how language, form and structure work in the printed extract of approximately 400 words. Part (b) assesses AO1: a supported interpretation of the novel elsewhere, written from memory. Each part is worth 20 marks. The examination is closed book, and relevant paraphrase is credited in part (b). Context earns no marks in either part; it is useful only where it explains a reading.

Worked paragraph for part (a), AO2 — analysing the storm passage:

In Chapter 7, Shelley presents the storm as both consoling and threatening through Victor’s description ‘so beautiful yet terrific’. The contrasting adjectives, joined by ‘yet’, hold attraction and terror together, showing how nature’s violence can lift his spirits. His metaphor ‘This noble war in the sky’ turns the storm into a grand conflict: ‘noble’ gives its destructive power dignity, while ‘war’ makes the scene threatening. Victor’s direct address to his dead brother, ‘William, dear angel!’, briefly transforms the tempest into a personal funeral. Shelley then interrupts this emotional elevation with the sudden appearance of a figure in the gloom. Lightning reveals the creature before darkness conceals him again, restricting what Victor and the reader can see. The first-person narration makes this reversal immediate: the setting that offered release instead confronts Victor with the consequences he has tried to forget.

Worked paragraph for part (b), AO1 — arguing about responsibility:

Victor’s responsibility extends beyond creating the creature because he repeatedly avoids confronting the consequences. In Chapter 6, Clerval restores his health, but Victor keeps the creation secret and leaves the creature unaccounted for. When Justine is accused in Chapters 7 and 8, he asserts her innocence without revealing the reason for his certainty. His fear that nobody would believe him makes his silence understandable, but Elizabeth’s public defence shows a contrasting willingness to act for another person. By the end of Chapter 10, Victor’s decision to listen to the creature marks a limited change: he begins to recognise that creation carries duties, not merely the power to give life.

Sequence to recall

• Chapter 6: Clerval helps Victor recover; Elizabeth’s letter establishes Justine’s goodness and William’s happy life. Victor remains secretive.
• Chapter 7: Alphonse reports William’s murder. Victor sees the creature during a storm and assumes his guilt. Justine is accused after the miniature is found in her pocket.
• Chapter 8: Circumstantial evidence outweighs Justine’s defence and Elizabeth’s testimony. Justine is condemned, then pressured into a false confession. She is executed; Victor feels responsible.
• Chapter 9: Remorse isolates Victor. He seeks temporary relief in the Alpine landscape.
• Chapter 10: The creature demands care and a hearing, and threatens further deaths. Victor agrees to listen; the creature’s narrative begins.

Essential distinctions

• Observation ≠ proof: Victor sees the creature near the murder scene; his certainty also reflects prejudice about appearance.
• Responsibility ≠ direct action: Victor feels responsible through creation and secrecy, not because he physically killed William.