Of course, that's a subjective viewpoint. But I do think there is something noticeable in the trio of papers for Gothic Disturbances.
If nothing else, it was the course that lured me to the wondrous dark side of the English Department. And there I have found almost everything I hoped to find when I came here seeking knowledge...
It all clicked with the windings. They peeled off from my literary criticism blind eyes and suddenly I could see!
[This essay seems now to end curiously abrupt. I wonder if the file I have is an early save...? Hmm...]
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(1st draft)
English 490 - Gothic Disturbances
February 17, 2009
The Terminal Point of a Cul-de-Sac
"The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain. It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken and strewed on the ground, some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning upon the jutting rocks of the mountain or transversely upon other trees. [...] The pines are not tall or luxuriant, but they are sombre and add an air of severity to the scene. I looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers which ran through it and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite mountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform clouds, while rain poured from the dark sky and added to the melancholy impression I received from the objects around me." (Frankenstein, Vol. II Ch. II)
When Mary Shelley introduces us to this precipitous ascent of Victor on an Alpine peak facing Montanvert, she is doing more than telling us about the steep mountainside and the felled trees along the path of avalanches. Indeed, this is the sixth time in the text that Shelley has used a variance of the word "precipitous," and, in all, the word is used 14 times in the novel.
Given this frequent usage, the word must carry with it some importance; seemingly connected with Victor's perception of the world around him, and the reader's perception of Victor himself.
At the point in the novel where Victor is ascending this precipitous, winding path, he has already brought life to his creation and abandoned it as something hideous, and William has been killed and Justine has been executed because of Victor's "unhallowed arts". Victor seeks some sort of solace in wandering the barren and starkly beautiful landscapes which bring to Victor's perception some calm reassurance that an omnipotent God must exist. He alternates these thoughts with suicidal considerations.
The word "precipitous" itself appears in various forms throughout the novel--most commonly as "precipice" (9 times); "precipitate" (3 times); and once each with "precipitation" and, in this passages, "precipitous". Of its meanings, perhaps the only definition not directly intended in any of these usages is the most apparent, that of meaning rain, mist, or snowfall; moisture. In this excerpt, "the ascent is precipitous" literally means the path Victor walks is extremely steep, but the word could also be used to represent his headlong ascent into unhallowed knowledge, and the way he abruptly ended his work upon successfully bringing life to a monstrous creation.
In chemistry, to precipitate something is to separate it, as in a solid form divided from a solution. In this sense, too, do we find a connection to Victor and his work, for he is seeking to separate himself from the substance--the thing--he has created.
Shelley describes the path Victor walks as "cut into [...] short windings" which is literally seen as being a treacherous path with many cut-backs crisscrossing the mountainside. But "windings" could also refer to Victor's meandering to avoid his responsibilities connection to playing God as a creator of life, his seeking to receive some sort of information about what he should do--to come to a conclusion about his uncertainty--as well as referring to the winding sheets used to wrap a dead body in.
All of these meanings could be found to have meaning in Victor's twisting, turning, walk through this landscape of his solitude. This landscape--where "traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived"--is described as an area where "trees lie [...] entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning [...] transversely upon other trees." An "avalanche" is, of course, a place of abrupt descent, or to suddenly go down, and to "traverse" is to barricade against, or to cross or thwart something. Victor feels like he has descended abruptly from his knowledgeable heights--that of becoming a life-giving God and then, falling from such a deified height in abandoning his creation--and feeling like he has been thwarted by the very thing he has created--that it is the creature's own fault that it is not a thing a beauty and perfection.
There is also a connection between "transverse" and crossing a bridge or passing through a gate. Perhaps, in wandering the Alpine mountains and valleys, Victor hopes to pass through a gate, or cross a bridge, that would allow him to shirk his past work and deeds, leaving them behind without having to ever deal with them again. This could then mean that the description of the trees should conjure images of broken limbs and other body parts that Victor would have seen in picking out the pieces to construct his creation, and he would have his creation scattered about in disarray like the mountainside in the wake of an avalanche.
Victor views these trees as "not tall or luxuriant, but they are sombre and add an air of severity to the scene." All at once, Shelley is revealing to us keys to Victor's nature and attitude with her choice of words. "Luxuriant" means to to have excesses, or to indulge, associated to Victor's unquenchable desires for knowledge that exceeds his reason; "sombre" and "severity" together displaying his gloomy and dark attitude, his austerity, and almost complete lack of kindness towards most anyone or anything. Descriptions which show him to be uncompassionate and selfish in the extreme.
His view of the peaks above him, shrouded in "thick wreaths" of "uniform clouds" where the rain falls from a "dark sky and added to the melancholy impression" also reveals to us his "black bile" of his irritability with the world surrounding him and his narcissistic sullen perception of how nothing he sees or has done is worthwhile. His creating life out of something dead is not a bright accomplishment, but a foul, deplorable thing, not because it is a creation of life from dead parts, but because it is, to Victor's eyes, not a thing of aesthetic beauty.
From his vantage point high along the winding path of the mountainside, where Victor has been wandering in philosophical circles, he looks down to the valley below where "vast mists were rising from the rivers". Aside from being a case where the word "precipitate" could have been used to indicate the falling moisture, it is a moment when Victor reaches a terminal point in his vicious circle of thought.
He looks back--and down--upon the world around him, knowing that he cannot forever stay in the solitude of the mountains, but must, eventually, descend back to the world below him, crashing like an avalanche upon those around him, shrouding a world he feels is, literally, beneath him.
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