This is a remarkable book! My favorite passage by far is Volume III, Chapter III. In this short chapter, Dr. Frankenstein has to battle his conscience and his fear of the monster. As he is preparing the materials for a second female monster, his mind jumps from worst case senario to worst case senario as he realizes that he will create another beast, of which he cannot predict the actions of.
I enjoy reading about the struggle that Dr. Frankenstein has to face and, while I read the novel, I felt a sense of joy when Dr. Frankenstein decides to destroy the materials for a second creature.
It also humors me to analyze the concerns that the Dr. has for this new female creature. He fears the creature will become more powerful and may not want to ally with the current "male" monster. He also is scared that if the two monsters do bond together, they will create monstrous offspring. I find this funny because Dr. Frankenstein is a scientist who obviously knows a tremendous lot about human anatomy. While he was preparing the materials for the second monster, couldn't he make her less strong, maybe a little smaller, and sterile—to eliminate the fear of offspring monsters?
All of these ideas are what fascinates me about this passage.
Yeah, I wonder those same things. And the only thing I can figure is that perhaps science (or at least Mary Shelley) didn't know what caused sterility yet. But at least this time he is thinking about the unintended consequences of such an act, thoughts he never had the first time. So I get a sense of growth in this scene.
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