V1, Ch6: The hens have come home to roost and Victor is responsible for creating that which has now taken a life, a life he was intimately connected to. We could almost read this as his seclusion into his experiments as being made manifest in how that is destroying his relationships. He may have not done the strangling, but he created the opportunity and means for a life and relationship to be destroyed.

V1, Ch5: He’s drawn back to the living thru his relationships with his friends and family but there is a cloud hanging over all this within the story of Justine and how her mother abandoned her and how that led to tragedy. This further reinforces the theme of relationships Shelley is interested in and how losing those relationships could be seen as a loss of humanity.

V1, Ch4: He is disgusted by his creation immediately upon it coming to life, it’s sort of a post-coital, postpartum depression. It’s also as if he poured part of his own essence into the monster which has sapped him of part of his own life. I’m reminded, in part, of Gogol’s Nose wandering about, detached from whom it belongs to, but here it’s not funny and the monster wants to be united.

V1, Ch3: Here we see his obsession and desire to be as a God – to chase nature into all her secret hidden space. He has forgone humanity to create life, to create a companion, but he has lost all sense of the importance of the life around him already. He is near going mad.