Creation & Abandonment
“It Was on a Dreary Night of November”
The moment of creation is the novel’s most famous scene and one of the most important passages for the exam. Victor describes: “It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.” The word “dreary” immediately undercuts any sense of triumph. “Accomplishment” should suggest achievement, but paired with “dreary,” it feels hollow. Shelley uses pathetic fallacy to signal that this is not a moment of celebration but of catastrophe.
Victor continues: “With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” The shift from “anxiety” to “agony” reveals his growing dread. “Instruments of life” is deliberately vague — Shelley never explains exactly how the Creature is animated, keeping the horror in the imagination. “The lifeless thing that lay at my feet” dehumanises the Creature before it even lives, reducing it to an object. Victor has spent two years working towards this moment, yet his language reveals revulsion rather than pride.
“It was on a dreary night of November” is the novel’s pivotal moment. Shelley’s language choices — “dreary,” “agony,” “the lifeless thing” — turn what should be a scientific triumph into a scene of Gothic horror. The creation scene embodies the novel’s central warning: that ambition without moral responsibility creates monsters.
Victor’s Horror and Disgust
The moment the Creature opens its eyes, Victor is overcome with revulsion. He describes the Creature’s appearance in visceral detail: “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set.”
Shelley’s description is deliberately contradictory. The Creature has beautiful elements — lustrous black hair, pearly teeth — set against horrifying features: yellow skin stretched too thin, watery eyes in discoloured sockets. This contrast creates an uncanny effect: the Creature is close enough to human to be recognisable but different enough to be deeply disturbing. Victor’s reaction is immediate and absolute: “breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” He does not try to help, teach, or nurture his creation. He runs.
The novel’s subtitle is “The Modern Prometheus.” In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, bringing knowledge and power. As punishment, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock where an eagle devoured his liver every day, only for it to regenerate each night. Victor is the “modern Prometheus” because he has stolen the power of creation from God or nature and must now suffer for it. Like Prometheus, Victor’s punishment is ongoing and inescapable: the Creature will destroy everyone Victor loves, one by one.
The Prometheus myth also has a second version, in which Prometheus creates humanity from clay. This version is even more relevant to Victor, who literally assembles a new being from dead matter. In both versions, the act of creation brings suffering. Shelley’s message is clear: humans who attempt to rival God or nature will face devastating consequences.
The Abandonment
Victor’s response to his creation is to flee. He describes: “Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room.” He abandons the Creature within minutes of bringing it to life. This abandonment is the novel’s original sin — the act from which all subsequent tragedies flow. The Creature is brought into existence with no guidance, no love, no language, and no understanding of the world. It is, in effect, a newborn abandoned by its only parent.
Shelley invites the reader to consider the parallel with childbirth. Victor has laboured for two years to bring this being into existence, yet the moment it lives, he recoils in disgust. Where a parent should feel love, Victor feels only horror. Where a creator should feel responsibility, Victor feels only the desire to escape. The novel asks a devastating question: who is the real monster — the Creature who was abandoned, or the creator who abandoned it?
Victor abandons the Creature within minutes of its creation. He feels “breathless horror and disgust” and flees the room. This abandonment is the novel’s original sin — it denies the Creature the parental guidance, love, and language it needs. Shelley positions Victor’s failure as a parent, not the Creature’s appearance, as the true cause of all the tragedy that follows.
Victor’s Collapse
After fleeing, Victor wanders the streets of Ingolstadt in a state of panic. When he returns, the Creature has gone. Rather than searching for it, Victor feels relief. He then collapses into a “nervous fever” that lasts several months, nursed back to health by his friend Henry Clerval. Shelley uses Victor’s illness as a physical manifestation of his psychological guilt. His body breaks down because his mind cannot process what he has done.
Even after his recovery, Victor refuses to take responsibility. He does not tell Clerval what he has created. He does not search for the Creature. He does not warn anyone. Instead, he tries to forget, throwing himself into poetry and nature walks with Clerval. Shelley presents Victor’s denial as a second moral failure: having created the Creature, he now pretends it does not exist, leaving it to fend for itself in a hostile world.
Henry Clerval represents everything Victor has sacrificed: warmth, friendship, creativity, and human connection. While Victor spent two years in isolation pursuing his experiment, Clerval was denied permission to attend university by his father. When Clerval finally arrives at Ingolstadt, he finds Victor in a state of mental and physical collapse. Clerval nurses Victor back to health, asks no difficult questions, and gently reintroduces him to literature and nature. Shelley uses Clerval as a moral benchmark — he shows what Victor could be if he valued human relationships over scientific ambition. Clerval’s later murder by the Creature makes Victor’s failure to warn him an even greater moral crime.