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Frankenstein

291 illustrations · 32 chapters

Chapter 1Walton writes from Petersburgh before the voyage

  1. Petersburgh under December snow, its frozen river and pale palaces beneath a dusk sky
  2. Robert Walton sits at a table under a frosted window in a bare St. Petersburgh room
  3. Walton strides down a snowy St. Petersburgh street, facing the cold northern breeze
  4. Walton stands alone on a snowy embankment facing a low sun over the frozen river
  5. Walton turns to his empty room as if a voice might answer his question
  6. Walton's steady grey eyes hold trembling candle flames as no voice answers
  7. Walton pauses over his letter to his sister, pen pressed to the page.
  8. Late at night, Walton holds his inked quill above the page, about to sign R.

Chapter 2Archangel: a ship, a crew, and no friend

  1. Archangel at frozen dusk from above: snowy timber roofs and masts locked in harbour ice
  2. Robert Walton writes to his sister by a single oil lamp in his Archangel room
  3. Alone in his frozen lodging at Archangel, Walton stops writing and lifts his eyes from the letter.
  4. The letter-writer's eyes grow wet with admiration as he finishes the master's story
  5. Walton leaves his half-written letter and stands alone at the frosted window
  6. Through a scraped spot in the frosted window, Walton watches his brig held in the ice
  7. Walton stands at the frosted window of his room in Archangel with his palm pressed to the ice.
  8. Alone in his frozen lodging room in Archangel, the weathered captain softens by the lamplight.
  9. From above, a hand holds a brass seal over scarlet wax on the letter to Margaret

Chapter 3The stranger on the ice

  1. On July 7th, a three-masted ship sails north through dark water and drifting ice
  2. The fog lifts at two o'clock and shows grey, broken ice running to the horizon on every side.
  3. The fog lifts over endless ice, and half a mile off a dog-sledge crosses toward the north.
  4. At a pale Arctic dawn, the ship's master reaches down to a half-frozen stranger
  5. On a drifting floe, a frozen stranger asks Walton where the ship is bound
  6. In the dim captain's cabin, the wasted stranger rises on one elbow in the bunk.
  7. Walton stops mid-letter in the lamplit cabin and looks back at the stranger asleep in his bunk.
  8. On the frosted deck, the wasted stranger presses his thin hands over his eyes
  9. The weeping stranger seizes Walton's arm and asks: Do you share my madness?
  10. In the captain's cabin, the wasted stranger raises a hand to stop Walton's sympathy
  11. The stranger's face as Walton remembers it when he starts the manuscript.

Chapter 4Parents' union and Elizabeth's arrival

  1. Walled Geneva lies at the lake's narrow end, with the Jura and Mont Salêve behind
  2. In a bare, cold room in Lucerne, the ruined Beaufort lies broken on his sickbed
  3. Caroline Beaufort kneels and weeps at her father's closed pine coffin in Lucerne
  4. Caroline Beaufort kneels weeping over her father's closed coffin in the bare Lucerne chamber.
  5. On a terrace above the Bay of Naples, Caroline holds her infant son to her cheek
  6. A lady and her small son step into the smoky, dark room of a Lombard peasant cot
  7. Little Elizabeth sits among her hungry foster siblings at a cottage table by Lake Como
  8. Caroline hears her own past as the peasant woman tells the fair child's story
  9. Alphonse Frankenstein stops in the doorway of the lakeside villa hall.
  10. Little Elizabeth skips across the villa hall at Como as five-year-old Victor watches
  11. Five-year-old Victor gravely holds out his open hand to golden-haired Elizabeth

Chapter 5Agrippa, the lightning, and the seeds of ruin

  1. The small villa at Belrive looks tiny beside the shining Lake of Geneva and the Alps
  2. On the lawn at Belrive, young Henry Clerval raises a wooden sword to challenge Victor
  3. In the garden at Belrive, Elizabeth rests a hand on sullen, book-bent Victor's sleeve
  4. At a rainy inn near Thonon, thirteen-year-old Victor holds out his Cornelius Agrippa
  5. At dusk, young Victor holds up an incantation, waiting for a spirit that never comes
  6. The morning after the storm, a boy lifts a pale ribbon of wood from the blasted oak stump
  7. Victor bends quietly over his geometry at the round table while his parents read and sew.

Chapter 6Mother's death and Waldman's lecture

  1. The villa at Belrive sits small on its green promontory as a storm gathers over the Alps
  2. On her deathbed, Caroline Beaufort joins Elizabeth's hand to Victor's and blesses them
  3. Caroline Frankenstein has just died in her curtained bed at Belrive.
  4. Ingolstadt's high white steeple appears through the chaise window after a long journey
  5. Professor Krempe freezes at his desk, staring at the student who named his alchemists
  6. Victor goes into the lecture out of idle curiosity and sees M.
  7. Professor Waldman lifts a hand toward the blazing window as he praises modern chemistry
  8. As Waldman speaks, Victor's gaze locks and burns.
  9. In his parlour, Professor Waldman holds out an open hand to welcome Victor as his pupil
  10. Evening falls in Waldman's laboratory.

Chapter 7The secret of life and the workshop of filthy creation

  1. Walled Ingolstadt sleeps under fading stars while one laboratory window still burns
  2. Victor stops at the electrical machine in the pale dawn light and turns his face toward the window.
  3. Victor stands alone in a low stone charnel vault under an Ingolstadt churchyard.
  4. Deep in the charnel vault, Victor stops in the middle of examining a body.
  5. In the lamplit cabin, the wasted Victor Frankenstein refuses to share his secret.
  6. In his attic cell, Victor lays a measuring rod along bones far taller than any man
  7. In his moonlit garret, a wasted Victor works a blade into the giant body's wrist
  8. Worn by secret work, Victor jerks his eyes to the shutter at a withered leaf's rustle
  9. Worn out by fever, Victor stands at the long table, hand pressed on his sheeted creation

Chapter 8The creature wakes; Victor flees and falls ill

  1. Ingolstadt lies asleep under driving November rain at one in the morning.
  2. One in the morning in the attic workroom.
  3. By a guttering candle at one in the morning, the creature's dull yellow eye first opens
  4. From the rafters: the giant creature stirs into life on the long trestle table
  5. Victor wakes to find the creature standing over his bed, holding the curtain aside
  6. Victor wakes to find his creature leaning in under the lifted bed curtain
  7. Outside the Ingolstadt inn, Henry Clerval leaps from the diligence with arms flung wide
  8. Victor throws open the door of his rooms expecting the monster and stops on the threshold.
  9. A feverish vision seizes Victor at breakfast.
  10. Victor lies unconscious on the floorboards of his Ingolstadt room after his seizure.
  11. After a winter of fever, Victor turns his thin face to spring buds at the open window
  12. Victor is recovering in the spring sunlight when Clerval's gentle "one subject" stops his smile.

Chapter 9Elizabeth's letter and recovery beside Clerval

  1. In the sickroom, Clerval puts Elizabeth's letter into the thin hands of recovering Victor
  2. In Professor Waldman's parlour, Victor sits rigid in the red wing armchair and grips the armrest.
  3. Victor stares at Krempe as the blunt praise lands, horror in his eyes
  4. Victor's face is at peace as he reads Persian poetry by the green light of the window
  5. Victor has spent the winter shut in sickrooms and studies.
  6. Fully recovered, Victor lifts his smiling face to the May sky beside a flowering hedge
  7. Victor bounds up a sunlit Ingolstadt street with his stick held high as Clerval laughs

Chapter 10Return to Geneva: the storm and the accused

  1. Two friends walk home to the lodging house, where a letter from Geneva waits
  2. At his writing table, Victor reads his father's letter telling him William is murdered
  3. At five in the morning, a small open hand lies still in the dewy grass of Plainpalais
  4. Victor has just read the news of William's murder.
  5. A flash of lightning over Plainpalais shows Victor the giant he created
  6. Sure his creature killed William, Victor sags against a rain-soaked tree at Plainpalais
  7. In the hushed library at grey dawn, Victor stands rigid as he hears Justine Moritz's name.
  8. After the storm, Victor's calm has set hard.
  9. Grey morning light after the storm falls into the mourning library at Geneva.

Chapter 11Justine's trial and execution

  1. On a grey morning, Geneva streams toward the town hall where Justine's trial will begin
  2. In the witness stand, Elizabeth holds up the gilt miniature she hung round William's neck
  3. Victor can no longer bear the verdict he sees coming.
  4. The morning after the trial, the judges' vote lies spilled across the clerk's oak table.
  5. Justine kneels on the stone floor of the cell with her manacled hands pressed to her heart.
  6. Justine is chained and condemned, yet she is the one giving comfort.
  7. Justine stands small and upright in black mourning on the scaffold above a hostile crowd
  8. Victor stands alone as his family grieves over the graves of William and Justine

Chapter 12Mourning at Belrive and flight to Chamounix

  1. The villa at Belrive stands half-shuttered and silent above the flat grey lake
  2. Victor has no answer for his father's gentle advice.
  3. Victor lets his boat drift in the middle of the still, starlit Lake of Geneva
  4. Adrift on the moonlit lake, Victor leans over the side toward his own reflection
  5. Victor stares past the camera toward Elizabeth.
  6. In the Arve ravine, a tiny rider on a mule climbs past a ruined castle and raging river
  7. Victor rides a mule into Chamounix as an avalanche thunders beneath Mont Blanc's dome
  8. On the road into Chamounix, grief-worn Victor throws himself face-down on the grass
  9. Worn out after the long ride, Victor stands at the window of the inn at Chamounix.

Chapter 13The meeting on the sea of ice

  1. At cold dawn, a glacier closes the valley of Chamounix beneath Mont Blanc's sunlit dome
  2. Mist lifts from the Mer de Glace, showing a lone traveller among the crevasses
  3. Victor Frankenstein stands in a recess of the rock above the sea of ice as the mist breaks.
  4. On the sea of ice, Victor stands against the dark rock, shaking with rage and horror
  5. Victor springs at the giant's throat as the Creature calmly turns aside below Mont Blanc
  6. On the sea of ice, the creature presses a hand to his heart and pleads with his maker
  7. On the sea of ice, the creature lays his huge hand over Victor's eyes
  8. On the glacier, the creature points to the far hut and puts the choice to Victor
  9. In a stone hut by the fire, the creature leans toward his maker and begins his tale

Chapter 14The Creature's first days and the cottage

  1. A high view over the endless forest near Ingolstadt in hazy summer glare.
  2. The newborn Creature sits alone by a brook in the night forest, wrapped in a found cloak
  3. Alone in the forest, the Creature reaches for the beggars' abandoned fire with childlike joy.
  4. A giant stoops under the lintel of a shepherd's hut, dark against the glare of the snowy fields.
  5. At sunset the village the Creature found so wonderful turns on him.
  6. Bruised by the villagers' stones, the giant lies curled in a lean-to too low to stand in
  7. Through a chink in the hovel wall, the Creature watches a fair-haired girl carry a pail
  8. The Creature watches the blind old cottager lift his weeping daughter with tenderness
  9. Felix reads aloud by the light of a taper.

Chapter 15The Invisible Hand and the First Words

  1. On a sleepless winter night, the bruised creature leans his huge body toward the boarded window.
  2. A young woman sets the only bowl of food before her blind father; two plates lie empty
  3. In the moonlit wood, the creature raises Felix's axe to cut firewood for the family
  4. Agatha opens the cottage door to find an unexpected pile of firewood
  5. By the fire, Felix reads aloud to his blind father and Agatha from a glowing open book
  6. By a still pool, the creature bends over the water to see his face for the first time
  7. The Creature sees his own face in a pool for the first time, disbelief turning to horror
  8. Hunched in the dark hovel, the creature presses his fingertips to the boarded window.
  9. Spring has come after a winter of hunger.

Chapter 16Safie's arrival and the bitter gift of language

  1. At dawn the valley that was desert and gloomy all winter is covered in flowers and fresh green.
  2. Felix teaches Safie her first word at the cottage table as the family looks on happily
  3. Safie sits at the blind old man's feet with his guitar and sings.
  4. Felix stops reading Volney's history as Safie weeps for America's lost native peoples
  5. The creature has drawn back from the chink in the boards.
  6. The creature watches the family's warm evening through a chink in the boarded window
  7. Alone in the grey hovel, the creature curls on the straw with his arms over his head

Chapter 17The history of the De Laceys and Safie

  1. In the stone hut on the glacier, the creature leans toward the fire and begins his tale
  2. Felix has just refused the Turk's gold with contempt.
  3. Felix drags the condemned Turkish merchant out through the forced prison grate
  4. At Leghorn, Felix rises with the crushed letter from Paris as Safie reaches after him
  5. Exiled from France, the De Laceys reach a poor thatched cottage in Germany
  6. Felix stands alone at the edge of a grey field, spade idle, head bowed
  7. In her room at Leghorn, Safie finds where Felix lives in exile in her father's papers
  8. Safie, clutching a purse of jewels, takes a last look back at her father's papers
  9. After her attendant dies in a strange German town, Safie sits on the floor beside the covered body.

Chapter 18The books, the journal and the rejection

  1. A lone whitewashed cottage between moonlit fields and a black wood, one window glowing
  2. On an August night in the wood, the Creature's huge hands open a leather portmanteau he has found.
  3. The creature reads Victor's journal, learns how he was made, and breaks.
  4. A year after waking, the Creature sits wrapped in his cloak on the straw of the frozen hovel.
  5. The creature has stepped out of his hovel into the cold autumn sun.
  6. The giant stoops under low beams and asks the blind old man for a place by the fire
  7. By the fire, the creature presses his hand to his heart and thanks the blind old man
  8. Felix stands over the fallen creature with his stick raised for a second blow.

Chapter 19The Burnt Cottage and the First Murder

  1. Worn out after a night of rage, the Creature lies on damp grass under cold stars
  2. The Creature dances around the dark, empty De Lacey cottage with a burning branch
  3. The Creature drives a burning branch onto the straw heaped against the De Lacey cottage
  4. On a starless winter night, the Creature crosses a vast frozen river in falling snow
  5. The name "Frankenstein" kills the Creature's last hope.
  6. In blue dusk, the Creature stands frozen over William's small, still body in the grass
  7. The stolen gold miniature of a lovely woman rests in the Creature's huge, dirty palm
  8. The Creature pushes Caroline's miniature into a fold of the sleeping Justine's gown
  9. Leaning across the hut fire, the Creature demands a companion of the same species

Chapter 20The pact on the sea of ice

  1. The creature's long tale is over.
  2. In the herdsman's hut, Victor jumps to his feet and shouts across the flaring fire
  3. Over the fire, the creature's face twists with hatred as he vows to destroy his maker
  4. Victor finally lifts his head and faces the creature across the dying fire
  5. In the dusk of the stone hut on the sea of ice, Victor finally agrees to the creature's demand.
  6. The creature rises beneath the low roof of the herdsman's hut.
  7. Victor stands at the herdsman's hut door.
  8. Alone at the fountain on his night descent from the Mer de Glace, Victor kneels and weeps.
  9. Worn out and silent, Victor comes home to Geneva and stops just inside the door
  10. Home in Geneva after a sleepless night, Victor stares past everyone at the task ahead

Chapter 21Departure for England with Clerval

  1. Walled Geneva by its long blue lake, with tiny sails and the snowy Alps beyond
  2. Victor's eyes freeze in silent horror as his father proposes an immediate marriage to Elizabeth.
  3. Victor eagerly asks his father to travel to England, hiding his real purpose
  4. Elizabeth stands on the step of the grey Geneva house in her dark mourning gown.
  5. Clerval arrives at Strasburgh with his arms flung wide and full of life on the golden Rhine quay.
  6. At sunset on the Strasburgh quay, Clerval throws his arm out toward the blazing sky over the Rhine.
  7. The Rhine runs dark and fast through a steep gorge below Mainz.
  8. On the Rhine below Mainz, Clerval stands in the bow and points out a ruined castle
  9. Clerval stands in blazing light at the bow as Victor watches him from the shadowed stern
  10. Clerval points out Britain's white cliffs as Victor grips the rail, dreading his task
  11. At the end of the voyage, Clerval points out St. Paul's dome above hazy London

Chapter 22From London to the Orkney laboratory

  1. Grey London under winter coal smoke, seen from the Thames: wharves, masts and St. Paul's
  2. Victor stands apart at the grey window of a London philosopher's study.
  3. A trembling hand hangs over the first wrapped materials for the new creation
  4. At Oxford, Victor rests his hand on a lightning-split willow above the Isis
  5. At Hampden's tomb, Victor briefly straightens toward a shaft of sun through the clouds
  6. On a lakeside path in Cumberland, Clerval walks on cheerfully toward the bright water.
  7. In a parlour in Perth, Clerval reaches out to Victor and asks him to come back soon
  8. Victor's chosen Orkney island: a bare rock ringed by surf in miles of cold grey sea
  9. In the Orkney hut, Victor keeps his hands on the covered form and turns away in disgust
  10. Alone in his stone laboratory on the Orkney rock, Victor sits bowed beside the covered work.
  11. Late at night on Orkney, Victor bends over the shrouded form of his second creation
  12. At night in the Orkney hut, Victor bends over his half-finished work.

Chapter 23Broken promise and drift to the Irish shore

  1. By moonlight, the dæmon grins through the casement at Victor and his unfinished work
  2. By moonlight, Frankenstein rises from his stool and tears apart the half-finished female.
  3. The creature stands stooped under the low rafters of the moonlit Orkney cottage
  4. Leaving, the Creature looks back and vows to be with his creator on his wedding night
  5. At daybreak, the half-finished creature's remains lie beside a stone-weighted basket
  6. Under a clouded moon, Victor lowers the stone-weighted basket into the black sea
  7. On the Irish quay, a hostile crowd closes in on Victor over a gentleman's murder

Chapter 24Clerval's body, prison and release

  1. Hearing of finger marks on the dead man's neck, Victor remembers his brother's murder
  2. Victor is led up to the open coffin in the inn room while Mr. Kirwin watches his face.
  3. In the open elm coffin, Henry Clerval's bare throat carries black finger marks
  4. In the grey inn room, Victor Frankenstein throws himself across the open coffin.
  5. After two months of fever, Victor wakes in prison and stares up at the barred windows
  6. Victor Frankenstein is sure that the friend who has come to see him is the creature.
  7. In his prison chair, Victor hears his father has come, and his face turns to joy
  8. Victor, thin and weak in his prison chair, reaches out to his father, who has just arrived.
  9. Freed, Victor comes down the courthouse steps between his father and Mr. Kirwin
  10. Wasted by fever, Victor grips a chair back, set on returning to Geneva
  11. In laudanum sleep on the ship, Victor fights a hand at his throat that isn't there

Chapter 25The wedding and the voyage to Evian

  1. Paris spreads under a low overcast morning sky, with the grey Seine curving between its stone quays.
  2. In Paris, feverish Victor springs up and calls the heavens to witness his guilt
  3. Victor looks up from Elizabeth's letter, remembering the creature's wedding-night threat
  4. Victor sits in the worn armchair by the small Paris hearth, still gaunt from fever.
  5. Victor comes home to Geneva, and Elizabeth hurries across the sitting room to meet him.
  6. In the Geneva sitting room, Elizabeth sits beside Victor and lays her hand on his arm
  7. By the firelit hearth, Victor smiles and clasps his father's hand as he agrees to marry in ten days.
  8. On the wedding morning, the overjoyed father directs servants with flowers and boxes
  9. The wedding boat crosses the sunlit Lake of Geneva between the Jura and Mont Blanc
  10. In the shade of the canopy, Victor takes Elizabeth's hand and asks her for one quiet day
  11. At sunset, Victor steps onto the Evian shore and reaches back for Elizabeth's hand

Chapter 26Wedding Night Murder and a Vow of Revenge

  1. At the Evian inn on their wedding night, Victor sends Elizabeth to the bedchamber
  2. A scream comes from Elizabeth's room, and Victor stops dead in the dark inn passage.
  3. Victor stops dead on the threshold of the candlelit bridal chamber.
  4. Victor looks up from Elizabeth's veiled body.
  5. Victor lunges from his murdered bride's bed and fires at the creature on the sill
  6. Weeping over Elizabeth's body, Victor pictures the fiend killing his father and Ernest
  7. In his dim Geneva bedchamber, Alphonse Frankenstein dies in his son's arms.
  8. Victor is finally released from the madman's cell.
  9. Turned away by the magistrate, Victor swears his life to destroying his creature

Chapter 27The Vow at the Grave and the Chase North

  1. Geneva from Mont Salêve at grey dusk, a small walled town between the lake and the Jura
  2. Victor kneels at his family's tomb, fist to his chest, cursing the dæmon
  3. Victor kneels at his family's tomb and twists round as a fiendish laugh answers his vow
  4. The creature leans down behind kneeling Victor in the dark cemetery and whispers
  5. Victor springs up from his family's tomb and grabs at empty air.
  6. From a warehouse shadow, Victor watches the creature board a brig bound for the Black Sea
  7. Fresh, deep letters are hacked into the white bark of an old birch while snow falls.
  8. Victor kneels on a snowy rise and gives thanks as the ice-bound ocean opens before him
  9. Worn thin and frosted, Victor Frankenstein kneels on a snowy rise above the frozen ocean

Chapter 28The chase across the ice and the oath asked of Walton

  1. A poor hamlet huddles on a snowy shore beside the rugged frozen ocean
  2. On a moonlit night, the giant stands beside a sledge loaded with stolen winter food
  3. On the frozen shore of the last hamlet, Victor rises from his despair.
  4. A small loaded dog-sledge leaves the last hamlet for the endless Frozen Ocean
  5. From an ice mountain, the exhausted pursuer spots a dark sledge far off and cries out
  6. Spotting the fiend's sledge after three weeks of despair, Victor weeps aloud with hope
  7. Victor sees the fiend's sledge a mile ahead and whips his dogs on in desperate hope
  8. The ice cracks open with the force of an earthquake, just a mile short of the chase's end.
  9. Victor Frankenstein kneels with his worn-out dogs on a small, crumbling ice floe
  10. On a shrinking floe by his dead dogs, Victor stares in disbelief at a distant ship
  11. Too weak to carry on the hunt, the dying Victor Frankenstein rises from his bunk in Walton's cabin.

Chapter 29The tale told: a friend found only to be lost

  1. Walton's ship lies alone in the endless northern ice
  2. In the lamplit cabin, the dying Frankenstein sits up in Walton's bunk with the notes on his knees.
  3. In the lamplit cabin, the dying guest speaks in his sleep and reaches into the empty air
  4. Sitting up in the narrow bunk, wasted Frankenstein lifts his face and an open hand
  5. At the last words of his confession, Victor Frankenstein's eyes sink toward his hands.
  6. Walton stops writing to Margaret by lamplight and looks back at the dim bunk
  7. Calm in his bunk, Frankenstein says he must hunt down his creature and may then die

Chapter 30Mutiny in the ice and the vow to turn back

  1. From high above, a small whaler sits frozen fast between two jagged mountains of ice
  2. Alone in the frozen cabin, Walton pauses mid-confession, his quill still above the page
  3. Through frosted stern windows, sailors haul a comrade's body to a cairn with a cross
  4. Half a dozen sailors crowd the captain's cabin door as their spokesman steps forward
  5. For one moment the dying guest comes back to life.
  6. The dying guest rises from his bunk and urges the mutinous sailors to be more than men
  7. The sailors have gone.
  8. Late at night, Walton sits alone at his letter with the quill stopped on the page
  9. Walton sits bowed over the letter in which he has just agreed to turn back

Chapter 31Frankenstein's death and the turn toward England

  1. The ice has let the ship go.
  2. Walton sits alone at the writing table in the grey Arctic light.
  3. The frozen sea starts to move, and ice islands split with a roar around the trapped ship
  4. Frankenstein tries one last time to rise from his bunk, and his strength gives out
  5. Victor Frankenstein's wasted fingers give Walton's palm one last faint squeeze
  6. Victor Frankenstein's eyes close for good and the last trace of a gentle smile leaves his lips.
  7. After Frankenstein's death, Walton weeps silently over his unfinished letter to Margaret

Chapter 32The creature's lament over the dead creator

  1. At midnight, a small whaler sails slowly south along a black lane of water through the ice
  2. A giant man springs from the coffin toward the open stern window at midnight.
  3. Across his dead friend's coffin, Walton flings out his arm and shouts at the creature
  4. In Walton's cabin, the Creature turns from the lamplight to face the black Arctic ice
  5. The giant creature kneels at the open coffin and bows over his dead creator's face
  6. By the stern window, the creature stands tall, lifting his face as if seeing his pyre
  7. By the stern window, the creature looks down one last time at his dead creator