Isolation

Almost every relationship in Frankenstein is offered and then broken. Victor has a loving family and a friend in Clerval, and he chooses the laboratory over them. The creature seeks the De Laceys, is beaten for his appearance, and concludes that solitude is a sentence passed by others. Walton, writing from the ice, wants a friend and finds Victor already destroyed by having refused one.

Isolation here produces plot, not just mood. Without a companion, the creature’s benevolence has nowhere to go; without confession, Victor’s knowledge cannot save Justine or protect Elizabeth. The chase across Europe and onto the Arctic is the image of two figures who can no longer re-enter a household. When readers ask why the book feels so cold, point them to this concept rather than to “Gothic weather”: the ice is what remains after kinship is declined.