Shelley begins her novel with letters from a man named Robert Walton. The purpose of the letters was, at first, unknown to me, as I have not previously read Frankenstein. There was no apparent connection between the travels of Walton and Victor Frankenstein’s experiment. I assumed that all would reveal itself as I read. At the end of Volume 1, I realized that the stranger that climbed aboard in Walton’s letters is none other than Victor Frankenstein himself. Walton tells of the stranger’s mysteriousness and that he presented himself like “a calm, settled grief” (62). In the last letter, the stranger finally tells Walton, “You will hear of powers and occurrences, such as you have been accustomed to believe impossible” (62). I can only speculate that the stranger is an older, subdued Frankenstein and Frankenstein is referring to his doomed experiment. Therefore, the introductory letters addressed from Walton serve as a framework for Frankenstein’s story.
In Chapter V, we are introduced to a new set of letters; this time, correspondence is between Elizabeth and Frankenstein, and Frankenstein and his father. Letters are also mentioned throughout the fourth chapter. These letters serve as a social connection during a time when Frankenstein isolates himself due to his experimentation with immortality. I understood these letters to be representative of the dream-like state Frankenstein seems to always be in versus the reality Elizabeth and Alphonse exist in.
Frankenstein has created his own world with the creation of his monster. He lives and breathes his experiments, and he neglects his physical state only focusing on his monster. After fleeing the awakening of his monster, Frankenstein returns to his empty apartment and enters into a wild, delirious state. “I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same place.. Wildness in my eyes for which [Clerval] could not account” (87). Frankenstein then becomes sick and continues in his “imaginary” world until the letter from his father, telling of his younger brother’s murder, arrives. Frankenstein then snaps out of his madness and isolation, and he returns to his family.
These letters from his family serve as a connection with the real world For Frankenstein, away from the delirium that Frankenstein has been consumed by. I can imagine that as the novel goes on, Frankenstein will continue to find himself in between this deranged, imaginary world, and the realistic world that his family lives in.