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1818, when Elizabeth was more closely modeled on Mary’s own physical features and qualities. In the original text, Elizabeth is described as a complex, intelligent, yet fragile child: “Although she was lively and animated, her feelings were strong and deep,” as Victor describes his cousin. “Her hazel eyes, although as lively as a bird‘s, possessed an attractive softness.” Startled, perhaps, by the image of herself in the earlier text, Shelley reintroduced Elizabeth as a blue-eyed, blonde “heaven-sent” being in 1831 (p. 30).
    The thirty-something Mary Shelley who revised Frankenstein was sad der, wiser, more emotionally protective, and less politically radical than the teenager who wrote the original story. By 1831, she had lost her husband, two more children, and several friends; she had abandoned hope of receiving needed support from her parents or in-laws (in fact, Godwin often asked Mary for help with his finances); she had faced alone the wrath of the public, which condemned her for her lifestyle choices and even invented racy stories about her involvement with a “League of Incest.” All this had shocked her into a state of submission, and the new Frankenstein was bound to reflect the new Mary Shelley. For example, in 1818 Victor possessed free will or the capacity for meaningful moral choice; it was his decision whether or not to pursue his quest for the “principle of life,” to care for the monster, or to protect Elizabeth. In 1831 such choice is denied to him; he is the pawn of forces beyond his knowledge or control. Describing his eventual turn from the study of mathematics to the chemical sciences, Frankenstein speaks of “destiny” and fate “hanging in the stars”: “Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin” (p. 3 7 ) .
    Shelley’s increasing self-doubt was complicated by her loss of faith in her parents’ ideals and teachings. Though Mary retained the novel’s dedication to her father in 1831, she removed or toned down several passages that pushed his radical politics: Justine’s final moments originally included Elizabeth’s didactic pronouncements of arguments from Political Justice; she removed these in 1831 and allowed Justine to speak of her own personal courage and resolution (p. 78). Likewise, the shaping influence of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, especially its raillery against women’s “passive obedience” in chapter 2, is much less evident in the 1831 incarnation of Elizabeth. In 1818 Shelley implies that Elizabeth took part with Victor in schooling and possessed an intellect that was different, yet just as active, as her cousin’s: Victor describes the world as “a secret, which I desired to discover” while for Elizabeth it was “a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.” In the revision, Elizabeth is presented to Victor as a “present” rather than an equal (p. 31), and she inspires rather than engages in Victor’s studies: “The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home” (p. 33).
    Shelley addresses the changes she made to her original text at the end of her 1831 “Author’s Introduction.” These alterations, she writes, “are entirely confined to such parts as are mere adjuncts to the story, leaving the core and substance of it untouched” (p. 10). Mary had changed over fifteen years, and parts of the text changed with her; but she herself recognized that the “core” of Frankenstein had a life of its own and an existence separate from hers. And she was content to leave it at that. Bidding her hideous progeny to “go forth and prosper,” Mary Shelley ventured through her last twenty years without ever turning back to the text again.
    He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.
    But