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the reader may have a harder time closing the book. There is something unsettling about the way the story ends—a lack of closure that points to a sequel that was never written (at least by Mary herself) . We are left wondering about the mysteriously silent Margaret Saville; did she ever receive these letters or see her brother again? Will Walton relinquish his quest and deny Frankenstein’s final request to destroy the monster? If he does indeed return to civilization, can we wholly approve of this decision? Frankenstein’s very last words resonate for his more ambitious listeners: His attempt and failure are necessary and contributory to eventual success. The point is to persevere, to dwell in possibility. Whether Walton chooses to acknowledge human limitations or defy them and why his letters drop off when they do are questions left for the reader to ponder. As she has throughout the novel, Shelley in the end has allowed for a provocative discourse of open-ended indeterminacy rather than moral didacticism.
    And what of the monster who is borne away, yet never dies? It’s difficult to imagine that a creature as sociable as the monster would leave society forever, or that a being who values its existence so highly would exterminate itself. If we take what we have seen from the monster already as example, it is evident that what keeps him going is the need to tell his tale. To De Lacey, to Frankenstein, to Walton, and perhaps to anyone he meets in the future, the monster reveals his physical form and discloses his soul, searching for the human sympathy he has lost hope in finding. Like the ancient mariner, the monster knows no release from the telling of his tale. And he continues to find those who are compelled to listen.
    I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
The moment that his face I see
I know the man that must hear me—
To him my tale I teach.
    Karen Karbiener received a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and teaches at New York University. She has taught courses on British and American Romanticism, as well as the connections between poetry, music, and the visual arts, at Columbia, the Cooper Union, and Colby College. Her publications include essays on transatlantic cultural influence, forgotten women poets, and Romantic opera.

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man, Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?
    PARADISE LOST, X, 743-745

TO
WILLIAM GODWIN
Author of Political Justice, Caleb Williams, &c.
THESE VOLUMES
Are respectfully inscribed
BY
THE AUTHOR

PREFACE f
    THE EVENT ON WHICH this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it developes; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.
    I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations. The Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece—Shakespeare, in the Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream—and most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule; and the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human