by the "repulsive countenance" of Krempe, the chemistry professor at the University
of Ingolstadt (see I:2:9), in time he came to treasure "his sound sense and real information,"
however much he was still aware of their being "combined . . . with a respulsive physiognomy"
(I:3:1). Obviously, however, what Victor can tolerate in a human constrained by the
normative boundaries of inherited genetic combination he is unwilling to extend to
his Creature, who is a being of whom, from the first, he claimed "no mortal could
support the horror of that countenance" (I:4:4), a being who himself, upon first seeing
his reflection, "started back" from his "miserable deformity" (II:4:13). Victor's
magnanimous identification with his fellow beings collapses here under the weight
of the ironies of a categorical discrimination he seems unable to comprehend.