Both Elizabeth and Victor, endeavoring to alter the verdict through a rhetoric that
would move the judges' hearts, completely fail in their attempt. Once again, eloquence
is placed at the center of the discourse and in a highly problematic light. Why it
is so problematic might best be gauged by comparing this work to the major poem that
Percy Bysshe Shelley was writing simultaneously with it, The Revolt of Islam. There
the heroine Cythna so moves the hearts of her auditors through her eloquent appeals
to their common humanity as to foment a radical revolution that overthrows the tyranny
that has oppressed them. Although it is a conspicuous feature of Cythna's presence,
Canto 8 of that poem is exemplary since it is entirely devoted to this process.
In the Shelleys' household, then, eloquence holds a privileged place as a tool of
non-violent political reform. Where it fails so grievously as here, the consequences
may be very great. That Mary Shelley is herself aware of this dimension may be inferred
from her letter of June 1 1816 where she calmly notes of the French "liberation" of
Switzerland in 1798 that all "the magistrates . . . were shot by the populace during
that revolution." It may give the reader pause to realize that one of those actual
magistrates, were he still himself among the living, would have been Alphonse Frankenstein.