Chapter 15

Discovering Victor's journal of the four months before his creation in the pocket of dress taken from the laboratory, the creature reads with sickening horror the minutely described process of his own construction.

When not despairing over his journal, the creature is persuaded that the cottagers' virtue will move them to compassion; he resolves to approach the blind old man when the children are absent.

During a nightly excursion, the creature finds a leather portmanteau containing Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and the Sorrows of Werther—three books that will reshape his understanding of himself.

Reading Paradise Lost as true history, the creature finds Adam's situation far superior to his own; he often considers Satan as his fitter emblem—like Satan viewing the bliss of Eden with envious bitterness.

Where Werther taught despondency, Plutarch elevates the creature above his own wretched sphere; he learns of public men, virtue, and vice, finding the greatest ardour for nobility rising within him.

The Sorrows of Werther strikes the creature with a never-ending source of speculation: its gentle domestic manners and lofty feelings accord with his experience among the De Laceys, though Werther himself seems more divine than any being he has known.

As the cottage fills with Safie's happiness and plenty, the creature's mind grows more tumultuous—each increase in knowledge revealing more clearly his status as a wretched outcast, his hopes vanishing whenever he sees his reflection.