Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein grows up in Geneva as the adored eldest son of a wealthy, affectionate family, surrounded by mountains, books, and people who expect great things of him. He is brilliant, impatient, and incapable of leaving a question alone — the kind of student who reads far past midnight and forgets to answer letters home. At seventeen he is sent to the university at Ingolstadt, alone in a foreign country, certain that science will let him do something nobody has done before.

The Creature is the being Victor Frankenstein sets out to assemble, and he arrives in the world knowing nothing at all — not language, not people, not even what his own body is for. He is quick, observant, and physically overwhelming, and every person who sees him reacts to his size and his face before he can make a sound. What he becomes depends entirely on what happens to him next.

Elizabeth Lavenza is the orphaned daughter of a Milanese nobleman, found as a small child living with peasant foster-parents and brought into the Frankenstein household by Victor's mother. She grows up beside Victor as the calm, warm centre of the family, drawn to poetry, people, and the beauty of the Alps rather than to laboratories. She and Victor call each other cousin, though she is no blood relation, and she writes to him faithfully once he leaves for university.

Henry Clerval is the son of a Geneva merchant and Victor's dearest friend since childhood, a cheerful romantic who loves languages, poetry, and stories of adventure far more than his father's account books. He is generous and stubbornly loyal, the sort of friend who will drop everything and travel a long way if he thinks someone needs him. When Victor leaves to study, Henry stays behind, still arguing with his father for a university education of his own.

Robert Walton is an ambitious, self-taught English captain sailing north in search of a passage through the Arctic ice and a discovery that will make his name. He is restless and painfully lonely; the long letters he writes to his sister Margaret are his only real conversation, and he says plainly that what he wants most, after the voyage itself, is one friend who understands what drives him.

Justine Moritz comes into the Frankenstein household as a young servant after an unhappy time in her own mother's house, and the family comes to treat her as one of their own rather than as staff. She is quiet, hardworking, and unfailingly kind, and Elizabeth loves her, saying she has the same look and manner as Victor's mother had.

Alphonse Frankenstein spent his younger life absorbed in public business in Geneva, respected everywhere for his integrity, and married only late. He is a devoted and patient father who would rather reason with his children than command them, and his affection for Victor is the steadiest thing in the boy's life. He is also getting old, and the family notices it.

Ernest is the middle Frankenstein brother, seven years younger than Victor and nothing like him. He looks on study as a punishment and spends his days climbing the hills above Geneva or rowing on the lake, and he wants to be a proper Swiss and go into foreign military service — an idea his father has not agreed to.

William is the youngest of the Frankenstein children and the household's delight, a lively and affectionate small boy who has already announced which little girl in Geneva is his favourite. Everyone in the family writes about him in their letters. Victor has not seen him in years.

M. Waldman is one of the two professors Victor meets on arriving at Ingolstadt, and the one who lectures on chemistry. He is courteous, encouraging, and entirely without the contempt his colleague shows for a student's old-fashioned reading, and he is happy to lend books and advice to anyone who is genuinely curious.

De Lacey is an old man living in a small cottage beside a wood with his son and daughter, in poverty they clearly were not born to. He is blind, and spends much of his day playing the guitar or sitting in thought, and he is treated by his children with a tenderness that is remarkable to anyone watching from outside.

Felix is the son of the old cottager, and he does the outdoor work that keeps the household alive: chopping wood, digging the garden, and going out into the fields at first light. He is unfailingly gentle with his father and sister, and unmistakably unhappy about something he does not discuss.

Agatha keeps the cottage: she draws the water, tends the garden, sets the table, and sits with her father in the evening while her brother reads aloud. She is patient and gentle, and grieves quietly rather than out loud. Like her brother, she gives her father the best of whatever there is.

Safie arrives at the De Lacey cottage one morning on horseback, veiled and guided by a stranger, speaking a language nobody there understands. She is warm, quick, and determined, and she sets about learning the family's language almost at once. Her presence changes the mood of the house from the first day.

Mr. Kirwin is the magistrate of a small Irish coastal town, an elderly man with a reputation for fairness who hears evidence carefully before he forms a view. He can look severe when he is weighing what he has been told, but he is not a hard man, and he takes more trouble over a stranger in his town than the office strictly requires.