Mary Shelley at The Threshold: Displacement and form in Lodore

Abstract

For a full year, the creature watches and listens. There in his hovel, peering through a “small and almost imperceptible chink” in a wooden plank, he observes the De Lacey family in the adjacent cottage. ¹ Attracted to their gentleness of spirit, he comes to know their routines, discerning their emotions and eventually understanding their language. Eavesdropping on Safie’s lessons, he becomes acquainted with the “strange system of human society” (F 96), and into this growing body of knowledge he assimilates the workings of hospitality. He sees that “the poor that stopped at their door were never driven away” (F 107), and when Safie first appears, exotically dressed and speaking an altogether different tongue, she is immediately welcomed. Witnessing these transactions, the creature feels sure the De Laceys will somehow “compassionate” him (F 106). “Could they turn from their door one, however monstrous, who solicited their […] friendship?” (F 106) Having imbibed lessons of virtue and sympathy from his three precious tomes, the creature imagines “a thousand pictures” of kind reception, when he might move from one side of the cottage wall to another (F 91). Yet it will not be enough simply to present himself at the door as beggars have done. He knows he will have to make a subtler approach, and so he plans to take advantage of the old man’s blindness, to adjust the moment of welcome so they might speak, exile to exile. If hospitality is always an exchange over time, this is especially true for Frankenstein’s creature if he has any hope of “mak[ing] them overlook the deformity of [his] figure” (F 90).