Chapter 10 — the meeting on the ice

The Creature is the first to speak. His voice, when it comes, is the surprise of the novel. He is articulate, almost formal in his constructions; he speaks in the rolling Romantic English of the educated of his moment. He has been hiding among humans for nearly two years, he says, and has learned their language by listening. He has heard about Victor's marriage to Elizabeth from gossip in the country roads; he has read books, including the journal Victor kept while building him; he has watched a peasant family for months and learned how to speak by overhearing them.

He is not asking Victor for forgiveness. He is asking, on equal terms, to be heard. "Remember that I am thy creature," he says — one of the most-quoted lines in the novel. "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed." Look at me, he says. I was not born this. I was born gentle and have been beaten, by every encounter with your kind, into what stands before you now. Listen to my story. After you have listened, I have a single request to make. You may grant it or refuse it; I will accept your decision either way.

Victor agrees, partly out of curiosity, partly out of fear. They walk together to a small herdsman's hut on the lower slope. The Creature lights a fire, places Victor near it (Victor is shivering; the Creature is unaffected by the cold), and sits across from him. Then, in the most extraordinary set-piece of the novel, the Creature begins. The next six chapters — Victor's narration of the Creature's narration — are the moral center of the book. The Creature tells Victor what it has been like to be him.