Chapter 3

Synopsis of Volume 2 Chapter 3

After leaving Frankenstein's laboratory, the creature has lived in the woods near Ingoldstadt. When he approaches a shepherd's hut and later a village, people are terrified by his monstrous appearance and drive him away.

He takes refuge in an abandoned hut next to a remote cottage. Through a hole in the wall, he observes the life of the De Lacey family: the blind father and his children Agatha and Felix.

Commentary on Volume 2 Chapter 3

Pandaemonium: the capital city of Hell in Milton's Paradise Lost.

More on Pandemonium:

There is a long description of Pandaemonium in Book 1 of Paradise Lost, lines 670-732.

• Milton spells it ‘Pandemonium' and the name literally means ‘the place where all the devils live';
• it is the meeting-place of Satan and his followers;
• its architecture is huge and magnificent;
• but it is also a noisy, confused and chaotic place, and this is the sense in which the word is used today.

For further information, see Big ideas: Devils.

The family … to rest: the creature's description of the de Laceys is very similar to the picture of an ideal family in Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (see Author section: Political radicalism).

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