Henry Clerval is a foil to
Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's classic, Frankenstein. Henry
is a true Romantic, not a scientist like Victor; he encourages Victor to study nature,
he enjoys reading romances about knights and damsels in distress rather than such works
as those by Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus and Cornelius Agrippa, and he studies
languages in hopes of traveling to exotic locations. Henry is humbly honest and
forthright whereas Victor, in his arrogance, refuses to confess that it is his creation
which has murdered his own brother.
In Chapter 2, Victor
describes Henry Clerval as a boy of "singular talent and fancy"
who
loved
enterprise, hardship, and even danger, for its own sake. He was deeply read in books of
chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs, and began to write many a tale of
enchantment and knightly adventure....I might have become sullen in my study, rough
through the ardour of my nature, but that [Elizabeth] was there to subdue me...Ad
Clerval--could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval?--yet he might not have
been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosity--so full of kindness and
tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous
exploit....
In the absence of
the humane Henry Clerval, Victor Frankenstein goes awry in his scientific pursuits and
loses his moral judgment. Thus, Henry Clerval is the character who best expresses Mary
Shelley's Romantic concepts, concepts of knowledge through intuition and
communication with nature rather than by scientific determinations, concepts that she
believed were superior to those of Darwin and those involved with
science.
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