University of Ingolstadt
The University of Ingolstadt is the pivotal setting where Victor Frankenstein's scientific ambitions take concrete form and where the most fateful act of his life—the creation of the monster—occurs. It is at this institution that Victor, arriving as a seventeen-year-old student from Geneva, encounters the modern scientific thought that redirects his youthful fascination with alchemy toward the empirical investigation of life's principles. The university's professors, its laboratories, and its intellectual atmosphere collectively provide the environment in which Victor's dangerous knowledge is acquired and his monstrous creation is brought to life.
Identity and Introduction
Victor Frankenstein is sent to the University of Ingolstadt by his father at the age of seventeen, after having attended the schools of Geneva. His departure is delayed by the death of his mother, Caroline Beaufort, from scarlet fever contracted while nursing Elizabeth Lavenza. When he finally arrives, he is conducted to a solitary apartment and spends his first days becoming acquainted with the localities and principal residents of his new abode. The university is a place of established reputation, with professors who lecture on natural philosophy and chemistry, and it is here that Victor must form his own friends and be his own protector, a stark contrast to his previously secluded and domestic life.
Professors and Intellectual Transformation
Victor's first encounter is with M. Krempe, the professor of natural philosophy, whom he finds to be an uncouth man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance. Krempe dismisses Victor's study of alchemists like Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus as a waste of time, declaring that every minute spent on such books is utterly lost. He instructs Victor to begin his studies entirely anew. Victor is not persuaded by Krempe's manner, but he is drawn to the lectures of M. Waldman, a fellow professor whose aspect expresses the greatest benevolence and whose voice is the sweetest Victor has ever heard. Waldman delivers a panegyric on modern chemistry, praising its practitioners for penetrating into the recesses of nature and acquiring new and almost unlimited powers. Waldman's words act as a fateful catalyst, filling Victor's mind with one thought, one conception, one purpose: to pioneer a new way and explore unknown powers. Victor becomes Waldman's disciple, and the professor takes him into his laboratory, explaining the uses of his various machines and promising the use of his own equipment when Victor has advanced far enough.
Victor's Laboratory and the Creation
Victor dedicates himself nearly exclusively to natural philosophy and chemistry, attending lectures and cultivating the acquaintance of the university's men of science. His application becomes so ardent that the stars often disappear in the light of morning while he is still engaged in his laboratory. After two years, he makes discoveries in the improvement of chemical instruments that procure him great esteem and admiration. It is during this period that he becomes obsessed with the structure of the human frame and the principle of life. He spends days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses, examining the decay and corruption of the human body, until a sudden light breaks in upon him—the secret of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, separated from all other apartments by a gallery and staircase, he keeps his workshop of filthy creation. He collects bones from charnel-houses and disturbs with profane fingers the tremendous secrets of the human frame. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnish many of his materials. It is on a dreary night of November, in this very chamber, that he infuses a spark of being into the lifeless thing at his feet, and the monster's dull yellow eye opens.
Aftermath and Departure
The immediate aftermath of the creation is catastrophic for Victor. He suffers a nervous fever that confines him for several months, during which Henry Clerval nurses him back to health. When Victor recovers, he conceives a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy; the sight of a chemical instrument renews all the agony of his nervous symptoms. Clerval removes all his apparatus from view and changes his apartment, perceiving Victor's dislike for the room that had previously been his laboratory. When Victor visits the professors, M. Waldman's praise of his progress inflicts torture, and M. Krempe's harsh encomiums cause even more pain. Victor eventually leaves Ingolstadt, but the university remains indelibly associated with the origin of his misfortunes. In his later wanderings, the memory of the mad enthusiasm that hurried him on to the creation of his hideous enemy at Ingolstadt haunts him, and the image of the monster's watery, clouded eyes as he first saw them in his chamber there recurs to him in his darkest moments.
Narrative Significance
The University of Ingolstadt functions as the intellectual and physical birthplace of the novel's central horror. It is the place where Victor's ambition, unchecked by ethical restraint, is given the tools and knowledge to transgress the boundaries of life and death. The contrast between the university's enlightened scientific community and the grotesque, secret work conducted in its isolated upper chamber underscores the theme of dangerous knowledge pursued in isolation. The institution's professors—Waldman the inspiring mentor and Krempe the blunt critic—represent the two faces of scientific authority, yet neither can prevent the catastrophe that their teachings help to set in motion. Ingolstadt thus stands as a symbol of the Enlightenment's promise turned to nightmare, a place of learning that becomes the site of an unlearning of humanity's most fundamental limits.
