Just a short blog to explain an idea I had...
Maybe a reason why so many Gothic texts use far away places is that they are exploiting the unknown.
"Fear of the unknown" is a often cited cause of most otherwise irrational phobias.
Mass travel was not around in the time of Shelley. Therefore, even Switzerland may have seen exotic to the average reader.
Walton and Frankenstein are pioneers of the unknown - as Ms Hennessy said, they live up to the creed of star trek to "go where no other has gone before". The reader, too, is on new territory. Hence the amount of description in the book. Maybe we found the obsession with mountains funny because we know full well what mountains look like. But Shelley was writing this book in a different land, knowing full well that many of her readers would not. The reader is exploring a new worlds.
The intention could be that the reader is as gripped by the exploration in Frankenstein as Walton and Frankenstein are gripped by their own quests.
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the environment is suggested as unknown but the monster is also. frankenstein expresses that the monster is his creation and he hates it, this reminded for some reason of The Secret Garden where the boys father confines him into a room for being different. the novel is not just about the unknown in environment but also the unknown in human nature and the question of nature nurture.
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