I was often tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities for ever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine.
Chapter 9 · Narrator
Context
Victor rows alone on Lake Geneva at night and contemplates suicide, but stops himself by thinking of Elizabeth and his surviving family members who depend on him.
Analysis
The image of water closing over him is seductive in its passivity—suicide framed as letting something happen rather than doing it—but the phrase "whose existence was bound up in mine" complicates Victor's self-restraint. He stops not out of hope or moral conviction, but because Elizabeth is entangled with him, as if she were another consequence he must manage rather than a person he loves.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Victor's relationships have become entirely transactional and guilt-driven—he no longer loves Elizabeth as a person but sees her as another responsibility, another weight, which shows how thoroughly his crime has destroyed his capacity for genuine human feeling.