This lady died, but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill-suited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation for virtue.
Chapter 14 · The Creature
Context
The Creature continues describing Safie's inner conflict after her mother's death, explaining her dread at the thought of returning to a life of confinement and trivial occupations that would waste the intellectual aspirations her mother had cultivated in her.
Analysis
The verb 'immured'—literally meaning walled in, as in a tomb—makes the harem into a kind of living burial, and Shelley pairs it with 'infantile amusements' to show what fills the void where intellectual life should be. The phrase 'temper of her soul' elevates Safie's resistance from mere preference to something essential and unchangeable, as if her inner self has been permanently shaped and cannot be compressed back into ignorance. The contrast between 'grand ideas' and 'infantile' work is so extreme it reads as incompatible states of being.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Shelley presents education as irreversible transformation—once the mind has expanded, it cannot tolerate returning to ignorance, which is exactly the Creature's situation after learning language and history. Safie's plot becomes a parallel that reframes the Creature's rage as intellectual claustrophobia, not mere vengefulness.