The Wedding Night—Elizabeth's Murder — Frankenstein

Victor and Elizabeth marry and travel to a lakeside inn for their wedding night. Victor is armed and watchful, expecting the creature to attack him. As night falls, his anxiety grows unbearable. He sends Elizabeth to the bedroom to rest while he patrols the inn, searching every corner for the creature. Suddenly, he hears a shrill scream from Elizabeth's room. In that instant, 'the whole truth rushed into my mind', Victor realizes too late that the creature's threat wasn't about killing him, but killing Elizabeth.

He rushes to the bedroom and finds Elizabeth dead, thrown across the bed with the creature's fingerprints on her neck. At the window, the creature appears, grinning and pointing at Elizabeth's corpse with 'fiendish finger' before leaping into the lake and escaping. Victor fires but misses. The community searches but finds nothing. Victor collapses in utter devastation. He returns to Geneva to tell his father, who cannot survive this final blow.

Learning of Elizabeth's murder, Alphonse's 'springs of existence suddenly gave way' and he dies within days in Victor's arms. Victor loses consciousness and wakes in a prison cell, he's been deemed mad and confined for months. When released, he goes to a magistrate and tells the complete truth about the creature, demanding help pursuing the murderer. The magistrate listens but clearly thinks Victor is delusional. Victor realizes no one will help him, he must hunt the creature alone. He devotes himself entirely to revenge, abandoning everything else. This chapter is the complete destruction of Victor's world: Elizabeth murdered, father dead from grief, Victor's sanity questioned, and his vow to pursue the creature to the ends of the earth.