Of the books the Creature learns in the forest, Volney's The Ruins of Empires was most closely associated with Europe's radical Enlightenment. While the Creature learns a powerful critique of power, imperialism, and exploitation from hearing Volney read aloud, he also absorbs some of the Enlightenment's prejudices and ethnic stereotypes ("slothful Asiatics"). However, the effect on the Creature is to give him a sense of the structural and not merely a personal framework for understanding virtue and suffering. See Ian Balfour, "Allegories of Origins: Frankenstein after the Enlightenment," SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 56.4 (2016): 777-98.