A highly contagious disease, usually encountered in childhood, caused by hemolytic
streptococus. It is spread through the air or through contaminated food, and was virtually
untreatable before the development of antibiotics, although penicillin and gamma globulin
have made it much less common in the twentieth century.

Scarlet fever's onset is sudden (typically two to seven days after exposure), beginning
with a sore throat, shivering, and a headache. It develops on the second day into
a rash behind the ears, which spreads to the arms and legs. Thomas Sydenham, a physician
of the late seventeenth century, describes its symptoms thus: "The skin is marked
with small, red spots, more frequent, more diffuse, and more red than in measles.
These last two or three days. They then disappear, leaving the skin covered with brawny
squamulae [scales], as if powdered with meal." Scarlet fever leaves the glands swollen
and often sensitive; in some cases, the squamulae on parts of the patient's skin peel
off.

The greatest threats arise from complications. Sinus infections, abcesses of the ear,
and mastoiditis are common. In a few cases, scarlet fever leads to arthritis, rheumatic
fever, or kidney failure.

Positioned in the outer sphere of the numerous nested narratives that make up the
novel, Mrs. Saville stands in the position of the author. The initials of her full
name, Margaret Walton Saville, are identical with those of the actual author, Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley.

Reverted to for a second time, the Creature's presence once again, as in the second
paragraph above, forces indeterminacy upon Walton's conclusions: "this apparition
seemed"; "the traveller seemed."

This phrase alludes to how the servant Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote, Book II, Chapter
33, faces the prospect of becoming governor of his own island.

Mary Shelley was aware that climbing to the top of Mont Salêve was a popular sport
of the Genevese, except that they did so from the sloping angle of its other side
not by scaling its sheer face: see her letter of 1 June 1816 appended to A History
of a Six Weeks' Tour

It is important to note that, however "ardent" he may be as an individual, Walton
has a highly developed sense of social responsibility. It will be strongly tested
toward the end of the novel by simultaneous pressures from his crew, Victor Frankenstein,
and Victor's Creature that establish markers for the complex moral resolution with
which it ends.

Why Mary Shelley felt it important to alter the legendary materials loved by Clerval
is unknown. It may simply be dictated by a change in the conditions of her culture.
Although Roland, the hero of Roncesvalles, is identical with the title character of
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (one of the books specified in 1818), in this rendering
Clerval's interest in him is more "romantic," less bookish. His other literary passions
are of a similar generic kind, rather than for specific books. On the other hand,
that the Battle of Roncesvalles was fought against Saracen attackers, who are also
the "infidels" who held the "holy sepulchre" of Jerusalem against the crusaders in
Victor's third example of their texts of romance, indicates an early manifestation
of the interest in eastern, or Mohammedan, culture Clerval will later develop.