Victor's stress on the term marks it as of particular importance to him and indicates
that it is also of concern to the novel. With some pathos, Victor will begin the second
volume by recalling that he had himself "begun life with benevolent intentions" (II:1:1).
At this point we cannot know how far from disinterested benevolence Victor has strayed.
In retrospect, however, the novel's readers can easily comprehend why fervent emotions
would be generated in him by a return to civilized human standards and ethical conduct.

As Walton's first letter opens with an expression of the opposed perspectives of men
and women (I:L1:1 and note), so this initial paragraph of the first chapter accentuates
the concern of the patriarchy with replicating itself. Alphonse Frankenstein's sense
of public purpose is to reproduce himself for the good of the state. By suppressing
the role of the female in this process, he paradoxically voices what will become his
son's obsession with creating a new man without the intervention of woman. With that
creation in mind, however, it does not require of the reader an undue stretching of
the sense to regard the distinctive tone of this language, so abstracted and clinical,
as being more characteristic of Victor than of his father.

Although not the elixir of life per se (which would give the owner perpetual youth),
Victor Frankenstein's discovery is related to that fundamental aim of alchemy and
thus is the culmination of the fascination with the occult sciences that has been
his ruling passion over the past eight years.

The condescension Victor so easily adopts toward Professor Krempe here seems to extend
as well to his peers among the students. Within another chapter we will witness yet
a further example of how Victor's sense of superiority combines with an almost instinctive
aversion to those he considers in some sense inferior to him. His observation here
may thus be intended by Mary Shelley to help prepare us for his sudden rejection of
the Creature to whom he gives life. Yet it might also be designed to bear a double
reading: not just that Victor's fellow-students are in awe of his commitment, but
that they are aware of something neurotic in its intensity.

Justine, we remember from Elizabeth's letter to Victor (I:5:4), had come to imitate
the expression and demeanor of Caroline Frankenstein. Thus, having lived with the
Frankenstein family for seven years, which is the age at which William was murdered,
she has in some sense become a surrogate for his mother who died when William was
yet an infant. Further in the paragraph, Elizabeth explicitly compares her treatment
of William as "like [that of] a most affectionate mother."

This detail, which has no effect on anyone outside the family circle, would seem intended
by Mary Shelley to insinuate a class bias into the court proceedings. Although Elizabeth
speaks of her almost as a member of the family, she is not so seen by the judges or
the populace of Geneva. Whatever the circumstance that separates her from an equality
with other family members, the important issue is the very principle of separation
by which she can be socially cast as a scapegoat.

The novel slides, seamlessly and without calling attention to itself, from Walton's
nursing Victor Frankenstein back from a state of near-death to Caroline Beaufort's
attendance on her despondent father in his decline. Such nurturing is a continual
necessity in Frankenstein and a measure of a character's capacity for sympathy.

Walton here assumes the position of ministrant that Clerval held during Victor's "nervous
fever" in Ingolstadt (I:4:17), pointedly an inversion of customary gender roles. Healers
are accorded a privileged value in this novel, though by no means in the world that
encompasses its fiction. Justine Moritz's attendance on Victor's mother in her final
illness earns for her no particular credence from her judges (I:7:10), and his mother,
contracting scarlet fever from nursing Elizabeth, dies as a result of her good offices
(I:2:2)

The actual events of the novel, it is surprising to realize, take place within the
next month, with Walton's last letter to Margaret Saville (III:WC:21) being dated
September 7th.

Justine is the third character, after the Creature (I:4:2 and I:4:3) and Victor (I:4:5
and I:6:19), to share this appellation. Perhaps, however, she applies it with a nuanced
difference of meaning from its usage in their circumstances.

These were wooden balls secretly selected by those judging a trial.