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.

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 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.

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.

When Walton resumes his narrative in Volume 3 (III:WC:1) his words will echo Victor's
here, as he calls the narrative a "strange and terrific story" and acknowledges that
the "tale is connected, and told with the appearance of the simplest truth," phrases
suggestive of how broadly the judging of truth is an issue in the novel.

This phrasing also introduces the complicating factor of the novel's deliberately
involuted structure. To adapt Walton's language, Victor's account of the strange tale
occurs within his own strange tale, which has already conveyed the narrative of William's
death provided by his father (as well as, in the chapter before, Elizabeth's account
of local doings). This tale will be told twice more, in the courtroom (I:7:6) and
in the Creature's autobiographical summation (II:8:33). If, in the end, readers can
assume that they are able to sift the truth from its excessive narrative elaboration,
the fact remains that in the official account Justine Moritz will be known as the
murderer, and no one in Victor's family—including Ernest, who will presumably inherit
a substantial fortune and the position that goes with it and his family's reputation
in Geneva—will ever be any the wiser.

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.

The uncertainty that enveloped the Creature in the early paragraphs of this letter
now surrounds Victor as well. He and Walton do not, at least at this point, perceive
the same reality.

We will later discover (III:WC:4) that it was not "nearly" enough for Victor, who
proceeds to rewrite Walton's narrative. But, then again, it could very well be his
own narrative that he so conscientiously revises. Whatever the particular case is
immaterial: what matters is the fact of emendation. Mary Shelley's deliberate accentuation
of the unreliability of her text will recur at crucial points throughout the novel.

Astronomy was another science, like chemistry, undergoing marked advances in England
during Mary Shelley's day. The major force behind this was Sir William Herschel, assisted
by his sister Caroline Letitia.

Waldman points to a distinctive feature of scientific discourse of the later eighteenth
and early nineteenth century. From Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), who in the study
of botany established the terms for the classification of plants, to John Dalton (1766-1844)
who in chemistry determined the universal table of atomic weights, late Enlightenment
science was extensively engaged in taxonomic classification.