attended on him
Walton here assumes the position of ministrant that Clerval held
during Victor's "nervous fever" in Ingolstadt (1.4.7), 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 (1.7.4), and his mother, contracting scarlet
fever from nursing Elizabeth, dies as a result of her good offices (1.2.1).
