The New Annotated Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

  “I commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet I see no room for hope. I beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my character; and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed guilt, I must be condemned, although I would pledge my salvation on my innocence.”

  Several witnesses were called, who had known her for many years, and they spoke well of her; but fear, and hatred of the crime of which they supposed her guilty, rendered them timorous, and unwilling to come forward.6 Elizabeth saw even this last resource, her excellent dispositions and irreproachable conduct, about to fail the accused, when, although violently agitated, she desired permission to address the court.7

  “I am,” said she, “the cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or rather his sister, for I was educated by and have lived with his parents ever since and even long before his birth. It may therefore be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a fellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character. I am well acquainted with the accused. I have lived in the same house with her, at one time for five, and at another for nearly two years. During all that period she appeared to me the most amiable and benevolent of human creatures. She nursed Madame Frankenstein, my aunt, in her last illness with the greatest affection and care; and afterwards attended her own mother during a tedious illness, in a manner that excited the admiration of all who knew her. After which she again lived in my uncle’s house, where she was beloved by all the family. She was warmly attached to the child who is now dead, and acted towards him like a most affectionate mother. For my own part, I do not hesitate to say, that, notwithstanding all the evidence produced against her, I believe and rely on her perfect innocence. She had no temptation for such an action: as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her; so much do I esteem and value her.”

  Excellent Elizabeth! A murmur of approbation was heard;8 but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in favour of poor Justine, on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude. She herself wept as Elizabeth spoke, but she did not answer. My own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew it. Could the daemon, who had (I did not for a minute doubt) murdered my brother, also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy. I could not sustain the horror of my situation; and when I perceived that the popular voice, and the countenances of the judges, had already condemned my unhappy victim, I rushed out of the court in agony. The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom, and would not forego their hold.

  I passed a night of unmingled wretchedness. In the morning I went to the court; my lips and throat were parched. I dared not ask the fatal question; but I was known, and the officer guessed the cause of my visit. The ballots had been thrown; they were all black,9 and Justine was condemned.

  I cannot pretend to describe what I then felt. I had before experienced sensations of horror; and I have endeavoured to bestow upon them adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the heart-sickening despair that I then endured. The person to whom I addressed myself added, that Justine had already confessed her guilt. “That evidence,” he observed, “was hardly required in so glaring a case, but I am glad of it; and, indeed, none of our judges like to condemn a criminal upon circumstantial evidence, be it ever so decisive.”

  When I returned home,10 Elizabeth eagerly demanded the result.

  “My cousin,” replied I, “it is decided as you may have expected; all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer, than that one guilty should escape.11 But she has confessed.”

  This was a dire blow to poor Elizabeth, who had relied with firmness upon Justine’s innocence. “Alas!” said she, “how shall I ever again believe in human benevolence?12 Justine, whom I loved and esteemed as my sister, how could she put on those smiles of innocence only to betray; her mild eyes seemed incapable of any severity or ill-humour,13 and yet she has committed a murder.”

  Soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a wish to see my cousin. My father wished her not to go; but said, that he left it to her own judgment and feelings to decide. “Yes,” said Elizabeth, “I will go, although she is guilty; and you, Victor, shall accompany me: I cannot go alone.” The idea of this visit was torture to me, yet I could not refuse.

  We entered the gloomy prison-chamber, and beheld Justine sitting on some straw at the further end; her hands were manacled, and her head rested on her knees. She rose on seeing us enter; and when we were left alone with her, she threw herself at the feet of Elizabeth, weeping bitterly. My cousin wept also.

  “Oh, Justine!” said she, “why did you rob me of my last consolation. I relied on your innocence; and although I was then very wretched, I was not so miserable as I am now.”

  “And do you also believe that I am so very, very wicked? Do you also join with my enemies to crush me?”14 Her voice was suffocated with sobs.

  “Rise, my poor girl,” said Elizabeth, “why do you kneel, if you are innocent? I am not one of your enemies; I believed you guiltless, notwithstanding every evidence, until I heard that you had yourself declared your guilt. That report, you say, is false; and be assured, dear Justine, that nothing can shake my confidence in you for a moment, but your own confession.”

  “I did confess; but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins. The God of heaven forgive me! Ever since I was condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments, if I continued obdurate.15 Dear lady, I had none to support me; all looked on me as a wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. What could I do? In an evil hour I subscribed to a lie; and now only am I truly miserable.”

  She paused, weeping, and then continued—“I thought with horror, my sweet lady, that you should believe your Justine, whom your blessed aunt had so highly honoured, and whom you loved, was a creature capable of a crime which none but the devil himself could have perpetrated. Dear William! dearest blessed child! I soon shall see you again in heaven, where we shall all be happy; and that consoles me, going as I am to suffer ignominy and death.”

  “Oh, Justine! forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you. Why did you confess? But do not mourn, my dear girl;16 I will every where proclaim your innocence, and force belief. Yet you must die; you, my playfellow, my companion, my more than sister. I never can survive so horrible a misfortune.”

  “Dear, sweet Elizabeth, do not weep.17 You ought to raise me with thoughts of a better life, and elevate me from the petty cares of this world of injustice and strife. Do not you, excellent friend, drive me to despair.”

  “I will try to comfort you; but this, I fear, is an evil too deep and poignant to admit of consolation, for there is no hope. Yet heaven bless thee, my dearest Justine, with resignation, and a confidence elevated beyond this world. Oh! how I hate its shews and mockeries! when one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. They call this retribution.18 Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge. Yet this is not consolation for you, my Justine, unless indeed that you may glory in escaping from so miserable a den. Alas! I would I were in peace with my aunt and my lovely William, escaped from a world which is hateful to me, and the visages of men which I abhor.”

  Justine smiled languidly. “This, dear lady, is despair,
and not resignation. I must not learn the lesson that you would teach me. Talk of something else, something that will bring peace, and not increase of misery.”

  During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison-room, where I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. Despair! Who dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the dreary19 boundary between life and death, felt not as I did, such deep and bitter agony. I gnashed my teeth, and ground them together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul. Justine started. When she saw who it was, she approached me, and said, “Dear Sir, you are very kind to visit me; you, I hope, do not believe that I am guilty.”

  I could not answer. “No, Justine,” said Elizabeth; “he is more convinced of your innocence than I was; for even when he heard that you had confessed, he did not credit it.”

  “I truly thank him. In these last moments I feel the sheerest20 gratitude towards those who think of me with kindness. How sweet is the affection of others to such a wretch as I am! It removes more than half my misfortune; and I feel as if I could die in peace, now that my innocence is acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin.”

  Thus the poor sufferer tried to comfort others and herself. She indeed gained the resignation she desired. But I, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation. Elizabeth also wept, and was unhappy; but her’s also was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness. Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish. We staid several hours with Justine; and it was with great difficulty that Elizabeth could tear herself away. “I wish,” cried she, “that I were to die with you; I cannot live in this world of misery.”

  Justine assumed an air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth, and said, in a voice of half-suppressed emotion, “Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may heaven in its bounty bless and preserve you; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever suffer. Live, and be happy, and make others so.”

  As we returned, Elizabeth said, “You know not, my dear Victor, how much I am relieved, now that I trust in the innocence of this unfortunate girl.21 I never could again have known peace, if I had been deceived in my reliance on her. For the moment that I did believe her guilty, I felt an anguish that I could not have long sustained. Now my heart is lightened. The innocent suffers; but she whom I thought amiable and good has not betrayed the trust I reposed in her, and I am consoled.”

  Amiable cousin! such were your thoughts, mild and gentle as your own dear eyes and voice. But I—I was a wretch, and none ever conceived of the misery that I then endured.22

  1. Chapter 8 in the 1831 edition.

  2. Multiple judges were uncommon to nonexistent in Swiss courtrooms, other than in a court of appeals. Perhaps Justine, and later Victor, meant the judge and the prosecutor collectively, or perhaps a panel of judges was specially convened out of respect for the victim’s father. By the constitution of the Swiss Confederation, crimes against the federal government were tried before juries; the conduct of other criminal trials was governed by cantonal rules. By the early nineteenth century, the canton of Geneva had adopted trial by jury (long a tradition of English law but much less common in other legal systems), and it may be possible to conjecture that Justine’s case represents one of the earliest jury trials. In 2009, a referendum in Geneva—the last of the Swiss cantons to use trial by jury—repealed the rule.

  3. Chêne, later Chêne–Les Bougeries, and later still Chêne-Bourg and Chêne-Thonex, was about two and a quarter miles outside Geneva, of which it became a part in 1816. Baedeker’s Switzerland and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol in 1887 terms it a “large village.” The economist-historian Sismondi, whose work on the history of Italy was read by Percy Shelley in 1819, died in Chêne in 1842.

  4. The preceding portion of this sentence is replaced in the 1831 edition with the following: “Most of the night she spent here watching; towards morning she believed that she slept for a few minutes; some steps disturbed her, and she awoke. It was dawn, and she quitted her asylum …”

  This change explains how the creature was able to place the broach in Justine’s pocket. See note 5, below.

  5. The creature testifies later that he approached Justine “unperceived” and deposited the broach into the pocket of her dress. It is hard to believe that a being of his size could have approached Justine when she was awake without being caught; therefore, she must have dozed off for at least a few minutes. See note 4, above.

  6. This sentence is confusing: Did the character witnesses testify or not?

  7. Under Greek and Roman law as well as Talmudic rules, women were not allowed to testify except in exceptional circumstances. This injunction prevailed in many Western countries, including the United States, and was one of many deprivations of rights that the suffrage movement sought to correct. The legal silencing of women was dramatized in Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman (1798), also known as Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman and The Wrongs of Woman; or, Mary.

  8. The 1831 edition replaces “was heard” with “followed Elizabeth’s simple and powerful appeal.” The psychoanalytic critics, including in this case Veeder, in Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, chapter 6, “The Women of Frankenstein,” argue that Elizabeth’s advocacy is full of ambiguities, suggesting her deep oedipal connection to Alphonse and her antipathy to Justine, who dared to insert herself into the family and the relationship with Alphonse. Veeder points out that Elizabeth carefully states that Justine is not part of the family but a mere servant; therefore, Elizabeth is her superior. Elizabeth also unconsciously expresses possessiveness regarding Caroline—“my aunt”—and Alphonse—“my uncle”—even though the relationships were perfectly clear without those descriptors. All of this, argues Veeder, reflects Shelley’s own feelings about Godwin and her half-sister Claire Clairmont. It is difficult to ignore the many psychological parallels between the relationships in Frankenstein and those in the Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley families, but it is very unlikely that, writing at the age of nineteen, the author intended Frankenstein as a work of autobiography or a therapeutic exercise. In short, as Sigmund Freud allegedly said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

  9. That is, no one among the jury or panel of judges voted for acquittal.

  10. The 1831 edition deletes this phrase and replaces it with the following: “This was strange and unexpected intelligence; what could it mean? Had my eyes deceived me? And was I really as mad as the whole world would believe me to be if I disclosed the object of my suspicions? I hastened to return home, and[.]”

  11. This is a very cynical view, in sharp contrast to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), a product of the French Revolution, whose Article IX proclaims: “As every man is presumed innocent until he has been declared guilty, if it should be considered necessary to arrest him, any undue harshness that is not required to secure his person must be severely curbed by law” (translation by Constitutional Council of France). Swiss law followed this principle as well, and therefore this statement must be seen as the personal opinion of Victor.

  12. In the 1831 edition, the word “benevolence” is replaced with “goodness.”

  13. The phrase “ill-humour” is replaced with “guile” in the 1831 edition, and in the following sentence, the word “wish” is changed to “desire.”

  14. The 1831 edition adds the phrase “to condemn me as a murderer?”

  15. The French Revolution disenfranchised the Church and subjected it to secular control, and scores of priests and nuns were executed and thousands were deported. Yet the very terror of the revolution apparently led many back to spiritual resources, and some turned to traditional Catholicism. Christopher Dawson, in his essay “Romanticism and Religion,”
argues that “the most profound expression of the romantic spirit is to be found, not in the Byronic cult of personality or the aesthetic gospel of Keats’s ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn,’ but in Novalis’s ‘Hymns to the Night,’ with their mystical exaltation of death” (The Tablet [of London], 1937). Certainly this much is clear: The revolution did not extinguish the Catholic Church, which gained adherents steadily through the nineteenth century.

  The pernicious influence of the Catholic Church as an organization urging conformity and obedience was a popular theme of the day in England. The Church’s adherents were perceived as a kind of “fifth column,” swearing fealty to the pope rather than the Crown. Although the Roman Catholic Relief Act, enacted in 1791, softened some official views, Matthew Lewis’s gothic novel The Monk (1796) was a well-received depiction of the wicked clergy. Lewis was acquainted with the Shelleys and visited them on Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816. It was not until 1829 that another Roman Catholic Relief Act extended full religious freedom to English Catholics. However, as Veeder points out in Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, such oppressive behavior by a cleric was hardly to be expected in Calvinist Geneva. Mary Shelley invokes anti-Catholic sentiments here to underline Justine’s helplessness, mirroring, according to Veeder, her own understanding of women’s vulnerability.

  16. The 1831 revises the balance of the paragraph as follows: “Do not fear. I will proclaim, I will prove your innocence. I will melt the stony hearts of your enemies by my tears and prayers. You shall not die! You, my playfellow, my companion, my sister, perish on the scaffold! No! No! I never could survive so horrible a misfortune.”