FRANKENSTEIN recap, Chapter 8
even other people's murder trials are all about Victor Frankenstein
Previously on: Victor arrives at his family home, having been informed of his little brother William’s death, and happens to spy his monster stalking around in a gigantic thunderstorm. Egad! thinks our Mr. Frankenstein, hiding behind a tree, surely no one but my unholy creation could be responsible for murdering a child, because everything is all about him, and thus he has no worries about the innocent and unjustly-accused Justine Moritz’s murder trial. Because she didn’t do it, his monster did, and therefore justice will obviously be served! Not that he can say so out loud because people will think he’s crazy!
Sigh.
Off they go to the trial, and Victor agonizes as usual:
My father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend as witnesses, I accompanied them to the court. During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture.
me me me me me
It was to be decided whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would cause the death of two of my fellow beings: one a smiling babe full of innocence and joy, the other far more dreadfully murdered, with every aggravation of infamy that could make the murder memorable in horror. Justine also was a girl of merit and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy; now all was to be obliterated in an ignominious grave, and I the cause!
me me me me me me me me meeeeeeeeee
A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine, but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me.
Pauvre petit, Victor. You can’t even wail on her behalf except inside the confines of your own fine-boned skull. The trial is not going well for Justine, who throws herself on the mercy of the court:
“God knows,” she said, “how entirely I am innocent. But I do not pretend that my protestations should acquit me; I rest my innocence on a plain and simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced against me, and I hope the character I have always borne will incline my judges to a favourable interpretation where any circumstance appears doubtful or suspicious.”
It’s not looking so great. Her story is basically “I was out that night visiting my aunt, when I came back some dude was like have you seen this missing child so I spent the rest of the evening searching, but ended up having to crash in someone’s barn because…I didn’t want to bother them?”
she was forced to remain several hours of the night in a barn belonging to a cottage, being unwilling to call up the inhabitants, to whom she was well known. 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, that she might again endeavour to find my brother.
But as we know, the child has been foully murdered, woe. Justine has no idea how the picture got into the pocket of her dress (how about when you were asleep in the barn and heard ~footsteps~) and throws the floor open for character witnesses to stand up for her. This also doesn’t go well, so Elizabeth raises her hand:
“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.
I’m just gonna keep calling her the notsister, tbh. Elizabeth says she knows Justine well, Justine’s been like family to her, Justine nursed Mrs. F in extremis and then proceeded to deal with her dying narcissist mom before coming back to the house of Frankenstein, she liked the kid, Elizabeth would have even given her the damn picture if she’d wanted it, all that good shit. It is passionate; it does not persuade.
A murmur of approbation followed Elizabeth’s simple and powerful appeal, 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.
But everything has to be about Victor:
My own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew it. Could the dæmon 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;
ME ME ME ME MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold.
chomp
(maybe if you hadn’t done an incredibly stupid and criminal thing we wouldn’t all be in this fucking position, Victor, but that would require you to evince the edges of self-awareness, so obviously it’s a non-starter)
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, and Justine was condemned.
Obviously. Victor agonizes some more:
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.
But he’s going to continue to try, don’t worry!
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.”
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 Elizabeth eagerly demanded the result.
He’s like “uh, she apparently confessed?” and we go into one of those somewhat dizzying whiplash sequences: Elizabeth is convinced of her innocence! But Justine has confessed so obviously she is guilty! Elizabeth is convinced of her guilt! They go to visit Justine in jail and Justine says she didn’t do it! Elizabeth is convinced of her innocence! The confession is so obviously produced under duress that it would not fool sheep or small children:
“He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments if I continued obdurate. 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.”
Elizabeth takes over the drama:
“Oh, Justine! Forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you. Why did you confess? But do not mourn, dear girl. 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.”
Victor, who has been quiet for a few lines, has to make everything all about him, and gnashes his teeth to get people’s attention:
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 awful boundary between life and death, felt not, as I did, such deep and bitter agony.
No one’s agony is anywhere NEAR as deep and bitter as Victor’s, y’all, it’s not even close.
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 hers 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.
As the world turns, it turns upon Victor Frankenstein alone, for he is the star to every wand’ring bark, the author of all woes, the most anguished soul and the most tormented genius. Justine is hanged as a murderess, leaving the true and monstrous criminal at liberty to kill and kill again, and everyone’s misery is all because of Victor, in case you might have forgotten:
From the tortures of my own heart, I turned to contemplate the deep and voiceless grief of my Elizabeth. This also was my doing! And my father’s woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling home all was the work of my thrice-accursed hands! Ye weep, unhappy ones, but these are not your last tears! Again shall you raise the funeral wail, and the sound of your lamentations shall again and again be heard!
At this point he does the equivalent of the Truck Driver’s Gear Change in terms of self-aggrandizing self-condemnation and starts talking about himself in the third person. If he’s been snarfing down scenery like an industrial shredder up to this point, he’s now in Bagger 288 mode, whole mountain ranges gobbled up in a matter of moments:
Frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your early, much-loved friend; he who would spend each vital drop of blood for your sakes, who has no thought nor sense of joy except as it is mirrored also in your dear countenances, who would fill the air with blessings and spend his life in serving you—he bids you weep, to shed countless tears; happy beyond his hopes, if thus inexorable fate be satisfied, and if the destruction pause before the peace of the grave have succeeded to your sad torments!
Like, damn, dude. As a reader I could not wish more strongly for the monster to pop up behind him and unscrew his head to put him out of everybody’s misery, but it is not to be; he has more woe to bemoan, more suffering to witness, more attention to demand:
Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.
Next time: Victor gets dinged for performative grief by his father and flounces off to Chamonix in a snit!