Chapter 8 · Frankenstein

Copywork

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. 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.

Read Justine’s words aloud, slowly. Which sentence is the hardest for her to say?

Discussion

Narration Tell back what happens from the morning of the trial to the day Justine dies. Then choose the moment you think matters most, and say what it changes.

Justine’s confused answer to the market-woman was used as proof against her. So in court she “worked up her mind to an appearance of courage”. If calm can be put on like that, what can her face prove to anyone watching? Inference
A murmur of approval follows Elizabeth’s speech. But it is for “her generous interference”, and the crowd’s anger turns on Justine with “renewed violence”. How can the crowd admire Elizabeth and still turn on the woman she defends? Theme
Elizabeth believed in Justine in spite of all the evidence, until she heard of the confession. Why does a confession outweigh everything else she knows about Justine? Moral reasoning
Justine says her confessor “threatened and menaced” her. She also says “I had none to support me”. Which weighed more when she gave in, the threats or the loneliness? Character
For the educator The confessor is seen only through Justine’s words. The chapter shows his pressure; it never shows him knowing she is innocent.
At the end of the chapter, Victor names himself: “Frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your early, much-loved friend”. Then he says this man “bids you weep”. Why might he speak of himself as if he were someone else? Author's choice
For the educator Victor calls this the voice of his “prophetic soul”. Treat the warning as his fear, not as an event the chapter shows.

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in your own life, when someone knew something and chose not to say it. What can keeping quiet protect, and what does it cost?

Vocabulary

obdurate: He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments if I continued obdurate. Stubborn and unwilling to give way. The confessor’s threat uses it for Justine’s refusal to confess. It comes from a Latin word for hardening, the same family as durable and endure.
perdition: Dear lady, I had none to support me; all looked on me as a wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. Utter ruin, especially the loss of the soul to hell. Justine sets it beside “ignominy”, public shame, so the sentence names disgrace in this life and ruin in the next.
execrated: Yet she appeared confident in innocence and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands Cursed or loathed openly. It is stronger than doubted or disliked, and Victor uses it for “thousands” of people at once. Its Latin root is the verb for cursing.
approbation: A murmur of approbation followed Elizabeth’s simple and powerful appeal Approval, a good opinion. Here it is only a “murmur”, a sound the room makes, not a vote or a decision. It belongs to the family of approve and probation, from the Latin for proving something good.
exculpated: 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. Cleared of blame. In the sentence it is what a confession from Victor would fail to do for Justine. The root is the Latin for fault, as in culpable, and the prefix ex- means out of.
hapless: 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. Unlucky, struck by bad chance. It is built on “hap”, an old word for luck, the root also of happen and happy.
For the educator The word says luck and the clause ends on Victor’s own “arts”. The discussion of his closing lament returns to that pairing.

Critical thinking

Three times Victor says that if he spoke out, people would think he was mad. Is that a good reason to stay silent, or an excuse?
Victor says Justine’s tortures “did not equal mine”. Is his suffering the greater one?