I confessed, that I might obtain absolution
Justine has confessed in order to procure last rites and entry into heaven
after death. Yet, as a false confession cannot truly absolve a sinner,
either Mary Shelley's protestant prejudice is showing, revealing a bias
against or actual ignorance of Roman Catholic theology, or, more probably,
she is quietly deepening her social critique to implicate the immorality
of those who, entrusted with the spiritual lives of humanity, sell them
out to the advantage of their own authority or of state power. It is also
possible that she emphasizes the Catholicism of the Moritz household to
mark a subtle prejudice against Justine in the minds of the Frankensteins,
who seem to reflect the austere moralistic Protestantism for which Geneva was noted.
