mockery of justice
Why Mary Shelley should begin the chapter by deliberately obliterating all
suspense is a good question not easily answered. Certainly, Victor's remark
asks us to scrutinize how this court conducts itself as a social
institution and as a microcosm of the polity of Geneva. Since Geneva's
republican government (1.1.1 and note) and its
softening of class hierarchies (1.5.3
and note) have already been admiringly
stressed, we might expect from Mary Shelley's political allegiances to
witness a trial conducted in ideal circumstances. But that is far from being
the case. Instead of a jury of peers, a panel of male magistrates decides
Justine's lot, and to exonerate a verdict reached by only circumstantial
evidence they employ the coercive power of the church to extort a false
confession. Victor's private denunciation of these proceedings does not
indict his own society or consider the extent to which his own family,
that long line of syndics, is complicit in an injustice that is all but
institutionalized. It will be left for his Creature, who is likewise
victimized, to articulate the more radical implications of such a society
(see 2.5.5).
