Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg (1824)

 

Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

This is a case of a novel that is more interesting from a technical point of view than from its subject matter. Not that this is entirely uninteresting, but the technical devices of “Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner” (or “Confessions…” as I will shorten it to from now on) are both very advanced for its time and used in a very interesting manner and this alone is good enough reason to read it.

“Confessions…” is divided into three segments. The first is “the editor’s” description of events that happened a little more than a hundred years in the past. A Scottish nobleman was briefly married to a fiercely religious woman and managed to have two sons before she moved out to live with her priest, the Reverend Wringhim. George, the older stayed with the nobleman, while the younger, Robert stayed with the mother. Though never explicitly stated, it is implied that the Reverend is the actual father of Robert, though for such religious people that would be absolutely unheard of.

George and his father are jovial types and George is well liked and described as a fairly ordinary young nobleman. Robert, on the other hand, is a dark, brooding type and very religious. During a game of tennis, he seeks out George and starts interfering in everything George does, presumably to convince him to see the light. Eventually George is murdered. His father’s housekeeper investigates and eventually finds out Robert did it after which Robert disappears.

The second part takes the form of a found manuscript written by Robert. It essentially tells the same story, but instead of the third-party objectiveness of the first section, this is a highly subjective first-person account and as such dramatically different. For once, Robert is not only deeply religious, he is also righteous and convinced that he is among the elect who can do no wrong because they are already admitted to heaven. This gives him a free ticket to do whatever he wants and a conviction that whatever he believes is correct and everybody else is wrong.

Robert also meets early on a person who never really introduces himself, but acts as Robert’s friend and supporter. Together they hatch a plan to eliminate people who are in the way of the true faith and start off with a minister. Successfully done, George is the next on the list. The impetus for these murders seems to be from Robert’s friend and he does seem to have uncanny abilities such as assuming the voice and looks of other people. Slowly it is implied that this friend is some sort of demon or devil haunting Robert and when Robert starts to suffer lapses in memory after which it appears he has been conducting unspeakable crimes, he has to flee. Not only the law, but also his supernatural friend.

The third part is again the editor explaining how he found the manuscript in a grave, somehow giving credence to the story as a “found manuscript”.

The technique of telling a story from two different perspectives is novel in the early nineteenth century and is particularly interesting because it highlights the unreliable narrator. Who do we trust more, the impartial third-party narrator with limited access to the details or the first person narrator with full access but also personally invested in the story? Not to mention, severely religiously biased.

Then of course there is the almost satirical portrait of a person so convinced of his religious doctrines that his views, actions and morality are far outside what we would consider the norm, even in a more religious age than today. I suspect this is the real agenda of the author and it certainly does make these cultist types highly suspicious. Most dangerous seems to be how completely impervious they are to other opinions and common sense. This is something that can frustrate even in our current day and age.

In my opinion, however, the most interesting element is that of the demon. With twenty-first century glasses on, Robert is schizophrenic and suffering from a split personality. An invented friend that feeds him with subconscious impulses he might otherwise have suppressed and leaves him with blank periods in his memory are typical schizophrenic symptoms. Though for an author in the early nineteenth century to describe a schizophrenic case sounds unlikely. Psychiatry was not that developed at the time, but we are really close here. The other possibility is the religious one that this pious type is haunted and corrupted by the devil and simply fails to recognize it because hellish and strict orthodox dogma are so very similar. In this understanding, Robert is suitably punished for his religious intolerance and arrogance. This is far more down the line of a nineteenth century writer and, of course, supporting the satirical agenda, but I cannot help reading a mental patient case story into this and that ambivalence is super interesting. Maybe it is implied that demonic intervention is causing schizophrenia?

“Confessions..” could easily be made into a horror movie today and I would not be surprised to learn this has already happened. Wikipedia mentions a Polish movie and several screenplays, but the big Hollywood production seems to be pending.

Apparently, it was the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and I can definitely see that.

Certainly, an interesting read.