46 pages • 1 hour read
James HoggThe Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1824A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Dalcastle Estate
The lands of Dalcastle belonged to the Colwan family for at least a hundred years by the time Laird Colwan marries Rabina. The lands are extensive, a physical symbol of the wealth and power of Laird Colwan. In spite of her husband’s immense power, Rabina refuses to acquiesce to his demands. She views Colwan as a sinful man and, eventually, their lives are divided up within the house. They take separate parts of the home as their own, a division of power that speaks to Rabina’s religious certainty: She will not alter her beliefs, even for such a powerful patriarch. Colwan, in turn, provides room for Rabina in his household but shames her by moving his mistress into the house. In turn, Rabina invites her priest to the house before decamping to a different family property in a different city. Since they are so different, they cannot envision a way to live together. At the same time, however, they are too proud to back down. The way in which the unhappy couple occupies the Dalcastle Estate symbolizes the inherent problems in their marriage: They are very different people and very stubborn. Rather than change or accommodate their partner, both Rabina and Colwan concoct an elaborate and unhappy power-sharing arrangement that mirrors the situation in Scottish politics at the time.
Robert is ignored by his father for most of his life. He is sent away from the Dalcastle estate, while George grows up in the seat of the family fortune. Robert spends most of his life bitter that his father sent him away while showing such love to his older brother. As such, the Dalcastle estate becomes an important symbol in Robert’s life. To Robert, the estate symbolizes everything that was denied to him and was given to George instead. While George, as the firstborn son, was the natural heir to the estate, the bitterness in the relationship between Colwan and Robert is embodied by the way in which Robert craves the estate as his right. He wants the loving father that was denied to him; he envies George’s gentle, loving childhood in comparison to his own experiences of religious austerity. Robert does not want the fortune or power that his father’s property represents. Instead, he covets the property because it represents the life that was taken from him and given to his brother through no fault of his own. Robert kills George and then Colwan dies of grief, leaving Robert to inherit the property. He wins, but the victory is hollow as the property is bestowed upon him through fratricide and sin, rather than love and affection. The hollowness of this victory symbolizes the extent to which Robert misunderstands his own relationship with the world around him.
Not long after inheriting the estate, Robert is accused of a series of terrible crimes that he cannot remember. He denies these crimes, though he admits to long periods in which he has no memory. He is chased from the estate by an angry mob carrying two bodies that supposedly belong to Robert’s victims (including his mother). Robert is sent away from his ancestral home due to involvement in the same crimes that won him the estate in the first place. He wins the estate through a murder he remembers, only to lose it due to a murder he cannot recall. Robert’s departure is a symbolic moment, at which his tragic downfall nears completion. The same violence that won him everything he wanted has spiraled out of control. He is brought down by the tragic employment of forces he does not understand.
Disguises
In The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, nothing can be trusted or relied upon to be true. The editor’s investigation takes place many years after the events of the novel, while Robert’s delusions and resentments cloud his ability to provide a true version of events. The result is that the novel obfuscates and disguises reality at every turn, leaving the audience to piece together the truth from the hints and clues that are available. Foremost among these disguises are Gil-Martin’s shapeshifting tricks. The demonic Gil-Martin is one of the few truly supernatural persons in the novel, though his ability to adopt the appearance of any other person is not questioned by Robert. This is, in effect, another form of disguise, with Gil-Martin presenting himself to Robert as a religious person, just as he presents himself to George as Drummond or to a crowd as a preacher whom he wishes to implicate in a murder. Gil-Martin’s disguises and the way that they are treated unquestioningly by Robert symbolize Robert’s unthinking desire for revenge and his lack of religious acumen. Gil-Martin’s disguises are supernatural and dangerous, but even more dangerous is the way in which Robert refuses to acknowledge the truth about Gil-Martin until it is too late. Robert builds a disguise for his friend, one that is far more damaging than any disguise that Gil-Martin adopts.
Late in Robert’s confession, he explains how Gil-Martin offers to disguise him to sneak him past the violent mob. Even amid his doubts over Gil-Martin’s character, Robert again accepts his friend’s help because Gil-Martin is offering Robert what he truly wants: to escape without punishment for his many sins. Robert accepts Gil-Martin’s clothes and slips by the mob. After spending the night in a yeoman’s house, however, the disguise reverts back to Robert’s customary black robes. His true self cannot be denied and any help offered by Gil-Martin only serves to cause more trouble for Robert, who is chased away from the house amid accusations that he is a demon. Robert’s continued trust in Gil-Martin’s disguises—and the continual betrayal of Robert—represents the extent to which Robert is willing to delude himself. Though he often asserts his status as a sanctified and justified man, someone who will is destined to enter heaven, he allows Gil-Martin to help him so that he can avoid the consequences of his actions. His belief is hollow and illogical, which is why he is willing to trust the disguises of a man who does nothing but betray and manipulate him.
Gil-Martin’s greatest disguise is the disguise of his intent. He comes to Robert, posing as a pious man. He tells Robert everything that Robert wants to hear, gently massaging Robert’s ego and exacerbating the resentments and grievances that have festered in Robert’s mind for many years. Through this deceptive manipulation, he is able to convince a supposed Christian to murder his brother. At this point, Gil-Martin’s disguise slips, even if Robert cannot yet see the true person behind the scanty disguise. Gil-Martin’s intent is not to befriend or help Robert. He is not even interested in a moral campaign against the sinners of Edinburgh. Rather, he is interested in corruption. He seeks to corrupt Robert as an exercise in satire, revealing Robert’s zealous belief in the idea of predestination to be utterly absurd. Gil-Martin disguises his intent to Robert, enacting the ultimate deception in the mind of a man who is all too happy to be deceived. Robert is corrupted by Gil-Martin and then convinced to die by suicide, a terrible punishment for his inability to see through his supposed friend’s thinly veiled intentions.
Sickness
Sickness and suffering recur throughout The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Emotional and spiritual suffering are common, particularly given the unhappy marriage between Rabina and Laird Colwan. The loathing and jealousy that marks their unhappy marriage is, in effect, a sickness of its own, one that seems incurable. They pass this sickness down to the next generation, with their hereditary disagreements between Laird Colwan and Rabina manifesting as the animosity between the brothers, George and Robert. Hatred and resentment, in this family, function like hereditary sicknesses that are passed down across the generations. The tragic consequence of this hereditary emotional sickness is that Robert murders George. Even without knowing the identity of his son’s killer, Colwan is overcome with grief. He dies of a broken heart, the final symptom of a decades’ old sickness that was never treated correctly.
To Robert, raised in Wringhim’s church, society itself seems sick. He views himself as one of the justified, someone who is predestined to enter heaven due to his belief in the one correct form of religion. Under Gil-Martin’s influence, Robert’s scathing view of the sick society that surrounds him becomes a corruption. Gil-Martin needles at Robert’s mind, urging him to become a vehicle for God’s vengeance upon the sinners. According to Robert’s twisted view of the world, society is sick and he possesses the only cure. He quickly succumbs to Gil-Martin’s manipulation because the sickness is actually extant in his body. Gil-Martin elevates Robert’s lust for violence against the world, but that lust for violence was part of the hereditary emotional sickness that Robert inherited from his parents. Robert’s corruption is a form of moral sickness, but one that he does not even recognize as a problem. Instead, Robert views himself as the cure for a sick society, even when his actions and intentions symbolize a deeper, more corrupting sickness.
As Robert falls prey to Gil-Martin’s corrupting influence, he begins to suffer from sicknesses. At first, he remains confined to his rooms. Then, he begins to suffer long periods of blackouts. His lack of memories during this time astonishes him, especially as people assure him that he has been carrying out sinful and illegal actions. Robert’s body begins to falter as well, as the stress and paranoia of his dissolving identity manifest in his physical form. Robert begins to look sick. He begins to experience a mental illness, in which he loses time and his sense of self. These physical and mental sicknesses point to a deeper moral sickness that is festering away inside Robert. His physical and mental sicknesses are manifestations of his deeper moral sickness, providing an outward symbol of just how much Robert is moving beyond the moral pale. His sickness is all consuming, affecting his appearance, his mental state, and his morality. Robert’s sickness symbolizes the corrupting effect of Gil-Martin on his life, as well as the extent to which this sickness was always somewhere within Robert.
