The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

“To the wicked, all things are wicked; but to the just, all things are just and right.”

Wringhim’s words foreshadow Robert’s temptation, introducing into Robert’s young mind the sense that the wicked and the good are immutable, a core tenet of predestination. Any action carried out by a wicked person is inherently wicked in this line of thought, so Robert—believing himself to be a good person—must only be able to carry out good actions. Robert comes to view himself and his deeds as inherently just and right, simply because he is the person carrying them out.

“A brother he certainly was, in the eye of the law, and it is more than probable that he was his brother in reality.”

The editor is adamant that Robert is almost certainly Laird Colwan’s son, yet the truth becomes inconsequential to Laird Colwan. To him, Robert may be his biological son, but he cannot be his spiritual son. Robert is too closely associated with Rabina and her beliefs, to the point where the child comes to represent the failed marriage. Laird Colwan rejects Robert because of this.

“The little wee ghost of the rainbow.”

When George tries to describe the vision in the clouds, he turns to local folkloric expressions. The idea of the little ghost of the rainbow is his best attempt to give words to the divine, to lock down his spiritual understanding of the world in a phrase that will convey meaning and importance to others. To him, the divine is unknowable, untouchable, and ephemeral. It is something as distant and fleeting as a rainbow, yet just as giant and totalizing. George may be a sinner, but moments such as this suggest a desire to understand God.

“For Wringhim’s whole system of popular declamation consisted, it seems, in this,—to denounce all men and women to destruction, and then hold out hopes to his adherents that they were the chosen few, included in the promises, and who could never fall away.”

Wringhim’s religion is a way to serve and excuse his own beliefs and actions while also demonizing others. The religion is a gamble, in which he presumes himself to be good because he exists and that his actions are good because he is the one carrying them out. Everyone else—those who are not him or who impede his actions or who criticize his beliefs—must, by extension, be sinners.

“Young Dalcastle either had a decided advantage over his adversary, or else the other thought proper to let him have it.”

Gil-Martin orchestrates the attack on George, then struggles to match George in combat. During the fight, however, there is the sense that Gil-Martin is deliberately allowing himself to lose. By struggling against George, he is giving Robert the necessary opening and motivation to enter the fray. Gil-Martin does not primarily desire George’s death, but rather Robert’s corruption. By losing the fight, he achieves the latter through the former.

“There was no friend, no Gil-Martin there to hear or assist him.”

When Arabella and Bell confront Robert, he finds himself abandoned. His spiritual mentor and co-conspirator is nowhere to be found. As in many instances, Gil-Martin shows that he has no real interest in helping or protecting Robert. Instead, he leads him into trouble and delights in the chaos and corruption that ensues. One of Robert’s greatest flaws is that he either ignores or excuses these betrayals.

“If my name is not written in the book of life from all eternity, it is in vain for me to presume that either vows or prayers of mine, or those of all mankind combined, can ever procure its insertion now.”

Robert believes himself to be a justified person, someone who’s name is written in the book of life. This grants him with a form of spiritual immunity, justifying any sin he might commit because it is surely in the name of a greater good. This form of predestination creates a tragic spiral for Robert, from which he cannot escape.

“I was utterly confounded at the multitude of my transgressions.”

To Robert, the idea that he is sinning seems almost incomprehensible. He cannot resolve the inherent tension between his own view of himself as a justified, moral person and the sinful, terrible reality of the things he does. Rather than abandon the former view, he abandons himself to the cognitive dissonance. He chooses to be confused rather than doubt himself or his morality for a moment.

“But still I had hopes of forgiveness, because I never sinned from principle, but accident.”

In an attempt to resolve the tension between his self-conception and his acts, Robert invents new excuses and explanations. These increasingly elaborate justifications for sin stem from the fundamental belief that he simply cannot be a sinner. These sins are accidents, Robert decides, rather than indicative of his principles, even though he has resented his brother for years and delighted in the idea of murdering George.

“From the moment, I conceived it decreed, not that I should be a minister of the gospel, but a champion of it, to cut off the enemies of the Lord from the face of the earth.”

Robert frames himself as a man burdened with a convenient purpose. His fate, he decides, must be to further the belief that he is predestined to go to heaven and that he is fundamentally justified in all his actions. This burden of fate goes so far as to allow Robert to kill his enemies, presuming that any enemy of Robert must inherently be an enemy of the church.

“My countenance changes with my studies and sensations.”

Gil-Martin can change his appearance. Whenever he transforms himself to look like someone else, he can understand their beliefs and ideals. In effect, he has the supernatural power of empathy, the capacity to understand the position of another person through magical means. To an ideologue like Robert, such empathy seems supernatural. Even the prospect of recognizing the agency of another person is alien to Robert, magic or otherwise.

“If the man Blanchard is worthy, he is only changing his situation for a better one; and, if unworthy, it is better that one fall than that a thousand souls perish.”

Gil-Martin preys on Robert’s particular religious beliefs. As a justified person, Robert views any of his actions as being inherently moral as he serves a greater, divine purpose. If he were to kill a man, then he would either be killing a sinner or moving a moral man closer to heaven. This logical trick is flimsy, but it is enough to prompt Robert to embark on a murder spree. The flimsiness of the reasoning suggests that Robert did not need much convincing.

“Another man was apprehended under circumstances that warranted suspicion.”

Gil-Martin disguises himself as another man in the aftermath of the murder. In doing so, he frames an innocent man for Robert’s crime. Robert does not stop to think about this for a moment. He knows that the man is innocent, yet he refuses to take the blame for the murder. The upper limits of Robert’s capacity for reason are met whenever he has to think about his own responsibility for the suffering of others.

“Till at length I began to have a longing desire to kill my brother.”

Robert is quick to accept his friend’s reasoning behind why they should murder George. For Gil-Martin, Robert is easy to convince because he has loathed his brother for many years. The religious motivation functions as a veneer for a deeper, even more bitter form of hatred that has festered in the mind of the second son, disowned by his father from an early age. Robert sincerely wants to kill George; Gil-Martin simply gives him an excuse to do so.

“The sooner he falls, the fewer crimes will he have to answer for, and his estate in the other world will be proportionally more tolerable than if he spent a long unregenerate life steeped in iniquity to the loathing of the soul.”

Gil-Martin peppers Robert with a barrage of flimsy excuses as to why they should murder George. Through his reasoning, he urges Robert to kill George so as to prevent even more sins in the future. Robert needs very little convincing, so much so that he does not stop to ponder the logic of Gil-Martin’s words. He feels aggrieved by George’s very existence, so much so that he feels as though he is being sinned against. To Robert, this makes him feel like the righteous arbiter of justice rather than an embittered brother.

“Had I not been sensible that a justified person could do nothing wrong, I should not have been at my ease concerning the statement I had been induced to give on this occasion.”

Robert is very sincere in his belief that he is a justified man and destined to go to heaven. The sincerity of his belief can be read in the way in which he is genuinely shocked that he could be accused of a crime and that the court would not agree with him. Rather than forcing him to reevaluate his beliefs, this merely functions as evidence that the court itself has been corrupted by sin.

“I prayed inwardly that these deeds of mine might never be brought to the knowledge of men who were incapable of appreciating the high motives that led to them.”

Robert is caught in a difficult situation. He is increasingly conscious of how his actions must appear to other people, yet he feels personally aggrieved that these people cannot understand his supposedly moral justifications and motivations. Robert believes that he is a force for good; anyone who correctly labels him a sinner is trying to impede his work. Rather than regret his actions, he instead regrets that people misinterpret his motivations. He turns his guilt around, blaming other people for their failure to comprehend his actions.

“It is impossible that I can have been doing a thing and not doing it at the same time.”

Robert feels as though his being is splitting in two. Though he loses track of time for as long as several months, he cannot comprehend how anyone—even his separate self—could commit such heinous crimes. It is impossible to Robert that any part of him could sin, since he believes that his entire self is a justified person who is destined for heaven. He struggles with the logic of his own illogical reasoning. Rather than backing down, however, he doubles down.

“I felt a sort of indefinite pleasure, an ungracious delight in having a beautiful woman solely at my disposal.”

Even though Robert insists that his conscious self could never have impregnated a young woman, a part of his subconscious recognizes his fundamental yearning for women. He has taught himself to hate women as, to him, they represent sin, yet he also recognizes that he has a physical yearning that even he cannot deny. This becomes the foundation of his doubt, as even the intensity of his belief cannot deny such a fundamental reality.

“I could not help turning round and taking a look of Dalcastle.”

The Dalcastle estate represents Robert’s bond with the father who disowned him. Through his crimes, Robert has won ownership of the estate. The same crimes that have won him the estate, however, have caused his terrible dissociation and implication in many other crimes. He is forced to flee from the estate, turning briefly to look back at the building that was so pivotal to his motivation and that he has now lost.

“My state both of body and mind was now truly deplorable.”

Robert’s mental and physical states have begun to catch up to his spiritual state. For months now, Robert’s spirituality has been a caustic presence in his life, justifying his many sins. With his spiritual side in complete collapse, his body suffers and his mind feels as though it is being torn apart. Robert is being broken on every level.

“You are an outlaw, and a vagabond in your country.”

Gil-Martin lays out the blunt reality of Robert’s existence. He is an outlaw, thrown out of polite society for crimes that he, mistakenly, believed were justified. Robert has become a stranger in his own land, a vagabond in his own country, someone whose ideas and morals are so alien to his peers that he has been driven out of the community. Robert’s life is not just in danger, Gil-Martin is telling him, but his situation represents a complete rejection by the rest of society.

“The letter from which the above is an extract, is signed JAMES HOGG, and dated from Altrive Lake, August 1st, 1823.”

At the very end of the novel, the editor alludes to the existence of a figure named James Hogg. In reality, James Hogg is the author of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and with this introduction he thereby distinguishes himself from the editor. This example of metatextuality, more than a century before the literary device was popularized, adds another element of uncertainty and unreliability to the text, in which the author inserts himself as an unreliable figure in his own work.