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.