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 (I:1:1 and note) and its softening
of class hierarchies (I: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 II:5:15).