Religious Fanaticism and Unreliable Narration in Hogg's Justified Sinner

Narrative Contrast and Character Perception

Though not widely recognized at the time of its writing in 1824, James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner was a groundbreaking work that simultaneously predicted the rise of the crime novel and postmodern fiction while remaining grounded in the Gothic tradition (McGuire 8; Sandner 73). Hogg's novel features a curiously bifurcated narrative, where the same events are told twice. Key events are relayed once through the narration of the editor, who claims to be providing a generally unbiased, historical account of the events under discussion, and once through the titular memoirs and confessions of Robert Wringhim, a man who appears to be a far more unreliable narrator but who nevertheless offers the reader useful insights into the motivation and meaning behind certain events.

Taken together, these two narratives complement each other by reinforcing their central themes via contrast. The historical, level-headed narration of the editor serves to make the religious fanaticism of Wringhim's narrative that much more apparent, while the untrustworthy voice of Wringhim's narrative serves to highlight the editor's own sardonic approach to religion. By examining how either narrator treats key characters as well as Robert's narration of his own commission, one is able to see how Hogg uses these two narratives to make a case against the kind of Calvinist theology which preached that human beings' life trajectory (and eternal destination) was already prescribed by God. In doing so, Hogg makes a case against all forms of restrictive and prescriptive ideology.

To begin, it will be worthwhile to examine the characters of George Colwan and Reverend Wringhim, because the beginning of either narrative provides distinctly differing portraits of both men. Prior to his birth, Robert Wringhim's mother, Rabina Orde, marries George Colwan, and soon after their marriage she attempts to convert him to her particular brand of Christianity. He resolutely refuses, daring to doubt the great standard doctrine of absolute predestination and mocking her wire-drawn degrees of faith, hope, and repentance (Hogg 11). Colwan's rejection of predestination is so offensive to Rabina that she soon declares her helpmate to be a limb of the Antichrist, and one with whom no regenerated person could associate (Hogg 11).

George Colwan and Reverend Wringhim: Competing Interpretations

The two soon live separately, with Rabina taking the upper floor of the house for herself, and Colwan begins meeting regularly with one Miss Logan (Hogg 11-12). Although Rabina obviously holds George Colwan in low esteem, the editor does not seem to participate in this condemnation. In fact, he actually seems to use some of Rabina's religious horror as a source of subtle comedy. The aforementioned line regarding Colwan being a limb of the Antichrist can only be read as a somewhat comical recreation of Rabina's extremism. Later, when the editor calls Miss Logan "the Canaanite woman," it is clear that he is mocking Rabina's tendency to imbue her everyday life with biblical importance (Hogg 12). Even the fact that Rabina calls Colwan her "helpmate" demonstrates a kind of linguistic fanaticism, because she is using the term first introduced to describe Eve's relation to Adam.

This is contrasted with Colwan's own view of religion, which the editor introduces earlier when he says that Colwan had "a very limited proportion of the fear of God in his heart, and very nearly as little of the fear of man. The laird had not intentionally wronged or offended either of the parties, and perceived not the necessity of deprecating their vengeance" (Hogg 2). It is very difficult to read these lines as anything other than a humorous response to the condemnation and shame that Christianity heaps on its followers. Despite Rabina's statements, Colwan appears as a congenial, friendly, and altogether faithless man.

One may contrast this playful, comical depiction of Colwan by the editor with the description provided by Robert, a character who is even more deeply ensnared by Christianity than his mother. He describes Colwan as "one of the wicked; a man all over spotted with the leprosy of sin, who abandoned him" (Hogg 100). Robert writes that he would have "remained an outcast from the Church visible were it not for Reverend Wringhim, a faithful minister of the gospel who instructed him in the ways of Calvinist Christianity, or at least the extremist doctrine of his own design" (Hogg 100).

Robert's depiction of Colwan is obviously in line with his mother's (and Reverend Wringhim's). Almost immediately upon starting Robert's own narration, his particular religious fanaticism is made clear, although the true extent of this fanaticism will not be made evident until later. From this one can conclude that his description of Reverend Wringhim must be decidedly biased. A look at Colwan's own assessment of Reverend Wringhim provides an alternative view. When Wringhim comes to chastise Colwan at the request of Rabina, Colwan will have none of it. Instead, he verbally attacks the reverend, claiming that the man did him "the worst turn ever I got done to me in my life by officiating at their wedding" (Hogg 15). Colwan goes on to insinuate a sexual relationship between Rabina and the reverend, and concludes by calling Wringhim "a presumptuous, self-conceited pedagogue, a stirrer up of strife and commotion in church, in state, in families, and communities, [and] one [whose] righteousness consists in splitting the doctrine of Calvin into thousands of indistinguishable films, and in setting up a system of justifying grace against all breaches of all laws, moral or divine" (Hogg 16).

Colwan's rebuke of Reverend Wringhim is instructive, because although he means it all as an insult, he provides a fairly accurate description of Wringhim's, and subsequently Robert's, peculiar brand of Christianity. In particular, Colwan is spot on in his claim that Wringhim's "righteousness consists of making up a system of justifying grace." Wringhim's view of predestination means that he considers himself incapable of doing evil, or more accurately, that anything he might do—for good or evil—will ultimately be justified due to his own status as a Christian. Wringhim admits as much when Colwan accuses him of doing wrong, because Wringhim responds by saying, "if I do evil to anyone on such occasions, it is because he will have it so; therefore, the evil is not of my doing" (Hogg 15).

In this particular case, Wringhim's evil is not that significant, and it mostly serves as an opportunity for Colwan to make his joke about his marriage being "the worst turn." However, his assertion that he can do no evil is precisely the core of religious fanaticism. The belief that one's actions are justified no matter what is necessary in order to comfortably carry out the otherwise despicable acts that result from religious fanaticism.

The stark differences between the narrator's and Robert's descriptions of Colwan and Wringhim are instructive because they demonstrate the extent to which religious belief clouds and colors the entirety of a person's perception. In the somewhat ironic words of Robert himself, "if once a man is prejudiced on one side, he will swear anything in support of such prejudice" (Hogg 148). Obviously, Robert was not acquainted with Colwan during his childhood and as such cannot truly judge him as "one of the wicked." Instead, it is likely he received this assessment from his mother and (likely) father Reverend Wringhim at the same time he was receiving his religious instruction.

While the editor is not entirely free of bias—as the comical moments outlined above demonstrate—he nevertheless endeavors to provide a more well-rounded account of the characters, such that one can see quite easily how religious belief (or lack thereof) has colored each person's views of the other. From the perspective of Colwan, the editor, and likely much of the reading audience, Wringhim is a hypocritical, self-serving fraud. But from the position of Wringhim and his flock, he is an automatically righteous, upstanding man due to the convenient religious doctrine that says as much.

The differing characterizations of Wringhim and Colwan are crucial for understanding the rest of the narrative, because Robert may be considered the heir of Wringhim in more ways than one. Aside from possibly being his actual son, Robert may be viewed as the refined, distilled essence of Wringhim's religious fanaticism. Where Wringhim had to come to his fanatical beliefs through secondary training and education, Robert was literally born into it, raised from a young age to become a scion of Wringhim's beliefs. Recognizing this allows one to better understand what is arguably the most confusing, or at least mysterious, element of the whole novel: Gil-Martin.

A look at what happens just before Robert meets Gil-Martin, in conjunction with what has already been revealed about the function of religion in the novel, will serve to illuminate this most mysterious of characters. Gil-Martin has been read a number of ways, and each reading has some evidence to back it up. Some view him as a literal manifestation of the devil, while others perceive him to be a mere figment of Robert's imagination (Mackenzie 24; Stout 535). While each of these readings provides useful insights into the character, this study suggests that Gil-Martin represents something more than either the devil or Robert's imagination.

Gil-Martin as Psychological Manifestation

Instead, one may read Gil-Martin as the specter of Robert's religious fanaticism—that part of his belief that justifies all of his actions. Rather than viewing Gil-Martin as an evil or negative influence in contrast to Robert's otherwise religious tendencies, one may view him as the physical embodiment of those religious tendencies. It is Gil-Martin that allows Robert to do everything he does, who gives him strength, and who justifies his actions.

Just before Robert meets Gil-Martin for the first time, he is anointed and blessed by Wringhim, who uses these remarkable words to send him out into the world: "I give him into Thy hand, as a captain putteth a sword into the hand of his sovereign, wherewith to lay waste his enemies. May he be a two-edged weapon in Thy hand, and a spear coming out of Thy mouth, to destroy, and overcome, and pass over" (Hogg 126). Robert writes that he has these words "still treasured up in my heart," and the scene is indeed dramatic and traumatic enough that it is easy to believe (Hogg 126).

However, while the scene passes by fairly rapidly, one must take a moment to consider the effect such words might have had on someone as obviously impressionable and unstable as Robert. The appearance of Gil-Martin just after, coupled with Robert's newfound confidence in his commission to "cut sinners off with the sword," suggests that this scene is nothing more or less than Robert suffering a kind of psychotic or manic break from reality. When framed within the context of his own preexisting belief, this break gives rise to a divine specter in the form of Gil-Martin.

Anyone who has ever witnessed a faith healer at work can attest to the coercive power of dramatic speech when it is playing off of preexisting belief. The scene described above demonstrates a similar phenomenon. Firstly, Wringhim appeals to Robert's own personality with his talk of swords and spears, because as Robert later notes, he "rejoiced in the commission, finding it more congenial to my nature to be cutting off sinners with the sword" (Hogg 126). In other words, Wringhim knows Robert's personality, and so tailors his words to have the greatest effect, in the same way that a politician might modify his or her stump speech in order to appeal to a different crowd.

However, because Robert is already so psychologically unstable—the natural result of growing up with Rabina and Wringhim as caretakers—the words are powerful enough to induce a kind of ecstatic break from reality. He undergoes a "miraculous transformation leading to his discovery of some intimate acquaintance who he nevertheless cannot recall" (Hogg 127). Robert feels a familiarity with Gil-Martin but cannot recall him precisely because Gil-Martin is the embodiment of that thing which was previously immaterial: Robert's fanatical belief.

Robert's transformative experience being commissioned by Wringhim rocks him so much that his belief is made manifest and appears in the form of Gil-Martin. Of course, this reading must account for the fact that Robert supposedly talked with Gil-Martin before his commission. Even this does not present a true problem, because one might simply suggest that the person Robert talked to before his commission was a real person who never appears again in the novel. Instead, following his commission, Robert imagines his newfound psychical companion to be the same person whom he "took rather for an angel of light" (Hogg 125).

Religious Fanaticism and Robert's Commission

In this light, one may read the day of Robert's commission as a process of psychological priming, wherein his initial meeting with the stranger makes him especially susceptible to Wringhim's words. He suffers a break from reality and subsequently imagines a physical embodiment for his faith. It is important to note that to call Gil-Martin a product of Robert's psyche is not quite the same as saying that he is a "figment of imagination," because the latter suggests a status roughly on par with an imaginary friend who exists as a consciousness apart from Robert. Instead, one must view Gil-Martin as a piece of Robert's psyche, made visible as a result of Robert's trauma and responding to that trauma.

Because Gil-Martin is essentially Robert's fanatical belief made manifest, one may read Robert's gradual deterioration over the course of his narrative as the somewhat tragic disintegration of his worldview in the face of increasing evidence that his faith is faulty.

This seems to be the ultimate message of Hogg's novel. Although his focus is on Calvinist theology in particular, the process by which Robert is entranced and ultimately subsumed by this belief is the same for any repressive ideology. By using two ideologically distinct but narratively similar stories, Hogg is able to demonstrate the destructive effects of fanaticism on the individual, using Robert as a kind of tragic anti-hero whose descent into madness is indicative of anyone who finds him or herself unlucky enough to fall under the sway of fanatical beliefs.

Thus, while one could never really call The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner a hopeful story, it does at least provide the reader with important insights into the dangers posed by fanatical ideology, serving as a kind of warning tale.

Hogg, James. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. London: J. Shiells & Co, 1824.

Mackenzie, Scott. "Confessions of a Gentrified Sinner: Secrets in Scott and Hogg." Studies in Romanticism, vol. 41, no. 1, 2002, pp. 3–32.

McGuire, Matthew. "James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner and the Romantic Roots of Crime Fiction." Clues, vol. 30, no. 1, 2012, pp. 8–17.