Scottish Gothic

[mtvessel]

July 2016
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg - Wordsworth Classics, 1997
* * *
This peculiar short novel was first published in 1824 but its use of unreliable narrators, ambiguous events and even a Stan Lee-like cameo by the author gives it a decidedly postmodern feel. It is also the earliest novel I have come across that engages deeply with the psychology of evil. Ultimately it is undermined by its heavy-handed religious message and a reliance on the Gothic, but it is an interesting experiment.

We are first introduced to the story of Robert Colwan (or Wringhim), the eponymous sinner, by an unnamed editor who describes his unfortunate progeniture in an unhappy marriage between the pleasure-loving laird of Dalcastle and a deeply religious Calvinist lady. Or perhaps not - it is strongly implied that Robert is the illegitimate offspring of a liaison between Lady Dalcastle and Mr Wringhim, her personal priest, who subsequently becomes the boy's guardian. He inculcates him in his extreme Calvinism with its doctrine of the Elect, souls predestined to be saved by God regardless of how their lives are lived. This becomes a convenient justification for Robert's subsequent behaviour as he harasses his older brother George in increasingly sinister and uncanny ways, egged on by his mysterious and changeable companion Gil-Martin.

The second part of the book describes the same events from Robert's point of view. He is of course a vile young bigot who sneers at anyone who tries to be nice, but seeing the effects of the circumstances of his upbringing at least allows the reader to gain some understanding of where he is coming from. And it seems that the story that the editor has told is not the whole truth.

Despite its brevity I found this book quite heavy going, largely because the protagonist is so unlikeable. It does not help that the whiffs of sulphur emanating from the character of Gil-Martin serve to destabilise Robert's psychological plausibility and point up some rather obvious parallels with a famous legend on which this story is clearly based. That said, there are some enjoyably eccentric twists in the inevitable denoument, including a reference to a genuine article in Blackwood magazine about a sensational exhumation that Hogg had published two years before the novel came out. Clearly Hogg had a high old time writing this book, and to some extent this is communicated to the reader. For lovers of offbeat nineteenth century literature, it is one to savour.