Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, long acknowledged as the best of the many works by James Hogg (1770–1835), focuses on the religious and political conflict in Scotland at the end of the 18th century. The first portion, labeled “A Detail of Curious Traditionary Facts, and Other Evidence by the Editor,” assumes a threatening, yet morbidly comic, tone to relate details of Colwan, Lord of Dalcastle’s stormy marriage to a woman described as “the most severe and gloomy of all bigots to the principles of the Reformation.”

When the laird enters her bedchamber on their wedding night, he finds her reading evangelical materials, demure and resistant to his attentions. As the laird abandons all hope of a joyous union and falls asleep while his wife prays, Hogg inserts a passage illustrative of the strange humorous edge he adds to his macabre tale, noting that the laird began “to sound a nasal bugle of no ordinary calibre—the notes being little inferior to those of a military trumpet.”

The symbolically named Rev. Robert Wringhim, a Calvinist bigot himself, enjoys long conversations with Mrs. Cowan, whose weak mind he can easily confuse. Eventually, she bears her husband an heir, whom they christen George, and Lord Dalcastle prizes his son above all his possessions. The conflict between Dalcastle and Rev. Wringhim escalates, particularly after Mrs. Cowan has a second son, which Dalcastle believes to be the reverend’s offspring. He agrees to materially support the boy but refuses to associate with him. Wringhim takes him in, naming him after himself.

The young Robert Wringhim matures to become the novel’s villain, eventually meeting and then stalking George, shadowing his every move. Mixed in with the escalation of tension between the brothers are scenes emphasizing the political and social unrest characteristic of that era.

When George is stabbed in the back, Dalcastle is filled with grief over the loss of his “only hope.” The old man dies, accusing the forces of “faith in absolute predestination” as having ruined his house. His companion, Miss Logan, thereafter calling herself Mrs. Logan, assumes that the Wringhims and Dalcastle’s wife plotted to destroy George and, by extension, Lord Dalcastle.

Robert Wringhim Colwan, now the young laird, is testified against by Mrs. Logan and her friend. But when authorities arrive, “It was in vain that they overturned beds, raised floors, and broke open closets: Robert Wringhim Colwan was lost once and for ever. His mother also was lost; and strong suspicions attached to some of the farmers and house servants to whom she was obnoxious, relating to her disappearance.”

In a macabre turn, the second portion of the book is composed of a memoir retrieved one hundred years later from the younger Wringhim’s grave—a literal voice from the past. In eerie, psychologically disturbing detail, of interest to psychoanalytic critics, and revealing the troubled mind that led Wringhim to suicide, Wringhim reveals he was a serial killer. He first murdered his supposed father, the Rev. Wringhim, then his brother and his mother, all at the bidding of a supposed stranger.

The stranger represents the evil side of Wringhim’s nature, through which he convinces himself that he was acting as God’s servant, killing evil beings in exchange for eternal glory. That Rev. Wringhim and Mrs. Cowan, declared devotees of evangelicalism, are murdered by their own deranged offspring, who is convinced that he commits the crimes in God’s name, proves highly ironic.

At the memoir’s conclusion, Wringhim discovers the so-called stranger, in reality his delusional alter-ego, to be Satan. Physical evidence at the grave, including a perfectly preserved corpse with a skull that has sprouted horns, suggests the devil, in the end, claimed Wringhim’s soul.

Although the work did not receive the attention it deserved until the 20th century, it is now available in print and electronic form.

Bibliography

Simpson, Louis Aston Marantz. James Hogg: A Critical Study. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1962.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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