AQA GCSE in English Literature · Free · no account needed
Justice and injustice in Frankenstein — theme analysis
Frankenstein · Mary Shelley · Set text on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702), which prescribes the 1831 text — not on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) · Grade 9 Notes
In one sentence. A theme most candidates miss: courts, confessions and revenges — the novel tries justice in every form and convicts them all.
This study ends with Mary Shelley. Build your reading of Justice and injustice in Frankenstein, teach it, then defend it against Mary Shelley.
How Justice and injustice works in Frankenstein
Institutional justice fails twice, symmetrically: Justine (innocent, convicted — evidence planted, confession coerced by her confessor) and later Victor himself in Ireland (innocent of Clerval's murder in law, guilty in cause — acquitted). Private justice then takes over: the Creature's revenges, Victor's pursuit sworn on the graves ('I swear… to pursue the daemon'), and the Creature's final self-sentencing on the pile. Every mechanism — court, church, vendetta, suicide — is shown reaching the wrong body or arriving too late; the only justice the novel endorses is the reader's, delivered on the whole system. Link to the gender study: the executed innocent is a servant girl; justice's failures, like ambition's costs, are posted downward.
The characters who carry Justice and injustice
An essay on Justice and injustice is built from the characters. Each line below is from that character's own study — follow it for the full analysis.
- The Creature — Justine's trial (institutional injustice) against his self-execution (justice outside institutions) — a pairing most candidates miss.
- Elizabeth, Justine and the domestic circle — Justine's trial is the theme's centrepiece.
Quotations on Justice and injustice, analysed
Each of these is analysed in full in the character's own study, where it belongs.
Elizabeth, Justine and the domestic circle
“I did confess; but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins.” — Justine, Volume 1, Chapter 8
Anaphora ('I confessed') hammering the coercion: church and court together manufacture the guilt they then punish. Justine's clarity about her own destruction — naming the lie a sin worse than those invented for her — makes her the novel's moral superior to every institution on stage. The reader watches an innocent hanged while the two who know the truth (Victor by knowledge, Elizabeth by faith) fail her: private cowardice completing public injustice.
Methods: anaphora · institutional critique · dramatic irony
More Justice and injustice quotations, from the Frankenstein quote bank
Each is analysed in full — speaker, scene, techniques, structure, context and essay use — on the Frankenstein key quotes page; the line here is what the words are doing.
“I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”
His whole case in three clauses: origin, cause, and a testable offer. Full analysis →
“I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed.”
Milton's casting disputed: made as Adam, treated as Satan, guilty of nothing. Full analysis →
“I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?”
Causation stated as syntax: 'because' is the whole philosophy. Full analysis →
“I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames.”
The self-sentence: fire — Prometheus's gift — chosen as his own end. Full analysis →
“I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was”
Institutional pressure teaching an innocent to speak the prosecution's script. Full analysis →
“I will proclaim, I will prove your innocence”
Female speech at its bravest — heard, admired, and overruled by the court. Full analysis →
Think you understand it?
Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.
Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?
- Teach it — Explain your reading of Justice and injustice in Frankenstein to Ember, an AI pupil who has not made one, and answer the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
- Defend it — Hold your reading of Justice and injustice in Frankenstein against Mary Shelley in a short, structured debate marked against descriptors you can read first.
- Then the exam — exam-style practice, marked on Incandio.
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Carry on through Frankenstein
- Previous: Nature and the sublime
- Grade 9 Notes: Frankenstein — every character and theme, context, craft, theses and full essay plans on one page.
- The Complete Guide to Frankenstein — the whole text, chapter by chapter.
- Frankenstein key quotes — every quotation in the bank analysed, by character and theme.
- Frankenstein · All set texts · The 4ET1 specification
Every study of Frankenstein
- Victor Frankenstein — character
- The Creature — character
- Robert Walton — character
- Elizabeth, Justine and the domestic circle — character
- Dangerous knowledge and ambition — theme
- Creation and responsibility — theme
- Prejudice, isolation and the outsider — theme
- Nature and the sublime — theme