William, Victor's brother, is found murdered one day after playing in the forest with his brother Ernest. The real murderer is the creature, who had found a way to indirectly torture Victor. Justine is found to have the picture out of the locket that Elizabeth gave to William the morning of the day he was murdered. This circumstantial evidence is enough for the courts of Geneva to convict her of William's murder. Justine confesses to the murder because, as she says when Victor and Elizabeth go to visit her in prison, her confessor threatened and menaced her into believing that she would be excommunicated if she didn't confess. In Justine's eyes, wrongful death would be better than being shut out of her religion. I believe that this is PB Shelley's atheist influence over his wife as it is showing how religion can distort your perception of what is (and isn't) good for your own wellbeing. Justine and Elizabeth play very similar roles in the novel. They both play the more innocent and helpless roles that Shelley indented for women to play in her novel. It shows the more passive role that women played in society and the more romanticism ideals that women should hold. Although Elizabeth stands up for Justine's innocence, she, like Justine, is completely helpless to stop the execution. Justine is also like the creature in her innocence as the creature doesn't know any better as he has not been taught, so he doesn't turn himself in. Justine doesn't know any better than to believe everything her confessor tells her, and so turns herself in to avoid being abandoned by her religion. Innocence becomes a very important theme in the novel, and more importantly innocence lost. Elizabeth also talks about justice and law when they go to visit Justine in prison after Justine has explained her false confession. Basically, Elizabeth is against the "shot for shot" attitude that the justice system has taken as it ends up punishing the innocent and wrongly accused.
