“If she is, God forbid that she should suffer as guilty. She is to be tried to-day, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that she will be acquitted.” (72)

The elder Frankenstein is the voice of reason in all the madness that is the novel. While everyone else is irrational and therefore unreasonable in the face of Justine’s accusations and William’s death, Alphonse remains calm and orderly during the whole ordeal. Despite the fact that he has lost one son to death and is close to losing the other one to the mental demons that were threatening to consume him, Alphonse manages to provide the only realistic point of view in Shelley's novel. His small role in the novel shows the hysteria that consumes all characters and the minor role that rationale honestly plays as things get more and more out of hand.