The rise of the Victorian novel in nineteenth century England is often associated with social changes and reform. The narrowing gap between the aristocratic and middle classes and the deplorable conditions of the working class provided ample material for Victorian novelists to develop plots exploring social concerns and often providing useful commentary. Following the French Revolution, England showed a remarkable social plasticity predicated by the Magna Carta and the Bloodless Revolution. While France’s working class built up a storm of vengeful justice toward the aristocracy unleashed on Bastille Day, England’s aristocracy incrementally relinquished political power to the people, thereby avoiding much of the calamity seen during the 1780s …show more content…
For example, concerns about race intertwine with injustices of social class, educational opportunities, health care, employment, etc. Simple allegory or one-for-one representations often fall woefully short in conveying the complexities surrounding and permeating social problems. In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien displays his displeasure over the simple allegory and advocates for a richer development of a secondary world within a novel full or nuance (70-71). The short novel simply does not allow for the intricate web of variables to take shape because fewer characters can be developed. Caroline Levine cultivates this concept further in her analysis of Dickens’s complex narrative network in Bleak House. She reinforces Tolkien’s assertion that convincing secondary worlds must achieve a level of complexity to avoid the pitfalls of simple allegory by comparing narrative network films to novels (520). Films simply do not allow for the complexities of interconnected variables to take shape much like the short novel. The form of the novel cannot fully commentate on social problems without creating a network of characters interwoven in plot and setting to define specific societal evils and provide possible …show more content…
St. Augustine’s idea that evil is correspondent to the diminution of good forces readers to identify evil on a scale from almost complete corruption to perfect virtue. This scale is far more compelling than binary options of right and wrong behavior. When examining novel characters, the question should not primarily be whether actions are right or wrong, but how far removed from perfect virtue is the action. To put it simply, the term wrong or vice is not a substantive term on the scale by which critics examine literary texts; wrong is simply the term used to label actions that deviate more severely from perfect virtue (substance). The same can be said of hot and cold—cold is simply the term used to define the removal of energy. According to Augustine, to measure something by its wrongness, is to use a phantom ruler or measuring stick—measuring evil is measuring nothing. In response to something that is void of virtue Augustine writes, “Evil simply could not be, since it can have no mode in which to exist, nor any source from which corruption springs, unless it be something corruptible” (9). Augustine’s view of evil creates a framework by which all existence possesses some value of goodness; if it possessed no virtue, it would cease to exist.