Didactic Elements in the Historical Novel

Abstract

One salient difference between the historical novels that fed the market for half a century (1830–80) and those which followed (1880 until the end of the Great War) was the insistence of Victorian novelists on drawing from the past a lesson that might have applicability to contemporary political and social situations, and the conviction of writers during the Transitional Period that an entertaining historical novel provided sufficient justification for its own being. (It may well have been the most important difference, though it was not much commented on at the time. So many Victorian novels contained didactic elements that the ubiquity of moral preachments in a particular type of narrative did not attract much attention.) The lesson may not have been crudely stated, and most often was not an obvious or important element in the way the plot developed; it might even be complicated or internally inconsistent, and on occasion it was presented in a gnarled, unaccommodating fashion; but it was usually there, deeply woven into the fabric of the narrative, and to some extent it contributed to a sense of excessive topicality, to the rapid ‘dating’ of particular texts.