Pedagogic themes in the major novels of Brooke, Day and Inchbald

Abstract

The novels of Brooke, Day, and Inchbald were natural developments of the late eighteenth-century climate of ideas and taste. Three circumstances combined to produce these novels: first, the widespread belief that the society of the day was corrupt; second, the primitivistic notion that man should act according to his natural impulses and instincts rather than the accepted rules of society; and third, the educational ideas of Rousseau, which were currently being acclaimed. Like Rousseau, these novelists exemplified their educational doctrines through the medium of the novel. -- Brooke, Day, and Inchbald believed that environment is largely responsible for the type of character produced. The conventional patterns of society can stultify the impressionable minds of children; therefore, these novelists condemned the fashionable environment which thwarted the natural virtues of the child. They maintained that a child must be placed in a natural environment which would permit the natural virtues to develop uncontaminated. Their conception of education accepted the child as a child; promoted the natural development of his faculties; aided him to recognize the dangerous habits of mind which a blind adherence to the conventions of society can develop; guided him in the formation of good habits; instilled qualities into his mind and heart which would cultivate a humane disposition and a sympathetic feeling for his fellow-man; and aimed at producing a useful and virtuous member of society. This education was to be conducted far from the vices of fashionable life. But the pedagogical novelists did not want to destroy society; they only wished to alter its sense of values so that a child's faculties could develop without constraint.