The art of insincerity: a study of religious hypocrites in selected novels by Dickens, Trollope, and Eliot.

Abstract

In their novels Dickens, Trollope and Eliot effectively render the essential qualities of hypocrisy through the characterization of the religious hypocrite. The first chapter of this thesis provides a detailed analysis of the names of the hypocrites depicted in Dickens's novels The Pickwick Papers and Bleak House, Trollope's The Warden, Barchester Towers, and The Last Chronicle of Barset, and Eliot's Middlemarch. In each novel, the name is more than a symbol; it serves as a lens through which the reader observes the words and deeds of the hypocrite. The author uses the name to insure that the reader will view the character as the author intends. The "name-as-lens" functions to establish the author's perspective of the hypocrite. The second chapter focuses this perspective on the cant of the religious hypocrite as manifested in the clergy and the laity. The analysis of the clergy's cant is restricted to the rhetoric of the sermon, and how the rhetoric is used hypocritically. Trollope's Mrs. Proudie and Eliot's Mr. Bulstrade represent the laity where cant is discussed. The final chapter examines the purpose of Dickens, Trollope, and Eliot in depicting the religious hypocrite. The initial purpose discussed is the hypocrite's ability to energize the story. He, or she, provides the novel with a Byronic energy and moves the story along. In addition, the authors use the religious hypocrite to warn the reader of the threat posed by hypocrisy. The chapter is concluded with the profferring of a system, essentially a hierarchy of needs, for assessing the effectiveness of the characterization. Each author, through the adroit depiction of his religious hypocrite, effectively explicates hypocrisy and exhorts the reader to battle it in all of its manifestations.