Victorian Reformations

Not of our race, nor yet wholly strangers: Race, religion and empire in some novels of early Christian Britain

“…The Reformation restored England to its true religion, she claims, but the threat has returned in the nineteenth century in the form of ritualism, and the novel closes on a note of warning, typical of controversial religious novels whose method is to '[fictionalize] Reformation crises so that the reader may learn to recognize that the present threatens to repeat the worst aspects of the past.' 60 'Is there no resemblance,' Holt asks, 'between the position in which the Church stood before that fatal step was taken, and the position in which she stands now?' 61 Despite its strong focus on religious controversy, the novel incorporates what can be seen as strategies of resistance to imperialist discourse.…”

“…70 Her portrait of British society is a pre-literate 'celebration of an activist Bible-reading culture that frequently flouts all social hierarchies' and accords high value to the principle of private judgment. 71 'If I considered that I had no right to do anything but obey somebody's commands,' Imogen tells her sister-in-law, 'I would rather obey God's commands than Bishop Gregory's. What good do you get by your learning, if when you have read God's precepts you are thought presumptuous if ye follow them?'…”