Miss Drusilla Clack is a character, and part-narrator, in
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for '' The Woman in White'' (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for '' The Moonstone'' (1868), which has b ...
' 1868 novel ''
The Moonstone
''The Moonstone'' (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. It is an early example of the modern detective novel, and established many of the ground rules of the modern genre. The story was serialised in Charles Di ...
''.
A poor relation of the Verinder family, Miss Clack is an ardent
Evangelical
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...
, and has a habit of handing out improving
tracts to strangers and family alike.
Social and Historical Context
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, (3 August 1920 – 27 November 2014), known professionally as P. D. James, was an English novelist and life peer. Her rise to fame came with her series of detective novels featuring th ...
suggests that, as "an evangelical busybody...Miss Clack occasionally gets close to being a caricature". A quasi-editorial footnote alerts us to the way her narrative is intended to have "unquestionable value as an instrument for the exhibition of Miss Clack's character"; and when she describes her eavesdropping as "A martyrdom was before me", or exclaims "Sorrow and sympathy! Oh, what Pagan emotions to expect from a Christian Englishwoman", her role as comic self-betrayer becomes very apparent.
However, there was another side to her presentation: Collins – like
Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...
, aware of the power behind Victorian evangelicanism, and of how spite and aggression could be concealed under a philanthropic cloak – mingled the serious with the comic in his portrayal of Miss Clack. The issue comes to a head with regard to her apparently endless distribution of tracts – extracts in pamphlet form of evangelical literature – to the modern eye, a seemingly unique eccentricity. We first see her giving tracts to a servant and a cabbie in place of a tip; and then concealing no less than "twelve precious publications" around her dying aunt's house for the latter to find. This sort of activity would be characteristic of individuals associated with the
Religious Tract Society
The Religious Tract Society was a British evangelical Christian organization founded in 1799 and known for publishing a variety of popular religious and quasi-religious texts in the 19th century. The society engaged in charity as well as commerci ...
, which published literally millions of tracts from 1799 onward of precisely the kind Collins describes; its members took pride in going to great lengths to disseminate their messages;
Thus it is only in the context of the strength of the evangelical mobilisation of public opinion behind the enforcement of
Victorian morality
Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of the middle class in 19th-century Britain, the Victorian era.
Victorian values emerged in all classes and reached all facets of Victorian living. The values of the period—which can be ...
, and the opposition to this influence in some quarters, that the significance of Miss Clack can be fully appreciated. Writers like Collins and
G. M. Trevelyan
George Macaulay Trevelyan (16 February 1876 – 21 July 1962) was a British historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the ...
opposed what they saw as "the peculiarly nauseous form of charity as a vehicle for tracts and enforced religion", judging that it was generally applied to social inferiors, with aggression masquerading as generosity.
See also
References
External links
Religion, Rogues, and ''Robinson Crusoe''
{{The Moonstone
Literary characters introduced in 1868
Fictional English people