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

O'Driscoll, Patrick Robert (1960) Pedagogic themes in the major novels of Brooke, Day and Inchbald. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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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.

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