An Angry Man

Caleb Williams by William Godwin




Why don't I want to give this book any stars? Not because I don't think it deserves them but because I think sometimes this star-allocating business isn't appropriate.

William Godwin wrote this book in 1794. The author is best known (now) for having been married to the feminist Mary Wollstencraft, and engendering a daughter who would elope with Shelley and then write Frankenstein. But in his time, Godwin was a famed and impassioned reformer, above all seething with anger at the law as it operated in England, a law that pretended to offer justice but which was in the pockets of the rich to manipulate as they pleased. Having written a polemic on the subject, he produced Caleb Williams - by way of illustration.

It's probably - someone will correct me, no doubt - the first psychological novel ever written in the west, maybe anywhere. He allows his characters to be perpetually questioning their motives, while through his first person narrator, he speculates on motive generally. This is also a sort of thriller, the story of a man-hunt - and, of course, highly political. In its day some criticised it as propaganda, which in certain aspects is certainly is, and Godwin clearly had no problem with that.

But from our perspective - over 200 years later, what is also fascinating is the social history that was simply the background against which Godwin placed his characters. One learns so much. One also learns how much was acceptable in novel writing then that one simply could not get away with now. It is longer than it needs to be. Caleb Williams (the narrator) manages to be inside the heads of people when they are busily engaged in thoughts and actions where he is not, and about which he therefore could not have known. But William Godwin is not worried about this either, and it would seem, nor much was anyone else.





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