Theme and moralism in Of Moths and Butterflies

[V.R.]

Besides abuse and property and women's rights, there are some other themes I've sought to address. Illegitimacy, for one, and the plight of the fatherless child. It meant more then than it does today, but I don't think it's any less a problem. Does the social stigma, having largely gone away, make a fatherless child's life easier?

The association of money with value is another point I wished to address. The idea that someone would shun a fortune is, admittedly, a rather absurd one. But what is the value of money? Imogen rightly feared what it would do for her. We work for money. Money is respect, it is status. There was a time when people worked so that they could provide for their families. Now families are side notes of accomplishment. Quoting from my second novel Cry of the Peacock (Oct 2012)"Money could not buy happiness; it was true. But money did have its power. Power to educate, to protect, to provide basic needs so many lived without, and, most importantly, to ensure the freedom that should be the God-given right of all men and women, but which right men so often strove to take away." And in Moths, that was exactly how it was used.

In writing the book, I borrowed from the works that have meant the much to me, Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Wilkie Collins, Dickens, George Eliot and the Brontes (all three). The value of literature as a mirror, and even a guide in our lives, how history repeats itself (even in the ordinary and mundane, in attitudes and philosophies) how centuries' old wisdom is often as valid to us as it was to they who uttered it, these too are themes I've attempted to address.

Were there other themes that touched a chord? Is historical fiction purely escapist, or do you find it has purpose and meaning today?