|Darton, F. J. Harvey. Children’s Books in
England: Five Centuries of Social Life. 3rd ed. (London: British Library,
Darton considers that The Water-Babies and other of Kingsley’s
writings were flawed because of the author’s tendency to preach and to
aim at a moral purpose. However, he also praises Kingsley’s fine
imagination and pure simplicity.
Horsman, Alan. “Elizabeth Gaskell and the Kingsleys,”
in his The Victorian Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990): 256-294.
In his brief examination of Yeast, Alton Locke, Two Years Ago,
and The Water-Babies Horsman praises the clarity, the felicity and
the exactitude of Kingsley's descriptive passages, qualities that make
him "stand out among the minor novelists" (256). However, he also
faults Kingsley for neglecting his novel writing in favor of the pursuit
of his religious and educational aims that led him to take "the short cuts
of melodrama and allegory" (256). Horsman also criticizes the didacticism
pervading Kingsley's novels though he acknowledges that despite its strong
didactic elements The Water-Babies comes closest to a work of the
Years Ago; The
MacNeice, Louis. Varieties of Parable (Cambridge:
Cambridge at the University Press, 1965).
MacNeice discusses The Water-Babies, “one of the most uneven
and ragbaggy books in the language” (83). Though he enjoys the fantasy
and escapism, he is greatly critical of the digressions about contemporary
disputes and excessive moralizing. While Lewis Carroll also introduces
aspects of contemporary problems into his works, he does not allow them
to interfere with the story. However, Kingsley does, “and in a story
which, potentially, had many of the virtues of a myth it is a very serious
Muller, Charles H. “The Christian Didactics and the
Sermons of Charles Kingsley,” Communiqué Vol.
9, No. 1 (1984): 14-44.
In a lengthy article Muller declares that Kingsley the preacher was
essentially a teacher. He examines Kingsley’ style of preaching,
his didactic methodology, and his socio-theological didactics. He
declares that Kingsley was a forceful and emotional preacher, sometimes
dynamic and dramatic, but frequently lacking in incisive intellectual argumentation.
When he expounded Scripture and taught about God, whether he preached to
the unsophisticated in Eversley or to royals at the Chapel Royal or Windsor
he was invariably didactic. He was consistent in his didactic material:
“the statutes of a loving but just God. God is often revealed as
severe and terribly exacting. But there are times when God is seen
as the author of benevolence and mercy” (33). Muller declares that
the didactic purpose of Kingsley’s sermons is primarily ethical-moral.
“It teaches, essentially, that there can be no change in the social order,
no purposeful progress towards the perfect realization of God’s kingdom
on earth, without a spiritual revolution first taking place within the
heart and life of the individual. Freedom from sin will mean a new
spiritual democracy, when men have the strength to resist sin and choose
the right” (39).
Kingsley as; Didacticism; Religion.
Stang, Richard. The Theory of the Novel in
England 1850-1870 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).
Stang refers to Kingsley frequently in this work. For example, he mentions
George Meredith's criticism of Kingsley's excessive hortatory approach
in Two Years Ago, George Eliot's similar condemnation of his didacticism
and moralizing in Westward Ho!, the National Review's 1860
very severe treatment of his general novelist style and art, Blackwood's
branding of Yeast as immoral. Stang also discusses Kingsley's belief that
the novel should include long explanatory passages in order to educate
less intelligent readers.
of Kingsley's Works; Didacticism.