Code of War- The invincible, untouchable Hack a Jack… his rise and fall

One sees that at its most obvious where a class-distinction isalso a colour-distinction. And something resembling the colonialattitude ('native' women are fair game, white women are sacrosanct)exists in a veiled form in all-white communities, causing bitterresentment on both sides. When this issue arises, novelists oftenrevert to crude class-feelings which they might disclaim at othertimes. A good example of 'class-conscious' reaction is a ratherforgotten novel, The People of Clopton, by Andrew Barton.The author's moral code is quite clearly mixed up withclass-hatred. He feels the seduction of a poor girl by a rich manto be something atrocious, a kind of defilement, something quitedifferent from her seduction by a man in her own walk of life.Trollope deals with this theme twice (The Three Clerks andThe Small House at Allington) and, as one might expect,entirely from the upper-class angle. As he sees it, an affair witha barmaid or a landlady's daughter is simply an 'entanglement' tobe escaped from. Trollope's moral standards are strict, and he doesnot allow the seduction actually to happen, but the implication isalways that a working-class girl's feelings do not greatly matter.In The Three Clerks he even gives the typical class-reactionby noting that the girl 'smells'. Meredith (Rhoda Fleming)takes more the 'class-conscious' viewpoint. Thackeray, as often,seems to hesitate. In Pendennis (Fanny Bolton) his attitudeis much the same as Trollope's; in A Shabby Genteel Story itis nearer to Meredith's.

Code of War- The invincible, untouchable Hack a Jack… his

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