7 - History, society, economy: holy fools and idiots come home in nineteenth-century literature

Summary

The natural fool – the innocent, the trickster, the depraved – is a vibrant, complex actor in medieval and early modern society, and so it should come as no surprise that nineteenth-century writers, looking back at the store of characters and images bequeathed to them by literary and cultural history, should also light upon the fool as a means of ironic commentary and social critique. But, of course, when the social context shifts, so too do the fool's specific functions. By the nineteenth century, the ‘natural’ fool is an anachronism, and the individuals so designated have been replaced in the public consciousness by the more formal ‘idiot’. Thus, while the associations of natural and holy folly are continuous, there are significant changes in the way authors sought to give their ‘fool’ characters a form that was not only accessible but also meaningful to nineteenth-century readers.

Thus, Walter Scott could use his ‘fool’ character David Gellatley to comment on political intrigues and developments in Waverley (1814), as well as to mark a certain strain of ‘Scottishness’. Charles Dickens could use his fool characters, and the pervasive theme of idiocy, to present a critique of moral responsibilities, both individual and social, in Little Dorrit (1857). And George Eliot could use Jacob, in Brother Jacob (1860), as a tool for helping to carry out an analysis that blends the moral with the economic.