'My servant Caleb': Godwin's Caleb Williams and the political trials of the 1790S

Abstract

In an article published some years ago in this journal Eric Rothstein argued persuasively against the view that Godwin's Caleb Williams is merely an unsuccessful roman è thèse, an attack on social injustice flawed by troubling psychological undertones. While conceding Godwin's obvious preoccupation with contemporary social issues, Mr Rothstein found the novel to be centred on 'individual recognition, not social exposure'; it is, in fact, Caleb's 'spiritual autobiography.' One consequence of this view, as Mr Rothstein points out, is that Caleb comes to seem an unreliable narrator of his story and a less than immaculate hero. His suffering at Falkland's hands is not simply, as he himself believes, evidence of the malice of fate and of the social system but also a symbolic punishment for his earlier callous treatment of his master.