That the didactic novels of the 1820s are more heterodox than their reputations allow has become something close to axiomatic in recent literary history, yet the precise mechanism by which such heterodoxy operated remains surprisingly underdescribed. To recover that mechanism, one must first reconstruct the critical orthodoxy against which these novels were measured. Periodicals of the period were emphatic and near-unanimous: reading in natural history—botany, conchology, mineralogy—conferred genuine intellectual and moral benefit upon its practitioners, whereas the consumption of sentimental fiction was held to induce a debilitating passivity of mind, a softening of the faculties that unfitted the reader for serious endeavor. A novel published in 1824, in which the heroine's devotion to botanical treatises is adduced as proof of her superiority over a novel-reading cousin, thus appears at first glance to do nothing more than dramatize the prevailing hierarchy of genres.

The appearance is deceptive. The botanical authorities most frequently invoked in such scenes—the naturalist Elias Ward, for instance—were themselves objects of theological suspicion, their deism being a matter of public notoriety even as their descriptive work was being commended from pulpits. Conversely, the sentimental novels consigned to the category of the enervating were, with some regularity, vehicles for pointed commentary on the legal disabilities of married women and on the institution of slavery. The praise of natural history in the didactic novel was therefore not a simple endorsement of the orthodox hierarchy; it was a maneuver whose implications depended on what the reader already knew about the authors being praised and the genre being disparaged.

Which of the following most accurately characterizes the passage's central concern?

A. To argue that a body of fiction has been unjustly neglected by literary historians
B. To explain how a seemingly conventional literary gesture could carry heterodox implications
C. To demonstrate that periodical criticism of the 1820s was internally inconsistent
D. To compare the critical reception of two genres in the early nineteenth century
E. To establish the theological views held by a particular group of natural historians




The passage indicates that the natural historians whose works are recommended in the novels under discussion were

A. regarded by periodical critics as more reliable on theological matters than on scientific ones
B. admired for their descriptive contributions while simultaneously viewed as religiously suspect
C. largely unknown to the general reading public until novelists popularized their views
D. defended against charges of heterodoxy by the same periodicals that denounced sentimental fiction
E. eventually rehabilitated by the critics who had earlier questioned their orthodoxy




The sentence concerning the naturalist Elias Ward functions primarily to

A. supply an instance of the divergence between a text's surface endorsement and its deeper implications
B. establish that the didactic novelists were consciously attempting to propagate deistical doctrine
C. demonstrate that periodical critics applied inconsistent standards to natural history
D. suggest that the botanical works recommended in these novels were of doubtful scientific value
E. illustrate the general reading public's ignorance of contemporary theological controversy



The author includes the qualification "with some regularity" primarily in order to

A. concede that the critical content of sentimental novels was uneven in quality
B. indicate that the subversive content of sentimental novels, while not universal, was frequent enough to unsettle the era's genre hierarchy
C. suggest that sentimental novels reached a wider readership than has previously been recognized
D. distinguish the political content of sentimental novels from that of didactic novels
E. acknowledge that some sentimental novels were as frivolous as their critics alleged