Second paragraph of third chapter:

The person in whom these calamities originated was Mr. Falkland’s nearest neighbour, a man of estate equal to his own, by name Barnabas Tyrrel. This man one might at first have supposed of all others least qualified from instruction, or inclined by the habits of his life, to disturb the enjoyments of a mind so richly endowed as that of Mr. Falkland. Mr. Tyrrel might have passed for a true model of the English squire. He was early left under the tuition of his mother, a woman of narrow capacity, and who had no other child. The only remaining member of the family it may be necessary to notice was Miss Emily Melville, the orphan daughter of Mr. Tyrrel’s paternal aunt; who now resided in the family mansion, and was wholly dependent on the benevolence of its proprietors.

I was reading this at the rate of a chapter every couple of days since November, as part of the same group who have previously read War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Our Mutual Friend and The Monk. I must say that a group read like this is a great way to maintain the pace of reading a heavy text and exchanging insights on plot developments and social commentary. Having read work by his wife and daughter, I was also interested to see how Godwin himself came across.

So, first of all: it’s not really all that good as a novel. The protagonist, Caleb Williams, acquires a rich patron, Mr Falkland; discovers Falkland’s dark secret, which is that he committed a murder and allowed two other people to be executed for it; and then flees Falkland’s wrath for the rest of the book, pursued by the sinister thief-taker Gines.

The long chase is not really very interesting – Godwin could have made it more vivid with descriptions of landscape and townscape, but instead just has Caleb hiding, being found by Gines, fleeing and hiding somewhere else all over again. There’s one good bit set in London (which had me looking up sources on the historic synagogues of the city). The chase sequence is reminiscent of the one in Frankenstein, but his daughter did it better.

The moral core of the book is the relatively short section where Caleb is imprisoned unjustly, and faces Falkland’s wrath through the justice system. Godwin was determined to expose the ways in which the judicial system in England served only to impose the will of the rich on the poor. The sections where Caleb is in prison are footnoted as if to say “I am not making this bit up”. There is a wronged young woman character who also dies tragically in prison. It appears to be impossible to hold Falkland accountable for his wrongs. These sections are passionate and fluent.

(I did wonder also if there was a bit of a spurned lover vibe between Caleb and Falkland.)

It’s also mercifully short, and we rather dragged it out by reading only four or five pages a day. Next time I’d prefer to do it a chapter at a time, though I realise that Caleb Williams has only 42 chapters, including the postscript but not the prefaces. Anyway, you can get it here.