The Creator And The Created In Victorian Society: Exploring The Importance Of A Perception Of Moral Consistency Between The Two,Virginia Henley

This is a reflection on connections between a passage taken from the novel, Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy (1895),1 and a section of a stained glass window in the parish church of All Saints, Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire, designed by Simeon Solomon (completed in 1865). Contemporary critical opinion on the matter of whether the aesthetic qualities of a created object may be distinguished from the moral position of the creator suggests that the two are inextricably linked. The artefacts examined below address this point from the perspective of both fiction and reality.