Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/153

 game, she constantly exposes her to ironic self-betrayal, and finally allows her disciplined husband the luxury of an ironic retort,—not in the lady's presence, of course, but by way of reply to his daughter Molly's anticipation of an orgy of freedom in her absence.

"The doctor's eyes twinkled, but the rest of his face was perfectly grave. 'I'm not going to be corrupted. With toil and labour I've reached a very fair height of refinement. I won't be pulled down again.'"

Kingsley and Brontë are both incapable of this quiet banter, and can produce from their earnest souls only an awkward and angry sarcasm.

The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely are asking whether Shirley's expressive manner of singing can be proper.

"Was it proper? * * * Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged."

Alton Locke says of his own aspiration,

"No doubt it was very self-willed and ambitious of me to do that which rich men's sons are flogged for not doing, and rewarded with all manner of prizes, scholarships, fellowships, for doing."

But in the midst of his bitterness he stops to remark,

"I really do not mean to be flippant or sneering. I have seen the evil of it as much as any man, in myself and in my own class."

The description in Yeast of the fight between the squire's retainers and the London poachers, which results