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The Nature of a Crime · Theme
Class and Respectability
How The Nature of a Crime develops Class and Respectability.
The book critiques the Edwardian upper classes, contrasting the outwardly respectable Edward Burden with the narrator's hidden criminality, and exploring how reputation and wealth mask deeper corruption.
Where it surfaces
- Chapter V
The narrator critiques the desire for material security and social standing, suggesting that women err in preferring a 'loaf-cutter' (a lady) over being an Ideal, and that a false position is intolerable to a true poet.
- VII
The narrator critiques the 'eternal Haves' and the hypocrisy of respectable society.