EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STATUS IN THE NOVEL “CATHERINE”

Abstract

To understand how Thackeray addresses education in Catherine, it is essential to situate the novel within its historical and cultural context. Although Catherine is set in an earlier period, Thackeray himself was writing in the early reign of Queen Victoria. In many respects, the eighteenth-century setting is filtered through Thackeray’s own vantage point and comedic-satirical style typical of the 1830s. He used historically distant settings partly to parody then-popular “Newgate novels”—sensational stories that glorified criminals—and to highlight broader truths about English social life.