more linting

content/post/the-wicked-rhyme-of-history.md

@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ I have recently finished reading Charles Dickens' 1840 novel, [*Barnaby Rudge*](
 "pure-u-1-2|img/dickens-caricature.jpg"
 "pure-u-1-5|" >}}
 
-This novel is a grotesque, cynical, cartoonish piece of very late Regency era propaganda. It's as if Dickens took an unpublished Jane Austen novel and had James Gillray paint caricature plates for every scene. Every character, save three, is either a sneering, conniving villain, or a swooning, helpless victim, or a giggling and/or brutish imbecile. I had thought that maybe this style was limited to *A Christmas Carol*, because of the subject matter of *A Christmas Carol*. But it seems every one of his novels is like this.
+This novel is a grotesque, cynical, cartoonish piece of very late Regency era propaganda. It's as if Dickens took an unpublished Jane Austen novel and had James Gillray paint caricature plates for every scene. Every character, save three, is either a sneering, conniving villain, or a swooning, helpless victim, or a giggling and/or brutish imbecile. I had thought that perhaps this style was limited to *A Christmas Carol*, because of the subject matter of *A Christmas Carol*. But it seems every one of his novels is like this.
 
 Dickens thankfully rescues three particular characters from this sort of completely Bugs Bunny portrayal: Geoffrey Haredale, Edward Chester, and Joe Willett. Haredale is a Catholic, owner of "the Warren" mansion, and uncle of Emma Haredale. His brother (Emma's father) was murdered, and was the original owner of the "Warren" mansion. Edward Chester is the estranged son of Lord John Chester, the "rich man on the hill" of this story. Lord Chester functions as a plot engine, providing both false pretenses and dark motivations for many of the other characters' actions. Edward is basically forced out of the story, after a confrontation with his father. Joe Willett is the son of John Willett, the dull-witted owner of the "Maypole" Inn, around which most of the early action centers.
 
@@ -31,11 +31,11 @@ Despite being a caricature in many ways, Dickens' novel nonetheless does contain
 
 * you are required to wear a blue cockade in your hat, or blue ribbon on your coat, to show fealty to the cause. Else, subject yourself to injury and theft.
 
-* on riot nights, you are required to scrawl in soap on your windows or ash on your door: "No Popery" or "True Protestant", in order to avoid the wrath of the mob. Even the Jews did it.
+* on riot nights, you are required to scrawl in soap on your windows or ash on your door: "No Popery" or "True Protestant", to avoid the wrath of the mob. Even the Jews did it.
 
 * Patriotism is synonymous with absolute fealty to the Protestant religion, in the minds of those captured by the contagion.
 
-* And, by "Protestant religion", what is meant is not any biblical principle, or intellectual dispute on the worship of christ, but simply identification with the mob, and it's hatred for Papists.
+* And, by "Protestant religion", what is meant is not any biblical principle, or intellectual dispute on the worship of Christ, but simply identification with the mob, and it's hatred for Papists.
 
 * Constables and military sentries were largely either sympathetic toward, or under orders to allow, the mob violence.
 
@@ -61,10 +61,10 @@ The cause they both end up fortuitously brothers in is, of course, the anti-Papi
 
 What is interesting to note, is that Dickens takes care to make sure you understand that Barnaby and Hugh are themselves *the products of violence*. Barnaby happens to the son of widow Mary Rudge, who's husband it turns out, did not die, but was the man that murdered the owner of The Warren mansion (Emma Haredale's father, and Geoffrey Haredale's brother). Hugh, meanwhile, turns out to be the bastard son of Sir John Chester. Orphaned after the woman Chester abandoned was hanged for what amounts to a Jean Valjean variety crime. The way I'm sure Dickens would put it, is that these men are the rotten fruit bore from a rotten tree (some, more victim than others). In some places in the novel, he's very explicit about this.
 
-## Happy Ending!
+## Happy Ending
 
 What makes Dickens' novels so frustrating, is that the lessons can never really be taken to heart. Why? Because, in the end, everyone you were supposed to dislike is given a comeuppance one way or another, and everyone you were supposed to have affection for, is given a reward, one way or another. Moral lessons be damned.
 
-So, for example, Geoffrey Haredale does not meet with a terrible end, for what amounts to murdering Sir John Chester in a final sword duel, because Chester *deserved it*. Yet, all through the novel, we were shown the horror of vain and vicious people who brutalized others they thought *deserved it*, and we were supposed to despise that behavior. Yet now, because a villain needs his commupance, and a hero needs his reward, Chester gets skewered, and Haredale rides off into the sunset.
+So, for example, Geoffrey Haredale does not meet with a terrible end, for what amounts to murdering Sir John Chester in a final sword duel, because Chester *deserved it*. Yet, all through the novel, we were shown the horror of vain and vicious people who brutalized others they thought *deserved it*, and we were supposed to despise that behavior. Yet now, because a villain needs his comeuppance, and a hero needs his reward, Chester gets skewered, and Haredale rides off into the sunset.
 
 Ultimately, Dickens is an acquired taste, I think. I don't think I would recommend this novel for pleasure alone. But it is an interesting look at the way the Victorians saw their Georgian progenitors. So, it might be worth the effort, just for that.