On Intergenerational Justice

Abstract

NE OF THE TROPES THAT RUNS THROUGH MANY VICTORIAN NOVELS—THOSE OF Dickens, of Wilkie Collins, of Sheridan Le Fanu, and many others—is the plot device of a will that controls the lives of the heirs, frequently through a codicil that has been kept secret or suppressed and that endangers the life of the one who inherits. In Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas a codicil to her father’s will requires Mary to live with her wicked uncle as a condition of her inheritance; if she dies before she comes of age the uncle will inherit the estate, and that condition then motivates a series of attempts against Mary’s life. In Bleak House the conflicting wills in Jarndyce and Jarndyce drive several generations of claimants to poverty and despair before a newly revealed will closes the case, with almost all of the inheritance swallowed up in legal fees. And in Charles Palliser’s magnificent pastiche of the Victorian novel, The Quincunx, the codicil to a will brings about the prolonged suffering of the hero, the forced prostitution and death of his mother, and the eventual collapse of the estate.