Equal parts dystopian fiction, historical fiction, love story, and religious allegory, William Harrison Ainsworth's
Old Saint Paul's: A Tale of the Plague and the Fire
conveys the story of the grocer Stephen Bloundel and his daughter during the time of the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London. Events from the two tragedies are intermixed with the daughter's pursuit of a man who has faked his identity-and who tricks her into sleeping with him-while the daughter is pursued by the grocer's apprentice, Leonard Holt. But that is not all! Ainsworth finds inspiration for his story not only from Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, but also from the Book of Revelation. Indeed, the story begins with a sermon warning of Judgment Day, and Ainsworth employs a character aptly named Solomon Eagle to judge the sins of London (which Bloundel assumes brought forth the plague) from the top of Saint Paul's Cathedral, much like the Biblical Ezekiel. Holt wanders the streets of London witnessing the destruction of civilization. Murder and robbery are rampant, as is the social decay of the citizens. It is a dark, dystopian scene indeed, with the sick killed by those who should help them, citizens celebrating death and the rampant destruction of the city, and religion adding to rather than abating the suffering. The pit filled with dying bodies is seen by critics as illustrating the suffering of humankind and also the cruelty.
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