Great Allegories in Literature

An allegory is a literary form which expresses complex abstract ideas in a reader-friendly comprehensible format.

Probably the greatest allegory in English literature is John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" which shows the protagonist Christian's spiritual journey towards the Celestial City as an actual journey with many hazards on the way, each of them anthropomorphised like "Giant" Despair. It is sad to see a great piece of literature being marginalised now to theological studies, depriving many of savouring Bunyan's great imagination. George Bernard Shaw thought so highly of this work, that he proved Bunyan greater than even Shakespeare by many quoted examples.

A similar spiritual journey, shown as a real physical one with even geographical landmarks, was Dante's "The Divine Comedy", showing the soul's ascent to Paradise through Hell & Purgatory.

Hermann Melville's "Moby Dick", with its copious digressions on the technicalities of whaling, is also not just an obsessive, maimed Captain Ahab's vindictive chase of an albino whale, but something much more deeper in the human condition.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", which many consider the most perfectly constructed novel, is also an allegory of sin & redemption, with Pearl, child of an adulterous union, being dressed in finery by her mother.

George Orwell's "Animal Farm" was a thinly disguised depiction of the early days of Communist Russia.

Even the children's novel, Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" is an allegorical depiction of an abandoned garden becoming a redemptive symbol for three children.

To sum up, allegorical novels add additional levels of meaning to seemingly simple narratives, transforming them to richly layered works of Art.

The "Gothic" novel

This is a genre of literature which deals with a secret, probably horrific, inside the novel. This trend was started by Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto" (1764). Haunted castles, strange noises & acceptance of the supernatural are the hallmarks of this work.

Later other authors, known for their literary acumen, also occasionally indulged themselves in writing such novels. Notably Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" is also an example. Her sister, Charlotte's masterpiece, "Jane Eyre" also can be considered one, because Mr. Rochester's first wife, insane, is locked up secretly in his house, because of which he cannot marry the heroine Jane.

Such was the prevalence of these novels, that much earlier than the Brontes, Jane Austen parodied the genre in her "Northanger Abbey", whose protagonist, Catherine Morland, when invited to the Abbey, let her imagination run wild to find a (non-existent) Gothic secret hidden there, only to be put right by her host later.

Even children's literature has examples of  this type as can be evinced from Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden." The garden, though secret & hidden, is not the Gothic element, but a small boy, hidden in the house by his indifferent father & cupidinous uncle.

Daphne du Maurier's classic "Rebecca" has also the past itself as a horrific secret which casts it's ominous shadow over the present.

The trend continues even now as evinced by the issue of the Reader's Digest "A Gothic Treasure Trove" omnibus volume containing six novels by modern lady practitioners like Madeline Brent, Phyllis A. Whitney, Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels, Dorothy Eden & Jessica North.

Many charms of Epistolary novels

These, written comprising only of letters from persons to persons, do offer many attractions compared to normal novels. They offer multiple points of view of events as seen through the eyes of the different writers.

One of the earliest was Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa", which also has the distinction of being one of the longest novels in the English language, running to more than 1500 pages. It is the tragic story of the eponymous heroine's family being her worst persecutors.

One of Jane Austen's earlier works, "Lady Susan", deals with the beautiful, unscrupulous, Ladyship's manipulations to secure a rich, titled son-in-law through her plain daughter. Whatever the critics' carping, it remains a highly entertaining account because it is a reversal of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew". Here, even though forewarned & convinced of her chicanery, a man becomes so enamored of her ladyship that he defends her against all critics! For her, it is just a game to change completely the bad opinion of a man towards herself & she does not enslave him further.

Another very unusual work of this genre is "Daddy Longlegs", which curiously presents a single viewpoint in spite of the epistolary form, because one of the preconditions imposed on the letter-writing girl (to sponsor her college education) by the man nicknamed in the title, is that there will be no replies!