Reading Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907) through a Dickensian Lens

In her narrative tracts also, Emily argued that individuals would be unable to access the word of God because they were so distracted by "the love of light reading: " I have seen a sick man at the very borders of the grave; the world seemed shut out; he could not go to it, but it came to him in the shape of the novel, the magazine, the newspaper; and when the minister of the gospel came with words of peace and healing, the voice was drowned by the love of light reading, which choked the Word and made it unfruitful. [...]the name became synonymous with any working woman believed to be neglecting her family. Emily's hairstyle is equally à la mode, indulging the practice of looping sections of hair over her ears and winding the rest into a knot at the crown of the head. [...]one might expect that Gosse, with his repressive Brethren background, would identify with the young Dickens, whose sufferings at Warren's Blacking Factory had been revealed to the world by John Forster in 1872.