The Nether World

Sorrow certainly awaited them, perchance defeat in even the humble aims that they had set themselves; but at least their lives would remain a protest against those brute forces of society which fill with wreck the abysses of the nether world.

Inheritance intrigue, Clara's ruin, and Jane–Sidney's caretaker endurance fuse into Clerkenwell tragedy without melodrama reward; the cemetery seal locks the moral ledger, so plot scores 89.

In the troubled twilight of a March evening ten years ago, an old man, whose equipment and bearing suggested that he was fresh from travel, walked slowly across Clerkenwell Green, and by the graveyard of St. James’s Church stood for a moment looking about him.

Jane, Sidney, Clara, Joseph, and Pennyloaf are individuated by relation to inheritance and work without flattening into allegory only, so cast scores 88.

On ordinary Sundays the Byasses breakfasted at ten o’clock; this morning the meal was ready at eight, and Bessie’s boisterous spirits declared the exception to be of joyous significance.

Forty chapters of lodging and Green oratory; Clara accelerates, but Byass and Saturnalia dilations keep middle social-realist rather than thriller, so pace scores 83.

Towards sundown, that modern Agora rang with the voices of orators, swarmed with listeners, with disputants, with mockers, with indifferent loungers. The circle closing about an agnostic lecturer intersected with one gathered for a prayer-meeting.

Cool anatomizing naturalism — Agora of Clerkenwell, Abney headstone, brute forces — exact about poverty without Dickensian flourish, so prose scores 90.

Sidney Kirkwood, spending his Sunday evening in a garden away there in the chaw-bacon regions of Essex, where it was so deadly quiet that you could hear the flutter of a bird’s wing or the rustle of a leaf, not once only congratulated himself on his good fortune; yet at that hour he might have stood, as so often, listening to the eloquence, the wit, the wisdom, that give proud distinction to the name of Clerkenwell Green.

Clerkenwell, Islington, Essex retreat, Abney Park — London's nether geography as moral abyss and workplace, so world scores 92.

Instead of coat and waistcoat, he wore a garment something like a fisherman’s guernsey, and over this a coarse short cloak, picturesque in appearance as it was buffeted by the wind. His trousers were of moleskin; his boots reached almost to his knees.

Traveller on Clerkenwell Green at twilight establishes the thrall premise before inheritance schemes — inviting social eye rather than shock alone, so hook scores 87.

Unmarked, unencouraged save by their love of uprightness and mercy, they stood by the side of those more hapless, brought some comfort to hearts less courageous than their own. Where they abode it was not all dark.

Poverty as systemic 'nether world' rather than individual vice anticipates twentieth-century social novel, so innov scores 90.

This was the third year, and they met as if by understanding, though neither had spoken of it. When they had stood in silence for a while, Jane told of her father’s death and its circumstances. She told him, too, of Pennyloaf’s humble security.

Yearly cemetery meeting and unmarked mercy as protest against brute forces form among Gissing's most complete social closures, so ending scores 91.