Novels; Social and Political Novel; Crimean War.
 

Baker, William J.  “Charles Kingsley on the Crimean War: A Study In Chauvinism.”  Southern Humanities Review Vol. IV, No. 3 (Summer 1970): 247-256.
Baker notes that the Crimean War was occurring while Kingsley was writing Westward Ho!, a war to which he refers over and over in this novel. Numerous aspects of this later war were similar, he believed, in many respects to the earlier war with Spain.  The chauvinism he consistently displayed during the Crimean War fostered as well as reflected the chauvinism of his contemporaries.  Moreover, Kingsley who never fought in a war had a romantic, “boy-like fantasy” view of war (254).  While in many ways, declares Baker, he was liberal, compassionate, a free-thinking cleric, a supporter of the poor, an advocate for social reform, a critic of the discriminatory class system, “his liberal sensitivity stopped at the northern edge of the English Channel”.  He combined in a contradictory stance “an insightful concern for his country's social problems alongside an uncritical bellicosity toward national foes” (255).

Westward Ho!; Crimean War; War; Chauvinism; Social and Political Views.