A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Revenge of the Deplorables

We have learned recently that the union of the illiterate and the evangelical is a powerful political coalition. As Rendell notes “illiteracy is a kind of blindness.” And evangelicalism is a form of egomania, a public selfishness that “is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” The mashup of the two is a perennial phenomenon, but nevertheless it is surprising when it occurs... and somewhat dangerous. The ignorant leading the self-righteous. Could Rendell have been channeling Trump as early as 2000?

A Judgment in Stone has one of the most arresting first lines in English fiction, rivalling even Dickens: “Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.” Of course Eunice’s illiteracy is a consequence of a complex set of circumstances; just as the Cloverdales’ upper middle class lives are more or less determined by theirs. Yet everyone gets on. Neither Eunice nor the family she murdered could therefore be said to be in control, or driven by compulsion. The designation of ‘victim’ depends on how far into history one wishes to go.

But the catalyst, the source of the flame that lights the fuse of homicide is a different story. Joan Smith is a religious fanatic by choice not circumstances. “She suffered from a particular form of paranoia. She projected her feelings on to the Lord.” She is thus justified by her privileged access to the divine will, which of course happens to coincide with her own on every occasion. She is the disenfranchised wannabe, the self-identified victim whom the world hates. She prefers to attribute that hate to her beliefs and so can claim righteous motivations for every action.

The sub-text is important. The Cloverdales are defenseless because they have no experience of Eunice’s world or Joan’s depravity. They lack the imagination to understand what the coalition of the two is capable of doing. Respectability is a vulnerable mode of life. It limits one’s imagination. As usual in all her work, Rendell’s literary mission here is to ensure that middle class smugness has just a touch of insecurity added for piquancy.

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