SOURCE: Storch, Rudolf F. “Metaphors of Private Guilt and Social Rebellion in Godwin's Caleb Williams.” ELH 34, no. 2 (June 1967): 188-207.

In the following essay, Storch maintains that Caleb Williams is a surprisingly modern text in its treatment of neurotic obsession despite its commonly perceived status as a late eighteenth-century gothic romance.

Caleb Williams was published in 1794, but is in essentials a very modern novel and may strike the twentieth-century reader as more congenial in its psychology than even the best Victorian character analysis. Its great imaginative power has unfortunately been suffocated by the wrappers of literary history: social novel, gothic terror, romance. When it is freed from these generalities and seen in its pristine state, it may be left to do its work on the reader's sensibility even to-day. The puzzle about the book is that in spite of its wooden style, wild improbabilities and unconvincing characterisation it produces...