Lorna Doone conforms to the reader's expectations of a romance in many ways, particularly in its idealized characterizations of women. Both Lorna Doone herself and John Ridd's older sister Anne have the unblemished purity and flawless beauty typical of Victorian-era romantic heroines. This is the way John Ridd sees them, and Ridd is both the central character and the narrator of the story.

On his final day at Blundell's School, John Ridd fights and defeats one of the school's strongest boys. Ridd realizes that something in him loves violence, but his conscience keeps questioning whether such violence is right. As a young man, he blinds his horse in one eye when the animal acts unruly, kills with a single blowa soldier who captures him, and thinks of nothing but revenge against his father's murderer . A grandfather at the time when he writes his autobiography...