Paper Details

Name: Biresh Kumar
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Vol-12, issue-2, (July-December)
Page Number: 118-124
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19731180

ABSTRACT
Angus Wilson’s fiction is commonly identified with social satire, yet the distinctive power of his narrative art lies in the fusion of satire with psychological realism. His novels do not
merely ridicule social institutions or moral postures but penetrate the inner lives of characters to reveal how self-deception, anxiety, guilt, and moral rationalisation function as social mechanisms. This study argues that Wilson develops a mode of psychological satire in which character consciousness itself becomes the primary site of satiric exposure. Through techniques such as free indirect discourse, variable focalisation, and ironic tonal control, Wilson constructs characters who are simultaneously intelligible, ethically compromised, and socially diagnostic. Focusing on major novels such as Hemlock and After, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot, and No Laughing Matter, the study demonstrates how Wilson’s narrative style sustains a “mixed mode” that resists both caricature and moral sentimentalism, offering instead a complex critique of post-war British liberalism, institutional authority, and modern selfhood.

Keywords: Angus Wilson; satire; characterization; free indirect discourse; focalization; postwar British fiction; moral psychology; narrative ethics