The Essex Serpent

“Time was being served behind the walls of Newgate jail and wasted by philosophers in cafes on the Strand; it was lost by those who wished the past were present, and loathed by those who wished the present past.”

For much of the novel, the characters will be concerned with the unrelenting progress brought about by the age of science. The tension between the institutional correctness of the Church and the buoyant faith of the natural sciences fuels the conflict between Cora and Will that eventually blooms into a romance. This tension (and this romance) are both affected by the passage of time, as is everything else. The Serpent is nothing if not a representation of the old and the unknown, the kind of ancient and malevolent force that predates science and reason. The people caught in the aura of the Serpent are as trapped as the prisoners behind the “walls of Newgate jail” (13). Indeed, this is the problem of the universality of time; it affects everyone, from convicts to philosophers, from village priests to amateur scientists, from little girls like Naomi to ramshackle old men like Cracknell. Both the Serpent and time itself will affect all of the characters, and none are safe. The way they deal with these issues—those who love or loathe the past, respectively—will determine how they proceed into the future.