“PATTERN PENITENCE”: PENITENTIAL NARRATIVE AND MORAL REFORM DISCOURSE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN

Abstract

The accounts of moral reform that nineteenth-century convicts offered the officials in charge were frequently characterized by such uniformity that it caused Dickens to mistrust their sincerity and to brand them scornfully as “pattern penitence.” Unlike Dickens, however, prison officials were more willing to credit the questionable authenticity of “patterned” repentance. The paper argues that rather than an effect of personal gullibility, reformers’ attitudes can be seen as an outcome of specific interpretative strategies which, in turn, constituted a response to several institutional challenges facing the nineteenth-century Penitentiary.

Citation

Kaladiouk, A. (2003), "“PATTERN PENITENCE”: PENITENTIAL NARRATIVE AND MORAL REFORM DISCOURSE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN", Sarat, A. and Ewick, P. (Ed.) Punishment, Politics and Culture (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-31. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(03)30001-8