{Pilgrim's Progress: as Outer Circle? [continued]}[26th March 1987]

[Redbook3:38-39][19870326:1543s]{Pilgrim's Progress: as Outer Circle? [continued]}[26^th March 1987]

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[continued]

Pilgrim's Progress shows a much stronger possible correspondence, with the dark passages (the Valley of the Shadow of Death) and Vanity Fair in the middle of the bottom [of the Outer Circle]; the rest is fairly clearly Outer Circle, although the Palace Beautiful's gels have to be seen as more Virginal than Female in order to support this interpretation, and the topography is not exact. The Wicket Gate, the House of the Interpreter and the Cross are at the top; in this interpretation, the City entrance (also at the top) marks only the start of the Inner Circle. The number of routes referred to before the City support a circular pattern.

(Incidentally, if one cannot enter along the route, but must start at the beginning (a point made more than once), why can Hopeful join at Vanity Fair? Is it because Faithful is dead, and Hopeful replaces him – the two representing aspects of Christian's qualities as a pilgrim at different stages?)

In any case, I doubt whether Bunyan was aware of any such pattern consciously.

Pilgrim's Progress Part II (Christiana) seems to be less rigorously constructed: an early example of 'Son of', perhaps. It contains one of the most tactless remarks ever to be unintended by author or character: 'Then said Gaius (of Christiana and her young friend Mercy): “Whose wife is this aged matron? And whose daughter is this young damsel?” ' The reactions of poor Christiana, who thought she had left the Valley of Humiliation, are not recorded. Perhaps this isolates* one of the sadder features of the Puritan outlook....

*[i.e. identifies?]

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