The Armor of Light: A Novel

Joseph Hornbeam, the antagonist of the novel, is a relentless defender of the privileges of the rich. He believes that the workers are inferior to the masters and factory owners in every way. Hornbeam sees his privilege as the manifestation of a divine order, and he polices the boundaries of class with a quasi-religious fervor. Even when other powerful people favor caution and compassion, Hornbeam strives for the harshest possible punishments. His vindictiveness and cruelty are extreme, such as when he seeks the death penalty for a teenage thief who stole to feed his starving mother, or when he sentences Jeremiah Hiscock to be flogged 50 times in public. The severity of these punishments, often achieved by stacking courts in his favor or intimidating people, is counterproductive, and even Hornbeam begins to wonder whether he might be undermining his own chances at election by turning the entire town against him. Yet he cannot stop himself from attacking anyone who tries to change the world. In this sense, Hornbeam as the antagonist is driven by a fanatical opposition to social change.

The bitter irony of Hornbeam’s view of social class is that he himself grew up in poverty. His mother was hanged as a thief, and Hornbeam witnessed her execution. He then stole to survive, committing many of the same crimes which he punishes with particular relish in later life. The tragedy of Hornbeam is that his terrible experience did not imbue him with empathy for others facing similar hardship. Instead, he is determined to forget his impoverished origins, and he punishes any working-class person who reminds him of his terrible past by trying to improve their position or acting on their desperate impulses. 

Hornbeam’s world is fundamentally shaken by the news that Jarge—a working class man with whom he has clashed in the past—saved the life of Hornbeam’s beloved grandson, Joe. This act of self-sacrifice is in such contrast to Hornbeam’s understanding of class that it causes Hornbeam a crisis of conscience, forcing him to question all his prior assumptions about working-class people. Rather than reflect, apologize, and atone, however, Hornbeam indulges in one final flourish of obstinacy, taking his own life by throwing himself from the top of the cathedral. He ends his life rather than admit that he was wrong. The same doggedness which Hornbeam used to rise up from poverty and then protect his status is reflected back at himself, and he cannot endure it.

Kit Clitheroe is the son of Sal and Harry. Since his father dies when he is young, Kit grows up in a particularly precarious position. Since Will Riddick is responsible for his father’s death, the Riddick family proposes that the six-year-old Kit come to work in their manor as a means of supporting himself and his family. Kit’s fate illustrates the problems facing working class people, as children as young as six are forced into work due to the tragedies that are commonplace in their lives. Kit is denied a real childhood, instead enduring a string of brutal attacks on his health and happiness, caused by the malignancy and disinterest of the wealthy Riddicks. In this sense, Kit is an avatar of working-class plight. His suffering—both emotional and physical—shows the great cost paid by the working class to maintain the wealth of the rich.

Kit is born at a moment of great change, growing up in the exact moment when industrial machines are proliferating across England. He understands the revolutionary wave of technology because he has lived and worked in the factories from a young age. He may never formally study engineering, as Roger does, but he possesses a savant-like understanding of how machines work and how they can be improved. He embodies the great change of the moment, existing on the cusp of a revolution that makes much better sense to him than to the previous generation. This understanding allows him to go into business for himself, setting up a company with Roger that provides machines to the mills. Kit’s engineering work causes tension in his family, as Jarge blames him and his machines for putting men out of work. As such, Kit struggles with class loyalty. He wants to make money, provide for his family, and invent machines, but doing so makes him a traitor in the eyes of some. Kit must navigate the tension between past and future while dealing with his sense of duty to his family. Kit’s precocious talent for engineering allows him a degree of social mobility that few others in his era could expect, and that uncommon mobility challenges his conscience, as he wonders whether he can rise above his class without betraying it. 

Though he succeeds in defying class expectations, Kit cannot entirely escape the rigid social expectations of his time and place, as he must keep his sexuality a secret all his life. His relationship with Roger is as sincere and as profound as any other romantic relationship in the text, yet it must be kept hidden because of the intense anti-gay bias that surrounds them. Society is intolerant of queerness in this era, though there are at least two queer relationships in Kingsbridge. Kit’s sexuality shows the intersectional nature of the class struggle. Kit not only struggles with his social position, but he also struggles because his sexuality is legally outlawed in Britain at this time. Whereas Roger can develop his understanding of his sexuality at university, where such experimentation is more tolerated, academia is limited to the upper classes. Kit and Roger’s contrasting experience of being gay shows the way in which class status affects the expression and understanding of one’s sexuality, even in a society that does not tolerate open queerness.