Equity, Law, and the Family in Sir Charles Grandison
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2025
This chapter reads scenes of judging and judgment in Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753–54) in the context of debates about the nature and scope of equity as well as the value and limits of the laws regulating familial relations. Through Sir Charles’s and Harriet’s interventions in disputes concerning marriage, custody, and inheritance, the novel affirms the value of equity as the basis for judgments in the Court of Chancery while showing the need to apply equitable principles to everyday life. The central principle underlying Richardson’s equitable jurisprudence is impartiality. Sir Charles’s and Harriet’s ability to assume other perspectives allows them to mediate conflicts in fair and flexible ways without issuing arbitrary or subjective decisions. Richardson’s commitment to equity shapes his experiments with epistolary form, prompting readers to examine conflicts from multiple points of view. Through his accounts of domestic disputes and his formal experiments, Richardson shows the need to extend the era’s equity jurisprudence to rectify injustices enshrined in and fostered by English common and statutory law.
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