BOOK COVER -- HALF-TITLE -- TITLE -- DEDICATION -- COPYRIGHT -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- 1 NARRATIVE AND NATURE -- PROLOGUE: A PATTERN AND A PURPOSE -- NARRATIVE WITH CLOUDS OF GLORY -- NATURE KNOWS BEST: THE BRONTËS AND THACKERAY -- RHETORIC AND HISTORY: SEQUENCE IN THE BRONTËS, THACKERAY AND EARLY DICKENS -- NARRATIVE IN THE WASTELAND -- MOVING ON -- 2 THE IDEA OF HISTORY -- PROLOGUE: GETTING COORDINATES -- CONSTRUCTING HISTORICAL (SOCIAL) TIME -- MEDIATE POWER -- EMERGENT FORM -- 3 SOCIETY AS AN ENTITY -- PROLOGUE: THE SYMPHONY -- IS THERE SUCH A THING AS SOCIETY? -- THE ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT WITH CORPORATE ORDER -- CRUISING THE BOUNDARIES OF DIFFERENCE: CLASS, PERSONALITY, SYSTEM -- Class differences: seeing things whole in Dickens -- Personal differences: Trollope and life in nuance -- Systemic differences: George Eliot and the world as language -- 4 DILEMMAS OF DIFFERENCE -- DIFFERENCE AS DUALITY: CLUB, CLASS, CLAN -- HOME IS WHERE THE FAULT-LINE IS -- RUNNING COSTS OF THE MARRIAGE MARKET -- WOMEN AND TIME -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOURCES -- TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOURCES -- INDEX.