Within the post-Enlightenment adoption of subjective idealism, there is a contradictory attempt in English literature to assert an essential ontology of the natural and supernatural orders. Further, the voluntarism of English Romanticism sometimes accompanies a contradictory assertion of the centrality of an essential moral law. These tendencies toward essentialism in nature and law emerge at a time when the Catholic Church was receiving greater civil freedom in England and making more assertive claims to absolute spiritual authority. Therefore, examining the appearance of extrinsic moral and ontical essences in nineteenth-century English literature allows for an exploration of the relationship between this trend and the resurgence of English Catholicism. In the nineteenth century, the Catholic claim to exclusive spiritual authority raises concerns because it occurs alongside the appearance in literature of constitutive, extrinsic essences of human nature and the law which, by threatening the immanence of political and individual activity, pose the dilemma of locating authority externally.

The authors included in this study are Charlotte Smith, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, and Oscar Wilde.