Discuss how Addison's essay 'Sir Roger and Will Wimble' & Steele's 'The Coverly House hold' a critique of 18th Century British conventions which were destructive on the society at large.
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Steele’s interest in the affairs of Sir Roger’s heart was in keeping with his general interests as a periodical writer. The age of sentiment was at hand, and Steele was among the first to sense the demand, and to provide the material, for the exercise of “fine feelings.” Through his treatment, Sir Roger becomes not merely a character, but a sentimental one. His quaintness (he still dresses in the fashion of the Restoration), his lovableness (he has the heart of all his servants), his amusing foibles (he often loses track of his thoughts in mid-sentence, an indication that a counter-thought of the widow has crossed his mind)—these traits are all designed to endear him to the hearts of the readers, particularly to those of the feminine readers whom Steele had constantly in mind and with whose interests he was always concerned. Sentimentality, the rise of the middle class as the arbiter of manners and morals, and the accompanying rise of the importance of women as the designers of public conscience were all concepts that Steele was temperamentally equipped to make appealing. Much of the success of his periodical essays can be attributed to his ability to work this appeal into a popularly digestible literary form. In Sir Roger he offered his most attractive tidbit.