Writing about Victorian religious fiction: things to tack above one's computer

I'm constantly in the process of reminding myself of these points (and let's just say I have sometimes conspicuously failed to keep them in mind).  You could no doubt generalize some of these reminders to other didactic or political genres. 

• Before seeking for covert meanings ("subversions," "transgressions," "internal tensions," etc.) that undermine a novel's manifest religious content, one should entertain the possibility that the novelist means what s/he says.
• Your conservative theology may be a Victorian's progressive variety, and vice-versa.
• Your trivia may be a Victorian's deal-breaker.  (E.g.:  pews.)  The jargon and shorthand are important.
• It is not altogether likely that your novelist's theology will be original.
• It is not necessarily the case that your novelist will actually understand theology, especially if it is somebody else's theology.  That being said, some novelists won't understand their own denomination's theology, either...
• Some novelists really will be unclassifiable.  (Is this novelist traditional High Church? Anglo-Catholic? Low Church? Broad Church? Some generic brand of orthodox? Confused?)
• Novelists have been known to *cough* rely heavily *cough* on existing ecclesiastical histories, biographies, controversial works, etc.
• Theological wings do not necessarily match political wings.  (E.g.: while one might expect the hardcore agnostic Eliza Lynn Linton to be feminist and the reactionary evangelical Emily Sarah Holt to be antifeminist, in reality, Holt's attitudes to women are rather progressive and Linton's famously...are not.)
• There was a market for didactic fiction, which means that some not insubstantial quantity of it was generated out of financial need and religious conviction--or, perhaps, just financial need.
• What you perceive as a contradiction may not have been seen as such at the time. 
• By the same token, some contradictions exist that you may not automatically perceive.
• It is not a good idea to assume that novelists who belong to oppressed religious group X will have any sympathy whatsoever with novelists who belong to oppressed religious group Y.
• Seen from a distance, novelists who vehemently disagree with each other may turn out to have much in common.  But novelists who look like they agree may not. 
• There is such a thing as hyperbole. 
• Many Victorians did not like religious fiction any more than they liked the more secular variety.  In fact, some devout Victorians appear to have liked it less.