As Perowne, "the professional reductionist," thinks of his family, he reflects: "So much divides them from the various broken figures that haunt the benches.… It can't just be class or opportunities.… [I]t's down to invisible folds and kinks of character, written in code at the level of molecules.… No amount of social justice will cure or disperse this enfeebled army haunting the public spaces of every town.… You have to recognise bad luck when you see it, you have to look out for these people" (272). The social drivers of class and race, then, purportedly have a negligible role to play in producing Perowne's own advantages and the disadvantages of others. Superior breeding, in all senses, wins out.

XREF: Perowne's genetic determinism echoes reductionist readings of biological essentialism, connectable to debates on meritocracy and the nature/nurture divide in contemporary fiction.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 118