unity of universal love.’’ Alas, this unrealistic solution to life’s challenges defines him as clinically insane. The so-called sane members of the Gurney family, who vie for control over Jack’s ownership of the estate, are all driven by greed. Sir Charles hopes to commit his nephew so that he can manage the estate— and reap its power and riches— himself, Claire compromises her integrity by staying with Sir Charles even though they both have other lovers, and the Bishop seems more concerned about the late Earl’s promise of ‘‘the Overseas Bishoprics Fund’’ than about guiding the family spiritually.

When Sir Charles hears the reading of the will, which transfers the Gurney estate to Jack, he complains that his brother has ‘‘let his personal feelings come before his duty to his family.’’ Charles would never let love get in the way of money. By contrast, Jack seems singularly disinterested in the value of his inheritance, spending his time meditating on his personal cross and urging the others to pray to the God of Love. In his madness, Jack adheres to better values than do his sane family members. In Grace the greed that drove her to adopt the persona of the Lady of the Camelias contests with her growing love for a man who treats her unlike her other lovers have done. As Claire announces nastily, Grace has made her living ‘‘on her back,’’ trading sexual favors for social advancement and money. But On the other hand, Tucker, who revels in his inheritance of 20,000 pounds, wants ‘‘more, more, more.’’ He is caught red-handed with stolen silverware; this petty theft libels his character enough to make it easy to pin Claire’s murder on him. Here is where the classes divide in Barnes’s world: Tucker’s greed sends him to prison, while the Gurney family’s greed lands them in Parliament.

Insanity
According to Dr. Herder, Jack’s insanity consists of not believing ‘‘what other people believe’’; he can’t see reality but has his own reality designed to win him love. He is a paranoid-schizophrenic suffering from delusions of grandeur, and, since he is already at the top of British society, he can only satisfy his megalomania by being God himself. His insanity, however, rests on a logical basis. He finds that when he talks to God he is talking to himself. He might have concluded, with the rest of modern western civilization, that God therefore does not exist, but he instead believes that he exists within himself.

As a peer of England with a vast estate, positions of honor, and a personal manservant, Jack is a kind of god. His God before his encounter with the High Voltage Messiah is the God of Love. He is peaceful and peace-loving, harming no one. But because he stands in the way of his family’s greed, he either has to be cured or locked up, out of the way. When he transforms into Jack the Ripper, he declares that he has ‘‘finally been processed into right-thinking power.’’ He is no longer ‘‘the God of Love but God Almighty. God the lawgiver, Chastiser and Judge.’’ This new form of insanity is harder for the other characters to detect, for he acts like one of them. His reactionary speech at the House of Lords, a vitriolic plea to reinstate punishment as a way of controlling ‘‘the weak,’’ leads Sir Charles to shout ‘‘He’s one of us at last.’’ In a sense, he is cured, as the Master of Lunacy has declared him. In fact, his newfound charisma proves irresistible to women— both Claire and Grace desire him and Mrs. Treadwell and Mrs. Piggot-Jones follow him slavishly.

Insanity is often defined in terms of legal responsibility. One who is insane cannot be held legally responsible. Jack as the God of Love was irresponsible and a social misfit. Jack as the God of Justice is eminently responsible, a leader in the highest social and legal circles of the land. The question of his sanity raises the question of the sanity of England’s social system.