Henrietta's Wish can fruitfully be studied as a counterweight to Charles Kingsley's Yeast, a story about rural discontent and deprivation in which his hero, Lancelot Smith, trumpeted Kingsley's own brand of red-blooded Christianity compared to that of a Tractarian cousin. When High Church politicians such as Gladstone failed to prevent the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, Keble and his friends despaired of this further meddling of the State in what were religious not civil issues; J.t. Coleridge regretted the 'fatally strong temptation which its open doors must offer to conjugal infidelity'. The mood of the times, as well as that of Yonge herself, is mirrored by the doubts emanating from Hopes and Fears about how families and society can preserve valuable aspects of the past while at the same time accommodating change.