4. An Unseen Hook and an Invisible Line: Father Brown

G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown is persistently figured as visually handicapped. Sometimes he cannot see what is happening because he is so short; he blinks excessively; he wears glasses. However, the fundamental condition of a Father Brown story is the importance of the unseen. The stories are obsessed with Celts and Gaels who apprehend things through a second sight which defies rational explanation, and in ‘The Mourner of Marne’ Father Brown is even prepared to believe that God has miraculously intervened to stop someone seeing. There is also a recurrent central device on which many of the Father Brown stories depend: people are lured to look in one direction to distract their gaze from somewhere else. It is in his ability to ignore surface evidence and detect visual misdirection that Father Brown’s method really lies, and he uses a lens of faith to do it.