Yanno, if you weren't noting and objecting to this kind of thing as you went, I wouldn't be able to enjoy your Moby Dick posts. Context-heavy crit has as much value as context-free crit, and "context" can include acknowledging the social continuity between then and now, instead of insisting on a total separation of the two. For some readers, the one will have far, far more value than the other.

Or put otherwise: some things are worth being disturbed over, and I see no earthly reason to view dispassion about such things as a virtue.