There is a great deal of intellectual snobbery that goes along with this type of literature.
The beauty of it is that it can be appreciated and enjoyed at all levels.
I was introduced to many of the classics, by Norfolk singer Walter Pardon who had read Hardy, along with Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mrs Gaskell, George Elliot... you name it He's read all of them at least half a dozen times, could discuss them at length and knew the characters and the plots as well as he knew his own garden. He read them, as did generations before him, because the thought them good stories. (weren't there queues of people anxious to learn the fate of Little Nell?) He once told us that the two greatest crimes in English literature were what happened to Tess and the drowning of of Maggie Tulliver.
Allegories they may well have been, but I have always been grateful to Walter for opening the door on many hours of sheer entertainment.
Jim Carroll