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Introducing “Sylvia’s Lovers” by Elizabeth Gaskell

08 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis, Introducing...

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Elizabeth Gaskell, Jane Eyre, press-gangs, tyranny

“Yes; with God all things are possible. But ofttimes He does his work with awful instruments. There is a peacemaker whose name is death.”

Sylvia's Lovers - Elizabeth Gaskell's anti-romantic novel ...

Elizabeth Gaskell’s final novel Sylvia’s Lovers is a historical tale set in a whaling town in northern England in the 1700s, and, not unlike Mary Barton and North and South, amid the struggle of an oppressed class against its oppressors. But instead of the factory workers against the owners, in the town of Monkshaven sailors have to worry about being “pressed” (kidnapped) into naval service by press-gangs, which had legal auspices. Although the press-gang incidents in the novel shape the plot, Gaskell doesn’t attempt here to reconcile these two hostile groups like she does in other novels. Rather, other than a brief commentary early on, she appears to avoid the political and focuses on the characters’ lives, and weaves the story into a tragic, haunting tale not unlike Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, replacing the wild moors with the wild sea perpetually washing up on the shores below Monkshaven. Sylvia’s Lovers would make a wonderful movie.

Beautiful Sylvia Robson is sought after by two lovers, a charming, flirtatious sailor, Charley Kinraid and a serious, responsible cousin, Philip Hepburn. The heroine falls for the sailor, but when he disappears and Philip supports her during the terrible tragic events surrounding her father, she feels she has little choice about her future. She later experiences regret.

*some spoilers ahead*

Charley and Philip are foils for each other: when Philip rises in the reader’s estimation, Charley seems to fall, but then in the middle of the novel Philip seems to sink in our estimation, while Charley rises, only to apparently change places again at the end; except by then, it is too late for happiness to ensue (without giving away too much). Thus, it can seem difficult to gauge Philip’s character with finality. Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, at times I was disgusted by him, but it is also difficult not to sympathize with him and wish that Sylvia could just return his love, so that he could be happy. But his love is not without a shadowy undercurrent, for his love is so exhaustive that it almost borders on obsession. His tricking Sylvia into marrying him by not revealing the truth about her lover seems to confirm this. In the end, he admits his idolatry in putting Sylvia above all else, even before God himself. If he is a tragic hero, this is his tragic flaw.

Within the larger narrative of governmental tyranny (regarding the press-gangs), I believe Gaskell inscribes a tale of domestic tyranny. While he may have had good intentions (as the government would also claim it had – for the safety of England against Napoleon), because Philip tries to control Sylvia’s whole future and does not let her be free to make her own choice, he appears, to me, to be as tyrannical as the government which mandates the kidnappings of its own citizens. Such a marriage must necessarily be loveless. There can be no happiness in a marriage where the wife does not willingly submit. We see the contrast with Sylvia’s own parents’ happy relationship, where her mother Bell takes pleasure in yielding to and forbearing with Sylvia’s father Daniel, even though Gaskell makes clear several times that Mrs. Robson is certainly his superior in intellect and sense. Many times Philip becomes frustrated with Sylvia’s emotional distance and automatic obedience and longs for a feisty retort or expression of anger. She appears to have lost her will altogether, and her will, which he most desires, is not hers to give because she married him under pressure. He stole a thing which can only be given.

Perhaps their story is Gaskell’s answer to the political tyranny transpiring in the background. The government that attempts to control (and trick, as the press-gang does with the fire bell in the novel) its citizens, will necessarily meet with resistance, and disharmony will ensue. Submission is unquestionably the Christian’s duty, but where it is forced its virtue is taken away and we are left with oppressed and oppressor, and these are injustices that Christ came into the world to set right. Consider that we are under Satan’s tyranny, but Christ calls us freely to come to him – or reject him. Consider too that Christ’s greatest act of submission was done of his “own accord,” which is what makes the deed so especially wondrous (why did he do it?); if he had been forced, the deed would be emptied of love (and divinity), and we would probably feel rather sorry for Him. We could not say that it was done out of love for us; love is a gift. I think it is worth pointing out that Gaskell aligns Philip with the press-gangs early on in the novel, when he defends the legality of their actions – “But t’press-gang had law on their side, and were doing nought but what they’d warrant for” – and later with Satan. Daniel calls the deeds of the press-gang the “devil’s work,” and Alice warns Philip that “The flesh and the devil are gettin’ hold on yo’, and yo’ need more nor iver to seek t’ ways o’ grace.” (Here she is referring to his pursuit of Sylvia, although she does not know of his deception.) This may seem harsh on Philip to associate him with Satan (and Alice’s warnings perhaps can be seen as excessive), as he certainly had good intentions by deceiving Sylvia; he believed he was protecting her, and his concerns about Charley may have been justified. But we know to what destination good intentions pave the road.

Only at the end, when Sylvia can truly make her own choice, can she return Philip’s love, and God finally brings about Philip’s greatest desire. But such an outcome can only arise after Philip casts down his idol and lets her be free, and in this final act of submission to God, and allowing Sylvia to willingly submit to him, Philip’s sanctification is complete. All along Sylvia’s happy submission to him was what Philip most desired, but his tyranny over her prevented such a possibility.

I don’t know whether Gaskell intentionally set out to write a novel with the above moral, and perhaps some will say I have read too much into the story. Primarily, Sylvia’s Lovers is a haunting, tragic romance with a beautiful setting and page-turning plot. But if Sylvia’s Lovers is a response to Jane Eyre, which the editor to my Oxford edition insists that it is – well, Jane Eyre contains one of the greatest expositions of Christian ethics in all of literature. It would be no surprise that Gaskell’s novel might respond in kind. (She and the Brontës were good friends.) And if the editors of the Oxford edition can interpret this story to be primarily about a young girl’s “sexual journey,” I think I can take a little theological licence with a novel by a minister’s wife.

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Introducing “North and South” by Elizabeth Gaskell

07 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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class, Elizabeth Gaskell, industrial England

North and South begins as a novel of clear, seemingly deep contrasts that eventually begin to dim and complexify as the protagonist grows in knowledge and understanding of the world and realizes her own prejudices. These juxtapositions of alien classes of people (North and South, factory owner and employee), with all their antithetical philosophies, customs, manners, fashions, landscapes, architecture, types of labour, leisure activities and more, are crocheted by the narrator in exquisitely fine detail for the reader to ponder, as exquisite as the lace fabric some of the characters wear. The Victorian novelist is inarguably the master of detail, and Gaskell is one of the best. I believe North and South to be her most excellent novel, and her discriminating, profound and often poignant descriptions of people, places, thoughts and emotions make this a book for the soul (the beautiful romance helps, too).

Image result for north and south book

I appreciate the photo of the protagonist,
Margaret Hale, from the most recent film adaptation of the book (on the right). The actress’s fully absorbed, introspective look betokens the intellectual nature of the novel; there is just so much to think about, in North and South, for both the protagonist herself, whose world is dramatically upended by change and sorrow, and the reader, who shadows her through Gaskell’s lifelike, transporting description. Unfortunately, the film all but erases the Christian faith that is Margaret’s guiding light and sure foundation, and which anchors her soul amidst upheaval and grief.

Elizabeth Gaskell was the wife of a Unitarian minister, and often wrote about the problems of industrialization, especially for the poor. Her desire in North and South, as well as in Mary Barton, was to see the factory owners and workers come together in the spirit of Christ in order to overcome their differences.

Further reading about Elizabeth Gaskell on Christian Victorian Literature :

Introducing Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Body of Christ in Mary Barton

Introducing Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Great Victorian Sin in Ruth

The Fall of Women in Victorian Novels

Introducing Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

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Introducing “Cranford” by Elizabeth Gaskell

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell, the body of Christ, Victorian spinsters

At the height of the age of decorum and manners, this little comedic novel pokes fun at precisely these treasured trimmings of Victorian society. Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell’s second novel, chronicles several episodes from the lives of a group of spinsterly ladies living in a quaint village that moves somewhat behind the times. The rigid customs and habits of the barely middle-class ladies of Cranford the narrator humourously exposes as eccentric, but endearingly so, showing how affected formalities and practices can actually build authentic community.  For Gaskell, communal values supersede class values; the customs of class do not define people to their core.

While typical Victorian novels uphold romantic, marital love as the penultimate relationship, Cranford appreciates sisterly and neighbourly love. Christians, too, often idolize the love between husband and wife as the sublime picture of Christ and his bride (the church), forgetting the other picture of humble submission and kindness – love between brothers and sisters within the body of Christ. Cranford reminds us that there is a place in the body of Christ for all people, married or celibate, fertile or barren.

While Gaskell does not choose to include any direct Biblical expositions in this novel, as she does in others, Cranford still illustrates Christian values of compassion, honesty and forgiveness, probably best summed up in Jesus’ words (quoting from the Old Testament Law)  “Love your neighbour,” the second highest commandment after loving God. For Gaskell, in this novel as in others, we are not meant to live alone but were destined for community, and the fullest life is partaking in a community operating under Christian values, in whatever curious fashion they may express themselves.

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Introducing “Wives and Daughters” by Elizabeth Gaskell

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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austen novels, Elizabeth Gaskell, pride and prejudice, Victorian Christian literature, Victorian novel, wives and daughters

If you like Pride and Prejudice you’ll want to pick up Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters.

Young women coming of age in an English village, the suspense of an impossible love attraction and comically shallow relations and neighbours combine for an endearing, absorbing read. Gaskell’s writing exudes subtle wit and irony reminiscent of Austen (which I’ve yet to find in a contemporary novel, though Austen fan fiction writers try their best). At seven hundred pages, however, this hefty book covers more ground than Austen novels do, including the topic of death, which never makes an appearance in Austen.

Gaskell contrasts the goodness of sensible, likeable and honest Molly with her charming but deceptive and superficial stepsister. Molly is a heroine who beams alongside the flawed (although fascinating) and manipulative Cynthia, although mostly to the reader alone; the other characters are sometimes blinded by Cynthia’s beauty and wit and fail to see honest Molly’s goodness and integrity, which “does what is right even when no one is looking,” to quote a popular phrase. But morality wins in the end, and Molly’s persevering goodness sees its just reward.

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The Body of Christ in “Mary Barton” by Elizabeth Gaskell

23 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

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Elizabeth Gaskell, industrial England, Marxism, mary barton, Socialism, the body of Christ

“…a treatment…is needed to bring such bewildered thinkers into an acknowledgement of the universality of some kind of suffering, and the consequent necessity of its existence for some good end.”  -Letter written by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1849, on Mary Barton

“Why are they so separate, so distinct, when God has made them all?”  -Narrator in Mary Barton

“Rich and poor have this in common:
the Lord is Maker of them all.” Proverbs 22:2

Working Class Bodies

Victorian Christians (and here I mean the middle class) have often been noted for their charity. Knitting and embroidering for the poor, giving alms, visiting the sick, opening orphanages, etc. were common endeavours of both individuals and churches. William Booth established the Salvation Army in 1878; countless other examples could be mentioned, including Elizabeth Gaskell, the wife of a Unitarian minister. Her sympathy for the working class and their sufferings pours out of Mary Barton.

Yet critics point out that, though they meant well, middle-class Victorians (Gaskell included) condescendingly understood and represented the lower class. The middle-class always exerted a “downward” sympathy toward the poor, and portrayed them in newspapers and in novels (such as Mary Barton) emotionally and physically (what critics term “pathologically”), rather than intellectually. They always suffer bodily: they hunger, they become ill, they weep, their work is by primarily physical labour and they are unable to articulate the cause of or the remedy for their trials. This makes them seem primal and animal-like, rather than human. They are not presented as rational, thinking creatures, but rather as children in need of parental guidance, and, sometimes, even discipline.

For example, in Mary Barton, the trade unionists never discuss any political ideas, philosophies or goals. The novel never mentions the landmark chartist agenda put forth at that time in history; the unionists name only suffering as their reason for striking. They cannot articulate any rational, political or economic explanation for their plight.  Time after time the novel presents the mill workers as entirely ignorant of politics and economics altogether.

John Barton personifies the bodily suffering of the poor. He is starved, depressed and addicted to opium. He is accused of murder (murder being the only idea the trade unionists can come up with to remedy their problems) and the narrator often describes him as emotionally disconnected. He is a picture of the lower class, deaf and dumb and besieged by visceral ills.

Visceral ills run rampant in the novel. The narrator colours the pages grey with images of the dirt and grime of poverty, and the poor blur into their surroundings: “the streets were wet and dirty, the drippings from the houses were wet and dirty, and the people were wet and dirty.” The poor are ailing, dying, starving, filthy, angry, weeping and always, always suffering. Often the story alleviates these problems with a visit from a caring neighbour who brings much needed food or a hot cup of tea. The poor are bound up in their bodily problems in Mary Barton. Gaskell’s sympathy for them is touching, but the major consensus is that her pathological portrayal of them only further infantilizes and isolates them.

Middle Class Bodies

But there’s always another layer with Gaskell. What critics of Gaskell have failed to notice is that the narrator of Mary Barton does not present the middle class as an intellectual elite in contrast to the irrational, visceral working class. In fact, the middle class’s actions can rarely be described as rational, they fall ill to the same passions of the heart, and they too suffer – certainly not from financial lack, but still from bodily and emotional ailments.

The labour unionists may be unable to articulate the reasons for their sufferings, but their middle class employers offer no reasons for their rejection of the unionists’ requests. Indeed, the employers’ rage and distrust of their workers has little grounding in reason at all. The punishments, jeers and insults they inflict on their workers make them seem more like bullies than educated gentlemen.

Henry Carson and his father both let emotions and passionate desires rule their thoughts and actions. Henry’s infatuation with Mary is purely physical and he has no intentions of marrying her. Just as John Barton is depicted as having a “diseased” mind, Mr. Carson is portrayed as having a “disease” in his heart. His refusal to forgive John makes him “feverish and ill,” and he struggles against “the fierce pulses which throbbed in his head” and tries to “recall his balance of mind.” His final change of attitude is manifested in the tears that stream down his face.

Another visceral resemblance drawn between the two classes is the fact that both Mr. Carson and John Barton are motivated by revenge to kill, although of course Mr. Carson has a change of heart in time. “True, his vengeance was sanctioned by law,” the narrator says of Mr. Carson, “but was it the less revenge?” These parallel character motivations show employee and employer tempted by the same passions, motivated by the same line of thinking, and unrestrained by the same moral code.

The novel also makes clear that it is John Barton’s lack of sympathy towards his employers that is the root of his sin. Barton complains that the rich never suffer for the poor, only the reverse, and he notices “the contrast between the well-filled, well-lighted shops and the dim gloomy cellar [of the Davenports].” But the narrator questions his reading of the people and places he sees:

he could not, you cannot, read the lot of those who daily pass you by in the street. How do     you know the wild romances of their lives; the trials, the temptations they are now enduring, resisting, sinking under? You may be elbowed one instant by the girl desperate in her abandonment, laughing in mad merriment with her outward gesture, while her soul is longing for the rest of the dead….You may pass the criminal, meditating crimes at which you will to-morrow shudder with horror as you read them.

 The narrator criticizes Barton’s judgment of people he does not know, and writes that “the thoughts of his heart were touched by sin, by bitter hatred of the happy, whom, he for the time, confounded with the selfish.”  Wilson chides Barton for not seeing that “th’masters suffer too.” Barton’s sin, then, is his lack of upward sympathy for his employers, and it is not until he has a change of heart and realizes that “Rich and poor, masters and men, were then brothers in the deep suffering of the heart” can reconciliation between the classes occur.

The Unified Body of Christ

Gaskell, then, calls for mutual sympathy between the classes as the solution (or the beginning of a solution) to the evils of class division. As a Christian (albeit Unitarian, but nevertheless her theology in this book is Biblical), Gaskell, I argue, understands and expresses the trials of class division through the metaphor of the body of Christ, which is the Christian church:

…that a perfect understanding, and complete confidence and love, might exist between masters and men that the truth might be recognized that the interests of one were the interests of all, and, as such, required the consideration and deliberation of all; that hence it was most desirable to have educated workers, capable of judging, not mere machines of ignorant men; and to have them bound to their employers by the ties of respect and affection, not by mere money bargains alone; in short, to acknowledge the Spirit of Christ as the regulating law between both parties.

Compare this with 1 Cor. 12:12-26:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body….But as it is, God arranged the members of the body, each one of them, as he chose….As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

 ….the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honourable we bestow the greater honor…. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

The heart of the problem with the workers and their employers, according to Gaskell, is that the body of Christ has become divided, as members scorn the usefulness of other parts of the body, and neglect to care for each other and suffer together. (Interestingly, factory workers were often referred to as “hands,” and Gaskell does as well in Mary Barton). In the letter I quoted at the beginning of this post, Gaskell states, “…a treatment…is needed to bring such bewildered thinkers into an acknowledgement of the universality of some kind of suffering, and the consequent necessity of its existence for some good end.”

Gaskell’s “body of Christ” approach to class conflict presents a new take on the patronizing nature of Christian Victorian middle class charity. Actually, Gaskell does not call for charitable actions at all in this novel. Furthermore, she offers almost no practical solutions or remedies for class conflict. She does not plot out economic or political policies or agendas that might assuage the division of the classes. And for this, Mary Barton is dismissed by literary critics as emotional, sentimental and domestic – a nice story (and one too much dominated by a love plot), but not super helpful.

From a Marxist or feminist literary critic’s point of view, the novel falls short, because at the heart of either ideology is the faith that a human-created economic or political earthly utopia is possible. But consider when Jesus tells his disciples, who complain that an amount of money could have been better spent on the poor: “The poor you will always have with you.” This is a tough doctrine to swallow, and one that those who have no hope for any kind of paradise except one they can create themselves on earth simply cannot accept.

This is not to say that Christians should reject economic and political reform. Human policies can positively affect the economic status of particular groups of people, certainly. But Christians understand a different root of the problem than Marxists and feminists, though all three worldviews are characterized by compassion. Only Christianity identifies the evil in humans’ hearts as the source of conflict, and this is the malaise that divides the classes in Mary Barton. As Vincent Poythress puts it in Inerrancy and Worldview: Answering Modern Challenges to the Bible:

Marxism and feminism represent counterfeits for the Christian redemption set forth in the Bible. Like any counterfeit, they would not be attractive unless they mimicked the truth and contained elements of truth. Human beings do indeed need redemption. Sin is the root problem. Sin resides in individual human beings. But it also has social, political, and economic ramifications. Sin has effects not only on individuals but on whole social systems.  

You can introduce economic and political reform, and you will likely see some alleviation of the problem. But it will not get at the heart of the problem, and class divisions will fluctuate and relocate from the local neighbourhood to the span of the globe. The poor will always exist on this Earth. Gaskell’s approach to the great class divide is to frame it as a matter of the heart. Each class suffers because it fails to recognize the necessity of the other; they have lost their identity as members of the same body of Christ. The final reconciliation between John Barton and Mr. Carson shows a healed body, and a picture of the what the church should and will look like in the kingdom of Christ. For a secular literary critic, such a picture holds little value. For Christians, there is no higher value than the restoration of humans into the body of Christ where they can live and move in the roles and identities they were created for.

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Introducing “Mary Barton” by Elizabeth Gaskell

23 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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class, Elizabeth Gaskell, industrial England, mary barton

Mary Barton is one of the quintessential novels of industrial 19th century England. It’s a novel about class division: the factory workers vs. the factory owners. The rich and the poor were so distinct from one another they spoke in different dialects, wore different clothes, and lived in different sections of the city. This era predated labour laws, and workers slaved long hours in unsafe conditions, sometimes on empty stomachs, as their pittance wages barely or hardly covered the cost of living. Workers and employers gazed at each other across the great divide of have and have-not and felt little sympathy for each other. Little wonder, then, that animosity should sprout, fester and erupt, as it does in this novel.

Mary Barton puts faces to this class struggle. The young heroine Mary must choose between a young man of her own class or the son of her poor father’s rich employer. Conflicted by her secret struggle, Mary watches in horror as her father is tried for murdering her rich beau at the command of his trade union. Her world in tatters and the brink between the classes growing ever wider and their relationship ever more volatile, Mary leaves home to exert all her efforts to bring things to rights.

Once you’ve finished the book, read an in-depth literary analysis “The Body of Christ in ‘Mary Barton’ by Elizabeth Gaskell.”

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The Great Victorian Sin in “Ruth” by Elizabeth Gaskell

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

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Elizabeth Gaskell ruth victorian sin christian victorian literature novel 19th century novel

A First Look

 Not unusually for a Victorian novel, the heroine of this story, Ruth, must die for her sin of falling into seduction. Ruth’s story cannot meet a happy end, which, typically for a Victorian heroine, involves marriage to an exemplary gentleman. The plot does not even permit her noble spinsterhood; that compensation is awarded to chaste (and sometimes annoying – see Miss Bates in Jane Austen’s Emma) ladies only. Conversely, Ruth must not only die but also toil in atonement (as a sickbed nurse) for her error, however innocently or ignorantly she committed it.

Such notions are hardly Scriptural, and if you hadn’t noticed the above chain of circumstances in the story until now you may be tempted to throw this book out the window now and every other Victorian author with it. Romans 6:23 assures that God offers eternal life to believers in Christ, regardless of their past. Ruth’s life and death seem contrary to a basic understanding of Christian salvation. Stories of believers physically and mortally punished for their sins are not spiritually truthful, never mind inspiring narratives to read.

Gaskell’s portrayal of Christianity appears to become more muddled by considering the antagonist of the novel, who commits the same sin as Ruth and yet does not meet the same end as her. The narrator clearly paints Bellingham as evil, yet he survives the same sickness that kills Ruth, and certainly does not spend his life toiling; he lives a life of privilege and exudes a degree of laziness. He is even allowed an engagement and there is no indication he will be barred from a happy, married ending because of his past.

Again, the disparate treatment of Ruth and Bellingham oppose scripture about salvation, in this case that it is offered equally to men and women. Why does the woman pay for her sins but not the man in this story?

A More Redeeming Look

 “I take my stand with Christ against the world.” – Ruth

A closer look at the novel shows that Ruth’s “great Victorian sin” is not all it may seem to outsiders. The narrator states several times that Ruth is only fifteen years of age at the time of her seduction. Ruth is described as innocent and ignorant of what she is doing; she gets a “feeling” sometimes that all is not quite right about her relationship with Bellingham, but mostly she does not seem to understand the significance of what she is doing. Mr. and Miss Benson defend her past because of her youth as well.

Ruth’s age raises a theological question. Did Ruth really sin, if she didn’t know what she was doing? Legally, today, courts would determine Ruth the victim of rape and Mr. Bellingham (that dashing gentleman) would be locked away. Christians today would hardly hold her at fault either. Consider, though, that in Victorian times a girl could legally marry as young as 12 (more commonly, though, women married around the age of 20).

Marriage then was not always the romantic product of choice it is now, however. It was often an exchange of properties and sometimes arranged for the participants. Gaskell’s downplaying of Ruth’s responsibility in the affair is noteworthy, not only because of its  radicalness for the Victorian era, but because it helps establish Ruth as blameless, and therefore, perhaps, sinless. [Much could also be said here about the tradition of woman as seductress in literary love affairs that Gaskells upends. In this narrative, woman is victim and man is seducer.]

The Bensons’ decision to take in and care for Ruth and her illegitimate child are also unconventional, as evinced by the community’s reaction, who whisper about them, and particularly Mr. Bradshaw, who shuns them altogether, when Ruth’s true history is revealed. But Mr. Benson stands firm in his Christian beliefs:

“I declare before God, that if I believe in any one human truth, it is this – that to every woman, who, like Ruth, has sinned, should be given a chance of self-redemption – and that such a chance should be given in no supercilious or contemptuous manner, but in the spirit of the holy Christ….

I state my firm belief, that it is God’s will that we should not dare to trample any of His creatures down to the hopeless dust; that it is God’s will that the women who have fallen should be numbered among those who have broken hearts to be bound up, not cast aside as lost beyond recall.”

I’m sure Gaskell did not choose a minister for such a role lightly. Mr. Benson, with his internal struggle about the moral rightness of hiding Ruth’s history, as well as his physical deformity, is a developed character, with a conscience and a past. Conversely, we might view Mr Benson’s deformity as representative of his capacity for falsehood, similar to the literary character Pinocchio. Either way/nonetheless, a minister is the mouthpiece of God, and through him Gaskell proclaims her Christian beliefs. Ruth is vindicated and loved by a minister of the church.

Gaskell also vindicates Ruth’s character by imbuing her with the attributes of the Biblical Mary Magdalen. Mr. Benson wonders, hopes even, that “the tenderness which led the Magdalen aright” will lead Ruth in the right path in the end and cover over her past, as Jesus says of Mary Magdalen in Luke 7:47: “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.”  Indeed, Ruth spends much of her life caring for and loving others, especially in her sick-nurse days. Her tender and blameless actions and the way she cares for and heals those around her exemplify her as a Christ-like figure – or, as Christians would say, show Christ shines through her.

But the novel’s most radical move sees Ruth epitomize Christ himself when she sacrifices her life for the one who persecuted her. Ruth attends Mr. Bellingham on his sickbed at the price of her own life, re-enacting the final sacrifice of Christ on the cross at the hands of his persecutors. This dramatic ending proclaims the message of the gospel through Ruth, a disreputable woman, not a minister, a gentleman or even a man.

In the universities, such a reading of the text would be considered a point for feminism. For academia, any promotion or affirmation of the marginalized is always a victory in and of itself. For Christians, however, the affirmation of the marginalized is glory for God:

     “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made        perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Ruth’s dramatization of the gospel message through a fallen woman upends Victorian middle class values about sexuality and gender, but not merely for progress’ sake. Gaskell’s novel illustrates the gospel message, how Christ demonstrated his love even for his persecutors, by sacrificing his life for them. This is the only true idea of love, and Ruth’s authentic exemplification of this love cuts through the social norms and legalistic religious beliefs of the people around her to show a true picture of Christ to a society that has become disconnected from him.

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Inaugural Post: Introducing “Ruth,” a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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Elizabeth Gaskell, fallen woman, Ruth

Elizabeth Gaskell’s four-hundred-page novel Ruth (1853) narrates the seduction and subsequent fall of the main character, Ruth Hilton, the characters who support her, and the characters who persecute and trouble her through her trials and her loving devotion to her son.

The book contains many Biblical themes and references (when is the last time you read a book that alluded to King Belshazzar or Rizpah?), notwithstanding the main character’s name itself, as well as a cast of Christ-devoted characters.

Does this book tell a Christian story? Does it have value for Christians today or is it outdated? Why is this book read in the universities but Christians today have never heard of it?

Once you’ve finished the book, read an in-depth literary analysis “The Great Victorian Sin in ‘Ruth’ by Elizabeth Gaskell.”

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“The Way We Live Now” by Anthony Trollope

14 Wednesday Dec 2022

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis, Introducing...

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Anthony Trollope, social commentary, The Way We Live Now

“If one wants to keep one’s self straight, one has to work hard at it, one way or the other. I suppose it all comes from the fall of Adam.” – The Way We Live Now

Whoever originated the writerly advice, “Show, don’t tell,” a commonly touted golden rule of fiction writing, apparently never read a Victorian novel. The Victorians are master story tellers, and the intense, psychological study of character is one of the defining features of Victorian novels (particularly the hefty ones). Rarely does a character act (“show”) first before an in-depth description of his personality, and all the vices and virtues such a personality induces, as well as the influence of his history or upbringing, are set before the reader. Before the character acts, we already understand him, and his words and deeds become plausible. The Way We Live Now, a long, critical commentary on the moral ills of Victorian society by Anthony Trollope, exemplifies this feature as the narrator spreads out an array of Londoners for the reader’s consideration, but mostly for her disapproval. Trollope’s narrator delineates his characters like an omniscient, god-like authority who sees into the very heart of a person. But the narrator does more than just reveal characters; he also judges him or her – also like God. Frequently, Trollope tells us what opinion we should have about a character’s behaviour.

Victorian literature fans may often be tempted to look back wistfully at Victorian society’s high standards of modesty, virtue and propriety; however, reading a little bit of Trollope is like a bucket of cold water on the head reminding us that sin pervades every society and culture and has since the dawn of time, since sin germinates in the heart of every person, quickly curing us of “good old days” syndrome. Whether it is marriage, the family, religion, the treatment of women, racism, the government, the economy, or vocation, there is hardly an area of society that escapes Trollope’s scathing reproof. What’s worse is that Trollope fixes his critical eye mainly upon the genteel class, where we would expect to find the best representation of Victorian values, but the vice hiding therein reduces our beloved propriety to a charade, and we are forced to swallow the uncomfortable truth that that which we admire so much in the Victorians was sometimes simply a veneer for vice. The lowest criminals are honest, at least, about their dealings. Of course, as Christians we should know that virtue has nothing to do with class or appearance. This is one of the plainest teachings in the Bible about human character.

Trollope’s epic novel follows a wide cast of characters whose lives and fortunes are greatly affected by an illustriously wealthy newcomer to the London scene. From the beginning the narrator strongly hints that Augustus Melmotte is duplicitous; he attracts other unscrupulous characters to him, while repulsing those who are honest and principled. The novel chronicles the sad story of his daughter Marie as she tries to gain some agency in her life both in love and in money, the parallel love story of Hetta and Paul and all of the obstacles in the way of their marriage, and the pathetic exploits of Hetta’s brother, Sir Felix Carbury, an utter profligate with no hope of reform.  

Although Trollope is not forthright with his religious beliefs in The Way We Live Now, he was an Anglican and the opinions that he sets forth in the novel can be understood through a Christian worldview, particularly his view on marriage and the sexes, which I would like to take up in another post. Clearly, if Trollope’s depiction of marriage in the novel was representative of nineteenth century society, the treatment of marriage as a kind of prostitution of women is a corruption of the model of marriage proscribed in the New Testament. In the little bit of research I did on Trollope’s personal life I learned that he, among many other Anglicans, did not appreciate the boldness of the evangelical movement, which burgeoned in the nineteenth century, seeing it as almost brash and annoying. This surely explains the understated Christian beliefs in his novels, as well as in Jane Austen’s (Jane Eyre is quite an exception to this, however, as well as Elizabeth Gaskell‘s works), and the explicit gospel and devotional themes in today’s typical Christian evangelical novel, which many of us have grown up with and thus have come to expect as the norm for Christian fiction. It’s why some people are surprised to find or feel skeptical that Austen was actually a Christian, and why she is so easily co-opted by feminist scholars.

I feel it is incumbent upon one when reviewing an eight-hundred-page novel to comment on its readability to help one decide whether to attempt such a herculean endeavour. For those who have given up halfway when slogging through some of Dicken’s massive tomes, take heart. I don’t think Trollope has the genius or wordsmithery of Charles Dickens, but I also think that makes him a little more accessible and less bewildering, at least in The Way We Live Now. I also don’t think that Trollope’s work delves as deeply into the good and evil of humankind or presents such a hellish or angelic view of people as Dickens does. Rather, The Way We Live Now is more a commentary on the lamentableness of Victorian society in terms of all of its hypocrisy, two-facedness and double-standards; there are no murderers or starving children in the gutter in Trollope. I personally found that The Way We Live Now is quite readable and it was one of the easiest large tomes I have read in a long time. There is just enough scandal and drama balanced with a light intellectual commentary to make picking up the novel something to look forward to each time.

Introducing “Barchester Towers” by Anthony Trollope

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Introducing “The Shopkeeper’s Daughter” by George MacDonald

18 Monday Sep 2017

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C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Victorian lady

“God’s love is not founded upon any merit – it rests only upon being and need.” -George MacDonald

Image result for the shopkeeper's daughter george macdonaldThe Shopkeeper’s Daughter is another abridged work by George MacDonald, edited and republished by Elizabeth Guignard Hamilton. Like in The Fisherman’s Lady, MacDonald presents the reader with the ideal Christian, only this time in the form of a lady, Mary Marston.

Most of the other characters in The Shopkeeper’s Daughter hardly know how to understand or categorize Mary, a Christian woman devoted wholly to the will and work of the Lord, who submits cheerfully to the tasks of her low station as shopkeeper and lady’s maid and yet disregards the importance and value of class.  Her willingness to accept work without pay and to lend aid to anyone she can is viewed with suspicion by those who do not care about or believe in God. Most – excepting Jasper Joseph, another individual seeking humbly to follow Christ’s footsteps, who recognizes Mary’s Christly virtue immediately – assume her to have selfish motives, because they themselves cannot conceive of any other kind of life.

True, Mary’s character is not the most developed and her saintliness is perhaps too perfect, apart from a weak struggle with temper she overcomes early in the novel. The Shopkeeper’s Daughter does not achieve the depth and interest of The Fisherman’s Lady, but it offers a light, interesting read nonetheless. It is mostly worth reading for the sake of, firstly, tracing the origins of C. S. Lewis’ thoughts, and, secondly, for encountering beautiful expressions of truth such as follow below.

“But what is love and loss and even defilement, what are pains and hopes and disappointments, what sorrow and death and all the ills that our flesh is heir to, but means to this very end, to this waking of the soul to seek the home of our being – the life eternal?”

“On the contrary, He is the only Man who is no exception. We are the exceptions. Don’t you see? He is the very One we must all come to be like, or perish!“

“She knew there is no bond so strong, so close or so lasting as the truth. In God alone, who is the truth, can creatures meet.“

 

Read a review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes, a totally different kind of novel. 

Other books about the ideal Victorian lady:

 

Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë

Fruits of the Spirit in Agnes Grey

The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte M. Yonge

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Prejudice and Suffering in North and South

Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth E. Prentiss

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  • “The Way We Live Now” by Anthony Trollope
  • Introducing “Sylvia’s Lovers” by Elizabeth Gaskell
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