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Introducing “Home Education” by Charlotte Mason

14 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis, Introducing...

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Charlotte Mason, education, Home Education, homeschooling, Nature, parenting

“We live in a redeemed world, and infinite grace and help from above attend every rightly directed effort in the training of the children; but I do not see much ground for hoping that divine grace will step in as a substitute for any and every power we choose to leave unused or misdirected. In the physical world, we do not expect miracles to make up for our neglect of the use of means.” – Charlotte Mason, Home Education

Once I was practicing the alphabet out loud with my three-year-old, encouraging him to supply the next letter, when my six-year-old, whose reading abilities greatly surpass alphabet recitation, kept chiming in with the answer without giving her little brother a chance. Finally becoming exasperated after the fourth or fifth time of chiding her for her interruptions, I warned about a potential consequence if the selfish behaviour was repeated. She promised me earnestly that she would stop now and would not do it anymore. I began again, singing the letters and stopping for my son to chime in with “G,” when my daughter blurted out the answer yet again. Immediately she clapped her hands over her mouth and burst into tears, following with, “I’m so sorry mom! I didn’t mean to! It just came out. I don’t even know how it happened! I honestly did not even want to do that!” My quick retort was, “I know exactly how it happened. You did the wrong thing so many times it became a habit.”

Such an illustration of human behaviour gets at the heart of 19th century educational pioneer Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of child education as laid out in her book Home Education (1886). The theory that repeated thoughts and actions are like tracks in the mind for behaviour to ride smoothly along conceives education as a battle of will vs habit, habit usually winning out because it requires the least effort.  Exerting the will, which means compelling the mind to go in a direction it is not used to going or does not feel like going (more or less the same thing), is much more challenging. It means stopping a train already hurtling down a nicely laid track. Not impossible, but extremely difficult – especially for children, who are still learning self-control. Children naturally possess very weak wills (“strong-willed” is really a misnomer). This is why they throw tantrums, stubbornly defy parents, give in easily to temptation and repeat forbidden actions again and again. When I call my three-year-old to go to bed, and he just sprawls on the floor as if he is powerless to even budge, I know what is going on in his little mind: the will to obey his parents is trying to overwhelm his desire to keep playing with his all-absorbing trucks and failing miserably. (This is why pleasant bedtime routines are so helpful – they are rails of habit set down that the child’s mind can run along every evening.)

Returning to my first example with the interrupting child, we can become accustomed to any bad behaviour so that our will is reduced to nothing – and a habit is established, making us, essentially, slaves to our sin. The moment when my daughter’s intention was the purest, when she willed herself to do good and stop interrupting, habit prevailed over will. To bypass the will completely and set children on good rails of habit from the very beginning (because good habits can persist as firmly as bad ones), particularly at an age when their wills are predisposed work against them, is the great foundation of Charlotte Mason’s educational approach. One might rightly ask how a person is really responsible or culpable for their actions, including their sin, when she is only repeating the script set down before her by parents or teachers. The reality is, however, that when my daughter’s habit overwhelmed her will, she actually became agentless, powerless over her “sin” (one could probably have a theological debate about whether at that point it was actually sin, if intentions were innocent; in any case, habits can rule us, and the end goal of a good education is to become master of one’s self).  Habits are inevitable. We are truly creatures of habit; all of our thoughts and behaviours will run in one way or another. There is no neutral or stopping ground or mental state because our thoughts constantly run, Mason writes. It is in our very biology. And so the question is not, will we develop habits, but in which direction will they run? Toward good or evil? Toward godliness or ways of the “flesh”? Towards improvement or degeneration? We must set a course out for ourselves, if only to save ourselves in the future from our tendency to waywardness. Children are no exception to this; in fact, this is the great calling and vocation of parents, Mason urges, and such an endeavour is not to be undertaken without great consideration.

To complement what may seem a rigid training of children in “the direction they should go,” Mason does not suggest that we force children into habits or ways of life or thinking, but rather gently nudge them (through the atmosphere we create, the habits we ourselves keep, quality literature, the planting of stimulating ideas in their mind, and immersion in nature, which is the direct and continual handiwork of God through which they can commune with him) and let them commandeer their own train, which they are more than capable of doing, for they were bestowed at birth with all the capabilities they require by the Creator. From parents, children need moral training and guidance – which tracks to set down. How much easier a future life will a child enjoy who is trained into good habits! She will not even have to choose the right, because it will become so natural to her. And when a novel temptation does arise, trust of doing right, which has always served her well in the past, will make it difficult to change tracks and choose the wrong. And, by this time, her will has become a well-toned muscle that is much easier to exert than if it had never been properly exercised.

Where, one might ask, is divine grace and the Holy Spirit in such a philosophy of behaviour? Mason addresses this exact objection. The Holy Spirit is actually another major pillar in her beliefs about education. The Holy Spirit, in fact, enables every good thought or deed, and is the agent in all learning, no matter the subject – even arithmetic – for God is the source of all knowledge and any gain in knowledge is a step out of the shadows and toward God. I think it is at this point where many lose their grasp of the point Mason is driving at because we live in such a sacred/secular, spiritual/matter, and even, mind/body divide, a division which has increased enormously in the latter half of the twentieth century and which did not exist so sharply in Mason’s time. For the Holy Spirit does not just work in the spiritual realm, but in the material world also. The Holy Spirit makes the grass grow and the flowers bloom and the laws of the universe hold together and the neurons in the brain fire – the ones that fire to enable us to speak and think and move us to repentance or forgiveness. There is no realm where the Holy Spirit does not move and work (interesting to consider that the Holy Spirit manifested himself as physical matter in the form of bird); no place where he is limited or forbidden. In fact, it would be impossible for him to affect our spirits and not our bodies, because our bodies are the physical incarnation of our spirits – they are actually the way given to us in which we can encounter another person’s spirit  – by seeing and interacting with their body. But the Spirit works on, or works most smoothly on, rails that parents lay down for their children (otherwise the lessons poorly-brought up children will be forced to learn as adults will be very hard). He also works in the minds of parents, inspiring them and guiding them to as they train their children. The Holy Spirit will sanctify one way or another, either by the easy instruction of the parents or by fire and trial later. These are the very laws that God has interwoven into his creation and which govern all of human behaviour. Proverbs especially teaches about the consequences of various tracks of behaviour and their inevitable destinations; in fact, the Bible only allows for two tracks – the way of righteousness or the way of destruction.

This leads to the third pillar of Mason’s educational philosophy, the first being, the observation of children’s behaviour regarding wills and habits (I’ve already offered my own children as examples), and the second, the role of the Holy Spirit in learning.  The third pillar is science. Now, all conservative, Bible-believing Christians reading this are likely cringing. For why would we want science to have anything to do with our children today? The science of our day teaches that God does not exist, humans were not created, our identities have no relation to our physical bodies, babies in the womb are not persons, sex should be divorced from relationship, it is natural for adolescents to rebel against parents, and on and on, all ideas which directly contradict biblical teachings. I’m glad to have doctors to prescribe medicine and engineers to build roads but when it comes to the realm of child psychology, development and behaviour, I would rather “science” as we know it today didn’t touch my children with a ten-foot pole. A reasonable objection.

But the science of today pushes all these anti-Christian beliefs precisely because it is premised on a mind/body divide (a schizophrenia lucidly explained in Christian cultural critic Nancy Pearcey’s book Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality). We twenty-first century Christians struggle to defend our beliefs against such science because we don’t understand the true nature of the issue because we too ascribe, unwittingly, to a secular/sacred and mind/body divide, which Mason did not. Mason looks at the ways in which the mind and body work together – in fact, the way they are inseparable. Habits of the mind become written on the very biology of the body because of the way the neurons in our brains and the nervous system work. One can observe this when playing an instrument skillfully or writing a letter. You don’t have to figure out or remember which keys represent which notes or how to form the letter “A” when you play the piano or write, because these habits were drilled deep into your brain and into the muscles in your hand long ago until they became part of your very biology – more specifically, your unconscious, and now your conscious mind (where your will resides) is freed from the effort. Anyone who has ever learned a piano piece thoroughly, especially by heart, has experienced that uncanny state where you look down and observe your fingers flying across the keys as if in the third person, or as if you are looking at someone else’s hands, or as if to wonder, who is playing this piece? How can I be playing this piece while thinking about playing it but not actually thinking about how to play it? Another bizarre example of the conscious and unconscious levels of the mind is one that many mothers have noticed, which is completely tuning out while reading aloud a boring picture book to their children, to the point where upon completion of the book they realize they have no idea what they just read. (I’m pretty sure I read Paw Patrol Saves Valentine’s Day out loud four or five times without having any idea what it was about because I was thinking about something entirely different the whole time.)

These examples illustrate how the conscious and unconscious levels of the mind work. This division of the mind may at times seem strange or uncanny, but the reality is that the unconscious mind is a great aid to us. Without the unconscious mind, playing the piano and writing a letter would be utterly laborious. We can’t even conceive of such an existence. If we can’t drill habits deep into our mind until they become second nature, how could we improve at or even learn anything? How could we even be sanctified? Good habits make for an easy life indeed. And the Holy Spirit enables all these processes from the inspiration or motivation to begin a new skill, the attention required to learn it, the discipline required to sustain it through practice, and the pleasure enjoyed from the successful fruit of one’s efforts. None of these endeavours exist solely in either the spiritual or material realm; even inspiration, which is a feeling, releases chemicals and hormones in the brain. The Holy Spirit is Lord of all and working in every system in our bodies. We might as well call this sanctification because it is really the overcoming of our sin nature, which tends in a downward spiral towards laziness and impulsiveness, or, the path of least resistance – the giving into temptation, rather than the mastery of one’s impulses and desires (the “flesh”). When explained this way, it is easy to see how Mason’s theory of education encompasses the “whole person,” a phrase often used when referring to her ideas. The end of education is not to “instill information” or “get a job” or any other kind of utilitarian, demeaning, narrow-minded or lowball goal. Indeed, for Mason, “academic” education cannot be separated from growing as a person – growing in godliness.

So how does one go about educating a child with such a theory of human behaviour? How do you establish firm habits in a child without force? How do you set them on the road toward God – which, in Masons’ view includes everything from kindness, thankfulness, cleanliness, orderliness, knowledge of the world, history, great ideas, creation and so on? The key is in training their attention, which Mason writes is the mark of true genius. What is attention, but focusing the mind at will? Some things are easy to focus our attention on, but that which is more difficult should be encouraged gently, over time, in a smooth and attractive manner. Such a training can begin when the child is a toddler, as the mother encourages the young child to stop and carefully notice a flower he might normally pass by – the number and texture of the petals and leaves and the width of the stem and so on. When it is time for lessons to begin at age seven, the mother keeps the lessons short and engaging, so that the will does not become set stubbornly against them from tediousness or over-difficulty. History is taught to the young child with exciting stories of heroes and faraway places so that the mind is lured down a track of learning and knowledge. When it comes to arithmetic and handwriting, these physical labours must be done briefly but with full attention to exactness. In all of these endeavours, the child is required to focus their full attention on the subject so that it permeates into the unconscious. The distracted child will recall nothing – and will learn to love nothing, for if education is also for the soul then what is the good of a mumbled or half-remembered Bible passage or poem?  The reward for full attention to a lesson is always complete leisure, thus motivating the child to focus her full attention the next time. As the child gradually practices focusing in longer and longer durations, what she is really doing is exercising mastery over her own will, which is the suppression of impulse, contrariness and laziness. The more the attention is focused, the easier it becomes, and learning becomes second nature. The student emerges from school not just stuffed with head knowledge, but the master of her own will, her own self. This is true agency.

It is vital to note that Mason’s “luring” of children to their studies is absolutely not with gimmicks, bribes and what we today call “edutainment.” Such methods she famously calls “twaddle,” and they are downright dishonest and offensive to persons as created in the image of God. There is no point on which I agree more with Charlotte Mason than this one, and it is this idea that especially drew me to her writings. I had already long felt this way before I even had children, never mind entertained the thought of homeschooling them. Mason urges parents and teachers to give children the real thing, which she calls “living ideas” and “living books.” Give them real history, real literature, the real Bible, real art, real music, real nature, real art supplies and so on. Children don’t need things dumbed or watered down; they can handle big ideas. Books, materials and music don’t need to be overly silly and nonsensical, filled with drivel and blather (“junk food” for the mind). Children don’t need to be “tricked” into learning.

Such an approach to education – that children need to be tricked (which our schools and books are so awash with today) – presupposes several untrue things. Firstly, it presupposes that children don’t or can’t naturally love to learn. Secondly, it presupposes that the subjects to be learnt are too boring. If such things were true, then learning would indeed have to be forced, or tricked through edutainment. The problem with the first presupposition, that children don’t or can’t naturally love to learn, is actually theological. It implies that God has given us no inborn capability or means to move toward him. Certainly we battle our sin nature, which pulls us down, but has God not set eternity in the hearts of men? Did not Augustine say that the soul’s appetite is for God? It may take a guide (the parent) to awaken the appetite for God, but the capability is latent and can be fanned into flame and sustained by the power of the Holy Spirit. We do nothing without divine power, but that divine power is ready and able to lead any mind toward Himself. It does not require gimmicks. The second presupposition, that subjects are just too tedious, does not trust in or believe that the richness of real knowledge nourishes the soul and mind in a way that good food nourishes the body. Edutainment itself, which is really bait-and-switch – look at this flashy thing and when it is taken away the knowledge will “stick” (all the while making a useless association – like Bible characters and vegetables) – is actually dishonest and insulting to the intelligence of children. It presupposes that children are not even really whole persons because they have no soul with an appetite for higher things. Such a vision of education is utterly dreary. Children can and do love to listen to classical music, read classic literature, learn about the great heroes and events of history, recite beautiful poetry and take joy in exploring nature. I have seen it in my own home.  Mason also points out that even if children do not love something at first, they will naturally learn to love what is continually set before them. Susan Wise Bauer, in The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Guide to Education at Home, says it another way: familiarity breeds appreciation. Begin with a small selection of interesting classical music and repeat it until the foreign becomes recognizable.  It is also a warning that children will love whatever is set before them – even junk. We live in a culture awash with junk for children, from trashy television shows to worthless books to narcissistic clothing slogans, and there has never been a time more necessary for parents to be overly intentional about cultivating their children’s minds and hearts to love what is higher and better.

Some might still feel that Mason’s method of habit-training is perfectionist and strict, with little room for grace. I have a hard time disagreeing with that and it is a point of tension I have with Mason. She uses phrases such as “perfect obedience,” a guaranteed setup for feelings of failure in any parent. But I think her statement, “The question is not – how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education – but how much does he care?”,  shows her desire to not just educate the whole person, but refigure “education” as nurture and cultivation. Knowledge is useless to a person if they do not have principles. I feel this statement is especially relevant to subjects like sex education for teenagers today. What does it matter if they know everything about sex but care nothing about it? What does it matter if they know all the scientific facts about every transmittable disease and contraceptive method and yet view physical intimacy as sacredly as going through a drive-through, when in reality it is a gift of God and meant for holy purposes? Indeed, there is no subject of learning in which we cannot move either toward or away from God.

There are a few other points of disagreement I have with Mason. Sight reading, which she heartily endorses, has been a dismal failure in the public schools. Her approach to math, I believe, is mediocre when compared to Asian-style conceptual math, an excellent discussion of which can be found in Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers’ Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States by Liping Ma. Mason also believed in evolution (although many Christians during her time apparently did), and basically concedes in the chapter on Bible lessons that the Fall of man in the garden of Eden may have been a symbolic event only. Indeed, it would have to be if the evolution of man were true, as literal death could not precede the Fall, when death is supposed to have entered the world. Evolution also remains a thorn in Mason’s ideas for me because is her “habits of the mind,” which are written on our biology to the point where we become changed (the child becomes a hunchback because he slouches too much, she says), an explanation of how the human species evolves? The ape came to walk upright because he got into the habit of straightening his spine? Perhaps I am way off the rails here in my speculations regarding Mason’s ideas but I think it is important to note that there does exist today an equivalent of Mason’s theory of the body, and that is neuroscience and the phenomenon of neuroplasticity. More and more scientists are beginning to perceive that genetics cannot explain the rapid onset of various conditions and diseases of the body and mind peculiar to our decade. There is also rising awareness of the effect of pornography on the brain and body and the total destruction of attention spans from overuse cell phones and tablets. There is definitely relevancy to Mason’s ideas, though they be over one hundred years old.  Ironically, at the end of her life, Mason actually almost reneged on her theory of habits, writing that, “Science has done nothing to confirm the ‘rut’ theory [that repeated behaviours and thoughts cut grooves in our brains, which then determine future behaviours and thoughts] all these years…. I think that all I have written is still true but I would emphasize habit and so on less.” I think the advent of neuroscience would dispute that; neuroscience is the medicine of the future, in my opinion.

Another issue I have with Mason is that she herself never had children and so never experienced parenthood for herself and how utterly difficult it can be to train children in good habits. Every parent has experienced the phenomonen that children are much more likely to control their impulses and put on their best side with other authority figures and teachers, and save their worst behaviour for their parents at home. Recently, at a church luncheon where my children sat amazingly still and quiet and miraculously didn’t complain about the food, a senior woman at our table said to me afterward, “I just want to commend you on how well your children behave. You have done so well with them. I live with my grandchildren and our house is a zoo most of the time.” Part of me had to smile at her naivety, as she has obviously never seen what goes on in our home (we have our own monkey house), but part of me felt terribly for her daughter or daughter-in-law who has now to live with the unrealistic expecations of her mother or mother-in-law after seeing some children behave well in one particular kind of environment. I have heard many parents observe that their kids, who behave like angels all day at school, according to teacher reports, come home and erupt with emotion and grumpiness. Repressing emotions all day can become like a kind of taxing performance and can apparently take its toll on a person. The home is a place of unconditional love. Children intuitively know that no matter how bad they behave, their parents will still love them; what’s more, they seem to need a place like that. Don’t we all? I feel like Mason does somewhat allude to the different expectations of disparate environments when she contrasts the kindergarten and the “nursery” (home), and criticizes the kindergarten for being an artificial environment that doesn’t truly train children in meaningful habits. The nursery, however, is reality, and the habits that are formed there matter more. That, I have to agree with. She is very careful to distinguish between sincere habits, which improve a person and are pleasing to God, and those which are just for show. Still, the total repression of negative emotions which she advocates is troubling to me as I believe it to be unhealthy from a psychological point of view. Repressing impulses and behaviour is one thing, but repressing emotion is another; however, she seems to believe the former requires the latter. I think there is a good case to be made for healthily acknowledging and experiencing the full range of one’s emotions, while still controlling the impulse to act upon them.

Lastly, I take issue with Mason’s disregard for the classical method, which she calls a method drawing from a poisoned source (the Greeks). However, her repeated citing of Coleridge and Wordsworth belies her own Romantic influences, a movement which was not Christian in its origins either. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of Romanticism, had very radical ideas about children and the “state of nature” which are difficult to reconcile with biblical Christianity. They are difficult to reconcile even with her own belief that children must not be left to their “nature,” which in my understanding is the opposite of Rousseau’s philosophy, a total rejection of institution and even parental authority. However, Charlotte Mason has a whole series of books that I have not read, and I look forward to reading more of her writings and perhaps receiving further explanation of many of her ideas. There is no doubt she is an extremely intelligent educational theorist and her ideas are definitely worth sifting through. They certainly reign superior to the typical approach to education embraced generally today. If there was ever a time when we needed to train up a generation of children in healthy habits and focused attentions spans, that time is now.

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“It is because of the possibilities of ruin and loss which lie about every human life that I am pressing upon parents the duty of saving their children by the means put into their hands. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that ninety-nine out of a hundred lost lives lie at the door of parents who took no pains to deliver them from sloth, from sensual appetites, from willfulness, no pains to fortify them with the habits of a good life.” – Charlotte Mason

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Related Posts

Hints on Child-Training by H. Clay Trumbull – An American from the Victorian era writes about training children in good habits.

My Story: A Victorian Healing – A personal testimony of the role of the unconscious mind in chronic pain, and how I have a Victorian doctor to thank for my healing. 

Should Adults Feel Embarrassed Reading YA Novels?

 

Recommended Reads

Hints on Child-Training by H. Clay Trumbull – An American from the Victorian era writes about training children in good habits.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey – Contemporary discussion of how to change your habits as an adult.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman – The dumbing down of our culture, the disappearance of literacy and the rise of junk culture.

Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality by Nancy Pearcey – An easily understandable discussion of the mind-body division that pervades our culture.

The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain by Dr. John Sarno – You can heal your chronic pain and other symptoms by understanding how the unconscious mind works.

When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Mate- The repression of negative emotion can lead to bodily illness.

The Holy Spirit by Arthur W. Pink – Comprehensive discussion of how the Holy Spirit works. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Prejudice and Suffering in “North and South”

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

≈ 1 Comment

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class, Elizabeth Gaskell, industrial England, suffering

Contrasts and Reconciliation

“I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you don’t understand me.”  –North and South

North and South begins as a novel of contrasts, as its title portends. The North is the new, progressive industrial sector of society, while the South is the old, aristocratic, land-based gentry. The North is urban, bustling, grimy and noisy with the grinding of machinery, while the South is rural, slow-paced, cultured, pristine and quiet. John Thornton, a successful factory owner in the busy manufacturing town of Milton, represents the North, and Margaret Hale, a parson’s daughter from the naturally beautiful village of Helston, symbolizes the cultured, intellectual South. Other characters fall on either side of this North and South divide, and some straddle the middle. Each side has its pathetic and shallow characters (Fanny from the North and Esther from the South) and its noble ones (Higgins from the North and Mr. Bell from the South), Thornton and Margaret being the most admirable of all, as the hero and heroine. The divisions arise from many factors (economic, social, technological) which would take a proper history lesson to explain, but suffice it to say that England’s societal fabric at this time was changing and Gaskell was seeking to dramatize and perhaps reconcile the above hostile segments of society in her novel.

The hope of the classes reconciling, in North and South, depends on the hero and heroine’s ability to resolve their differences and fall in love, and to fall in love Thornton and Margaret need to overcome their prejudice and learn to understand each other – likewise with the clashing classes, North and South and master and hand. If only they really understood each other, if only they took the time to get to know each other, the rift could turn into a bridgeable gap.

Thornton and Margaret’s acquaintance begins by completely misunderstanding each other, only able to view each other through preconceived notions of the other “class” of people. When Thornton begins to see and understand the sympathy for the working class behind Margaret’s proud scorn of the masters, and Margaret learns the sense and intelligence behind why Thornton makes the decisions he does, and how they have led him to his current success and capacity to employ – and thus feed and clothe – the many workers that he does, only then do they see each other for who they really are. Thornton and Higgins reconcile in a similar way; Thornton visits Higgins’ home and sees the orphans he cares for, and gives Higgins the opportunity to speak to him face to face. Elsewhere, upon meeting Thornton and actually hearing what he has to say, many from the South (such as Henry lennox) change their minds about him. The final picture of Thornton and Margaret’s reconciliation is when she offers to collaborate with him financially in order to save his mill. At this point Thornton realizes Margaret has come to understand him and returns his affections.

However, Gaskell is a masterful, intelligent writer and a closer reflection on the novel reveals that Thornton and Margaret’s characters are not fully or neatly explained by “North” and “South.” For, we get the sense that Margaret is somewhat atypical of the South, and Thornton likewise of the North, in that they are exceptionally noble people, who represent the best of their worlds. Additionally, by the end of the novel, neither Helstone (the South) nor Milton (the North) themselves seem the same. The former has gained some vices and the latter has lost some. The novel North and South reflects the complicated reality of life, where issues are never simple; there is both good and bad in the mill workers and the mill owners, and there is suffering in both the North and the South. The contrast between the North and the South, then, blurs and erodes as the protagonist lives new experiences and grows and matures in her thinking.

Faith and Suffering

“I wish I could tell you how lonely I am. How cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell and it’s white, it’s snow-white.” -North and South

The narrative of North and South contains many scenes of disappointment or grief. Very little positive or uplifting happens to Margaret, except her friendship with the Higgins and the sense of community it provides. Even the dreamlike entrance of Frederick is cut very short. He never returns, never overturns his death sentence, and four close family members or friends of Margaret die.

Sometimes it can be tempting to think that “back then” people dealt with tragedy and grief better because death occurred more often, but Gaskell’s characters still experience significant despair and depression upon the loss of a love one. Gaskell’s novel shows, contrary to the timeworn sentiment that faith is a kind of “crutch” to cope with hard times, that Christians can feel the farthest from God in the midst of suffering. Even so-called “applicable” scriptural comforts can seem trite at this time of mental numbness. Consider Mr. Hale a few days after his wife’s death. A former parson whose strong religious convictions compelled him to give up his career and home, he finds little solace in his faith upon the death of his wife, with what faith he yet clings to, as he admits God’s will in this matter appears entirely obscure to him. His daughter mechanically repeats Bible verses to comfort him, and in the familiar repetition he finds only a modicum of comfort. Mr. Hale knows God exists, but in this time of loss he staggers under the weight of his emotions and grief, and, like any child undergoing discipline, has difficulty feeling the love of his heavenly Father. For Mr. Hale, God’s will has become as hazy, obscure and impenetrable as the masters’, from the viewpoint of the hands. Again, this is not a moment of atheism for Hale. Rather, he is experiencing the natural and “right” effects of death. We would not long for that place where there are no more tears or suffering if such experiences were not awful. These periods of weakness prove the Hales’ faith to be all the more authentic and believable, firstly, because they are relatable, and secondly, because they are natural and true.

As humans we can’t help being subject to our emotions, to a degree, to feel despair in our suffering (not to be confused with despairing of salvation itself). Jesus himself felt the real agonies of suffering, forsakenness, loneliness and depression on (and preceding) the cross, crying out to his Father and questioning his will. To suffer is to feel forsaken, because we cannot see the face of God at that moment; not that he is not working (and working at his best – again I think of the cross) but perhaps his work at this time is so profound and holy so that we cannot look upon it with earthly comprehension. As for Margaret, although she walks through the valley of the shadow of death, the deep imprint of God’s law on her heart keeps her faith anchored.  Her greatest mental anguish arises from not only regretting lying to the police inspector about having been on the train platform the night Leonards dies, but from discovering that Thornton knows about her lying, which fills her with shame. Even though God’s will may at times be obscure, his laws (the part of his will that he has revealed to us) prove his goodness, Margaret knows full well, and it is right for people to obey them. For Thornton to think that she had abandoned her faith is more than Margaret can bear, and it is at this point that she realizes her love for him.

 

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Introducing “Lady Susan” by Jane Austen

15 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis, Introducing...

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Christian Victorian literature, film adaptation, Jane Austen, Lady Susan, Love and Friendship

“The spell is removed. I see you as you are.” – Lady Susan

“‘People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.'” Samuel 16:7

Lady Susan (1871), one of Jane Austen’s lesser known writings, was one of only two works by Austen (along with The Watsons) to reach publication during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837-1901). These two novellas were published posthumously (Austen died in 1817), but were actually among her early writings. Lady Susan, excitingly, is being released as a major motion picture on May 13, 2016 in the United States under the title Love and Friendship (curiously this was actually the title of another early writing). Christianity Today has already bestowed a rave review upon the film. And yes, Jane Austen was a Christian (more on that below, along with an upcoming book giveaway).

Some readers might raise an eyebrow at finding the first page of this Austen book already rocking with scandal and impropriety in the person of Lady Susan, a flirtatious scheming widow (with a grown daughter, no less) who gets “thrills” out of seducing the attentions of even married men for her own amusement. But merely recall wicked Wickham of Pride and Prejudice; one might consider Lady Susan his female double. This time, though, we get to hear the story from the reprobate’s point of view.

Austen seems to delight in crafting deceptive characters and watching unsuspecting people fall for them (even her own heroes and heroines). But the greatest satisfactory pleasure Austen’s novels deliver, Lady Susan not excepting, is the unveiling of true character at the final curtain call, when all the masks come off and the pretenses disappear. In Austen’s literary worlds, dishonest, scheming and immoral behaviour is always brought to light, and the duped become enlightened (usually to their indignant horror). In Austen’s time, when following rigid codes of manners and behaviour could enable success in relationships and society, one could conceivably “play the game” – that is, affect good manners – and thereby “win” a spouse, or friend, or popularity. Austen detests players of this game, and her heroes and heroines are those who remain honest, trustworthy and ethical, even at the expense of reputation or popularity.

Lady Susan’s pretenses fail and her daughter Frederica’s innocent humility succeeds because of the higher moral order that Austen believes in, where bad is punished and good rewarded. Even though we know in real life that that is not always the case (and Austen wouldn’t make any such claim about reality), we know that is the way things ought to be, and the way we ought to think about things, for that is ultimately the divine order of things. God, the author of life, will see the just rewarded and the wicked punished in the end. It is God’s will that all secret deeds and thoughts be brought to light, and judgment.

Likewise, Austen lays out her characters’ actions for her readers’ judgment. But such an endeavour is only effective because she presumes that readers presuppose a timeless, objective standard of morality that transcends all societies. Her eternal popularity, despite superficial changes to societal behavioural “codes,” testifies to this. We still believe that deceiving and manipulating people for one’s own personal gain is wrong, and that people ought to be held accountable for such behaviour. We’ve heard this before; this is “mere Christianity,” and this is Jane Austen, an Anglican and intellectual kin to C. S. Lewis.

The scriptures say that “The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy” (Proverbs 12:22). Austen seeks to evoke the same desires in her readers, to approve the honest and condemn the charade. It seems that Austen’s literary works are moralizing sermons after all, and it also seems to me, interestingly, that millions of readers have no problem with that, however consciously or unconsciously.

But what about her comic humour? Indeed, Austen’s works are primarily comedies. Fittingly, C. S. Lewis explains it best:

“Have I been treating the novels as though I had forgotten that they are, after all, comedies? I trust not. The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible. ‘Principles’ or ‘seriousness’ are essential to Jane Austen’s art. Where there is no norm, nothing can be ridiculous…. Unless there is something about which the author is never ironical, there can be no true irony in the work. ‘Total irony’ – irony about everything – frustrates itself and becomes insipid.”

______________________

Details on a Jane Austen Christian biography giveaway coming up soon!

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Nature Reveals the Glory of God in “Lorna Doone,” Part III of III

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Creation, Lorna Doone, Nature, R.D. Blackmore, the glory of God

“….suddenly the gladsome light leaped over hill and valley, casting amber, blue, and purple, and a tint of rich red rose, according to the scene they lit on, and the curtain flung around; yet all alike dispelling fear and the cloven hoof of darkness, all on the wings of hope advancing, and proclaiming, ‘God is here.’” –Lorna Doone

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this? Job 12:7-9

 

In Lorna Doone, everything in nature bursts with vitality and expression, beyond simply the biological symptoms of life. Nothing, from the swaying flowers to the craggy rocks to the eerie mists, escapes the narrator John Ridd’s personifying and metaphorical lens. Flowers smile and fogs oppress, animals converse and feel miffed, skies warn and seasons forebode. Always nature sympathizes with John’s mood, and always it displays the glory and the story of its creator. Through John’s eyes, we see nature entirely imbued with the imprints and traces of a maker.

Nature has a creator in Lorna Doone, and that creator is joyful, creative, good and rational. We know this because these are the characteristics of his creation. We know a creator exists, first of all, because without a God who has ordained the events of nature, nature is meaningless and the blowing of the wind is to no purpose; “the Lord only kn[ow][s] the sense of it,” John reflects on the effects of the Gulf-stream on the weather. We know the creator is joyful because he causes brooks to laugh and dance, meadows to ruffle (103), tree branches to glisten with dew (173) and the sun to drink it (174). We also see the creator’s sense of humour as John affectionately tells us about his barn animals displaying endearingly human-like traits, such as taunting each other and lingering with lovers. John adores these little barnyard comedians, experiences joy working the land and expresses gratitude at harvest time (183). For John, the world is a gift from a joyful creator, a gift sometimes incomprehensible but evidencing vestiges of a creator who, in his omniscience, does comprehend all things, and who, through his good gifts, displays his trustworthiness.

The narrator also beautifully demonstrates the existence of a creator in the exquisite picture of John gazing around him at the laughing brook, the ruffling meadow and the breeze opening up the primroses:

“These little things come and dwell with me; and I am happy about them…. I feel with every blade of grass, as if it had a history; and make a child of every bud, as though it knew and loved me. And being so, they seemed to tell me of my own oblivion, how I am no more than they….”

John feels so fond of nature and so familiar with all of its little details that he looks upon them as a father would upon his own children; yet at the same time that he loves them and imagines, as it were, that they love him, he simultaneously identifies with them, being created himself to love and to be loved by something or someone much beyond and above him, without which he is nothing. Nature is both familiar and yet strangely isolating, and in this uncanny space both the presence and absence of God is felt. As creatures ourselves, we both feel the love of our creator and at the same time recognize our nothingness. “Man is but a breath, we know,” says John; man is both nothing (“but” or “only”) and life (“breath”) at the same time.

This isolating effect of nature points to the other knowledge nature imparts about God, which is that he is at times wrathful. John doesn’t only find his own joy and the joy of his creator reflected in nature, but the residue of sin, and its resulting curse. When John wonders what has become of Lorna and fears her death, nature empathizes so strongly with him that “all was lonely, drear and drenched with sodden desolation. It seemed as if my love was dead, and the winds were at her funeral.” (233) Death is an ever-present possibility in a fallen, cursed world, and neither humans nor nature are free from it. Furthermore, both being under the same blessings and curses of the creator, that humans would view nature in an empathetic light and find in it both solace and anguish comes as no surprise. The curse of death, John reflects, as he views the bloody carnage of the rebellion, blemishes nature like a “reeking” stain, that “drown[s] the scent of new-mown hay, and the carol of the lark.” God created a beautiful world, where work brings satisfaction (“the scent of new-mown hay”) and nature rejoices (“the carol of the lark”), but the blight of human sin taints everything, so that humans exist in a world simultaneously good and evil, comforting and tormenting, familiar and isolating.

But there exists a far greater comfort in faith. “I…could [never] bring myself to believe that our Father would let the evil one get the upper hand of us,” writes John. Evil resides alongside us, but we know evil fights a losing battle, and the omnipotence and wisdom of God sustains all, even the limited power of evil. For John, nature mirrors the spiritual warfare raging in the human heart, where good and evil fight, but good always wins in the end:

“In all things there is comfort… [i]n the rustling rush of every gust, in the graceful bend of every tree, even in the ‘Lords and Ladies,’ clumped in the scoops of the hedgerow, and most of all in the soft primrose wrung by the wind but stealing back, and smiling when the wrath was past.”

In this exquisite description of flowers bowed down by the wind and then flinging back smiling “when the wrath was past,” John shows us the anger and mercy of God in the tiniest details of nature, and mercy always prevails. The heavens above us also inspire faith: “At the sky alone, (though questioned with the doubts of sunshine, or scattered with uncertain stars) at the sky alone we look, with pure hope, and with memory.” (429) The mere spreading of a bud is hope, John writes (112). Morning is hope, “To awake as the summer sun [comes] slanting over the hill-tops, with hope on every beam adance to the laughter of the morning (173). What is the source of this hope? That “God is here,” believes John, testified to by the faithful rising of the sun, its warming rays, and its dispelling of darkness and fear:

“Yet before the floating impress of the woods could clear itself, suddenly the gladsome light leaped over hill and valley, casting amber, blue, and purple, and a tint of rich red rose, according to the scene they lit on, and the curtain flung around; yet all alike dispelling fear and the cloven hoof of darkness, all on the wings of hope advancing, and proclaiming, ‘God is here.’ Then life and joy sprang reassured from every crouching hollow; every flower, and bud, and bird, had a fluttering sense of them; and all the flashing of God’s gaze merged into soft beneficence.” (216)

But an even greater hope exists: God is coming. As John contemplates further, the rising of the sun and the joy of a new, hopeful morning is merely a foreshadowing of an even better sunrise, the rising of the face of our heavenly Father himself:

“So perhaps shall break upon us that eternal morning, when crag and chasm shall be no more, neither hill and valley, nor great unvintaged ocean; when glory shall not scare happiness, neither happiness envy glory; but all things shall arise and shine in the light of the Father’s countenance, because itself is risen.”

At the end of this age all creation will wake into a new, “eternal” morning, an everlasting joy where the flow of God’s grace and mercy is no longer disrupted by his wrath (signified by the night), humans no longer feel isolated or afraid, and death itself dies. For now, nature serves, as John Ridd knows, as our sign of hope for the future.

________________________
What a wonderful message of hope from a beautiful piece of literature. How did the nature imagery in Lorna Doone speak to you?

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The Male Gaze: Masculinity and Godliness in “Lorna Doone,” Part II of III

26 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

godliness, John Eldredge, Lorna Doone, masculinity, R.D. Blackmore, the Male Gaze, Wild At Heart

[Introduction to Lorna Doone]

[Part I of this three-part analysis]

“I…will love them and show myself to them.” -Jesus, John 14:21

Feminists have made much of the recurring motif of the male gaze in literature. The concept of women being the object of the male gaze (whether aware or unaware) is exemplified in film, but one can also find this motif recurring throughout literature. Feminists see the male gaze as a symbol of the larger patriarchal objectification of women in society; objects are always receivers of someone’s gaze, a passive interaction that leaves them devoid of power and control.

And there is some merit to this theory of the evils of male gazing. Certainly, King David’s objectifying gaze of Bathsheba bathing was not only sinful in itself, but led to a series of the greatest sins of his life. David exemplified a male of power and privilege gazing at a vulnerable woman, unawares, and saying, “I want that; mine.” One could write an entire essay about the unrestricted male gaze as a root of a whole host of sins, such as pornography, prostitution, rape and more – and tie it into the tenth commandment.

Fascinatingly, in Lorna Doone, Blackmore creates the anti-David in John Ridd. Several times John comes upon Lorna unaware in her bower, and is stunned and mesmerized by her beauty. But instead of enjoying gazing at her from the shadows, he “leap[s] forth at once, in fearing of seeming to watch her unawares.” In another chapter he does the same, thinking, “Who was I, to crouch, or doubt, or look at her from a distance…. Therefore, I rushed out…not from any real courage but from prisoned love burst forth.” John always comes out of his hiding place immediately, feeling almost ashamed, not thinking it fair to watch her from afar but rather desiring to approach her on equal ground and converse with her face to face. More than once this exact scene plays out in the novel, and each time John jumps out instantly upon espying Lorna, not desiring, or not finding it sufficient, to merely gaze at her; indeed he is most anxious to avoid such a situation. His heart’s desire is to get to know Lorna as a person, which speaks magnitudes about his respect for her.

Again, as in my previous discussion of Lorna Doone, we see John tempering the desires of his flesh in a selfless manner. In John’s view, it is not right to objectify anyone, because doing so degrades the person and raises the self, and we know from elsewhere in the novel that John strives to be humble. In contrast to objectification, John desires real relationships with people and desires real restoration of relationships (as we see frequently with his mother and sisters). Much more could be said about John’s pursual of a genuine relationship with Lorna throughout the novel; his refusal to gaze at her in her bower from afar is only the beginning. 

All of John’s views stem from his Christian beliefs, and nothing could be more anti-gospel than the objectifying male gaze. For the Bible tells us that God himself was not satisfied to merely gaze at his creation from afar but desired to come down and see us face to face, converse with us on equal ground and create (actually, restore) a real relationship with us, through the person of Jesus Christ. The objectifying male gaze is unChristian because it degrades the image-bearers of God and has the effect of destroying relationship and equality. In the garden of Eden, at the fall of man, relationships broke down (man-woman, human-God), but Christ seeks to bind these together again. A real man seeks to undo the effects of the breakdown of Adam and Eve’s relationship and the effects of sin’s curse by seeking a real relationship with a woman, on equal footing with her and respecting her autonomy and identity as an image-bearer of God. John Ridd is the ideal of that real man seeking a real relationship.

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Pure at Heart: Masculinity and Godliness in “Lorna Doone,” Part I of III

27 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Lorna Doone, masculinity, R.D. Blackmore, Wild At Heart

This may seem a violent and unholy revenge upon them. And I (who led the heart of it) have in these my latter years doubted how I shall be judged, not of men – for God only knows the errors of man’s judgments – but by the great God Himself, the front of whose forehead is mercy. – Lorna Doone

Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. Romans 12:19

[Plot details revealed.]

In his highly successful novel Lorna Doone (1869), the “gentle Victorian Christian” R.D. Blackmore has sketched a character seemingly opposite to his own: an exceedingly broad-shouldered and muscular, hyper-masculine, Hercules of a man. John Ridd turns sideways to fit through doors, hurls men through windows like haystacks and proves his strength unmatchable in the region through wrestling victories. In addition to his strength, John is the poster boy for masculine hero in other ways: he carries a gun, shoots with mastery, tames wild horses, earns his keep by hard physical labour, and possesses a hot-blooded temperament. Somebody tell John Eldredge and co. about this novel already.

Or maybe not. John’s outer appearance can be deceiving. John actually dislikes bloodshed and violence, and sees his strength as something often requiring taming and tempering, a force he must keep under control. When he feels his anger rising, he often leaves the room to regain composure; failing to do so leads to him regretting his resultant outbursts.

John also declines to fight in the rebellion (a decidedly man-filled enterprise) and looks upon its bloody carnage with a feeling of moral and religious horror: “Surely all this smell of wounds is not incense men should pay to the God who made them.” He also tells the reader, as he walks among the dead bodies of his countrymen strewn among the forest after the battle, “I saw nothing to fight about; but rather in every poor doubled corpse, a good reason for not fighting.” And he feels glad, after the first ambush on the Doones, that he did not kill anyone, “For to have the life of a fellow-man laid upon one’s conscience – deserved he his death, or deserved it not – is to my sense of right and wrong the heaviest of all burdens; and the one that wears most deeply inwards, with the dwelling of the mind on this view and on that of it.”

Even meditating on violence does not sit right with John: “Upon fighting I can never dwell; it breeds such savage delight in me; of which I would fain have less.” Additionally, he is not interested in punishing the man who killed his father: “‘Not strike a blow,’ cried Jeremy, ‘against thy father’s murderers, John!’ ‘Not a single blow, Jeremy; unless I knew the man who did it, and he gloried in his sin. It was a foul and dastard deed, yet not done in cold blood; neither in cold blood will I take the Lord’s task of avenging it.'” John is also mocked for his willingness to vote, but not fight, for the powers in authority.

But Lorna Doone is not a criticism of masculine strength — far from it. John Ridd’s strength and power is a source of great pride and joy for him. He acknowledges with satisfaction the respect and even fame his great stature garners him. He revels in the sport of wrestling, traveling far to maintain his reputation as undefeated champion. John takes joy in working the fields, pulling a sled as though he were a horse, carrying a flock of sheep through waist-high snow, practicing target shooting and accomplishing other manly feats of strength and prowess. The other characters in the book greatly admire John’s strength and the reader can’t help but join in. No, Lorna Doone is not a criticism of masculinity, but a celebration of it. Masculinity at play is beautiful. However, the novel promotes a particular kind of masculinity, as I will continue to explain, and one that is much at odds with the “glorious” violence in action movies, and even, I argue, one that hits the mark of godly manliness more accurately than does the once-popular (and hopefully now-dying) Wild At Heart movement.

You may have noticed that in fact John Ridd does commit some violent acts, such as throwing men through windows, burning down houses, punching a horse to blindness and fighting a man almost to the death. What makes John’s acts of violence different is that John’s are always in the protection of the innocent and vulnerable: women, children and animals — and even men. Violence is always a last resort for John, he never uses it to serve himself and he always tempers his violence with mercy. He does not attempt to avenge the death of his father, though it hurts him sorely, but is only driven to attack the Doone village when the Doones cruelly murder an infant, and John orchestrates the ambush with reluctance and misgiving. He only engages his nemesis Carver Doone in a fight after he believes Carver has murdered his new wife at their marriage altar in cold blood. In all of these cases, however, John acts with mercy – he ensures the Doone houses are empty before burning them and he does not murder Carver but rather shows him mercy in the end, leaving Carver’s death penalty to God (which God does not hesitate to immediately administer by sinking Carver into the swamp). Even after all John’s acts of mercy he still doubts the rightness of his violence: “I dealt him such a blow, that he never spake again. For this thing I have often grieved; but the provocation was very sore to the pride of a young man; and I trust that God has forgiven me” and “This may seem a violent and unholy revenge upon them. And I (who led the heart of it) have in these my latter years doubted how I shall be judged, not of men – for God only knows the errors of man’s judgments – but by the great God Himself, the front of whose forehead is mercy.” Furthermore, John’s final command to Carver after he lets him go reminds the reader of Jesus’ merciful command to the adulterous woman in the temple courts: “I will not harm thee any more…Carver Doone, thou are beaten: own it, and thank God for it; and go thy way, and repent thyself.”

John’s perspective on violence and death is a Christian one. John lives out the creed “vengeance is the Lord’s” as well as the command of the New Testament to protect the poor, widowed and fatherless, the latter especially seen when he takes Carver’s orphaned son under his care. For Blackmore, true manhood is humility, to deny the “savage delight” of the flesh, as John puts it, to humble one’s self, even when one is the greatest of all, to lay down one’s life for another, and to show mercy where it is not merited.

The more closely we examine these “manly” traits of John, however, the more difficulty we have in seeing them as distinctly “masculine” and more as “godly.” For these are values for all Christians to live by, both men and women, in whatever ways their abilities enable them to do so. Even women can wrongly desire violent revenge, as the reader observes in John’s youngest sister. And although the novel celebrates John’s excessive strength, I am inclined to question — is his Sampson-like strength an ideal or an aberration? Certainly no other men in the novel compare to John, except perhaps the Doones, and they are evil – they are masculinity “unchecked.” Strength in and of itself does not godly manhood make. True manhood is utilizing one’s gifts for the kingdom. In John’s case, his gift is his strength. If masculine strength were the ladder to godliness, how could women strive to be like Christ?

Let’s be clear – Lorna Doone is not a feminist text, in the radical understanding of the term; Blackmore does not espouse an anti-gender agenda (which would be out of character for the period and his religious beliefs, however feminist scholars might attempt to construct such a cringe-worthy reading). Rather, the book celebrates gender as a gift from God at the same time that it points to an identity beyond it, thereby simultaneously affirming gender and revealing its source a mystery. When we use our gifts for the kingdom, the light of the kingdom shines so brightly that our distinctions disappear in the dazzling brilliance of the Son, so that “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” For now, we live with the mystery of gender and can only wonder as to why God gives us the various strengths and weaknesses that he does. One thing we can be certain of, however, and that is we are called to use our strengths tempered with and submissive to the Word of God, which delights in hearts that are pure and full of meditations pleasing to God.

 

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Pride, Position and Romance in “Barchester Towers”

13 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

trollope barchester towers christian novel pride humility marriage covenant

Pride Goes Before Destruction

Mr. Obadiah Slope’s enormous pride and haughtiness become evident early in the novel and only worsen as the narrative develops. He foresees no obstacles to winning Mrs. Bold’s affection and feels confident in his ability to woo any women with his wiles. It takes a humiliating slap in the face to send him the message that his wiles are not welcome, and he reacts with rage, not humility. His also loses his sparring match with Mrs. Proudie over the control of Dr. Proudie. His greatest display of pride, his coveting of the deanery without any kind of humble introspection or self-examination to judge his own merits for the position, ultimately ends in his total fall and humiliation. His public character destroyed and all of his ambitions ruined, Mr. Slope perfectly exemplifies the moral of Proverbs 16:18:

      Pride goes before destruction,

      a haughty spirit before a fall.

The Last Shall Be First

Matthew 20:16; Matthew 23:12

Mr. Harding, on the other hand, the hero of the novel, is Mr. Slope’s character foil (the opposite). Whereas Mr. Slope always seeks his own advancement at all costs and at the sacrifice of any person, Mr. Harding continually turns down offers of advancement within the church and constantly worries about the feelings of others (probably too much, as this endearing foible lands him in an awkward scrape or two). In contrast to Mr. Slope’s arrogance in his self-worth, Mr. Harding is often concerned about whether he would be able to properly fulfill the duties of the positions he is offered – although comically everyone tries to assure him there are almost no duties. Mr. Harding ultimately settles down into a lifetime of humble obscurity, allowing his son-in-law to attain the position of dean instead of himself. On the final page of the book the narrator asks that the reader remember Mr. Harding

not as a hero, not as a man to be admired and talked of, not as a man who should be toasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdity as a perfect divine, but as a good man without guile, believing humbly in the religion which he has striven to teach, and guided by the precepts which he has striven to learn.

How Delightful is Your Love

Song of Songs 4:10, Genesis 2:18, Mark 10:7-9

Amidst the banality of the church and all its dry tradition, Trollope allows a fresh romance to blossom and calls it a “luxury” that “far [] surpasses any other pleasure which God has allowed to his creatures.” The narrator illustrates the beauty of love between a husband and wife by comparing it to the way a stone wall reveals the glory of ivy vines:

[Vines] were not created to stretch forth their branches alone, and endure without protection the summer’s sun and the winter’s storm. Alone they but spread themselves on the ground, and cower unseen in the dingy shade. But when they have found their firm supporters, how wonderful is their beauty; how all pervading and victorious! What is the turret without its ivy, or the high garden-wall without the jasmine which gives it its beauty and fragrance? The hedge without the honeysuckle is but a hedge.

Barchester Tower’s most beautiful illustration of the church (which is the body of Christ) is not in the clergymen or the architecture or the sermons, but in the marriage covenant. Eleanor and Mr. Arabin learn to forgive each other, then pledge a lifelong commitment to each other and enjoy the pleasures of marriage founded on the Christly principles of servanthood, humility and interdependence.

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Marriage, Divorce and Universal Salvation in “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” by Anne Brontë

22 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Anne Bronte, marriage and divorce, teachings of christ, tenant of wildfell hall, universal salvation

Quotes, Scriptures and Questions for Book Club Study

 Divorce

“‘But, Helen!’ I began in a soft, low tone, not daring to raise my eyes to her face – ‘that man is not your husband: in the sight of Heaven he has forfeited all claim to – ‘ She seized my arm with a grasp of startling energy.” –The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Scripture

-“I hate divorce,” says the Lord, the God of Israel.  Malachi 2:16

-Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Matthew 19:8-9

-Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Romans 13:1

-The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”   Hosea 3:1

Questions for Discussion

1. Since Helen can’t legally divorce her husband, what is Gilbert suggesting in the above quote? How would such behaviour contradict the teachings of Christ?

2. How are Brontë’s beliefs about divorce counter-cultural today? Why would society find them radical and oppressive?

3. If Brontë’s beliefs about divorce find their source in Christ’s teachings, how important then is the protection of the marital institution to Christ and why would he be so stringent about allowances for the dissolution of marriage?

4. How is Arthur Huntingdon like Hosea’s wife in the Bible? What is the broader theology of Hosea’s marriage?

  

Marriage 

“‘I will give my whole heart and soul to my Maker if I can,’ I answered, ‘and not one atom more of it to you than He allows. What are you, sir, that you should set yourself up as a god, and presume to dispute possession of my heart with Him to whom I owe all I have and all I am, every blessing I ever did or can enjoy – and yourself among the rest.'” The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

 Scripture

-“You shall have no other gods before me.” Exodus 20:3

-Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment.” Matthew 22:37

-Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 2 Cor. 6:14

 Questions

1. Helen doesn’t heed her aunt’s warning about marrying a man without principles and good sense. She overlooks Arthur’s faults and determines to see the best in him. Once struck with the reality of marriage, she believes she can try and reform him with her influence. Is such a pursuit of a husband (or wife) Biblical? What does the Bible have to say about choosing a spouse?

2. Since Arthur is not following the Lord, Arthur and Helen have an “unequally yoked” marriage. How does the novel show the consequences of such a union?

3. Why does God not desire “unequally yoked” marriages? What are the larger theological implications of such an understanding of marriage? Why did God create marriage? 

4. Can a spouse ever be justifiably jealous of his or her spouse’s devotion to Christ?

Universal Salvation

“The novel’s espousal of universal salvation was, as Anne explained in a letter, something which she had ‘cherished…from my very childhood – with the trembling hope at first, and afterwards with a firm and glad conviction of its truth. I drew it secretly from my own heart and from the Word of God before I knew that any other held it.'”

-from the Introduction to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wordsworth Classics edition

 Scripture

-For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Col. 1:19

-“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Matthew 25:46

Questions

1. Anne says her belief that all sinners will gain heaven, but those who are not saved will suffer temporarily in purgatory, is scriptural. What verses might she refer to to support such a viewpoint? What verses could you use against it? How would you explain verses that seem to suggest universal salvation, such as Col. 1:19?

2. Why might Brontë – or anyone – desire that universal salvation be true? What would it suggest about the character of God?

3. Why do you think purgatory (a temporary place of suffering) is not sufficient for God’s wrath? Why eternal separation?

Rounding out the discussion: Does the metaphor of marriage and divorce help illuminate the issue of salvation and damnation, or complicate it? How/why?

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Fruits of the Spirit in “Agnes Grey” by Anne Brontë

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

≈ 6 Comments

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agnes grey anne bronte analysis themes fruit of the spirit

“All true histories contain instruction.” – Agnes Grey

 

Is It Art?

 Agnes Grey offers a simple tale. It does not boast the sweeping drama of gothic novels. It does not tease with otherworldly characters and landscapes, such as in the other Brontë sisters’ novels. Its scenes do not sparkle with the nuances of witty conversation in an English drawing room, as in a Jane Austen novel. One might say Agnes Grey does not carry that kind of depth of vision.

 And if the novel were judged according to my university professors’ trifecta of “good” literature (and you thought the universities taught that art is subjective!) – degree of complexity, capacity to challenge the status quo, and lack of didacticism – Agnes Grey probably would not measure up (although I wouldn’t put it past critics to drag a feminist interpretation kicking and screaming out of the text somewhere, if they haven’t already). As I said before, the scope of the novel is narrow. Its subversion of the status quo appears to consist merely of defying wickedness with virtue (this is not a sufficient challenge to societal norms for academia, since it doesn’t involve any minority groups).  And Agnes Grey, a “history of instruction” by its own declaration, could be considered a morality story for grown-ups. By academia’s standards, this book offers little aesthetic value. Indeed, I never even heard of it until after university. I first discovered it at a book depot containing rare books.

 But another standard of judging art exists. It’s an old one, and it’s a delightfully Christian one. In 1595, when the plays of Shakespeare enthralled audiences, “A Defence of Poetry” by Sir Philip Sidney was posthumously published, roughly fifteen years after he composed it. Sidney built his case for the purpose and value of art firmly upon a Christian foundation.

 As an aside – Students of literature typically study Sidney’s “Defence” in classes on Renaissance literature, or even whole courses on Sidney himself, sometimes in companion with Edmund Spenser (I did), as he wrote his fair share of now-canonized poetry. Usually, though, professors teach “Defence” as a key to understanding the rest of Sidney’s works, and not as a way of understanding other literature. So the essay is really more of a literary relic, and understandably so; for secular professors and students, a handbook of Christian literary interpretation can be of little other use. 

 In “A Defence of Poetry,” Sidney argues that art’s purpose is to morally enlighten and instruct through beauty. He writes, “I affirm[] that no learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to virtue; and that none can teach and move thereto so much as poetry.” To paraphrase, the best instruction is that which not only inspires people to be good, but shows them how to do it, and poetry (or literature, as novels did not exist at this time. Sidney calls poetry “speaking pictures.”) does this the best. The source of all goodness and virtue for Sidney is God, but this goodness has been overshadowed by the consequences of the Fall. The poet’s duty is to imagine and represent the world as God intended it to be, as the present kingdom of Christ has restored it to and which is partly revealed in us.  Furthermore, when poets write, they glorify God, for the nature their imaginations conceive of far surpasses the nature we see around us, and as creatures formed in the image of God and set above nature, their creative acts point to and honour Him.

 It’s not hard to see how secular academia would find such an approach to literature irrelevant and relegate an essay advancing it to an artefact of literature itself. That is also how academia approaches the Bible.

 

Art That Enlightens

 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Gal. 5: 22

 Sir Philip Sidney’s “A Defence of Poetry” may not prove useful for understanding all Christian literature, but it can help illumine the meaning of Agnes Grey. Sidney’s interpretative strategy also establishes the novel as art, which secular standards of “good literature” might deny it. Additionally, such an interpretation explains the value of this kind of text to Christians.

 In the character of Agnes the author gives readers a “speaking picture” of the effects of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a follower of Christ. Though of course Agnes does not pretend to be perfect (“If you would but consider your own unattractive exterior, your unamiable reserve, your foolish diffidence – which must make your appear cold, dull, awkward, and perhaps ill-tempered too,” she remonstrates herself), her interactions with those around her demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit exemplified by Christ in the gospels and detailed by Paul in Galations.

 The pupils under Agnes’ charge test her every limit; nevertheless, mustering all the self-control she can, she strives to act with kindness and gentleness toward them (and their parents, who see their offspring through rose-coloured lenses), forbearing from lashing out in exasperation. “Patience, Firmness and Perseverance were my weapons; and these I resolved to use to the utmost,” the narrator writes, and that is quite a task, considering her first set of pupils’ behaviour is like something out of Dennis the Menace. At her second placement as a governess, the pupils, teenagers this time, challenge her with a whole other set of appalling characteristics which I will just sum up as “shallow” and “egotistical.” Through it all Agnes forbears, firstly, when her employers unjustly criticize her methods and falsely accuse her of negligence and she offers no retort, and secondly, when one of her own pupils, Rosalie, attempts to win the heart of the man Agnes admires, even though Rosalie is secretly engaged to another.  

 Agnes’ efforts to reform her pupils are, unfortunately, unsuccessful. However, in the end, Rosalie acknowledges her former governess’ virtue and sense, as she laments her poor marriage choice and begs Agnes to “be [her daughter’s] governess as soon as it can speak; and you shall bring it up in the way it should go, and make a better woman out of it than its mamma.” But Agnes’ greatest reward for her patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control is the attention they attract of the curate Mr. Weston, an equally virtuous person, and who ultimately asks for her hand in marriage.

 Through Agnes, Bronte demonstrates the qualities of a Christian filled with the Holy Spirit, who perseveres and endures, though enemies face her on every side, and who treats others with the virtues Christ lived out and taught his disciples to imitate. Agnes Grey is art because it shows us what living in the kingdom is like. The character of Agnes, though not perfect, displays the attributes of a kingdom dweller, and it is these characteristics that cause her to appear foolish to those who live in the kingdom’s shadow (her employers and their children), yet attractive to those who live in the kingdom’s light (the curate).

 Indeed, for those living outside of the kingdom, beauty (and by extension, art) can only appear to exist in the eye of the beholder because they possess no standard by which to measure it. Kingdom-dwellers, on the other hand, are immediately attracted to reflections of the kingdom. It is no surprise in the end that Agnes and Mr. Weston should be attracted to each other, as they each bear marks of the kingdom. It should also come as no surprise that Christians should be attracted to and find value in Agnes Grey the novel, a novel wholly concerned with kingdom matters. 

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

23 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

≈ 5 Comments

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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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