Category Archives: Analysis

Prejudice and Suffering in “North and South”

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

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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

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“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.”

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

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

23 Friday May 2014

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“….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.

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

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

26 Saturday Apr 2014

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[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.

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

27 Thursday Mar 2014

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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.

 

Pride, Position and Romance in “Barchester Towers”

13 Friday Dec 2013

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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.

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

22 Thursday Aug 2013

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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?

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

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

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“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. 

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

23 Saturday Mar 2013

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“…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.

The Great Victorian Sin in “Ruth” by Elizabeth Gaskell

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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A First Look

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

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

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

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

A More Redeeming Look

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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