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Tag Archives: Elizabeth Gaskell

Introducing “Sylvia’s Lovers” by Elizabeth Gaskell

08 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis, Introducing...

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Elizabeth Gaskell, Jane Eyre, press-gangs, tyranny

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

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

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

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

*some spoilers ahead*

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

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

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

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

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

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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 “North and South” by Elizabeth Gaskell

07 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

class, Elizabeth Gaskell, industrial England

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

Image result for north and south book

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

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

Further reading about Elizabeth Gaskell on Christian Victorian Literature :

Introducing Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Body of Christ in Mary Barton

Introducing Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Great Victorian Sin in Ruth

The Fall of Women in Victorian Novels

Introducing Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

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Is the Novel Inherently Protestant?

06 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in For the Student of Literature, Misc.

≈ 3 Comments

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Elizabeth Gaskell, novel, Protestant Reformation, Protestantism, Robinson Crusoe

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? – Matthew 16:26

Joseph Bottum argues in his article “The Novel as Protestant Art” in Books & Culture: A Christian Review that the novel is and has always been an art form that is quintessentially Protestant. The genre of the novel never existed before the Protestant Reformation because prior to it, Christian salvation, according to Bottum, had never been understood as an individual responsibility. Instead, the church – its teachings, sacraments, indulgences and penances – acted as the agent of salvation. Only after the Five Solas of the Reformation (by scripture alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone, and glory to God alone) could a writer pen a character’s conversion to Christ on an island all alone solely by reading the Bible, thus fulfilling all of the Five Solas. This scene occurred in what many consider to be the first English novel, Robinson Crusoe:

[When] we reach the central moment of the novel, Robinson Crusoe finally reads the Bible he has brought from the wrecked ship, and – without a church community or a teacher to aid him, sheerly from the power of the divine text itself on an individual conscience – he writes, “I threw down the Book, and with my Heart as well as my Hands lifted up to Heaven, in a kind of Extasy of Joy, I cry’d aloud, Jesus, thou Son of David, Jesus, thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give me Repentance!”

Like no other art form, the novel presents the greatest in-depth study of the psyche and the consciousness – in other words, the soul – ever. No previous genre delved so deeply into such self-awareness or focused so entirely on the soul on its journey of salvation. Unified narrative elements, such as plot, character and theme achieve this. And the novel as a genre reaches its height of unified soul-searching in the Victorian Era. Consider Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, a social problem novel that values individual reformation – a change of heart – above economic and political reform. Such an approach defines her book as inescapably Protesant. Bottum comments:

However powerfully our society controls us, it is an epiphenomenon created by the metaphysical drama of the soul. However completely our culture shapes us, it is, on the cosmic scale, only the prismatic spray tossed up by individuals acting out their individual salvation plays. Where, except in the reformation of many separate selves, could we find a solid basis for change in their society and culture?…. Only the soul has true metaphysical weight and consequence, and the novel is the story of a soul’s journey.

Novels imply the existence of an all-powerful Creator-God guiding the destinies of the characters in his stories. And the destination of every true soul-searcher is God-likeness – sanctification. The heroine learns lessons, swallows her pride (or prejudice), comes out the other end wiser, older, maturer, a better person – more sanctified. None of this would be possible without an ordered, meaningful universe where individual lives themselves contain meaning, just waiting to be discovered. Bottum says, “The journey of the self is the deepest, truest thing in the universe, and the individual soul’s salvation is the great metaphysical drama played out on the world’s stage.”

In university, I was devastated to hear the novel (Pride and Prejudice given as an the penultimate example) more or less written off as a symbol of the bourgeoisie, functioning to reinforce class division. So I am somewhat pleased to read Bottum’s take; I agree that considering the religious beliefs of a writer should come before whatever social analysis (Marxist, feminist, postcolonialist, etc) but are often never given the time of day because Marxism etc. hold religion to be merely a function of class. However, Bottum is Catholic, and I get the sense that his article is critical of the novel’s Protestant stranglehold. He says he wishes he could go back and “start over, pretending the march of modernity and the parallel histories of the novel and the self hadn’t happened.” What do you think? Do you perceive the novel as the journey of the soul? Leave your thoughts below.

 

 

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Introducing “Cranford” by Elizabeth Gaskell

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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

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

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

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

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Introducing “Wives and Daughters” by Elizabeth Gaskell

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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

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

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

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

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

23 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Analysis

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

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

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

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

Working Class Bodies

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

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

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

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

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

Middle Class Bodies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Unified Body of Christ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Introducing “Mary Barton” by Elizabeth Gaskell

23 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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class, Elizabeth Gaskell, industrial England, mary barton

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

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

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

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

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by ChristianVictorianLiterature in Introducing...

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Elizabeth Gaskell, fallen woman, Ruth

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

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

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

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

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