Of the earth earthy
I’ve been thinking (on and off) about something slightly puzzling. The people who rebuke militant atheists or Enlightenment fundamentalists or secular dogmatists or deaf scientistic positivists or some other combination of those and similar terms, often murmur something about the importance of religion for art and literature and music. After bumping into one of those murmurs a few days ago, I suddenly noticed a puzzle. It’s this: the one about literature isn’t true. That’s very odd, isn’t it; why isn’t it true?
Of course, there are exceptions; there are some bits of literature that are very goddy; I’m not ignoring Dante and Milton. But – most literature actually isn’t all that goddy – even literature written at times when atheism was a capital crime; even literature written by believers, or at least people who went to church. Literature on the whole seems to be a very, very secular and above all worldly undertaking. That’s very odd, isn’t it?
I’ve noticed this before, actually, but in different contexts and so from different angles. I remember being astonished a couple of decades ago when I first read The Decameron – I was astonished that any medieval book could be so very worldly and so cheerfully lewd. But I should have been more astonished by later people too – I should have wondered about it more.
Think about it. Think about Shakespeare, or Austen, or anyone else you like. They just don’t talk about God and goddy things the way you would think they would if they took the whole thing seriously. Yet Austen, at least, did take it seriously (and Shakespeare may have; no one knows).
Why is that? Why is God tacitly left out? Why is the whole subject mostly bracketed? Why isn’t it central? Why, when they write about human lives and characters and morality and experience, do they mostly talk about all of them in purely human worldly quotidian terms? Why do they have plenty of clergymen and clergymen’s wives and daughters, with so very little searching talk about what the clergymen are actually there for?
I’m really curious about it. I think it’s strange. It’s strange because if the god hypothesis is true, it ought to loom immensely large; if you believe it’s true, it (surely) must loom immensely large in everything you think about life and the world; many producers of literature have believed it’s true; yet they write on the whole as if human life were just what I think it is: human life, period. It’s odd that there isn’t a radical split in poetry and plays and novels written by believers and those written by non-believers – but there isn’t. They ought to inhabit and describe completely different worlds, and yet they don’t. Why is that?
It’s not true of painting, or of music; why is it true of literature?
I have one guess: it’s only a guess. I’ll be interested to know if anyone has others. My guess is that it doesn’t work, and that the reason it doesn’t work is that the God character isn’t around. It’s hidden. We’re supposed to believe it’s there (we’re especially ‘supposed to’ in literature of earlier periods) but we also all know it’s hidden – and because it’s hidden, it’s peculiar and creepy to talk about it – apparently even for believers. That’s interesting. Gravity is hidden too, of course; so are atoms; but it’s not creepy or peculiar to talk about them; but it is creepy and peculiar to talk about God much – much or even at all. I don’t think Austen ever so much as mentions God.
If that’s right, it means that even believers (many, most) don’t really believe God is there in the same natural easy way we all believe in what’s around us. It may even mean that they (or many or some of them) think they do but really don’t.
Strange, isn’t it. Fantasy is fine; magic realism is fine; Harry Potter okay, Wizard of Oz okay, ghosts and witches okay; but God…hmm…not really. Except of course for evangelicals and the Rapture books, but those don’t count, being a recent local product of the Third Great Awakening; the question is why more literature hasn’t been like the Rapture books all along.
Cheap shot: because if it were like the Rapture books, it wouldn’t be literature…
Interesting question. Outside the rather showy evangelical tradition, one is not supposed to have a particularly personal relationship with God – that’s what priests are for – and thus, if one is not a showy evangelical, it might not seem proper to introduce God into literature, which has concerned itself mostly with interpersonal relationships. It would be like launching into a diatribe on the separation of powers, or industrial mediation policy, while at tea with one’s grandparents…
There are, of course, some very ‘literary’ figures absolutely obsessed with a religious journey — John Bunyan is one, and ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ was an immensely popular text. William Blake is another.
Another dimension would be to accuse much literature of being snobbery in print – written by people who find religious enthusiasm vulgar, and disdain it, while being sure people like them will get to Heaven… That’s rather crude agitprop thinking, though.
Anyway, overall the whole thing is a red herring of course. Being an atheist doesn’t mean one has to repudiate history, or the products of less secular ages; nor does it mean that one cannot find shared aesthetic grounds on which to critically appreciate cultural products of religious inspiration. I doubt the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks much of the ‘Left Behind’ novels…
A lot of medieval literature is religious – Everyman; the Mystery Plays; Pearl. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and The Pilgrim’s Progress were probably the most read of books for English protestants in a later period though part of the pleasure of Bunyan is the adventures. There were allegories about life and death that were highly Christian. There were dream poems when you would get allegories about sins and virtues. Canterbury Tales is explicitly about going on a pilgrimage and it is highly Christian though critical of corruptions in the church. Richardson’s Clarissa and Pamela are expressly Christian; so is Samuel Johnson; I think Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is highly Christian and Villette is highly Protestant. There are Donne and Herbert. There is of course Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. You mentioned Milton. There will no doubt be studies of what people read – what proportion was not concerned with religion eg many ballads or love poems. But a substantial amount of what people read probably up to about 1900 was Christian eg Trollope, Mrs Gaskell and even in trash novels of the 19th century there was a strong sense of the sinners bing punished and themes of a specifically Christian redemption. And there are of course Little Women and What Katy Did and Anne of Green Gables – all young people’s books and all highly Christian to a preachy degree. And still readable and charming today.
There’s a Dutch writer whose name escapes me at the moment who tried to encapsulate the promise of the Messiah’s second coming in a novel. He ended up with a novel consisting of a single, 80,000-word sentence. I think this points to one of the reasons why prose literature isn’t necessarily very “Goddy” (though it can tackle religious themes in many other ways). Music is highly abstract, painters and sculptors may focus on one particular scene; but prose literature necessarily has some kind of temporal structure on it, some progression of events and actors. Can you imagine a novel about the miracle of the Creation, or about the second Coming? About God as God, rather than the going-ons of (possibly religious) people? The Finnish novelist Waltari was a devout Christian, but his novels (not necessarily his poems!) deal with human corruption, moral degradation, etc. usually in a historical setting. The subject fits the format.
Well, there is a (purported) novel about the second Coming – but it has an obvious problem. I once noticed my theologist father reading the Left Behind books, but he stopped pretty quickly. When I asked him why, he mentioned he pretty much knew the story already, and it was all getting a bit boring. Christianity already has its basic narrative involving God’s interaction with people. It is not easy to turn the Jesus story into something “new” in literature (some have tried). To a much lesser extent, film has the same problems. I’ll unashamedly confess to liking Mel Gibson’s “Passion” (seen it twice), but as a work of art, it lacks something in that it is basically a cinematization of the Stations of the Cross.
It is of course possible to build an alternative narrative concerning people and God. But that would easily become SF literature, an unfairly maligned sector. I’d say Dan Simmons’ Hyperion books are an instance of this. But of course religiously orthodox writers would bark at such an enterprise.
I think this goes some way to explain the absence of directly “Goddy” prose literature. I don’t think the same counts for poetry: there’s a lot of very directly religious poetry (and some my favourite poets deal very directly with religious themes).
But religion as such influences art in much more subtle ways. Autobiographical novels about miserable Protestant childhoods in inbred villages are a common trope in Dutch postwar literature. In Scandinavia, the far north is both home to the most strict Lutheran sects and a strong base for the Communists – so radical twice over. And a lot of the more interesting writers, painters, etc. seem to come from Lapland. Of course, the relationship between art and religion is a very negative one here. But happy societies aren’t a fertile soil for art.
“prose literature necessarily has some kind of temporal structure on it, some progression of events and actors”:-
Thanks Merlijn – I was groping for that but it kept slipping out of my fingers.
I know; I know C. Bronte is Christian; I know Trollope is; just as I know Austen is; but that was my point – they’re ‘Christian’ in some sense but they’re not goddy – that’s what strikes me as odd. Very odd. My point was explicitly not that Trollope and Co are not Christian but that they are.
But there are not that many depictions of god in painting, if you think about it. Yes, there are many religious scenes, taken from the Bible or the Christian traditions, but God? So I think the word “goddy” is a bit misleading (even if I quite like it!).
Seriously, I think KB is not far from an explanation with these references to medieval literature. Art is (also) a product, artists needs patrons and customers to survive. Prior to Gutenberg there wasn’t that many potential buyers in the field and a lot of the wealth (or even the technical ability to create books) was concentrated in the Church… That period still gave us a lot of “secular” literature though (medieval poetry and “Chansons de geste” for instance) but it’s not surprising that, as soon as authors had the opportunity to look somewhere else for a living, they pounced upon it. It took a lot longer for painters/sculptors and musicians to free themselves from wealthy patronage.
A somewhat prosaic explanation, I am afraid…
No that’s true, not a lot of goddy painting. Lots of jesusy painting.
And true about poetry – I nearly mentioned Donne and Herbert. Funnily enough, I actually like Donne’s ‘Batter my heart, three-personed God’.
And I did jump over the medieval stuff (though I thought of Canterbury Tales – it seems to me pretty dang worldly, despite pilgrimage etc – and then there’s Troylus and Criseyde, despite the unconvincing recantation at the end – very worldly).
Maybe I mostly mean the bourgeois novel, and most drama. But the basic oddity remains – novels packed with vicars and bishops and curates and their relations, but little or no religious content. And the subtle stuff doesn’t count, because that would still be my point: why subtle, why not right out there? And as for mere morality, that really doesn’t count. Sinners being punished needn’t be religious at all.
I recommend counting. When you’ve decided what to count. Evidence, you know.
I speculate that in earlier times, it was actually dangerous, like talking religion (or atheism) at the dinner table. Some eg Bunyan dealt with religious themes, but possibly the presence of a large professional and amateur class of theologians meant that literary writers were not game to take it on, because you might end up before the beak.
There was a large theological writing market too, don’t forget. Some literary writers wrote in the theology category too, I believe; certainly some scientists did. If your category was clear, the markets self-classify. You then didn’t have to fear people understanding your metaphors too clearly or misunderstanding them to your detriment.
Surely many of the most influential and aesthetically powerful works of literature ever created are contained in the Bible, and most especially in the Old Testament! Furthermore, many of the very greatest works of literature, visual art, and music in the European tradition take their source material from the Bible. While we need not accept that the Bible provides a source of scientific information, we cannot ignore the literary power of much of it.
Kierkegaard’s Either/Or has an obvious religious overtone to it – if you count epistles as literature, then Either/Or has to be one of the finest examples of it – the assorted ‘papers’ point to the importance of the religious life by trying to demonstrate the failure of the other forms of life.
At the other end of the spectrum, Terry Pratchett – more intelligent things have been said in the Discworld novels on the subject of religion and the gods than almost all of the Christian theologians of the last two thousand years put together.
Literature seems to revel in the evil – the sin, misdeeds, punishments, Hell and damnation. In literature it’s explicit, in most of the churches it’s slightly more implicit. Evil is interesting, heaven is boring. As humans, we naturally pick the boring out of fear. Hence Starbucks, hence romantic comedies and hence heaven. None of these are particularly great to represent in literature.
Surely, also the problem of monotheism bumps on up to us here – the Greek gods are primarily described in literary pieces rather than revelatory pieces. Zeus and friends has given us lots of good literature, but should we *not* laugh when someone professes beliefs in the gods of the Athenians lest we be thought of as ‘secular fundamentalists’ (whatever they are)? This is not an academic debate, as I did hear a news article recently about a group of neo-Greco-Pagans who have won the right to practice the worship of the Greek gods in the Pantheon. The local Christian groups were going apeshit about it. Of course, the only decent response to the idea that someone is worshipping Zeus is laughter.
Just some fragmentary thoughts. Ophelia, just so you know, it looks quite likely that this “culture war” bullshit is well on it’s way to being as big a thing here in the UK as it is in America – I think that B&W has a long future ahead of it…
I’m not so convinced that literature is different in this respect from art and music, either.
Music is certainly “case not proven”; “this makes a nice noise and I believe in God so I will decide it is to the greater glory thereof” is just as likely a way round as “I love God, now what nice can I think of to make to express that love?”.
Similarly, how many painters just liked painting the human form and decided that calling the particular human form they wanted to paint “Jesus” just fitted in nicely (and possibly made them feel better about wanting to pain human forms at all, depending on prevailing moral norms)?
It’s harder to write a book about getting married or war and claim it’s really all about god.
potentilla: Kierkegaard’s ‘Judge’ character would certainly dispute about the marriage. But, yes, regarding art – the political forces of the church have had a fair bit to do with the fact that there is so much religious art. When the primary art patron is the Pope, how much art do you see that’s not about religion?
Depends on the pope, of course. There were some very worldly popes during the Renaissance, bless their little hearts.
Ah, Stratford Will ….
Had a few words, some in passing on the passing of the singing of the old chantries, anmongst other things:
LXXIII
That time of year thou may’st in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou sees’t the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the West;
Which by and by, black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou sees’t the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie;
As the death-bed wheron it must expire,
Consum’d with that with which it was nourish’d by.
This thou percievs’t, which makes thy love more strong,
To love well which thou must leave ere long.
“They just don’t talk about God and goddy things the way you would think they would if they took the whole thing seriously.”
Maybe they don’t talk about God and goddy things they way *you* would think they would, Ophelia. I’m not sure what this is evidence for though.
This is a huge subject in fact, The Representation of God in Western Art, Literature and Music, a bit big for a blog and comments.
I would say that when you study medieval literature and you are from a modern Church of England Protestant background it is something of a shock to see God being treated with such familiarity – he turns up as another character in the Mystery Plays but once he has created the world and seen off Adam and Eve there isn’t much for him to do. So the people who wrote such things got on with writing knock about comedy with Herod and tragedy with the crucifixion. A huge motive of doing any kind of writing is to hold the attention of your audience. So the sacred and profane were mixed, as they are in the reliefs in cathedrals.
BTW that line from Handel’s Messiah – Comfort Ye my People – seems to be an explanation of religion. We people certainly need comforting.
Oh, thanks, Chris – what an enlightening comment.
Well Ophelia, you aren’t going to get very far in understanding the way religious believers talk about “Goddy things” if you read them with very strong prejudices about how they *must* talk if they take such things seriously.
Hmm. True. On the other hand, you seem to be taking the whole thing as a ‘gotcha,’ but it wasn’t. I am genuinely curious as to why Austen’s novels, for instance, aren’t more overtly, explicitly goddy. My guess is that there’s some buried principle of taste at work – but the question is why. I think that is genuinely interesting. It would be embarrassing and weird to have Lizzy and Jane talking about God…but why? Given that Austen was a Christian – why? I understand why I would find it icky, but I don’t entirely understand why Austen would.
It may be the ‘Evangelical’ thing, as Dave said. There’s that bit in the letter to Fanny Knight, about the suitor Fanny isn’t sure she wants to marry after all, and is it because he is Evangelical – ‘I’m not so sure we shouldn’t all be Evangelicals,’ Austen says, with what degree of irony or seriousness we can’t tell.
It could be that; it could be fashion, the tone of the times, etc; it could be something about fiction, or the novel; it could be something about Austen’s sense of what she’s good at. But if you’re saying I’m wrong to think God is not around much in Austen’s fiction, I flatly disagree. The church is everywhere; God is almost nowhere (almost because I think there are a few exceptions).
And come to think of it – I would add a further point. A point about your inaccurate reading – a reading whose inaccuracy is probably prompted by your dislike of me or what I say and think, and your resulting general hostility.
What is that emphatic “*must*” doing there? When that’s exactly what I didn’t say? When that’s what I avoided saying? What I said is, “They just don’t talk about God and goddy things the way you would think they would if they took the whole thing seriously.”
“One would think” – there’s a big difference between ‘one would think’ and ‘must’ – and it’s just all too damn typical of you to misquote and misattribute that way. You do that to people you disagree with, and it makes you look small, spiteful, and childish. I made the mistake of giving you the benefit of the doubt on first reading that reply – but that was before I noticed that obnoxious and typical misreading. I think you’re better than that, Chris, but I’m not really sure why I think that.
If you are interested in following up Jane Austen’s Christianity I would try C S Lewis’s Essays in Criticism. I can’t find my copy so can’t quote it but he does cover how in her novels Christianity is expressed, covertly rather than overtly.
As for medieval literature – Christianity is entirely taken for granted. You could make the analogy of politics – hereditary monarchy and lordship are also taken entirely for granted but that doesn’t mean that the literature deals all the time with kings. It is just assumed that the rightful ruler will be a king or a feudal lord. Narratives embody that principle but don’t overtly deal with that principle.
It’s in the nineteenth century (eg Gissing, Eliot, Samuel Butler, Arnold) that faith is dealt with overtly.
I would say a lot of medieval literature comes as a surprise – much of it has a rather database, classificatory quality – they love great lists of things or people – and much is very worldly, and much mixes up the classical and the Christian.
One thing that is totally unlike medieval literature is Tolkein.
I know – I like The Allegory of Love a lot. I read some medieval literature myself at one point, just out of interest.
But anyway, the covertness is the point. It’s very very covert indeed. I can buy Fanny as a Christian character, but Lizzy? Not so much.
Marilyn Butler is interesting on Austen too. Not entirely convincing, but interesting.
I’m cross I can’t lay my hands on the C S Lewis book – I have a nasty feeling that was the book I put through the washing machine with my clothes. And if you know what a load of washing looks like if it has been washed with a bus ticket or an old tissue think what it looked like having been tumbled with a whole paperback!
Anyway, having shared that with you he points out that though the good Austen women are very different in personality they do share exactly the same standards in morality. He calls it “the grammar of conduct”.
Something else occurs to me – and this ties in with your surprise at the often light-hearted worldliness of some medieval literature. It is an idea that the religious are necessarily solemn – that it is a hushed business of best clothes and quiet behaviour. Now in the kind of Christianity I was brought up that was true – but of course for many eg gospel singing types, religion is a joyful business.
Anyway, the idea of solemnity and seriousness may equate for you. So as Fanny is solemn and humourless so she can seem more Christian than the sparkling Elizabeth. However Elizabeth says that “I never ridicule what is wisse or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.” And her idea of good would be the same as Fanny’s, even though Fanny doesn’t laugh at anything.
But it may be that you can’t really believe that someone as delightful as Elizabeth could possibly be a Christian.
Hmmmmmm. I think he’s not quite right about that. There are subtle differences. There’s a whiff of Lady Catherine about Emma – or else there’s a whiff of Frank about Lizzy. One of them has to have it wrong. Lizzy wouldn’t have those thoughts about the mixing of ranks if everyone started going to balls at the Coles’ – Lizzy would be more like Frank, and share his something like inelegance of mind in her indifference to rank.
And would all of Austen’s good women do what Emma does to Harriet, when she pressures her to refuse Robert Martin? I do not think so.
On the whole he’s right though. They all basically speak for Austen.
Irritating about the book. I hate losing essential books. I think I might have that one myself, actually.
Oops, that was a cross post.
“But it may be that you can’t really believe that someone as delightful as Elizabeth could possibly be a Christian.”
No, you’re probably right, I can’t. But then again – I wouldn’t find her nearly so delightful if she were an obvious Christian. So it’s a bit circular.
But that’s the puzzle – it looks to me as if Austen wouldn’t either. Now, how can that be? If I’m wrong, if Austen would have found her just as delightful if she’d been an obvious Christian, why didn’t she make her one?
True about that statement of Lizzy’s. But then I don’t equate what’s wise and good with what’s Christian, so…
“And her idea of good would be the same as Fanny’s, even though Fanny doesn’t laugh at anything.”
Hmmmm. I’m not absolutely sure. That’s one of the deeply interesting things Austen does in MP – she presents two Lizzy-like characters who are not altogether good, though they are also not altogether bad. They’re more like good but corrupted – and so lost. But I think Lizzy would have liked them at first, whereas Fanny never did – Fanny disliked their very liveliness and vitality; she found it tiring. She would have disliked Lizzy.
And she’d have been wrong. There’s something wrong with Fanny – she’s not really good. Or she is but she isn’t. She’s a force for dreariness – for sitting still, for hiding, for darkness and no jokes. She’s a bit Talibanish. She’s morbid. She means well, but she’s…
she’s dreary, and that’s not a good thing. It just isn’t. Life is short, we need energy and humour and happiness and health. Fanny is like a death-force.
Now…I wonder if I can think of a literary character I like who is an obvious Christian.
Dorothea Brooke. But I wouldn’t call her delightful – and I like her despite the Xianity, not because of it.
Come on; do better than that.
Um…
Helen Burns in a way; but she’s Fanny all over again.
Okay; no, I can’t; but then it’s notorious that Lizzy has no rivals for sheer likability. I heard someone on tv the other day refer to someone as the most lovable female character in English literature (oh, Molly Gibson, it was) and I was just opening my mouth to remonstrate when he added ‘apart from Elizabeth Bennett of course’.
Are obvious Christians lovable? Can they be?
I can think of one in real life, certainly: William Lloyd Garrison. A stone hero of mine.
Maybe that will have to do.
BTW they were showing Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow on television the other night – I’ve seen it before and I thought it was a pretty good adaption with a light comic touch and Gwyneth Paltrow did manage to be charmingly and lovably absurd. However the actress who played Harriet Smith was not pretty enough for the part – Harriet should be a doll.
I suppose you are right about Emma’s touch of the De Burghs – she is the heroine who has the most power of all of them and misuses it.
And Anne Elliott? She is not lively but her gentleness and her sadness and poetic feeling and sympathy are very attractive. I find her very lovable.
Actually the Austen woman who cuts me to the heart is Charlotte Lucas – a bright woman forced to marry a total fool.
Oh, I know. Poor Charlotte – ‘it was melancholy to leave her to such society.’ But she wasn’t actually forced – her options were far from attractive, but she wasn’t forced. But what a nightmare, all the same.
Yes, I like Anne. Anne isn’t like Fanny. The differences are small, but they’re enough.
Austen did that on purpose, I’m pretty sure – she wanted us to have a hard time liking Fanny, she wanted to give us a hard task. She wanted the charmers to be not what they ought to be, and the good one as depressing and irritating as she could possibly be.
Anne isn’t incapable of laughing, and Fanny apparently is; I suppose that’s what it is. I don’t get along with people like that. I never have. I can think of fundamental antipathies I had in childhood, and they were with people who somehow lacked that organ. I think it matters – I think it’s not trivial or just style or personality or some such; I think it matters. I hate and fear people who want to stamp out laughter. I think they’re death.
Is this really so? : “As for medieval literature – Christianity is entirely taken for granted. You could make the analogy of politics – hereditary monarchy and lordship are also taken entirely for granted but that doesn’t mean that the literature deals all the time with kings. It is just assumed that the rightful ruler will be a king or a feudal lord. Narratives embody that principle but don’t overtly deal with that principle.” ??
What about the Papacy, or the republics of Venice and Genoa?
Oligarchic, yes, maybe plutocracies, but not hereditary nobilities …..
Even Florence, until the rise of the Medici.
There were alternatives.
And at the end of the Middle Ages, the rise of the Nation-state presaged the simultaneous rise of the non-nobly born as great servants of the states – who then became assimilated into the systems.
You’re quite right – my view of medieval times is highly Anglo and Scottocentric – sorry to have missed out the rest of Christendom. Though the oligarchies were hereditary at least in Venice it was kept in the hands of self-electing families.
And I do think the principle of hereditary rights (of which we retain a trace or two here in the UK) was unquestioned (hastily trying to regain some ground).
Anyway, to continue the Austen thread (and probably bore everybody else) Austen said Fanny was “too good for her”. I think she is an ideal of female submissiveness and modesty and self-sacrifice which so nauseates us in nineteenth century English literature. Possibly taken to her logical and unpleasant conclusion.
Mind you the modern ideal of “feistiness” (ie very rude and often noisy like the girl in Flashdance) can be pretty unpleasant as well.
So we bore everybody else, so what, they don’t have to read it.
Yes, about Fanny – though there’s a lot more to it than that, I think. For instance…Austen denies her any way to be really actively kind. She’s helpful to Susan toward the end, but that’s not really the right kind of thing. She’s utterly powerless and resourceless, and nobody gives a shit about her, so she can’t really be actively kind even if she wants to. And then, in addition to submissiveness and so on, she’s so weak and whiny and unhealthy.
But, exactly, about modern ‘feistiness’ – I hate the very word. And that’s the fiendishly clever thing about Mary Crawford (about Austen’s creation of her) – if one makes a great effort, one can see her that way – as not charming and amusing but ‘feisty’ and tiring and relentless. One can see her as Fanny does. It takes an effort, but it can be done. (It helps that I know someone to whom I react that way – I find her very funny, very raucous and disrespectful and attractive that way, yet at times I just wish she’d shut up and let people finish their sentences. It helps that she really is funny – some of the most helpless with laughter I’ve ever been was her doing.)
I always like Fanny better when I’m actually reading the book. But when I’m not, I dislike her.
Wow.
It is true that I do get irritated by the feeling that your prejudices get in the way of your understanding of what other people have to say. That’s all I was trying to convey with the must really. But you are quite mistaken to think that I dislike you personally.
Sorry, I’ll try to be less snipy and sarcastic next time.
Thanks, Chris. That really would help! It makes a difference, as you probably can see.
Sure; you may well be right. But I try to correct for that. That’s part of the point of this post – it’s mostly interrogative. I’m wondering if I’ve overlooked things – specifically, if there are conspicuously explicitly (as opposed to formally implicitly) Christian characters in (well-known) novels (especially 19th century). There’s Dinah in Adam Bede, and…
?
I think that ? is interesting, that’s all.
I think for the explicitly Christian you would find it more in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. It is perhaps an English quality that you don’t talk much about those things, distrusting enthusiasm and zeal as low and dissenting.
It’s interesting that the intellectual freethinker George Eliot should have sympathetic overt Christians – she is much more sympathetic to the radical dissenters and Evangelicals than Trollope. As well as Dinah she has Rufus Lyon in Felix Holt (though he’s an awful old bore) while to Trollope the Evangelicals are a bunch of kill joys who go to absurd extremes to curtail harmless pleasure (Rachel Ray is good on that). He is very much the man of the world about his parsons.
BTW Esther Lyon is a strong contender for Highly Attractive English heroine.
Trollope I think had two overt sympathetic Christians – the gentle, ineffectual Mr Harding of The Warden – “no better Christian” – and the tragic, suffering Josiah Crawley of The Last Chronicles of Barset, whom critics have pointed out seems much more of a Dostoevskyan figure. But they enact rather than preach even though both are clergymen by profession.
Yeh; Dostoevsky and later Tolstoy, definitely. But the distrust is not just English – look at the French novel for example.
It is interesting about Eliot – but she found the whole subject interesting. She was a strenuous Christian herself in adolescence – she knew the experience from the inside.
The Warden…I found The Warden deeply off-putting, because of the way even the best (gentlest) people took it absolutely for granted that a nice middle-class guy needed the disputed funds a lot more than a number of destitute old working-class guys – that it was quite all right that the legacy had been diverted from its original purpose of supporting several poor people into providing a middle-class living for one person.
So much for ‘Christianity’.