A Novelist and a Gentleman

(This is half-baked, but we'll run with it)

George Eliot, on Fielding:

A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those intital chpaters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his arm-chair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as if delivered from a camp-stool in a parrot house. I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe (Middlemarch 132).

Ford, with usual aplomb, cuts right to the chase:

The besetting sin of almost all other English novelists from Fielding to George Meredith is that they seem to cut their characters out with hatchets and to colour them with brushes of house-painters and never, even at that, being able to leave them alone, they are perpetually pushing their own faces and winking at you over the shoulders of Young Blifil, Uncle Toby, the Widow Wadman, Dick Swiveller...and the rest (11). (Eliot's not mentioned here -- but it's still a jab)

Elsewhere, Ford hews to the notion of a kind of objectivity -- a distancing from the moralizing voice, which Eliot seems to embrace too (her goal is to reveal, not explain - which Fielding, she implies, does too much of already). OK, check. But for Ford, the emphasis moves entirely from narrator to character, with Eliot's sympathetic narrator entirely off the radar. With Eliot, too, the emphasis is on discernment (on seeing)-- for Ford, it's style and craft (on making characters, rather than finding the right lens).

What's interesting here, in part, is that while Ford lingers on Fielding, he pretty much glosses over Eliot entirely -- the English novel, by his account, stops with Richardson, then picks up and moves to France during the entire progression of Whig politics until Henry James comes along. Fielding and Thackeray he dismisses as "nuvvelists," who care relatively little about their characters, but who "would have knocked you down if they could, supposing you had suggested that he was not a 'gentleman.'" But what's his beef with Eliot? "Gentlemen" (or ladies) don't craft, according to Ford. I wonder if he would also say they don't observe?

That's all I've got.

On Thomas Babington Macaulay

From the Dictionary of Literary Biography on Macaulay's writing for the Edinburgh Review:

The Edinburgh Review was the quasi-official organ of the Whig party, and the period from 1825 to 1834--during which Macaulay wrote most of his reviews--was a politically acrimonious time preceding and following the passage of the Great Reform Bill of 1832. Arrogance and invective were characteristic of the Edinburgh's reviewers as a group. In these years, Macaulay wrote twenty-seven articles--ostensibly book reviews but in fact wide-ranging essays on topics suggested, sometimes rather loosely, by the book under scrutiny. They are not today his most impressive writings, but they were the ones that established him both as a political and a literary figure.

Specifically, on the relationship between Macaulay (writing for the Whigs) and J.S. Mill (writing for the Radical party) circa 1830.

It was because of an article in the Edinburgh Review that Macaulay came to the attention of Lord Lansdowne, who in 1830 helped secure him a seat in Parliament through his pocket borough of Calne in Wiltshire. The first essay (January 1825) was an abolitionist argument on the West Indies. This piece was followed by other purely political works, including a series of three attacks on James Mill and the Utilitarians in general. The general line of argument was that Mill was too theoretical and insufficiently pragmatic, that he reasoned from a priori notions rather than from observation of fact. These three essays are important in that they constituted one side of a debate between the Whig Edinburgh Review and the Westminster Review, the organ of the Benthamite Philosophical Radicals or Utilitarians. In his Autobiography (1873) John Stuart Mill recalls his own role in answering Macaulay's objections to his father's writings but also admits that the Edinburgh articles helped modify his faith in his father's views.

Brainstorming session

Thinking about mid-Victorian reform movements -- how to categorize them, how to relate them to literature:

• Owenites -- important as a variation of socialism that predates Marx
• Bentham / Mill - Utilitarianism -- focusing on institutional reform
• Socialism to Fabianism - post-Marx, precurser to the welfare state
• Moral reform -- including low church movements, temperance, education (in my head, all aligned with Unitarian activism)

Things I need to define more clearly in order to answer this question

• New Poor Law -- first major piece of Benthamite legislation
• Christian Socialism - Maurice, Ludlow, Kingsley
• Ten Hours Movement (1847)
• Anti-Corn Law League (1846)
• Chartism -- as a comparable bit of working-class activism?
  

Clearly there is more reading to be done here. What I need is a good solid history to get my facts straight. But right off the bat, the literary question being something about literature's relationship to institutions? As opposed to a more personalized "moral" approach?

These are my thoughts so far.

Hey! Jude!

Some hardcore interpellation needed here -- poor Jude Fawley! You just want to shake him -- not just call him out, but pick him up, take him home, maybe feed him some soup? His life's not actually that bad, until God, the church, and marriage step in and fuck it all up for him.

So then - Jude's horrible marriage. Both of them! Where shall we start?

(Jude on Arabella) Illuminated with the sense that all was over between them, that it mattered not what she did, or he, her husband stood still, regarding her. Their lives were ruined, he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with the affinities that alone render a life-long comradeship tolerable (64)

On marriage, then -- focusing on divorce laws, but also Hardy's critique of common-law marriage? On marriage, sex, and children (a BIG issue), and why contracts are something to be wary of.

There's a really interesting point about halfway through, when Sue is worried about her marriage, and Jude says something to the effect of "Nobody cares!" Meaning, marriage among the poor is largely invisible -- if they were lords, it would matter, but because they are poor, they actually have a tremendous amount of freedom do "do as they like," (in Arnold's words).

(Jude - on divorce) There is this advantage in being poor obscure people like us -- that these things are done for us in a rough and ready fashion. It was the same with me and Arabella. I was afraid her criminal second marriage would have been discovered, and she punished; but nobody took any interest in her -- nobody inquired, nobody suspected it. If we'd been patented nobilities we should have had infinite trouble, and days and weeks would have been spent in investigations (248).

This is obviously not true in practice -- the book spends an inordinate amount of time looking at how communities police themselves. The uncanny ability to know when someone is married or when they aren't is an interesting point here - Hardy emphasizes the *visibility* of marriage quite a bit, whether on paper or in practice (this is something that Sue, at least, never seems to get). Certainly relevant re: common-law marriages (vs. more formalized unions). Also relevant re: marriage by deception -- in Arabella's case - where one can stumble into marriages before even realizing what is happening.

I have no idea where spiritualism comes in here. To be honest, I don't feel like I 'get' any of the conversions in the novel. They don't seem to be nearly as persuasive, as a critique of social practice than the community scenes (where Jude and Sue are being ejected / where Jude is speaking among a group of people). Personal conversion is all fine and dandy -- and may be a good way to read Sue, separately -- but it doesn't seem to fit within the broader context of the quartet, especially with the main focus on Jude, whose loss of faith seems solid throughout.

Point of order: Conversion MIGHT be an interesting place to bring in D.H. Lawrence - especially since he really wants to focus on Sue, an dmake her the central point of the novel


A few sections I want to look at:

1. Phillotson's conversion (Section IV) - his arguments for free love to Gillingham (along with Eliza, one of the only characters outside the quartet) --> as a defense of free love / of common-law marriage - a Platonic union (223)

(Though later, we find out that he justified this mostly because he assumed Sue was having an affair - i.e. having sex with Jude)

2. Section V (in Aldbrickham) -- the "domestic" section, where Jude and Sue live happily with Father Time, Idyllic domestic bliss -- also, the point where the social body (the gossiping townspeople) come most stringently to the fore. Notably, the section where Arabella is not permitted into the house. Introduction of children (Father Time). Also, later, the section where Jude and Sue become transients.

3. Section VI (in Christminster) as a critique of homelessness - especially when the family is literally forced to split up for the evening. The fear is that Sue will have her baby -- what actually happens is the triple / homicide (notably, when Jude is not around)

Throughout the novel:

Male friendship vs. female friendship -- why do Sue and Arabella never connect? Not in comparison with Jude, but with Phillotson, who has male friends throughout (first Jude, then Gillingham) --> later, the failure of male friendship? (SUE as Jude's only friend? 350)

Hardy's relationship with the Bronte sisters -- Arabella as a succubus (Jane Eyre, the returning wife) -- also Wuthering Heights -- the transient lovers (in the end, treated ironically) - Arabella - a working-class Bertha Rochester? (a way to bring this character to life?) --> an ironic inversion of the succubus wife?

Arabella: She may swear that on her knees to the holy cross upon her necklace till she's hoarse, but it won't be true. She's never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she's as he is now (397)

Oh, that English Jutish blood...

Hammond: As to our looks, the English and Jutish blood, which on the whole is predominant here, used not to produce much beauty. But I think we have improved it. I know a man who has a large collection of portraits printed from photographs of the 19th c., and going over those and comparing them with the everyday faces in these times, puts the improvement in our good looks beyond a doubt

Now, there are some people who think it not too fantastic to connect this increase of beauty directly with our freedom and good sense in the matters we have been speaking of: they believe that a child born from the natural and healthy love between a man and a woman, even if that be transient, is likely to turn out better in all ways, and especially in bodily beauty, than the birth of teh respectable commercial marriage bed....They say, Pleasure begets pleasure. What do you think?

Guest: I am much of the same mind (96)

Five British Socialists I'll Bet You've Never Heard Of

I've got two (Shaw, Morris). Three are news to me. (Kropotkin, Stepniak, Bernstein).

1. S. Stepniak: Russian anarchist turned liberal, Stepniak published Underground Russia in 1883, arguing that acts of terrorism were a crucial line of defense against the Tsarist regime. He was the most visible advocate of the Terror (1870's) in Britain, called assasination "the collective act of reformers," and writing vivid profiles of revolutionaries (including Kropotkin). He spoke forcefully against Tsarist despotism, arguing for free speech and freedom from political orthodoxy. Though ostensibly a socialist, Stepniak had no affiliation with Marx and was primarily concerned with liberalizing Russia rather than exploring Hegelianism or class struggle; Kropotkin later wrote that he was largely disillusioned by conspiracies and bickering in Socialist factions (though an active organizer himself).

Why he's important: William Morris read his book and said that it "ought to open people's eyes a bit and do good" -- he later became friends with Stepniak, who contributed one of the first articles to Morris' newspaper The Commonweal.

Major works: Underground Russia (1885), which reappropriated the term "nihilism" for revolutionaries of 1870s in the service of terrorism and warfare. The Career of a Nihilist (1887?), a romantic novel loosely based on Stepniak's early political life.

Closest native affiliation: Christian Socialism, particularly in his later years, as he became more cautious about the use of violence in revolution.

2.

The Line, the Human Body

In line with that last excerpt:

There is only one best way of teaching drawing, and that is teaching the scholar to draw the human figure: both because the lines of a man's body are much more subtle than anything else, and because you can more surely be found out and set right if you go wrong...The sense of pleasure in drawing a good line, would really, I think, be education in the due sense of the word for all such people as had the terms of invention in them (248)

What's interesting here, incidentally, is not that the line serves as evidence of work or labor (or alternatively, the pleasure, as after-effect / evience, of making the line in the first place) -- but its sympathetic (and markedly erotic) association with human-feeling in the present moment. The lines are subtle because the body itself is subtle - which is something you don't get, unless you're actively trying to draw it. The artist understands work, in part, because they directly enact it by putting ink to paper -- for Morris a deeply physical move, the enactment of labor through the production of art. The movement of the body - enacting labor *through* the body - is a key part of what seems to sublimate labor through the work of art.

On second read, maybe what he's actually doing here is just putting the 'work' back into 'work of art' - taking it down off the pedestal, and making it analogous to other forms of labor. Still, it seems worth parsing out the difference in these terms -- looking at how 'pleasure' and 'leisure' are correlated, if ever so slightly different ways, with Morris' broader definition of 'work.'

Elaine Scarry would probably be a good place to go for this. Might be worth looking into.