ABSTRACT

DOUBT AND FAITH IN LATE NINETEENTH
CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION

BY

Roy Melvin Anker

America's cultural pluralism and religious
sectarianism have always complicated the task of defining
its religious mood at any point in its history. The dif—
ficulty applies particularly to American religion in the
late nineteenth century when orthodoxy confronted the
challenges posed by Darwinism, the higher criticism, and
comparative religion. By looking closely at the religious
fiction of doubt and faith in eleven separate popular and
elite authors, the six chapters of the dissertation at-
tempt to understand the nature and scope of America's re-
sponse to scepticism.

The first chapter examines Harold Frederic's The_

Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), a novel which won wide

 

pOpularity in the late 1890's. Through the experience of
the novel's minister-protagonist whose fate foreshadows

1

Roy Melvin Anker

America's future, Frederic portrays the displacement of
America's traditional spiritual-moral energy by subtle
forms of a reductionist epistemology which revere only

the empirical and accept self-interest as an ethical

norm. The natural consequence of this secularist per-
spective, facilely rationalized by the new thought, leads
to a social and political elitism that bodes ill for Amer—
ica's egalitarian ideal which demanded a measure of self-
forgetfulness inspired only by a faith in the Transcen-
dent. Similar concerns with the social complexion of
America and an incipient empiricism informed part of the
lifelong religious inquiry of well-known critic and novel-
ist William Dean Howells, whose fiction is examined in
Chapter Three. Through the first half of his career,
Howells sought conspicuous indications of beneficent pro-
vidence amid the social turmoil of urban-industrial Amer-
ica. Howells eventually exchanged this insistence for
more complex notions of individual suffering and expiation
modeled on the paradigm of Jesus. Coincident with this
interest in the social was HOwells' quest for conclusive
evidence of an afterlife, which was initiated in The Un-

discovered Country in 1880. In time, this desire led

 

2

Roy Melvin Anker

Howells to respect the subjective and non-rational as
modes to "truth" at the expense of the empiricist's in-
sistence on factual knowledge.

Chapter Two looks at pOpular female novelists
Augusta Evans Wilson, Elizabeth Phelps Ward, and Margaret
Deland, whose best-selling fiction often sought to under-
stand and mediate between doubt and faith in a time of
widespread religious confusion. These writers were joined
in their efforts by the novels of clergyman—turned-novelist
E. P. Roe, which are considered in Chapter Four. Like his
feminine counterparts, except in a more direct fashion, Roe
through his score of volumes offered rationales for the
trustworthiness of the subjective experience of Christian
truth. As authors Wilson and Ward, Roe saw a conspicuous
Christian piety of compassion as an effective rebuttal to
the empiricist's demand for objective validation of reli-
gious claims.

The defense of heterodoxy in late nineteenth-
century fiction appeared in the work of three noted scep-
tics, Celia Parker Woolley, Helen H. Gardener, and Minot
Judson Savage. Chapter Five surveys their fiction which
integrated old-style deistic criticisms of Christian

3

Roy Melvin Anker

doctrine and practice with the new insights afforded by
Darwinism, the higher criticism, and comparative religion.
Both Gardener and Savage saw inevitable progress within

the fabric of evolution. Mrs. Woolley agreed but dissented
from religious liberalism's excessive emphasis on the ra-
tional at the expense of emotional and non-rational modes
of knowing. Joining in this criticism of the new scepti-
cism were historian Henry Adams and turn-of-the-century
novelist James Lane Allen, who are considered in the clos-
ing chapter. Adams' Esther (1884) rejects both scientific
and religious, non-rational modes of knowing as inconclu-
sive, although both have some validity. Allen's many novels
develOp a comparable agnosticism. As did Mrs. Woolley,
Allen noted the negative emotional and moral effects of

an exclusive devotion to the distant ideals of any opti-
mistic evolutionary faith.

Taken as a group, despite their obvious differences,
these eleven notable fiction-writers, in their explicit
subject matter and their expectations of readers' knowledge
of contemporary religious issues, indicate that America's
response to the late nineteenth century's sceptical chal-
lenges to faith were serious, reflective, and widespread.

4

DOUBT AND FAITH IN LATE NINETEENTH

CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION

BY

Roy Melvin Anker

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1973

Copyright by
ROY MELVIN ANKER

1973

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is my pleasure to acknowledge Distinguished
Professor Russel B. Nye, the chairman of my doctoral com—
mittee, for his guidance and consideration in the prepara-
tion of this thesis. I also wish to express gratitude to
Professor Robert T. Anderson of the Department of Religion
for his reading of the individual chapters as they appeared.
The same appreciation extends to Professor C. David Mead
and Professor Victor M. Howard of the English Department
who read the final draft of the thesis and served on my
doctoral committee. I wish also to acknowledge Professor
James H. Pickering, Graduate Chairman of the Michigan State
University English Department, whose advice over the past
few years was often timely and served to expedite the
length of the doctoral program. Lastly, I wish to thank
my wife Ellen, without whose patience and good humor this

project might never have been completed.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Page
INTRODUCTION 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 1
Chapter
I. HAROLD FREDERIC'S THE DAMNATION OF THERON
WARE: AN EMBLEM OF AMERICA'S SPIRITUAL
AND MORAL Loss 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O 22
II. POPULAR FEMALE NOVELISTS: THE DIFFICULT
PATH BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND DOUBT . . . . . 93

III. "THE RIDDLE OF THE PAINFUL EARTH": THE
RELIGIOUS QUEST OF WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS. . 158

IV. EMPIRICISM AND FAITH: THE NOVELS OF
E. P. ROE. . O C O O O O C C O O C C O O O 239

V. SOME SCEPTICS: THE WAYS OF DOUBT AND
NEW FAITH. O I O C O O O C O O O O O O O O 286

VI. HENRY ADAMS AND JAMES LANE ALLEN:

KNOWLEDGE AND THE FUTURE . . . . . . . . . 337
CONCLUSION O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 392
BIBLIOGRAPHY O I O O O O O O O O O C O O O O O O O O 404

iv

INT RODUCT I ON

In his essay on "Evolution and Theology in
America," historian Stow Persons comments that

Few comprehensive generalizations do jus—
tice to the evolutionary impact upon American
religious thought because of the wide variety
of beliefs and attitudes in a community that
had long cherished the spirit of religious
freedom. An exhaustive study would require
the examination of each sect and denomination
in order to determine the nature and the bit-
terness of the conflict, which doctrines were
jeopardized, how the group reacted in defense
of its traditions, and what concessions if
any were made to the evolutionary outlook.

 

1"Evolution and Theology in America," in Evolu-
tionary_Thought in America (Archon Books, 1968), p. 425.

 

 

The difficulties that Persons notes in assessing the im-
pact of evolution on American religion apply equally well
in determining the influence of two other major intellec-
tual movements of the late nineteenth century, the higher
criticism of the Bible and comparative religion. These
combined with Darwinism to redefine the traditional param-

eters of doubt and faith in Christian orthodoxy. It will

be the purpose of this dissertation to examine, through a
survey of the Gilded Age's fiction of religious doubt, the
nature and extent of the religious impact made by these
three movements. A careful analysis of popular and elite
fiction-writers affords a View of what the authors them—
selves, who in only two cases were clergymen, and their
often very considerable audiences were thinking religiously.
Wherever possible, this study will follow a novel—
ist's thought through his canon in order to observe any
new influences or changes in his religious direction.
Often, however, as with Harold Frederic and Margaret De-
land, novels of doubt were a one-shot venture at dramatiz-
ing the author's or the public's religious attitudes. In
any case, the popularity, if not the durability of the
age's religious fiction offers some indication of the
variety and scope of serious religious inquiry. Other
novels with religious subjects, such as Lew Wallace's

famous Ben-Hur (1880) and Charles Sheldon's In His Steps

 

(1898), found popularity in late century America, but this
study will restrict itself to that religious fiction which
directly confronts the religious issues peculiar to the

late nineteenth century in America.

In order to attend directly to these problems of
faith, we will look at those writers who reached maturity
and began their careers in fiction by the appearance of

Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species in 1859, the

 

volume which most symbolized and publicized incipient
religious questions of long standing. Except for one
novel, Augusta Evans Wilson's Beulah (1859), all the fic-
tion under examination here followed the Civil War, be—

ginning with Elizabeth Phelps Ward's The Gates Ajar (1868)

 

and ending with William Dean Howells' The Leatherwood God

 

(1916). In four cases, in order to perceive a writer's
changing attitudes, fiction written after the turn of the
century has been pursued. The years following the Civil
War to the close of the century evidence a steady fre-
quency of well—known religious fiction, although the cen-
tury's last two decades show an increased number of self-
conscious novels of doubt and faith.

Each of the eleven writers considered in the fol-
lowing chapters reSponded in a different way to the domi-
nance of Darwinian thought in the intellectual milieu of
the late nineteenth century. More than the higher crit—
icism and comparative religion together,the validity and

meaning of evolutionary theory preoccupied theological

debate. The Presbyterians offer a typical example of
intra-denominational disagreement. While Princeton Semi-
nary theologian Charles Hodge rejected Darwinism outright

in his What Is Darwinism? in 1874, his seminary President,

 

Scotchman James McCosh, attempted to reconcile evolution
with traditional concepts of design in nature. Scientists
matched the interpretive disputes of theologians. Indeed,
eminent Harvard biologists Louis Agassiz and Asa Gray
echoed the differences of Hodge and McCosh, Agassiz deny-
ing evolution and Gray christianizing it within the Nicene
creed. Such contention among the orthodox was common and
needs little elaboration, but evolution was no less influ-
ential for admitted secularists. As the sceptics dis-
cussed in Chapter Five illustrate, Darwinian thought not
only confirmed and reinvigorated their older, deist-style
criticism of Christian doctrine, but it offered a new,
alternative vision of progress from which to protest
against the static and moribund culture of American Chris-
tianity.

On the part of theology, two distinct attitudes
emerged toward Darwinism in particular and the domains of
science in general. The "dogmatic" position, as Herbert W.

Schneider names it, contended that the Bible "does not

teach science and science does not teach religion." In
declaring this separation, dogmaticians "accept Copernican
astronomy and Darwinian evolution in so far as they are
systems of natural science, but . . . reserve the right

to declare the truth about God and the soul." A second
group, the "philosophical," sought reconciliation or syn-
thesis of the facts of science with the truths of revela-

. 2 . . .
tion. For these later, the issues posed by the Darw1n1an

 

2 . .
"The Influence of Darw1n and Spencer on American

PhilOSOphical Theology," Journal of the History of Ideas,
VI (January, 1945), p. 3.

 

 

controversy centered in the problematic nature of history,
creating "a crisis of historical consciousness," as his-

torian Martin E. Marty has concluded.3 Darwinism over-

 

3Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in
America (New York, 1970), p. 189.

 

 

turned prevalent religious understandings of time and na—
tural order. It initially affronted traditional Christian
assertions of spontaneous creation that are suggested by

Genesis. Similarly, the precise chronology of human his-
tory, estimated by one theologian to be approximately six

thousand years, met a severe rebuke in conceptions of an

almost limitless time of natural law stretching far into a

non-human pre-history.4

 

4 . ' . .

Langdon Gilkey, "Evolution and the Doctrine of
Creation," in Science and Religion: New Perspectives in
the Dialogue, ed. Ian G. Barbour (New York, 1968), p. 160.

 

 

 

Perhaps the greatest threat to Christian supposi-
tions came in the Darwinian's vision of historical and
natural process. Historian Richard Hofstadter comments
that by the advent of Darwin, "For nearly a century the
argument of design, as popularized by the English theolo-
gian William Paley, had been standard proof of the exis-

tence of God."5 While the Bible offers some support for

 

5Social Darwinism in American Thought, Rev. ed.
(New York, 1959), p. 25.

 

 

the idea, Christian theology had incorporated design, ac-
cording to Stow Persons, as an accommodation to the "phi-
lOSOphy and Spirit of the Enlightenment," which had en-
visioned nature to be a sufficient indication of the char—
acter of God and a proper guide "for the purposes of ra-

tional worship."6 With the orderly distribution and

 

6"Evolution and Theology in America," p. 422.

 

immutability of the biological species as its key tenet,
the appeal to design, as R. J. Wilson has summarized, "was
simultaneously a scientific interpretation of nature, a
theological argument, and a comforting moral view of the

world."7 Theologically, the permanent forms posited in

 

7Darwinism and the American Intellectual: A Book
of Readings (Homewood, Illinois, 1967), p. 3.

 

 

 

the design theory were held important, in Langdon Gilkey's
words, "because they were purposefully or teleologically
preadapted to each other and to their environment by the
wisdom and benevolence of the Creator in a glorious har-

mony of ends and means."8 Darwin's theory replaced this

 

8Religion and the Scientific Future: Reflections
on Myth, Science, and Technology (New York, 1970), p. 11.

 

 

 

static, balanced View of nature with the random variation
of species emerging from aimless natural selection. By
the early nineteenth century, geology had offered empir-
ical proof of extinct species, and developmental anatomy
soon showed man's connection with lower forms of life.
Ultimately, from a Darwinian perspective, man arose "not
from the purposive providence of God but out of the con-

flux of the random novelty of variation and the ineluctable

law of survival--strictly and solely the child of change

. . 9 . . . .
and determinism." Such a View contradicted traditional

 

9Gilkey, "Evolution and the Doctrine of Creation,"
p. 164.

 

Christian versions of the mechanics of creation and nature
and, on a more profound level, all hope for a teleological
dimension to history.

In the two decades following Darwin's Origin, few
scientists and religious or secular thinkers perceived
evolution in these bleak terms. Non-Christian Herbert
Spencer, an English theoretician who in major ways anti-
cipated Darwin, saw inevitable progress within the fabric
of evolutionary change. Two famous American preachers,
Congregationalist Henry Ward Beecher and Episcopalian
Phillips Brooks, integrated evolution into essentially
orthodox structures by diluting the randomness of natural

. 10 . . . .
selection. DiVine immanence in natural process replaced

 

loWinthrop S. Hudson, The Great Tradition of the
American Churches (New York, 1963), Chapter Eight.

 

 

 

older reverence for transcendence, and America's Victorian
optimism received encouragement from the idea of the pro-

vidential Operation of an ever-progressing history.

More negative interpretations of Darwinism awaited
the second thoughts which appeared in the last two decades
of the century. The blind, heedless force portrayed in
the literary naturalism of Frank Norris and Jack London
found confirmation in the social chaos of late nineteenth-
century industrial turmoil. With reference to those
novelists in this study, eminent novelist and critic
William Dean Howells struggled with Darwinism as a threat
to his hOpes for a discernible moral order superintended
by a beneficent deity. The two heterodox tempters of the

protagonist in Harold Frederic's The Damnation of Theron

 

Wa£g_(1896) argue for moral fatalism and self-interest
from Darwinian criteria. Patrician historian Henry Adams
offered an agnostic perception of an indeterminable and
unlimited force of history in his novel Esther (1884).
Through a series of novels bridging the turn of the cen-
tury, best-selling novelist James Lane Allen expressed
reservations about a slow cosmic process that at times
seemed inpenetrable and often operated at the price of
unwarranted individual suffering. In her second novel,
Beulah (1859), Augusta Evans Wilson considered and re-
jected a directionless nature to see God's love infused

in its many benign faces. Other orthodox novelists,

10

E. P. Roe and Elizabeth Phelps Ward, noted the evolu-
tionary hypothesis but went on, as did Howells and Fred-
eric, to grapple with the underlying epistemological
questions which empiricism asked of faith.

Only three of our writers gave unqualified en-
dorsement to an Optimistic version of evolution: feminist
Helen H. Gardener, clergywoman Celia Parker Woolley, and
noted theologian Minot Judson Savage, one of the first
American preachers to articulate such a view. All theo-
logical liberals (Miss Gardener was perhaps an agnostic),
they dissented vigorously from the non-empirical theolog-
ical categories and assumptions of Christian tradition.
Instead, they emphasized the necessity of reason and
close attention to substantiable fact as norms and bene-
fits of evolutionary progress. Only Mrs. Woolley cau-
tioned, as would her conservative brethren, against the
dangers of an exclusive rationalism and the neglect of
subjective insight.

Without doubt, Darwinism made the largest impact
of any intellectual movement on the American religious
scene in the late nineteenth century, as the abundance
of its commentators amply illustrates. Yet, not all of

this response arose from the Specific contentions of

ll

Darwin's theory. It perhaps drew the greatest attention be-
cause for many Darwin's views "completed, confirmed,and rad-
ically symbolized the new scientific world view"cflfthe "uni-

formity of mechanical cause.“11 The spirit of Darwins scru-

 

llGilkey, "Evolution and the Doctrine of Creation,"

p. 164.

 

pulous investigation of traditional assumptions was shared

by other fields of contemporary historical scholarship which
vitally contributed to the religious controversy of the
Gilded Age. As historian Sydneyll.Mead has noted, if Darwin-
ian methodology helped formulate a "so-called 'new historyf"
"The 'higher criticism' of the Bible was largely the appli-

cation of the new history to the sacred volume."12

 

12The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christian-

ity in America (New York, 1963), pp. 168-69.

 

 

 

By the late nineteenth century, the application of
new literary and historical critical methods,especially the
more accurate dating of manuscripts, had led to serious
doubts about the infallibility of Christian revelation.
John Herman Randall, Jr. comments that when scholars judged
the Bible

by the same canons of investigation that were being

applied to the study of Virgil, of Homer, of the
medieval chronicles and records, the conviction was

12

forced upon men that the Scriptures embodied the ex-
perience and the early myths and the later spiritual
discoveries of the Hebrew people over a long period
of time, and that to attempt to look upon Holy Writ
as all of one piece, and as all equally inSpired and
valuable, was impossible. A careful study of the
texts to determine the authorship and date of the
various parts-—the so-called "higher criticism"—-
revealed fundamental discrepancies with traditional
beliefs. Differences in style, contradictory ac-
counts of the same even, conflicting commandments
purporting to come from God, made the older Protes—
tant View that every word and every point was di-
vinely inspired and literally true, exceedingly dif-
ficult to reconcile with faith in the wisdom and ra-
tionality of God . . .the sacred books became the
record of early mythological and imaginative at-
tempts to understand the world and its meaning, of
sacred poetry, of religious and civil laws, and of
the prophetic messages of noble souls.l3

 

13The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the

Intellectual Background of the Present Age, Rev. ed.(Boston,

 

 

 

Such traditional certainties as the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch, the genuineness of Old Testament prophecies, and
the authorship of the Gospel of John soon fell under serious
question. A related widespread endeavor to discover the hu-
man,"historical Jesus" as distinct from the biblical Christ

received impetus from Ernest RenaanThe Life of Jesus £1896L

 

Biblical criticism had long been a tradition within
the Christian church. Roman Catholicism had always inter—
preted the Bible freely, perhaps because of an alternative

authority in tradition. At the start of the Reformation,

l3

Luther's radical Christocentrism had relegatedtflmaOld Testa-
menttx>virtual unimportance. English Deists both accepted
and rejected the Bible on the basis<xfnatural law. The early
nineteenth century in America had seen a small, but vigorous
movement of biblical criticism. Liberal Harvard professor
Andrews Norton contended with the conservative scholarship
of Moses Stuart,the grandfather of Elizabeth Phelps Ward
whose fiction will be considered in Chapter Two. The failure
of this movement to retain younger disciples,such as George
Bancroft,and the interruption of the Civil War effectively
ended its influence. Thus, when the biblical criticism re-
emerged in America during the 1870H3,its sources were almost
exclusively German. Moreover,American theology and its con-
stituency reacted as though biblical scholarship was of re-

cent invention.

 

4Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism
in America, 1800-1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown,
Connecticut, 1969), p. 180.

 

 

 

Attacks upon the Bible in the late nineteenth century,
if we can judge from the novels under consideration here,
combined the information made available by the new histori-
cal criticism and the rational strategies of old—style deism.
The later challenged the moral character of biblical person—

ages, particularly those of Jehovah and his prophets and

 

 

 

14

their teachings. Indeed the scepticism of well-known infidel
Robert<3.Ingersoll, whose disciple HelenIL.Gardener we shall
look at in Chapter Five,more often relied on a rationalistic
moral criticism of the Bible than on the factual base of the
higher criticism which undercut the Bible's traditional infal—
libility. Fellow sceptic, Minot Judson Savage, a prominent

theologiananuipreacher who publishedaasingle novel Bluffton

 

in 1878, utilized both approaches in a rationale for thisljm-
beral religion of evolutionary optimism. Unitarian clergy-
woman Celia Parker Woolley adoptedtfluasame approach in her

novel of doubt and new, broader faith, Love and Theology (1887).

 

In novels of doubt which maintained a relative alle—
giance to the older orthodoxy Augusta Evans Wilson's heroine
in Beulah (1859) finally returns to the Bible as man's only
consolation and hope after rejecting it for its geological
and historical inaccuracies. Assorted characters of Eliza-
beth Phelps Ward, granddaughter of biblical scholar Moses
Stuart, are aware of biblical difficulties, but noneanxamore

affected than A Singular Life's Emanuel Bayardvfim>is refused

 

ordination because of his doubt about inerrancy of scripture
and his denomination's treatmentcm'the biblical understanding
of hell. Bayard's doubts do not extend to the rightness of
Jesus' ethics or the essential, ever-abiding love of God,

however. An adherence to a strict biblicism and rigorous,

15

though loving Calvinism precipitate marital tragedy in Mar—

garet Deland's John Ward, Preacher (1888). The prominence of

 

uncertainties about the Bible in the novels of these best-
selling authors was matched in the fiction of the Reverend
E. P. Roe whose fiction tried to mediate faith's way between
objective revelation and subjective experience.

The higher criticism also plays a crucial role in1flue

heterodoxy of the hero in James Lane AllenfisThe Reign of Law

 

(l900),although Allen does not enter into detail on specific
issues and questions the adequacy of his hero's new confidence
in an abstract evolutionary optimism. Similarly, in Harold
Frederic's novel, the damnation of the Reverend Theron Ware
results in part from the minister's uncritical embrace of
Darwin and historical criticism of the Bible and a precipi—
tant rejection of Christian ethics. The many novels of Wil-
liam Dean Howells contain references to issues of biblical
criticism, although nowhere does he venture a discussion of
them or an explicit attitude toward their merits. EknrHow-
ells, as for most of these eleven writers, mention of the
issues of the higher criticism presupposed reader awareness
of the complexity and rangecnfdebate surroundingaaparticular
tOpic. More often than not, references to biblical contro-

versies served as touchstones for the reader that sufficed

16

to convey the intellectual-religious climate of an author's
world.

A last major intellectual enterprise which also arose
from the new historical consciousness was the study of world
religions. {Nuaincreased understanding of historical theology
in Christendom--the way in which culture affected theologi-
cal formulation at any one time--soon led, as Sydney Ahlstrom
has explained in his recent religious history of the American
people, to a consideration of the

relation of Hebrew religion to its ancient neighbors,
or the Apostle Paul's indebtedness to Greek thought
and the oriental mystery cults. In these pursuits
many of the major disciplines for studying the his-
tory of religions were first developed. But it was
the Western discovery of the great "higher religions"
of the Orient, above all Hinduism and Buddhism, that
raised the more difficult questions, because these
highly philosophical religions possessed an intrin-
sic appeal for an age already imbued with idealistic
philOSOphy and pantheistic theology . . . . Highly
enthusiastic historical accounts raised more direct
theological questions,above all, how is one to demon-
strate the superiority and finality of Christianity?
Even disclaimers raised the specter of religious
relativism.15

 

5A Religious History of the American People (New
Haven, 1972), p. 773.

 

 

Within such logic, Christianity could easily succumb to rel-
ativism, like other world religions. Its claim to absolute
authority, embodied in the Bible and doctrine,faced yet an-

other challenge. On Christianity, with scripture and dogma

17

under assault, lay the burden of proof--a word which would
focus the energies of those novelists wishing to salvage
Christianity's unique, transhistorical character.
Comparative religion prominently influenced the
thinking of only a few of the novelists under consideration

here. Harold Frederic's orthodox minister in The Damnation

 

of Theron Ware (1896) is taken aback by the atheism of a

 

Catholic priest and a Darwinian scientist who refer to the
Incarnation as the'Tfiuist-mythfl which is only one of numer-
ous similar myths in world religions. Augusta Evans Wilson,
whose heroines and heroes show endless interest and erudi-
tion in comparative religious studies,cites the emerging
discipline as a frequent cause for scepticism. The three
heterodox novelists discussed in Chapter Five--Minot Judson
Savage, Celia Parker Woolley, and Helen H. Gardener-—diaxmun:
Christianity as simply another of the world's religions, if
not an inferior one. They strive, as does Mrs. Woolley's

Arthur Forbes in Love and Theology (1887), for a "natural and

 

universal religion" which transcends the self-interested
parochialism of dogmatic Christianity. Like the higher cri-
ticism, scholarship in comparative religion added to the
threat contained in Darwinian thought. Its picture of de-

velOping world religions with similar structures and

l8

preoccupations, all of relatively equal value, conformed to
the general thrust of the evolutionary hypothesis.

These novels clarify one further issue that has re-
ceived scant attention in treatments of the Gilded Age's
religious crisis. That is, the increasing conflict between
scientific-empirical criteria for knowledgeenuithe insights
and intuitions of the non—rational subjective self. With the
loss<1fthe objective authority<xfscripture,Christian ortho-
doxywxfnecessity turned to alternative modescflfknowing to
validate its religious faith. Such a conflict runs through the
fictioncmfall the novelists in the dissertation,regardless
of their place on the religious spectrum of the late nineteenth
century. flflfijsdilemma sought to locate the sources of reli—
gious belief when traditional rationales hadtmmnilargely and
widely discounted. Perhaps because the novelist,by the very
nature of his task, was concerned with showing the processes
of doubt and faith, this epistemological question rests at the
center of religious debate in these novels. The particular
issuescfifDarwinism,biblical higher criticism,and comparative
religion point the way to this foundational question which
has since affected all modes of human self-understanding. The
nature of this threat to America's basically Protestant

faith emerges in the fact that Catholicism remained largely

19

unaffected by the attack on the Bible because of its alter-
native source of religious authority in tradition.

Thus Chapter One finds Harold Frederic's The Damnation

 

of Theron Ware (1896) expressing reservations about America's

 

moral and political fate when the reductionist empiricism of
modern science has fully displaced its traditional religious
legacy. The implications of a strict empiricism affect the
perSpectives of two popular feminine novelists of the late
century,Augusta Evans WilsoneuuiElizabeth Phelps Ward,in the
second chapter. A third novelist in that chapter, Margaret
Deland,considers the effect of two types of religious ration-

alism within marriage in her best-selling John Ward,Preacher

 

(1888). In Chapter Three, William Dean Howells'lengthy fic-
tional canon meditates on two questions posed by empiricism:
the nature of religious certaintx.especially in the probabil—
ity of an afterlife, and the reality of a discernible moral
logic in mans affairs. The fourth chapter will discuss the
Reverend E. P. Roe's popular efforts at illustrating the trust-
worthiness of religious subjectivity in the private encounter
with Christian truth. The novels of Unitarian clergywoman,
Celia Parker Woolley, discussed in Chapter Five, show the
dangers of an inordinate empiricism in religious liberalism.

A fellow Unitarian, the Reverend Minot Judson Savage, seeks

20

to balance empirical certainty with the subjective assertions
of traditional and cross—cultural religious experience. A
last figure in Chapter Five, feminist Helen H. Gardener, at-
tacks excessive subjectivity in orthodox Christian doctrine
and reliance on the Bible. The dissertation's last chapter
analyzes the ambivalence of Henry Adams and James Lane Allen
toward the supposed certainty and moral implications of new
faith in Darwinism. In his novel Esther (1884), Adams looks
at the epistemological problems arising from Darwinism, rec—
ognizing the persistent authority of a non-rational mystical
insight of an indeterminable nature. Allen, on the other hand,
while recognizing the probable accuracy of the evolutionary
framework, expressed doubts about the emotional adequacy of
any moral or religious system that might be based upon its
sketchy outlines. Through his many novels, Allen always ad-
mitted the impenetrable, circumscribing mystery of man's
existence which was never fully dispelled by evolutionary
conceptions of cosmic purpose.

The interest in religious questions throughout these
novels of the late nineteenth century in America gives some
indication of the time's religious tenor. As always, it is
difficult to say why the public responded as it did to the

more popular of these novels. Those novelists who won wide

21

reCOgnition with their work, such as E. P. Roe or Augusta
Evans Wilson,among others, often stocked them with sentiment
and melodrama, two staples in the Gilded Age's reading taste.

Even Harold Frederic's The Damnation of Theron Ware, aprofound

 

and well—wrought work, contains elements of melodrama and
sensation which might have occasioned ibsbest—seller status.
The lasting work of William Dean Howells, which wasvmfllrknown
but comparatively little read, exhibits multiple religious
themes whose subtlety probably eluded many an idol reader.

In any case, part of the difficulty of assessing the perva-
siveness of religious doubt in America by looking at its
literature stems from the lack of a conspicuous literary
figure, such as a Tennyson or Hardy in England, who articu-
lated, and probably stimulated, a nation's doubt” Perhaps
the best indication of the awareness of contemporary reli-
gious problems of Americas considerable readinggnfifljr:appears
in the fact that many novelists of the period who dealt with
religious questions expected a degree of common knowledge on
the part of the reader. More certain, however, is the com-
plexion of the religious doubt and the strategies of faith
that attempted to influence the American reading public dur—
ing the last half of the nineteenth century. It is to this

subject which we now turn in the following chapters.

CHAPTER ONE

HAROLD FREDERIC'S THE DAMNATION OF

 

THERON WARE: AN EMBLEM OF AMERICA'S

 

SPIRITUAL AND MORAL LOSS

The year 1896 stands out in nineteenth—century

American fiction because two novels of serious scepticism

finished fourth and fifth on the year's best-seller lists.l

 

lAlice Payne Hackett, 60 Years of Best Sellers
1895-1955 (New York, 1956), p. 96. For an account of the
sales and critical reception of The Damnation, see Austin
Briggs, Jr., The Novels of Harold Frederic (Ithaca, N.Y.,
1969), pp. 101-04.

 

 

 

 

 

Not since 1888 with Mrs. Humphry Ward's Robert Elsmere and

 

Margaret Deland's John Ward, Preacher, had two religious

 

novels attracted wideSpread attention, in this case Eliza-

beth Phelps Ward's A Singular Life and Harold Frederic's

 

The Damnation of Theron Ware. The American Mrs. Ward and
Frederic explore in detail the ways and consequences of
doubt in their heroes, in each instance a young clergyman
of conservative Protestant background. They differ, how-
ever, in their portrayal of serious scepticism. In the

22

23

absence of doctrinal certainty, Mrs. Ward's hero clings
more steadfastly to the ethical dimensions of Christ's

life and teachings, as was typical of the Social Gospel.2

 

2 . . . . .

James Ward Smith, "Religion and SCience in Amer-
ican PhilOSOphy," in The Shaping of American Religion,
eds. J. W. Smith and A. Leland Jamison (Princeton, 1961),
p. 424.

 

 

Frederic's Theron Ware, on the other hand, scuttles his
past and moves westward for a career in real estate and
politics.

Neither novel offers a satisfactory resolution to
the Gilded Age's problems of doubt and theological affir-
mation. As discussed in Chapter Two, Mrs. Ward's novels
refer to the experiential efficacy of the biblical impera-
tive of love which remains untouched by doubt and provides
a new theological starting point. With Frederic, our
chief concern here, meaning and intent are far more am—
biguous, as a long history of critical disagreement tes-

tifies.3 In The Damnation, which takes place in the 1880's,

 

 

3Among the critics who have looked at The Damna—
tion, diversity of Opinion is only outdone by the various
interpretations of the significance and functions of the
novel's assorted characters. Stanton Garner has recently
commented in his Harold Frederic (Minneapolis, 1969) that
The Damnation offers one of the "most widely misread
novels in American literature" (p. 34); Austin Briggs, Jr.,

 

 

 

24

on this same matter, notes that only "recently have cri—
tics begun to look past the subject matter of The Damna-
tion in order to see what the novel is really about"
(Briggs, Novels, p. 107). Most critics find the novel's
meaning related in some way to Theron Ware's cultural
predicament. Theron's intellectual and cultural innocence
becomes emblematic of an America that must contend with
new, disturbing elements in almost all aspects of its
experience. For example, in The American 1890's (New
York, 1966), Larzer Ziff sees The Damnation as "a symbolic
tale of America's progress to disunity in the latter half
of the nineteenth century" that eventually culminates in
the nation's "loss of innocent purpose" (pp. 212, 214).
Similarly, Everett Carter in his John Harvard Library
edition of The Damnation (Cambridge, 1960), expands Ziff's
comments to include a sexual and aesthetic as well as an
intellectual awakening and fall (pp. xxi-xxii). For
Robert Morrs Lovett in his introduction to a 1924 edition
(New York: Albert and Charles Boni), Frederic deals di-
rectly with the "temptation" presented to the rustic "when
the superiority of the pioneer gives way to the inferior—
ity complex of the provincial" and he is suddenly con-
fronted with "a culture which is beyond his understanding
complicated as it often is with a sexual desire which is
beyond his satisfaction" (p. xi). John Henry Raleigh
largely concurs with Lovett in identifying Frederic's
meaning in terms of the problems of pride that prompt
Theron Ware to aspire "to a cultural perspective and to

a woman who embodies it that are far too rich for his
rather meagre blood" ("The Damnation of Theron Ware,"
American Literature, XXX [May, 1958], 210). Both Everett
Carter and Raleigh extend their conclusions about Thg_
Damnation to note the emergence of pragmatic knowledge

as a necessary consequence to the pain of lost innocence
and injured pride. Carter suggests that such knowledge
provides the "central reality of the tale" (p. xv), while
for Raleigh it signals the "triumph of pragmatic wisdom"
in the American mind (222). In "Harold Frederic's Young
Goodman Ware: The Ambiguities of the Realistic Romance"
(Modern Fiction Studies, VIII [Winter, 1962-63]), George
W. Johnson differs from most critics in interpreting Thg_
Damnation in terms of the freedom of the American imagina-
tion to dream of "a democratic vista of harmony and reso-
lution no matter how often or how far the vista recedes"
(363). Austin Briggs uniquely focuses on the centrality

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25

of the comic mode in Frederic that points to the "con—
trast between what men aspire to and what they achieve"
and transcends cultural and historical considerations,
although it often employs them in its service (Briggs,

p. 14). Finally, Stanton Garner sees Frederic summoning
America to a greater moral attentiveness at a time when
its traditional values have been diSplaced by new intel-
lectual and social forces and it must make its "way among
the tangle of often questionable choices of the [modern]
world-maze" (Garner, p. 38).

 

Frederic's concern is with the impact of sceptical thought
on traditional religious concepts of morality, both pri-
vate and social. In the place of Christianity's God and
values, he discovers an emerging pragmatism and scientific
rationalism. He explores America's direction as it adopts
these new references and loses faithfulness to a tran-
scendent ideal that encourages moral energy and social
harmony. The nature of religion's modern surrogates--
frontier individualism, aestheticism, and scientism-—are
detailed in their effect on the novel's main character,
the young Methodist preacher Theron Ware. In this way,
the minister's fate foreshadows America's future.

As Frederic's title indicates, the novel's main
interest and interpretive problem lies in the process and
nature of the Reverend Theron Ware's damnation. Near the

end of the story, after his three-day debauch, the

 

u. u' il..k j [’11.

 

 
 

 

 

26

preacher articulates this focus to Sister Soulsby, his
mentor and confidante, stating that

"Six months ago I was a good man. I not only
seemed to be good, to others and to myself,
but I wa§_good. I had a soul; I had a con-
science. I was going along doing my duty,
and I was happy in it . . . . Now, how do
you explain that [his moral deterioration]?
How gag_it be eXplained? Was I really rotten
to the core all the time, years ago, when I
seemed to everybody, myself and the rest, to
be good and straight and sincere."4

 

4Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware
(Chicago, 1896), p. 498. All page references in paren-
theses will be to this edition.

 

 

In other words, was Theron damned from the start, without
moral worth, or was his final plight brought about by his
encounter with the alien, modern world he confronts in the
story? In a half year's time, it seems, the hopeful and
talented young preacher turns infidel and, not long after,
into a charlatan, thief, would-be lecher, and snob, which
all the while he mistakes for "'uphill instead,'" or, to

use the ironic title of the English edition, Illumination

 

(p. 340)?
Frederic's adept handling of the psychological
facts of the novel manages to include the reader in

Theron's uncertainty and self-deception. Thus, a full

 

 

 

   

27

understanding of the author's intent in Theron's fate
depends on a recognition of three vital factors that
shape his world. Foremost is Frederic's perception of
the historical situation of the late nineteenth-century
Methodism of which Theron is a product and active parti-
cipant. Second is Theron's own character, a mixture of
noble traits and moral limitations. A last element in-
volves a series of startling, heterogeneous people and
points of View that Theron meets in his first months in
Octavius—-a priest, a scientist, an attractive aesthete,
and a matronly debt-raiser. Together, these factors con-
tribute to Theron's fall and, in their respective roles,
strike a pessimistic note in Frederic's assessment of the

culture that decides Theron's damnation.

One of these underlying factors in The Damnation,

 

often overlooked by critics, is a moral tension between
Methodism's past and its present. On one level, this
contrast has importance as it gives rise to a comparable
tension in Theron Ware's character. On another, the
Methodist past establishes a positive moral norm from

which to judge the ethical stature of other characters

28

and their points of View. Theron Ware's story opens on
the last day of the Nedahma Conference annual meeting
when the ministerial assignments for the following year
are to be announced. As the omniscient narrator surveys
the overflow crowd in the First Methodist Episcopal
Church of Tecumseh, he laments a marked difference in the
appearances of a wide range of clergy in the audience.
Among these, the "impress of zeal and moral worth seemed
to diminish by regular gradations as one passed to
younger faces" from the older (pp. 8-9). With their
presence "in the nature of a benediction" to the days

of frontier evangelism, these elderly clerics in atten-
dance, "the venerable Fathers in Israel," seem an antique
remnant of bygone "heroic times" ”when a plain and homely
people had been served by a fervent and devoted clergy--
by preachers who gave their lives without dream of earthly
reward to poverty and to the danger and wearing toil of
itinerant missions through rude frontier settlements"
(pp. 7-8). Waiting tranquilly for their deaths, outmoded
and dependent on church charity, the narrator respectfully
concludes that "even to the least sympathetic vision there
show upon them the glorified light of the Cross and crown"

(p. 8).

29

The long—suffering service of the Methodist fore-
bearers contrasts with the "modern and go-ahead" congre-
gation of Tecumseh, whose frame of mind the younger min—
isters generally share (p. 11). Far from the "plain and
homely," these prestige-minded church people could not
imagine that they were not "an improvement on those who
had gone before them" (p. 9). Their new church building
marked a "standard of progressive taste" unparalleled in
the Nedahma Conference. Locally, rivalling the Presby-
terians in wealth and social distinction, they lacked only
"an attractive and fashionable preacher" to fulfill their
vision of modern piety (pp. 9, 11). When the desired
prize, none other than the Reverend Ware, is assigned
elsewhere, many Tecumseh members desert the meeting in
righteous anger. But the average cleric at the conference
exhibits neither an archaic self-forgetfulness nor a piety
of self—congratulation; rather, he is an inoffensive mix-
ture of old and new tendencies--"goodness, candor" blended
with a bland, "imperturbable self-complacency" (p. 8).

Somewhere between the rigor of Methodism's fron-
tier past and Tecumseh's secularity lies the settled agri-
cultural life of Octavius Methodism, the scene of Theron

Ware's pastorate during the novel. While the rural folk

30

have lost the Spirit of their founders, they have retained
and solidified their creeds and customs, and, in so doing,
repeat the desire of their urban brethren for some ground
of social differentiation, whether it Opposes other Pro-
testants or the cultural aliens of Octavius' Italian and
Irish Catholic population.

Frederic's views on late nineteenth-century Metho-
dism also pertain to its environing culture whose ethical
norms the church had adopted in place of its own spiritual
and moral heritage. It is this tension between the churchfis
past and its present secularity that Theron Ware must re-
solve in himself while he confronts the unsettling non-
Methodist influences of Octavius. In any case, the Metho-
dism of Tecumseh and Octavius had traveled a long distance
from the selflessness and spiritual idealism of early

Methodism's circuit riding preacher.5

 

5Only occasionally has a critic mentioned the
moral dimension of the obvious historical cultural tension
in The Damnation. In A Mirror of the Ministry in the
Modern Novel (New York, 1959), Horton Davies observes that
The Damnation is unique among religious novels because
Frederic "gives a much more sympathetic account Of the
older generation" than the typical novel in which a loss
of faith occurs. Davies also contends, as will this chap-
ter, that Frederic would "seem to suggest rather the
danger than the exhilaration of adopting the new thought
and the emancipated manners of modern times" (p. 72).
Austin Briggs, Jr. has noted the merit of the church

 

 

 

 

31

fathers but suggests that "No sooner has Frederic estab-
lished this contrast . . . than he begins to play with it"
by first identifying Theron with the noble past on super-
ficial grounds and then by allowing Theron's actions and
thoughts to demonstrate his actual unworthiness (Briggs,
Novels, pp. 114-15). John Henry Raleigh also speaks of
Theron Ware's link to the past, but neglects mention of
the moral earnestness in order to associate Theron with
the "two outbursts of emotionalism that occurred in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Methodism
in the Protestant religion and the Romantic love of Na-
ture" ("Damnation," 214). Raleigh emphasizes this aspect
of Theron's character to establish the significance of the
eventual triumph of pragmaticism in his thinking (222).
While not praising Theron's character, Larzer Ziff still
recognizes his link as a part of Methodism to "the Chris-
tian rural ideal" which is lamentably forsaken in the
course of The Damnation for "a grab bag of third-hand
tastes, ill-digested ideas, and smirkingly cynical opin-
ions about those who nourished and shaped him,"--a "set
of shoddy modern opinions" poorly understood and ill-
suited for the "needs created by the changes which had
destroyed the ideal" (The American 1890's, pp. 214-15).

 

 

 

 

Amid the variegated many at the Tecumseh confer-
ence meeting, there was among its mundane young an excep-
tion to the habit of increased secularity. The Reverend
Theron Ware, with his "broad white brow, thoughtful eyes,
and features moulded into . . . regularity of strength,"
reminds the narrator of the "American Senatorial type in
those far-away days of clean shaven faces and moderate

incomes before the War" (p. 12). Although the reference

32

is not directly religious, Ware seems a throwback to an
earlier time, sharing more in the spirit of the fathers
than in the snobbery and triviality of his churchly con-
temporaries. This early positive description of Ware
initiates the central interpretive problem of the novel:
does a fall of some variety take place in the story, and,
if so, why and how and of what kind? IS the recouped man
at the story's end "the same old Theron," but bereft of
his delusion of goodness, as Austin Briggs, Jr. has

argued?

 

6Briggs, Novels, pp. 110, 111. Briggs' most dis-
tinguished ally in this View is Howells who suggested that
with The Damnation, "When you get to the end . . . although
you have carried a hazy notion in your mind of the sort of
man Ware was, you fully realize, for the first time, that
the author has never for a moment represented him anywhere
as a good or honest man" (Quoted in Briggs, p. 120).
Allen F. Stein also agrees with Briggs and Howells in
"Evasions of an American Adam: Structure and Theme in
The Damnation of Theron Ware," American Literary Realism
1870-1910, V (Winter, 1972) 23-36. Most critics, however,
have neglected the intricacies of Theron's psychology for
the nature of the new intellectual and cultural forces he
confronts. Everett Carter contends that "Frederic tried
to make Theron's innocence typical" of American innocence
at the time. Consequently, Carter diminishes the role of
individual psychological causes in Theron's fall from
innocence to elaborate on the symbolic cultural signifi-
cance of Theron's fate, finally regarding The Damnation
as an introduction to the uncertainties of the twentieth
century ("Introduction," p. xviii, passim). John Henry
Raleigh largely repeats Carter's approach, although he
stOpS to note the ambiguity in Theron's character, that
he is "simultaneously likable and despicable." Theron

 

 

 

 

 

33

invites the reader's sympathy because he is "incurably
boyish" in his adolescent enthusiasms and apparent Sin-
cerity (212). Yet, he is also susceptible to a "pride

of intellect" (210). Raleigh implies that Theron's es-
sentially static character only awaited a confrontation
with the cultural and intellectual sophistication of the
modern world for which his rural background had ill-
equipped him ("Damnation," 211). George W. Johnson re-
gards Theron as a relentless seeker after "freedom," both
individual and social, "an imaginative wholeness and
serentiy, the dreamland of grace, utOpia, and business-
like idealism" ("Young Goodman Ware," 363). In this
light, Theron's final damnation lies in the fact that
after his fall, in the philOSOphic and ethical relativity
of the modern world, he "does not and cannot know whether
. . . his experience [his quest] has been a grand melo-
drama or a parlor anecdote--he cannot know how or whether
he is really damned at all" (372).

 

To clarify the issue, a closer look at Theron
Ware's character is necessary. When he first arrives in
Octavius, assorted non-Methodists grant him a respect
that agrees with the narrator's Senatorial image. For
example, Shortly before Theron's climatic debauch, the
dying Michael Madden, brother of attractive sophisticate
Celia, recalls that on arriving six months before, the
young minister had the conduct and "face of a saint"
(p. 441). Theron's pious conduct had even helped Michael
to diSpel doubts about the salvation of non-Catholic
Christians (pp. 437-41). Levi Gorringe, the town lawyer
and a church trustee, also expresses a liking for Theron,

noting that he was ”'different'” from and more "'human'"

34

than other ministers (pp. 184, 185). In Celia's last
encounter with Theron, this time in a New York hotel room,
she recites the amusement with which she, Forbes, and
Ledsmar at first viewed his character, stating that "'you
impressed us as an innocent, simple, genuine young char-
acter . . . . Your honesty of nature, your sincerity in
that absurd religion of yours . . . pleased us a great
deal'" (p. 478). A further indication of Theron's char—
acter at the story's beginning comes from his wife, who
would perhaps know him best. Midway through the year in
Octavius, noting her husband's new marital indifference
and apparent reprobation, Alice Ware longs for "'the old
dayS'" when Theron was "'just a good, earnest simple young
servant of the Lord'" (p. 305).

But neither View, Briggs' nor the various charac—
ters', is entirely correct. At the start of the story,
Theron Ware exhibits an ordinary, fully human mixture of
active charity and latent self-concern. The chief tragedy

of The Damnation lies in the collision of these tendencies

 

within Ware and the gradual triumph of the latter. Briggs'
view that Frederic is basically a writer of comedy, albeit
of a rather dark variety, rests on his judgment that

Theron's self-concern was always the moving force in his

35

behavior, Octavius only providing an occasion for its
emergence. Briggs, however, arrives at this view by mis-
interpreting some important scenes in the novel. When
Theron and Alice evidence a child-like excitement over
possibly winning the valued Tecumseh appointment, their
expectation and "Simple pride" is seen as an indication
of Theron's egoistic, "vaulting imagination [which] had

already occupied" the Tecumseh pulpit (p. 13).7

 

7Briggs, p. 116.

 

Briggs also accuses Theron of cowardice in dealing
with his belligerent trustees: he supposedly exchanges his
wife's bonnet flowers for not having to pay parsonage re-
pair bills. A closer reading of the confrontation with
the trustees reveals that Theron understandingly concedes
to "old, simple, primitive" Methodism's prohibition on
colorful dress, but he experiences growing "stiffness in
his moral spine" at the trustees' obvious grasp for finan-
cial and congregational power (pp. 45, 50). Theron sees
through their pretense of homely piety, and the meeting
ends in a contentious stalemate. That Theron's behavior
with the trustees is at least justifiable is confirmed by

the "deliberate wink" that is left with him by

36

non-Methodist trustee Levi Gorringe, one of the novel's
more admirable characters (p. 53). As for the flowers
themselves, their removal from Alice's bonnet represents
an injustice that Theron freely admits and offers to rec-
tify in full (p. 56).

Briggs is more accurate, however, in his criticism
of Theron's behavior in his previous pastorate in Tyre,
another rural farming community. The moments immediately
before the trustees' arrival find Theron reflecting on
that segment of his past in the ministry, Octavius being
his third charge. His thoughts reveal notably unadmirable
character traits during what he himself considers an "un-
worthy epoch in his life history" (p. 36).

It seems that after some months in his second
charge, the exuberant, newly married minister and wife
suddenly found themselves eight hundred dollars in debt.
The narrator sympathizes that a man in Theron's position,
a respected member of the clergy "who receives from all
his fellow-men a Special deference of manner and speech,
is in the nature of things prone to see the grocer's book
and butcher's bill through the little end of the tele-
scope" (p. 32). As common to newlyweds as Theron's pe-

cuniary imprudence might be, a demeaning hostility toward

37

his congregation appears after reassignment to Tyre "to
pay his debts, and drain the cup of disciplinary medicine
to its dregs" (p. 34). Aware of his eminent preaching
ability, Theron deliberately "withheld himself from any
oratorical display which could afford" his parishioners
gratification. Further, with regard to his future when

he might finally be liberated from Tyre, an "ambition,

at once embittered and tearfully solicitous, possessed
him" (p. 35). Both inadvertent cause and victim of his
unhappy situation, a defensive pride of social superiority
emerged to compensate for his humiliation. At last for
Theron, it became unpleasant, as it had not been in the
first months of his ministry, "to sit at table with the
unfragrant hired man, and still worse to encounter the
bucolic confusion between the function of knives and forks"
(p. 26).

The full weight of Briggs' indictments of Theron's
character is somewhat mediated, however. In the matter of
the hired hand, while "conscious of having moved along"
socially, Theron was not sure that his refinement was,
"after all, an advance" (p. 26). In addition, sitting in
the parsonage study, Theron deeply regrets his past--

"thank God! All that was past and gone now"——and looks

38

to future pastoral challenges: "the Call sounded, reso-
nant and imperative . . . and there was no fibre of his
being, which did not stir in devout response" (p. 37).
Even though this new dedication arose in part, as some
critics have pointed out, from the emotional intensity of
subjective religion, this constitutes no real reason to
doubt either the sincerity or commitment within Theron's
sense of calling "which beckoned him.with a new and urgent

significance" (p. 36).8

 

8Austin Briggs dismisses the significance of
Theron's religious promptings because he considers them
unrelated to Theron's conduct which in Briggs' mind is
unworthy (p. 121). Yet, as this chapter will contend,
there is some correlation between Theron's religious
devotion and the consequences of his actions. John Henry
Raleigh makes somewhat the same assumption but is more
reasonable in suggesting the unsuitability of a
subjectively-oriented frame of mind for coping with the
intellectual and social problems of the late nineteenth
century in America (Raleigh, 215—17).

 

But there are less ambiguous, more positive as-
pects to Theron's character that have gone unnoticed. In
the first days of his vocation, "People had prized him for
his innocent candor and guileless mind, for his good heart,
his pious zeal, his modesty about gifts notably above the
average" (p. 29). Some of these notable traits persist

into the events of the novel and point to the moral

39

seriousness that plays a major role in his personality.

On his arrival in Octavius, various characters, as we have
already seen, perceived him as saintly and human, honest
and sincere in his religious practice. Theron himself
expends some time in theological and moral reflection as
indicated by his revery in the parsonage study, and he is
not reluctant to observe and defend moral distinctions.

He regards the Methodist revivals, which manipulate reli-
gious emotion for economic ends, "'about the lowest down
thing we [Methodists] produce'" (pp. 181, 48). Also dis-
turbing is the detrimental impact that the legalistic
application of the Methodist Discipline has on personal
morality. "'Like the Beatitudes,'" the discipline Should
be taken as a "'spiritual suggestion,'" not as a vehicle
for salvation (pp. 185, 160). Nor does the social signif-
icance of Christian morality escape Theron as it clearly
does trustees Winch and Pierce and Sister Soulsby, another
conspicuous figure in Methodism. He tells Levi Gorringe
with self-directed satire that "'no modern nation could
practice the principles handed down in the Sermon on the
Mount and survive for twenty—four hours'" (p. 185). It

is also Significant that when Theron thinks of writing a

book on Abraham, the moral complexity of the story attracts

40

him more than its strictly theological dimensions (p. 60).
In sum, the young preacher takes himself and his religious
profession seriously.

More indicative of Theron's character are his
deeds, which reflect his thought and words. On numerous
occasions, his moral concern appears in a sensitivity to
the diverse world beyond his own consciousness. The first
words Theron speaks in the novel console his wife at their
loss of the Tecumseh appointment, introducing a solicitude
that is often repeated in the early part Of the story
(p. 18). The same understanding is later offered to Levi
Gorringe when the lawyer confesses that he once mistook
romantic love for religious conversion (pp. 183-84). And
it is Theron's instinctive sympathy and desire to serve
that prompts him to follow the injured workman of Jeremiah
Madden, thus introducing him to Father Forbes and Celia
Madden and enmeshing him in a new, deceptive dimension of
experience (pp. 61-62).

Theron's readiness to understand extends beyond
sharing warmly in the experience of others. He demonstrates
a receptiveness to novel ideas that transcends the limita-
tions of his parochial background. Whether an evidence of

his eager "guileless mind" or a conscious moral attitude,

41

this Openness to peOple and things provides a positive
norm against which to judge the man who at the close looks
westward anticipating a future of politics and money.
Early in the novel, when Theron first looks upon the
spring landscape behind the Octavius parsonage, he intuits
in nature a beneficent design that is independent of human
agency, naming it "'God's goodness'" (p. 23). Yet, by the
close of the novel, this capacity to revere something be-
yond himself—-be it other people, ideas, or nature--has
wholly disappeared, indicating the real measure of his
damnation. A year later, Theron's reSponse to a similar
scene as he stands on the Soulsbys' doorstep is an egoistic
image of an orator's power over a throng of political
supplicants. This time, his eyes "did not soften and glow
. . . at the thought of how wholly one felt sure of God's
goodness in these wonderful new mornings of spring" (p.
511). Rather, nature now functions, like the rest of
Theron's world, as a convenient adjunct for his exploitive
egoism.

It is part of the irony of Frederic's novel that
the openness that enables Theron to discern his cultural
biases also begins him on the course of his own damnation.

He readily appreciates, for example, the aesthetic

42

qualities of the death sacrament that Father Forbes admin—
isters to the Madden workman. Impressed and moved, Theron
revises his estimate of the Irish and their religion to
"the very verge of feeling that heaven must have heard"
their petition (p. 77). When first faced with organ music,
an expression forsworn by the ascetic Methodists, Theron
reCOgnizes its aesthetic merit as well as its sacred and
secular moods (pp. 117, 126).

In sum, Theron who has always by his own acknowl—
edgement "'lived in little places'" lacks, as Celia readily
tells him, the confining "'prejudices and nonsense'" found
in the "'ordinary Orthodox minister'" (pp. 147, 148—49).

In his own words, he tries "'to preserve an Open mind, and
to maintain my faith that the more we know, the nearer we
shall approach the throne.'" This confidence may be naive,
but that the open mind exists at all, given Theron's back—
ground, merits some measure of reSpect (p. 111). Initially
at least, Theron is not all bad, or at least has enough
good in him, contrary to Briggs' Opinion, to merit calling

his Slow moral decay a genuine fall or damnation.

43

As significant a role as Theron's pride plays in
his downfall, it is important to note, as has George C.
Johnson, that in his fall, Theron is "as much sinned

against as sinning."9 In this regard, each of Theron's

 

9Johnson, "Young Goodman Ware," 336.

 

non-Methodist influences is culpable--Forbes, Ledsmar,
Celia Madden, and Sister Soulsby, who despite her title
apparently never joined the church. While each fosters
pride in the young preacher, each is also a victim of the
same fault. It is in the pedantic, cultured world of
Forbes, Ledsmar, and Celia that Theron first confuses
intellectual and aesthetic sophistication for moral wisdom.
Confronted with the hypocracy of his trustees, the com-
placency of his congregation, and the doubtful integrity
of contemporary Methodism, Theron strives for an alterna-
tive intellectual and artistic identity that is encouraged
by his new friends.

Critic Stanton Garner admits that Theron's three
cultured influences "must Share some of the blame” for his
fall insofar as they are "careless" in their dealings with
him. However, Garner errs in concluding that their guilt

is somewhat diminished by the fact that each was ”genuinely

44

concerned with his [Theron's] intellectual and spiritual

l . . .
growth." 0 To the contrary, the weight of their actions

 

OGarner, Harold Frederic, p. 34.

 

 

and attitudes in relation to Theron, although often seem—
ingly inadvertent, has substantial negative impact on the
well-intentioned, fumbling naif, Forbes and Ledsmar are
eager religious critics who readily parade their scepticism
before Theron's untested orthodoxy. The history of Celia's
relation with Theron reveals an impetuous, inconsiderate
mode of behavior. In short, the three treat him as an ob-
ject, an "'acquisition,'" as Celia terms it, for the amuse-
ment of their private coterie. When the "'mother's milk'"
of Theron's innocence turns sour with conceit, each read-
ily avoids contact with him, in two instances by lying,
instead of charitably correcting him, as does the dying
Michael Madden (p. 478).

Because Forbes and Ledsmar resemble one another
in intellectual orientation and life style, they affect
Theron in similar ways, although Forbes perhaps exerts
more influence in his role of an elder clerical model.
When Forbes first meets Theron at the cottage of the dying

workman, he responds to Theron's comment on the

45

impressiveness of the last rites with a recitation of its
ancient pagan origins which he has uncovered through a
broad study of comparative religion (p. 71). In so doing,
he makes the unwarranted assumption that Theron shares,
for one, his "'understanding of just what it [religion]
all amounts to'"--that is, "'savages in a dangerous wood
in the dark, telling one another ghost stories around a
camp fire'" (pp. 363, 357). Forbes display of learning
brings Theron to see an intellectual inadequacy that
plants the seeds of a scholarly aSpiration which soon dis-
integrates into pretension.

Theron is further impressed with his own ignorance
when he dines with Forbes and his ”'particular friend'"
Dr. Ledsmar, an ex-physician, Darwinian scientist, Assyri-
ologist, and cuisinary expert (p. 101). To Theron's
queries about Abraham on whom he intends to write a book,
the pair inform him of the patriarch's non—existence as
a person and the eponymous character of the name. For
illustrative purposes Forbes injects the eponym Marmaduke,
which offers "'the original prototype of our "divine
intermediary"'" that culminates in "'this Christ-myth of
ours'" (pp. 110-11). Theron's dismay at this unexpected

view, soon succumbs, however, to his pleasure in the

46

"charm of contact with really educated people" (p. 111).

A further charm is Forbes' life style of exquisite cookery,
fine wine, cigars, "scholarly symbols," luxurious furni-
ture, and classical engravings. The effect of this strange
milieu is to make Theron feel, as does the rectory's elec-
tric doorbell, "rather more a countryman than ever" (p. 99).
Impressed if not awed, Theron perceives this intellectual
and aesthetic world as uplifting, as it is for him at
times, and thus, morally superior to his own. He grasps
after its mystique as an affirmation of his potential and
an escape from the diSpiriting pettiness of his congrega—
tion.

Through all their dealings with Theron, the moti—
vation behind the directness of the priest and scientist
remains uncertain. Forbes does restrain Ledsmar from dis-
puting Theron's expression of faith in the reality of the
"'throne,'" but the eagerness and sense of privileged en-
lightenment with which the two express their views under-
cuts the possibility that they are genuinely concerned with
Theron's well-being (p. 111). Although Celia Madden is
usually an unreliable relayer of information--as the am-
biguous kiss with Theron finally reveals--her comment

about the intellectual arrogance of Forbes and Ledsmar

47

confirms the ambiguity in their motivation, stating that
"'they think it smart to laugh at all the sweet and beau-
tiful things in life, and to sneer at people who believe
in ideals, and to talk about mankind being merely a for-
tuitous product of fermentation'" (p. 151). Ledsmar's
pride emerges clearly in the pains he takes to make
certain "that the young minister should appreciate the
favor extended him" in inviting Theron to visit him at
his home (p. 120). Secure in his special knowledge, Leds-
mar disdains most everyone for good scientific reasons:
musicians, women, most men, and the Chinese.

Some of the arrogance of Forbes and Ledsmar falls
in line with their pessimistic views of man and history.
From experience and study, Forbes has concluded that in
spite of "'the most tremendous changes in races and civil-
izations and religions, stretching over many thousands
of years,'" mankind is yet and "'will always remain'"
unaltered from savage, prehistoric patterns of thought
and behavior (pp. 357—360). Any hope of gradual improve-
ment in human nature is "'utterly baseless and empty'"
(p. 360). Rather the motive forces in man's psyche,
"'self-protection and inertia,'" render him hOpelessly

egoistic. In repeating "'dead men's thought and belief'"

48

and "'"dead races" faiths and imaginings,'" modern reli-
gious man still imagines that the world was "'made for
him, and that the rest of the universe is subordinated
to him and his world, and that all the spirits and demons
and gods occupy themselves exclusively with him and his
affairs'" (pp. 109-10, 360). Those few enlightened who
have rid their minds of superstition soon find that their
explanations have "'very little influence'" with the
masses and that, subsequently, the "'chief wisdom in life
is to bend to the pressures'" of the "'crowd'" (p. 366).
Given this circumstance, Forbes has chosen to re-

main in the Church and to "'make the best of it'" (p. 363).
A norm of personal convenience supplants professional
honesty and public candor. He does find, however, some
support for this tactic in the traditional Roman Catholic
concept of hierarchical authority. In contending with
Theron about the usefulness of broad public awareness of
important religious problems, he asks

"Why should 'everybody' be supposed to know

anything at all? What business is it of

'everybody's' to know things . . . . the

truth remains the truth, even though you

give a charter to ten thousand separate

numskulls to examine it in the light of

their private judgment, and report that it

is as many different varieties of something
else" (p. 108).

49

To Forbes, the main activity of Protestant denomination—
alism, an "'absurd and fruitless wrangling over texts and
creeds,'" seems so much "'barbaric nonsense'" (p. 361).
And since man's nature demands that "'there must always
be a church,'" Forbes finds something "'intelligent and
rational,'" "'intelligible and fine'" in a church whose
obstacles to belief are declared "'sacred mysteries'" and
"'taken for granted'" (pp. 362, 361). For those enlight-
ened who wish to avoid public censure for scepticism,
Roman Catholicism provides "'a restful house'" where "'the
manners are charming, the service excellent, the decora-
tion and upholstery most acceptable to the eye, and the
music . . . divine'" (p. 361). But, more importantly,
Forbes believes that the church furnishes an indispensable
social artifice, stating that it serves "'first and fore-
most, as a police force [and] secondly . . . as fire in-
surance.'" It also provides the "'most pure atmosphere
for the growth of young children'" and "'the best obtain-
able machinery for marrying off one's daughters . . .
patching up quarrels, and so on.'" In this context the
priest earns his salary as an agent who insures the effi-
cient and tranquil functioning of society. For those

clergy who desire, theology is "'thrown in as a sort of

50

intellectual diversion, like the ritual of a benevolent
organization'" (PP. 362-63). Thus, the church earns re-
spect not for its pretention to any kind of ultimacy, but
as a secular social apparatus whose virtue lies in adapt—
ibility to its culture (p. 361). Frederic symbolizes this
fact in the new, imposing sanctuary of the Octavius Cath—
olic church that still lacks a steeple, the traditional
sign of aspiration and fidelity to a transcendent ideal

(p. 98).11

 

lMost critics attribute no more than an inadver-
tent role to Forbes in accounting for Theron's moral dis-
integration. He is an instrument, along with Ledsmar, for
broadening Theron's knowledge of the higher criticism of
the Bible and of a pessimistic view of man that opposes
Theron's Optimism. John Henry Raleigh properly analyzes
Forbes' thought and suggests that for Frederic he is a
mouthpiece who "tells us what we argf ("Damnation," 227).
This view may be quite correct, but Raleigh neglects to
attend to the moral dimensions of Forbes' conduct and the
social implications of his thinking. Most critics, as
does Austin Briggs, accompany Raleigh in his error.
Larzer Ziff goes so far as to ascribe a positive social
benefit to Forbes' thinking, suggesting that Forbes con-
trols "his knowledge of the psychological origins of re-
ligious feeling so as to be of greater service in his
parish" (The American 1890's, p. 214). There is, how—
ever, no evidence that Forbes attends his parish duties
with any more than a perfunctory necessity. Only George
W. Johnson briefly notes the underlying moral fatalism
that makes Forbes a "cynical defeatist" with regard to
the worth of moral struggle fYoung Goodman Ware," 366).
As will be seen, Forbes' example functions as an ostensible
sanction for Theron's clerical duplicity.

 

 

 

 

1")

 

VITA‘-

51

Scientist Ledsmar seems to have drawn largely the
same conclusions as Forbes by way of modern evolutionary
thought. At middle-age, he has forsworn medicine because
it is insufficiently scientific and has turned his ener-
gies to research in plant genetics, Opium tolerance, and
reptiles. A critical foil to Celia's aestheticism and
Theron's orthodoxy, he expounds a rigorous empiricism of
rationality and objectivity as requisite norms for proper
knowing and acting. He emerges as zealous an advocate of
scientific positivism as any frontier Methodist of revi-
valist Christianity. Ledsmar himself was converted to
science when he noted a pet monkey's instinctive aversion
to snakes, although the beast had never before seen one;
that incident, he tells Theron, "'changed my whole life'"
(p. 328). Having taken his stand, he is an insistent
proselytizer. As mentioned, when Theron expresses hope
in the reality of the "'throne,'" Ledsmar readies to argue
the point until Forbes urges caution (p. 111). Ledsmar
does not concede easily, however. Some weeks later,
Theron receives a packet of books that contains Ernest

Renan's Recollections of My Youth, which tells how the

 

young priest declared "that he could no longer believe

at all in revealed religion" (p. 189).

52

Devotion to an empirical ideal informs Ledsmar's
personal tastes as well. He prefers the concrete and
certain pleasure of good food to the non-discursive na-
ture of aesthetic response. The Jews are admired because
they penalized the making of art, "'the tendency to brood
on the beautiful,'" which as a "'sign of rot'" always
parallels the decay of a culture (p. 122). Musicians
deserve contempt because they resemble birds which are a
"'debased offshoot'" of reptiles, “'the very lowest type
of vertebrata now in existence'" (pp. 121-22). A similar
evolutionary analogy supports an abhorrance of women.

In their irrationality, lasciviousness, and superstition,
the sex has only reached a stage of development comparable
to the "'dawn of mediaevalism'” (p. 325). Their worst
fault is that they lack the objectivity required for ra-
tional thought.

Because Ledsmar's confidence in scientific method-
ology dictates practical detachment from the world about
him, he can experiment indifferently with plants, animals,
and people, as he does with his Chinese servant. In his
contact with other people, this posture toward experience
proves both ethically and perceptually inadequate.’ Like

Forbes and Celia, he neglects an Opportunity to correct

53

Theron's self-inflation by feigning illness (pp. 335-36).
He must also share with Forbes and Celia the niavety that
supposed Theron's innocence would remain unaffected when
immersed in a different and, to their minds, superior
intellectual—cultural realm. A similar error arises in
Ledsmar's judgment of the pragmatic Soulsbys whom he re-
gards as "'really genuine people'" (p. 323). As Alice
Ware observes on first meeting Sister Soulsby, intelligent
and shrewd the matron may be, but genuine she is not (p.
203). Whatever the merits of Ledsmar's views, they become
a rationale Theron uses to excuse himself from further

. . . . . . . 2
distracting involvement With his Wlfe or congregation.l

 

2Frederic's critics have generally been more
unanimous and accurate in their assessment of Ledsmar
than of any of the other characters in The Damnation.
Everett Carter suggests that Frederic's rendering of Leds—
mar who is the "essence of experimental science" represents
a reversion in American fiction to a Hawthornian concept
of the scientist and "a climate of doubt about the advances
of man through empirical science" (pp. xix, xx). Austin
Briggs concurs with Carter and observes that those critics,
Carter concluded, "who wish to make Frederic a spokesman
for pragmatism have not dealt adequately with the thor-
oughly pragmatic Dr. Ledsmar" (p. 131). And perhaps it
is Briggs who best summarizes the conclusions of Johnson,
Raleigh, and others by stating that Ledsmar's scientism
"has led him to a misanthrOpy which is only less mild than
his misogyny" (p. 130).

 

 

54

The greatest influences on Theron in the novel are
feminine personalities, and they at various times alter
his thinking to an extent that surpasses their powers of
intellectual persuasion. We are told that early in their
marriage, Alice Ware imparted a sense of humor to her hus-
band who until then had been noted for his sincere, somber
personality (p. 29). Sister Soulsby, the middle—aged
fund-raiser, later converts Theron to her "common sense"
View of religion and self-interest. Theron's acceptance
of her closely parallels his growing awareness of her
lingering sexuality--that she was once an attractive
"'frontranker in the Amazon ballets'" and that even now
she indulges in such Methodist prohibitions as lowcut
dresses, perfume, and jewelry (p. 264). At the time of
Theron's greatest liking for Father Forbes, he is vaguely
conscious of "a quaint sensation of feeling as a romantic
woman must feel in the presence of a Specially impressive
masculine personality" (p. 417). But Theron's most domi-
nant influence, following in the tracks of Sister Soulsby,
is Celia Madden, a wealthy, witty Irish Catholic beauty
who attracts Theron to her adaptation of Greek life.

Although at no time does Frederic make sexual

selection the decisive factor in human behavior, he was

55

enough of a naturalist to recognize the subtle, constant
play of sexual considerations at the deeper levels of

thought and motivation.13 As often as thought and reason

 

3Everett Carter and Austin Briggs err when they
take Frederic's statement that sex "is the mainspring of
all human activity" as the norm for motivation in Thg_
Damnation (Quoted in Briggs, p. 131; Carter, p. xxi). As
the following discussion will Show, sex is a major factor
in human activity for Frederic, but it is not exclusive

in its influence.

 

 

are cited as justifications for human action, they are
never uninfluenced by unrecognized sexual needs, much as
thought also succumbs to the demands of pride and self—

interest. Instances of this gap between conscious and un—

 

perceived sexual motives recur throughout The Damnation.
For example, a mixture of sexual and religious motives
combined in Levi Gorringe's one-time decision to join the
church (p. 184). Forbes' celibacy remains mysterious
throughout the novel, although he seems to maintain unde-
termined affection for Celia Madden (p. 417). Ledsmar's
devotion to science, almost of a monastic calibre, grows
from a psychological condition that causes physical revul-
sion at the thought of sex (p. 327). The intricate pat-
tern of relationships between Forbes, Ledsmar, and Celia

resembles a highly sublimated sexual triangle with the

56

priest at the apex. The sophisticated and schooled, it
seems, are no less susceptible to sexual demands, as in
their capacities for pride, than the simple and ignorant
whom they condemn. The only character in the novel who
transcends sexual considerations is the charitable,

deeply religious Michael Madden; his energies are exhausted
in his quest for religious truth and his concern for the
welfare of his workmen. In the case of Theron, it should
be noted that his egoistic and sexual needs increase as his
vocational commitment diminishes.

Celia Madden, the third member of the heterodox
group that befriends Theron in Part One, eventually becomes
the potential satisfaction for Theron's mounting egoistic
and sexual needs. The large role he assigns to her in his
moral disorientation finds ample justification in her con-
duct. Because this behavior is consistent with her "Greek"
view of life, it is useful to examine it nad her background
before turning to her relationship with Theron.

The only daughter of an immigrant Irish peasant
who has struck it rich, Celia lives a pampered life of her
own design in the private chambers of the new opulent
Madden mansion. Inspired by her study of Greek culture,

she has set out to be a "'fine early Greek'" devoted to

57

the "'beautiful and the strong.'" Yet, she lacks, as she
herself recognizes, the graceful discipline and thoughtful
control of Greek life at its apogee (pp. 154, 152). While
adhering to public mores, her private life represents, she
tells Theron, "'what I mean'" by being a Greek, albeit at
times that eclectic vision seems "'quite of the decadence'"
(pp. 288, 154). Whether Frederic meant to identify Celia
with the excesses of fin_dg_siecle Continental culture or
with the deline of Greek culture remains unclear, but
Celia's Greek ideal evidences attitudes antipathetic to

the standards of prOper maidenhood in late nineteenth-

. . . l
century, very Victorian America.

 

14On a cultural level, as John Henry Raleigh has

pointed out, Celia "represents a phenomena that occurred
in the late nineteenth century when,as a reaction against
utilitarianism, rationalism, relativism, Catholicism gum_
Art emerged with a vengeance" ("Damnation," 215). As an
embodiment of the extravagant habits of this movement,
Raleigh concludes, Celia is "never quite credible and al-
ways verging on the preposterous" (216). In "The Damna-
tion of Theron Ware as a Criticism of American Religious
Thought," Elmer F. Suderman aptly summarizes Celia as a
"combination of Madonna, seductress, and troubled human
being," a witty inversion by Frederic of the stereotypical
pious maiden of late nineteenth-century sentimental reli-
gious fiction in America (Huntington Library Quarterly,
XXXIII [November, 1969], 68). Austin Briggs thinks Celia
credible and, if absurd in her "new hedonism," then neces-
sarily so, although he does not say why (pp. 124, 128,
132). Briggs also notes Celia's loss of interest in
Theron after his evening in her rooms, although he retains
sympathy for her as one who endures genuine existential

 

 

 

 

58

anguish (pp. 135, 132). George W. Johnson ignores this
factor in Celia and, perhaps recognizing the extent of her
selfish conduct in relation to Theron, pronounces her a
"rather masculinized, sadistic, and coldly superior" advo-
cate of a "vague pagan monism" (366, 368). Although some-
what overstated, especially with reference to Celia's
"masculine," liberated womanhood, Johnson's comments point
to one instance, the other being Sister Soulsby, of the
"duplicity of feminine moral guidance" in The Damnation
(370).

 

 

The first tenet of Celia's Greek philosophy, the
"'recognition that beauty is the only thing in life that
is worthwhile,'" leads to an aestheticism that worships
Chopin devoutly, furnishes her rooms with nude male sta-
tuary and paintings of the Virgin, and pursues painting,
sculpting, and wood-carving. "'Absolute freedom from
moral bugbears,'" her second principle, relates to the
third, a wish "'to kick out of one's life everything that
isn't worthwhile'" (p. 300). She shares in the feminism
of her day in decrying marriage as an institution that
sanctions the ownership and enslavement of women (pp. 378-
79). In its place, she would advocate romantic love amid
a greater sexual equality and Openness reminiscent of pre—
Christian Greece. For Celia, the culprits of Western cul-
ture, much as they are Ledsmar's heroes, are the "'epi-
1eptic'" Jews who alone "'could imagine a religion without

sex in it'" (p. 384). The goal of Celia's philsophizing,

59

beyond sanctioning her freedom, lies in returning the
church to the Greek spirit which venerated "'art and
poetry and the love of beauty, and the gentle, Spiritual,
soulful life'" (p. 383).

What seems unclear, however, is Celia's seriousness
in her adOpted Hellenism. Dr. Ledsmar, who abhors the
sensuous when connected with subjectivity, thinks Celia
an elaborate poseur--"'a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance,
and red-headed lewdness . . . a little brain addled by
notions that she is like Hypatia, and a large impudence
rendered intolerable by the fact that she has money'"

(p. 334). Celia reminds Forbes, on the other hand, al-
though he too recognizes her egotism, of an "'atavistic
idealization of the old Kelt at his finest and best,'“ of
the Irish people two millenia ago when they were "'the
merriest and saddest, the most turbulent and the most
docile, the most talented and the most unproductive, the
most practical and the most visionary, the most devout
and the most pagan . . .'" (pp. 416-17). Yet, Forbes
expresses doubt about the conception on which his respect
rests, stating that "'If it were not such a noble thing

to be an Irishman, it would be ridiculous'" (p. 418).

60

Celia is also aware of the unsubstantial surface
of her assertive Irish Hellenism. On one of her "'very
unhappy'" nights, she concedes that life at best is "'a
very paltry affair . . . Luckily it's soon done with,—-
like a bad dream'" (p. 154). Late one evening when her
distant piano-playing is overheard by the Wares, Theron
suggests that the noise belongs to "'some distressed soul
. . . seeking relief from . . . sleeplessness;'" Alice's
response is succinct, stating "'Distressed fiddlesticks'"
(p. 159). In short, Celia's posture of Hellenistic dis-
cipleship seems less a serious philoSOphy of life than an
intricate game intended to escape the boredom and despair
of an affluent, meaningless existence. Unable to sustain
a steady confidence in the purposefulness of life, she re-
sorts to affectation and private melodrama to assauge her
restlessness.

Celia's frequent selfish actions in relation to
various characters, especially Theron, only confirm this
conclusion. As with her intellectual ecleticism, She
consistently adOpts or rejects aSpects of her world ac-
cording to her pleasure. This she does with her family,
unkindly regarding her father and brother as privileged

servants. Nor is religion exempt from apprOpriation.

61

Publicly an ardent devoteee of the church, she is pri-
vately a "'pagan'" and "'only a Catholic in the sense
that its symbolism is pleasant'" and serves "'very well
my own system'" (pp. 383, 151). Following the lead of
Father Forbes, she disregards the Church's desire for
doctrinal adherence and puts "'into it what I like‘" (p.
383). These instances fall in line with Celia's declara-
tion that she "'will not have anything about me--or any-
body either--that I don't like,'" a dictum that she
harshly fulfills with regard to Theron. As she later
tells Theron, "'it is the one fixed rule of my life to
obey my whims'" (p. 377).

On three separate occasions, this impulsiveness
prompts duplicity in her relations with Theron. The first
occurs after Theron's encounter with Forbes and Ledsmar
and his exposure to the majesty of classical organ music.
Theron ends up escorting Celia home, and on the way, she
inquires into his tastes in art and literature. In re-
Sponse, he pleads that he has "'always lived in little
places'" and has not had much experience in the arts
(p. 97). In spite of Theron's disclaimer, Celia predicts
that he will be "'thrown into friendship, close contact,

with Father Forbes'" because there is "'nobody else in

62

this raw, overgrown, empty-headed place for you and him to
like . . .'" (p. 148). Theron, it seems to Celia's brief
knowledge of him, is "'full of poetry, of ideals, of gen-
erous, unselfish impulses,'" words which later return to
advance Theron in his self-inflation (p. 150). Celia's
praise continues until Theron interprets her comment about
being an "out-and-out Greek'" as a declaration of national
origin instead of a philOSOphic orientation (pp. 151-52).
Giving proof of his ignorance, Celia attempts to retract
her earlier flattery, petitioning Theron to "'let it all
be as if I hadn't spoken'" and not to "'mind anything I
have said'" (p. 152). The caution is belated, however;
the many glowing words of encouragement outweigh the mild
and incidental denial.

The second occasion of Celia's whimsy comes some
months later in Theron's visit to her rooms in the Madden
mansion. Celia brings him there promising "'to make you
well again'" with the music of Chopin and, she ambiguously
adds, to "'show you what is my very own'" (pp. 280, 283).
Amid cigarettes, nude statuary, and paintings of the Ma-
donna, Theron listens to Celia's Spirited rendition of her
ChOpin repertoire. After some time, She stops playing and

with an "almost roguish smile" departs into her bedroom.

63

When She returns, her conventional dress has been exchanged
for a revealing Greek-style costume of "shapeless, cling-
ing drapery, lustrous and creamy and exquisitely soft"
(p. 294). She resumes playing, significantly a lullaby
and then a love poem. Theron, quite overwhelmed by all
he has seen, heard, and anticipates, almost faints and
must be revived with wine. Then amid his request of Celia
to help him become more of a Greek, Celia unceremoniously
yawns, revealing her real attitude toward Theron. Taking
the hint, Theron departs, and shortly after his leaving,
Celia reflects on the evening and breaks into a "joyous
laugh" at the fumbling, bumpkin preacher (p. 302).

The final incident involves the ambiguous kiss
Celia allows at the close of their forest meeting. For

Theron, the act signifies the fait accompli of their ro—

 

mantic intentions, but in Celia's mind, it marks the end
of their relationship. On this occasion, instead of the
honesty that she knows Theron's egotism now demands, she
gives into the lure of melodrama and conceals her ambiva-
lence of disgust and pity in playful disguise. The idea
of the kiss, she later confesses, "'seemed to me to mean
something at the moment,'" to be a symbolically appropriate

way of simultaneously "'saying good-bye'" to Theron as well

 

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as to his innocence (p. 476). In any case, Theron, who

was raised in the country where "'They don't have kisses

in assorted varieties,'" fails to recognize that the kiss
really expressed pity--"'that just for one little moment
I permitted myself to be sorry for you.'" Celia later

apologizes that the gesture was "'too subtle'" and did
not consider Theron in his "'greenhorn'" status as an
illicit lover (p. 475). Celia's coyness again takes pre-
cedence over necessary honesty, and, in the process, by
playing to Theron's self-deception, accelerates his moral
deterioration.

Celia's speech to Theron in the New York hotel
room does much to clarify the shortcomings of the moral
perspective shared by Forbes, Ledsmar, and herself. Ini-
tially Theron impressed the trio as "'an innocent, simple,
genuine young character, full of mother's milk . . . like
the smell of spring in the country'" (p. 326). Further,
Theron's "'honesty of nature,'" his "'sincerity in that
absurd religion . . . and general naivety of mental and
spiritual get-up,'" "'pleased us a great deal.'" In short,
Theron becomes an object of entertainment in their sedate
insular world, "'a real acquisition!" His subsequent de-

parture from the'"unsophisticated and delightfully fresh

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65

and natural'" leads them to conclude that "'we had mis-
judged you,'" that "'somehow we took it for granted you
would stay'" innocent and unpretentious (p. 478).

Yet, as Celia, Forbes, and Ledsmar are all clearly
instrumental in Theron's change of character, the issue
is not one of initial misjudgment but of misdirection and
unconcern in the ways their attitudes serve as precursors
for Theron's end. For example, Celia accuses Theron of a
prurient interest in George Sand's life because it has an
"'unclean side,'" but she during the evening in her apart—
ment and the day in the forest panders to Theron's imagi-
nation (p. 479). She further rebukes Theron for the dis—
crepancy between his private views and his posture within
his church, stating that he enjoys "'ridiculing and re-
viling the people of your church, whose money supports you,
and making a mock of things they believe in, and which
you for your life wouldn't dare let them know you didn't
believe in'" (p. 479). Such a tactic, however, is implicit
in the example set by Father Forbes and Celia. She clearly
puts the church to her own ends, disregarding its stated
purpose for itself. Forbes draws his support in the same
manner as Theron, prudently not bothering to tell his

pe0p1e what he disbelieves. Living in quiet luxury and

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66

intellectual refinement, Forbes himself has chosen, as he
advises Theron to do, "'to make the best of it'" (p. 363).

With regard to the common man, the priest's opin-
ion, like Ledsmar's, is no higher than Theron's, consider-
ing the mass of men childlike and incapable of COping with
reality (p. 108). At heart, Celia, Forbes, and Ledsmar
are intellectual aristocrats of one sort or another, ad-
vocating social control by an intellectual plutocracy.
Forbes retains a secularized version of church structure
for the maintenance of social order (pp. 108, 362-63).
Celia expresses intolerance for the uncultured and longs
for an ideal that resembles ancient Greece "'where all
the peOple were artists, where everybody was an intellec-
tual aristocrat, where the Philistine was an unknown'"

(p. 289). Ledsmar as well thinks his interests and knowl—
edge Special and lives a hermetic existence in pursuit of
both.

In the matter of pride, Theron's overweening flaw,
each of the three has Special hOpes for his point of View
and warms to Theron most when he responds to their special
interest. Consequently, Celia sympathizes with Theron
when he approves the significance of women in history.

Forbes repeats this pattern in Theron's response to his

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67

pet theories on the Irish. And lastly, Theron receives
an enthusiastic tour of Ledsmar's facilities and research.

The group fails most in not exerting honesty with
Theron after he had accepted the friendships that had been
"'mistakenly extended'" to him. They accuse him of being
an ass and of not being an "'honest, straightforward
donkey at thatl'" But none of the Octavius group has
been honest with Theron, especially Celia. And as for
Theron trying to play a "'1ap-dog,'" it was they who first
hinted that he could join their special world (p. 480).

In the end, Theron's real mistake in the eyes of
the group is not his duplicity, but his lack of tact in
the way he carries out his new beliefs. For every fault
of which Celia accuses Theron, a parallel shortcoming
exists in themselves. Although schooled and socially
adept, their self-knowledge and understanding of human
nature, as dictated by their Special points of View,
does not exempt them from the same shortsightedness and

pride to which Theron Ware more conspicuously falls prey.

Whatever effects the cultured Octavians might have

luui on Theron, these influences are amplified, and in some

 

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68

ways prepared for, by Sister Candace Soulsby, Methodist
debt—raiser. Some of her influence can be attributed to
the fact that she encounters Theron at an opportune time
in his ministry. She visits Octavius for a week when the
first difficulties in Theron's new charge, "all sorts of
conditions wholly novel to him," are beginning to appear
(p. 160). The church there embodied the schismatic right
wing of Methodism that identified moral and spiritual
purity with the preservation of the ecclesiastical and
social customs of its founders' time, by then some eighty
years past. Given to hairsplitting on the Sabbath use of
streetcars and on attendance at traveling menageries, the
church proves narrowly legalistic, strongly revivalistic,
and intensely factious. Theron's homiletic powers accom-
plish little in recruiting new members-—the Methodists
have a bad name in Octavius--or in liberalizing the con-
gregation which suffers tight control by the small con-
servative faction that dislikes Theron. Caught in the
classic ministerial predicament, Theron must choose be-
tween expressing his best understanding of Methodism and

currying the favor of his opponents.15 Reluctantly, he

 

15Horton Davies has commented on the precarious

'Paradox in which the minister always finds himself--"that
(kfli has entrusted the . . . Gospel to the earthen vessel

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69

of the minister's personality" (Davies, Mirror, p. 4). As
man and God's minister to man, the clergyman experiences
an unceasing tension, as Theron Ware early in the novel,
between "truth and tact, between Christian charity and
expediency, and between the pressures of fidelity to God
and fulfilling popular expectation" (p. 183).

 

sets about organizing members who would support him in a
time of crisis. The political nature of the activity has,
Theron reflects, some "apostolic warrant," but "If there
had not been . . . the mere elementary demands of self-
defense would have justified his use of strategy” in "per-
versely enigmatic Octavius" (pp. 165, 168).

It is with this uncertain mind that Theron first
meets Sister Soulsby who has, at the trustees' request,
come to rescue the church from its large debt. As a ves-
tige of the past which employs excessive religious emo-
tion, only now for economic ends, Theron considers debt—
raising "'about the lowest down thing we [Methodists] pro-
duce'" (pp. 48, 181). Hence, Theron gives a cool recep-
tion to Sister Soulsby, a well-known representative of
the practice. Mrs. Soulsby comes to her profession and
t0 Octavius with a widely varied background. Born in the
South, she left home with a married man; subsequently, she
traveled the West as a professional clairvoyant, fortune—

tfiller, "'frontranker in Amazon ballets,'" and comic Opera

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actress. She once would have been indicted by a grand
jury if "'the smartest and most famous train-gambler be-
tween Omaha and 'Frisco . . . who died in his boots and
took three sheriff's deputies along with him'" had not
bribed the decisive vote. Mr. Soulsby, too, apparently
had a similar period in his life in which he was a confi-
dence man and "'a regular bad old rooster'" (pp. 264-65).
In any case, she and her present partner "'both soured on
living by fakes'" and decided for a quiet retirement of
books and gardening (p. 266). The couple soon determined,
however, after witnessing a Methodist revival in which
they were somewhat moved, to shun leisure to become "'good
frauds'" (p. 268). At the time, they came "'mighty near
to going up to the rail and joining the mourners,'" but
instead, noting "'what tremendous improvements . . . were
possible in the way that amateur revivalist worked up his
business,” applied their frontier savvy and went into the
practice themselves (p. 266).

The Soulsbys' response to the conversionist chal—
lenge reveals an orientation in Sister Soulsby that sets
the pattern for her actions through the novel. A product
of? the hard contingencies of frontier survival, she re-

‘BeEitedly advises a self-interested individualism that has

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71

its justification in the logic of "'common-sense'" prac—
ticality. Sister Soulsby values the world about her in
proportion of its exploitive potential, expressing an
unmediated form of commercial impulse in religious garb.
Her work in Octavius leads Theron to exchange his reli-
gious idealism for the confidence-man's ethic of "'ma-
chinery,'" the use of Showmanship and deception for per—
sonal ends (p. 257).

In her days of leisure, Sister Soulsby still main-
tains esteem for the empirical and pragmatic in experi-
ence; she reveres nothing that she cannot apprehend con-
cretely and does not conform to the demands of her frontier
past. This perceptual bias prompts her to discount reli-
gious yearnings as "'a matter of temperament-—of emo-
tions,'" impractical and unsubstantial--and to name theo-
logical aspirations for truth "'pure moonshine'" (pp. 267,
264). Instead, she accepts human limitations, both epis-
temological and moral, as normative and, in "'real wisdom,'"
employs these shortcomings in order to "'get the best of
What's going!" (p. 258). In brief, she has concluded from
her huckster's experience that "'You've got to take_folks
as; you find them; and you got to find them the best way

YOWJ can'" (p. 211; my italics). Because human nature will

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72

always remain selfish and vainglorious, the conversionist
hOpe of Methodism is futile and illusory (pp. 254, 269).
It is soon clear that Sister Soulsby's actions
concur fully with her views on human nature and the func-
tion of the church. In her debt-raising revival, she shows
a complete disregard for the religious content of her work
except as traditional phraseology excites and disarms her
audience. Every gesture in her presentation operates to
create an emotional effect on the audience. For example,
in their first appearance, the Soulsbys surprise and please
the Octavius peOple with "delightfully sacred duets,"
traditional hymn lyrics set to the melodies of ChOpin
(p. 240). While Soulsby's address comes off uninspired
and hackneyed, his wife captivates her audience without
any more insight or profundity. She is, in fact, all
style, demonstrating the controlled flourish of the con-
summate actress, the narrator stating that "What Sister
Soulsby said did not matter. The way she said it--the
Splendid, searching sweep of her great eyes; the boldly,
jUbilantly triumphant; the sympathetic swaying of her
willowly figure under the stress of her eloquence--was all

wonderful" (p. 230).

 

 

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73

However, her best skills are saved for the sur—
prise debt—raising that she springs on an unwary revival
audience. Speaking in "a breezy, off-hand fashion," she
handily wins over the resentful with a "bright—eyed impu-
dence" directed at their gullibility (p. 240). But the
humor, as the surprise itself, is not without purpose.
The narrator describes the scene, stating that Sister
Soulsby would

set them all laughing; and then, with a twist

of the eyes and a change of voice, 10, and

behold, she had them nearly crying in the same

breath. Under the pressure of these jumbled

emotions brethren began to rise up . . . and

say what they would give. The wonderful woman

had something smart and apt to say about each

fresh contribution, and used it to screw up

the general interest a notch further toward

benevolent hysteria. With songs and jokes and

impromptu exhortation and prayers she kept the

thing whirling (p. 241).
For an added attraction, Soulsby has arranged for one of
the trustees to provoke a new member, the recently com-
ndtted Levi Gorringe, into "a sort of duel of generosity"
(p. 241). She justifies her contrivance on the ground
that generosity resembles "'a habit, like tobacco, or
biting your finger—nails, or anything else'" and lacks

c30nnection to the giver's experience of religious truth

Q3- 255). Strong emotion provides a convenient device

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74

for reorienting an old habit. Questions of any religious
reality that might be conveyed through intense emotion,

a traditional Methodist supposition, become secondary and
incidental to the raising of money. Because she assumes
the unreliability of emotion as a guide to truth, it does
not disturb Sister Soulsby that her guise of emotion,
accepted as genuine by others, is staged for mercenary
ends.

To Theron's question about the ethics of her tac-
tics, Sister Soulsby replies that "'very queer things in-
deed turn out to be the means of grace.'" Further, one
"'simply can't get along without some of the wisdom of
the serpent'" and is "'commanded to have it, for that
matter'" (p. 212). Correct in her biblical citation, she
neglects the second portion of her text which enjoins
that a dove-like innocence should accompany worldly knowl-

edge.16 When Theron doubts Soulsby's biblical interpreta-

 

16Jesus' words in Matthew 10:16 read "Behold, I
Send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye
therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."

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tion, she compares the church to the stage, hoping to
Poidnt out the inevitability of "'dirty work'" or "'ma-

chidnery'" in any successful venture (PP- 255: 257). She

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observes that in a theatre "'the performance looks one way
from where the audience sits, and quite a different way
when you are behind the scenes.'" In reality, "'the trees
and house are cloth, and the moon is tissue paper, and the
flying fairy is a middle—aged woman strung out on a rope'"
(p. 256). Yet, she rightly insists, the presence of
backstage manipulation and "'machinery'" "'doesn't prove
that the play, out in front, isn't beautiful and affect-
ing, and all that.'" Soulsby realizes that the play is
only a play and has its value in the aesthetic—emotional
satisfaction it might give. She explains that Theron, on
the other hand, after having "'been let in on the stage,
behind the scenes,'" simply wishes "'to sit down and cry
because the trees a£§_cloth, and the moon i§_a lantern'"
(pp. 256—57). The problem here, as with Soulsby's logic
in general, is that the church contends that it is more
than a stage, attempting always to relate special insight
into the nature of reality. Machinery and dirty work are
alien to the church's claim of honesty and hope for trans—
Parency to divine reality.

The real mischief of the Soulsbys is that they in-

CISEase the disparity between appearance and reality in an

iniatitution that encourages implicit trust by its

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subscribers. Prospering on this strategy, the Soulsbys
represent an updated, semi-urban advance from Twain's King

and Duke, the fumbling hucksters of Huckleberry Finn.

 

Humanity being what it is, Sister Soulsby urges Theron to
follow her lead, as Twain's crooks attempt to enlist Huck.
That is, "'get the best of what's going'" by "'keeping up
this grip you've got on your people'" (p. 257). The logic
of self-interest precludes leaving the ministry because,
in short, Theron is trained to do nothing else; and, be-
sides, Soulsby knows other ministers who have experienced
doubt and disgust, but they have "'stayed in and made the
best of it—-[and] well, one of them will be a bishop in
another ten years'" (p. 258).

Unfortunately, the consequences of Sister Soulsby's
practice extend beyond Theron's private choices. The prag-
matic bias leads her to misjudge situations and others in
a way that further disrupts Octavius. The most immediate
and lasting victim is Alice Ware. The fund-raiser not only
undervalues Alice's intelligence, but implants a similar
idea in her husband, reducing her stature still more in
COntrast to the glamorous Celia Madden. (pp. 215-16) How—
eVer, the young wife emerges as one of the two characters

111 the novel--the other is Michael Madden—dwhose judgments

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77

are unfailingly accurate. Alice is the one who recognizes
Levi Gorringe as an ally in her husband's struggle against
the conservative elements in his church. It is also Alice
who invites the Soulsbys to stay in the parsonage because
the business-like matron "'is as smart as a steel trap,-—
that woman iS,--and if she took the notion, I believe she
could help get us a better place'" (p. 203). All through
Theron's moral decay, Alice maintains a clear perception
of his duplicitous conduct (pp. 422-30). She alone real-
izes that mysterious forces within "miserable, contemp-
tible Octavius" were the chief cause of Theron's fall and
not, as Sister Soulsby contends, professional inaptitude
(p. 507). Theron's self-inflation, to which Sister Soulsby
gives succor, condemns Alice to a future of quiet suffer-
ing before her husband's overweening selfishness.
Accompanying Sister Soulsby's misperception of
Alice is an overestimation of Theron's intellect. On
separate occasions, she adds to Celia's flattery by sug—
gesting that Theron possesses "'brains'" and is an "'in-
tellectual man,'" "'greatly the other way'" from medioc-
rity (pp. 215—16, 259). After Theron's fall, illness, and
a'Pparent recovery, Sister Soulsby retracts this assessment

tC> announce that Theron henceforth will "'be just an

 

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78

average kind of man-—a little sore about some things, a
little wiser than he was about some others'" (p. 508).
Although this estimate of his mental stature is more re—
alistic, her prOphecy is belied by Theron’s hOpeful, ego-
istic imaginings of the future. Of course, her judgment
that Theron never belonged in the ministry reveals more
of her misconception of the ministry than it does of his
character. For Sister Soulsby, the ideal clergyman must
possess the skills of a charlatan that Theron in his inno—
cence clearly lacked (p. 269).

Sister Soulsby's "'good fraud'" also affects the
church and its social setting. In order to raise the
church's required deficit, she Opportunely capitalizes on
Trustee Levi Gorringe's new seriousness in the pre-
arranged "duel of beneficence." When it is finally ex—
posed, the "duel" not only disenchants Gorringe, a poten-
tially forceful and positive member of the church, but it
also administers, in its dependence on Theron's complicity,
a EEEE.§E.2£EEE.t° the minister's remaining insistence on
the moral integrity of the Christian community. Lastly,
Soulsby's work in Octavius only gives added power to the

sanctimonious self-interest of Winch and Pierce, the

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church's chief obstacles to greater Methodist honesty and

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magnaminity.

 

7Sister Soulsby has drawn more critical disagree-
ment than any other character or issue in The Damnation.
Everett Carter, Austin Briggs, and John Henry Raleigh all
evaluate Sister Soulsby's role as positive and meritor-
ious. Austin Briggs accepts the Soulsbys as Theron's "good
doctors" because they, after the Octavius trio deserts
Theron, stick around to pick up the pieces and pragmatic-
ally minister to him with the saving "gift of comic vision"
(pp. 135, 136). Everett Carter sees the Soulsbys as "com-
plete and exuberant embodiments" of Jamesian epistemolog-
ical and ethical pragmatism (p. xiv). Sister Soulsby is
"a healing and restoring madonna" who tells Theron the
"homely, unpretty truth of the realistic, the pragmatic
attitude towards life" (pp. xv-xvi). John Henry Raleigh
finds the "triumph of pragmatic wisdom" in the American
mind symbolized in the Soulsbys (222). The Soulsbys are
an "antidote" that counters the deleterious effects of
Ledsmar, Forbes, and Celia on Theron, and while they "have
learned to bend to the wind and to tell necessary lies,"
they still preserve "an inner integrity and a moral pur-
pose of their own" (222). They restore Theron, "salvage
as much good as they can from the materials at hand," and
send him off to Seattle "wiser, if sadder" (223). Raleigh
finally identifies Sister Soulsby as the ethical mouth—
piece of Frederic, much as Forbes is supposedly his phil-
osophic voice, who tells "what we must def (227).

Those critics who Oppose the above point of view
take quite a different view of the consequences of Sister
Soulsby's pragmatism. In the words of Stanton Garner, she
is a "shape—changer" "who touches Theron's weakest point,
immobilizing his moral faculties with a vision of petty
illusions disguising the sordid 'reality' of the world,"
thus pointing out the speciousness of Soulsby's analogies
of manure and stage. To Theron's misfortune, she wins him
as "a permanent convert to the cynical philosophy of sharp
practices and self-indulgent generalizations" (p. 35).
George Johnson has best suggested the process by which
SOUlsby's conversion of Theron takes place. She manages
to blur Theron's moral sense with her pragmatic philoso-
phizing, and that brings him to "imagine that he is too

 

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80

good for poor little Alice, that he is superior to his
congregation, and that he is cut out for larger things"
(365, 371).

 

Much like the views of Forbes, Ledsmar, and Celia

Madden, the Soulsbys presence in The Damnation finally

 

suggests, as Larzer Ziff has perceptively noted, the "pos-
sibility of social control" in America by a small, knowl-

edgeable elite.18 Ziff admits that the Soulsbys make

 

18Ziff, The American 1890's, p. 210.

 

 

their living by manipulating smalltown "greed and prurience
for their own ends," but he nevertheless contends that "a
love for the people" turns their work to "the good of

those manipulated."19 As evidence of this uncommon human-

 

19Ziff, pp. 216-17.

 

ity, Ziff cites the Soulsbys' willingness to care for the
disoriented Theron over a long winter. Actually, Theron's
return to the Soulsbys illumines the role they played in
his collapse. In her assertiveness, Sister Soulsby is far
more than Theron's "'pal,'" as she names herself; rather,
she is his mentor and a symbolic progenitor of his fate

in Pcflitics and real estate. Frederic fixes this role

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81

through Theron's drunken arrival at the Soulsbys. When
he rouses them from sleep, the wife asks if the intruder
is, indeed, "'QE£_Brother Ware?'" The husband replies
positively, stating "'Well, yes, I suppose he's our
Brother Ware . . .'" (p. 487). As such, the Soulsbys'
charity for the Wares hardly merits exceptional praise.
Nor are their other acts of conspicuous kindness, "'real
piety'" as Sister Soulsby calls them, especially praise-
worthy for an affluent couple who have made a life of
fraud (p. 267).

In any case, the "good" of which Ziff speaks is
arbitrary in nature, picking and choosing its favorites
according to whim. Theron receives its questionable bene-
fits because he seems bright and innocent, while Alice
Ware is turned away because of apparent dullness; still
further, no cause emerges for Sister Soulsby's preference
for the interests of self-seeking Winch and Pierce over
those of Levi Gorringe. In short, recipients of Sister
Soulsby's beneficence merit her favors in the degree to
which they mirror her self-image of the intelligence and
common sense that grew out of her youthful naivety. Her
goodness benefits only the already or potentially powerful,

not the victims of their craft.

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82

The beneficent social control envisioned by Ziff
depends on the creation of "a meritocracy of common sen—
sical peOple who sympathize with the masses and are knowl-
edgeable enough to translate new intellectual developments

into a tongue they can understand."20 As Ziff suggests,

 

zoziff, p. 216.

 

the Soulsbys manage to expose the uncultured Octavians to
Chopin, but aesthetic pleasure offers a poor substitute

for confidence in the trustworthiness of the moral and re-
ligious posture of the church. For Sister Soulsby, the
self-serving impulse of the modern advertising genius takes
precedence over the welfare of mass man. In sum, Elmer
Gantry's surname should have been Soulsby-—a good grandson

for Sister Candace Soulsby.

Theron's descent into damnation is slow, but steady.
Forbes' chance remark on the Turanian origins of the last
rites brings Theron to the "unsuspected and staggering
truth . . . that he was an extremely ignorant and rudely
untrained young man, whose pretentions to intellectual

authority among any educated people would be laughed at

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83

with deserved contempt" (p. 93). With this observation,
Theron dismisses his background and attributes his self-
recognition to his native intelligence. ASpiration sets
in after his Optimism concludes that "There was bright
promise in the very fact that he had discovered his short-
coming" (p. 9l). In the moment of recognition, the no—
madic Israelites lose the "poetic light [which] had shown"
around them and become mere "rude tramps of the uncivil-
ized plain" (p. 93).

Theron's impressions of ignorance are reinforced
in the dinner meeting with Forbes and Ledsmar who inform
him of the "'Christ myth.'" As suggested, Theron's shock
at this news is alleviated by the "charm of contact with
really educated peOple" (p. 111). On leaving the rectory,
Celia Madden unfoundedly flatters Theron's "'temperament
and bent of mind and tastes'" (p. 148). As at the last
rites, Theron finds it unusual that his first sample of
Octavius "polish and intellectual culture" should come
from its Irish Catholic segment (p. 78). On returning to
his parsonage later that evening, his "newly informed eye"
judges its contents, his sleeping wife presumably included,
to be "bare and squalid" (p. 155). It is also on this

evening that Theron first lies to his wife.

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84

Part Two of The Damnation focuses on church poli—

 

tics and introduces the Soulsbys. Arriving shortly before
the Soulsbys, however, is the parcel of books from Leds—
mar, which Theron begins to read furtively. Inspired by
the contents, eSpecially Renan, he feels lifted "bodily
out of the slough of ignorance, of contact with low and
sordid, narrow things" into "a world of culture and grace,
of lofty thoughts and the inSpiring communion of real
knowledge, where creeds were not of importance, and where
men asked one another not 'Is your soul saved?‘ but '18
your mind well furnished?'" (pp. 192-99). Noting Forbes'
cynicism about man and his comfortable vocation in spite
of disbelief, Theron discounts any obligation to his con—
gregation, concluding that "he could never again harbor
the delusion that the tie between them was blessed." With—
out taking "time to reflect on what he was abandoning,"
Theron issues a "new oath of allegiance" to the world of
Forbes and Ledsmar (p. 199). In doing so, he responds less
to the intellectual content of this new world than to its
romantic aura.

The effect of Sister Soulsby's coming is to render
explicit the conduct and advice of Forbes and Ledsmar. She

also flatters Theron's intelligence, but demeans his wife,

11"“ Theron worse:

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85

making Theron wonder if men "like Father Forbes and Dr.
Ledsmar would care much about her [Alice]" (p. 219).
Ledsmar's objectivity provides criteria for Theron's
greater criticism of the emotional excesses of revival-
ism (p. 283). By the example of her week of chicanery
and the import of her "common-sense" conversation, Sister
Soulsby finishes Theron's counter-conversion to moral

fatalism.2

 

21The idea that Frederic is playing on the conven-

tions of the contemporary sentimental religious novel is
the main point of Suderman, "The Damnation of Theron Ware
as a Criticism of American Religious Thought." Counter-
conversion is one example of Frederic's foiling of reader
expectation.

 

 

Left in Part Three with only his ego, Theron's
fancy plots intrigue with Celia Madden. Her expression
of boredom after the evening of Chopin is effectively fil-
tered by Theron's now overwhelming self-love. Under her
influence, as at first with Forbes and Ledsmar, Theron is
entranced with a "new birth" from the "country lout, the
narrow zealot, the untutored slave groping . . . after
silly superstitions." In his new discipleship, he is "a
Poet . . . a child of light, lover of beauty and sweet
sounds, a recognizable brother to Renan and Chopin--and

Celia!" (pp. 307-08).

 

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86

By early Fall, Theron has conformed to Sister
Soulsby's advice and Forbes' example, and "the results
were already wonderful" (p. 346). After preaching an ex-
pedient, popular sermon at a camp-meeting, he "retreats"
to the hills, only to visit a nearby Catholic picnic.
There, he comes across Celia and Forbes, drinks beer, and
is greeted with silence in his marital complaints. Alone
later in the forest with Celia, she administers her ambig-
uous kiss, which symbolically seals Theron's fate.

In the last section of The Damnation, Theron re-

 

ceives a series of warnings against his present behavior,
which are disregarded until Celia's rebuke in New York.
Levi Gorringe responds to Theron's innuendoes about Alice
Ware by telling Theron that "'It wouldn't be worth any
grown man's while to quarrel with so poor a creature as
you are'" (p. 404). On the pretext of a sick-call, Forbes
dispenses with Theron when the preacher drOps by to gossip
about Ledsmar and Celia. Alice Ware confesses to Theron
that he is like "'some man who never loved me, and doesn't
even know me, much less like me.'" In sadness, she has
even tried "'to intercede with Him, and to try to lose my
burden at His feet'" (pp. 426-27). But Heaven, as her

husband, remains indifferent. Her subsequent religious

 

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87

doubts contrast with Theron's facile, self—ingratiating

intellectualism.

 

22 . . . .
In A Mirror of the Ministry in the Modern Novel,

Horton Davies clarifies the nature of Theron's scepticism,
especially when seen in contrast to Michael Madden's and
Alice's, by naming it "dishonest doubt" (p. 78).

 

 

Theron's last warning issues from Michael Madden
who is slowly dying of congenital lung disease. He reluc-
tantly informs Theron that once he had the conduct and
"'face of a saint . . . [but] it is more like the face of
a bartender nowl'" (p. 441). Michael also depreciates his
sister's wisdom in religious matters, thus discounting the
role of spiritual mentor that Theron has assigned her
(p. 440). Theron departs, thinking the perceptive Michael
a "ridiculous bore," a term that Celia will soon apply to

Theron (p. 444).23

 

23Michael Madden, the son of a long-suffering
father, also offers a connection to the spiritual-moral
rigor of an arduous frontier past. As Austin Briggs has
pointed out, although neither Michaelrunrhis father Jere-
miah Madden do anything to determine the action of the
novel, Frederic devotes over half a chapter (Nine) to
describing the pair (Briggs, pp. 136-37). This fact can
perhaps be explained by their use as foils to the modern
adherents to Catholicism, notably Celia and Forbes, much
as the decrepit circuit riders contast with a decline in
late nineteenth-century Methodism.

 

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88

When Celia at last does tell Theron his true sta-
ture in her eyes, Theron feels isolated in "the Egyptian
night which lay upon the face of the deep while the earth
was yet without form or void . . . awful, planetary soli-
tudes . . . crushed him." In short, "the universe held
him at arm's length as a nuisance" (p. 481).

Frederic's final comment on the nature and signif-
icance of Theron's fall comes in Theron's thoughts before
his departure for Seattle. The ex-preacher's political
image of himself suggests the continuation of self—concern
as the motive force in his character. Theron has recovered
from his illness with no lasting recognition of the dis-
tance he has traveled or remorse for the moral heritage he
has lost. His lifelong capacity for egoism has emerged
dominant and blatant, and he eagerly embraces the philos—
Ophy of self-interest urged by Soulsby and enacted by
Forbes, Ledsmar, and Celia Madden.

Unlike most religious novelists of the period,
Frederic chooses not to resolve the metaphysical question
implicit in the theistic and naturalistic explanations
that Theron gives for his fall. He speculates, rather,
on the individual and social consequences of the loss of

confidence in a transcendent ideal that dictates humility

 

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89

and selflessness between men and before God. Subsequently,
Frederic focuses on possible substitutes for this tradi-
tional allegiance. Theron's character balance of ethical
idealism and subtle egoism makes him a fitting vehicle

for examining the impact of America's new cultural and
philosophic pluralism. His naivety allows for an unso-
phisticated, stumbling enactment of the suggestions urged
and lived by numerous characters, thus magnifying the
motivation and implications of those points of View.
Sister Soulsby points out this fact to Theron, stating
that "'I'm afraid you'll never make a really good fraud

. . . . Your intentions are all right, but your execution
is hopelessly clumsy'" (p. 289).

In this way, Theron's fate offers a somber indica-
tion of the direction of American culture in the modern
age. In the twentieth century's absence of traditional
certainties that at their best offered an admirable model
for social intercourse, Frederic foresaw the emergence of
multiple forms of self-interest which would persist behind
elaborate structures of philosophic justification. Amid
agnosticism, which Frederic probably shared, or a pragmatic
empiricism which would deny the relevance of man's reli-

gious urgings, Frederic envisioned modern man's aimless

 

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90

isolation, "alone among awful, planetary solitudes"
(p. 441).
The perspectives of Theron's four major influ—

ences in The Damnation-—Forbes, Ledsmar, Celia, and

 

Sister Soulsby--offer little recourse to twentieth—century
multiplicity. While their views arise from the pervasive
religious doubt of the time, each absolutizes his indi-
vidual point of view and allows it to function as a ra-
tionale and a dubious ethical posture. Theron himself
readily adopts the vocabulary of naturalistic science to
explain his conduct. His pursuit of Celia is justified
by the fact that he "was only obeying the universal law
of nature . . . which prompts the palled Spindling sprout
of the potato in the cellar to strive feebly toward the
light" (p. 276). Similarly, Theron sees his desertion

of Alice as one of "the accidents in life, the inevitable
harsh happenings in the great tragedy of Nature . . . and
there was nothing more to be said" (p. 432). Forbes and
Celia, as Sister Soulsby, share Theron's moral fatalism
that severs them from compassion for all but their own
social and intellectual equals. Thus, the worse judgment
that Celia can pronounce on Theron is that he has become

a "'bore'" (p. 477).

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91

Sister Soulsby's pragmatism fully repeats this
pattern. Her belief that the individual is incapable of
alteration in character, "'that the time to separate the
sheep from the goats is on Judgment Day,'" justifies the
manipulation of human frailty (p. 264). Soulsby's ac-
tivities in the church tend, as do Forbes', toward the
exertion of authority by an enlightened few who withhold
their special knowledge for their own advantage (pp. 260-
61; 108, 359—63). This attitude in Sister Soulsby's fund-
raising and Forbes' intellectualism increases the dispar-
ity between appearance and reality within the church, a
self-proclaimed arbiter of divine truth from which one
could expect unqualified integrity. Significantly, Leds-
mar, Forbes, and Soulsby, all employ the term "'machinery'"
to denote their concepts of the way in which the church
should function (pp. 114, 362, 257). In their hands,
ecclesiastical structure becomes artifice and tool for
social control rather than a vehicle for community and
the imparting of religious wisdom. The church's suscep-
tibility to self—interest speaks pessimistically of the
fate of the secular culture of which it is a self-

proclaimed moral leader.

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92

It is the prOSpect of an elitist oligarchy for
democratic America, with either philOSOphic or pragmatic
rationales, that Frederic represents in the moral fall
of Theron Ware. The political ambition of Theron, a pro-
fession always disdained by Frederic, clashes sharply
with the candor, humility, and selfless concern of his
Methodist forefathers who gave their lives in civilizing
the frontier. Theron, like Sister Soulsby, values the
frontier for its exploitive potential. Although Frederic
does not endorse the metaphysical suppositions of the
pioneer Methodists, he does lament the passing of a dis—
position that was connected with humility before a trans-
cendent religious and moral ideal. It is the premature
dismissal of this frame of mind that bodes ill in Fred—

eric's vision of America's future.

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CHAPTER TWO
POPULAR FEMALE NOVELISTS: THE DIFFICULT

PATH BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND DOUBT

Among the novelists of the late nineteenth century
who portrayed the tension between doubt and faith, none
drew more attention to the conflict than three female
writers whose best-sellers treated crucial contemporary
religious issues. Born in successive decades of the mid-
century and in different regions, the three represent,
moving from the eldest to the youngest, distinct stages
on the path from orthodoxy to theological liberalism.

Each novelist, in one or more works, considered causes
for doubt and expounded a rationale for continued reli-
gious faith, despite the persistence of unsolvables.

The earliest and perhaps the most popular of the
group, Southerner Augusta Evans Wilson initiated the half—
century's novelistic depiction of religious uncertainty
with Beulah (1859), a gloss on her own experience with

scepticism. Her St. Elmo (1866), a latter variation on

 

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the same theme, set new sales records and ranks among the

tOp three best—sellers of the nineteenth century.1 Two

 

lWilliam Perry Fidler, Augusta Evans Wilson 1835-
1909: A Biography (University, Alabama, 1951), p. 129.

 

 

 

years after St. Elmo, New Englander Elizabeth Phelps Ward

 

won wide recognition with a novel of death, consolation,

and the afterlife, The Gates Ajar (1868). Mrs. Ward's

 

subsequent fiction turned often to religious themes, most

notably in the best-selling A Singular Life (1896), which

 

tells of a heretic minister and his martyrdom in social
reform. Lastly, Margaret Wade Deland pointed to the dan-
gers of religious incompatability in marriage with John

Ward, Preacher (1888), a novel which became known as the

 

American Robert Elsmere. Together, if popular fiction

 

truly reflects its time, these feminine writers rendered
the experience and limits of denial and affirmation common
to a religiously confused public. It is the logic and
nature of that uncertainty and faith which provides the
focus for our discussion here.

A native Georgian, and, as the Civil War would
prove, a loyal daughter of the South, Augusta Jane Evans

first novel, Inez (1855), described the frontier life of

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southwestern Texas and the events leading to the battle
of the Alamo. Published in the author's twenty-first
year, the novel's setting and subject resulted from her
family's brief tenure in pioneering. Filled with the
melodrama of political intrigue, the author's religious
concerns are already conspicuously present. In§z_sought
to explain, as biographer William Perry Fidler has sum-
marized, "the dangers of Catholicism . . . and the vir-

tues of Protestantism."2 Voicing traditional Protestant

 

2Augusta Evans Wilson, p. 42.

 

 

complaints about priestcraft, superstition, and intellec—
tual tyranny, Miss Evans also debates intricate theolog-
ical points with long discussions and numerous learned
quotations. In any case, because the novel assumed the
necessity and correctness of religious belief, it need
not fall under consideration here. The young author soon
experienced fundamental religious doubt which would ef-
fectively rid her of sectarian bias. Her concern became
not which sect or faith to follow but whether religious
faith remained a viable possibility in light of evolution-
ary thought, higher criticism of the Bible, and compara—

tive religion.

 

 

.‘

flut‘xf‘ul orpha :1

 

96

Miss Evans turned to this matter in her second
novel, Beulah (1859), which Fidler calls a "fictional con-
fession" of the author's intellectual experience in late

adolescence and early twenties.3 The novel tells of a

 

3Fidler, p. 48.

 

youthful orphan girl's journey from faith, through scepti-
cism, and back to faith. As such, the novel probably
represents America's most detailed account of the sources
and logic of rational religious doubt. Stocked with eru-
dition and philosophic debate, the heroine's religious
inquiry parallels a romantic interest between herself and
her middle-aged sceptical guardian, Dr. Guy Hartwell. The
physician is not brought to affirmation by the novel's
close, but the author strongly implies that the pious
example of Beulah, now his wife, will eventually bring the
doubter to faith. Whether due to its religious content

or its romantic effects, Beulah sold 22,000 c0pies in its
first nine months and continued a popular favorite through-

4
out the century.

 

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97

No small part of Beulah's religious doubt results
from the adversities of her childhood. Orphaned with a
younger sister by her parents' deaths, she lives happily
in a foundlings' home until age fourteen, when her pretty
sister is adOpted by the wealthy Grayson family, who will
have nothing to do with the less than attractive Beulah.
Shortly thereafter, an orphan friend, again adOpted by
affluent parents, departs for five years to study abroad.
Yellow fever strikes the Southern city, and the sister
dies, the parents refusing the lowly Beulah admittance to
the deathbed. The series of untoward events brings Beulah
to reflect that she "'never loved anything but trouble

came upon it.”5 DisProportionate suffering plants the

 

5Beulah (New York, 1868), p. 68. Future refer-
ences will be given in parentheses.

 

seeds of doubt that will later question the origins of
evil in a supposedly beneficent universe. Hardly beyond
childhood, the author explains that already "Hope fainted;
faith fainted; and bitterness and despair reigned in that
once loving and gentle soul" (p. 73).

All is not bleak, however. Beulah meets the

widowed Guy Hartwell who takes compassion on her plight

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98

and brings her into his home, although her fierce indepen-
dence will not allow formal adoption. "A proud, gifted,
and miserable man," the wealthy Hartwell habitually mani-
fests a "stern sadness" that makes him "a baffling, fasci-
nating mystery" to the young girl. They live happily to-
gether for three years as Beulah becomes increasingly
"grave, earnest, restless, and searching; indexing a
stormy soul" (p. 132). In Hartwell's scholarly library,
she encounters Poe where she catches "tantalizing glimpses
of recondite psychological truths and processes, which
. . . ever eluded analysis" (p. 147). Unable to detect
"adroitly disguised sophisms," Poe's "Eureka," by a
"seemingly infallible reasoning," "cooly informed her
that she [Beulah] was her own God." "Mystified, shocked,
and yet admiring," Beulah is thus brought to "the portal
through which she entered the vast Pantheon of Specula-
tion" (p. 149). Her guardian warns her of the threat
serious study poses to her Christianity, but Beulah cannot
"'be satisfied with a creed which I could not bear to have
investigated'" (pp. 157-58).

So begins Beulah's long inquiry of years. Her
catalogue of authors mounts: Richter, Jean Paul, Cole-

ridge, Carlyle, Goethe, and Spinoza, among many others.

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Added to these are her own speculations on mortality which
inevitably arise from her close acquaintance with death.
She soon asks, "Aside from revelation, what proof had she
that unlike her moldering flowers, her spirit should never
die?'" (p. 160). In seeking answers to this and other
"primeval foundation questions," she turns often to the
Bible, but there she only confronts "inexplicable passages"
(pp. 256, 257). Whatever authority the Bible maintains
for Beulah soon falls to the findings of pre-Darwinian
geoloqy, which had anticipated many later threats to
orthodoxy. Beulah discovers that "in those pre—Adamic
ages, Paleontologists find no trace whatever of that
golden time, when the vast animal creation lived in har-
mony, and bloodshed was unknown; ergo, man's Fall has no
agency in bringing death into the world; ergo, that chap-
ter in Genesis need puzzle her no more." In addition,
comparative religion "beckoned her on to conclusions
apparently antagonistic to the revealed system" (p. 258).
Thus, the "landmarks of her earlier years were swept away"
(p. 259). The "grim fact" of evil, which also bothered
contemporaries E. P. Roe and William Dean Howells, has no

explanation (p. 350). On the ground of logic alone, she

 

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100

dismisses the Christian solution, asking "'why curse a
race in order to necessitate a Saviour?'" (p. 255).

In her Spiritual crisis, Beulah would turn to
others for consolation. The "pompous austerity of his
manners" discounts her clergyman (p. 257). A kindly
physician to whom she turns, the partner of Guy Hartwell,
tells her that he is an unsafe guide for he shares her
doubts about the Bible (p. 300). The conspicuous scepti—
cism of her guardian disqualifies him from any role as
counselor. A local heiress who has befriended Beulah
also lacks faith, although she lives with a slow death
from heart disease (pp. 285, 376-77). The climate of
Beulah's time seems to combat faith: "On every side she
saw the footprints of skepticism; in history, essays,
novels, poems, and reviews" (p. 353). Beulah's two
closest Christian friends, a fellow-teacher and the
orphanage matron, are pious but timid and unquestioning
in their faith. From this context, Beulah must decide
to study independently, and she plunges into formal
philosophy, against which other doubters have warned her.

Her first confidante on her new line of study is
Hartwell, to whom she confesses that "'There are mysteries

in physics, morals and metaphysics, that have wooed me on

 

 

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b-v‘

101

to investigation; but the further I wander, deeper grows
the darkness . . . . Cloudy symbolisms mock me on every
side'" (p. 320). Hartwell's assurances, assuming "'all
creeds and systems are null,'" are few: "'I know that I
exist; that a beautiful universe surrounds me, and I am
conscious of a multitude of conflicting emotions . . . .

I stand on the everlasting basis of all skepticism, "there
is no criterion of truth!" All must be subjectively
true'" (pp. 320, 322).

A similar declaration comes from Beulah's wealthy
dying friend, warning Beulah that metaphysical systems and
philosophers "'are worse than useless. They will make you
doubt your own existence . . .'" (p. 378). The invalid
reasons that she cannot know that "'all truth is not merely
subjective . . . . How do I know that my "true," "good,"
and "beautiful" are absolutely so? My reason is no infal-
lible plummet to sound the sea of phenomena and touch
noumena'" (p. 285). This epistemological dilemma, shared
again by Howells and Roe, recurs often to Beulah and comes
to lie at the center of her intellectual struggles (p.
352). Later in the story, in preparation for Beulah's
conversion, Miss Evans recalls Beulah's history in in-

quiry, which merits quoting at length:

ability a

 

 

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102

Rejecting literal revelation, she was perplexed
to draw the exact line of demarkation between
myths and realities; then followed doubts as
to the necessity, and finally, as to the prob-
ability and possibility of an external, verbal
revelation. A revealed code, or system, was
antagonistic to the doctrines of rationalism;
her own consciousness must furnish the neces-
sary data. But how far was "individualism"
allowable? And here the hydra of Speculation
reared its horrid head; if consciousness alone
furnished truth, it was but true for her, true
according to the formation of her mind, but
not absolutely true (pp. 382-83).

In trying to find any definite truth through phi-
losophy, Beulah becomes disenchanted with the capability
of human reason and the emotional adequacy of any abstract
philosophic system. In Beulah's careful study, philOSOphy
does much to disqualify itself through intramural conten-
tiousness. On the basic facts of man's psychology, "in-
stead of unanimity among metaphysicians, she found fierce
denunciation of predecessors, ingenious refutations of
principles . . . and an intolerant doqmatism which aston—
ished and confused her" (p. 351). The same result emerges
from her study of the history of philOSOphy, in which she
expected to find more objectivity (p. 352).

To facilitate Beulah's disillusion, the author

injects a knowledgeable suitor whose sole purpose seems

to be the devaluation of philOSOphical Speculation. A

 

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lawyer about to be elected to Congress, Reginald Lindsay
spars with Beulah's unbelief by recounting his own exper-
ience in speculation. His main point suggests that "'the
very absurdities of phiIOSOphy are the most potent argu-
ments in substantiating the claims of Christianity. Kant's
theory, that we can know nothing beyond ourselves, gave
the death blow to philosophy'" (p. 408). Lindsay also
strikes the other theme that will force Beulah to Chris-
tian submission, claiming that "'merely logical forms of
argumentation do not satisfy the hungry soul. The rigid
process of Idealism annihilated the external world; and
Hume proved that Mind was like a chimera; yet who was ever
seriously converted by their incontrovertible reasoning?'"
(p. 439).

Beulah and Reginald never reach philosophic con-
clusion, for they are usually interrupted at crucial junc—
tures, but the lawyer's arguments do prepare the way for
Beulah's surrender to faith. In their last meeting when
Beulah finally dismisses Lindsay's proposal, the lover
offers a perspective that the author earlier intruded to
suggest and that Beulah will finally accept. That is,
"'to receive the attempted solutions of phiIOSOphy re—

quired more faith than [to receive] Revelation'" (p. 446).

 

 

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104

Or, as the author poses her axiom, "the attempted refuta-
tions of Christianity contained objections more gross and
incomprehensible that the doctrine assailed" (p. 351). In
Lindsay's words, doubt dictated entering "'vagaries more
inexplicable than aught I fled from in revelation'"

(p. 445). Lindsay articulates the alternatives that will
soon decide Beulah's philOSOphic fate. Admitting that
Christian revelation "'is insufficient for our aspiring
souls,” scripture nonetheless "'declares emphatically that
here "we see through a glass darkly.“ Better this, than
the starless night in which you grope, without a promise
of the dawn of eternity, where all mystery shall be ex-
plained'" (pp. 446-47). To support his claim, the advo-
cate of faith argues for the trustworthiness and qualita—
tive superiority of the Bible. He quotes a latitudinarian
and sceptic of verbal inspiration, stating that when phi-
losophers "'"deliver prOphecies as clear as those of the
Hebrew seer . . . when they shall speak with the sublime
authority of Jesus of Nazareth . . . then we may begin to
place them on the elevation which they so thoughtlessly
claim . . . ."'" The Bible, in short, "'bears incontro-

vertible marks of divine origin'" (p. 446).

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105

Beulah at last comes to the impasse between final,
complete negation and orthodox faith. With logic which
would reappear in the arguments of Henry Adams' Reverend
Stephen Hazard, Beulah asks, "'Of two incomprehensibles,
which was the most plausible?'" Philosophy had given her
"'dim, doubtful conjecture, cold metaphysical abstractions,
intangible shadows, that flit along my path, and lure me
on to deeper morasses'" (p. 457). Beulah concludes that

"this world is indeed as a deluge, and in it
there is no ark of refuge but the Bible. It
is true, I did not see this soul's ark con-
structed . . . yet, all untutored, the ex-
hausted bird sought safety in the incompre-
hensible, and was saved. AS to the mysteries
of revelation and inspiration, why, I meet
mysteries, turn which way I will. Man, earth,
time, eternity, God, are all inscrutable mys-
teries" (p. 451). -
In Spite of persistent mystery, Beulah's "weary Spirit
found rest" as "only the exhausted wanderer through the
burning wastes of Speculation can truly comprehend and
appreciate“ (p. 461).

In Beulah's closing Speech to Hartwell, the author
offers one more, previously unintroduced reason for belief.
Pointing to traditional philOSOphy and the new science,

Beulah asks, "'has all this learned disputation contri-

buted to clear the thorny way to strict morality? Put the

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106

Bible out of sight,'" She admonishes Hartwell, "'and how
much will human intellect discover concerning our origin--
our ultimate destiny? . . . notwithstanding the many price-
less blessings it [science] has discovered for man, the
torch of science will never pierce and illumine the recesses
over which Almighty God has hung his veil'" (pp. 508-09).
Although "'There is a divine mystery infolding it, which
tells of its divine origin,'" "'Christianity is clear, as
to rules of life and duty . . . about the [divine's] direc—
tions to man'" (p. 509).

The theme of Christianity's unparalleled moral
stature comprises the chief focus of Augusta Jane Evans

most popular novel, St. Elmo (1866). This long tale

 

largely repeats the successful formula plot of Beulah.
Orphan Edna Earl, injured in a train wreck, is befriended
by the wealthy Mrs. Murray, whose son St. Elmo becomes
the Byronic hero of the novel and the beneficiary of
Edna's Christian witness.

When Edna Earl enters the protection of the Murray
home at age thirteen, She quickly impresses the lordly
middle-aged son who has long since discarded any reverence
for humanity or religion. Even St. Elmo's eyes cast a

"cynical glare," and his mouth carries "a chronic, savage

 

ear, as if it <

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107

sneer, as if it only Opened to utter jeerS and curses."
Such features reveal a character "blotted by dissipation,
and blackened and distorted by the baleful fires of a
fierce, passionate nature, and a restless, powerful, and

unhallowed intellect."6

 

6St. Elmo (New York, n.d.), p- 56. Future refer-

ences will be given in parentheses.

 

 

The author withholds the sources of St. Elmo's
abrasive cynicism until the later part of the novel when
he confesses his love to Edna. Once possessed of a
"'tender, loving heart,'" as one character testifies,

St. Elmo Murray fell victim to the romantic duplicity

of his fiancée and his best friend, whom he had long
idolized (p. 334). In his rage which followed the diS-
covery, St. Elmo killed the friend, a ministerial student
and the son of the local minister, in a duel. Since that
time, the morose young man surrendered "'to every Species
of dissipation'" and to the "'hate of every thing human,
eSpecially of every thing feminine.'" The fact that the
deceit of "'A minister's daughter, a minister's son, a
minister himself'" composed the occasion of his disillu-

sion only compounded the young idealist's despair.

108

Subsequently, St. Elmo designed his life "'to mock and
make my race suffer'" (p. 316).

Edna's life of consistent Christian virtue gradu-
ally works to reorient St. Elmo's attitudes. Penultimate
cynic, St. Elmo finds his expectations confounded by the
young girl who, to his surprise, pities and despises his
fearsome demeanor (p. 83). AS St. Elmo later confides,
"'I saw in your character traits that annoyed me, because
they were noble and unlike what I believed all womanhood
and girlhood to be'" (p. 319). Still sceptical of the
girl after a four year absence, the now seventeen-year-
old beauty continues to amaze. Anxious to prove his af-
fections misplaced, St. Elmo confesses to Edna that he
"'strewed infidel books where . . . you must see them
. . . I teased and tormented and wounded you whenever an
Opportunity offered; for I hOped to find some flaw in
your character, some defect in your temper, some incon—
sistency between your professions and your practice'"

(p. 322). Edna's continued integrity and selflessness at
last convince St. Elmo that damnable humanity has at least
one worthy exception, and, thereupon, love and hope return

to his malignant, deadened Spirit.

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109

St. Elmo is further redeemed by the charity of the
Reverend Hammond, the learned and saintly man whose son
had duped St. Elmo and had, in turn, been avenged. In
addition to St. Elmo's satisfaction upon the minister's
son, he wooed and jilted the minister's only surviving
daughter, an act which led to the death of the frail,
consumptive girl. In rebutting St. Elmo's negative esti-
mate of humanity, Edna cites the example of the elderly
clergyman "'whose unswerving consistency, noble charity,
and sublime unselfishness . . . ought to leaven the mass
of sneering cynics, and win them to a belief in their
capacity for rising to pure, holy, almost perfect lives'"
(p. 160). Nevertheless, the minister does indeed forgive
St. Elmo. When they are finally reunited after almost
twenty years St. Elmo discovers the depth of the old man's
forgiveness, exclaiming that "'You amaze me, for I hate
and scorn myself so thoroughly . . . I can not understand
how you can endure the Sight of my features . . . .'"

(p. 405). Between the time of his dillusion and his

acquaintance with Edna and reunion with Hammond, St. Elmo
had nowhere found any evidence of Christian charity, even
in his mother--"'a woman of stern integrity of character

and sincerity of purpose; but she is worldly and ambitious,

 

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110

and inordinately proud, and for her religion I had lost
all respect'" (p. 318).

In dwelling on ethical representations of Chris-
tianity, Augusta Evans returns to a major theme develOped
by the minor characters of Beulah. Although it is not an
element in Beulah's religious doubt, the ethical laxity
and inconsistency of Christians bring several characters
to scepticism. Most notably, Beulah's wealthy friend dies
an unbeliever after disenchantment with the church wherein
she "'set out to anchor myself in a calm faith'" (p. 283).
The minister of her fashionable church parades pompously
before the lowly but bows "'with a servile, fawning syco-
phancy'" before the wealthy and powerful. Similarly, the
congregation either squabbles over sectarian claims or
plainly pursues "'Mammon worship'" (p. 284). Unable to
find but one consistent, self-effacing Christian through
all her world travels, the dying girl concludes that "'If
all Christians set an example as pure and bright as hers,
there would be less infidelity and atheism in the land'"
(pp. 377, 78). The husband of this exceptional Christian
woman, himself an unbeliever, confesses to Edna that he
must ”'acknowledge the happy results of her faith, and I

may yet be brought to yield up old prejudices and confess

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111

its divine origin'" (p. 300). Following their marriage
two decades before, the husband, Guy Hartwell's medical
partner, "'did not expect her [his wife] to prove so pure-
hearted, unselfish, humble, and genuinely pious as I found
her . . . . if it [religion like hers] were not so rare,
I Should never have been so sceptical'" (p. 301).

With this relation between faith and conspicuous
fidelity to its ethical dictates firmly in mind, Edna Earl
proclaims to the cynical St. Elmo that "'Even if our reli-
gion were not divine, I Should clasp to my heart the sys—
tem and the faith that make Mr. Hammond's life serene and
sublime. Oh! that I may be "duped" into that perfection
of character which makes his example beckon me ever onward
and upward'" (p. 162). Miss Evans thusinitiates a stra-
tegy of conversion that appeals to an unique, unparalleled
ethical stature which beSpeakS divine origin and suggests
an empirical verification of the realities of faith. It
is with this logic that the Reverend Hammond early in the
novel urges Edna "'to make your life an exposition of your
faith; let practice and profession go hand in hand . . .
and your influence for good in Mrs. Murray's family may
be beyond all computation'" (p. 104). Later, when trying

to coax Edna to marry St. Elmo, Hammond recurs to this

 

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112

same point, arguing that "'Far, far beyond all computation
is the good which a pious, consistent, Christian wife can
accomplish in the heart of a husband who truly loves her'"
(p. 334). Even though Edna does not marry St. Elmo until
the novel's close and her immense literary success, Edna's
ethical witness to faith and Hammond's forgiveness prove
efficacious. St. Elmo's heart is softened, and he chooses
to atone for past Sin by entering the ministry.

The author seems to have had two distinct reasons
for introducing the pattern of St. Elmo's experience into
her fiction. The first results from her desire to amend
the social and political tendency of her time.

The old venerated barriers and well-guarded
outposts, which decorum and true womanly
modesty had erected on the frontiers Of pro-
priety, were swept away in the crevasse of
sans souci manners that threatened to inun-
date the entire land; and latitudinarianism
in dress and conversation was rapidly re-
ducing the sexes to an equality, dangerous
to morals and subversive of all chivalric
respect for woman.

A double-faced idol, fashion and flirta-
tions, engrossed the homage of the majority
of females, while a few misguided ones, weary
of the inanity of the mass of womanhood and
desiring to effect a reform, mistook the
sources of the evil, and, rushing to the
Opposite extreme, demanded power, which as
a privilegethey already possessed, but as
a right could not extort (p. 464).

 

 

 

 

 

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113

Feminism in particular drew the author's ire because it
disturbed the traditional vital role of the female in the
home, the bulwark of social practice. Consequently, Miss
Evans, through Edna Earl's purpose in writing, Offers a

justification for St. Elmo and its straightforward appeal

 

to the feminine reader:

Believing that the intelligent, refined,
modest Christian women . . . were the real
custodians of the national purity, and the
sole agents who could successfully arrest
the tide of demoralization breaking over the
land, She addressed herself to the wives,
mothers, and daughters of America; calling
upon them to smite their false gods, and
purify the Shrines at which they worshipped.
Jealously She contended for every woman's
right . . . . to be learned, wise, noble,
useful, in woman's divinely limited Sphere;
the right to influence and exalt the circle
in which she moved . . . the right to modify
and direct her husband's opinions, if he
considered her worthy and competent to guide
him . . . (pp. 465-66).

St. Elmo, then, constitutes the author's explanation of

 

the province of the female and the sanctity of romantic
love.

Miss Evans' second motive for St. Elmo perhaps
undergirds her first. For the writer who had discredited
metaphysics and still reSpected the findings of science
and biblical criticism, a new way had to be found for the

verification of traditional Christian orthodoxy. This new

114

perspective emerges in the method of St. Elmo's conver-
sion. Edna Earl and the Reverend Hammond oppose and con-
fute St. Elmo's misanthrOpy by proving, in Edna's words,
"'that human nature, sublimated by Christianity, is ca-
pable of attaining nobler heights than pagan philosophers
and infidel seers ever dreamed of'" (p. 456). Thus, in
a time when traditional rational-empirical proofs for
Christianity were widely discounted, Augusta Evans pointed
toward a different kind of empirical substantiation. In
exemplary Christian conduct, there emerges a moral witness
which Springs from and illuminates the reality which faith
perceives. Other late-century defenders of the faith,
Elizabeth Phelps Ward and E. P. Roe, would repeat this
approach to the tension between faith, ethics, and doubt,
but Augusta Evans deserves credit for its inception early
in the half—century.

Augusta Evans published over novels before and

after St. Elmo, although none came close to its popularity.

 

Macaria (1863), an elaborate exposition of the Southern
position in the Civil War, won the distinction of being

banned among Yankee troops by at least one Northern

 

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115

general.7 Between the publication of St. Elmo and Vashti

 

(1869), She married Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson, a

 

7Fidler, p. 107.

 

wealthy, elderly (aged Sixty) businessman Of Mobile, Ala-
bama. The new Mrs. Wilson took her marital duties seri-

ously, and her productivity Slackened. Vashti; or, Until

 

Death Do Us Part, as its title suggests, warns against

 

hasty and loveless marriages. Six years passed before

Mrs. Wilson's next work, Infelice (1875), a highly melo—

 

dramatic tale of upper-crust degeneracy and personal re-

venge. The Mercy of Tiberius (1887) features a murder

 

mystery which includes heroic Sisterly affection and an
uncanny scientific denouement (the murdered couple was
struck by lightning which cast a photographic image on a
pane of glass). Mrs. Wilson's last major effort, A

Speckled Bird, appeared in 1902 when She was Sixty-seven.

 

Set amid labor unrest and talk of women's rights and com-
munism, the novel expounds the author's belief that, as
biographer Fidler has summarized, "women who permit them-
selves to be 'corrupted' by association with the imper-
sonal, materialistic forces of commerce can expect to lose

their indentity as women, because the hardened practices

116

of business will destroy the delicate, superior moral

'fibres' of feminine character."8 Devota (1907), a thin,

 

8Fidler, p. 107.

 

disjointed discussion of contemporary topics, ended Mrs.
Wilson's writing career just two years before her death
in 1909 at age seventy-four.

In contrast to Mrs. Evans' early fiction, none of
the above novels contains characters whose beliefs are
altered by new currents of religious thought. The author's
opinions on contemporary religious questions are on occa-
sion inserted into characters' discussions or in direct
lectures to the reader, but never are they central to the
outcome of the story. The most frequent theme in these
instances focuses on the nature of science and its impact
on religious faith. A look at two of these novels will
suffice to illustrate her attitude toward science and
indicate her understanding of its role in modern culture.

The first significant mention of science occurs
in the closing pages of Beulah. There the heroine assures
her husband that while "'the torch of science will never
pierce and illumine the recesses over which Almighty God

has hung his veil,'" She does hOpe that some day "'Science

 

 

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117

and Religion shall link hands.'" Beulah reveres "'the
tireless laborers who toil in laboratories . . . hunting
for footsteps of Deity,'" believing "'that every scien-
tific fact will ultimately prove but another lamp, planted
along the path which leads to a knowledge of Jehovahl'"

(p. 509).9 Infelice (1875), which came well after the

 

 

9 . .
Mrs. Wilson tried to steer a careful path between

materialistic and pantheistic views of nature. Her clear-
est exposition of her view comes in Beulah. Speaking di-
rectly to the reader, the author states,

There is an ardent love of nature, as far re-
moved from gross materialism or subtle panthe-
ism on the one hand, as from stupid inappreci-
ation on the other. There is such a thing as
looking "through nature up to nature's God,"
notwithstanding the frightened denials of

those who, shocked at the growing materialism
of the age, would fain persuade this generation
to walk blindfold through the superb temple of
a loving God has placed us in . . . . it may
safely be proclaimed that genuine aesthetics

is a mighty channel, through which the love and
adoration of Almighty God enters the human soul.
It were an insult to the Creator to reject the
influence which even the physical world exerts
on contemplative natures . . . . Because one
false philOSOphy would defy the universe,
startled opponents tell us to close our ears

to these musical utterances, and Shut our eyes
to glorious nature, God's handiwork. Oh! why
has humanity so fierce a hatred of medium paths?
(p. 276)

It should be noted that when Beulah does return to faith

one of her highest pleasures is again contemplating a na-
ture infused by God's love. For a nature lover, the sci-
entific attack on nature was to have special significance.

 

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118

impact of Darwinism, repeats essentially the same attitude
expressed in Beulah but takes care to emphasize the epis-
temological limits and the emotional inadequacy of the new
science as a system of thought. An elderly bishOp cau-
tions a young enthusiast to be certain that the new sci-
ence

"is not merely old error under new garbs,—-only
a change of disguising terms. Science has its
fetich, as well as superstition, and abstruse
terminology does not always conceal its stolid
gross proportions . . . . Scientific research
and analysis, nobly brave, patient, tireless
and worthy of all honor and gratitude,--have
manipulated, decomposed, and then integrated
the universal clay,--but despite microscope

and telescope, chemical analysis and vivisec-
tion,--they can go no further than the whirring
of the Potter's wheel,--and the Potter is no-
where revealed . . . . the Clay and the Potter
are still distinct,--and He who created cosmic
laws-—cannot reasonably or satisfactorily be
confounded with, or merged in His own statutes.'

,10

 

10Infelice (New York, 1903), pp. 135-36. Future
references will be given in parentheses.

 

 

AS with abstract philosophy in Beulah, Mrs. Wilson
connects "the vexing riddles that sit open—mouthed at our
religious and scientific cross-roads" to the emotional
needs of the individual (p. 187). She questions her
reader as to whether scientific theory can "cure Spiritual

starvation" (p. 185). AS Elizabeth Phelps Ward, She poses

 

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119

her question from the emotional urgency surrounding death
and the possibility of an afterlife.

Among the multitudinous philOSOphic, psy-
chologic, biologic systems that have waxed and
waned, dazzled and deluded,--from the first
utterances of Gotama,--to the very latest of
the advanced Evolutionists, is there any other
than the Christian solution of the triple-
headed riddle-—Whence?—-Wherefore?--Whither?
that will deliver us from the devouring Sphinx
Despair;-—or yield us even shadowy consolation
when the pinions of gentle yet inexorable
death poise over our household darling,--and
we stand beside the cold Silent clay, which
natural affection,—-and life-long companion—
ship render so inexpressibly precious?

(p. 184).

It is to Mrs. Wilson's credit that, recognizing
the agnostic thrust in most late nineteenth-century sci-
ence, she could still allow for COOperative efforts be-

tween science and religion. A character in A Speckled

 

Bird (1902) probably states her final attitude.

"Revealed religion letS down a ladder from
heaven; natural sciences are the solid rungs
by which men . . . build and climb. Side by
side these ladders rise, never crossing at
Sharp angles, both ending, resting at the
feet of God. Up one spiritual faith runs
easily; along the other some souls of a dif-
ferent mould toilsomely ascend, each and all
seeking and finding the same goal--the eter-
nal Ruler of the universe."11

 

llA Speckled Bird (New York, 1902), p. 180.

 

 

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120

Later religionists and secular thinkers would more strin—
gently abjure the cOgnitive arrogance of science. Holding
to the private certainty of faith, Augusta Evans Wilson
was content to withhold judgment until all facts had been
submitted.

Although She never rivalled the consistent popu-
larity of AuguSta Evans Wilson, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
did on occasion receive a warm, broad reception from the
American public. The daughter of Austin Phelps, a dis-
tinguished theolOgian, and the granddaughter of Moses
Stuart, probably America's greatest biblical scholar,
Miss Phelps was amply prepared for the eschatalogical

ponderings of her first novel, The Gates Ajar (1868).

 

Although exact statistics do not exist, the novel sold
in excess of 100,000 COpieS within in a few years of its
publication and was soon translated into numerous foreign

languages.12 The author later wrote other variations on

 

12James D. Hart, The Popular Book, p. 121.

 

 

the same theme, The Gates Between (1887) and Within the

 

 

Gates (1901), but they failed to capture the pOpular ima-
gination as had her initial treatment of the Christian

afterlife. The year following The Gates Ajar saw the

 

 

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121

publication of Men, Women, and Ghosts (1869), a collection

 

of Short stories which mixes the author's impulses toward
the mundane, the religious, and the spiritualistic. A

second novel appeared in 1870. Hedged In, a mawkish tale

 

of a factory girl's life, introduces Miss Phelps' social
concerns which would culminate in her best-selling A Sin-

gular Life (1896). In any case, within three years of her

 

first novel, Elizabeth Phelps established a pattern of
fictional interests and forms which would typify her long,
prolific career.

Through the years Miss Phelps' fiction would turn
to subjects ranging from women's rights to antivivisection
and the mixed blessings of the automobile. Yet, none of
these novels drew the attention stimulated by her fiction
which possessed contemporary religious relevance. Whether
this popular response resulted from superior artistic
quality or sensitivity to the audience's concerns is im-
possible to say with certainty. What appears clear, how-
ever, is that Elizabeth Phelp's religious fiction sought
to understand the nation's religious anxiety and to offer
messages of hope and faith.

Her first attempt in this direction was The Gates

 

Ajar (1868), the immensely popular consolation to widespread

122

mourning that followed a national conflict. Published when
the author was twenty-four years old, the novel does not
question the existence of God but debates the mysterious
nature of divine goodness in the caprice of death and the
post-mortem routine of the soul. Specifically, the last
days of the Civil War have claimed the heroine's brother,

a close companion and only surviving family member. Mary
Cabot's grief quarrels with a "dreadful God," who "'has
dealt very bitterly with me'" and sent her brother to a
"dreadful Heaven."l3 Her anger at the injustice of the

event is almost outweighed by sadness at the consignment

 

13The Gates Ajar, ed. Helen Sootin Smith (Cam-

bridge, 1964), pp. 10, 13, 17. Future references will be
given in parentheses.

 

 

of the energetic, carefree brother to a staid, stereotyp-
ical heaven of golden harps and obligatory, unrelenting
Singing. In a Spiritualistic impulse, the bereaved Sister
prays for "a touch, a Sign," from the farther world, but,
as Howells also was to discover, "there is no answer,
none" (p. 17).

To Mary's spiritual rescue comes a middle-aged
Kansas aunt, the widow of an exemplary Christian "home

missionary." During her stay with Mary in her small New

123

England village, She confides the lessons of sorrow and
her hOpes of the future life. Aunt Winifred Forceyth,
Showing her creator's awareness of theolOgical issues,
diverges widely from the usual rural matron-—

A woman who knows something about fate, free—

will, and foreknowledge absolute, who is not

ignorant of politics, and talks intelligently

of Agassiz's latest fossil, who can understand

a German quotation, and has heard of Strauss

and Neander, who can dash her sprightliness

ably against . . . old dry bones of meta-

physics and theology, yet never Speak an accent

above that essentially womanly voice . . . .

(p. 74).
Her uniqueness also affects her exposition of the details
of heaven with which she seeks to quiet Mary's worst fears.
To Aunt Winifred, it seems likely that in heaven the saved
are aware of those left behind and are allowed to carry on
their favorite occupations. In Short, life continues much
the same there as on earth, except that all capability for
Sin and guilt has been removed (p. 91). Perfect felicity

between peOple and between peOple and God results.

In one important way, The Gates Ajar initiated a

 

pattern that would persist through Miss Phelps' other re-
ligious fiction. In all of Aunt Winifred's Speculations
about the experiential particulars of the afterlife, she

is guided by one theolOgical norm. That is, God's love

124

for man as clarified in the life of Jesus. Early in her
visit, the aunt reasons with Mary, asking "'do you think
He could have lived those thirty-three years, and be cruel
to you now? Think that over . . . . It may be the only
thought you dare to have,--it was all I dared to have

once . . . .'" (p. 37). Similarly, Aunt Winifred disap-
proves of popular Sunday-school lore about heaven, stating
that "'Never, never, if Jesus Christ had been Teacher and
Preacher to them, would He have pictured . . . blessed
endless years with Him in such bleak colors. They are

not the hues of his Bible'" (p. 99).

Winifred's picturing of God's solicitude in the
gentle details of heaven alters Mary's conceptions of God
from “'abstract Grandeur'" to a "living Presence, dear
and real," from "inexorable Mystery" to loving "Father"
(pp. 129, 130). Thus, the nature of Christ and Christ's
love becomes pivotal. Mrs. Forceythe explains that "'It
is on the humanity of Christ . . . that all my other
reasons for hoping for such a heaven as I hope for rest
for foundation. He knows exactly what we are, for he has
been one of us . . . not the less humanly, but only more
intensely'" (p. 133). The full measure of Jesus' "'brood—

ing love'" is seen in the fact that "'in the mystery of an

 

 

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intensity which we Shall perhaps never understand [Jesus]
could choose death and, what is more than that, could live

life for us three-and—thirty years'" (pp. 133, 131).

 

From the example of Christ's love for man, Mrs.
Forceythe simply applies "'common sense'" to the actual-

ities of heaven, conjecturing that it would "'be like'"

 

a God of love to provide all considerations for his serv-
ants (pp. 56, 51). Although at times it is texturally
uncertain, further proof of heaven's environment exists
in the Bible, where promises are held "'in hints or asser-
tions, in parables or visions'" (p. 53). Assuming God's
love and symbolic vagueness in scripture, Aunt Winifred's
only restriction in imagining the future life is "'that
nothing in the Bible contradicts" her hypotheses (p. 95).
While the aunt's many expositions on heaven do
much to console Mary, the widow's personality and conduct
perform an equally important role in clarifying the Spir-
itual reality of which she Speaks. Here, as in Phelps'
later novels, the extraordinary ethic moves from and il-
luminates the heart of trust and love and the divine
source of its inspiration. Mary Cabot's small farming
village harbors a sanctimonious Deacon Quirk and an eru-

dite, dispassionate Reverend Dr. Bland, but only a warmly

126

human and Christlike person can effectively dispel doubt
or hostility. Aunt Forceythe comes to Mary with patience
in compassion and good cheer: "with her serene smile and
rapt, saintly eyes . . . refined not only by birth and
training, but by the long nearness of her heart to Christ"
(p. 104). To Mary's further surprise, her aunt "is a
thoroughly busy Christian, with a certain 'week-day holi-
ness that is strong and refreshing" (p. 98). Her ethic
draws Simply and directly on Christ's model of Openness
and humility: "'the better we do Christ's work, the more
the uneducated, neglected, or debased mind will be drawn
to try and serve Him . . . . He sought out the lame, the
halt, the blind, the stupid, the crotchety, the rough, as
well as the equable, the intelligent, the refined . . . .'"
(p. 106).

In her third novel, The Silent Partner (1871), Miss

 

Phelps redirects the theme of The Gates Ajar, turning from

 

God's love manifested in heaven's arrangements to "'Christ%;

work'" among the industrial poor of mid-century America.l

 

14The Silent Partner (Boston, 1871), p. 256.
Future references will be given in parentheses.

 

 

An insulated, idle society girl, much like Howells' Annie

Kilburn two decades later, finds herself discomforted by

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a chance encounter with a tattered factory girl who works
in her father's mills. Gradually the debutante becomes,
as She puts it, "'wrapped in'" "the world of the laboring
poor as man has made it . . . a world deaf, dumb, blind,
doomed, stepping confidently to its own destruction before
our eyes" (pp. 183, 277-78). When Perley Kelso falls into
partial control of the mills after her father's death, his
partners humor her desire for reform. Not to be put off,

She protests that "'there is something about the relations

 

of rich and poor, of master and man, with which the state

of the market has nothing whatever to do. There is some—

 

thing,--a claim, a duty, a puzzle, it is all too new to
me to know what to call it . . .'" (p. 141).

Perley does find an explanation and focus for her
"puzzle" as She "feels" her way, "'groping purposes'" in
a world that falls "'into the dark once in a while'"

(p. 241). Her refined friends are bemused and a little
Shocked when Perley's "'superb house'" begins to resemble
"'a hospital or a set of public soup roomS.'" To this
"'morbid'" behavior is added a schedule of teas and mus-
icales, libraries and model tenements for the poor (p.
236). Perley also withdraws from the church with "'the

best pew-list in Five Falls, on the ground that the

 

 

 

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128

mill-people do not frequent'" the building (p. 237). She
finally dispels her friends bewilderment by providing a
rationale for her concern with the poor, which had at first
been only a vague dissatisfaction with her conventional
life. She quotes the unimpeachable Isaac Taylor:

"'To insure, therefore, its large purpose
of good—will to man, the law of Christ spreads
out its claims very far bpyond the circle of
mere pity or natural kindness, and in absolute
kindness, and in absolute and peremppory terms
demands for the use of the poor, the ignorant,
the wretched, and demands from everypone who
names the name of Christ, the whole residue of
talent, wealth, time, that may remain after
primary claims have been satisfied.'" (p. 242)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The force of Perley's compassion and faith appears
consistently in her acts and those she influences. One of
her business partners, a self-made man who cares only for
the less fortunate, falls in love with her as their paths
cross on errands of mercy. "Wherever peOple were cold,
hungry friendleSS, desolate, in danger, in deSpair . . .
wherever there was a soul for which no man cared, he found
her footprints" (pp. 255-56). Because of Perley, the mill-
girl who had first disturbed Perley's conscience becomes
a night-time, street-corner preacher to her impoverished
neighbors, declaring that "'the religion of Jesus Christ

the Son of God Almighty is the only poor folk's religion

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129

in all the world'" (p. 296). Throughout, admitting always
that she is only a "'feeler'" toward new ways, Perley
Kelso stands in stark contrast to the sterile "dream-life"
and facile religion of her social equals (pp. 241, 127).
Again, Miss Phelps declares the value of an extraordinary
ethic of selflessness, a claim which will assume vital
significance as the Gilded Age's threats to faith multiply.

From the religious seriousness of these two early
novels, Elizabeth Phelps turned to lighter fare in Short
stories and sentimental tales of love and marriage. Not
until 1883 with the publication of Dr. Zay does Miss
Phelps' fiction again Show the desire to surpass solely
entertainment value. Dr. Zay is still a story of love
and romance, but it draws on the movements of feminism,
homeopathy, and science for its dramatic setting.

Yorke, an aristocratic Boston lawyer, comes under
the care of Dr. Zay, a female homeopath, when his buggy
falls from a bridge in rural Maine. In addition to get-
ting well, he must contend with "this new and confusing

type of woman" who attends his injuries."15 A tireless

 

152£;_E§X_(Boston, 1883), p. 186. Future refer—

ences will be given in parentheses.

 

130

physician, Dr. Zay cannot reconcile herself to human suf-
fering for which "'there is no excuse'" (p. 113). As a
doctor, She is happy in her "terrible work," a ministering
"'seraphim'" to her impoverished patients (pp. 110, 85).

A female in a man's profession, She walks self-consciously
in the vanguard, acting "'for the whole,-—for the sex, for
a cause, for a future'" (p. 122).

With the doctor's unusual views on medicine and
the female's role in society come parallel views on human
nature and religion. When Yorke notes the difficulty of
religious belief for scientists, she responds that she is
"'a seeker, still'" (p. 170). Throughout the novel, the
author hints that the doctor attributes all thought and
emotion to a physiological base. Thus, love, in her eyes,
is “'pathological sentiment'" (p. 211). Yorke first sus-
pects that, like biblical miracles, the doctor considers
the possibility of romantic love to be so improbable that
it amounts to denial (p. 207). Yet, she later confesses
that love alone speaks of mystery and deserves reverence,
stating that "'Love is a miracle. All laws yield to it'"
(p. 242). She admits that "'Next to love between man and
his Creator (if there is such a thing, and I believe . . .

there is), the love of one man and one woman is the

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131

loftiest and most illusive ideal that has been set before
the world'" (p. 241). When Yorke repeatedly professes
that his love meets such criteria, Miss Zay begs his pa-
tience on the ground that to a scientific mind, "'The
supernatural doesn't come easily'" (p. 256). Her own
emotion convinces the doctor that she loves, as emotion
earlier convinced Yorke of a "power so mysterious . . .
as if he only out of the world had ever come into helpless
and beautiful contact with it'" (p. 208).

Miss Phelps' treatment of science and religion in
Dr. Zay serves to preface a more hostile attitude in later
novels. A more pointed portrait of her fears appears in

Within the Gates (1901), which follows the soul into the

 

next life. An enlargement of an earlier novel, The Gates

Between (1891), Within the Gates relates the death and

 

afterlife of Dr. Esmerald Thorne, a successful physician

who has given "'All his life . . . to science.”16 The

 

16Within the Gates (Boston, 1901), p. 17. Future

references will be given in parentheses.

 

 

doctor's confidence in his Skill and a scientific mate-
rialism informed by evolution prompt him to discount the

truth or necessity of religion. AS a patient explains,

 

132

"'he works the miracles himself'" (p. 6). Needless to
say, the doctor has difficulty in recognizing his state
as a disembodied Spirit after his death in a carriage
accident. He attempts to Speak to the living, but they
neither see nor hear him. Even as he progresses through
a desolate purgatory and then the beauties and mysteries
of heaven (the author fails to explain why Thorne is not
in hell for his unbelief), the doctor continues to refer
to Christianity as "'superstition'" and "'that ancient
myth that men were wont to call Almighty God'" (pp. 67,
62).

In heaven at last, Thorne remains, as anatomist
William Harvey informs him, "'out of harmony with your
atmosphere'" and "'very ignorant--for a man of your gifts'"
(pp. 86, 113). Sullen scepticism persists until the Christ
passes one day, and all kneel except Thorne who sees no
one. When all returns to normal, Thorne's empirical temper
examines Christ's apparent path to discover a footprint
and that "'There wa§_0ne passing'" (p. 133). Recognizing
his previous blindness to the Invisible, Thorne's eternal
felicity in faith appears certain.

Probably Miss Phelps' worst work of any sort—-the

story was intended for the stage—-Within the Gates

 

133

emphasizes the dangers of perceptual exclusiveness and

scientific hubris. A similar, only more stringent char-

acterization enters centrally into the antivivisection

novel Trixy (1904). From a sensitive, delicate youth,

Olin Steele matures into a research physiologist, "'one

of the most brilliant . . . who ever came back from Berlin
17

and Vienna.'" Like Thorne, Steele is secure and confi-

dent in the suppositions of a scientific materialism. As

 

17Trixy (Boston, 1904), p. 42. Future references
will be given in parentheses.

 

 

a physiologist and empiricist, he believes in the physio-
logical origin of all human activity and reflection. Con-
sequently, the human intangibles of art and love are
deemed the same as "Christianity, homeopathy, or psychical
research: one of the inevitable delusions of an unin-
structed class of minds" (p. 45). Thorne's special pro-
ject "was to locate the brain-cells wherein dwelt the
sense of maternal affection of the higher animals, and

to see whether the mother's instinct could be destroyed
or not" (p. 54). Although he discovers that "love was

too evasive . . . . to be cut out by a scapel or grasped

by a pincers," Steele nevertheless contends that love

134

"was only a Greek hypothesis, a psychic disease, the dream
of the past, the illusion of the present . . . ." (p. 55).
AS might be expected, the author sets out to con-
found Steele's suppositions through the events of the
novel. The sceptic of love soon falls prey to the "mys—
terious and beautiful force" in response to a wealthy,
"beautiful being on fire with a divine self-oblivion,-—
she, pity, personified, mercy made magic" (pp. 60, 57).
The liaison prospers until the betrothed discovers that
the researcher's chief specimen has been her missing pet
dog. AS the purveyor of "ingenuities of a decadent sci-
ence upon small, Speechless creatures," Steele suffers
condemnation from his lover's "passion for humanity" and
"womanhood" (pp. 85, 213). Morally chastened by the loss
of love and compassion for his misspent life, the physi-
ologist ponders the reality Of love that somehow transcends
physical explanation. He perceives "a theory beyond
theory, and a law beyond a law . . . he found himself
hurled to the conclusion that a man has his Share of the
mutual surrender of the loving" (pp. 214-15). The author
saves her last blow for the COgnitive arrogance of sci-
ence. The heroine writes the dying researcher that "'the

worst thing about the scientific error that has misled

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135

you [is] that it should delude the moral nature of such a
man as I thought you were born to be'" (p. 275). In a too
convenient ending, the doctor dies of infection from a
disease on which he has experimented.

The author's attack on the moral insensitivity of
Olin Steele also accuses the essentially amoral nature of
materialistic modern science. Dr. Esmerald Thorne of

Within the Gates exhibits a Similar tendency, for he abuses

 

his loving wife and neglects his child, whom he soon meets
in heaven. In Spite of their claims of service to human—
ity, both Thorne and Steele overlook the more immediate
wrongs of a saddened wife and animal cruelty (and thus to
the people who love the animals). Only Dr. Zay finally
overcomes the pattern, apparently redeemed by her womanly
sensitivity. In pointing to this inconsistency in the
practice of scientific humanism, Miss Phelps Shares a
theme that dominates the later fiction of her contemporary
James Lane Allen.

Elizabeth Phelps most forceful rebuff to the claims
of science came a decade before Tgixy. In 1894, She pub-

lished the social gospel novel, A Singular Life, which

 

finished fourth on the best-seller list for 1896, one

place ahead of Harold Frederic's The Damnation of Theron

 

 

 

 

 

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Ware. A Singular Life reverses the author's usual align-

 

ment of religious roles. In this instance, it is the hero
who doubts his inherited Calvinistic orthodoxy and subse-
quently has difficulty obtaining his denomination's license
to preach and securing a call to a pastorate. By opposing
a mild heterodoxy to rigorous traditionalism, Miss Phelps
dramatizes the experiential center to the Christian faith
which disputes the criticisms of orthodox and sceptical
alike. Through extraordinary ethical action and spiritual
character, the believer can illuminate the heart and

source of faith and convince the reticent.

A Singular Life takes place in the last decade of

 

the nineteenth century in a hotbed of theological contro-
versy. The Opening scene locates a group of senior semi-
nary students warmly arguing heredity, Huxley, and Darwin.
References to these, the higher criticism, and heresy
trials abound throughout. Even the daughter of Caesarea
Seminary's most noted professor, a "warm, rich, human
girl," reads Herbert Spencer and thinks Agustine an "in-

. I 18
teresting monomaniac."

 

18A Singular Life (Boston, 1904), pp. 39, 38).

Future references will be given in parentheses.

 

 

137

While fellow seminarians equivocate in pre-
graduation reviews of their theological correctness,
Emanuel Bayard refuses to withhold his views on verbal
inspiration and eternal punishment and thus has diffi-
culty in licensure. In the inquiry that precedes his
installation in a sea-port town, Bayard demurs on the
inerrancy of scripture, confessing instead to "'the
sacredness and authority of the Bible, which contains
the lesson and the history of His [Jesus'] life'" (p. 73).
In answer to a question on damnation, a doctrine which
provides "'an easy way of making the Christian religion
intolerable,'" Bayard makes reference only to heaven,
stating that "'its happiness and holiness are the gifts
of Jesus Christ to the race; to such of us as prove fit
survivors, capable of immortality'" (pp. 47, 73). In
submitting to the theological committee's decision,
Bayard humbly admits the existence of sacred "'mysteries'"
which he does not understand but accepts. He declares,
however, that he will "'teach . . . none which I do not
believe'" (p. 73). Otherwise fully orthodox, Bayard's
candid dissent on the two points disqualifies his candi-

dacy for the post.

138

The council's divided decision prompts some members
of the still pastorless congregation to organize indepen-
dently and to call Bayard, for the young man possesses
eminent gifts for the ministry. Besides physical beauty,
eloquence, and personal warmth, he demonstrates "an ex-
treme sensitiveness of nature" and a "spiritual supremacy"
that impresses even his detractors (pp. 11, 12). With the
"clean, sober . . . respectable families . . . of unin-
fluential citizens," Bayard unites to minister to the
"'misery and Shame in Angel Alley,'" the sea-port's bowery
where "whiskey ran in rivers" (pp. 137, 167, 178).

In a dangerous political move, Bayard and "his
poor and humble people who, in fear and faith, had trem-
blingly organized the experiment," challenge the influence
of the town's liquor interests over the thirsty sailors
(pp. 94-95). As Bayard explains to a classmate who never
expected him to lead "'such a singular life,'" "'If it
isn't the business of a Christian church . . . to look
after these fellows—-whose is it? . . . the best people
are responsible for the worst, or there's no meaning in
the New Testament, and no sense in the Christian reli—

gion'" (pp. 152, 154).

139

Over the course of years, the religious work makes
steady progress. Bayard impresses the sea-going mass with
his physical courage (he leads the rescue of a storm—blown
Ship) and his selfless conduct. AS one sailor refers to
Bayard's mission church, "'They've got a mag up there. He
ain't no dummy in a minister's choker'" (p. 135). For his
Simple sermons to the fishing folk, Bayard struggled
"harder than he had ever worked at any time in his life.
To make them one half hour's talk, he read, he ransacked,
he toiled, he dreamed, he prayed" (p. 98). Like White—
field, he "'forgot all else about the men before him, but
their immortality and their misery'" (p. 99). In daily
contact and weekly in public talks, Bayard esteemed the
needy "in some divine scales into which no dust or chaff
of weakness or care for self could fall" (p. 140). To
his meetings come the "homeless . . . and the hOpeless,
the sinning, the miserable, the disgraced, the neglected,
the 'rats' of the wharves, and the outcasts of the dens"
(p. 137). Later in his tenure, the narrator comments that
"Obscurity, poverty, religious doubt, sin and shame and
repentance jammed the ailses to hear 'the Christman' [as
Bayard became known by the lowly] interpret decency and

dignity and the beauty of holiness" (p. 346).

140

To replace a rented building destroyed by arson,
Bayard and his peoPle build a sanctuary that has, in addi—
tion to a prayer room, a library, gymnasium, bowling alley,
lounges, and smoking rooms—-all designed to entertain and
uplift the weak and unfortunate (p. 402). From the start
and when a local paper accuses Bayard of associating with
prostitutes for other than evangelical reasons, his ori—
ginal followers stay with him. The author identifies
their trust with the fidelity of "Peter and the sons of
Zebedee when they put their nets to dry upon the Shores
of Galilee, and tramped up and down Palestine at the call
of a stronger and diviner mind, wondering what it meant
and how it would all end" (p. 137).

Despite the congregation's collective effort for
others, it is Bayard's personality and love that dominates
and attracts the unchurched many. His sermons seem more
"the cry of a spirit . . . than the eloquence of a man,"
pleading "as no man pleads who has not forgotten himself,
as no man can plead who is not remembered of God" (p. 265).
The author can only approximate the source and nature of
his magnetism. She poses the problem directly.

Was it magic or miracle? Was it holiness

or eloquence? Did he Speak with the tongue
of man or of angel? Where was the secret?

I

 

141

What was the charm? Not a man or woman Of

them could have answered, but not a soul of

them could have gainsaid the power of the

preacher . . . (p. 264).
Invoking the model of Christ, Miss Phelps suggests that
"Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the
fishermen loved him [Bayard] because he loved them" (pp.
264-65).

The real intent of Miss Phelps' portrait of Bay—

ard's life emerges in her handling of the theological

professor's changing estimate of Bayard. Professor Haggai

Carruth, whose Special interest is the state of the damned,

has always conceded that Bayard's "'Christianity is all
right, so far as I know . . . . It is his theology that
is the hitch. He isn't sound'" (p. 54). The professor
seems reluctant to accept the discontinuity between ap-
parent theological error and undeniable "'Spiritual qual-
ity'" (p. 366). Within his old-style orthodoxy, the
theology teacher can neither account for nor contain the
dynamics or results of Bayard's life. He, like liberal
sceptics, can only stand in wonder at Bayard's luminous
faith. Emotion and theological humility surprise the
professor when he hears Bayard preach at an ocean-front

gathering that is reminiscent of the New Testament. The

142

professor first reflects that Bayard's sermon was "'not

. . . precisely a doctrinal discourse.'" The professor
checks his criticism, however, and confesses, until over—
come, that "'It is written . . . that the common people
heard HIM gladly. And it must be admitted that our dear
young friend, His servant, seems to command that which—-
men older and--sounder than he, would give their lives--
and fame to--'" (p. 266).

Bayard's example proves sufficient to make the
teacher realize that he "had been so occupied with the
misery of the next world that he had never investigated
the hell of this one" (p. 384). For one evening, the
professor volunteers to substitute in Bayard's pulpit.
Forced to depart from his abstruse notes because of the
polite incomprehension of his audience, the theologian
Speaks from his heart, only to have his wife afterward
tell him "that it was the best sermon She had heard him
preach in thirty years" (p. 394). The final measure of
the professor's concession to Bayard's influence emerges
in his permission for the heretic to marry his daughter.
The following day the daughter explains to Bayard that
"'Papa says I have never been quite sound myself, and

that he supposes I will do as I please, as I always have'"

143

(p. 368). In any case, Bayard's singular life, which

Arthur Hobson Quinn calls "representative of the Spiri-
tualized, the distilled essence of Christianity," con-
founds the limits and preconceptions of everyone in the

19 .
novel. The theological professor can no more account

 

l9 . . . .
Arthur Hobson Quinn, American Fiction (New York,

1936), p. 368.

 

 

for Bayard than his theologically bemused daughter or the
seafaring folk to whom Bayard ministers.

Although Miss Phelps did not venture into the com-
plex, varied thought of Augusta Evans Wilson, her discus-
sions of science clearly Show that She assumed the intel—
lectual background that her contemporary took pains to
spell out. Insofar as She sought the proof and substance
of Christianity in its social presence, Elizabeth Phelps
Ward (she married Herbert D. Ward in 1888) shared the
direction of late nineteenth-century American Protes-
tantism. Having lost the argumentive struggle with the
new science and its metaphysic, Protestant clergy, as
James Ward Smith has pointed out, generally "fastened on
the claim that metaphysics was not their baliwick anyway."

Instead, they concluded that "the essence of Christianity

4
t-

144

lies in its ethical and social teachings." While this
turn to the social introduced, again as Smith states,
"a period of disillusion with theological metaphysics,"
it at the same time obviously served as a strategy some
writers employed to counter the epistemology of science

which had forced the retreat from metaphysics.20 AS in

 

OJames Ward Smith, "Religion and Science in Amer-
ican Philosophy," in The Shaping of American Religion,
eds. James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison (Princeton,
1961), p. 424.

 

 

Augusta Evans Wilson and E. P. Roe, for Elizabeth Phelps
Ward, the untypical, extraordinary life of selflessness
not only redeemed its social setting but made transparent
the heart of faith that motivated it. Thus, unique eth-
ical action, very probably unparalleled by secular and
many churchly counterparts, offered a different kind of
empirical datum that testified to the essential reality
of faith and its source. Faith, as romantic love in BE;
§3y_and IEi§XJ composed a mystery inaccessible to the gaze
of science which would explain all things with the logic
of material causation.

Mrs. Ward's fiction never again considered theo-

logical problems with the directness of A Singular Life.

 

145

She wrote with her husband several biblical romances, such

as Come Forth! (1891) and The Master of the Magicians

 

 

(1890), but these works do not approach any Significant

theological issues. Only The Supply at St. Agatha's

 

(1896), a brief tale of divine mystery in a modern metrop-
olis, moves toward theological pertinence, only to be

lost in fully inexplicable coincidence; the only possible
explanation of the story has an angel in contemporary
dress filling a vacant pulpit. Mrs. Ward continued to
write novels and short stories, some of which, as "Jack
the Fisherman" and "Madonna of the Tubs," contain poig-
nant touches in their psychological and social realism.
After slowly deteriorating health and an unhappy marriage,

Mrs. Ward died at age seventy-Six in 1911.

Another chief indication of the spiritual temper
of the Gilded Age came in Margaret Wade Deland's first

novel, John Ward, Preacher (1888), which became an imme-

 

diate best-seller. A native Pennsylvanian, in 1876
Margaret Wade moved by herself to New York at age nineteen
to study design at Cooper Union. There she came in con-

tact with religious free-thinkers, feminists, and

r

146

intellectuals, who helped her shed her childhood Presby-
terianism. In 1880, She married Lorin Deland, a success-
ful publisher and advertiser, to whom she dedicated her
many volumes. Mrs. Deland more or less stumbled upon her
writing career through the encouragement of her husband

and many friends. Her popularity with Americans continued
into the next century, but, as J. C. Levenson has noted,
her fiction soon left behind "the conflict of ideas that
had characterized John Ward and its complex society whose
working people lived by their vigorous preacher and his
stern, dramatic theology." Most of Mrs. Deland's remaining
fiction, especially her "Old Chester" tales, picture "a
closed-off world of domestic or, at most, parochial problem

comedy and sometimes even of minor tragedy."21 In the

 

l"Margaret Deland," in Notable American Women,
1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Edward T. James
(Cambridge, 1971), p. 454.

 

 

 

considerable tragedy of John Ward, Preacher, however, there

 

exists a quality of seriousness and emotional urgency that
has no parallel in late nineteenth-century religious fic-
tion. Aware of her novel's potential controversy, Mrs.
Deland gained the approval of Phillips Brooks, her good

friend and noted pastor, and Dr. William Henry Campbell,

147

a Presbyterian minister and an ex—President of Rutgers.
With their admiration, she gave the book to the public.

The interest of John Ward, Preacher arises from

 

its theological disagreement within marriage. The husband
of the pair, a Presbyterian minister, accepts and preaches
his "Angry-God" Calvinism without diluting its more un-
pleasant doctrines. AS the narrator explains, John Ward
"was an intellect which could not hold a belief subject

to the mutations of time or circumstance . . . granting

his premise that the Bible was directly inspired by God,

he was not illogical in holding with a pathetic and patient

faith to the doctrines of the Presbyterian Church."22

 

22John Ward, Preacher (Boston, 1888), p. 41.

Future references will be given in parentheses.

 

 

Thus, "Once acknowledged by his soul," Ward goes forth, as
one character explains, to express his Presbyterianism
"with utter truth, without shrinking from its conclusions'"
(pp. 41, 188).

Ward's convictions and the necessity for theolOg-
ical conformity within his church conflict with his bride's
religious disinterest, which, in the course of the story,

turns to active scepticism. With pain and sorrow, John

"v

7"

u...

(
V

‘r-

f

148

Ward wrestles with the Presbyterian dichotomy between
faith and good works, recognizing that his wife, "whose
gracious, beautiful nature stirred him with profound ad-
miration, was in the darkness of unbelief" (p. 41). An
orphan raised by her Episcopalian cleric—uncle, Helen Ward
took "her belief for granted, and giving no more thought
to problems of theology than girls usually do" (p. 42).

In response to John Ward's first anxious questions during
their engagement, Helen moved to formulate her own creed:
"Love of good was really love of God . . . . Heaven meant
righteousness, and hell an absence of what was best and
truest; but Helen did not feel that a soul must wait for
death before it was overtaken by hell" (p. 42). In debat-
ing the wisdom or morality of marrying an unbeliever, John
Ward concludes that "it was a sacred right and duty to win
her and marry her, that he might take her away from the
atmosphere of religious indifference in which She lived,
and guide her to light and life" (p. 43).

After marriage, however, Helen continues her re-
ligious disinterest. For Mrs. Ward, religious differences
are a "'matter of temperament,'" telling her husband that
"'it does not make any difference to me what you believe.

I wouldn't care if you were a Mohammedan . . . if it

Ar.

149

helped you to be good and happy . . . different people
have different religious necessities'" (pp. 99, 98).
CorreSpondingly, she explains that she "'must believe
what my own soul asserts, or I am untrue to myself. I
must begin with that truth, even if it keeps me on the
outskirts of the great Truth'" (p. 99). Helen lives Open-
mindedly "in religion as in everything else,'" content "to
have the realization of God in one's soul." Consequently,
although she is not certain of the nature of God, "'the
fg£m_of belief is of . . . little consequence'" (p. 140).
Ward repeatedly postpones contending with Helen's
unbelief, judging her "not ready for the strong meat of
the Word" (p. 101). His sermons substitute "'the tender-
ness of God as it is found in Christ'" for their previous
usual theme of God's judgment and the terror Of damnation
(p. 228). The story's crisis Occurs when Helen repudiates
any belief in hell in an argument with a church elder and
the elder complains to the minister. Helen begins to re-
gret "this hideous shadow of Calvinism," as She and John
Spar on the issues (p. 178). She "'cannot believe God
punishes people eternally; for if He is good, He could
not be so cruel . . . . no human being would be so cruel

as that'" (p. 168). John, in turn, cannot concede. a

 

150

point on which rests his whole theological system. In the
inexorable logic of his Calvinism, Ward reasons that if
one doubts reprobation, "'Christ need not have died, a man
need not repent, and the whole motive of the gospel is
false; revelation is denied and we are without God and
without hope. Grant the eternity of punishment, and the
beauty and order of the moral universe burst upon us'"

(p. 308). In addition to the cruelty of the doctrine,
Helen accuses the motives out of which John's congregation
seeks salvation: "'For people to be good for fear of

hell . . . seems selfish to me somehow'" (p. 303). Dis—
carding expedience, Helen prefers goodness to arise from

a love of "the beauty of holiness," in which John's "whole
life was a lesson" (p. 255).

The matter of the Wards' intellectual incompati—
bility is compounded by their deep mutual love. Ward's
concern about his wife's beliefs transcends any desire for
scholastic correctness or public approval. In Short, he
fears for her salvation. As Helen,explains to her uncle,
"'In denying reprobation, I deny revelation . . . and also
the Atonement, upon which salvation depends'" (p. 389).
Fearing this outcome, Ward makes the ultimate sacrifice

and separates from Helen until her scepticism alters.

F‘

151

Again, Helen explains to her uncle that "'He has tried all
that he knows . . . argument, prayer, love, tenderness,
and now—-sorrow.'" Knowing his love for her, Helen under—
stands and accepts John's motive, reasoning that "'If a
man believes his wife will be damned for all eternity un-
less She accepts certain doctrines, I Should think he
would move heaven and earth to make her accept them'"
(p. 389).

A Similar motive, only less in degree, informs
John Ward's ministry and explains Helen's love for him.
In Lockhaven, the slum—ridden industrial town where Ward
has his church, he is at once "love and feared” (p. 146).
Given the habitual drunkenness of the town's workmen,
Ward fendS for goodness with sermons of brimstone and
damnation. The narrator explains with reference to one
particular inebriate that "Not love, nor hope, nor shame,
would move Tom Davis, but fear stung him into a semblance
of sobriety" (p. 148). Similarly, the children of Lock-
haven love the minister, "as most of them loved nothing
else in their meagre, hungry lives. And he loved them;
they stirred the depths of tenderness in him" (p. 93).
The fear that they might follow their parents' dissipation

(and damnation) "lent a suppressed passion to the fervor

152

with which he tried to win their love, that he might lead
them to righteousness" (pp. 93-94). One character relates
an incident in which Ward sacrificed propriety to aid a
drunken woman on a busy city street. Helen's uncle, in
contrast, wonders why Ward did not call a policeman (p.
91). When the uncle condemns Ward for giving his salary
to the poor because his wife's endowment provides for
their needs, a friend suggests that Ward simply follows
"'Christ's example rather more literally than most of uS'"
(p. 192). The same friend understands that Ward's separa-
tion from Helen represents the "'height of love that is
ideal'" (p. 412). Perhaps no comment reveals Ward's hu-
manity than Helen's reflection on the role of John's harsh
doctrines in his emotional composition. She suggests to
him that he needs their "'sternness and horror . . . as a
balance for your gentleness. I never knew any one as
gentle as you, John'" (p. 98).

The extremity of John Ward's theological and eth-
ical posture contrasts with the religious milieu of Helen's
native Ashurst. The rector's chief concern in his talk
with Ward after he separates from Helen focuses on how
"'the world will regard your action'" (p. 425). When

Helen turns to her uncle for religious counsel, he can

153

offer nothing but formulas and cliches for he had always
avoided "those doubts which may lead to despair, or to a
wider and unflinching gaze into the mysteries of light"
(p. 87). When Dr. Howe had contemplated doubt, he found
"the way was too hard, and the toil and anguish of the
soul too great; he turned back into the familiar paths of
the religion he knew and loved" (pp. 87—88). Although
kindly and conscientious in his parish duties, the rec—
tor's ministry proves ineffectual and limited, as the
genteel complacence of most of his parishioners indicates.
The lack of an unambiguous religious model in the

rector or John Ward is not amended in the novel's conclu-
sion. John Ward does call his wife to him some months
later, but he lies near death from pneumonia. Either out
of convenience or good taste, their last conversation is
concealed from the reader. Helen returns to her uncle's
home following the funeral, but she is now without any
religious faith whatever, unable to find any clear indi-
cation Of God's action in the world.

"One goes in, and in: Why is Sin, which is

its own punishment, in the world at all?

What does it all mean, anyhow? Where is

God, and why does He let us suffer here,

with no certainty of a life hereafter? Why

does He make love and death in the same
world? Oh, that is so cruel,-—love and

f‘-

154

death together! Is He, at all? Those are the

things, it seems to me, one has to think about

. . . . We can't get away from it, can we?"

(p. 303).
Helen does, however, maintain, her characteristic Open—
ness, stating that "'Perhaps light will never come to my
eyes, but I will wait, for I believe there is light some-
where'" (p. 460).

Apart from John Ward's pre-modern dogmatism, the
rector's timid faith, and Helen's agnosticism, the author
provides two alternative views of contemporary religion
and the significance of the Ward's marriage, although one
cannot be sure that Mrs. Deland endorses either. One
perspective comes from Helen's long—time friend Gifford
Woodhouse, a religious liberal who counseled Helen when
her religious questions were still "only a sort of intel-
lectual exercise" (p. 141). An apparent evolutionist, he
explains the debauchery of Lockhaven workers as "'one
stage of development: to live up to the best one knows
is morality, and the preservation of self is the best
some of these peOple know'" (p. 69). Gifford also under-
stands John Ward's anachronistic theology with a Similar
strategy, stating that "'there are stages of truth; there's

no use knocking a man down because he is only on the first

step of the ladder, which you have climbed into light. I

155

think belief in eternal damnation is a phase in spiritual
development'" (p. 180). Mrs. Deland does not allow Gif-
ford to announce the nature of his spiritual fulfillment,
however. His definition of God resembles Helen's early
attempt at theology, naming God "'the power and the de-
sire for good in ourselves. That seems to me to be God.
Sometimes I feel as though all our lives were a thought
of the Eternal, which would have as clear an expression
as we would let it'" (p. 413). Yet, Gifford does not
explain or try to understand the logic of Helen's suffer-
ing. He simply reassures her that faith is not beyond
her reach, for to Gifford faith "'iS not the holding of
certain dogmas; it is simply Openness and readiness of
heart to believe any truth which God may show'" (p. 459).
A more definite interpretation of Helen's exper—
ience comes from another of her Ashurst uncles, the el-
derly Dr. Dale who plays but a slight role in the novel.
Only Gifford Woodhouse and he respect John Ward for his
decision. "'Love like his inspires reverence,'" he con-
soles Helen. "'It is almost divine,'" and insofar as it
is, man gains insight "'into the mysteries of God when we
see how divine a human soul can be'" (p. 447). The in-

tegrity of the Wards' convictions and their love work to

156

"'rouse us out of our sleepy satisfaction with our own
lives, and make us more earnest'" (p. 450). Her experi-
ence and her lasting devotion to her husband form a kind
of testimony to the Ultimate:

"You have taken a stand for a vital principle,

and it must make us better. Truth is like

heat or light; its vibrations are endless,

and are endlessly felt . . . you and your hus-

band, from absolutely opposite and extreme

points, have yet this force of truth in your

souls. You have both touched the principle

of life,--he from one side, you from the

other. But you both feel the pulse of God

in it!" (p. 451).

Mrs. Deland does not supplant the views of John

Ward, Helen, or the rector, with any definitive religious
analysis. The only assurance She provides for her reader,
and the only remotely theological concept, lies in the
necessity of honesty in a period of intellectual chaos.
John Ward's relentless dogmatism is not approved, nor is
the inconsequential religion of decorum that characterizes
Helen's native Ashurst. Mrs. Deland seems to advocate a
kind of theological, creedal neutrality until some later
time when theological issues might again be clear-cut
and no longer subject to the bias of individual tempera-

ment. Other than her membership in Episcopalian Phillips

Brooks' church of social concern, Mrs. Deland gave her

A

157

public no solution to the conflict of John and Helen Ward.

The author died at age eighty—seven in 1945.

FA __

o‘;

CHAPTER THREE
"THE RIDDLE OF THE PAINFUL EARTH": THE

RELIGIOUS QUEST OF WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

From 1867 when he became assistant editor of the

Atlantic Monthly to his death in 1920, William Dean Howells

 

lived at the center of American letters. There, in his own
fiction and his criticism, he led the way in the school of
"realism" which by the turn of the century had shifted the
mode of serious literature in America. Friend and literary
advisor to Henry James and Mark Twain, he also provided the
inspiration for disciples Crane, Garland, Frederic, and
Dreiser, tO name a few. But Howells was not a less note-
worthy presence outside literary circles. AS perhaps no
other contemporary, he announced and attempted to come to
terms with the social transformation of America into an
urban and industrial nation. Amid the national blood-
thirstiness that followed the Chicago Haymarket Square
bombing of 1886, Howells stood virtually alone among prom-
inent Americans in speaking for sanity and justice. In

addition and as might be expected, the “Dean," as Howells

158

159

became known, was no less involved, though less conspic-
uous, in the intellectual and religious currents of the
late nineteenth century.

Born in 1837, Howells was the son of a Sweden-

borgian newspaper man of rural Ohio. Although as an adult

he did not retain William COOper Howells' particular creed,

he did inherit his father's religious and moral serious-

ness.l In 1872, the year Howells became editor of the

 

1The extent of William Cooper Howells' interest in
Swedenborgianism can perhaps be measured by the fact that
in 1879 he wrote and published The Science of Correspon-
dences, a book explicating key Swedenborgian doctrines.
Also valuable is James W. Taylor, "The Swedenborgianism of
W. D. Howells," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Illinois, 1969.

 

 

Atlantic, he wrote to his father about his religious atti-
tudes, stating that "Underneath all my literary activity

[mainly reviews at this time] there is a strong current of
spiritual thought--or trouble, and I shall yet end a vio-

lent believer or disbeliever."2 As Kermit Vanderbilt has

 

2The unpublished letter of November 19, 1871
(Harvard), is quoted in Kenneth S. Lynn, William Dean
Howells: An American Life (New York, 1970), p. 241.

 

 

 

shown, Howells during his Atlantic association, a total of

fourteen years, willingly immersed himself in religious

1f.- Qfi-v‘A—a

160

problems by reviewing an extraordinary number of books

with religious relevance.3 Through the time that Howells

 

3Kermit Vanderbilt, The Achievement of William

 

Dean Howells: A Reinterpretation (Princeton, 1968), p. 52.

 

Vanderbilt is also useful for his study of Howells' atti—
tudes toward organized religion; see pp. 51-57.

 

devoted to writing fiction, from 1881 on, he continued his
interest in religious subjects which he from time-to-time

I D I l I 4
expressed in his magaZine writing. As one observer of

 

4In "Howells' Opinions on the Religious Conflicts
of His Age as Exhibited in Magazine Articles," American
Literature, XV (November, 1943), Hannah Graham Belcher
surveyed Howells' periodical writing from the year 1860
to his death in 1920. In her essay, she observes two
strains in Howells' religious concerns during this period
--"the religion-science controversy and . . . the place
of religion in American life" (p. 264). On the former
point, which provides the chief interest of this chapter,
Belcher noted a consistent mixture of elements in Howells'
religious conflicts:

 

tempermental tendencies to faith in an intui-
tive and subjective religion, struggling with
a rational recognition of facts which seem—
ingly denied the validity of such a faith;
confidence in mankind's control over his des—
tiny, in conflict with the theory of an im-
personal and harshly deterministic cosmos;
hope vying with despair (p. 270).

Belcher also concludes that Howells never surpassed an
"intuitive, unreasoning, and . . . inadequate faith," a
judgment that reflects the author's own epistemological
bias and her neglect of Howells' understanding of the na-
ture of faith. While the general interpretation does not
generally conflict with the evidence of Howells' novels,
the fiction does produce a clearer and more consistent

 

161

focus and movement in Howells' religious concerns. For
example, Belcher suggests that in the main Howells' even-
tual awareness of the limitations of science in discern-
ing truth did not assume shape until the late 1880's and
1890's. Yet, The Undiscovered Country (1880) shows
Howells fully aware of the limits of a strict empiricism.

The unreliability of Howells' periodical opinions
is pointed out by Harry Hayden Clark in his thorough "The
Role of Science in the Thought of W. D. Howells," Trans—
actions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and
Letters, XLII (1953), 263-303. Clark notes that Howells,
as a prolific journalist, "did not always find it neces-
sary to make his early and later book reviews entirely
consistent." Rather, his ideas must be reconstructed
"from many sources, balancing one against the other when
necessary . . . ." (p. 263). Wisely, Clark seeks to bal-
ance Howells' journalistic expressions with the comments
of his fictional characters. But here, as in Belcher's
article, nothing is added that is not expressed more clearly
in Howells' fiction. Clark gives short space to Howells'
basic attitudes toward Darwinism (pp. 273-275)--that he was
open to it--and dwells primarily on its literary and social
implications. While chronicling Howells' agreements with
contemporary science, Clark neglects to explore the sources
of Howells' dissent from its prevalent points of View, only
stating that Howells never reconciled his confidence in
"scientific methodology with its inability to determine
truth in its psychical and spiritual realms" (p. 299).
Nevertheless, Clark is correct in assessing that "while
Howells never became a complete rationalist or materialist,
science did in one way or another help to inspire much of
his thought" (p. 301).

Also taking Howells' periodical writing into ac-
count is Arnold B. Fox's "Howells as a Religious Critic,"
New England Quarterly, XXV (June, 1952), 199-216. Although
Fox accurately surmises that Howells' "religion lacked the
firm foundation necessary for true stability," Fox's essay
is not specific about the sources of Howells' doubts and
often errs in interpretation of Howells' novels, The
Leatherwood God (1916) in particular (p. 199).

 

 

 

 

 

the Gilded Age has noted, Howells was "a writer who left

his mind (and thus his novels) open to the wide sweep and

 

 

162

swing of the winds of doctrine, and knew, at his best,
that they blow all ways at once. He was prepared to ac-

cept and dramatize ambiguity."5

 

5Jay Martin, Harvests of Change: American Liter-
ature 1865-1914 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), p. 47.

 

 

 

The record of that fiction does not depart signif-
icantly from the ambivalent attitude he revealed to his
father in 1871. Yet it was Howells' fate to be unable to
believe or disbelieve with either violence or finality.

He always struggled with the feeling that life was, in
George Carrington's words, "a pointless mystery, to be

endured patiently."6 Howells' gestures toward faith were

 

6George C. Carrington, Jr., The Immense Complex
Drama: The World and Art of the Howells Novel (Columbus,
Ohio, 1966), p. 40. Perhaps the evidence most often cited
in support of this view, although Carrington does not use
it, is Howells' sonnet "The Bewildered Guest" in StOps of
Various guills (New York, 1895), V.

 

 

I was not asked if I should like to come.

I have not seen my host here since I came,

Or had a word of welcome in his name.

Some say that we shall never see him, and some
That we shall see him elsewhere, and then know
Why we were bid. How long I am to stay

I have not the least notion. None, they say,
Was ever told when he should come or go.

But every now and then there bursts upon

The song of mirth a lamentable noise,

A sound of shrieks and sobs, that strikes our joys
Dumb in our breasts; and then, some one is gone.

r, t

163

They say we meet him. None knows where or when.
We know we shall not meet him here again.

 

not, again as Carrington has argued, merely "forms of psy-
chological self-defense."7 Rather, they represent a hard-

won hOpe amid confusion and despair. As we shall see,

 

7Carrington, pp. 44-45.

 

Howells' fiction does show frequent concern with the two-
sided question that resided at the core of nineteenth-
century thought—-the nature of final reality and man's
proper mode of knowing. On one level, Howells' inquiry
takes shape in the metaphysical problem of an afterlife.
On another and more profound, it emerges in his effort to
discern an underlying moral order in man's private and
communal experience. Together, these facets focus on
Howells' lifelong debate over the purpose of man's exis-
tence, both individually and cosmically. Initially opti-
mistic about man's nature and rational capabilities,
Howells became increasingly cognizant, as biographer Edwin

Cady has shown, of the "mysteries" of man and his world.

 

8Edwin H. Cady, The Realist at War: The Mature
Years 1885-1920 of William Dean Howells (Syracuse, N.Y.,
1958), pp. 112, 117.

 

 

 

 

164

But the nature of this spiritual-intellectual journey is
revealed best in the fiction itself. It should be noted
that because innumerable incidental references to Dar-
winism and the higher criticism abound throughout Howells'
fiction, attention will be given only to those novels in
which the problems of belief or unbelief have dramatic
and thematic relevance.

Howells' first extensive fictional mention of re-

ligious problems occurs in A Foregone Conclusion (1875).

 

This third novel in Howells' lengthy canon of fiction—-
forty-three volumes in all--relates the experience of
Henry Ferris, an aspiring artist who, in the first days of
the American Civil War, immediately preceded the novel's
narrator as the American consul in Venice. (Howells him-
self held the post as patronage for his successful cam-
paign biography of Lincoln.) By this time under the tech—
nical influence of Turgenev, Howells restricts his story
to the relationships between four characters: Ferris,

an American widow and daughter temporarily sojourning in
Venice, and a Venetian priest. With Ferris' help, the
priest, Don Ippolito Rondinelli, is contracted to tutor
Florida Vervain, the daughter. Over a period of weeks,

the priest, who dreams of inventing, falls in love with

 

165

Florida, a malady that visited most of her tutors. He
eventually confesses to her the "'life-long habit of a
lie'" which the priesthood has been to him, for he has

faith in neither Catholicism nor God.9 Rather, the living

 

9William Dean Howells, A Foregone Conclusion
(Boston, 1873), p. 147. All subsequent references in
parentheses are to the first editions of Howells' novels.

 

 

provided by the church has been "'a means to gratify the
passion that has always filled my soul for inventions and
works of mechanical skill and ingenuity'" (p. 141). Ap-
parently irredeemably a "'mundane spirit,'" Don Ippolito
entered the priesthood at the insistence of his family
which had always given one member of each generation to
service in the church; the priest now views himself as
hopelessly enmeshed in an unwanted vocation, bound to it
by "'an inexorable and inevitable law'" (p. 144).

Florida sympathizes with the priest's plight, and
she and her mother provide for his passage to America
where the inventor hopes to win the love of Florida. The
quixotic charity of the Vervains is disrupted, however.
Don Ippolito announces his love to the unsuspecting Flor—
ida who, in turn, reveals that she loves not Don Ippolito

but Ferris. The Vervains hurriedly depart Venice without

 

166

seeing Ferris who himself has despaired of Florida's love.
Two months later a chastened Don Ippolito summons Ferris
to his deathbed where he informs Ferris of Florida's love
for him. The lovers finally meet after two years of sep-
arate wanderings, she through EurOpe after her mother's
death and he as a cavalry officer in the American South-
west. The novel closes with the fact of their marriage
and their reflections on the character of Don Ippolito.

In the concluding retrospect, Ferris continues to
regard Don Ippolito's character as a "'puzzle'" (p. 264).
On the one hand, the priest seemed an innocent dreamer so
invention—minded that he effectually insulated himself
from the complexities of the real world. Yet, at other
times, Don Ippolito's facial expression hinted a calcu—
lated, "lurking duplicity" that surfaced in the fact of
his religious hypocrisy (p. 82). To Florida, the priest
always exhibited "'the simplest and openest look in the
world'" whose genuineness was confirmed by his straight—
forward relations with his American friends (PP- 76, 262).

Amid these contradictions, any analysis of Don Ippolito's

1r

167

character must be stated, as one critic has noted, "as an

. . "10
approx1mation.

 

0George N. Bennett, William Dean Howells: The
Development of a Novelist (Norman, Oklahoma, 1959), p. 58.

 

 

 

The same approximation must be applied to the
logic of Don Ippolito's religious views. Don Ippolito's
agnosticism--he replies "'I do not know'" to Florida's
question about the existence of God—-remains largely un-
explained, although Howells does include some possible
influences (p. 147). One cause refers to Italian anti-
clericalism during the Church's support of Austrian occu-
pation of Italy. Howells also emphasizes Don Ippolito's
isolation from his fellow priests who suspect and ridicule
his experiments (pp. 43, 81-82). Another factor that re-
ceives much attention is the general atmosphere of good-
natured materialism among Italy's educated classes (pp.
153, 157). Lastly, Don Ippolito recalls the comment made
by his uncle, who is also a priest, that focuses on
Catholicism's long conflict with science, suggesting
that "'all the wickedness of the modern world has come

from the devices of science . . . .'" (p. 145).

168

Yet, all these suggestions are possibly undercut
by Ferris' closing observation that Don Ippolito lacked
the depth of character that would permit the acceptance of
his religious statements at face value. Ferris theorizes
that when Don Ippolito finally recognized the failure of
his inventor's dream, he sought refuge in an equally illu-
sory romantic love and, failing that, turned again to the
church. For Ferris, a consistent anti-romantic, the deci-
sive fact in his assessment is that Don Ippolito, "'for a
man who lived in doubt so many years . . . certainly
slipped back into the bosom of the mother church pretty
suddenly'" (p. 263). In the end, however, Don Ippolito's
infidelity seems no more than Howells' concession to Vic-
torian objections to a cleric who would maintain religious
convictions and harbor a secret passion for a seventeen—
year-old.

The vagueness surrounding Don Ippolito's agnosti-
cism applies as well to Ferris' assertion of religious
belief. At one point, in a statement as orthodox and
undoubting as any issued by a major Howells' character,
Ferris counters Florida's religious doubts, stating that
"'I don't thigk_it [that God exists] . . . I.kngw_it'"

(p. 166). But again, as in Don Ippolito's skepticism,

”n?

169

the origins of faith await clarification in Howells' more
mature fiction. Howells is aware of religious problems
and makes dramatic use of them in this early novel, but
he fails to confront the logic and effects of either be-
lief or unbelief.

Howells' most direct and lengthy treatment of the

metaphysical aspect of religion occurs in The Undiscovered

 

Country (1880) which followed A Foregone Conclusion by five

 

years and one other novel. Howells' question here, one
that he would return to periodically, focuses on the abil-
ity of empirical science to alter man's traditional under-
standings of the nature of reality. With the historical
authority of the Bible under scrutiny by Darwinism and the
higher criticism, Howells urges the trustworthiness, if
not the necessity, of subjective and non-rational modes

of experience in arriving at religious faith. Signifi-
cantly, this assurance includes Howells' caution that
faith's cognitive bias is not without limitations and un—
certainties in its knowledge of religious reality.

The thematic center of The Undiscovered Country

 

lies in the experience of the elderly spiritualist Dr.
Boynton, who is "one of the great figures in Howells'

world of fictional characters," according to Swedish

170

critic Olav Fryckstedt.ll During his early medical train-

ing, Boynton exchanged his native New England Calvinism

 

11Olav W. Fryckstedt, In Quest of America: A

Study of Howells' Early Development as a Novelist (Cam-
bridge, 1958), p. 184.

 

 

 

for a materialism that believed in nothing that one
"'could not see, hear, touch, or taste'" (p. 178). The
post-pregnancy death of his wife brought Boynton to sus-
pect dimensions to reality for which his empiricism could
not account, stating that his wife's passing "'was attended
by occurrences so intangible, so mysterious, so sacred
that I do not know how to shape them in words . . . . In
the moment of her passing I was aware of something, as of
an incorporeal presence, a disembodied life, and in that
moment I believed!!" (p. 179). Subsequently, as "'merely
as inquirer'" and "'experimenter'" in the wave of spiri—
tualism that swept America following the Civil War, Boyn-
ton has set out to deliver the skeptical from doubt by
making contact with the afterlife, thus providing "'evi-
dences through which thousands [can] cling to . . . belief
in God'" (pp. 6, 50, 56). Beyond the anguish of personal

doubt, the spiritualist physician also fears future social

171

calamity once the new science has displaced the religious

authority supporting traditional moral standards (p. 236)..l2

 

2Howard Kerr, in his study of late nineteenth-
century American spiritualism, Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers,
and Roaring Radicals: Spiritualism in American Literature,
1850-1900 (Urbana, 1972), identifies The Undiscovered
Country as the "first sustainedly serious novel about
American Spiritualism" (p. 122). Kerr agrees that Howells
meant Boynton to be "more than a crank deluded by grief.
His aim was to resolve the conflict between religious
faith and scientific agnosticism by providing an experi-
mentally verifiable alternative to doubt" (p. 123). In
this respect, Boynton confirms Kerr's thesis that the
impetus behind the spiritualist movement was desire for
"an empirical demonstration of the soul's immortality in
an age of growing doubt" (p. 3). Kerr is also useful for
his description of the biographical sources for Howells'
characters (pp. 129-39).

 

 

 

 

Boynton's actions well illustrate the urgency of
late-Victorian religious concern. Loquacious and exuber-
ant, he engages wholeheartedly, much like a Rappachini,
in an idealistic quest for demonstrable proof of an after-
life that, as George Bennett has noted, "makes the means

of his search secondary."13 This has consequence for his

 

l3Bennett, p. 100.

 

nineteen-year-old daughter Egeria who has from childhood
served as her father's medium and hypnotic subject. Suf-

fering from psychic exhaustion at the start of the story,

172

she is further unnerved when a test seance runs awry.
Boynton disregards her shaken condition to proclaim to

his consorts that man now stands on "'the verge of a great
era'" because the "'key to the mystery [of spirit commun-
ication] is found'" (p. 33). Discovering later that he
and his daughter were duped on the occasion, Boynton aban-
dons the assistance of Boston's professional mediums. He
leaves behind "'shameless swindlers'" and "'sorcerers'"

to return to the quiet disinterest of his native Maine
(pp. 8, 218). A series of misadventures befall the pair
on their journey, and they end up in a small socialist
community of Shakers. Egeria falls seriously ill on their
arrival, but her father is nevertheless buoyant about the
possibilities for spiritualist research among these honest
and gentle people. They are, in his estimation, "'the
only peOple who have conceived of spiritism as a science,
and practiced it as a religion'" (p. 181). However, as
Egeria regains physical health with the returning Spring,
her father's mesmeric influence over her proportionately
decreases. A discouraged Boynton finally suffers a stroke
while confronting the sceptic he believes responsible for

Egeria's disinterest.

 

173

Throughout, Boynton's efforts "'to place beyond
question the truth of a future existence'" waver "between
the sublime and absurd, the tragic and comic," and, in

the end, he seems but a "sincere fool" (p. 358).14 Boynton

 

l4Fryckstedt, pp. 190, 185.

 

does not die without self-knowledge, however. Before a
fatal relapse, he retreats from spiritualism when he comes
across a scientific explanation for the mysterious "raps"
that invariably accompanied his daughter's presence in
buildings. Although he does not preclude spiritualism,
this new information prompts him to reconsider its value
(p. 370). He recognizes that his obsession with it exacted
an unjust psychological toll from his daughter (p. 371).
On a related point, he notes that, unlike "'other systems
of belief, all other revelations of the unseen world,'"
Spiritualism lacks a "'rule of life . . . for our use
here.'" Inasmuch, its claims will never convince the
masses because "'it has not shown its truth in the ameli-
orated life of men'" (p. 367). In its insistence on imme—
diate revelation and a personal afterlife, spiritualism
ignores man's communal dimension to appeal to the egoistic

(pp. 217-18, 368-69). As Boynton apologizes to Ford, the

174

sceptic who will marry Egeria, the old physician calls
himself "'a lunatic who fancied that he was seeking truth
when he was only seeking himself'" (p. 371). Further,
spiritualism, despite its religious pretentions, offers
only another form of atheism that neglects any considera-
tion of God, "'the great thing which it never included,—-
which all research of the kind ignores'" (p. 370). Lastly,
Boynton observes that spiritualism absolutized a particular
mode of perception that "asserts and affirms, and appeals
. . . to purely physical phenomena'" (pp. 366—67). It
constructs only "'a grosser materialism'" than "'the
spirit of science, which has beaten down the defenses and
razed the citadel of the old faith'" (pp. 366, 326).

This latest displacement of religious belief by
materialism prepares the way for Boynton's acceptance of
a gentler version of his youthful Calvinism. Both Boynton
and Ford, a young skeptic and amateur scientist, agree
that the findings of the new science reveal little meaning
in life. Consequently, Boynton "'stands at death's door
. . . without a sense of anything but darkness and the
void beyond'" (p. 363). Their discussion then turns, as
Ford suggests it, to the hOpe reposited in eighteen-hundred

years of Christian tradition. At first, the fact that the

175

Christian legacy still constitutes man's best and only
hope seems unreasonable to Boynton's rational, empirical
mind, stating
"Then that is the only hope,--that old story

of a credulous and fabulous time, resting upon

hearsay and the witness of the ignorant, the pe-

dantic wisdom of the learned, the interest of a

church lustful of power, and that allegory of

the highest serving the lowest, the best suffer—

ing for the worst . . . ." (p. 365).
But Boynton warms to his subject, confessing to Ford that
he has been reading the Bible during his convalescence and
has found "'a great many new ideas in Job, in David, and
Ecclesiastes, and Paul,--a great many in Paul'" (p. 368).
The Bible leaves the question of an afterlife unanswered,
"'as if it were too trivial for affirmation,'" chosing
instead to emphasize the individual's preservation in the
moral legacy he leaves behind. Boynton also finds "'proof
of its [the Bible's] truth" in the conformity of man's
experience to the biblical dictum that "'We shall reap as
we have sown'" (p. 369). And finally, Boynton recalls an
instance from Paul's writing that speaks to the skeptic's
demand for rational and empirical authority. Religious
hope or faith—-the most that Christianity aspires to--is

by its very nature not certitude; unanswerables persist,

and doubt accompanies them. Boynton grasps the Pauline

f‘ “n-‘aI-"fl

176

paradox that "'We are saved by hope. But hope that is

seen"-—that is seen--"is not hope; for what a man seeth'"

 

. . . (p. 372).15

 

1 . .
5The reference is to Romans 8:24. The King James

version reads: "For we are saved by hOpe: but hOpe that
is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he
yet hOpe for?"

 

Boynton thus reverts to a particular religious
attitude that rests, first, on a cognitive humility before
both science and religion, and, secondly, on the moral and
spiritual relevance of the Christian ethic of self-
sacrifice. Consequently--although the Bible "'keeps the
veil drawn . . . close, and lets the light . . . glimmer
sparely in a few promises and warning, against the agonized
passion of the Cross'"--Boynton can claim that "'I have
come in sight of him'" (pp. 368, 371). He entrusts his
fate to God's forgiving love which "'will take care'"

(p. 371). The practical efficacy of Boynton's "'trust'"
emerges in new humility and the desire to ask the forgive—
ness of those he has offended. Final Reality, as Boynton
discovers, is not solely metaphysical in nature, but also

moral.

r.-.“

177

Howells' conclusion to The Undiscovered Country

 

seems no more certain than Boynton's. Following Boynton's
death, Ford's abrasive cynicism is softened in his mar-
riage to Egeria. She regains mental and physical health
and attends the Episcopal church to which she hopes some-
day to bring her husband. They live comfortably in a
Boston suburb on the profits from a household convenience
of Ford's discovery. Together, they seem to have found
something of the meaning of love, much as Egeria's father
belatedly discovered its redemptive mystery. Boynton's
spiritualist "illusions, if they were illusions," and
"the dusky twilight through which he hoped to surprise
mortality" are never discussed between them. Rather,
"Ford feels it a sacred charge to keep Egeria's life in
the full sunshine of our common day." Boynton has given
them no sign from the grave, and they "do not question his
silence. They wait, and we must all wait" (p. 419).
Boynton's final emphasis on the ethical dimensions
of Christianity at the expense of its metaphysics marks
Howells' own shift from the abstruse to the practical in
religious understanding. Howells does not forswear, as
Boynton phrases it, the "'question whether we came from

the Clam or the Ancient of Days,'" but seeks to guage the

 

178

truth of religion by its consequences in the "ameliorated
life of men,'" a standard derived from Howells Sweden-
borgian background (pp. 288, 367).

In A Modern Instance (1882), Howells' seventh

 

novel, the religious interest lies in his presentation

of the conflict between two opposing views of man's moral
activity: a scientifically-based determinism denying
human choice and the traditional Christian concept of
moral freedom and human accountability. Howells casts
his debate around the experience of a young New England
couple whose marriage ends in an Indiana divorce. Their
case forms the "modern instance" which is symptomatic, as
one critic has put it, of "larger disruptions in American
civilization that produce undisciplined marriages, which,

in turn lead to divorce."16 Olav Fryckstedt explains that

 

16Vanderbilt, Achievement, p. 88.

 

 

both Bartley Hubbard and Marcia Gaylord come from "a small
village where the old theology has lost its hold on
peOple's minds." They are "left without moral standards

in the new, highly mobile, urban and industrialized

179

America with its brutal competition and its nervous, rest-

less pace."

 

l7Fryckstedt, p. 227.

 

An orphan, and thus without a heritage, Bartley
Hubbard embodies Howells' worst fears about the future of
America. As one character describes Hubbard, he is a
"'fellow with no more moral nature than a baseball'"
(p. 243). Fryckstedt summarizes Bartley as representative
of Howells' pessimistic estimate of first generation post-
war Americans: "He is gay, optimistic, enterprising,
vigorous . . . an altogether self-made man who . . . has
few principles and few scruples because he has no tradi-
tions. Culture and fine manners are but a thin veneer

overlaying an essentially egotistical and brutal nature."l8

 

18Fryckstedt, p. 237.

 

A slow moral decay culminates in the desertion of his
wife. Failing to obtain a fraudulent divorce, the news—
paperman, much like preacher Theron Ware, heads westward,
to die in Whited Sepulchre, Arizona, at the hands of a

victim of his gossip column.

180

His wife fares little better. Marcia Gaylord, as
Edwin Cady points out, is a "lushly emotional creature
whom the decay of up-country religion . . . has left with
no resources of civilization to discipline or channel her

. l . .
paSSions." 9 Her marriage to Bartley involves a cycle of

 

19Cady, p. 209.

 

contention and forgiveness in which neither partner pos-
sesses the strength or love to transcend habitual pride,
jealousy, and pettiness. As Howells makes clear, their
mutual inability to cope with the complexities of marriage
characterizes the rest of the moral life as well. After
Bartley wins a dubious promotion, Howells comments that
Marcia was "too ignorant to feel the disgrace, if there
were any . . . and he had no principles, no traditions,

by which to perceive it" (p. 229).

While the Hubbards lack the insight and will to
correct the deficiencies of habit, the worlds in which
they dwell are equally unable to provide "the vital re-
sources to save the Hubbards from themselves and each

2 . . . . . .
other." 0 In the inherited CalVinism of Equity, Maine,

 

20Cady, p. 213.

 

 

181

Marcia Gaylord's home—town and the scene of Hubbard's first
newspaper venture, spiritual aspiration has been exchanged
for social distinction, and economic self—concern has re-
placed moral seriousness. In short, religion in Equity
"largely ceased to be a fact of spiritual experience";
rather, it now serves the needs of its sponsors. The once
rigorous Calvinist theology now temporizes, hoping to win
sinners "to heaven by helping them to have a good time
here." No longer critical or concerned, "the church em-
braced and included the world" (p. 27). Equity's sole link
with past rigor appears in archly satirical old—fashioned
deist who is the town lawyer and Marcia Gaylord's indul-
gent father. Old Gaylord takes iconoclastic delight in
swiping both ways on religious questions. On the one
hand, he takes pleasure in quoting the Bible and Jonathan
Edwards to those within "the Mammon of Righteousness, as
he called the visible church in Equity." But his ridicule
also targets zealous evolutionists who expound ”Darwinism
and the brotherhood of all men in the monkey" (p. 37).

The Hubbards' associations with Boston prove no
more satisfying. There Bartley finds confirmation of his
worst instincts in the standard of "counting-room jour-

nalism," although when he becomes too flagrant he loses

182

his position. The Halleck family of proper Boston that
has retained its ancestral Calvinism cares for the Hub-
bards but proves unable to impart their sense of disci-
pline and self-sacrifice. Ben Halleck, an only son and
a college classmate of Bartley, only manages to fall in
love with Marcia and, failing her love after Bartley's
death, seeks refuge in the ministry of an unreconstructed
Calvinism. Others in prOper Boston repeat the ineffec-
tiveness of the Halleck family. The wealthy Clara Kings-
bury, who had "not yet found a religion that exactly suited
her," occupies herself with a self-conscious philanthropy
that patronizes whomever it befriends (p. 255). As the
Founder of the Indigent Children's Surf-Bathing Society
for Boston's immigrant unclean, she finds ”'indigent
children . . . personally unpleasant to her'" (p. 244).
Even on a personal level she cannot emerge from her fatu-
ous temperament. As one friend describes her, "'Clara
Kingsbury can say and do, from the best heart in the world,
more offensive things in ten minutes than malice could
invent in a week'" (p. 215).

Finally, the wealthy lawyer Atherton, who is
Marcia Hubbard's legal advisor and seems to be Howells'

raisonneur on occasion, can do nothing either to redeem

 

183

Marcia's plight or console the lovelorn Ben Halleck. A
probable self—parody by Howells, Atherton is an intellec-
tually confused character given to criticizing his eco-
nomic and social inferiors. As he tries to evaluate the
Hubbards' own role in their somber fate-~Bartley murdered
and Marcia an embittered widow--he is forced to acknowl-
edge the uncertain distinction between the environmental
determination and individual choice in character forma-
tion, stating in the last lines of the novel, "'Ah, I
don't know, I don't know'" (p. 514).

Howells sharpens his focus on the displacement of

traditional morality in The Rise of Silas Laphan (1885).

 

As George Bennett has summarized, the novelist "deals with
the potential moral corruption of a man . . . [who] at-
tempts to buy his way into social acceptance with a costly
house and to buy his way out of moral reSponsibility
through a deliberately unwise loan to a former partner

and victim."21 The issue of Silas Lapham's resistance to

 

21Bennett, p. 150.

 

corruption points again to a question posed in A Modern
Instance: from what source, at a time of disarray in

traditional religion, will America find moral leadership

t;

184

amid an uncertain future? Kermit Vanderbilt answers this
question by pointing to the potential renewal of New Eng-
land's moral forces in the marriage of Tom Corey, the son
of Boston aristocrat Bromfield Corey, and Penelope Lapham,
the paint manufacturer's elder daughter. Their union
offers hope by "mingling the best of the Laphams (Penelope—-
a mixture of new native vigor with the old respect for in-
tellect and morality) with the best of the Coreys (Tom-~a

. . 2
mixture of the old culture and the new enterprise)." 2

 

22Vanderbilt, p. 137.

 

Neither the older generation of the Coreys or

Laphams seems to offer resolution to the "social eruption

. 2
in a new Boston, leaderless and morally adrift." 3 Per-

 

23Vanderbilt, p. 101.

 

ceptive and trenchant, Bromfield Corey has never mustered
the moral energy to participate in, as he phrases it,
"'the common feelings of commonplace people'" (p. 285).
He has, with a stance of ironic detachment, held aloof
from social equals and inferiors alike.

Mrs. Corey has transferred her youthful moral

fussiness to the demands of taste—-"'the airy, graceful,

185

winning superstructure'" that distinguishes Society from
other people of "'good sense and right ideas'" (pp. 194,
138). Similarly, Mrs. Lapham of Vermont Calvinist stock,
while losing active belief, is plagued with a residual
moral stringency that seeks causes for "the mystery of
pain and loss" and to "have someone specifically suffer
for evil in the world, even if it must be herself" (pp.
324, 390).

Silas Lapham, on the other hand, is a man of "burly
simplicity" who has accepted the "'business chance'" for
his ethical standard (p. 27). As his wife reminds him,
his paint company forms a kind of surrogate for his dis-
placed religion, stating that "'You had made paint your
god, and you couldn't bear to let anybody else share in
its blessings'" (p. 63). Even Bartley Hubbard who inter-
views Silas for the "Solid Men of Boston" series recog-
nizes Silas' devotion to his paint, suggesting that "'He
makes it a religion; though he would not imply it is his
religion'" (p. 26). Silas' attitudes in business and
paint characterize his family's in living "richly to
themselves"; they did so "not because they were selfish,

but they did not know how to do otherwise" (p. 35).

186

Silas' "rise" in the novel involves a recognition
of the ambiguity and complexity of man's moral experience.
As Silas' sometime moral guide, Mrs. Lapham's Puritan
equation which, like Boynton's, sees the good prosper and
the evil suffer, is confounded on separate occasions.
First, there is the inadvertent confusion arising from
Tom Corey's unsuspected love for PenelOpe, and, secondly,
Silas bankrupts executing honest business practices
(p. 324). After he has risked his solvency to help a
spendthrift former partner, Persis tells him, "'I know_
you won't be allowed to suffer for doing him a kindness
. . . .'" (pp. 228, 391). But Silas does carry out his
kindness, and he does suffer. The paint company goes to
creditors, and his family must return to a modest life on
their rural Vermont homestead. Even in his assertion of
his moral energy, Silas' "reward for standing firm for
right and justice" is "to feel like a thief and the mur-
derer" because he has inadvertently hurt the swindler's
family (p. 468).

But Silas' suffering does prove beneficial in an
intangible effect, the narrator explaining that "Adversity
has so far been his friend that it had taken from him all

hOpe of the social success for which people crawl and

187

truckle, and restored him, through failure and doubt and
heartache, the manhood which his prosperity had so nearly
stolen from him" (p. 506). In a closing discussion with
Silas, the Reverend David Sewell, who proves as much of

a friend as the Laphams have, leaves the ways and causes
of Silas' misfortune, and by implication his moral re-
newal, to the reader's reflection, stating that "'We can
trace the Operation of evil in the physical world. There
its course is often so very obscure; and often it seems
to involve, so far as we can see, no penalty whatever'"
(p. 514). The question posed by Bromfield Corey's refer-
ence at the Lapham dinner party to the "'riddle of the

painful earth'" is not answered in Silas Lapham, if indeed

 

Howells answers it anywhere (p. 285). Silas' moral cour-
age does demonstrate that on occasion, in the midst of
Howells' uncertainty about the fate of America, a man can
by uncertain ways--it is never revealed how Silas arrives
at his decisions, just that he does-~show forth the best
that is in him and concern himself with the plight of
others.

With the appearance of the Reverend David Sewell

in The Rise of Silas Lapham, Howells initiates a series

 

of clerical figures that offer an answer of sorts to the

.r- A

188

vacuum of moral leadership in America. A clerical per-
sonage, again the Reverend Sewell, appears centrally in
The Minister's Charge, or The Apprenticeship of Lemuel
Barker (1887), where Howells first names and explains his
doctrine of complicity. Mr. Peck, a social radical,

plays a major role in Annie Kilburn (1889). In A Hazard

 

of New Fortunes (1890), Conrad Dryfoos wishes to become

 

an Episcopal priest, and the wealthy Margaret Vance even—

tually enters a Protestant sisterhood. The Shadow of a

 

Dream (1890) includes a young cleric in a disastrous love

triangle. The setting and legacy of Annie Kilburn's

 

Mr. Peck, now deceased, provide a thematic backdrop for

the story of a defalcator in A Quality of Mercy (1892).

 

A minister also appears, this time as Howells' raisonneur,

 

in The Son of Royal Langbrith (1904). Mr. Homos of A_

 

Traveller from Altruria (1894) must explain the social

 

meaning of Christian ethics to a pagan and materialistic
America. Finally, an elderly Howells focuses on the

religious self-delusion of a backwoods Ohio preacher in

his classic The Leatherwood God (1916). In short, Howells'

 

use of ministerial figures in significant roles reflects
insofar as each is admirable, Howells' changing religious

and ethical opinions.

1.1,...

189

The Reverend David Sewell appears in The Rise of

 

Silas Lapham as a Corey dinner-party guest and then as the

 

Laphams' counsel in the romantic misunderstanding between
their daughters and Tom Corey. In both instances, Sewell
echoes Howells' exasperation with the "'ruinous'" effects
of the "'false ideal of self-sacrifice'" and love found in
pOpular sentimental fiction (pp. 162, 198). In advising
the Laphams on their daughters' problem, he urges an
"'economy of pain'" which prescribes that "'One suffer
instead of three, if none is to blame'" (p. 197). Inor-
dinate self—sacrifice is only a devious form of egotism,
as emphasized in Howells' portraits of philanthrOpists
Clara Kingsbury and Annie Kilburn. Such quixotic behavior
derives, Sewell reiterates, from "'novels that befool and
debauch almost every intelligence in some degree'" (p.
339). Fiction of the kind obscures common sense and goes
against Christian justice.

The reader has to await a subsequent novel, Thg_
Minister's Charge, or The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker
(1887), to get a fuller picture of Sewell, the person and
thinker. Yet, even in this novel, Howells cautiously
leaves specific aspects of Sewell in question. For ex-

ample, the denomination in which Protestant Sewell serves,

190

a matter of some importance, is never mentioned, and the
theology behind his ethics remains undelineated save for
random comments Howells allows. Sewell does seem, how-
ever, to be fully aware of the heterodox theological and
intellectual climate of his day. He defers the literal
meaning of hell, tending toward metaphor or universalism,
and complains of the difficulty of getting people "to be
good for reasons not immediately connected with their
present or future comfort" (pp. 5, 117). The greatest
threat to Christianity lies in a Darwinian—inspired de-
terminism which would severely limit man's freedom. Con—
sequently, Sewell's office has portraits of Lincoln and
other notables who outstripped their hard beginnings.
Such examples remind him that "'God is creative as well
as Operative'" (p. 22). It seems a part of Sewell's
thought that man can in ethics transcend his natural in—
clinations and prove "'defiant of all law . . . indepen—
dent of causation'" (p. 245).

Beyond noting the opposition of determinism to
Christian concepts of moral freedom, Sewell hesitates to
conclude very much about the nature of God independent of

his grace to man. In Silas Lapham, Sewell stresses that

 

an adequate concept of "'God has never been imagined at

 

191

all,'" but his predilections can be intimated from man's
moments of noblest self—sacrifice (p. 285). Sewell re-
peats the same sentiment in his concluding sermon on com-

plicity in The Minister's Charge. The most man can know

 

or imagine of God resides in "a witness from everlasting
to everlasting of the spiritual unity of man" (p. 458).
Far from denying the objective existence of God, Howells
at this point leaves it an Open question, suggesting that,
because of man's perceptual limitations, God can be known
only in the concrete compassionate ways of men. "The
gospe1--Christ--God" provides a "lesson, a type, a wit—
ness," "for God was but the impersonation of living re-
sponsibility, of infinite and never-ceasing care for us
all" (PP. 458-59).

The members of Sewell's "oddly assorted" Boston
congregation-—composed of liberal, middle-class, and a
few blue-blood adherents--appreciate his eloquence and

honesty only slightly less than his warm "personal" min-

istry (p. 426). Both his preaching and parish work express

"his belief that you can have a righteous public only by
the slow process of having righteous men and women"
(p. 458). With this goal in mind, Sewell seeks to enact

and spread "the old Christ-humanity" which offers man's

F ‘3; 2:!

192

most profound and trustworthy guide to personal and social
wholeness. God's creative purpose is best realized by
each individual's recognition that, in what became known
as Howells' doctrine of complicity, "no one for good or
evil, for sorrow or joy, for sickness or health stood
apart from his fellows, but each was bound to the highest
and the lowest by the ties that centred in the hands of
God" (p. 458). Only those that recognize this ethical

and spiritual interdependence, which constitutes the sub-

stance and raison d'etre of Sewell's religion, will live

 

"usefully, fruitfully" (p. 458).

The worth of Sewell's profession appears in its
effects on Lemuel Barker, a rude country boy who comes to
Boston on Sewell's unfounded but well-intentioned encour-
agement of his literary ambitions. By a series of odd
coincidences, Sewell witnesses his own often reluctant
involvement with Lemuel's misfortunes and growing maturity.
Their relationship provides an inspiration for Lemuel and
occasion for Sewell to articulate his own sense of social
responsibility. After spiritual growth and bad luck,
Lemuel leaves Boston to teach in a rural school where he
hOpes "to pass along the good that has been done me" by

Sewell and several of his parishioners (p. 450). He

193

departs Boston, as the aging Bromfield Corey relates, "'a
thorough believer in Sewell . . . [who] could formulate
Sewell's theology a great deal better than Sewell could'"
(p. 387).

The Minister's Charge marks Howells' last thin

 

hold on the moral and social optimism that characterized
his early fiction. Beginning two years later with Aggie
Kilburn (1889), confidence in the future becomes a much
more tentative attitude, a hOpe won out of an increasing
pessimism about man's nature and his moral and perceptual
limitations. Sewell suggests that mankind gradually grows
"in grace, in humanity, in civilization" as his willingness
for self-sacrifice increases (p. 458). The minister con-
cedes that sin composes "a terrible mystery" with which
one hardly knows how to deal or how "to determine its
nature," but he entertains the hOpe that it often amounts
to "good in disguise." (p. 133). Insofar as a person is
aware of the real consequences of his harmful action, he
is not likely to commit the same error again; thus, the
original evil has the potential of working for good. In

Silas Lapham, he consoles Silas with the fact that his

 

consciousness of a possible misdeed probably put him on

guard against future offenses (p. 514). After The

7“;

194

Minister's Charge, good and evil wear a less ambiguous

 

face, and Howells is less patient with the unrighteous.
Sewell's belief, conservative and almost evangelical in
tone, that a "righteous public" can be achieved by "the
slow process of having righteous men and women" changes
to the Reverend Mr. Pck's demand for a radically altered
economic structure where "all share alike, and want and
luxury and killing toil and heartless indolence shall all

cease together" (Annie Kilburn, p. 240).

 

As in A Modern Instance, Howells in Annie Kilburn

 

 

seems especially conscious of setting in terms of its re—
ligious significance. The town of Hatboro, Massachusetts,
as Howells' satiric commentator Putney points out, is in
a state of transition from a New England village to "'a
sprawling American town,'" and its religious circumstance
is no less chaotic. The once dominant Unitarians, who
gave the town's life an intellectual flavor, have been
supplanted by less cerebral Methodists, Baptists, Ortho—
dox, and an increasing immigrant Catholic pOpulation that
work Hatboro's industry. With the proliferation of denom-
inations, the social life of the community has "become
much more ecclesiastical in every way, without becoming

more religious" (p. 154). The orthodox church, whose

t-
5‘

195

minister Mr. Peck forms a chief interest in the story,
includes both the working and middle class with some few
possessors of wealth. The church seems, as its name im-
plies, moderate theologically, although it has several
noted doubters in regular attendance and Mr. Peck does
make approving reference to evolution.

The drama of the story arises when Mr. William
Gerrish, a self-made, self-righteous dry-goods merchant,
protests Mr. Peck's "'one-sided gospel'" that neglects
explication of the means of salvation for emphasis on
"'mere conduct'" (pp. 273-74). Peck himself, however,
seems an uncommon type of biblical literalist who takes
the Bible's ethical injunctions as seriously as its asser-
tions about the centrality of faith. (He later admits the
probable correctness of Gerrish's accusations about theo-
logical laxity.) Gerrish, on the other hand, insists on
theological stringency while following the gospel's ethics
in "spirit"; that is, "'as far as . . . circumstances
will permit'" (pp. 317, 273).

Mr. Peck objects to the mounting socio-economic
inequity of America, and by the story's end, he has chosen
to live and teach among the poor in a nearby factory town.

In his eyes, the "superfluous charity" of the rich most

“I: .i__
d
1

196

often amounts to a "'palliative'" to the poor, marked by a
condescending sense of superiority (pp. 59, 65). Real
charity and love between classes is rare because the rich
fail to make sacrifices which they "'would really feel'"
(p. 65). With an acute social sense, Peck demands "'some-

thing holier yet than charity, something higher, something

FA

purer and further from selfishness . . . and that is jus-
tice'" (p. 24). Eventually, Annie Kilburn, the young
spinster from whom the novel draws its title, comes to
share Peck's View after trying through philanthropy to
escape her own "idle and vapid" life, stating that "'Those
who do most of the work in the world ought to share in its
comforts as a right, and not be put off with what we idlers
have a mind to give them from our superfluity as a grace'"

(pp. 113, 261).24

 

24Annie Kilburn probably marks the fruition of
Tolstoy's oft-mentioned influence on Howells. Howells
himself compared his reading of Tolstoy "'to the old-
fashioned religious experience of peOple converted at
revivals'" (quoted in Louis J. Budd, "William Dean Howells'
Debt to Tolstoy," American Slavic and East European Review,
IX [December, 1950], 292. In spite of Howells' reference
to the purely spiritual or religious, Tolstoy's effect
emerges largely in Howells' social-ethical thinking. If
Tolstoy did influence Howells with regard to belief, it
was probably in convincing Howells of the possibility of
accepting Christ's moral teachings literally, much as
both Tolstoy and the fictional Mr. Peck strived to do.
Both Louis Budd and Clare R. Goldfarb agree that Tolstoy's

 

 

197

thought was the "catalytic agent" that moved Howells down

a path he was already following (Budd, 292). In Goldfarb's
words, Howells "used Tolstoy to define his terms and ideas"
and to "direct those experiences that caused Howells to
write novels" in the first place ("From Complicity to Al-
truria: The Use of Tolstoy in Howells," University Review,
XXXII, Summer, 1966, 312, 311.

 

 

It is Peck's final hope that the church "'may be-
come a symbol before the world of the peace of Christ.'"
Of greater concern to Christendom than "the godlessness
of science" should be the widespread doubt that "'the
disparity between the Church's profession and her perfor-
mance'" has always inspired (p. 242). Only by bringing
about the congruity of aspiration and practice can the
church dissuade the skeptic's rational doubts which them-
selves come from God.w Again, Howells concludes that if
the nature of reality is preeminently moral and redemptive,
as Christianity contends, ethics and not abstruse meta-
physical and doctrinal wrangling should be the church's
chief expression.

This equation receives support from the experience
of various characters in the novel. Both Dr. Morrell, the
town physician and Darwinian, and Ralph Putney, occasional

drunk and a mildly skeptical lawyer, admit the benefits of

Peck's "'moral influence.'" Under Peck's care, Putney

I
ll

198

recovers more rapidly than ever from a debauch, which
brings Morrell to admit the probability of "'spiritual
mysteries'" inaccessible to scientific explanation (p.
255). Annie Kilburn, whom Morrell eventually marries,
underwent inward change, although she "never could tell
by what steps she reached her agreement with the minis-
ter's philosophy" (pp. 328—29). Even though all Peck's
various disciples were somewhat puzzled by his "cold and
passive" demeanor--a mystery his death in a train accident
leaves unanswered--they nonetheless respected his reli—
gious uniqueness and left the idiosyncracies to his own
care. With regard to Peck's imperfections, Putney inti-
mates the perceptual mystery that centers in all efforts
to express or understand absolute truth, stating that

"I suppose the truth is a constitutional

thing, and you can't separate it from the

personal consciousness, and so you get it

coloured and heated by personality when

you get it fresh. That is, we can see

what the absolute truth was, but never what

it is" (p. 302).
Even Peck, for all of his good deeds and better intentions,
lacks certainty and final repose, stating to Annie before

he leaves Hatboro that "'Now I feel sure of nothing, not

even of what I've been saying here'" (p. 291).

‘11“

199

In A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), the difficul-

 

ties of perceiving truth of any kind, and then trusting in
it, measurably increase amid urban social disruption.

Basil March, a middle-aged litteratus, accepts an invita-

 

tion to forsake his Boston insurance work (he was about

to be dismissed anyway) and accept the editorship of a new
periodical to be based in New York City. Until this time,
the Basil Marches lived a comfortable, satisfied life to
themselves—-she in her two teen-aged children and husband,
and he in his "dream of intellectual achievement" which
afforded "a sacred refuge" from the taskdwork of business
life (I, 27). Although they looked upon the less refined
not "so much with contempt as with amusement," both con-
gratulated themselves on their "democratic instincts"

(I, 28). They abhorred "social cruelty" of all kinds and

imagined that "if it had ever come into their way to sacri-

fice themselves for others . . . they would have to do so,
but they never asked why it had not come in their way"
(I, 28).

Content at first in the life of the liberal mind,
Basil undergoes a gradual awakening to the limitations of
his social sympathies. He discards his habit of viewing

experience through a glass of aesthetic distance and, as

F

200

Kermit Vanderbilt has named it, the "protective irony" of

a self—deprecating wit.25 New York's cultural hetero-

geneity, squalor-ridden slums, well—dressed gutter scav-

 

25Vanderbilt, p. 150.

 

engers, widespread labor unrest, and ostentatious wealth--

all these

ities and

ica. The

occasions

provoke March to an awareness of the incongru-
looming chaos of life in modern industrial Amer—
architectural randomness of the commercial city

a Darwinian vision of potential meaninglessness.

The "frantic panorama" about March seemed

in wanton disregard of the life that dwelt, and
bought and sold, and rejoiced or sorrowed, and
clattered or crawled, around, below, above

. Accident and then exigency seemed the

forces at work to this extraordinary effect;
the play of energies as free and planless as

those

that force the forest from the soil to

the sky; and then the fierce struggle for sur-

vival,

with the stronger life persisting over

the deformity, the mutilation, the destruction,
the decay, of the weaker. The whole at moments
seemed to him lawless, Godless; the absence of
intelligent comprehensive purpose in the huge
disorder and the violent struggle to subordi-
nate the result to the greater good penetrated
with its dumb appeal the consciousness of a
man who had always been too self—enwrapt to
perceive the chaos to which the individual
selfishness must always lead (I, 243—44).

Eventually, after some months of exploring the by-ways of

New York, March arrives at the point where he could no

201

longer "release himself from a sense of complicity . . .
no matter what whimsical, or alien, or critical attitude
he took. A sense of striving and the suffering deeply
possessed him . . . as he gained some knowledge of the
forces at work-~forces of pity, of destruction, of per-
dition, of salvation" (I, 74).

With sadness and guilt, Basil surmizes that he
and his wife "had got their laugh out of too many things
in life" and had lived, in fact, a "death in life" (I, 74).
As Everett Carter has noted, March's deepening sense of
social responsibility spills over into the religious. (We

are told in The Shadow of a Dream [1890] that the Marches

 

were Unitarians.) Early in their travels of New York,
Basil and Isabel retreat momentarily into a downtown cathe-
dral to escape the noontime bustle and to admire its art.
After a pleasing moment of religious solemnity, Basil must
remind Isabel that they came in simply to gratify an
aesthetic sense, and, as such, their presence "'was a
purely pagan impulse'" (I, 66). However, as Basil's so-
cial sense increases, he begins regular attendance at var-
ious churches where he "listened to those who dealt with
Christianity as a system of economics as well as a reli-

gion" (II, 74).

 

202

Basil's religious interest reveals not only an
urgency to find a practical solution to the problems of
social and economic injustice, but Howells' effort to
discern a beneficent intent beneath the suffering and
pain he sees about him. On a pragmatic level, several
alternatives are represented in the people March encoun-

ters while editing Every Other Week. The view most di- l

 

rectly affecting March belongs to the periodical's owner,
a Gospel of Wealth natural—gas millionaire whose "moral
decay began with his perception of the opportunity of
making money quickly and abundantly." Once an example
of "conservative good citizenship," Jacob Dryfoos has
come to New York to make more money and to sponsor a
periodical that will employ his son who would prefer
being a minister (II, 16). A radical perspective comes
from the now elderly Lindau, a friend from March's youth
who Edwin Cady describes as "an Anarchist . . . tortured
immigrant, poet, scholar, crippled veteran, idealist

crazed with disillusion."26 Like Lindau, Colonel Woodburn,

 

26Cady, The Realist at War, p. 105.

 

 

a Southerner in New York for its publishing opportunities,

laments "'the virus of commercialism.'" But the two differ

203

in that Woodburn would return to a pre-Civil War society
of interdependent castes and aristocratic privilege (I,
230; II, 125—26).

Still other characters offer less explicit views.
March's associate Fulkerson embodies an unthoughtful
business standard that, without concern for social effect,
would "'make things hum'" for the sake of "unalloyed pros-
perity" (I, 121; II, 144). Nor does a pure aestheticism
prove satisfactory. Angus Beaton, the art editor of Eye£y_

Other Week, possesses talent, but the lack of a moral

 

vision superior to egoism renders his art attractive but
inconsequential. The source of greatest impact on March
is found in young Conrad Dryfoos, the millionaire's son
who hOpes to become a preacher. A businessman in defer—
ence to his father, Conrad spends his spare hours working
in New York settlement houses, reasoning that if the poor
are to be helped each person must expend himself for the
less fortunate. His mother recalls Conrad's Christian
socialism, explaining that money alone is not enough and
that, in her paraphrase, "'You got to give yourself, if
you expect help 'em'" (I, 308). Conrad's death in the
act of expressing his ethic--he was shot trying to protect

Lindau from a policeman's club--poses both a mystery and

204

a promise to March in his effort to grapple with the so-
cial and religious nexus of late—nineteenth century Amer-
ica.

Here the mystery, the "riddle of the painful earth"

from Silas Lapham, centers in the perennial problem of why

 

good men suffer and the evil prosper. Conrad Dryfoos
dies-—innocent and selfless, if somewhat ineffectual--
while less earnest and good, often evil men go on as be-
fore, men as the elder Dryfoos, Beaton, Fulkerson, and
March himself. In Conrad's death March recognizes "'a
principle in the world'" that has been "'felt more or
less dumbly . . . ever since Calvary,'" although it con-
stitutes "'as great a mystery as the mystery of death.'"
That is, "'that old doctrine of the Atonement . . . The
life of Christ,'" says March, "'wasn't only in healing
the sick and going about doing good; it was suffering for
the sins of others.'" (II, 272-73). For March, Conrad's
life and death suggest "'somehow, somewhere the order of
lovingkindness, which our passion or our willfulness had
disturbed'" (II, 276). Imitation of Conrad's and Christ's,
way offers hOpe for social reconciliation and opportunity
for the personal resolution that comes as a by-product of

following a model of selflessness. As Margaret Vance, an

ft” "‘7
“I

205

accomplished society girl, suggests to the narcissistic
Beaton, "'There is no comfort for us in ourselves . . . .
It's hard to get outside, but there's only despair within.
When we think we have done something for others by some
great effort, we find it's all for our own vanity'" (II,
298). Later, when the Marches encounter Miss Vance on
the street, she has become, partly inspired by Conrad's
example, an Episcopalian Sister of Charity. Although

she does not stOp to speak, "she smiled joyfully, almost
gaily on seeing them," and they "felt that the peace that
passeth understanding had looked at them from her eyes."
Reflecting on the lifestyle she represents, March con-
cludes to his doubting wife, "'Well, we must trust that
look of hers'" (II, 332).

In spite of this affirmation of the efficacy of
Christian ethics, March cannot, in an age of science and
self-conscious modernity, accept traditional Christian
orthodoxy. For example, when considering the cause of
the old Dryfoos' softening after Conrad's death, March
states that "'it won't do to say, the Holy Spirit in-
dwelling. That would sound like cant at this day. But
the old fellows that used to say that had some glimpses

of the truth.'" Grace, March suggests further, is subtle

 

206

and most often imperceptible, working in "'the still,
small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts
of doom'" (II, 318). Certain knowledge of God, or grace,
or right, at last, is impossible, just as its converse of
denial. March can only conclude that, in the absence of
miraculous proof, "'I don't know what it all means . . .
though I believe it means good'" (II, 319). The events
of Christian myth, which also appear symbolically in the
story, seem to conform to Basil March's perception of
experience, but his "'trust,'" as Howells' later fiction
shows, is tentative and open-ended; March knows that,

as Kermit Vanderbilt points out, "he has gained only the

germ of an ideology, the hint of an explanation."27

 

27Vanderbilt, p. 186.

 

Everett Carter has concluded that after A Hazard

of New Fortunes, with "the fund of his experience of so-

 

cial evil exhausted," Howells "returned to tepid rework—

ings of the themes of his earlier periods."28 This

 

28Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism

(Philadelphia, 1950), P. 223.

 

 

207

judgment of Howells' later fiction as inconsequential and
unimaginative fails to appreciate an important shift of

direction in Howells' interests. As Howells in his early
fiction focused on the problems of the individual's moral

decision-making, he returns, with The Shadow of a Dream,

 

to the dilemma of the individual-—only now to concentrate
on the relation of the self's non-rational modes of per-

ception to "reality." For the aging Howells—-he was

fifty-three in 1890--the locus of the real becomes increas-

ingly ambiguous. He finds that it is often fully as much
determined by unseen and unsensed vagaries of the private
psyche as by the complex of social forces that create the
realist's usual world.

Perhaps part of this shift can be accounted for
by the Howellses' experience with their talented daughter

Winifred who for years was thought to suffer from a de-

bilitating psychosomatic illness. The parents' long agony

over her mysteriously deteriorating health and her sudden
death may have been somewhat allayed by an autOpsy that
proved her illness organic, but their daughter's experi-

ence, as Edwin Cady suggests, may have shown to Howells

"that the ancient lore of humanity concerning the shadowy,

elusive life within the depths of the heart and soul

‘FH‘fl

208

contained wisdom not dreamt of in the realist's philos-

2
ophy." 9 In any case, Howells' next novel, The Shadow of

 

 

29Cady, p. 113.

 

a Dream (1890), departs from social and economic concerns
to dwell on the ambiguous epistemological relation between
the conscious self and the suggestions of the unconscious.
In short, the question Howells asks here, and will recur
to periodically in his remaining fiction, has to do with
the ability of the psyche to have an adequate grasp on the
essential truth of the world in which it must dwell.

In The Shadow of a Dream, this problem finds ex-

 

pression in the difficulty of one man in isolating the
import of his dreams from the conclusions of his conscious
observations. After his death, the legacy of his percep-
tual uncertainty affects the happiness of his widow and
best friend who, wishing to marry, cannot themselves be
sure of their mutual disinterestedness during the husband's
life. Yet, Howells' interest in non-rational forms of

cognition does not begin with The Shadow of a Dream. As

 

suggested in the discussion of A Hazard of New Fortunes,

 

Basil March's Christian hope for personal and social tran-

quility is little more than wishful, especially when

[Fi‘

209

understood in light of the forces of self-interest rampant
in competitive, industrial America. Christianity may seem
reasonable within the profounder logic of the heart, but a
social Darwinism seems no less accurate in its description
of final reality. Even more striking than March's hope is
the circumstance of Annie Kilburn's final acceptance of
Mr. Peck's message of honest charity. In a mild tran-
scendent experience, Annie finds conciliation with the
quixotic and self-satisfying in her philanthrOpy. Stand—
ing on her doorstep, she looks at the morning sky which

had an immeasurable vastness, through which
some crows flying across the pasture above
the house sent their voices on the spacious
stillness. A perception of the unity of all
things under the sun flashed and faded upon
her, as such glimpses do. An inexorable cen-
trifugality had thrown her off at every point
where she tried to cling . . . . she felt
nothing withal had been lost; a magnitude, a
serenity, a tolerance, intimated itself in
the universal frame of things, where her
failure, her recreancy, her folly, seemed

for the moment to come into true perspective,
and to show venial and unimportant, to be
limited to itself, and to be even good in its
effect of humbling her to patience with all
imperfection and short coming, even her own.
She was aware of the cessation of a struggle
that has never since renewed itself with the
old intensity . . . . (pp. 319-20).

Howells spells out the logic of Annie's experience,

as perhaps Basil March's hOpe, some years later in an

 

210

uncharacteristic paragraph in An Imperative Dupy (1892),
a novel centering on miscegenation and the future of the
Negro in American society.

We suppose, when we are experienced, that
knowledge comes solely from experience; but
knowledge, or if not knowledge, then truth,
comes largely from perception, from instinct,
from divination, from the intelligence of our
mere potentialities . . . . The materials of
knowledge accumulate from innumerable unremem—
bered sources. All at once, some vital in-
terest precipitates the latent electricity of
the cloudy mass in a flash that illumines the
world with a shadowless brilliancy and shows
everything in its very form and meaning

(pp. 77-78).

Here Howells emphasizes the distinction between knowledge
and truth that Basil March only intimated. As well, in
the description of the process of recognition offered,

Howells describes, as in Annie Kilburn, a level of exper-

 

ience that centers in the non—rational and adjoins the

religious. Beginning with A Shadow of a Dream, which will

 

be considered next, Howells increasingly highlights the
conflict between the insights and province of the non-
rational in perception and the adequacy of modern science's
empirical approach to reality.

Basil March reappears in The Shadow of a Dream to

 

narrate an experience that spans his Ohio youth and Boston

insurance work, although the reader is not sure exactly

 

211

when the story is being told. While a youthful Columbus,
Ohio, neWSpaper reporter, March met Douglas Faulkner, a
fellow reporter on a rival newspaper. Their brief inti-
macy, mostly on Faulkner's part, ended over a political
dispute. Despite this conflict, when Basil moves east,
Faulkner continues to send March occasional information
about himself and his new wife. Approximately ten years 4?
after their first acquaintance, March learns of Faulkner's
presence in the Boston area through the "nervous special-
ist" Dr. Wingate, who asks March to visit his patient

(p. 12). Faulkner, it seems, suffers from a perilous
heart condition that gives him great pain and makes his
future uncertain. His physical debility is compounded

by a mysterious recurring dream that causes enmity toward
his wife and a long—time friend, the Reverend James Nevil,
who has accompanied the Faulkners during Douglas' conva-
lescence. On the day of the Marches' visit to the Faulk-
ner's seaside cottage, Faulkner dies of a heart-attack in
the act of striking out, for some unknown reason, at Nevil.
His wife Hermia returns to Ohio to live with her widowed
mother-in-law, and Nevil, an effective Episcopalian propo-
nent of the Social Gospel, assumes the leadership of a

distant church.

212

The Marches maintain correspondence with Hermia
and are surprised when two years later the widow announces
her engagement to James Nevil. Shortly before the mar-
riage, Hermia discovers a note among her dead husband's
possessions that suggests that she had in some way been
the cause and subject of her husband's mysterious, hostile
dreams. She decides to journey to New York to have Dr.
Wingate, her husband's physician and confidante, reveal
the content of the dream.

Unaware of her engagement to Nevil, Wingate re—
veals that Faulkner dreamed, as his mother later informs
March,

"that she [Hermia] and James were--attached,

and were waiting for him to die, so that they

.could get married. Then he would see them

getting married in church, and at the same

time it would be his own funeral, and he would

try to scream out that he was not dead; but

Hermia would smile, and say to the people that

she had known James before she knew Douglas;

and then both ceremonies would go on, and he

would wake" (pp. 174-75).
Stunned by the implication of the dream-~Hermia had
thought that Faulkner had probably feared some physical
violence from her-~the widow falls into remorse and guilt

that Nevil shares when informed of the nature of Faulk-

ner's paranoia. Unable to decipher their own motives and

213

emotions during Faulkner's life, the pair painfully part.
Hours later, Nevil is killed in a train accident which
Hermia interprets as judgment. Her death follows Nevil's
by a few years.

Basil March's occasional comments and concluding
reflections bring into focus two crucial questions in the
novel: the justice or worth of the suffering that the
principals undergo, and secondly, the accuracy of Faulk-
ner's dream-derived suspicion. On the second point, even
as a young man, Faulkner "sometimes had dreams, humiliat-
ing, disgraceful, loathsome, that followed him far into
the next day with a sense of actual occurrence" (p. 5).
When March visits the ailing Faulkner, the invalid, always
something of a romantic, has come to absolutize the content
of a recurring dream, accepting it, and dreams generally,
as "'truth.'" When Faulkner counters March's cautious
skepticism, he acknowledges and then discounts the suspi-
cions of pre-Freudian psychology about the unconscious,
stating that

"There's a whole region of experience--half the
map of our life--that they tell us must always
remain a wilderness, with all its extraordinary
phenomena irredeemably savage and senseless.
For my part, I don't believe it. I will put

the wisdom of the ancients before the science
of the moderns, and I will say with Elihu, 'In

214

a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep

sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon

the bad; then He Openeth the ears of men, and

sealeth their instruction'" (PP. 55—56).
Faulkner supports his idea with the Emersonian question of
"'Why should God be farther from man in our days than He
was in Job's?'" (p. 31).

Opposing Faulkner's "wisdom of the ancients" are
the "moderns" Wingate, March, and Faulkner's mother. March
respects Wingate as a physician possessed of "a sympathy
for human suffering unclouded by sentiment, and a knowledge
at once vast and accurate" (p. 12). However, as an empir-
ical scientist who deals "only with the facts of experi—
ence," Wingate does not regard the "'spiritual element'"
in Faulkner's forebodings, but insists that "'the less
medicine meddles with our immortal part, the better'"

(p. 62). As such, Wingate finally views Faulkner's dreams
as, in Edwin Cady's words, "the products of organic con-
ditions," Wingate stating that Faulkner's paranoia "'was
an effect rather than a cause of his condition . . . his
disease caused his trouble of mind: the physical affected

the moral, and not the moral the physical'" (p. 85).30

 

30Cady, p. 119.

 

215

Although he would adhere to Wingate's objective
view of Faulkner's "'maniacal delusion that was gradually
overshadowing his waking consciousness,'" March never
brings himself, as his final remarks show, quite in line
with Wingate's analysis (p. 128). Reluctant to "'return
to the bondage of the superstitions that cursed the child-
hood of the race,'" March defends civilization against
Faulkner's reverence for the trustworthiness of dreams
(p. 57). Throughout the novel March tacitly agrees with
Wingate's conclusions, but in reflection he cannot re-
strain from speculating to his reader that "there is al-
ways the human possibility that the dream of Faulkner was
a divination of the facts; that Hermia and Nevil were
really in love while Faulkner lived, and were untrue to
him in their hearts, which are the fountains of potential
good and evil . . ." (pp. 217-18). March's final conjec-
ture, like his argument in behalf of civilization, neither
confirms nor denies the narrative facts which are consis—
tently ambiguous and inconclusive. The tension existent
in March's thinking in this regard, as the ideological
tension between Faulkner and Wingate, is summarized nicely

in an incidental phrase March applies to the thought of

 

216

Faulkner's mother-—"a mixture of mysticism and matter-of—
fact" (p. 169).

The major part of March's reflections are devoted,
however, to the justice of the mental anguish that Faulk-
ner's dream. At times, the trio seem the innocent "vic-
tims of fate in a Greek triology" (p. 180). Throughout
March must struggle against the feeling that existence
offers "a miserable chance, a series of stupid, blundering
accidents" (p. 108). The question returns Howells to his
persistent uncertainty about the moral order of the uni—
verse, the existence of the "order of loving-kindness" on
which his doctrine of complicity rests. In discussing
Faulkner's agony, Nevil presents a desperate, harddwon
confidence that is very similar to March's conclusion in

A Hazard of New Fortunes. It is as clear a statement as

 

Howells ever offers and merits quoting at length:

"I used to groan in despair when I could see
no other reason for it [pain] . . . . Is it
wasted, suffered to no end? . . . Shall man
work wisely, usefully, definitely, and God
work stupidly, idly, purposely? It's impos-
sible! Our whole being denies it; whatever
we see or hear, of waste or aimlessness in the
universe, which seems to affirm it, we know
to be an illusion . . . . But I could not
reason to the reason, and I owe my release to
the suggestion of a friend whose experience
of suffering had schooled him to clearer and
deeper insight than mine. He had perceived,

 

217

or it had been given him to feel, that no pang
we suffer in soul or sense is lost or wasted,
we shall know sometime; and why. For the
present the assurance that it is so is enough
for me . . . . Sometimes it seems to me the
clew to the whole labyrinthine mystery of

life and death, of Being and Not-being"

(pp. 42-43, my italics).

March's response to Nevil's faith in the purpose—
fulness of suffering remains as inconclusive as his ambi—
valence toward the "truth" of Faulkner's non-rational in-
sight. March cannot admit the aimlessness of suffering
"for our very souls' sake; and for our own sanity we must
not" (pp. 108-09). Though men will strive to know the
logic, or illogic, of the universe, March concludes that
"We who were nowhere when the foundations of the earth
were laid . . . could only feel that our little corner of
cognition afforded no perspective of the infinite plan"
(p. 109). For March, the balance of suffering and happi-
ness is "'all a mystery, and one part no more a mystery
than another . . . .'" (p. 142). The disprOportionate
suffering of the trio is not guessed at, except in the
illogic of overbearing evil. But here, contrary to ro-
mantic convention, suffering does not ennoble, but only

destroys. For its cause, Howells arrives at a vision of

existence more complex than he had previously expounded,

t“.

218

recognizing that the subtle and devious operation of the
unconscious compounds the complexity of human motives and
actions. As he confides to the reader in the novel's last
lines, Mrs. March "does not permit it to be said, or even
suggested, that our feelings are not at our bidding, and
that there is no sin where there has been no sinning"
(p. 218).

Howells later made other ventures into the non—
rational with the same Openness and questioning evidenced

in The Shadow of a Dream. In 1903, Questionable Shapes

 

 

appeared, a collection Of three novelettes that deal with
the comparative weight of objective and subjective modes

of knowing.31 "Histpparition" tells the story of "an

 

31Edward Wagenknecht states that "on at least one

occasion, and, according to Van Wyck Brooks, he [Howells]
told S. Wier Mitchell that all the psychic 'Romances' in

Questionable Shapes and Between the Dark and the Daylight
were from his own experience; William Dean Howells: The

Friendly Eye (New York, 1969), p. 257.

 

 

 

 

 

average skeptical American, who denied no more than he
affirmed," and the "weird figure" he Observed in his bed-
room early one sleepless morning (pp. 30, 36). Hewson is

a mild-mannered and well-to-do middle-aged bachelor de-
voted tO the creation of a "leisure class." He never doubts

in "his inmost" that the apparition constituted a "veridical

219

phantom." Yet, his experience fails to recur "to confirm
his belief that he had been all but in touch with the
other life, or to give him some hint . . . why this vi—
sion had been shown him" (p. 27). Further, the apparent
purposelessness of the vision is never dispelled for
Hewson, and the best guess he can Offer is that it boded
the day on which he met his future wife. She shared
Hewson's acceptance of its reality, and, as her father
suggests to Hewson, one should "'believe it [the vision]
was innocent till it proved itself guilty'" (p. 102).
Proof of its existence remains indefinite and personal,
much as, Howells suggests, the subjective reality of
lOVe or fear. The subjective, the private psyche, ap-
pears tO carry as much weight in human motives as, and
often surpasses, the logic of rational, Objective explan—
ation. Perhaps Howells'real attitude toward his story is

given by the psychologist Wanhope, a less skeptical suc-

cessor to Wingate of The Shadow of a Dream. After hearing

 

Hewson's tale, he thoughtfully replies, "'Curious'" (p.
45).
WanhOpe narrates the other story of interest in

Questionable Shapes, "The Angel of the Lord." Wanhope's

 

patient Ormond, who like Faulkner suffers from a serious

 

220

heart ailment, finds sudden and unexpected relief from a
fear of death. Ormond, it seems, suddenly found himself
with a "solemn joy" which "he could not account for by
anything in their lives [his own and his wife's]" (pp.

134, 128). His wife regards her husband's change in mood
as "the effect of a mystical intimation from another world
that was sacred, and could not be considered like an ordi-
nary fact without sacrilege" (p. 125). For Ormond him-
self, his new outlook results from having sensed or "'found
out the reason of things, though I don't know what it is.
Maybe I've only found out that there lg a reason of things.
That would be enough, wouldn't it?'" (p. 135). In his
changed state, Ormond begins reading poetry and the Old
Testament in which he is especially struck by the idea of
a divine messenger, “the angel of the lord,“ which, he
concludes, attends man "in every great moral crisis, in
every ordeal of conscience" (p. 141). One morning on his
rural estate, Ormond, to his wife's disgust, feeds a tramp,
explaining that the fellow might be the angel of the Lord.
When out riding with his wife later that day, Ormond sud-
denly runs into the woods yelling "'I'm coming'" (p. 152).
He trips over a tree root, plunges over a cliff, and falls

dead at the feet of the same, now startled tramp.

 

221

The logic of the affair is left unexplained, ex-
cept to suggest that Ormond had come to view death posi-
tively and to desire it. WanhOpe's attitude throughout
his narration is noncommittal. He does suggest with re-
gard to Ormond's new attitudes that, “'in the absence of

proofs to the contrary,'" such a turnabout should be

t.

allowed "'the chance to evince a spiritual import'"

(p. 125). Yet, in Spite of his Openness, Wanhope does
experience the empiricist's difficulty in discussing Or-
mond's subjective realities which are "'facts which we
are not in the habit of respecting very much, or that we
relegate to the company of things that are not facts at
all'" (p. 136). On the same note, Wanhope acknowledges
semantic obstacles, stating that with regard to Ormond's
religious intimations or "'hallucinations,'" "'There ought
to be some other word that doesn't accuse his sanity in
that degree. For he . . . didn't show any other signs of
an unsound mind'" (p. 137). Again, without discernible
irony, Howells through Wanhope states his own conclusion,
which is "'I haven't formulated it yet'" (p. 156).

The final story in Questionable Shapes, "Though

 

One Rose from the Dead," tells of the Alderlings, a couple

so closely knit that they read each other's thoughts and

 

222

imagine the other's presence. When the wife dies the
husband hears his wife calling him to the sea. He follows
the voice from their ocean-side cottage, again yelling
"'I am coming,'" into the fog—shrouded ocean, and his row-
boat is found abandoned at sea the next morning. The
story is complicated by a disagreement between the husband
and wife over the probability of an afterlife. After his
wife's death, the skeptical Alderling judges that their
previous telepathy and a post—mortem promise to return for
him were delusions. Wanhope, who is again the narrator,
remains typically uncommitted, although somewhat abashed
by the events. He admits that "though all psychology is
in a manner dealing with the occult . . . its grosser in-
stances . . . are apt to bring one's scientific poise
into question" (p. 215). WanhOpe can only concur with
the "'greater tolerance'" of eminent scientists toward
renewed notions of an afterlife and mental telepathy,
stating that "'Men like James and Royce, among the psy-
chologists, and Shaler, among the scientists, scarcely
leave us at peace in our doubts, any more, much less our
denials'" (p. 204).

Howells backs away from the connection between

the psychological and the spiritual in Between the Dark

 

 

223

and the Daylight, Romances (1907), a series Of stories

 

about the quirks of the mind. One story, "A Sleep and a
Forgetting," deals with the strange world of a continual
amnesiac who is gradually brought to memory by romantic
love. Another, "The Eidolons of Brooks Alford," dwells

on one man's recurring hallucinations of past experiences

 

which prove to be mental aberrations cured by love and
marriage. The mental slip of a man's forgetting a package
when all the while he was sure he had it with him is told
in "The Memory that Worked Overtime." The collection also
includes Howells' famous short—story "Editha." On the
whole Howells seems to have chosen to return, as he put

it in The Undiscovered Country, to "the full sunshine of

 

our common day."

Paralleling Howells' inquiry into the subjective
and non-rational is a continued interest in America's so-
cial realities and what they might say of the moral order

of the universe. The Quality of Merpy_(1892), which shares

 

many characters with Annie Kilburn, centers on exactly this

 

problem. As another common kind of "modern instance," a
wealthy defalcator of Hatboro abscounds to Canada with
company funds with which he expects to speculate and repay

the money he has already stolen. Plagued with homesickness

224

and old-age, he returns to face justice in America and re-
unite his family. In a last misfortune, shortly before
arriving in Boston, he dies of a heart-attack. In the
closing pages of the novel, two interested parties--Putney,
the witty, inebriate lawyer, and Darwinian Dr. Morrell,

Annie Kilburn's husband--discuss whether the defalcator's

- Ad
I'

end can be accounted for by Fate or Law. Putney, who con-
tends for Fate, decides to "'split the difference . . .
and call it Mercy'" (p. 474).

A similar effort to discern moral order motivates

The Son Of Royal Langbrith (1904). This time Howells fo-

 

cuses on the idealized memory of a wealthy private scoun-
drel who has effectively bound his wife, his son James,
and others to the reluctant preservation of his legend.

In various ways, the sufferings of Royal Langbrith's con-
temporaries expiate for his Offenses against them, or such

is the conclusion of Howells' clergyman raisonneur.

 

Howells acknowledges the uncertain ways of "'that mystical
legislation, as to whose application to our conduct we
have to make our own guesses and inferences,'" but the
novel does reveal his persistent concern with deriving

the logic Of human suffering and joy (p. 369).

 

225

One aspect of Howells' fiction not to be neglected

is his utopian romance, A Traveller from Altruria (1894).

 

Through the eyes of Mr. Homos, a Visitor from a lost
Christian socialist island originally evangelized by St.
Paul, Howells contrasts industrial America's grotesqueries
and injustices with an ideal of social harmony. Although
Altruria is officially and administratively Christian,
little is said about its theological suppositions or state
of belief among its citizens.

Mr. Homos does state that "'we have several forms
of ritual, but no forms of creed, and our religious dif-
ferences may be said to be aesthetic and tempermental
rather than theological or essential'" (p. 300). The
Altrurians are not quietistic in their thinking, however.
They enjoy the life of the mind, examining "'natural laws,
Open and occult," and warmly disputing "'questions of
aesthetics and metaphysics'" (pp. 288, 294). One thing
all Altrurians agree on is the efficacy of their Christian
communalism. With the radical reform of society, they
have arrived at what is known among them as the "Evolu-
tion." The term remains vague as Howells treats it,

though it seems connected with the Altrurians' gradual

 

 

226

recognition of the power of individual and social gener-
osity.

In the harmony and richness of Altrurian life,
Howells intimates a social approach to the still persis-
tent enigma of an afterlife. Mr. Homos states that "'Hav—
ing come to live rightly upon earth . . . or at least
ceased to deny God in our statutes and customs, the fear
of death . . . has been lifted from our souls . . . . If
we do not know yet the full meaning of death, we know
that the Creator of it and of us meant mercy by it'"
(pp. 302-02). Howells is aware Of the difficulties in
the way of Mr. Homos' confidence. With spiritualism in
mind, the traveller admits, that although "'no externa-
tion of the supernatural, no Objective miracle,'" came
to verify the Altrurians' claim to an afterlife, they
nonetheless, on a social level, "'had the faith to do
what we prayed for, and the prescience [of the afterlife]
of which I speak has been added unto us'" (p. 303). At
last, Homos appeals to the proof of private judgment--in
the case of Altruria, national experience--which conforms
to the biblical view Of reality: "'the presence of the
risen Christ in our daily lives is our assurance that

as one ceases to be, and that we shall see our dead

 

 

227

again. I cannot explain this to you; I can only affirm
it." (p. 302) 0

Here, as in A Hazard of New Fortunes, the figure

 

of Christ plays a decisive role. As Edward Wagenknect
has suggested, it provided one of the main reasons, along
with the doctrine of immortality, for Howells' attraction

. . . 2 . . . . .
to Christianity.3 Never certain of Christ's diVinity, a

 

32Wagenknecht, p. 249.

 

synthesis of Mr. Homos' orthodoxy and March's theological
hesitancy suggests where Howells probably stood. It
seems safe to say that, as Howells grew older, the figure
of Christ became increasingly connected with his efforts
to discern proof of immortality and moral purpose in the
universe.

In his next to last novel, The Leatherwood God

 

(1916), Howells at age seventy-nine made his most direct
approach to the problem of the Incarnation. His finished
work stands among the most estimable among his own and in
American religious fiction. The story transpires about
1830 in the mildly evangelical frontier settlement Of
Leatherwood, Ohio, an area roughly similar to Howells'

native locale. Its citizens, "orderly and diligent,"

228

enjoy a prosperity that has "relaxed the stringency of
their several creeds" and effected a mutual toleration of
doctrinal differences (p. 4). The sectarian harmony of
the community suffers disruption by an interlOper, one
Joseph Dylks, who successively passes himself off as, in
his words, "'first exhorter, then prophet, then disciple,
then the Son, then the Father'" (p. 102). As the commun—
ity divides over Dylks' authenticity, he himself becomes
confused about his actual nature. On the one hand, it
seems probable that he is God. As he tells the wife he
deserted twelve years before, "'You would be struck dead
if you said the things I do; but why ain't I struck dead?
Why, either because it ain't so, at all, or because I'm
God'" (p. 95). Besides other examples of similar lOgic,
Dylks has the encouragement of Leatherwood's prominent
citizenry. As Dylks explains, their eager credulity,

"'Their faith put faith into you. If they believe what

you say, you say to yourself that there must be some truth

in it'" (p. 173).

The phenomenon Of imposter and disciple, as Dylks
himself states, arises from "'a kind of longing, that's
always been in the world, and you know it's in others be-

cause you know it's in you, in your own heart, your own

F‘

229

soul.'" That is, "'the hunger and thirst to know what's
going to be after you die; to get near to the God that
you've always heard about and read about, near Him in the
flesh, and see Him and hear Him and touch Him'" (p. 172).
Thus Howells again returns, some thirty-six years later,
to the lure of the undiscovered country and the agonizing
limits of human cognition. Matthew Braile, the Leather-

wood justice of the peace and Howells' raisonneur, largely

 

agrees with Dylks' analysis, only adding some sociological
understanding: "'life is hard in a new country, and any-
body that promises salvation on easy terms has got a
strong hold from the start. PeOple will accept anything
from him'" (p. 232).

Matthew Braile seems a composite of Howells' var-
ious religious attitudes through his many novels. After
a mock trial for Dylks, Braile gives sound Howellsian
counsel to the conflicting factions of Leatherwood Creek,
believers and scoffers alike. To those men who embrace
the pretender, he advises the perspective gained by time,
suggesting that they "'look after your corn and tobacco;
and you women, you go and get breakfast . . . and leave
the Kingdom of Heaven alone for awhile'" (p. 152). And

to the young rowdies who chastize Dylks' believers and

 

230

would punish their leader, the squire commands that they
"'let these folks worship any stock or stone they're a
mind to; and you find out the true God if you can, and
stick to Him and don't bother the idolators. I reckon He
can take care of Himself'" (pp. 152-53). While on the
one hand, Braile wisely perceives the folly Of encapsuliz-
ing God, he nonetheless sympathizes with their aspirations,
however distorted, in his challenge to the dissenters to
do better if they can.

Edwin Cady describes Matthew Braile as a "Tom
Paine free-thinker among the pious folk of Leatherwood,"
which he no doubt is, although by turn—Of-the-century
standards his skepticism is mild (p. 266). With Braile,
Howells faced the problem of locating late nineteenth-
century religious insight in a Jacksonian era character.
Consequently, Braile reads Tom Paine-~the infidel's
trademark in religious fiction-~but he seems to have ab-
sorbed little from Paine other than his rationalist's
criticism Of the Bible. He tells a troubled neighbor,
the deserted wife of Dylks who had remarried after his
rumored death, that he believes "'As much as the Bible'll
let me.'" With regard to the credibility of miracles,

Braile accepts them insofar as the moral character of the

231

performer would justify the miraculous, stating that the
miracle "'would depend on who did it'" (p. 108). He is
also careful to distinguish between true and false pro-
phets, in both the Bible and elsewhere. Braile's sole
statement of belief in the novel more closely resembles
orthodoxy, both in imagery and thought, than Tom Paine's
deism:

"He [God] thinks it's best for mankind to let

them have their swing when they choose to do

evil . . . . He's made man, we'll say, made

him in His own image, and He's put him here

in a world of his own, to do the best or the

worst with it. The way I look at it, He

doesn't want to keep interfering with man,

but lets him play the fool or play the devil

just as he's a mind to. But every now and

then He sends him word. If we're going to

take what the Book says, He sent him Word and

flesh, once, and I reckon He sends him Word

made Spirit whenever there's a human creature

comes into the world, all loving and unsel-

fiSh o . .II (pp. 110-11) 0

When Dylks is brought to trial by his skeptics and

no legal Offense can be determined, the pretender responds
when Braile asks him if he is God by replying in biblical
fashion "'Thou sayest'" (p. 148). Enraged by "the dese—
cration of the hallowed words," Braile refuses to find
Dylks guilty of anything, and thus makes him a buffoon

rather than a martyr (p. 149). Braile's respect for the

passion of Christ is shared by the narrator. Earlier

232

when the captured Dylks is abused and mocked by his Oppo-
nents, the narrator sees the affair as "a squalid travesty
of the supreme tragedy of the race" (p. 143). Rather than
a strict adherent to Paine's skepticism, Braile's most Ob-
vious tie to Paine lies in his devotion to reason. The
squire's caustic wit reduces the sentimental and ludicrous
to its proper prOportions. As one credulous character
tells him, "'You do beat all . . . the way you take the
shine off of religious experience'" (p. 15). Braile, hav-
ing apparently made a study of the differences between
true and false prophets in the Old Testament, quickly sizes
up Dylks, whose special traits are a horse-like "mane" and
"snort," for what he is: "'a man . . . worshipped for a
God because he snorted like a horse'" (p. 78). Indeed,

as Howells repeatedly makes clear, the pretender's pretty
masculinity appeals to the sublimated sexuality of the
townswomen. Thus, the village's religion turns from "the
orderly worship of the Most High to the riot of emotions"
that becomes an end in itself and obscures the ethical
dimension of Christianity (p. 112). The same strategy
forms Braile's long-standing Objections to sectarian
Christianity whose "religion" amounts to doctrinal hair-

splitting and an easy sociality (pp. 32, 68). Worst of

233

all, the sectarianism of Leatherwood sanctions the exces-
sive subjectivity that effectively complicates, like the
sentimental in literature, a firm and difficult grasp of
the real which, as Howells' canon illustrates, has an
elusive and shifting center. Braile is fond of deferring
to the "real God" that lies beyond or is different from
the cultural appropriation of the "people of the backwoods
[who] longed to feel themselves near the greatest world

of all, and well within the radius Of its mysteries" (pp.
82, 56).

Howells' fiction readily makes clear the deep and
agonizing religious concern that persisted throughout his
life. Nonetheless, in James Taylor's words in his study
of Howells' Swedenborgianism, "it is considerably more
difficult to say what Howells' religious beliefs were.
Nowhere in Howells' writing is there a fully develOped

systematic statement of his religion."33 A child of his

 

3Taylor, "The Swedenborgianism of W. D. Howells,"
p. 12.

 

time, Howells absorbed Darwinism and empirical science
and contended with its reduction of criteria for truth
and final reality. These contemporary intellectual move-

ments compounded the difficulty of approaching Matthew

234

Braile's "real God" and the mystery of the divine relation
to man. Basil March's uncertainty about the Operation of
an "intelligent comprehensive purpose in the universe" is
never definitely dispelled: the logic of the material,
social-economic, and Spiritual worlds remains inpenetrable
to man's efforts. Reality remains so, save for occasional
glimpses, as Annie Kilburn experiences, of "the unity of
all things . . . in the universal frame . . . ." Howells
never finally departs from the Reverend Nevil's, not to
mention Basil March's, confidence that "'no pang we suffer
in soul or sense is lost or wasted.'" The protagonist of

The World of Chance (1893), Howells' novel about the ca-

 

prices of literary success, speaks perhaps for all of
Howells' characters of hard—won faith, stating that, like
the physical world,

in that world where we lived in the spirit
. . . . We must own that we often saw the
good unhappy, and the wicked enjoying them-
selves. This was not just; yet somehow we
felt, we knew, that justice ruled the uni-
verse. Nothing, then, that seemed chance
was really chance. It was the operation of
a law so large that we caught a glimpse of
its vast orbit once or twice a lifetime.

It was Providence (p. 375).

Howells' desire to affirm an afterlife resembled

the subjective mode of his hOpe for cosmic purposefulness.

235

In an essay printed in In After Days (1919), a collection

 

of essays on the after life by prominent Americans, Howells
stated that he could not "speak . . . from the absolute
faith which some others can speak from . . . . There are
many things that I doubt, but few that I deny: where I
cannot believe, there I often trust . . . ." He counsels
the bereaved, "as all faith is mystical," to trust their
mystical experience "for much truth which they cannot
affirm" (p. 5). As in Howells' fiction, the sources and
implications of non-rational intuitive experience are am-
biguous. Howells acknowledges the sceptic's contention
that intimations and visions might be the

figments of an overwrought brain, but . . . .

Whether they are natural or supernatural, they

are precious, whether they are the effect of

causes quite within ourselves, or are intima-

tions to us from the sources of all life . . .

somehow, they are . . . not to be cast out

. . . as idle and futile. They may be the

Kaleidosc0pic adjustment of our shattered

being; they may be the prismal rays of celes-

tial light: who shall say from knowledge

(p. 6).

Both these lifelong concerns, the enigmatic moral

purpose of man's universe and the possibility of an after-
life, converge in Howells' wrestlings with the idea of

Christ. In the face of the illogic and pain of the moral

world, "the riddle of the painful earth," in which the

236

good suffer and the evil prOSper, Howells eventually di-
placed Boynton's and Mrs. Laphams' insistence on clear
and just moral desserts as a necessary indication of Pro-

vidence. As Sewell notes in The Rise of Silas Lapham,

 

cause and effect may be discernible in the physical world,
but that pattern breaks down when applied to the moral
dimensions of man's Spirit and will. Instead, Howells
turns to Christianity as a religion which approaches the
problem of suffering. In the selfless love and mercy of
the life of Christ, personal Suffering is directed away
from the ego to the common cares of humanity. Within

this awareness of human mutuality or complicity, suffer-
ing itself is transmuted, as in the death of Christ. For
Howells, the passion of Christ, as the narrator of The

Leatherwood God points out, constitutes the "supreme tra-

 

gedy of the race." Although Howells never made a definitive
statement about the divinity of Christ, the doctrine itself
seemed, much as the idea of the afterlife in the Bible,

irrelevant to the person and meaning of Jesus. In A Modern

 

Instance, Howells has Ben Halleck, a selfless but psycho—

 

logically uncertain young man, admit that "'if Christ never
lived on earth, some One lived who imagined him, and that

One must have been a God. The historical fact oughtn't to

237

matter'" (pp. 408-09). To Howells in an age of sceptical
science, the Christian moral paradigm and assertion of
spiritual reality still seemed the best summary of man's
experience and, in the spiritualist Boynton's words, "'the
only hOpe,--that old story of a credulous and fabulous
time . . . that allegory of the highest serving the low—
est, the best suffering for the worst.'"

Richard Foster's conclusion that Howells always

. . 34
remained agnostic seems a marked overstatement. Where

 

34Richard Foster, "The Contemporaneity of William

Dean Howells," New England Quarterly, XXXII (March, 1959),
p. 67.

 

 

Howells stood, exactly, at any one time is hard to tell.
What is clear, however, are the tendencies and directions
of Howells' own doubt and tentative "trust." Knowledge

of experience, especially scientific knowledge, did not
necessarily yield truth, which was qualitatively different
from fact and whose province was the Spiritual nature of
the human psyche. In recognizing this rift between the
empirical consciousness and the intangible promptings of

the unconscious and the soul, Howells delineated the main

238

conflict of the twentieth century which Eliot named "the

dissociation of sensibility."35

 

5 . . . .

Howells' clearest statement of this dispOSition
comes in his poem, "Statistics," Stpps of Various Quills
(New York, 1895), XXIII.

 

Burglaries, arsons, thefts, and forgeries

Had their own averages as well as these;

And from these figures science can discern

The future in the past. We but return

Upon our steps, although they seem so free.

The thing that has been is that which Shall be.
Dark prophet, yes! But still somehow the round
Is Spiral, and the race'S feet have found

The path rise under them which they have trod.
Your facts are facts, yet somewhere there is God.

 

CHAPTER FOUR
EMPIRICISM AND FAITH:

THE NOVELS OF E. P. ROE

During his visit to America in the mid—1880's,
English critic Matthew Arnold received the impression
that "The Western States are at this moment being nour-
ished and formed . . . on the novels of a native author

called Roe."l Arnold, in spite of his high-culture con-

 

1Quoted in Edward Payson Roe, "A Native Author
Called Roe: An Autobiography," in Taken Alive and Other
Stories (New York, 1902), p. 24. .

 

 

descension, appears not to have greatly exaggerated the
case. Among all late nineteenth-century fiction writers,
none surpassed the popularity of religious novelist Edward
Payson Roe, a Presbyterian minister turned story—teller.
At the time of his death at age fifty in 1888, Dodd and
Mead, Roe's publishers, estimated that over "1,400,000

copies of all his novels had been sold, not counting

239

240

pirated editions in many foreign languages."2 Alice Payne

Hackett includes Roe's first and most pOpular novel,

 

2Fred Lewis Pattee, A History of American Litera-
ture Since 1870 (New York, 1917), p. 387.

 

 

 

Barriers Burned Away (1872), among those novels which have

 

through the years sold a million COpies or more.3 The

 

360 Years of Best Sellers 1895—1955 (New York,
1956), p. 219.

 

 

records of an unidentified book wholesaler in the Missis-
sippi Valley reveal Roe outselling his nearest competitor
by three times during the mid-eighties. (On a scale of a
thousand, William Dean Howells earned fourteen and Henry

4 . . .
James one.) Perhaps the best indication of Roe's real

 

4Clarence Ghodes, "The Later Nineteenth Century,"
in The Literature of the American People: An Historical
and Critical Survey, ed. Arthur Hobson Quinn (New York,
1951): P. 591.

 

 

success in the days before well-kept sales records is

economic. While the average author earned $200 on a book,

241

Roe, according to James D. Hart, eventually accrued royal-

ties amounting to $15,000 a year.5

 

5The Popular Book: A History of America's Liter-
ary Taste (Berkeley, 1963), p. 121.

 

 

 

E. P. Roe stumbled on his writing career during a
visit, prompted by compassion and curiosity, to the after~
math Of the great Chicago fire. While there on leave from
his New York congregation, he came upon the idea for his

first novel, Barriers Burned Away, which was serialized in

 

the New York Evangelist and then taken by Dodd and Mead.

 

Other than some war correspondence as a Union chaplain, he
had done little writing prior to his first venture into
fiction. He claims, nonetheless, to have had a natural
inclination for it. On the one hand, he had the influence

of his invalid mother who had committed Paradise Lost and

 

most of the Bible to memory. As an added benefit, early
in life Roe "had formed the habit of beguiling the soli-
tary hours in weaving crude fantasies around people who

for any reason interested me."6 Consequently, when Roe

 

6"Author," p. 20.

 

242

struck upon the Chicago fire for the setting and central
metaphor for his religious tale, the novel "grew as natur-

ally as a plant or weed in my garden."7

 

7"Author," p. 21.

 

The results of this easy disposition toward fiction
were less than satisfactory artistically. Roe's prose al-
ways remained wooden and formal, except for his action se-
quences where he achieved pace and directness. His stories,
while often original in conception, were weighted with
melodrama, sentiment, and pious preachment. Carl Van Doren
amply summaried Roe's novelistic formula:

First, some topical material, historical event,
or current issue; second, characters and inci—
dents selected directly from his personal Obser»
vation or from the newspapers; third, an abun—
dance of nature descriptions with much praise

of the rural virtues; and fourth, plots concerned
almost invariably, and never too deviously, with
the simultaneous pursuit of wives, fortunes, and
salvation.8

 

8The American Novel 1789-1939 (New York, 1940),

 

p. 113.

 

Much to his credit, Roe never made any literary
claims for his fiction. He admitted equal bewilderment
before the spectacle of his popular success and the crit-

ical disapproval that increased with each new work. To

243

his mind, in one of his rare flashes of humor, the success
indicated that "It may be that we at least have an instance

of an effect without a cause."9 Any critic, he judged,

 

9"Preface," Without a Home (New York, 1902): Po 4.

 

 

who would credit his work with classic stature would have

to be "daft."lo He further confessed that if the time

 

lo"Author," p. 29.

 

came when the public indicated that "they had had enough

of Roe, I Shall neither whine nor write."ll

 

ll"Author," p. 25.

 

A practical man, Roe was probably saved from illu-
sions about the value of his work by a clear understanding
of his audience and purpose, AS early as his second novel,

What Can She Do? (1873), which came before the brunt of

 

critical disrepute, Roe proclaimed that his fiction "was
not written to amuse, to create purposeless excitement, or

to secure a little praise as a bit of artistic work . . . .

 

 

 

244

It was written with a definite, earnest purpose, which I

trust will be apparent to the reader."12

 

lzupreface," What Can She DO? (New York, 1902):

 

 

For Roe, fiction became a way Of extending the
work of his pastoral vocation, stating that "my object in
writing, as in preaching, is to do good . . . .“ When Roe
chose writing over preaching because of deteriorating
health, he took consolation in the fact that "I know my
books are read by thousands: [before] my voice reached

at most but a few hundred."13 Recognizing that his efforts

 

13Quoted in Mary A. Roe, "E. P. Roe: Reminiscences
of His Life," in He Fell in Love with His Wife (New York,
1902): P. 403.

 

 

left much to be desired, he surmised that "Many things may
have good and wholesome uses without exciting the world's
admiration. A man who cannot model a perfect statue may
yet erect a lamp-post, and place thereon a light which

shall Save many a wayfarer from stumbling."l4

 

4
1 "Preface," Near to Nature's Heart (New York,

 

 

245

Whatever merit or success Roe did achieve he attrib—
uted to his knowledge of "what is closely related to the
people," in particular to "the young and to the common
poeple, whom Lincoln said 'God must love, since He made so

15 .
many of them.'" Roe was en rapport" because, from his

 

15"Author," p. 23.

 

experience as a war chaplain, he knew "the nature that
. . l6 . .
eXistS in the human heart." KnOWing the variousness of

the public, he estimated that his "only chance of gaining

 

l6"Author," p. 29.

 

and keeping the attention of men and women was to know, to
understand them, to feel with and for them in what consti—

. . l
tuted their life." 7 Human nature, he conceded, "may be

 

l7Ibid.

 

 

inartistic, or my use of it all wrong," but sales indi-
cated that, unless Americans were generally "an aggrega-
tion of asses," he was striking a responsive cord Somewhere

in the populace.

 

l8"Author," pp. 24, 22.

 

246

'In Spite of his sensationalism and idealized char-
acters, Roe did come close to the problems of the "common"
reader in late nineteenth-century America. His frequent
praise Of nature and the rural life is matched by an
equally persistent awareness of the loneliness and poverty

of agrarian existence, as What Can She Do? (1873) and He

 

Fell in Love with His Wife (1886) amply illustrate. In

 

Without a Home (1881), Barriers Burned Away, and other

 

 

novels, the precarious existence of middle— and lower—
class urban life is portrayed. There, tenement housing,
harsh working conditions, and poor sanitation, give rise

to the special dangers of alcoholism, drug addiction, pros-
titution, and police courts. The strains of the new indus-
trialism on the traditional family unit furnish a constant
undercurrent in many Roe settings, upper and lower class,
rural and urban. Financial failure, is depicted as often
as Horatio-Alger-style success. Turning often to the en~
mity and grief lingering from the Civil War, Roe sought to
reconcile and to explain the sincerity and best intentions
of both sides. The ever-present problem of love and mar-
riage exists less for sentimental interest than to Spell
out a prOper basis for both romantic and non-romantic re—

lationships. Perhaps the largest factor in Roe's success

247

was that the reader always found a voice of understanding
and sympathy for the foibles and sufferings of mankind.
Always a moralist, Roe was not vindictive or self—righteous.
Amid life's perplexities, his counsel urged the acceptance
of a biblical Christianity of consolation, hope, and love.
Insofar as most of Roe's canon depicts the discov-
ery and choice of Christianity by a main character, his
work is best denoted by the motif of conversion that forms
a division within the larger category of religious fiction.
In treating this aspect of Christian experience, and Roe
always contended that it was only one aspect, he approached
a concern of late-century America that was at least as
pressing as its social and economic problems. According
to church historian Martin E. Marty, the threat of infi—
delity had traditionally been no more than a convenient
straw—figure for the American preacher.19 With, Roe, how-

ever, a distinct change of attitude takes place. Judging

 

19The Infidel: Freethought and American Religion

(Cleveland, 1961), pp. 139-41.

 

 

from his sensitivity to the common experience of his
readers, the frequency in his novels Of the dilemma of

faith and doubt suggests that the possibility of

248

widespread unbelief had become suddenly an urgent concern
to much of the American public. Amid this new religious
uncertainty, brought about mainly by the new science and
biblical criticism, Roe produced a body of thought that,
in spite of limitations and its format, is honest, consis-
tent, and sometimes trenchant. His attempt to understand
and dispel the Gilded Age's religious problems treated
Specific obstacles to faith and discerned, as superior
novelists like Howells and Frederic did, the new epistemo—
logical uncertainty underlying most questions.

AS Roe's protagonists espouse their creator's re—
ligious affirmations and judgments, his infidels and un-
believers, before they are typically converted, offer his
perSpective on contemporary doubt about Christianity. One
circumstance that frequently deters belief appears in the
ethical imperfections of the visible church. The specific
complaints of the doubters were usually endorsed by Roe,
but he never granted that the gap between Christ's ethical
and spiritual example and the church's performance provided
conclusive ground for disbelief. Far more often than not,
he accused the church of presenting a face of self-concern,
social insensitivity, and doctrinal rigidity to the chaotic,

suffering world around it.

249

Christine Ludolf of Barriers Burned Away(l872),

 

Roe's first doubter-turned-Christian, arraigns the religion
of her upper-crust friends for its idolatry and perpetua—
tion of social distinctions. In her friends' hands, the
cross had become a "'mere pretty ornament,'" symbolizing
affluence and self-concern rather than a redemptive self-

20 .
lessness. Numerous instances throughout Roe's novels

 

20Barriers Burned Away (New York, 1902), p. 182.

 

 

confirm Christine's judgment of the church and of the un-
declared caste system of America's "'Bible civilization,'"

. 2
as another Roe character names it. 1 In What Can She Do?

 

 

21A Knight of the Nineteenth Century (New YOrk,
1902): p. 185.

 

 

(1873), Roe lamented that "the Shifting code of fashion is

coming more and more to govern the church" to the extent

that "multitudes of wealthy churches . . . will no more

admit association with that class among which our Lord

lived and worked . . . . They seem designed to help only
"22

reputable, well-connected Sinners . . . The unkempt,

down-and-out Egbert Haldane of A Knight of the Nineteenth

 

 

22What Can She Do?, pp. 108-09.

 

 

250

Century (1877) is directed at the door of a wealthy urban
church to its mission branch, which for the wealthy re-

semble religious "'second class cars.”23 After the

 

23Knight, p. 273.

 

father's bankruptcy, the Jocelyn family in Without a Home

 

(1881) is made to feel uncomfortable amid the snobbery and
lush surroundings of their former church. A large part of

Walter Gregory's cynicism in Opening a Chestnut Burr (1874)

 

results from being jilted for financial reasons by a pious
fiancee and then swindled by an upstanding churchman. Simi-

larly, in Near to Nature's Heart (1876), Theron Saville

 

cites "the absurd, cruel, and monstrous acts" of professed

. . . . . 24 .
Christians as one cause for his sceptiCism. Roe, as did

 

24Near to Nature's Heart, p. 328.

 

 

his hero in Barriers Burned Awgy, could only condemn and

 

mourn "the worldly, inconsistent life of the multitudes in
the church who do more to confirm unbelievers than all

their sophistries."25

 

5Barriers, p. 162.

 

 

251

At least some of the church's hypocrisy could be
attributed to ministerial preoccupation with doctrinal pre-
requisites and theological systems. In this respect, as
Ralph Carey has pointed out, Roe shares an anti-theological,
anti-doctrinal bias with other late nineteethn—century
ovelists.26 Even with good intentions, ministers, espe-
cially those in affluent churches, often have little know—
ledge of human nature and actually discourage the earnest
seeker with sermons heavy in theology and philosophy. While

the courious are put off, the congregations themselves are

 

26"Best-Selling Relition: a History of POpular Re-

ligious Thought in America as Reflected in Religious Best-
Sellers 1850-1960" (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan
State University, 1971), pp. 60-61.

 

"'spiritually smothered,'" as seminary student Frank Hemp—

stead tells Lottie Marsden in From Jest to Earnest (1875).27

 

Significantly, the only sectarians of whom Roe ever unre-

servedly approved, although one can question his portrayal

 

27From Jest to Earnest (New York, 1902), p. 66.

 

 

Of them, were the non-theological Quakers. To Roe, their
tranquil goodness was the "inevitable reflection of a

fuller, richer spiritual life" which "had come from

 

‘II' [III I I A! .I\I«| (1:11

252

Heaven, and not from the dyspeptic creeds of cloistered

theologians."2

11*

28A Day of Fate (New York, 1902), p. 108.

 

 

An emphasis on dogma created a "'theological phan—
tom'" or, as one minister confesses, a "'Christ of theology
and philOSOphy'" rather than "'a living and personal

power.”29 The theologians' Christ formed but an obstacle

 

29A Young Girl's Wooing (New York, 1902), p. 249;
Knight, pp. 284-274.

 

 

to "'the Christ of the Bible,'" a distinction of kind that

Roe always vigorously maintained. Edith Allen of What Can

 

She Do? (1873) explains that "'the Romish Church puts the
Virgin, saints, penances, and I know not what, between the
sinner and Jesus, and we [Protestants] put catechism, doc-
trines, and great mass of truth about them, between Him

3 . . . .
and us.'" 0 Often in real practice, the distressed in

 

30What Can She Do?, p. 352.

 

 

body and mind turn away from a religion of dreary formali-
ties and vague, uncomprehended mental processes." By an

unknown authority that is not Christ's, theologians and

253

dogmatists "lead the suffering through . . . a round-about,

intricate, or arid path of things to be done and doctrine

to be accepted before bringing them to Christ."31

 

31Knight, p. 231.

 

Nor do individual clergy do much to stem increasing

unbelief. Both Ludolph in Barriers Burned Away and Theron

 

Saville in Near to Nature's Heart (1876) have adopted Euro-

 

pean suspicions of clerical motives. Ludolph, a German
exile who hopes to return a baron, thinks the clergy cun-
ning and self-interested-—a logical leadership for a self—
interested religion which has the heavenly preservation

and reward of the individual as its chief Object.32 And

 

32Barriers, pp. 119, 117-18.

 

 

young Saville, a Revolutionary War Officer recently re-
turned from schooling in France, regards religion as "'ab-
surd and antiquated beliefs and systems of the past, Orig-
inated by shrewd old schemers who constructed and maintained

them for their own advantage.”33

 

33Near to Nature's Heart, p. 129.

 

 

254

While Roe never presents a clerical figure with
such attributes, he does offer examples of ineffectual or
plainly incompetent clergy. An inner-city mission worker

in Without a Home (1881) so demonstrates "his mannerisms,

 

his set phrases, his utter lack of magnetism and apprecia-
tion of the various shades of character with which he was
dealing, [that he] repelled even those who respected his
motive and mission." To compound the faults of personal-
ity, the man diSpensed economic aid only to those who
played to his taste for maudlin religiosity. Roe concludes
that if he were in business, his associates would soon

bankrupt.34 Almost as harmful are the aloof, stern clerics

 

34Without a Home, pp. 213-14.

 

 

whose demeanor gives the wrong impression of the loving
deity whose emissaries they are. Effective clergy exist
as well in Roe's fiction, but discussion of their merits
must wait until later.

From the above dissents which are practical in
their focus, Roe moves to more purely intellectual diffi-
culites. A natural transition lies in his treatment of
the problem of evil. We have already seen the doubter's

disdain for the frailty of the earthen vessels of church

255

and clergy. In the face of evil and disorder, the sceptic
extends his criticism to cosmic proportions, questioning
the nature of reality itself. The enigma often arises of

"'What kind of a God is he that permits . . . horrors?”35

 

35Near to Nature's Heart, p. 99.

 

or more specifically, asks cousin Amy in A Knight of the

 

Nineteenth Century (1877), "'If Christ is so strong to help

and save, why is he not strong to prevent evil?”36 As al-

 

ready suggested, in Roe's world, evil and horrors are Often

 

36Knight, p. 428.

 

considerable. Without a Home (1881) presents a relentless

 

series of personal and social disasters that leaves its
survivors with, at best, a somber resignation. In A Face

Illumined (1878), the kindly, faithful Jennie Burton sug-

 

gests to an artist friend that

"you have never realized how shadowed humanity
is, Within a mile of your studio . . . there
are thousands who are perishing in slow, re-
morseless pain. It is this awful mystery of
evi1--this continuous groan and cry of anguish
that has gone up to heaven through all the ages

---that appalls my heart and staggers my faith."37

 

37A Face Illumined (New York, 1902), p. 386.

 

 

256

Sensational and melodramatic Roe's novels were, but fre~
quently, unlike other sentimental novelists Of his day,
such events possessed a Significant thematic relevance,
not existing alone, as Roe himself noted, for the reader's
titillation.

In any case, the sceptic's attack on the evil per-
mitted by a supposedly benevolent God gained force from a
negative interpretatiOn of evolution, which enters into

the Civil War Novel, His Sombre Rivals (1883). After the

 

death of her husband, who was agnostic and evolutionist,
Grace Alford gradually concludes that "she could not turn
to a God who permitted such evil and suffering," stating
that "'It's the same blind contention of forces in men as

in nature . . . and only the strong or fortunate survive.“UM3

 

38His Sombre Rivals (New York, 1902), p. 283.

 

 

Roe himself seems not to have been able to make up his mind
about the significance of nature in God's universe. In

the early novels Opening a Chestnut Burr (1874) and From

 

Jest to Earnest (1875), he expressed a Wordsworthian or

 

Christian romantic view of nature. Nature, "in her rarest

and purest beauty," offers "a glimpse into the more

257

beautiful world of truth, where God dwells."39 To the

hero of From Jest to Earnest, "'all of the countless forms

 

 

39Jest, p. 68.

 

in nature prove an infinite mind gratifying itself. They

. . 4
are expreSSions of creative thought.'" 0 By A Face Illu-

 

mined (1878), which contains Roe'S only mention of Darwin

by name, resistance to evolutionary ideas is obvious. When

 

40Jest, p. 74.

 

trying to understand the mindless levity of an attractive
young girl, the novel's hero comments that "'the Lord from
heaven breathed the breath of life into the first fair
woman, but this girl might seem to have been the natural
product of evolution, and her soul to be as truly of the
earth as her body.'"41 Similarly, the girl's cousin ex-

cuses his own unashamed pleasure in looking at women by

 

41A Face Illumined, p. 20.

 

 

saying that on the average, "'Mr. Darwin has not got uS

very far along yet.'"42

 

42A Face Illumined, p. 24.

 

 

258

Optimistic views of the directions of nature and
man's progress seemed unrealistic to Roe. In his social

novel, Without a Home (1881), he comments that its bruised

 

and forsaken heroine, in her dire physical and Spiritual
need, "was not ready for a system Of theology or for the
doctrine of evolution; and if any one had begun to teach
the inherent and self-correcting power of humanity, she

would have Shown him the door . . . ."43 Much the same

 

43Without a Home, p. 188.

 

 

lesson is taught to Theron Saville in Near to Nature's

 

Heart (1876) whose confidence in mankind's certain advance
falters when the moral restraints of Christianity are re—

moved. Yet by 1885, in the preface to An Original Belle,

 

Roe unexpectedly takes a positive tact in his view of evo-
lution, stating that as

men reach levels above the animal, other quali—
ties take the lead. It is seen that the imma-
terial Spirit wins the greater triumphs-—that
the brainless giant, compared with the dwarf of
trained intelligence, can accomplish little.
The scale runs on into moral qualities, until
at last humanity has given its sanction to the
divine words, "Whosoever will be chief among
you, let him be your servant."44

 

44"Preface," An Original Belle (New York, 1902: P-

 

 

 

259

For an unknown reason, Roe's apparent acceptance
of evolution never enters into the fiction itself, as it
would for Celia Parker Woolley, Helen H. Gardener, and
other contemporaries. The findings of evolution and their
threat to faith form an important intellectual backdrop in
. Roe's fiction, although he never becomes involved in de-
bates about their accuracy or meaning. Rather, he judged
the questions of evolution to be secondary to the individ-
ual's experience of Christ, which was always a potent
weight for counterbalancing doubt before the insoluble,
circumscribing mystery of life. The most Roe sacrificed
in the evolutionary debate was his ardent love of nature,
an enthusiasm confirmed by his successful avocation in

horticulture. A character in A Face Illumined (1883) re-

 

lates Roe's probable view of nature and romance, which
offer, each in its own way, a potential object of devotion.
Though often marvellous and inspiring, neither can supplant
the unique gift of the Christian faith: "’We cannot find
in nature nor in the happiest human love that which can
satisfy our deep spiritual need; but we can find all in

. . 4
Him who came from Heaven in our behalf.'" 5

 

45A Face Illumined, p. 333.

 

 

260

The reasons for Roe's restraint in argument with the
merits of evolutionary theory, as with the issues of compar-
ative religion and biblical criticism, can best be under-
stood in view of his approach to empirical sciences. Roe's
real position on biblical criticism, for instance, iS dif—
ficult to identify. He often acknowledges its existence in
characters who express doubts about the authority of scrip-
ture, thus placing the burden of proof on the Bible's de-

fenders. Near to Nature's Heart (1876) provides his only

 

comment on the specific issues of authorial inspiration and
historical, geological accuracy. After much study and re—
reading Of the text itself, sceptic Theron Saville finally
grasps "its wonderful unity in the seeming diversity and

he saw that the verbal husk in the early parts of the Old
Testament had a kernel of rich, spiritual meaning, and that
the New Testament clearly taught a philOSOphy too lofty for
a merely human origin . . . ."46 In several other novels,

one of the faithful suggests to the doubter that his inves-

tigations have been one-sided, all on the critic's Side and

 

6Near to Nature's Heart, p. 375.

 

 

that the Bible's scholarly friends have not received equal

attention. Thus, in one novel, Tom Paine, a frequent

261

whipping-boy for Protestants, is accused of criticizing the

Bible without having read it.47

 

47Jest, p. 48.

 

Roe was more Specific with regard to the assertions
of comparative religion. Under its critical stare, the
Christian God became an obscure Hebrew divinity, another
form of myth that has no more truth than other myths and
one which like them, man eventually outgrows.48 Most reli-
gions have origins and develOp similarly, be it Christian

or Greek:

 

48Near to Nature's Heart, p. 375.

 

"Some conception of the mind is embodied, or
some object is idealized and magnified until
the original is lost Sight Of, and men come
to worship a mere fancy of their own. Then
some mind, stronger and more imaginative than
the average, gives shape and form to this con-
fused image: and so there grows in time a be—
lief, a theology, or rather a mythology."49

 

49His Sombre Rivals, pp. 203-04.

 

 

The fact that there are earnest believers in other world re—

ligions gives further credence to the probability that all

262

religious practices are matters of "'education and tempera-

ment,'" "custom and fashion, or an accident of birth."50

 

50A Face Illumined, p. 498.

 

 

As with the higher criticism, Roe's response to
comparative religion was not very extensive or convincing.
About the best he could do was to argue that there existed
a qualitative contrast between the Greek pantheon, whose
acts would today land them in a penitentiary, and the Chris-
tian God of mercy and love.51 Once beyond Specific rebut-

tals, Roe turned to a general strategy based on common-sense

 

SlJest, p. 48.

 

empiricism and wonder. The Bible was significant and
unique because it had outlasted each age's attacks on its
validity.52 Additional proof arose from its conformity to

man's profoundest perceptions of the complexion of human

experience. For Vera in Near to Nature's Heart (1876),

 

 

52Jest, pp. 89-90.

whose only books were a collected Shakespeare and the Bible,

263

the two agree on the essentials of man's nature and predic-

ament.53

 

3Near to Nature's Heart, p. 340.

 

 

By thus appealing to the logic of the reader's ob—
servations on life, Roe initiated an empirical and exper—
iential approach that dominates his advocacy of the Bible's
and Christianity's truths. Beginning with his first novel
where Baron Ludolph believes only "'what I see and know,'"
Roe gradually recognized that the main threat to Christian-

ity was a rigorous empricist definition of reality.54 In

 

54

Barriers, p. 119.

 

the face of the new Science which would "'often apply gross
material tests to matters of faith and religious experience)"
Roe contended that there "is a power, a force, an agency,
that the materialist cannot calculate, weigh or measure, or

laugh scornfully out of existence."55

 

55Opening A Chestnut Burr (New York, 1902), p. 232;
Jest , p. 156.

 

 

It is through Christian experience, which is

largely subjective, that this intangible agency is mediated

264

and made known. Consequently, much of Roe's rhetorical
effort argues for the trustworthiness of subjective SXper-
ience. Often his characters' responses are common-sensical
assertions Of subjective self-confidence, such as "'rich,
lasting, rational, Spiritual experience is as much a fact

as that stone therer'" or "'I know it as I know I exist.”56

 

56A Face Illumined, p. 308.

 

 

Other characters justify their beliefs on the unusual clar—
ity and immediacy of their religious experience. In Open-

ing a Chestnut Burr (1874), Annie Walton states that "'Reli—

 

gion is a matter of revelation and experience . . . [and]

. . . . . . 57
my religion is a matter of fact, of ViVid conSCiousness.’"

 

57Opening a Chestnut Burr, p. 196.

 

 

Ida Mayhew in A Face Illumined (1878) refers to a Similar

 

strategy in her certainty of answered prayer, stating that
"'if I do not know this to be true, I cannot know anything
to be true'; for never before had her consciousness made

anything so distinct and real."58

 

58A Face Illumined, p. 352.

 

 

265

In two novels, Roe apparently felt it necessary to
be more elaborate and reasoned in his effort to establish
respect for subjective experience. Annie Walton, the opener
of the chestnut burr, responds to Walter Gregory's epistemo-
logical question, stating that

"if you should ask me how I know it [that God ex-
ists], I in return ask how you know that you are
ill, or well, that you are glad or sad, or tired,
or anything about yourself that depends on your
own inner consciousness . . . . Suppose I should
say I want mathematical proof that you do feel an
interest, or physical proof--something that I can
measure, weigh, or see--should I be reasonable?"59

 

59Opening a Chestnut Bur, p. 231.

 

 

Again Ida Mayhew pleads that her inner "'hope, patience,

peace, when the world would give no peace,'" are not to be
dismissed easily for they are as real to her as any Object,
form her primary reality, and bespeak something beyond ra-

. . . . 60
tional, empirical experience.

 

60A Face Illumined, p. 499.

 

 

Roe often supported his characters' private reason-
ings with an appeal to proofs of history and consensus,
thus utilizing a kind of modified empiricism. Egbert Hal-
dane, the nineteenth—century knight, cautions a doubter

that "'I and myriads of others have had proof of God's

266

power and willingness to help. If wide and varied exper-

ience can settle any fact, this one has been settled.'"61

 

61A Face Illumined, p. 499.

 

 

SO also, the elderly counselor Mr. Eltinge states that God
"'has helped me when and where there was no human help. I
have often seen His redeeming work in the lives of other

faulty, Sinful peOple like myself.”62 In the same novel,

 

62A Face Illumined, p. 308.

 

 

A Face Illumined, Roe debates his reader directly, stating

that

To say that . . . multitudes of others are mis—
taken is begging the whole question. It is
badly taking the ground of everything outside
of personal understanding and knowledge . . . .
The facts of Christian experience and Christian
testimony are as truly facts as those which are
discovered by people who are hostile or indif-
ferent to the Bible.63

 

63A Face Illumined, p. 62.

 

 

Beyond the private experience of Christian conso-
lation and faith, Roe found some confirmation in the pub-

lic effects of Christianity, the evidence of changed lives

and social charity. He referred to "the One who developed

267

Peter the fisherman, Paul the bigot, Luther the ignorant

64 . .
monk . . . ." As is the case in most of Roe's novels,

 

64Knight, p. 338.

selfish, egotistical fops and belles become charitable,
self—forgetting Christians who often violate decorum and
reputation to minister to others. It is this public proof
that Roe thought most convincing to sceptics. By observ-
ing a slum minister who cared for his parishioners' bodies
as well as souls, Roger Atwood gains a "thorough respect"
for Christianity, "seeing its practical value worked out
in the useful busy life of one who made his chapel a
fruitful oasis in what would have otherwise been a moral

desert.”65 Similarly, Christine Ludolph, watching Dennis

 

65Without a Home, p. 387.

 

 

Fleet's heroism during the Chicago fire, "realized more
and more vividly that he was sustained and animated by
some mighty principle that she knew nothing of, and could
not,understand . . . . Though it all remained in mystery
and doubt, she could not resist the logic of true Chris—

tian action."66 Roe best clarifies the purport of Christian

 

6Barriers, p. 396.

 

 

268

activism in A Knight of the Nineteenth Century (1877),

 

stating that

not the wrath of God, but his love, is the
most effective in separating men from the evil
which would otherwise destroy them . . . .

The love Of God is ever best taught and best
understood, not as a doctrine, but when em-
bodied in some large-hearted and Christlike
person,

. . . 67
in "a personal and human ministry."

 

67Knight, p. 388. Roe's attitudes toward the so-
cial dimensions Of Christianity appear to have changed in
the course of his writing career. In What Can She DO?
(1873), his second novel, he ventured that the only way in
which to make respectable citizens of the lower class was
through a "'merciful, patient, personal Saviour. He had
wonderful power over them when He was on earth, and He
would have the same now, if His people could make them
understand Him'" (p. 352). A Knight of the Nineteenth
Century (1877) Shows an increasing discontent with the
established church in its efforts, or lack of them, to
reach the unaffluent and dispossessed in society. To one
cantankerous old man in the novel, "'respectable people
and the devil were in partnership'" (p. 192). While it
still seemed to Roe that "The love of God as manifested
in Christ of Nazareth is doing more for humanity than all
other influences combined," too often "the wondrous story"
was not being "told as it should be" (p. 338; also see the
text above, pp. 254-255). In Without a Home (1881), he
continues his attack on the upper classes, stating that

 

 

 

If, instead of harsh judgments, they would pro-
vide for the poor places of cheap and innocent
resort; if, instead of sighing over innate de-
pravity, they would expend thought and effort
in bringing sunshine into the experiences of
those whose lives are deeply shadowed by the
inevitable circumstances of their lot, they
would do far more to exemplify the Spirit of
Him who has done so much to fill the world with
light, flowers, and music (p. 203).

269

In the same novel, Roe talks of the necessity, and practi-
cality, of lightened working conditions for the factory-
worker and the shop-girl: "Multitudes would . . . live
better, do more work and die much later, could they find
some innocent recreation to which they could often give
themselves up with something of the whole-hearted abandon
of a child" (p. 284). From this specific example, he goes
on to offer a general principle of reform, stating that

If the truth could be appreciated that circum-
stances color life and character just as surely,
marring, distorting, dwarfing, or beautifying and
developing, according as they are friendly or ad-
verse, the workers in the moral vineyard, instead

of trying to obtain fruit from sickly vines, whose
roots grope in sterility, and whose foliage is
poisoned, would bring the richness of opportunity

to the soil and purify the whole atmosphere (p. 325).

Ralph Carey places Roe in proper historical context as "an
early example of the native middle-class revolt against the
corrupting influence of urban industrialism, with its un-
ethical business practices and 'foreign' laboring masses"
(Best-Selling Religion," p. 61).

 

Necessary to Roe's defense of Christianity was
some dilution of the mounting authority of empirical
science in late nineteenth-century America. He seems to
have disapproved of scientists more than of their endea-
vors. To Roe, the scientist's faith in his special
approach to reality, trusting only in what he can "measure,

weigh, or see," seemed at once inordinate and partial.

 

8
6 Opening a Chestnut Burr, p. 233.

 

270

The scientist's pejorative View of religion, Roe further
suspects, results from preconceived bias which, not having
tried religion, is clearly unjust. In a like manner, the
scientist makes assertions that he cannot support, even by
his own scientific criteria. As such, when his conjectures
are used to displace the dearly held truths of religion, he
proves irresponsible, "'however gently or scientifically it
might be done.'" For example, on the subject Of immortal-

ity in A Face Illumined, Jennie Burton argues "'How can

 

they know that [death is final]? How can they know what
Shall be in ages to come?”69 Roe even has one of his

characters apply the lessons Of relativity to science

 

69A Face Illumined, p. 208.

 

 

itself, suggesting that "'Science to-day laughs at the ab—
surdities believed by the learned a hundred years ago; and
so will much that is now called science, and because of

which men doubt the Bible, he laughed at in the future.”70

 

70Qpeninga Chestnut Burr, p. 233.

 

 

For Roe, placing faith in the right of enquiry,

The broad, liberal man is he who accepts all
truth and humbly waits till the fuller wisdom
of coming ages reconciles what is now apparently

271

conflicting. The bigot is he who Shuts his eyes
to truth he does not like, or does not understand;
and he is as apt to be a scientist as a man who
has learned that the God who made him can also
Speak to him, through His inspired word and all-
pervading Spirit.

 

71A Face Illumined, p. 352.

 

 

One of Roe's counsellors even prescribes the virtues of
the scientific method as a likely paradigm for disciplined
Christian enquiry, stating that "'He who would enter upon
the Christian life, must come to Christ as the true scien-
tist Sits at the feet of nature--docile, teachable, eager
to learn the truth that existed long before he was born,
and not disposed to thrust forward some miserable little

system of his own.'"72

 

72Knight, p. 332.

 

Without question, Roe faced a difficult choice in
attempting to negotiate between conflicting modes of know-
ing, between tradition and innovation. His nineteenth—
century knight probably summed up his appeal to private
sense and consensus, concluding that "'Believers in Jesus
Christ have been verifying his promises in every age, and

in every possible emergency and condition of life, and if

272

their testimony is refused, human consciousness is no
longer a basis of knowledge.”73 It is in this reasoning
on the necessity of subjective knowledge that Roe'S under-

lying sense Of wonder surfaces, which itself then becomes

an argument for belief. Throughout his discussion of

 

73Knight, p. 331.

 

knowledge, Roe finds it impossible to think of a cautious
subjectivity as untrustworthy because consciousness must
of necessity believe in itself.

This undercurrent becomes explicit in his treat-
ment of immortality. Again Egbert Haldane, the nineteenth-
century knight, counsels a sad maiden that "'this life is
not all; the belief that human life ends at death is re-
volting to reason, conscience, and every sense of jus—

. 74 . . .
tice.'" While Roe went on to inSist on the last element

 

74Knight, p. 428.

 

in Haldane's rationale, six years later in His Sombre

 

Rivals, he refers repeatedly, as one character reflects on
a feminine friend, to "marvel of marvels . . . that mere

clay could be so highly organized."75 The fine

 

75His Sombre Rivals, p. 64.

 

 

273

sensibility of Grace St. John leads Warren Hilland to re—
gard his belief in an aimless evolution as a "'profana-

. ,u 76
tion of her character. Through the agency of Grace,

Hilland concludes that "'Mere corruption, chemical change,

 

76His Sombre Rivals, p. 108.

 

 

ought not to be the end of a man.'"77 When the child of

——-——-—

Grace and Hilland dies suddenly, the father proclaims to

 

77His Sombre Rivals, p. 246.

 

 

his wife that "'You can't believe it [that death is final],

any more than I.'"78

 

78His Sombre Rivals, p. 375.

 

 

In wonder at the quality of man's consciousness
and potential for moral grandeur that exists even in a
child, Roe'S contemplation of non—existence suggests that
man can neither comprehend his own mortality nor believe
in it. Found in the predicament where he must wonder at
the existence of personality or soul, man concludes that
behind life cannot be, states Warren Hilland, just "'law

or force. It's either God, who in some way that I can't

274

understand, will bring good out of all this evil, or else

its all devilish, fiendish.'"79

 

79His Sombre Rivals, pp. 375-76.

 

Using this perspective of wonder, Roe suggests
that for man, regardless of science's suppositions (and
Warren Hilland was a scientist), the horror of life comes
to be as intolerable as religious hope once seemed. This
either—or position, wondering at life's fullness and
horror, seems Roe'S final statement——it is hardly a ration—
ale in a logical sense--on the limits Of faith and doubt
in late nineteenth-century America. Balancing human na-
ture and the century's epistemological questions, he con—
cluded through Warren Hilland that "'Reason is a grand
thing, and I know we once thought we settled this question
[of mortality negatively], but reason fails me to-night,
or else love and the intense longings of the heart teach

a truer and deeper philOSOphy.'"80

 

8OHis Sombre Rivals, p. 325.

 

 

Because Roe backed away from religious problems to

write adventure and romance in his last Six novels, His

275

Sombre Rivals (1883) no doubt represents the depletion of

 

his resources for debate. The strategy of wonder employed
in this novel, while new in its religious application,
previously found a role in his treatment of romantic love.
Infidel suitors or belles are always taken aback by the
quality of character which they find in the unique Chris-
tian. While their reason is stymied by wit, vivacity, or
charity, their hearts are disarmed by sympathy and under—
standing. In this way, with an insistent emphasis on the
practical consequences Of Christianity, the conventions of
romance and sentiment--"'the intense longings of the heart
[that] teach a truer and deeper philOSOphy'"--are turned
to religious ends. In an unsophisticated form, this appli-
cation surfaced in Roe's dictum that, as they can be

damned, men can also "'be beguiled from ruin by smiles.”81

 

81Knight, p. 49.

 

Yet, at times amid romance, Roe'S lovers received a glimpse

that beauty could "become so enlarged that the world would

 

be transfigured, 'radiant with purple 1ight,'" thus encoun-
tering an unforeseen complexity and depth to life.82 In
82

His Sombre Rivals, p. 31. Frank Hemstead's ex-
perience in From Jest to Earnest (1875) provides some

 

 

276

clarification of this pattern. After winning the love of
Lottie Marsden, Roe comments that "As he entered the pul-
pit that morning his face was radiant with the purest hu-
man love, as well as the love to God. So far from being
incongruous, the one seemed to kindle and intensify the
other" (p. 347). In the case of Arden Lacey in What Can
She Do? (1873), the believer initiates trust in the
doubter, thus making another kind of faith more feasible.
After Edith Allen accepts Lacey, he tells her that "'I
now feel sure that, through my faith in you, I Shall learn
to have faith in Him'" (p. 389). And such is the case
with Warren Hilland in His Sombre Rivals (1883): "His
wife's faith has become his. She has proved it true by
the sweet logic of her life" (p. 378).

 

 

 

their charity and faithful love, Roe'S protagonists served
as imitations or vehicles, though imperfect, of the mys-
tery of divine love. Romantic love in the context of
Christian felicity has the potential to transform the pro—
saic for the loved one and to enrich his experience in a
way, as in conversion, that deterministic science could
not explain. When Roe put the strategy of romantic attrac-
tion to other purposes, the results were less than satis-

factory ethically. For example, in An Original Belle

 

(1885), which provides a likely occasion for Howells'
satiric short story "Editha" (1905), the heroine uses her
considerable charms for patriotic ends--to enlist men for
the front lines of the Union army-«while she finally

marries one who stays home.

277

With regard to sentiment and romance, Roe thought
of his work as distinct from the excessive sentimentality
of much contemporary fiction. Although his stories always
end happily, his heroines are on occasion homely, plain,

or very faulty in character, as Annie Walton in Opening a

 

Chestnut Burr (1874). In one instance, a character in

 

Without a Home (1881) derides a novel "'in which the hero

 

and heroine are sentimental geese and blind as bats. They

misunderstand each other so foolishly that I'd like to

' "83

bat their empty heads together. A Young Girl's Wooing

 

 

83Without a Home, p. 174.

 

 

((1884) drew fire from the SaturdayReview critic because

 

it broke with prOpriety in detailing how a young girl set
out, with Roe'S approval, to steal away the suitor Of a

coquette.84 In He Fell in Love with His Wife, Roe'S most

 

 

4Saturday Review, LVIII (December 27, 1884), 821.

 

 

realistic and best novel comparatively Speaking, he de—
scribes the processes of love and misunderstanding in a

bleak rural environment. In Barriers Burned Away, Dennis

 

Fleet sadly learns that a pretty face has no necessary

connection with fine character. And Mildred Jocelyn of

278

Without a Home (1881) comes to know, after much sorrow,

 

the difference between romantic passion and mature love.

 

85 . . .
Roe'S most expliCit comment on negative patterns

in contemporary courtship comes in From Jest to Earnest
(1875).

 

In some minds the ideas of love and passion seem
inseparable, and they regard religion as some-
thing far removed. These are but the right wing
of that sinister class who jumble their passions
and religion together, and, in pious jargon and
Spiritual double entendre, half conceal and half
convey the base meaning of their hearts. In
others, love, or what with goes by the name, iS
equally inseparable from management and match~
making, trousseaux and settlements-~concerns
pertaining to earth, and very earthy, it must

be admitted (p. 346).

 

 

While Roe never portrays the former, the concerns of fin-
ance and marital Spectacle often receive his disapproval.

 

A similar attempt at realism informs Roe's treat-
ment of the religious life. Emotion and sentiment had
their place, but, as Frank Hemstead tells Lottie Marsden,
"'religious feeling is something that comes and goes, and

cannot be depended upon.'"86 Egbert Haldane mistakenly

 

86Jest, p. 246.

 

expected that, after conversion, emotion would "bear him

forward, and through and over the peculiar trials Of his

279

lot . . . ."87 When his zeal subsides, the long-suffering

Mrs. Arnot must explain that while Haldane's emotional ex-

periences in religion

 

87Knight, p. 320.

 

"were evidences of God's love and favor . . . .

The trouble has been with you . . . that you have
been consulting your variable emotions instead of
looking Simply to Christ . . . . Besides, the

power is not given us to maintain an equable flow
of feeling for any considerable length of time.

. . . Our feelings depend largely also upon
earthly causes and our physical condition, and

we can never be sure how far they are the result
of the direct action of God's spirit upon our
minds. It is God's plan to work through simple,
natural means, so that We may not be looking and
waiting for the supernatural."

 

88Knight, pp. 333-34.

 

In the same vein, the elderly Mr. Eltinge admonishes con-
vert Ida Mayhew not to be "'superstitious or sentimental

The life of a Christian means honest, patient

work . . . .'"89 Seemingly for Roe, the only sure proof

of the Christian faith lies in the patient study and

 

89Knight, pp. 333-34.

 

discipleship Since "'the more closely and faithfully

280

we follow him, the more surely do fear and doubt pass

 

 

 

...90
away.
90 .
A Face Illumined, p. 335.
The kind of work Roe had in mind was what he iden-
tified in his first novel as "'real practical belief'" in

. . 91 . .
the ethics and meaning of Jesus. True Christians were

 

lBarriers, p. 164.

 

 

to give sympathy and aid to others as Jesus himself did and

as they received from him. A positive ethic of love, not.

judgment, emulated God's own action who "At last . . .

came among men, and shared in their lot and nature. He

taught them, he sympathized with them, he loved them, and
,"92

he died for them . . . . In all aspects of life, pri—

vate and social, Roe stressed "'the accessible Jesus of

 

92Knight, p. 338.

 

Nazareth'" in contrast to, as suggested earlier, the stern,

doctrinal, and aloof Christianity emanating from the "'costly

refrigerator'" climate of affluent urban churches.93 To

 

93Knight, pp. 264, 266.

 

281

counteract this later image, some guilty members of the

wealthy church in A Knight of the Nineteenth Century un—

 

dertake an In His Steps-like experiment in Christian voca—

 

tion. Roe always emphasized that Christ came to save and
serve the distraught and the poor, the "publicans and

' "94 I '
Sinners. Consequently, all of Roe S exemplary Chris-

tians Spend time in charity work, giving their compassion

 

94Knight, p. 265.

 

and often considerable skills to the needy wherever they
are found, in resort hotel or slum. True followers helped
others materially and spiritually, and in doing so, their
own doubts and guilt were dispelled as his "'all—pervading
Spirit'" became evident in the effects of selfless, heal—

. 95
ing love.

 

95Knight, p. 428.

 

If concern for others was the real work, a decisive
public indication of genuine Christianity, the meaning and
import of the gospel was only revealed in the inmost depths
of the self, in private encounter with Christ's "Presence."

It is this experience, Roe Often suggested, that provides

282

...96

"'just what our poor human nature needs. In his iso-

lation and guilt, the unconverted or the hard-pressed

 

96A Face Illumined, p. 308.

 

 

Christian was Often blessed with a sense, always subjec—
tive in nature, of Christ's "'living, loving, spiritual
Presence that uplifts and sustains the sinking heart when

the whole great world could only stand helplessly by.'"97

 

97A Day of Fate, p. 271.

 

 

To Edith Allen in Roe'S second novel, What Can She Do? (18TM,

 

that Presence without which all temples are vain
had come . . . as freely, as closely, as truly
as when it entered the cottage at Bethany . . . .
Even to her . . . as to God's trembling servant
of old, a ladder of light was let down from
Heaven, and on it her faith would climb up to
the peace and rest that are above, and therefore
undisturbed by the storms that rage on earth."98

 

98What Can She Do?, p. 277.

 

 

Amid the many intellectual doubts provoked by Dar-
winism, the higher criticism, and comparative religion,
the final measure of Christian certainty and verification
came to the individual through the unique sufficiency,

fully unlike any human agency, of Christ's love. Always

283

"a living, loving, personal presence, human in sympathy,
divine in power," the "practical truth" of divine concern
satisfied the "intense longings of the heart."99 In this

way, through the unique personal effects of Christ's ac-

tive care and its historical trustworthiness, Christianity

 

99Without a Home, p. 188; His Sombre Rivals, p. 325.

 

 

 

found its justification which, in moments of need, could
override the new science's accusations of subjective illu—
sion.

AS discussed above, Roe was not sanguine about the
ease of the Christian life. Doubts and hardships were
ever—present realities. Whatever his personal certainties,
man was always "'surrounded by mystery on every side . . .
humanity, left to itself, is a hOpeleSS problem. But . . .

we are not responsible for questions beyond our ken.'"loo

 

100Opening a Chestnut Burr, p. 129.

 

 

'Yet, the Christian could take some comfort in the fact
that these unanswerables were the same questions of cosmic

purpose and human Significance that "'the scientists may

284

as well give up at the start.”101 The aged Mr. Eltinge,

contemplating his death, admits that "'There has been much

 

lOlHis Sombre Rivals, p. 101.

 

 

that was dark and hard to understand; there is much still;
but there is plenty to prove that my Heavenly Father is
leading me home as a little child.'" Eltinge affirms his
heavenly hOpe on "'the ground of simple, downright exper-
ience, through all these yearS,'" and poses a single ques-
tion to others, which was also Roe's question:

"Therefore which you must each decide is not

whether you will ever belong to this church

or that, not whether you will believe this or

that doctrine, or do what this or that man

teaches. The question is this--Here is a
tender, merciful, Divine Friend."102

 

102A Face Illumined, pp. 307-08.

 

 

The closing remarks to the story of sceptic Warren

Hilland and Grace St. John in His Sombre Rivals (1883) in-

 

clude the standard elements of Roe'S approach to the con—
sequences and role of Christianity in relation to the
questions of modern thought and the traditional mystery
of evil, Of Warren Hilland, Roe writes,

to the poor and sorrowful he gives increas-
ing reason to bless his name. His wife's

285

faith has become his. She has proved it true
by the sweet logic of her life . . . . The
dark mysteries of evil are still dark to
them—~problems that cannot be solved by human
reason. But in the Divine Man, toward whose
compassionate face the sorrowful and sinful
of all the centuries have turned, they have
found One who has mastered the evil that
threatened their lives. They are content to
leave the mystery of evil to Him who has be-
come in their deepest consciousness Friend
and Guide. He stands between them and the
shadows of the past and the future.103

 

103
His Sombre Rivals, p. 378.

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE
SOME SCEPTICS: THE WAYS OF DOUBT

AND NEW FAITH

Among popular novelists, if numbers alone provide
any indication, scepticism seems to have fared less well
than orthodoxy. Only James Lane Allen and Margaret Deland,
depending if one determines their fiction to be indeed an
advocacy of scepticism, reached the popularity of such
orthodox writers as Augusta Evans Wilson,Elizabeth Phelps
Ward, and E. P. Roe. Either because sceptics preferred
the lecture platform or the essay, as the famous agnostic
Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, or because their numbers were
in fact few, they seldom chose the novel for a vehicle of
religious debate. This chapter will examine three notable
exceptions from this tendency. Celia Parker Woolley, for
a while an Unitarian clergywoman, published two popular
novels in the late 1880's that Offer alternatives to ortho-
doxy. In the early nineties, Helen H. Gardener contributed

two novels in the cause of free-thought and its favorite

286

287

social concerns. The Reverend Minot Judson Savage, a Con—

gregationalist—turned—Unitarian, published Bluffton in

 

1878, a novel that introduced the major issues of the re—
ligious conflict in late nineteenth—century America. While
these three writers do not differ from orthodox novelists
in their perception of underlying causes for doubt, each
suggests the possibility of an enlightened religious faith
that allows for new scientific findings and that mediates
between the stark opposition Of traditional faith and
atheism usually set forth by popular orthodox novelists.
Celia Parker Woolley was born in Toledo, Ohio, in
1848, dying at age sixty-nine in Chicago where She had
served as a Unitarian minister and a settlement worker.
The daughter of religious liberals, She graduated from the
Coldwater, Michigan, female seminary and married Jefferson
A. Woolley, a dentist, in 1868. Following an apprentice-

ship of short stories in Lippincott's Magazine, she pub-

 

lished her first novel, Love and Theology (1887), which

 

passed through five editions in its first year when its

title was changed to Rachel Armstrong. A Girl Graduate

 

 

(1891) achieved similar success. A third and last novel,

Roger Hunt, appeared a year later. In 1894, Mrs. Woolley

 

was ordained a minister in the Unitarian Church, filling

288

two pastorates before resigning in 1898 to devote more
time to lecturing and wifely duties. In 1904, she estab—
lished an inter-racial settlement house, the Frederick
Douglass Center, on Chicago's south Side, where she lived

until her death in 1918.1

 

l"Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley," in A Woman of the

Century, Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore (Buffalo,
1893), pp. 500-01. See also, George B. Utley, "Celia
Parker Woolley," in Dictionary of American Biography, XX
(New York, 1937), p. 515.

 

 

 

Love and Theology (1887) narrates the long travail

 

of a couple whose romance is disrupted by theological dif-
ferences. When theological student Arthur Forbes con-

fesses growing scepticism to fiancée Rachel Armstrong, the
humorless orthodox maiden promptly dismisses him with the

epithet "'infidel.'"2 Allowed to find his own opinions by

 

2Love and Theology (Boston, 1887), p. 47. Future
references will follow in parentheses.

 

 

a free-thinking older sister-guardian who has raised him,
Arthur purposed to enter the orthodox ministry. Slowly,
however, he recognized that the "old doctrines . . . now
appeared as so many dead and useless dogmas" (p. 45). At

last, after much struggle, Arthur committed himself to "a

289

bold investigation" of the new thought "with the result of
reaching, as he deemed it, higher and more tenable ground"
(p. 46).

This new perspective enables Arthur to affirm the
Bible's historical and literary value, the nobility of
Jesus' ethics, the individual's right of inquiry, the ra—
tional base of truth, and the immanence of God in natural
law and the evolutionary process. For Forbes, the ortho—
dox err in "'separating the universe from God, and then
require a miracle to bring them together again. We [lib~
eralS] deny the separation, look on man's imperfections
as the necessary means of growth, teach that ignorance is
the worst form of wickedness, and trust to nature for the
cure'" (p. 289). The unremitting constancy of natural law
inspires a superior faith that is "'content to take things
as they are, and bases itself on the present integrity of
things,'" thus foregoing a childish "'constant expectation
of the miraculous'" (p. 424). "'Trust and aspiration in
the thought of an orderly universe, controlled by an un-
changing law,'" imparts a "'sense of safety,'" that is
roughly Similar to traditional "'religious dependence'"

(p. 424). Because this "'"continuous unfolding of divine

290

energy"'" is universal, glimpses of it are afforded to all
men, and, hence, all religions are valuable (p. 391).
Apparently expecting her audience to be aware of
its times, Mrs. Woolley only hints at the process of Arthur
Forbes' doubt. Her tactic is explained in relation to the
scepticism of a defrocked Methodist, stating that "there
was little to tell that, in the light of modern theologi-
cal events, cannot be surmised" (p. 282). At least part
of Arthur's free-thought, as for most sceptics, can be
attributed to the disparity between Christian ideals and
practice. Borrowing from science the theory that effects
reveal the reality or nature of their causes, Arthur con—
tends that "'the best way to estimate Christianity or any
religious system is as a guide to a man's conduct, by its
power to make the world happier and better'" (p. 418).
By this standard, the "'natural tendencies'" of orthodox
Christianity pose serious questions about the truth or
usefulness of its key doctrines (p. 286). The novel's
prominent representative of old-time creedalism is Deacon
Armstrong, the father of Arthur's lover. A leading force
in his church, he is a smug, selfish man Of "unctuous
piety" who has exacted fealty from his wife and three

children (p. 70). Added to Armstrong's example is the

291

religion of Bishop McFarren, an obese egoist and snob. His
"Religion, so far as he defined it at all, was a matter of
pleasing form and sentiment, something that, aside from
the future benefits it promises to man, serves to impart a
certain patrician grace and solidity to his present exis-
tence" (p. 349). The author herself endorses this cause
for doubt when noting the factiousness of sectarian Chris—
tianity. Her only statement of faith in the novel asserts
that it is only respect for others' religious views that
allows us to "get nearer the heart of goodness than in any
other way; emulating the divine wisdom and charity that
have created the differences for some grand reconciling
purpose He best understands" (p. 406).

Arthur Forbes' dissents from traditional religion
rest on more than Christianity's ethical failure. Equally
significant is his confidence in evolution by virtue of
the new science. In its light, the Old Testament record
loses its special status of revelation to become human
history and "'literature, not dogma'" (p. 214). The same
revaluation informs Arthur's interpretation of Jesus,
stating that the New Testament offers "'only a scanty tra-
ditional account . . . enough, doubtless, to lead us to

believe that sometime in Judea a great light shone out and

292

passed quickly out of sight again. We know less Of Jesus
than of any other great religious leader, Buddha, Confu—
cius, or Socrates . . .'" (p. 288). Knowledge of compara-
tive religion brings Arthur to value the "'natural and
universal [in] religion'" (p. 186). The celebration of
Easter is preserved in his pastorate because a like"
festival "'antedates Christianity by hundreds of years,
and was part of every ancient worship'" (pp. 185-86).

Mrs. Woolley's exposition of rationalism in reli-
gion is not without its reservations, however. Man's re-
ligious yearnings are an uncertain commodity that demand
more than the satisfaction of reason. The tendency of
liberal religion to elevate reason to the exclusion of
emotional and imaginative needs troubles the author. For
example, a friend of Arthur's cautions that "'if the really
sinful and suffering did come [to Arthur's services], it
would only be dry huSks you could give them. What has
modern liberalism to say to a lost soul, compared with
the message Christianity has to offer?" (p. 106). Composed
of "'A mere hOpe and implication, a few thin, intellectual
Speculations,'" rationalism extends~-insofar as "'the ma-
jority of people, theologically Speaking, are still in

their swaddling—clothes'"--"'no cure . . . for the real

293

sinner'" (pp. 106-07). Arthur later fears this when seek—
ing to reform Rachel Armstrong's delinquent brother, ask-
ing himself if "the plain but remote principles of modern
liberalism" could transform the untaught and hardened "as
the Old ideas of Sin and judgment" continued to do (p.
331).

Judge Hunt, the leading lay—figure in Arthur's
liberal church, represents the dangers of a liberalism
which recognizes only "a few intellectual prOpositions,
the main purport of which lay in their denial of somebody
else's belief" (p. 211). The judge's free-thinking, the
author stresses,

was of a type that abounds in our day, where

pride of intellect and devotion to a high, but

narrow, ideal usurp the whole domain of thought

and feeling in the discussion of questions

whose settlement requires the combined action

of reason, a cultured understanding, and . . .

historic imagination (p. 177). '
Arthur, on the other hand, is saved from liberalism's prej-
udice by his "poetic temperament," and by the fact that he
was, as a friend puts it, "'a natural believer and wor-
shipper'" (pp. 34, 236). Consequently, it is under Arthur's

tutelage that Judge Hunt's daughter first learns "to admire

and reverence" "religious sentiment, that upward—springing

294

feeling of the heart towards a living ideal of goodness
and beauty . . ."(pp. 212, 211).

Much the same criticism of late-century liberalism
comes from the Reverend Chase HOward, the young Episcopal
cleric in Arthur's hometown. The priest sympathizes with
the new thought, but he laments that "'we cannot put this
boasted modern reason of ours to some better purpose than
wholesale destruction'" (p. 153). Recognizing the limits
Of the empirical and rational, he notes that science "'can-
not measure the aspirations of the soul with a square and
compass . . . the logical faculty is well enough in its
place; but it is by no means the highest'" (p. 154). The
higher category of intelligence, an Emersonism ideal,
"'includes sentiment and imagination.'" The moral and
cognitive relevance of the heart's longings finds ample
proof in the nobility and centrality of a man's "'feeling
. . . for his mother, or . . . for his Maker'" (p. 154).

As one of "a progressive clergy, with minds con—
tinually Open and eager to proclaim the new knowledge to
the world," Howard sought to humanize "the cold world of

the rational intellect." An integration of the old and

the new,

295

retaining those helps to the imagination and
faith which lie in consecrated form and symbol,
leaving the mind free to adapt where it cannot
wholly adopt the new teachings of science and
philosophy, satisfied both heart and judgment
(p. 350).

The logic of Howard's view finds support in the ex—
perience of Virginia Fairfax, a wealthy and attractive
spinster with whom the minister eventually falls in love.
A disciple of feminist, free-thinking Hester Forbes, Vir-
ginia's flippant, good-natured scepticism encounters un—
suspected depths of experience amid EpiSCOpalian ritual:

AS Virginia listened, wonderingly, her heart
began to tremble and melt with a new feeling
of religious awe and tenderness . . . it bore
her soul along with it . . . and it seemed to
her that no form of worship could be more
beautiful and more apprOpriate than this

(p. 167).

A final instance of the tension between rational-
ism and the needs of the heart appears in Arthur's reunion
with his estranged sweetheart. When Rachel Armstrong's
fervent orthodoxy finally softens to admit doubt, she must
still wrestle with the remoteness and impersonality of
Arthur's "divine energy." She confesses a desire for
"'something different from that--something nearer. . . one

that I can see sometime, and . . . pray to'" (p. 391).

Arthur concedes her need, affirming that "'your feeling

296

. . . Shall correct my definition'" (p. 392). After their
marriage, the wife's still "morbid and exacting conscience
stood ready to impose some new check on every new process
of mental and Spiritual growth." With time, however, the

old beliefs and standards were brought to a new

bar of judgment, face to face with the needs

and conditions of her new life. Where they

failed She sorrowfully but unreservedly laid

them aside . . . but such losses enrich the

nature more than the choicest possessions of

faith and knowledge (p. 431).
In their place, she gained "a faith larger than any she had
known before . . . as wide and loving in its scope as the
bending heavens, owning proud and grateful fellowship with
every soul that struggles, suffers, and aspires" (p. 430).
Rachel never fully Shares "the more radical convictions of
her husband, remaining . . . midway between the rejection
of the old and the acceptance of the new" (p. 436). Her
greatest discomfort in her new religious allegiance is the
"slighting tone . . .with which they [her fellow liberals]
discuss the most sacred themes . . . and the complacent
patronage with which they speak of other sects less ad—

vanced than their own . . ." (p. 436).

In A Girl Graduate (1889), Mrs. Woolley repeats

 

most of her criticisms of orthodoxy and increases her em-

phasis on the non-rational in religion. A prominent role

297

is played by a pusillanimous Episcopalian cleric who is
cast in the mold of Deacon Armstrong and Bishop McFarren.
An intelligent and talented man, the Reverend Fay is none-
theless a snob, fop, and dilletante with the temperament

of a "fractious child" (p. 193).3 His social sneers and

 

3A Girl Graduate (Boston, 1889), p. 193. Future

references will follow in parentheses.

 

 

sexual advances discontent the heroine with traditional

religion. The feminist cause which enters Love and Theol-

 

ggy only slightly with Hester Forbes here finds full empha-
sis in tyrannized wives and the energetic Miss Graham,
founder of the local Emerson Club which reads John Fiske
and Herbert Spencer. The better traits of ministers

Arthur Forbes and Chase Howard are combined in the Uni-
tarian cleric John Norton.

The story itself narrates a young girl's path to
maturity. Maggie Dean, a shOpman's daughter, must over-
come adolescent romantic silliness and social aspirations
to find usefulness and deeper meaning in life. While in—
teresting, Mrs. WoolleYS treatment is finally unsatisfac-
tory because She neglects her heroine's consciousness
whenever it is time to explain the causes for her increas-

ingly noble actions. Again, as in Love and Theology,

 

298

influences and causes are merely approximated, expecting
the reader to fill in gaps with apparently commonplace
contemporary knowledge.

Mrs. Woolley's unsystematic and undetailed presen-
tation of free-thought tends to expand her previous reser-
vations about rationalism. The Reverend John Norton, like
the author the child of religious liberals, transcends
typical liberal contentiousness and condescension toward
others' beliefs. He prefers "'to find the points of like—
ness between two Opposing views, and not the points of
difference'" (p. 304). AS a lifelong habit, Norton has
"opened his being on all sides to receive whatever light
of truth or Spiritual blessing the universe contains"

(p. 302). In doing so, he places the insight of the non—
rational on the same par with the knowledge of reason.
When Maggie Dean asks if "'we have any proof of immortal—
ity,'" Norton adopts a rationale Of wonder in his assent,
stating that "'We have the proof that lies along side the
knowledge we are now alive . . . . That fact is as won—
derful and difficult to explain as the problem of a future
existence can be'" (p. 312). Norton's openness, honesty,
and selflessness provide a paradigm for heroine Maggie

Dean to emulate.

299

Miss Graham, the town feminist and an admirer of
Norton, serves somewhat the same function for Maggie. Her
greatest compliment comes from the hypocritical rector who
thinks of her as "'a free-thinking Amazon, a crack-brained
fanatic and revolutionist in petticoats'“ (p. 207). De-
Spite a rough exterior--She is homely, ill—dressed, and
gruff--"the brave and kindly spinster" is undogmatic and
humble in her liberalism (p. 458). Her "independent views
on the Trinity and the first chapter of Genesis" do not
preclude belief in spiritualism and immortality (p. 196).
With some inspiration from Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, her
hope for an afterlife "sprang solely from her passionate
love of justice, the need to project in imagination some
future state of existence which Should atone for the ills
and hardships of the present" (p. 267). Her most signif-
icant contribution to Maggie's growth comesin teaching
through music that "'feeling is always larger than thought'"
(p. 280). In listening to Miss Graham play her adored
Beethoven, Maggie "gained entrance to a new world, where
truth, freed from the didactic bonds of Special formula
and text, is presented in the form of vivid emotion."
Art performs a function that excells rational analysis.

For Maggie and Miss Graham, as with all "sensitive souls

300

the main office of music is always the same, ennobling the
heart and exalting the imagination" (p. 285).

Mrs. Woolley's most pointed criticism of the ex—
cessive rationalism of her adOpted liberalism comes in her
portrait of kindhearted Thomas Dean, Maggie's uneducated,
slow-thinking shopman father. In an intuitive, semi-
mystical religion which is reflected in aspects of Epis-
COpalian ritual, Dean can affirm that

"religion ain't made to scare you; it's what
keeps you quiet and steady like. It gives you
the feelin' o' bein' at home in the world. Re-
ligion makes you see how things are put together
that elswise you might think had just happened.
They all belong-~1ittle and big. They're all

His. He takes care of 'em" (p. 233).

Roger Hunt (1892), Mrs. Woolley's last novel, offers

 

her most trenchant criticism of rational dominance in lib—

eralism. In brief, Roger Hunt is a brilliant, learned ego-
ist who utilizes "an insidious kind of reasoning" to remove
himself from all moral responsibility.4 Hunt inveighs

against 'all man-made regulations'" in order to obtain

 

4Roger Hunt (Boston, 1892), p. 16.

 

 

"'what does belong to me, what nature and reason say I

have a right to . . . . (pp. 52, 53). The novel's merit

lies in the handling of Hunt's self-delusion which to some

301

extent resembles Frederic's technique in The Damnation of

 

Theron Ware. Like the Methodist preacher, Hunt passes

 

through a number of crises that might disturb his self-
love, but he too remains unreflective and undoubting.
The author does not deal with matters of belief or un—
belief because Hunt's thorough scepticism is an accom-
plished fact. The novel stresses the dangers of rampant
egoism notwithstanding any pretentions to intellectual
justification. As Mrs. Woolley explains in her memoir,

The Western Slope (1903), Hunt's personality falls victim

 

toa

too personal point of View which hinders under-
standing all around; a tyrannous and insistent
ego which brings every matter to be judged, all
human values, to the bar of some pre-conceived
wish or Opinion.5

 

5The Western Slope (Evanston, Illinois, 1903),
p. 214.

 

 

Woolley's criticism of Roger Hunt, as of religious
rationalism in general, focused on its disprOportionate
reliance on reason or "intelligence" at the expense Of
"Spirit" or "soul," whose province is sentiment and imag—

ination (pp. 111, 200). These comments in The Western

 

510pe make clear the criticism implicit in her fiction.

302

Noting the knowledge and insight given by modern "reason
and a sound scholarship," she recurs to "the primal need
of the human heart" for religious assurance, finally con—
cluding that "Truth is divined, chiefly, by the heart
needing its ministrations” (pp. 126, 199). For these
assurances, she points to "intimation" amid "a multitude
of casual incidents, fleeting glimpses of things and
people, which our daily march along the common roadway"
(pp. 200, 203). As an example of this potential in ex-
perience, She recalls the grandeur of a lustrous Indiana
sunset during which it seemed the "commonplace was lifted
to the sublime" (p. 220). A sense of wonder on such occa-
sions prompts faith more readily than scientific estima-
tion of progress through evolution. Resting on the fact
of man's self-consciousness and the beauty Of the external
world, the author asks, "How can we Spell the lesson of
the world's beauty on other terms than those of divine
good will to man, the only creature who can note the
beauty and guess its meaning?" Faith, "the right angle
of vision," comes to the heart's deeper needs of hope and
love (p. 224).

AS is obvious in Woolley's novels, evil exists in

the unfair "distribution of life's benefits" by man and'

303

nature which challenge one's faith, but at the same time,
"Human need is accompanied by human helpfulness in the
world round, and God is proved forever incarnate in the
loving deeds of men" (pp. 212, 223). Hence, evidences
for pessimism are countered by instances of goodness,
much as the reason's doubts are softened and balanced

by the heart's promptings. Mrs. Woolley's Optimism that
"life on the whole is proved good" rests on hints of na-
ture's beneficence-—"why not judge nature by her best"--
and man's spirituality and helpfulness.

The Observations of her own experience are added
to by science's evolutionary hope and the slow spreading
of the "spirit of truth" which was manifest in the ethics
of Jesus and appears now in "the growing mind of man"

(pp. 119, 113). In man's "coarse and ready common-sense,"
a higher religion and clearer ideals are clumsily making
their way (p. 110). Progress is Often faltering and
Sporadic. The lesser, ignoble aspects of man, the "ani-
mal, is being Slowly refined away; the Spirit, through a
study of natural law, is coming in closer, because less
sensuous, relation with the physical world, so the differ-
ences tend to become one of words chiefly . ._." (p. 111).

Retrospect on man's history is necessary "to Show God-"and

304

that it is GOd--working through man and nature to bring
into harmony and accomplish designs aiming at the high-
est good of both" (p. 111). For example, in religion,
the "hard Shell of a dogmatic creed has been cracked and
we feed on the sweet kernel within. Once we thought the
Shell was the kernel, or rather that the kernel was safe
only in the shell" (p. 119). The "unknown and inscrut-
able" still pervades knowledge of all kinds, but amid the
late nineteenth century's "unrest, all its disturbed be-
liefs, its half-realized hopes and ideals," science's
testimony of man's progress and the heart's own urgings

and evidences give some cause for hope.

A less reserved endorsement of reason comes in
the fiction of Alice Chenoweth who wrote under the pseu-
donym, Helen Hamilton Gardener, a name She eventually
legally adopted. A native of Virginia, in 1875, at age
twenty-two, She married Charles Selden Day, then school
commissioner of Ohio. When the Days moved to New York
in the early 1880's, the wife met the well-known lecturer
on agnosticism, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. It was at

Ingersoll's insistence that his new friend joined the

305

lecture circuit as an advocate of free-thought. Her ear—

nest and energetic efforts led to the publication of Men,

Women and Gods, and Other Lectures (1885), which was fol-

 

lowed in 1893 by a similar collection, Facts and Fictions

 

of Life. Helen Gardener's greatest renown came from her
venture into fiction, which proved a more efficacious way
of conveying her controversial opinions. Her first novel,

IS This Your Son, My Lord? (1890), sold 25,000 copies in

 

its first five months. Pray You Sir, Whose Daughter?

 

(1892) attempted to repeat its predecessor's success.

Two volumes of topical Short stories and a nostalgic
novel of her father's life were added to her earlier fic-
tion. After these efforts, Miss Gardener wrote no more
fiction, although she continued to contribute actively

to movements for women‘s rights and social justice. A
successful lobbyist for women's suffrage, she became well-
known in Washington social circles and a friend of Presi-
dent Woodrow Wilson. The real measure of her success in
these areas appears in her appointment in 1920 to the
United Nations Civil Service Commission as its first
female member. She died in Washington in 1925 at age

seventy-two.

 

6 . . .
Adelaide Washburn, "Helen Hamilton Gardener," in

306

Notable American Women 1607-1950, II, ed. Edward T. James
(Cambridge, 1971), pp. 11-13.

 

 

The first of Helen Gardener's novels, Is This

 

Your Son, Mnyord? (1890), occasioned much public contro-

 

versy and the author's greatest sales. As the preface to
the second edition reveals, the novel sought to provoke
Opposition to legalized prostitution and low age-of—consent
laws. Miss Gardener's thesis, however, extends beyond
topicality to indict Christian thought and practice as
fundamental causes of the social wrongs under considera-
tion.

To accomplish its multiple purposes, the story
follows the career choices of three college classmates.
The novel's chief object lesson comes in the experience
of Preston Mansfield, a dissolute, guilt-ridden young
man who eventually commits suicide. After expulSion from
prep school for general rowdiness (and masturbation?),
Manfield's father, a respectable businessman, proceeds
to initiate his son by sending him to a brothel and later
by serving as procurer of early adolescents for the boy's
growing sexual appetite. The elder Mansfield excuses his
behavior on two grounds which emerge from his deep faith

in Christianity. Introducing her chief objections to

307

Christianity, the author points first to the doctrine of
the vicarious atonement. The father, "a thoroughly sel~
fish man, with an undevelOped ethical nature,” represents
a type of men "who are thorough believers in religion and

do not know the meaning of morality."7 The father does

 

7Is This Your Son, Mnyord? (Boston, 1890), p.
202. Future references will follow in parentheses.

 

 

The father does not struggle against his own well-hidden
dissolution, rather accepting and relishing the impulses
of his "poor weak humanity, unable to save itself, incap-
able of resisting temptation, whose feet slipby the way,
whose sinful passions overcome . . ." (PP. 204—05). Thus
happily enmeshed in sin, the rascal turns for solace to

the doctrine of vicarious atonement, Miss Gardener's Spe-

cial béte noire. Mansfield and other pious scoundrels

 

utilize their religious belief to "purge themselves of
any lapse from rectitude, which lapse they believe, with
the faith of childhood, is a necessary part and parcel Of
depraved human nature" (pp. 202-03). He concludes to
"Let Christ bear the burden as he volunteered to do" (pp.
203-04). Insofar as such self-serving interpretations

give rise to public chaos and suffering, Christianity

308

becomes a hindrance to social progress which rests on in-
dividual moral responsibility.

Mansfield's doctrinal orthodoxy also sanctions
his abuse of the women who are the victims of his dissi-
pation. With original Sin, which he well exemplified, as
his starting point, the father reasons that "Eve was the
active agent in that sin. Therefore it was only just
that Eve's sinful daughters Should suffer most and be the
victims of men, since all men were first her victims" (p.
203). Besides, the vicarious atonement provided equal
exoneration for the women Mansfield might debauch. As

the author comments, Mansfield "had not used his religion

 

as a cloak. His religion was his cloak" (p. 205).

 

Preston Mansfield, the scoundrel's son, must con-
tend with this moral legacy. With honesty inherited from
his unsuspecting mother, Preston discards the possibility
of ever reforming his licentious ways. Guilt and self-
knowledge cancel future respectability and marriage; he
cannot "'look any decent woman in the face without remem-
bering that if I married her I would have to lie to her
every hour of my life as long as we both lived. I hate
to lie . . . . It gives me a sense of disgust and phys—

ical discomfort'" (p. 100). Caught between compulsions

309

for dissipation, as his father, and for honesty, as his
mother, and unable to accept religion, Preston solves
his impasse by self-murder.

A second figure in the story, young Fred Harmon,
illustrates Miss Gardener's dissatisfaction with Chris—
tianity's intellectual and moral base. Like Preston
Mansfield, Harmon lives strongly under the influence of
a parent—~in this case a snobbish, self—seeking woman
whose religion resembles aesthetic hedonism. She urges
her reluctant, sceptical son to enter the ministry for
practical reasons, stating that "'the rectOr of a fashion-
able parish stands firm on the tOp of the social edifice
. . .'" (p. 29). With regard to "'those unpleasing reli—
gious notions expressed in the creed of our beloved
church,'" she rejects their literal content for an "'in—
terpretive meaning'" which clothes them "'in a garb of
poetry'" (pp. 26, 29). With reference to Jesus, although
she fervently prays to him, Mrs. Harmon confesses that
"'Of course I believe that he was the son of Joseph, and
that he is dead in the same sense that all of us are, or
will be dead; but really . . . I fail to see what that
has to do with it [faith]'" (p. 241). Thus, by draping

language "'to a certain extent when used to express

310

spiritual things,'" "'You can close your eyes and drift
into a realm of Spiritual exaltation where questions and
doubts are impossible; where the dear Christ touches your

heart and illumines your understanding" (p. 27). Be—
sides, she tells her son, the Reverend Phillips Brooks
and other clergy can "'explain all those points you ob-
ject to so entirely away, and in such choice language
that the most fastidious can not fail to be satisfied'"
(p. 29).

Fred Harmon does follow his mother's wishes but
not without some hesitation. He spends some months
travelling about looking for a wealthy wife to replenish
his family's depleted finances. At last, he decides to
take orders and to accept intellectual duplicity as a way
of life. As one of the author's mouthpieces explains,
Harmon "'had not gone far in his college course, till he
found his science and his Scripture conflicting in places.“'
After discrediting the mental integrity of his college re—
ligion professor, Harmon and his fellow fledgling sceptics
turned to a noted minister for counsel on the seven-days
creation, "'the sun standing still, and the Red Sea's

antics'" (p. 136). If the cleric "'happened to be a

"reconciler" he manipulated, evaded, and patched up, and

311

jumped over, and construed, until a good many of the boys
were completely mystified.'" Awed by the minister's elo-
guence and self-confidence, many students "'could not
follow his arguments to the conclusions he reached,'"
supposing only that "'they missed a link, and that he had
it all there, only they were not clever enough to see it'"
(p. 137).

Harmon, on the other hand, noted the theological
obfuscation and "'saw very distinctly that the link was
gone,'" concluding that "'what are called the advanced
ministers didn't believe, and didn't have to believe the
creeds they vowed to teach'" (p. 137). AS a consequence,
Harmon forsakes all personal integrity. It seems that
"'the moment his belief in dogmatic religion was shaken,
he had no foothold. Natural morality had no meaning to
him. Goodness had none apart from its creed-bound, so-
ciety defined limits. The outcome is, that he absolutely
doesn't know the moral difference to-day between a lie
and the truth'" (p. 138). Whereby orthodox defences of
the Bible appealed to its long—term reliability as a
moral-Spiritual guide, the commentator inverts this

strategum, stating that

312

"it isn't safe, to base morality and goodness

on such shifting sands . . . . It [the Bible]

belongs to the past, and its present pretence

of readjustment to the needs of this generation

is Simply turning out a lot of Fred Harmons--

and worse——if that is possible“ (p. 138).

To supplant the Christianity she has construed,

Miss Gardener offers the character and thought of Henry
Ball, an enterprising and earnest young man. Ball's ini-
tial discontent with Christianity centers in his under-
standing of the Bible which he considers to be no "'dif—
ferent from any other old book'" (p. 176). In college,
he tells his orthodox parents, "'reasoning and informa-
tion led me to form certain conclusions about the Bible
and religion'" (p. 178). The author gives some indica-
tion of the nature and SCOpe Of Ball's intellectual ex-
perience in a catalogue of common influences on college
students. Her major points refer to the findings of the
new science and comparative religion and "the fact that
. . . morality had no necessary connection with religion"
(p. 160). In advising his younger brother against enter—
ing the ministry, Ball utilizes the logic an Older ration-
alism rather than specific reference to the new thought,

explaining that "'the final appeal of any Orthodox clergy-

man must be to the Bible. He cannot doubt the justice

313

of Jehovah . . . [or] the goodness of the Jewish God . .
[or] what may shock or pain him in the New Testament; he
cannot maintain his mental integrity in discussing the
miracles and be an honorable minister'" (p. 120).
Another criticism, pointing to Miss Gardener's

evolutionary optimism, results from Christianity's neces-
sary allegiance to the past. A "'relic of barbarism,'"
theology, like war, belongs "'to the infancy of the race.
. . . Theology [is civilized] to the verge of sealing
hell over, and reading the vicarious atonement and orig-
inal sin out of good society. But in the nature of
things, Theology mpgp get its light from the past. It
is based on a revelation long since closed'" (p. 119).
The future belongs to Medicine, Law, and Journalism,
which Ball hopes will become the arbiters of the public
weal. A related deficiency arises from Christianity's
concern with the future life. In contrast, Henry con—
tends that

"Man's highest duty is here . . . . If He

wanted them [Christians] to look after some

other world . . . . He would have put them

nearer their post of duty . . . if a man is

a good healer of bodies, he is in a far nobler

business than if he is a talker about souls"
(p. 122).

314

Henry's views receive support from Gardener's
occasional commentator, John Stone, who is to become
Henry's father-in-law. In defending Henry's scepticism
to the boy's parents, Strong agrees with the young man's
religious suppositions and places them in their historical-
Social context, stating that "'The birthmark is no longer
faith; it is doubt, more or less open. It is agnosticism
plain or on the half-Shell . . . these days'" (p. 230).
As an example of his contention, Strong cites the "'" re-
concilers"'" who "'give away their whole case, and then
vow they have got it, only it is covered up. Beecher did
that . . . and so does Phillips Brooks . . . and all those
progressives over at Andover'" (p. 231). With a mixture
of logic and empiricism, Strong summarizes the author's
case against Christian belief, stating that when theolo-
gians

"lay down their premises, argue their case and
then begin to draw their conclusions, it is
enough to make a dog laugh . . . . If you be-
lieve without a doubt, the story of the crea—
tion, the Garden of Eden legend, the snake
tale,--which is necessary to the fall Of man,
--and the 'In Adam all men died' theory; if you
accept the possibility of vicarious atonement,
and can think it not a vicious idea; if you be-
lieve Christ was a God and had no human father,
and that his death could in any way relieve you

of your own responsibility, or make an All-wise
God change his mind about damning you; if you

315

are sure of such a God, such a creation, such

a temptation, such a fall, such a Christ, such

an atonement, and that it could have the re-

sults claimed,--then you are able to argue

with some Show of consistency. But drop one

single link; admit one single doubt or ques—

tion, and you are gone. Your whole system is

worthless" (p. 232).

As in the sentimental novel of faith, the hero

Henry Ball, in competition with the likes of Fred Harmon,
wins the admirable daughter of John Strong, who has not
finally been deceived by Harmon's sophistry and preten—
tion. Unconventional in its thought, Miss Gardener's
novel does not escape the pitfalls of pOpular orthodox

religious fiction. As Adelaide Washburn has summarized,

the technique of Is This Your Son is "melodramatic in

 

tone, loose in construction, unsubtle and didactic in

drawing its moral," in addition to being slightly lurid.8

 

8Washburn, p. 12.

 

Unfortunately, Miss Gardener's next novel, Pray You Sir,

 

Whose Daughter? (1892), compounds these faults in its

 

attempt to capitalize on the fame Of its predecessor.
The novel repeats the same social concerns, although it
is more articulate in its depiction of unequal marriage

and in its opposition to a ten-years-of-age consent law

316

for girls. Again, the author's themes are dramatized in
a heavy-handed fashion. A wealthy young girl turns down
one polite, condescending suitor to accept an idealist
who Shares the author's innovative conceptions of mar—
riage. The subplot features the sexual victimization of
a young girl whose father, a state legislator, supports
the bill to lower the age of consent.

Miss Gardener's sentiments on the place of the

woman in modern society emerges more clearly in Pray You

 

Sip than in her previous, more pOpular work. Regardless
of social and economic caste, the woman is the most fully
Oppressed member of society. Among the affluent and
aristocratic, marriage--mainly because of the husband's
economic dominance--means "a physical possession of a toy
more or less valuable" that is "to be set under glass,
whenever his real life, his real thoughts, his deeper

. 9 .
self were stirred." Thus, marriage most Often "rests on

a physical basis for those who refuse to allow it root in

 

9Pray You Sir, Whose Daughter? (Boston, 1892), p.

 

26.

 

common sympathy and community of thought" (p. 29). Among

the laboring poor, who earn their food "'a hundred times

317

over, and the miserable rags they are alloweélto wear in—
stead Of the broadcloth they have earned,'" women are
doubly oppressed-—first by their poverty and then by "'the
added outrage of sex subjugation and legal disability'"
(pp. 124, 126). For "'no matter how poor a man is, his
wife and daughter are poorer . . . for she is the de~
pendent Of a dependent, the serf of a Slave, the chattel
of chattell'" (p. 125). The female's "'absolute finan—
cial dependence on men'" has had especially deleterious
effects on the moral stature of men and society gener-
ally. In short, it "'has made sex maniacs of men, and
peopled this world with criminals, lunatics, and liars'"
(p. 121).

Miss Gardener's feminism has religious conse—
quences because her prOponents Of sexual equality are

also free-thinkers. In Pray You Sir, Whose Daughter?

 

the author's chief advocate does not accept "'the Bible
as an altogether admirable. Some of the prophets and
holy men of old, as I read of their doings in the scrip-
ture, always impress me as having been long overdue at
the penitentiary'" (pp. 122—23). As might be expected,
the major perpetrators Of masculine dominance are wealthy

and affluent Christians who live sordid lives behind a

318

Shield of polite respectability. Although it is not an

Obvious thesis in Pray You Sir, Miss Gardener objects to

 

Christianity's theological and ecclesiastical manipula-
tion of the female supplicant. As the author states in
her essay "Men, Women and Gods," "This religion and the
Bible require of women everything, and give her nothing.
They ask her support and her love, and repay her with

. l . .
contempt and OppreSSion." 0 Since it was not long ago

 

10“Men, Women and Gods," in Men, Women and Gods

and Other Essays (New York, 1885), p. 9. Future references
will follow in parentheses.

 

 

 

that "the Church decided that a woman who learned the
alphabet overstepped all bounds of propriety,"

Women are indebted to-day for their emancipa-
tion from a position of hopeless degradation,
not to their religions nor to Jehovah, but to
the justice and honor of the men who have de—
fied his commands. That she does not crouch
to-day where Saint Paul tried to bind her, she
owes to the men who are grand and brave enough
to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his
God (p. 30).

Miss Gardener forsook her directness and social

concern in her next and last novel, An Unofficial Patriot

 

(1894), a slightly fictionalized biography of her father's
courageous and tolerant life as a Methodist minister. In

the same years as her novels, Miss Gardener published

319

volumes of Short stories, A Thoughtless Yes (1890) and

 

Pushed by_Unseen Hands (1892). None of the stories ven-

 

ture toward the detailed attack on Christianity contained

in IS This Your Son, My Lord? "A Lady of the Club" in A

 

Thoughtless Yes does, however, emphasize the social in-

 

sensitivity and apathy of Christianity as the poor starve
next to its opulent churches. "The Boler House Mystery"
in the same volume highlights its author's novelistic
themes, agaifl paying' attention to the otherworldly un-
concern and hypocrisy of Christianity. The stories in

Pushed bygUnseen Hands deal with the effect on the per-

 

sonality of social conditions and especially heredity,
"strange manifestations which we have made little intel-

ligent effort to comprehend."11 Men unfortunately still

 

llPushed by Unseen Hands (New York, 1892), p. 9.
Future references will follow in parentheses.

 

 

"grope within the same dark walls and draw the window-
shades of habit and inherited forms of thought against
the sunlight of science and a rational tomorrow" (pp. 9,
10). Of Special and representative interest are "An Echo
from Shiloh," which flirts with extra-sensory perception

in a spiritualist setting, and "How Mary Was Converted,"

320

which exposes the social and emotional coercion that in—
fluence a girl's insincere adoption of Christianity. The
majority of the stories return to Miss Gardener's usual

themes of social injustice and exploitation.

Perhaps the most reasoned of sceptical novelists

is Minot Judson Savage, whose Bluffton (1878) reflects

 

his own movement through orthodoxy to a theology of evo-
1utionary Optimism. One of the first American ministers
to confront the national public with the religious impli-
cations of Darwinism, Savage entered the Congregational
ministry in 1864 at the age twenty-three. While serving

a church in Hannibal, Missouri, of which Bluffton seems

a fictional counterpart, the young minister found himself
moving rapidly toward heterodoxy under the influence of
late nineteenth-century scientific thought. In 1873,
Savage accepted the pastorate of Chicago's Third Unitarian
Church, although he also had invitations to the pastorates
of prominent Congregational churches. He soon moved to
the Church of the Unity in Boston, and then, in 1896, to
the Church of the Messiah in New York City. Ten years

later failing health forced Savage's retirement from

321

public life. More than his Single novel, his many collec-
tions of sermons and eXpositions of his new theology won
him a large audience and influence. He died in Boston

in 1918.12

 

12Charles H. Lyttle, "Minot Judson Savage," in
Dictionapy of American Biography, XVI, eds. Allen Johnson
and Dumas Malone (New York, 1937), pp. 389-90.

 

 

As a prominent minister and well-versed theologian,

Savage's Bluffton offers the late century's most detailed

 

picture of the issues and logic which influenced contemp—

orary theological liberalism. Bluffton differs from Augusta

 

Evans Wilsons' Beulah (1859), the century's other novel of
elaborate scepticism, in two significant respects that
probably make the later novel a more satisfactory exposi—
tion Of doubt. With two decades separating Beulah and

Bluffton, the later adopts an evolutionary Optimism that

 

had not yet developed at the time of Mrs. Wilson's ven-
ture, although she did foresee the negative impact Dar—
winism would have on orthodoxy. Secondly, while Mrs.

Wilson's Beulah eventually returns to faith, Bluffton's

 

hero, Mark Forrest, journeys into doubt to remain there
and to construct a more rational and hopeful version Of

man's religious situation. In any case, Bluffton

 

312

provides an explanation of doubt by a knowledgeable theo-
logian who helped shape the major issues and trends of
late nineteenth-century religious thought.

In the year 1863, Mark Forrest comes to Bluffton,
a large town on the Mississippi River, to assume the pul-
pit of its Congregational church. A new seminary gradu-
ate, Forrest's first sermon contains a gentle Arminian
message of ready faith and ethical necessity. Well-
received by the congregation, the sermon offends the old-
style Calvinism of the church leaders who find in it "'too

much of tenderness towards sin.'"l3 Indeed, the "'five

 

l3Bluffton: A Story of To-Day (Boston, 1878),

 

p. 37.

 

points of Calvinism' embodied in the unsympathetic, un-
yielding angularities of real people" soon bring Forrest
to the recognition that this rural, parochial Calvinism
"was not the kind of religion he believed in" (p. 63).
Forced then to reconsider his beliefs, the fledgling
minister painfully admits to himself that "the gospel he
held was not what was popularly held as orthodox" (p.
64). Particularly disturbing to Mark are doctrines,

especially the vicarious atonement and justification by

323

faith, which put "'a premium on immorality'" and lower the
ethical stature of church members (p. 66). When Forrest
bridges this subject with a church leader, the elder ar—
gues that while "'morals are desirable, even necessary,
in a true Christian . . . they are worth nothing to a man
who is not converted'" (p. 64). If the value of morality
alone is admitted, argues the elder, "'You make the whole
gospel of no effect. What's the need of the cross, if
such things are true?'" (p. 67). Such responses only
prompt Mark to Open his mind to broader, more fundamental
questions.

The Reverend Forrest's uncertainties find support
in the opinions of Tom WinthrOp, an old college friend
who now practices law in a neighboring town. A "somewhat
fearless and independent thinker," Winthrop followed reli-
gious questions in his Spare time and "had even written
an ocassional article of local scientific importance, or
had contributed to some theological reviews." The nar-
rator flatters Forrest's confidante with a "keen logical
mind, and—-what is very rare in this world-—a keen insight
as to the value of proof" (p. 69). Although an "out-and-
out rationalist" in religion, WinthrOp "had the tolerance

of a wise believer in evolution toward the past; and would

324

no more think of quarrelling with it than of . . . find—
ing fault with the twilight because it wasn't noon" (p.
70).

It is Winthrop's advanced views that point the
intellectual path which Forrest will follow. Through a
long discussion in which the preacher poses many problems,
Winthrop effectively defends his liberal point of view.
Throughout, in lawyer fashion, WinthrOp holds closely to
his standard of careful substantiation. Consequently,
the creative history of the Pentateuch falls to the find—
ings of geology. When Forrest cites the spiritual and
moral consolation and durability of the Bible over the
ages, WinthrOp counters with the logic of comparative
religion, stating that also "'have the Veda . . . and
Confucius and the Koran held their own; all but the last
one, longer than the Bible'" (p. 75). In spite of its
long history as a moral guide, Winthrop argues that "'the
average tone of society to-day is infinitely above the
ordinary levels of the Old Testament. The character of
Yahweh himself is such that he could not make a respectable
citizen of Bluffton to-day'" (p. 79). Because of the
"'veil of superstitious reverence'" through which the

Bible's partisans read, they miss the fact that "'if a

325

heathen nation were found practicing Old-Testament moral—
ity, there would be new activity in the Bible society to
send them a new religion'" (pp. 80, 79-80).

In a like manner, when Forrest identifies the
Bible as the moving force in Western civilization, Tom
looks at anthropology and probable racial rather than re—
ligious causes. Besides, Christianity had unfailingly
opposed science. When new findings are no longer deni-
able, states WinthrOp, the church "'re—interprets the

Bible, and finds it all there, and benevolently takes it

under the wing of revelation.'" Within ten years, he
predicts, "'a fast and firm alliance will be patched up
between even Darwin and Moses . . . [who] will be made
out the original Darwinian'" (p. 76). Through such syn-

theses the concept of the Bible's verbal inSpiration
loses all credibility. The creational theory that makes
the six days periods of indefinite length would change
the essential meaning of words to the extent that one
could not be sure "'what any other word means'" (p. 75).
While not conscious pretenders to inspiration, biblical
writers "'were mistaken . . . . They took for divine
what we now know to be natural: that is all'" (p. 78).

In addition, recent biblical criticism shows that Moses'

326

books reveal "'the highest and latest thought of the He-
brew race . . . the highest peak of Jewish civilization,
and not the low starting point'" (p. 78). In short,
historical study Shows that Moses did not write the
Pentateuch which is a national literature--"'a mass of
traditions, national legends, and wonder-stories, wrought
into its present shape by unknown hands'" (p. 79).

Similar findings undercut the authority of the
New Testament according to lawyer WinthrOp. The uncer—
tain authorship of the Gospels and obvious Gnostic influ-
ence throughout offer two weighty examples. Like the Old
Testament, the morality of the New Testament often departs
from sound common sense. The Sermon on the Mount contains
"'a beautiful ideal; but much of the best of modern civil-
ization has come from pg; obeying it'" (p. 80). Christ's
call for non-resistance abdicates political liberty, and
Paul's "'doctrine of women is thoroughly degrading'" (p.
81). WinthrOp does not despair over the loss of the
Bible, however. Rather, seeing its fully human character
occasions hope for the future: the fact that much of the
Bible is "'noble and inspiring gives the grandest promise
for humanity . . . . The humanity that makes a Bible in

its infancy, what may it not be in its fully—developed

327

manhood?'" (p. 82). The clerical inquirer admits many of
the points of his mentor, but he for now continues to
affirm "'the ever—present spirit and everlasting love Of
God,'" preferring to let time settle some of the ferment
in his mind (p. 83).

Unable to repose ever again in his old faith,
Forrest decides "to press forward until he gained that
other calm that comes to intelligent conviction" (p. 84).
Like his comrades in doubt in other Gilded Age novels,
the young minister finds solace in the observation that
"every man ought to be a Christian, because that means
loving God and your fellow-men" (p. 85). Although suc-
cessful in drawing large crowds, Forrest's subsequent
sermonic appeals to rationality and good character fur—
ther alienate his congregational leaders who do not like
"'to see lawyers and doctors, and so many moral men,
present and approving'" (p. 99). Forrest also suffers
because of his association with Winthrop, a noted infidel,
and Mrs. Grey, a kindly, but unbelieving widow in Bluff»
ton.

It is to the unbelieving Mrs. Grey that Forrest
confides many of his new Opinions, the growths of the

seeds Tom Winthrop had planted. After some months of

328

patient study, the doubting pastor had discarded belief in
the Trinity, considering it a motion taken from Gnostic-
ism. Jesus, who "'never claimed to be God,'" becomes
"'only a manifestation of this [God's] unseen spirit in
the sphere of humanity'" (p. 116). The contention of
Jesus' divinity made by certain New Testament writers
proves only that they "'believed it, not that it is
true '" (p. 116). Both Mrs. Grey and Forrest View the
incarnation as an indignity, a "'most stupendous absurd-
ity,'" heaped on God by earlier, less knowledgeable
"'grades of civilization'" (p. 118). Another concern of
the friends focuses on traditional ideas of hell which
caused them much anguish in childhood. Forrest explains
that the concept results largely from

"ignorance, mistranslation, and change in the

meaning of words . . . [for] there isn't a

trace of everlasting punishment in the Old

Testament. Indeed, the Jews had no fixed or

clear belief in a future life at all. It is

a late growth, and largely received from the

Persians at the time of captivity" (p. 120).
While Forrest rejects everlasting damnation, he does
still believe, adOpting the consistency of natural law,
"'in future punishments. For the same laws of right and

wrong, of reward and penalty, are everywhere.'" The appli—

cation of simple logic to the moral quality of God leads

329

to the conclusion that "'the whole doctrine is . . .

blasphemy toward God. He either can, or can't some time

 

save all. If he can't, he isn't God; for his power is
limited. If he can, and will not, then he's not God,
but a devil'" (p. 121).

When Mrs. Grey dies helping Bluffton's poor dur-
ing a cholera epidemic, Mark Forrest preaches her funeral
eulogy, wherein he claims that the departed sceptic,
"'since a tree is known by its fruits,'" lived "'a noble
Christian life,'" and thus, livessHjJJ.in heaven (p. 141).
Forrest's decision to display his heterodoxy in Mrs.
Grey's defense draws the consternation and wrath of his
critics. A public inquiry into his theology soon follows.
A rumor that Mark visited "'certain house of notorious
character'" during a recent visit to New York compounds
his theological offenses, and Mark is tried on both
charges (p. 183). While he is convicted on the first
charge, the second also proves true, but his visit re-
sulted from a disinterested inquiry that rescued a kid-
napped young lady, the exiled sister of Mark's chief
Opponent. The minister's heroism in the affair renews
the trust and affections of his congregation, and he is

asked to remain. He feels, however, that if he leads

330

"churches into new truth, he should do it with open colors,
and not uniforms that are stolen" (p. 127). His decision
to leave the ministry is complicated by his romance with
the daughter of one of his chief accusers. Because she
cannot understand his thought or leave her elderly father,
Mark departs for a solitary world tour. Three years
later, Mark and his lover are accidentally reunited; she
has since read widely enough to share Mark's advanced
views, and her father has died. They agree to marry, and
Mark accepts a call to a liberal society in the East.
Savage does not allow Mark's passage to hetero-
doxy to be an easy one. The early events and recognitions
are greeted with ambivalence. With guilt that he cannot
abide in the Old faith, Mark reasons that."allvflu3, like
Abraham, like Jesus himself, like Paul, like Luther, had
left a past dear to sentiment and rich in precious memor-
ies, must have gone through substantially the same struggle
of forboding, of doubt, of misgiving" (pp. 64-65). As Mark
proceeds in inquiry, he becomes more certain of his path
and beliefs, but doubt of his course still persists.
Savage explains Forrest's conflict in evolutionary terms,
stating that such strife occurred in

every live and earnest human heart. Progress
fought reaction; freedom struggled with

331

tradition . . . the faith of Abraham, that

'went out, not knowing whither,‘--only know-

ing that God had called,--was met by timidity

that doubted whether God ever led into new

lands . . . (p. 124).
Ready for the challenge, Mark nevertheless reflects that
"'if there be a God,~—why must one so doubt and suffer
in trying to find thee, and the way of thy truth?'" (p.
125). Mark takes hope in the observation that the price
of progress "'has been one long agony and martyrdom . . .
The thinkers, the inventors, the prOphets, they who have
tried to give something to mankind . . . have paid for it
by endless vulture—gnawings at their vitals'" (p. 125).
Regardless of personal suffering, Mark will "be true to
himself at any cost," realizing that "'some one must do
the work of to-day for the future'" (pp. 126, 199).

Like fellow liberal Helen Gardener, Savage dis-
likes and rejects efforts to reconcile orthodoxy with the
new science. In a discussion with two noted theological
professors, Mark explains his Objections, which also form
the basis of his theological rationalism:

"If one believes in the Garden of Eden and the
fall of man, then, of course, the incarnation,
the atonement, heaven and hell, logically fol—
low. It is a linked chain; it is a complete
logical arch. But Liberal Orthodoxy knocks

the keystone out, and thinks the rest will
stand. It snaps out one link, and thinks

332

the chain will still hold the clear-headed

thinkers of the world. It knocks the founn

dations out from under its house, and then

proceeds calmly up stairs and sits down as

if nothing had happened'I (p. 215).
For example, modern science and geology, as well as the
higher criticism and comparative mythology, have made im—
possible any rational belief in a literal fall. Thus,
"'if there wasn't any fall, there isn't need of any in-
carnation or atonement; and the whole scheme of ortho-
doxy tumbles like a card house'" (p. 215).

In place of the Bible and traditional creedalism,

Mark will trust "'All ascertained truth, however and
wherever found'" (p. 216). In doing so, he places a
careful empirical standard between knowledge and belief,
stating that "'I believe a lot of things I do not know:
so I call those things beliefs. I am not aware that I

know anything that I don't know. I don't know much; but

I keep the word knowledge for that little'" (p. 218).

 

Mark's three years of world travel reinforce this approach
to truth. The practice, consequences, and highest teach-
ings of other world religions put them on the same level
with Christianity (p. 234). Logical considerations of
this equality suggests

that all religions are the natural growth Of
the religious nature of man: that no one is

333

supreme above all others by virtue of any super-
natural pre-eminence; but, if it be supreme at
all, it is so only as one man or one nation

surpasses another . . ." (p. 237).
Consequently, "'God is the God of the whole earth, and Of
all religions'" (p. 247). In accepting a call to the

liberal New York pulpit, Forrest reminds his wife—to—be
that his new ministry will operate

"on the broadest basis. We shall not put in
our creed any thing we do not know. It will
be a Church of and for this world, which is
God's world. We shall only try to make men
and women noble here; to build up and purify
society; to build God's kingdom out of solid
truths, on solid ground. We shall trust the
future to Him who alone knows any thing about
it. We Shall have faiths and hOpeS and senti-
ments and poetry; but we shall try and remem—
ber that they are such, and not make our guesses
and imaginations and wishes into sharp stones
with which to strew the path of life, and make
the feet bleed that travel over them" (p. 248).

The three sceptics of the chapter-—Woolley,
Gardener, and Savage—-have in common basic approaches to
the questions of Christianity's historical truthfulness
and its spiritual-moral transparency to the Divine. First,
each utilizes the findings of geology, evolutionary biol-
ogy, and the higher criticism to discredit the authority
of Scripture as revelation. Secondly, they separately
apply a pragmatic, cause-and-effect ethical criterion to

judge the faith underlying Christian conduct. In this

334

test, Christian faith, as reflected in Christian ethics,
is found wanting, thus confirming the judgment of recent
science and scholarship on the historical inaccuracy of
the Christian faith. Lastly, the three agree that a
careful study of world religions as made available by
the new discipline of comparative religion shows their
essential equality in Spiritual worth and ethical nobil-
ity. Religion is a universal prompting of men, and no
one religion reveals supernatural reality more directly
than any other. Helen Gardener and Minot Savage add a
criticism not echoed by Woolley; that is, a largely ra-
tionalistic judgment on the less than admirable moral
stature of much of the Bible, and, in particular, of
Christian doctrine, especially the vicarious atonement.
In both instances, Christian paradigms of ethics and ex-
pression reveal inferior, debased standards for man's
trust and conduct.

Given these reservations about Christian ortho-
doxy, these religionists face the challenge of posing
alternatives to orthodoxy. Each agrees that the empir—
ical and the rational must form the starting point of
any such new religious vision. Only Mrs. Woolley seri-

ously dissents from this norm, not denying it but

335

suggesting that reason must be balanced with the needs
and insights of the non-rational. In this regard, she
concurs with orthodox objections to religious liberalism,
especially those of E. P. Roe and Augusta Evans Wilson.
She also anticipates the reservations James Lane Allen
would voice throughout his later fiction. As Woolley,
Savage and Gardener advocate a broad religion of humanity
which finds its focus and verification in an optimistic
understanding of the evolutionary process. The two dif-
fer from Mrs. Woolley insofar as they adopt the values

of science, rationality, empiricism, and their requisite
objectivity, as an exclusive model for the perception of
truth and ethical correctness. By such criteria, the up—
ward journey Of mankind toward universal truth and felic—
ity can be best facilitated. The stringent rejection of
traditional Christianity which characterizes these novel—
ists results in part from, as Paul Carter suggests, the
nineteenth century's insistence on monistic systems of

truth.14 Thorough consistency dictated that if one "link"

 

14The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age (Dekalb,

Illinois, 1971), p. 19.

 

 

336

in a philOSOphic construct proved false, justifiable

cause for discarding the entirety existed.

CHAPTER SIX
KNOWLEDGE AND THE FUTURE: HENRY ADAMS

AND JAMES LANE ALLEN

Amid the vehemence and confusion of the late
nineteenth-century American debate over religion, only
scattered, infrequent individuals displayed sufficient
courage and insight to View conflicting claims diSpas-
sionately. These few issued a verdict against the solu-
tions of the partisans and for the still surpassing, in-
soluble mystery Of man's existence. Henry Adams posed
his unanswerable query in his pseudonymous, unnoticed
novel Esther (1884). James Lane Allen, on the other
hand, considered the same theme through thirty years of
fiction-writing that made him for a time one of America's
most famous artists. In each instance, Adams and Allen
looked at man's potential for knowledge within the age's
new understanding of natural process called evolution.
Insofar as their answers to this problem were sceptical
or negative, the pair represent the few who did not see

in evolutionary thought simple, single explanations Of

337

338

man's life. For both, the passage of time provided the
sole possibility of clarifying the limits and antinomies
of late nineteenth—century thought.

Of the many who doubted in late—century America,
perhaps no one engaged in a more self—conscious search
than the journalist, historian, and some-time novelist
Henry Adams. A fourth generation member of America's
foremost political family, Adams recorded his quest for

certainty in his posthumous autobiography The Education

 

of Henry Adams (1918), which treats a lifetime's failure

 

in inquiry. Yet, of the many stages and tactics of Adams'
pursuit, perhaps the most indicative of Adams' struggle
is his novel Esther (1884), Adams' second and last ven-

ture into fiction.

While religious conflict clearly provides the
dominant focus in Adams' novel, interpreters have dif-
fered over the extent to which this conspicuous debate
constitutes the story's real theme. Several critics have
contended that Adams' intent was to study the uniqueness
of the female character——according to D. S. R. Welland,

"woman and her nature," or, "a woman's quest for truth,"

339

as William Jordy has stated.1 Noting the resemblance in

character between the heroine and Adams' wife Miriam,

 

l .
D. S. R. Welland, "Henry Adams as Novelist,"

Renaissance and Modern Studies, III (1959), 37; William
H. Jordy, Henry Adams: Scientific Historian (New Haven,
1952), p. 276.

 

 

biographer Elizabeth Stevenson agrees with these sugges-
tions, stating that the novel celebrates "the integrity
of the lonely human individuality, even when most lost

in a world it doesn't understand."2

 

2Elizabeth Stevenson, Henry Adams: A Biography
(New York, 1956), p. 184.

 

 

George Hochfield, on the other hand, feels that
Esther goes beyond the nature Of "sexual distinction" to
consider the "reality . . . upon which the spiritual life
is founded."3 Still, for Hochfield, the novel's purpose

is not "an examination of religion's claim to impersonal

 

3George Hochfield, Henry Adams: An Introduction
and Interpretation (New York, 1962), p. 54.

 

 

 

ideality." Rather, Esther's theme "is the discovery of
moral identity, and the establishment of the value of in-

tegrity . . . upon an impersonal, philosophic

340

principle."4 Millicent Bell more or less concurs, stat-

ing that the novel deals with the "fundamental question

 

4Hochfield, p. 45.

 

of the relation of conscience to its traditional source--

religion."5 Adams' latest biographer, Ernest Samuels,

 

5Millicent Bell, "Adams' Esther: The Morality
of Taste," New England Quarterly, XXXV (June, 1962), 149.

 

 

thinks Esther expands this problem to wrestle with
"the grounds of religious belief, involving that pe-

rennial of metaphysics, the freedom of the will."6 Fol-

 

6Ernest Samuels, Henry Adams: The Middle Years
(Cambridge, 1958), p. 229.

 

 

lowing this lead, Michael Corlacurcio sees both of Adams'
novels as flirtations with Jamesean pragmatism that
eventually conclude in favor of the biological deter-

mination of life attitudes.7 In a related manner, J. C.

 

7Michael Colacurcio, "Democracy and Esther:
Henry Adams' Flirtation with Pragmatism," American
Quarterly, XIX (Spring, 1967), 68.

 

 

 

 

Levenson sees Esther firmly enmeshed in the "nineteenth

century struggle for belief," declaring finally

341

"the emotional bankruptcy of both religion and science."8

Similarly, noted critic R. P. Blackmur thinks Adams

 

8J. C. Levenson, The Mind and Art of Henry Adams
(Boston, 1957), p. 199.

 

 

intended Esther to be a symbol or fable of his age's re—
ligious uncertainty, of the individual caught between

untenable belief and a still-to-come secularism.9 As

 

9R. P. Blackmur, "The Novels of Henry Adams,"

Sewanee Review, LI (April, 1943), 282, 294.

 

 

will be shown, it is not an evasion to say that Adams'
Esther properly includes all these variegated elements.

A simple story, the novel turns on the romance
between Esther Dudley, a wealthy SOphisticate, and the
Reverend Stephen Hazard, a young, charming EpiSCOpalian
cleric roughly modeled after Adams' cousin the Reverend
Phillips Brooks. As Blackmur describes Esther, she "is
a young woman with a high taste in art and a high achieve—
ment in humanity, serious, with a conscience, an intelli—

gence, and an infinitely malleable sensibility."lo The

 

10Blackmur, 299.

 

342

novel's crisis arises when Esther falls in love with the
Reverend Hazard but is unable to accept his religious
orthodoxy. The reasons for Esther's rejection of the
minister are numerous and complex, as the critics amply
illustrate. The artist Wharton, who is the novel's best
critic of character, calls attention to several of
Esther's unique qualities which will influence her deci—
sion. First, she belongs to a new variety of woman,
still indeterminate in nature--"'one of the most marked

American types I ever saw.'"ll Beyond the customary age

 

llEsther, in Democracy and Esther: TWO‘NOVGlS by

Henry Adams (Goucester, Mass., 1965), p. 212. All subse—
quent references to Esther and to Democragywill be in
parentheses and will be to this edition.

 

 

 

of marriage, her self-sufficiency piques Wharton's curios—
ity. He observes that he wishes "'to know what she can
make of life. She gives one the idea of a lightly—
sparred yacht in mid-ocean . . . . She sails gayly along,
though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough
weather coming'" (p. 223). While this habit of independ—
ence also attracts clergyman Hazard, it proves bothersome
when she must conform to his meticulous creedalism. The

author explains that "Esther had all her life been used

343

to act for herself and to order others rather than take
orders of any sort . . . . She could no more allow him
[Hazard] to come into her life and take charge of her
thoughts than to . . . take charge of her cook" (p. 306).
Wharton also isolates the modernity which helps
decide Esther's relation with Hazard. While the minister
sides with the theology of the middle ages, Wharton ob-
serves that "'There is nothing medieval about her [Esther].
If She belongs to any [world] besides the present it is
to the next world which artists want to see, when pagan-
ism will come again and we can give divinity to every
waterfall'" (p. 223). From beginning to end, Hazard's
elaborate, not uneloquent theologizing fails to stimulate
or convince Esther's mind. In her first exposure to him,
Hazard's inaugural sermon in St. John's of New York City
meets with scepticism--"'I hOpe he believes it all'"—-and
mild thankfulness that it was "'very entertaining'" (pp.
213, 214). Similarly, when Esther observes Hazard's
story-telling talents with hospital children, "She could
not help thinking that if he would but tell pleasant
stories in the pulpit . . .church would be an agreeable
place to pass one's Sunday mornings in" (p. 239). Al-

though Hazard takes her attendance at his second sermon

344

as a compliment, in Esther's mind it is a "mere . . .
piece of civility" which "she did not enjoy . . ." (pp.
244, 243—44).

This religious indifference is repeated in Esther's
inability to grasp the religious intent in the early Chris-
tian art that is imitated in Hazard's new church building
(p. 260). Thus, her painting of St. Cecilia on the trans-
cept of St. John's lacks, in Hazard's mind, "Spiritual
earnestness' and in Wharton's View, "religious feeling"
(pp. 261, 274). Esther's agnostic cousin George Strong,
who thinks her "'the sternest little pagan I know,'" ex-
plains that her approach to the painting is mistaken.

The necessary element for good work in the medium is
faith, which is more than an intellectual position:
"'Faith is a state of mind, like love or jealousy. You
can never reason yourself into it'" (p. 318).

AS forceful as Esther's independent, secular im-
pulses might be, they are not, however, exclusive factors
in her refusal of Hazard and his dogmatism. Michael
Colacurcio argues that Adams real concern in Esther lies
with "the biological sources of consciousness" which

makes "Hazard's orthodoxy and Esther's paganism . . .

345

biases of nature."12 Esther herself asserts this very

conclusion, stating that "'Some people are made with

 

2Colacurcio, 67.

 

faith. I am made without it.'" (p. 364). Yet, several
instances in the narrative belie this self—estimate.
Following the death of Mr. Dudley, the narrator states
that the daughter "had a vein of mysticism running
through a practical mind" (p. 290). In her mourning and
mysticism, "nothing seemed real except the imagination,
and nothing true but the spiritual." While in this mood,
"the purity of the soul, the victory of Spirit over
matter, and the peace of infinite love" became conversa-
tion between Esther and the minister, "a mystic of the
purest water'I who could find "peace in the soul of a
dandelion" (p. 296).

Similar emotions recur the morning after Esther's
betrothal, but they are soon disturbed by the intrusion
upon Esther's mind of Hazard's creedal and public obliga-
tions. Emotion-laden as these experiences were, religious
awe first transfixes Esther on her visit to Niagara Falls
where She contemplates the awesome, indeterminate force

of nature in the cataract. The Falls tells "her a story

346

which She longed to understand," which intimated "a dif-
ferent secret from any that Hazard could ever hear"
(p. 348). Adams leaves the exact content of Esther's
perception indefinite, except to say that "eternity, in-
finity, and omnipotence seemed to be laughing and dancing
in one's face" (p. 349). In turning to the falls as a
"confidant," in hearing its story, Esther expresses a
non—rational trust in the numinous that is not qualita-
tively unlike the content of Hazard's mysticism (p. 348).
Esther objects, however, to any parochial interpretation
which circumscribes the force she intuits. Thus, she re-
flects if Hazard were to see the Spectacle, he would
"'think it is the church talking'" (p. 348). That Adams
intended Esther's response to assume a religious dimension
seems probable in light of Wharton's early insight that
Esther in fact belonged "'to the next world . . . when
paganism will come again and we can give divinity to every
waterfall'" (p. 223).

Another part of Esther's protest against the church
aims at the ethical stature of its constituents. Esther
grew up in an atmosphere that embodied the attitude of

Madeleine Lee in Adams' earlier novel, Democracy (1878):

 

she "had not entered a church for years; she said it gave

347

her unchristian feelings" (p. 12). The author's first com-
ments in Esther describe St. John's affluent congregation,
which "showed no victory over the world or the flesh" but
"a diSplay of human vanities that would have called out a
vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon . . ."
(p. 209). Esther's father and her lawyer-uncle contemn the
church but contribute to it because in their View society
still needs "'that sort of police'" (p. 321). This atti-
tude subsequently enters into Esther's jealousy of Hazardks
congregation, "'a stupid crowd of people,'" who "had rights
of prOperty in him, soul and body, and called their claim
religion" (pp. 304, 303).

To make his point, Adams allows Hazard to Share the
impulse behind Esther's attitude. After delivering his
first sermon in the wealthy St. John's, he half-jokingly
tells George Strong that he "'felt like St. Paul preaching
at Athens the God whom they ignorantly worshipped'" (p.
220). Indeed, as the narrator comments, Hazard's parish
members associate their identities far more with social and
economic status than with any inclusion in the mystic,
"'supreme I AM, of which the church is the emblem'" (p.
213). In Esther's last debate with Hazard, such ethical

Shortcomings in the contemporary church figure prominently

348

in her decision to send Hazard away. She catches the
church in a self-contradiction of thought and action,
telling Hazard that ultimately there is "'nothing spiri—
tual about the church. It is all personal and selfish'"
(p. 369).

Esther's dissatisfaction with the church's prac-
tical posture leads to a more fundamental criticism of
Hazard's ecclesiasticism, of which his character and self-
understanding is a reflection. To a large extent, Haz-
ard's vocations and his private self are indivisible, and
Esther is correct when she tells him that "'you and your
profession are one'" (p. 367). George Hochfield strikes
some of the complexity of this unity when he suggests that
Hazard "is basically an egotist whose religion, however
sincerely he may feel it to be true and necessary, is an

expression of his will to dominate and possess others."l3

 

13Hochfield, p. 46.

 

It is not difficult to illustrate that more ambiguity
exists in Hazard's character and religion than Hochfield's
oversimplification allows. As most clergymen, Hazard

lives in a perilous profession wherein success is often

349

bound up with personal charm, as Horton Davies has said

of the paradoxes of the ministry.14

 

4 . . . . .
Horton DaVies, A Mirror of the Ministry in the
Modern Novel, p. 183.

 

 

 

To understand Hazard's psychology, one must first
perceive his View of theology and the church. His inau-
gral sermon sketches the starting point for his theolog-
ical system. That is, "'behind all thought and matter'"
lies "'one central idea . . . I AM! Science like religion
kneels before this mystery; it can carry itself back only
to this simple consciousness of existence.'" The church's
unique status derives from its solitary proclamation that
the miracle of self—consciousness originates and partici-
pates in the divine, "'the supreme I AM, of which the
church is the emblem'" (p. 213). Knowledge of its pro-
vince comes through "'eternal truth handed down by tradi-
tion and revelation'" (p. 368). Hazard accepts both ve-
hicles "'outright,'" thinking "'it wiser to receive a mys—
tery than to weaken faith'" (p. 365).

Hazard's belief is not without its awareness of
late nineteenth-century threats to faith, however. There

is rumor in his congregation that he is not a literalist

350

with regard to aspects of the Pentateuch (p. 321). Still
more discontent results from his "secular flirtation" with
scientists and artists (pp. 259, 322). Hazard's first St.
John's sermon announces that religion need no longer fear
science, for the "church now knows with the certainty of
science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith'"
(p. 212). The novel soon makes clear, however, that Haz-
ard's measure of certainty is not very great. It is this
fact that calls in question the motivation behind his
ardent ecclesiasticism. Midway through the story, Adams
pauses to explain that Hazard, "Like most vigorous-minded
men, seeing that there was no stopping-place between dogma
and negation . . . preferred to accept dogma" (pp. 321-22).
Having committed himself, Hazard "would rather have jumped
at once pure denial . . . than yield an inch to the argu-
ment that a mystery was to be paltered with because it
could not be explained" (p. 322). In their last debate,
Hazard confesses to Esther that "'if I could have removed
my doubts [about God] by so simple a step as that of be-
coming an atheist, I should have done so . . . I studied

. . . and found that for one doubt removed, another was
raised, only to reach a result more inconceivable than

that reached by the church . . . .'" Complete negation

351

and faith at last return "'to a confession of ignorance:
the only difference between uS is that my ignorance is
joined with a faith and hOpe'" (p. 365). At the impasse
between atheism and religion, Hazard tells Esther, "'You
must at last trust in some mysterious ahd humanly incom-
prehensible form of words'" (p. 366).

The accuracy of Hazard's philOSOphic perception
and the nature of his impulse toward faith is clarified
by Adams' presentation of Esther's paleontologist cousin,
George Strong, a "'full-fledged German Darwinist . . .
[who] believes in nothing . . . unless it is himself'"
(p. 321). Strong is a long-time friend of Hazard with
whom he has "'had it out fifty times, and discussed the
whole subject [of religion] till the night reeled, but
. . . never got within shouting distance of each other'"
(p. 214). It is to Strong that Esther turns with her
question, "'Is religion true?'" (p. 316). To this Strong
responds that he does not know, but he adds that science
is certainly untrue, although he pursues it so he might
"'help in making it truer'" (p. 317). As for Esther's
reservations about "'miracles and mysteries,'" he consoles
that "'There is no science which does not begin by requir-

ing you to believe the incredible.'" Thus, "'the doctrine

 

 

 

352

of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working

proposition as any one of the axioms of physics (p. 317).
"'Mystery for mystery,'" Strong tells his aunt, "'science
beats religion hollow. I can't Open my mouth in the
lecture-room without repeating ten times as many unintel-
ligible formulas as ever Hazard is forced to do in his
church'" (p. 313).

Yet, Strong's fideism is not total. In his dis-
cussion with Esther before her last dismissal of Hazard,
he does admit "'evidence amounting to strong probability'"
of the existence of "'mind and matter'" (p. 354). He fur-
ther concedes the possibility of an impersonal God and
immortality, especially as a Darwinist in the church's
thought that "'this life is nothing and the future every
thing.'" Allowing this, he then proceeds to isolate the
epistemological dilemma at the center of nineteenth-century
doubt and faith: "'If our minds could get hold of one ab-
stract truth, they would be immortal so far as that truth
is concerned. My trouble is to find out how we can get
hold Of the truth at all.'" Unable to comprehend "the use
of human existence in any shape," Strong laments that if
the individual was to get ahold of some truth or another,

he would absolutize his insight, thinking "'his thought

353

the true one'" (p. 355). Apart from such peOple, Strong
holds to a strict impartiality and Openness. As he tells
Esther, "'I don't want you to believe in mine [my system],
because I've not got one which I believe in myself'"
(p. 355). "'I prefer almost any kind of religion. No
one ever took up this doctrine who could help himself'"
(p. 354).

Strong's philosophic neutrality despite a wish
to believe is notable and points to Hazard's religious
motives and their apologetical weaknesses. These defi-
ciencies, hinted at throughout the novel, culminate in
the last talk between the betrothed. Hazard's earnest
pleas only convince Esther that religion, for all its
claims to Spirituality, "'does nothing but pursue me with
self even into the next world'" (p. 369). Indeed, through-
out their discussion, Hazard's appeals are directed toward
self—interest. At the start, he implores Esther "'not to
turn from all that has been the hope and comfort of men,
until you have fairly learned what it is!‘" (p. 364). In
defense of faith against doubt, he argues that "'the athe-
ists Offer no sort of bargain for one's soul. Their scheme
is loss and no gain.'" "'What do you gain by getting rid

of one incomprehensiblelthe church]on1y to put a greater

354

in its place, and throw away all hope besides?”15 Esther

is "staggered" by this View, but she finds herself further

 

5Ernest Samuels traces this line of thought back
to Pascal's famous wager. He also locates its effect in
William James, quoting James' defense of religion: "'If
you win, you have infinity; if you lose,—-if atheism is
right,-—you lose nothing'" (p. 255).

 

confounded by the stratagem Hazard deems his most persua-
sive (p. 365). That is, the individual's desire to meet
loved one's in a future existence. Esther resents the im-
plied self-concern of the hope, responding "almost fiercely"
that "'I ask for Spiritual life and you send me back to my
flesh and blood as though I were a tigress you were send—
ing back to her cubs'" (p. 370).

By his consistent reference to self-interest,
Hazard in effect circumscribes the mystery and function
of the church and religion. As we have seen, in contact
with Niagara's cataract, Esther apprehends the numinous
in the "eternity, infinity, and omnipotence [that] seemed
to be laughing and dancing" before her (p. 349). This
perception differs little, is not qualitatively dissimilar
from Hazard's own response to the Falls. He explains to
Esther that it has "'the air . . . of being something

final. You can't go beyond Niagara. The universe seems

355

made for it . . . for the Sight of it suggests eternity
and infinite power'" (p. 363). The cataract becomes for
Hazard a suggestion of the divine which he subsequently
particularizes in dOgma; Esther, on the other hand, sees
the waterfall as divinity itself, immediate, incontrover-
tible, and insuperable. Consequently, she can tell Hazard
"'What difference does it make to me whether I worship one
person, or three persons, or three hundred . . . . I
can't understand how you worship any person at all'" (p.

369).16

 

6George Hochfield has gone further into the con—
tent of Esther's reflection on the Falls than any other
critic. He attributes more to Esther's perception than
is actually given in its indeterminate form:

The cataract symbolizes to Esther the vast and
steady flow of an ultimate energy, of life it-
self, that satisfies its transcendent purpose
through the fullest possible realization of
itself within its individual particles. Life
is its own end so far as the individual is
concerned, but each life has its unique truth,
or principle of integrity, which it contributes
to the total and eternal meaning Of life as a
whole. There is no single abstract faith by
which eternity is circumscribed; eternity is
the mysterious wholeness of life comprising
the innumerable particularities of living
truth (p. 52).

While the latter part of Hochfield's statement concurs
with this writer's, both Esther and Strong leave the pur-
pose Of nature's function unspecified. To do so would
be to fall into the same trap in which Hazard is mired.

 

 

356

Esther's objection to Hazard is the cleric's ap-
prOpriation and containing of mystery within his private
perspective. Esther and Hazard share a mystical respect
for the extra-human, but Hazard mistakenly submits it to
the uses of dogma. Or, as George Strong has it, Hazard
resembles those who think their limited grasp on truth
the only View, their "'thought the true one'" (p. 355).
The same theolOgical imperialism applies to Hazard's view
of the church. Not only did all history represent "ema-
nations of divine thought," but all "human energies be-
longed to the church" (pp. 21, 322). George Strong half—
jestingly testifies that even in college Hazard "'would
have sent us all off to the stake with a sweet smile, for
the love of Christ and the glory of the English Episcopal
Church'" (p. 213). In Hazard's mind, everything, includ-
ing his love for Esther, subserves the church of which he
is a representative. It is not inconsistent, then, for
Hazard to see the conversion of Esther as a "'test'" of
his ability to "get a held on the rebellious age" which
she represents (pp. 322, 243). When Hazard finally wins
her pledge, he utilizes the content of their relationship
for his next sermon. In response, Esther feels only

chagrin:

357

It was beautiful, Simple, full of feeling and
even of passion, but she felt that it was made
for her, and she shrank before the thousand
people who were thus let into the secret cham—
bers of her heart. It treated of death and
its mystery, covering ignorance with a veil of
religious hope, and ending with an invocation
Of infinite love so intense in feeling and ex-
pression, that, beautiful as it was, Esther
forgot its beauties in the fear that the next
word would reveal her to the world (p. 303).

A related factor in Esther's decision is that in
Hazard's hands, the church becomes an unsuccessful medi—
ator of the Mystery it professes. For Esther, the church
in its ethical stature and its poor approximations of mys-
tery in ritual and dogma fall Short of the eloquence and
immanent Transcendence of Niagara. In meditating on Ni-
agara, She reflects that "Hazard spoke with no such au-
thority; and Esther's next idea was one of wonder how,
after listening here, any preacher could have the confi—
dence to preach again" (p. 349). Even before the Niagara
experience, Esther sensed an air of artificiality in the
approach of the church toward God. On her first visit to
St. John's, she feels it is "'just a little near being an
opera-house'" (p. 215). Months later when she paints St.
Cecelia on the transcept, she states that the silent,

empty church "'has a terribly grotesque air of theater

even now'" (p. 262). Artist Wharton readily agrees,

358

stating that "'It i§_a theater . . . . That is what ails
our religion . . . . The place has not heart'" (p. 262).
Similarly, Esther is unable to find ready solutions for
her doubts in Hazard's books of abstruse exposition on the
atonement, the apostolic succession, "the nature of the
trinity and the authority of tradition" (pp. 313, 314,
307). Thus, after Niagara, she suspects even more that
the rituals and dogmas of the church embody Oblique, if
not irrelevant and distorted modes for the representation
of Mystery (p. 368).

In summary, Esther dismisses Hazard for a variety
of reasons that relate to the character of the church and
Hazard's inadequate, perhaps egoistic ground for belief.
The lovers Share a mystical perception of extra-human
sublimity, but Esther cannot accept Hazard's arbitrary,
if not self-serving containment Of Mystery within the
church which in turn usurps and at best approximates the
Inviolable. The reasons for Hazard's fidelity to the
church, either egoism or religious despair, remain incon-
clusive. Adams does conclude in favor of Esther's reluc—
tance to ecclesiastize Mystery. Instead, she follows the
intellectual honesty of cousin George Strong whose impar-

tiality and Openness prescribe the way to whatever elusive

359

Truth might lie still in the future. Perhaps Adams clear-
est comment on the dynamics of thought in the story lies

in the names of the novel's male intellectual antagonists--
strength and Hazard. As Adams' biographer Ernest Samuels
has commented, in Esther's intellectual honesty and open—
ness to the future, one finds "marked out for Adams the

highway of thought which he would henceforth follow."l7

 

l7Samuels, p. 258.

 

In contrast to Henry Adams' Brahmin upbringing,
James Lane Allen shared the poverty of his once-noted Ken-
tucky family which had lately fallen on bad times. Born
in Lexington in 1849, the youngest of seven children,
Allen worked his way through Kentucky University (now
Transylvania College) to teach in preparatory schools
and, briefly, in colleges. After ten years in the pro-
fession, discouraged by meagre salaries and perhaps tem-
peramentally unsuited, Allen determined to pursue a lit-
erary career, first publishing critical articles and then
poems and Short stories in national periodicals. Finally,
at age forty-one, he found popular and financial success

with his first volume of short stories, Flute and Violin

 

360

and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances (1891). His popu-

 

larity steadily increased through the next twelve years,
until he became one of America's most acclaimed writers.
Admirers diminished, however, when Allen's Often contro—
versial fiction began to meditate pessimistically on man's
place in nature, a theme which had always been an implicit
concern in his work.

Despite critical disapproval and waning popular—
ity, Allen largely followed his sombre vision until his
death in 1925, reduced by then to living on earnings from
past success. AS surprising as Allen's later pessimism
was to some readers, it has a role even in his earliest

work. The stories in Flute and Violin (1891), his first

 

volume, tell of mismatched or ill—timed love, of large
tragedy following small errors, Of conflict between ideal
purity and passional necessity. His characters do not
recover from their calamities, or, if they do, their later
hopes are tempered by the griefs of the past. It is not,

however, until Allen's first novella, A Kentucky Cardinal

 

(1895), that the reader is introduced into what becomes
his dominant theme—~the question of man's place in an

enigmatic universe.

361

In this early novel, called a "minor masterpiece"
by Allen's critics, the author emphasizes the conflict be-
tween the hero's worship of nature's beauty and a new,

disturbing passion for a pretty female neighbor.18 One

 

18 . .
William K. Bottorff, James Lane Allen (New York,

1964), p. 60. See also, Grant C. Knight, James Lane Allen
and the Genteel Tradition (Chapel Hill, 1935), pp. 97, 254.

 

 

 

 

of the few in the South aware of Thoreau's writings, Adam
Moss' usual communion with nature, "a glad current of feel-
ing," is disrupted by the attractiveness of a comely new
neighbor.19 The relationship prospers erratically, cul-

minating when the girl asks Adam to cage a cardinal with

 

19James Lane Allen, A Kentucky Cardinal: A Story
(New York, 1895), p. 4. Subsequent references will be in
parentheses and to first editions.

 

 

which he has established a bond of trust. Adam first re-
fuses to betray the bird, which he considers a Special
"messenger of beauty, bearing on his wings the light of
his diviner home" (p. 14). Eventually he concedes, and
the caged bird dies. Adam exchanges communion for guilt,
but he wins the girl, knowing that "the woman dearest to
him must be pardoned--pardoned as long as he shall live"

(p. 119). As Adam's allegiance gradually Shifts to the

362

human, the character of nature becomes more elusive and
problematic, losing the old rapport.

Always antagonistic toward humanity, Adam's View
of experience deepens. Nature, no longer an occasion for
joy, now reflects man's sufferings. The birds' voices
seem "to be lifted up like the loftiest poetry of the
human Spirit with sympathy for realities and mysteries
past all understanding" (p. 134). Moss and his birds are
"Henceforth . . . like poor little foolish children, so
sick and so lonesome in the night without one another,"
the couple shares "the long, long silence of the forests"
which no longer confide their beneficent secret to Adam
(p. 138). As critic William K. Bottorff has suggested,

a fall of mythic stature has taken place.20 While man's

 

20Bottorff, p. 57.

 

wholeness in nature has disappeared, it is not supplanted
by the comforts of marriage which at best prove an arti-

fice of defense against self-isolation in an indifferent

universe.

Allen's next novel, Summer in Arcady: A Tale of

 

Nature (1896), expands and complicates this view of man

and nature. From the dated transcendentalism of Adam Moss,

363

Allen moves to the timely issues of determinism and free-
dom, nature and the self, and the nature of nature. The
"Preface" informs the reader that Allen intended the novel
as a "protest" against the "downward—moving fiction of
manifold disorder" characteristic of the literary school
of naturalistic determinism (p. ix). Given this purpose
and Allen's previous flirtation with transcendentalism,
Allen surprisingly concedes much argument to his Opponents,
thus making the freedom and "moral victory" he claims for
his characters a narrow victory indeed. Allen further
professes to lay bare the same "veiled and sacred mysteries
of life" his foes treat, heredity and sex in this instance,
but with "full and far greater reverence" (p. x).

Daphne and Hilary are mutually-attracted late
adolescents in their native farming community. Both hero
and heroine are subject to forces which they do not sus-
pect. Contending with the unconscious, instinctual force
of sex, Daphne becomes restless "for reasons of which she
knew nothing but of which Nature could have given a rea-
sonable account . . ." (p. 12). Similarly, with Hilary,
Allen explains that

Nature quietly asks room for the operation

of her laws; if it is not given, she takes it,
and you take the consequences. If the young

364

man's life had overflowed the innocent banks

of childhood . . . you could not have gotten

from him any intelligent account of what he

was doing. You would have to question nature

and his forefathers, and some of the people

who had always influenced him (p. 77).
Blatant or subtle in its action, natural force as sex
mounts disruptive obstacles for the innocent. When Hilary
and Daphne are surprised by passion almost to unchastity
(they are ironically disturbed by a bull who wanders into
their forest retreat), Allen explains that they had mis-
takenly trusted "nature, who cares only for life and noth-
ing for the higher things that make life worth living"
(p. 144). Impersonal natural force moves only to self-
expression without concern for particular life or death.
Only as the couple recognizes their "helplessness" before
the consuming energy on which they have stumbled are they
brought to a humble maturity which will undergird their
marriage (p. 147).

Against the passional element active in man, Allen
adds another which makes his View of man and nature multi-
faceted if not fragmented. Echoing the Christian duality
between the flesh and the spirit, Allen posits in man a
capacity for spiritual purity——its origins unexplained--

which he identifies with the progress of humanity through

365

evolution. When Hilary marries Daphne out of love and re-
sponsibility after their tryst, Allen explains that the
farmboy's choice surpassed his meagre moral inheritance
and surroundings, somehow sharing "intimations from the
wisdom of everlasting law, from the perpetuity of the
Species, and from the growing,triumphing movement of the
world" (p. 167). Thus, although its origins and workings
remain unclear, Allen constructs a dialectic between man's
inherited retrogressive, passionate instincts and a higher,
Spiritual aspiration. That the "moral victory" forecast
in the "Preface" results in part from the chance intrusion
of a lost bull indicates the Slimness of freedom's action
in man's affairs.

Allen's third novel, The Choir Invisible (1897),

 

was his first great pOpular success, finishing second on

the best-seller list for 1897.21 An enlargement of the

 

21Alice Payne Hackett, 60 Years of Best Sellers
1895-1955, p. 97.

 

 

 

earlier novella John Gray (1893), the tale continues the

 

duality between Spiritual and passional forces in man.
The story takes place about 1800 in the prospering fron-

tier town of Lexington, Kentucky. To those who know him,

366

John Gray, the local schoolmaster, exhibits "moral lofti-
ness and intellectual power" which is "disciplined to the
higher nature of control" (p. 9). His moral worth is
qualified by a "stark audacity of faith" in himself and
the probability "that Heaven was blessing him" (pp. 80,
81). Gray's expectation that "he should rise in the world
and lay hold by steady degrees upon all that he would care
to have" suffers reversal when life proves more contingent
than anticipated (p. 78). A first rebuff comes in the
fickleness of human nature. The girl he wished to make
the "lamp" of his life pledges herself to another while
Gray is delayed by a practical joke. Realizing that he
"had been beaten, routed, and by forces how insignificant,"
Gray faces the further humiliation of having misread the
girl's character, a "honeycomb of self—love" (pp. 94, 130).
Nature administers a second defeat when a starving
panther mauls Gray early one morning. While the incident
is unsuccessful thematically, it introduces Gray's major
struggle--the effort to suppress his illicit sexual desire.
During his convalescence, the aunt of his ex-lover who
warned him of the girl daily attends his wounds. A long-
time friend of Gray's, Mrs. Jessica Falconer respects the

"religious purity of his nature and life," "the effect of

367

the unfallen in him, of the highest keeping itself above
assault" (pp. 44, 45). Her platonic attraction to this
"shining white life" compensates for a spiritual lack in
her own marriage, but Gray must soon confront a consuming
passion that overcomes his platonic affections.

Whether Gray will concede to what both he and Mrs.
Falconer deem the ignoble, or devote himself to service
in a promising law career in Philadelphia, becomes the
novel's central interest. Gray's task is to respond to
and to fulfill Allen's dictum for the novel: "All growth,
all strength, all uplift, all power to rise in the world
and to remain arisen, comes from the myriad hold we have
taken upon higher surrounding realities" (p. 77). As in

Summer in Arcady, Allen only vaguely identifies the "higher

 

surrounding realities" which Gray must seek out. One sup-
port comes from the Reverend James Moore, Gray's friend

and "the dreamy, saintlike, flute—playing Episcopal parson
of the town" (p. 52). Moore had subdued his private evil
and disorder, and "aflame with holiness," he counsels
others to struggle for inner peace and public good (p. 270).
A second inspiration for Gray's eventual victory is Jessica
Falconer herself. As the minister states, "'She holds in

quietness her land of the Spirit; but there are battlefields

368

in her nature that fill me with awe by their silence"
(p. 284).

After a long struggle, Gray manages to contain
and transmute his passion. He reaches "that high cold
table-land where the sun of Love shines rather as white
luminary of another world than the red quickener of this"
(p. 302). Marriage later eludes the pair when after
Colonel Falconer's death Gray is found to be bound to
one who knows his real love but will not release him.

Two decades later, now a famous judge, Gray sends his
teen-age son to Jessica to learn from her the lessons of
tranquility and nobility. A letter accompanies the boy,
explaining Gray's purpose and love to the aging widow.
There, Gray confesses that his life's purpose, in evolu-
tionary imagery which Allen provides, has been "'to turn
with ever-increasing love from the imperfection that is
in us all to the Perfection that is above us all--the per-
fection that is God . . . . Many a time this candle has
gone out; but . . . with your sacred name on my lips-—it
has been relighted'" (p. 360).

Of all Allen's novels, The Reign of Law (1900)

 

most directly approaches the question of man's place in

the universe and the issues of late nineteenth-century

369

religious debate. A kind of American Robert Elsmere, which

 

also prompted much popular controversy, this tale of post-
Civil War Kentucky details the "counter-conversion," as
Elmer Suderman has named the process, of a devout farm—boy
to Darwinian scientism.22 David, the only son of an im—

poverished rural family, possesses a deeply religious

 

22Alice Payne Hackett records The Reign of Law as
fourth on the best-seller list for 1900; p. 100. See
Suderman, "The Damnation of Theron Ware As a Criticism of
American Religious Thought."

 

 

 

sensibility which finds expression in his inherited Chris-
tianity. By temperament "joyous and self—reliant," his
locale and his parents' influence—-"intense sectarians and
dully pious souls"—-offer neither understanding nor in-
spiration (pp. 35, 39—40).

When David hears a lecture by a faculty member
from a new college to be opened in Lexington, he decides
to enter its ministerial course. In the two years he must
work to earn tuition money, David pursues a careful pri—
vate study of the Bible which instills in him an outlook
"nearer the first century and yet earlier ages than the
nineteenth" (p. 61). Ignorant of "modern theology or

modern science" and with his own soul "a temple Of

370

perpetual worship," David absorbs a biblical View of man
and nature, relating it to the events of daily life:

the most important among the worlds swung in

space was the Earth, on account of a single

inhabitant--Man. Its shape had been moulded,

its surface fitted up, as the dwelling-place

of Man . . . . Nothing had meaning, pos-

sessed value, save as it derived meaning and

value from him. The great laws of Nature—-

they, too, were ordered for Man's service

. . . . Man had only to Speak properly (in

prayer) and these laws would move faster or

less fast, stOp still, turn to the right or

the left side of the road that he desired to

travel (pp. 56-57).
Allen objects to this anthrOpocentric bias in David's in—
terpretation but allows that such was "still, in all prob-
ability, the most important fact in the faith and conduct
of the race," and, secondly, that in David it "took on one
of its purest shapes and wrought out . . . some of its
loftiest results" (pp. 57-58). After two years of daily
toil in hemp fields and nightly Bible study, David departs
for Lexington knowing "more of prophets and apostles than
modern doctors of divinity" and, Spiritually, "already as
one who had climbed above earth's eternal snow-line and
sees only white peaks and pinnacles—-the last sublimities"
(pp. 61, 37).

David's expectations of new learning are soon con-

founded, however. The school established after the war as

371

a "pledge of the new times, [a] plea for the peace and
amity of learning, [and a] fresh chance for the study of
revelation" has already conceded to dogmatism and conten—
tion (p. 34). David's worshipping mind alters toward the
critical as he experiences the logic behind comparative
religion. Instead of toleration and "religious peace,"

he discovers "impassioned and rancorous" "wars of dogmatic
theology" between a plethora of "wrangling, sarcastic,
envious creeds" (p. 84). Among Lexington's heterogeneity,
"Each of the many churches was proclaiming itself the sole
incarnation of this [true religion] and all others the
embodiment of something false" (p. 113). Doubts about
sectarian claims to ultimacy are further compounded by
divisions for purely political motives. Nor do intrade-
nominational arguments over the morality of organ music

or dancing accord with David's perception of necessary
lattitude for custom and personal preference in religion
(pp. 86-87).

"Doubtful and distressed, not knowing what to be-
lieve nor whom to follow," David begins to doubt one of
his two guides to faith-~the Bible. In reaction to the
higher criticism, a powerful influence in American reli—

gion by the 1860's, the new Lexington seminary made a

372

stringent Biblicism its cornerstone, "having cast aside
the dogmas of modern teachers, and taken, as the one in-
fallible guide of their faith and practice, the Bible
simply . . . " (p. 42). While David's textural and his-
torical studies of the Bible "enlarged enormously his
knowledge," they also added questions, and "in adding to
the questions . . . they multiplied those that cannot be
answered" (p. 87). When at last the young doubter debates
a minister and is called to account by the faculty, he
must reject their insistence on the infallibility of the
biblical record (p. 98).

As David decides that he can no longer accept his
Old belief but must nevertheless discover what he "pap_
believe," he happens to hear a sermon warning against
"modern infidelity-—the new infidelity as contrasted with
the old" (pp. 112, 114). AS might be expected of David's
earnest mind, he promptly searches out the proscribed
books for what they might say of "'The Truth, the Law'"
which his religious sense still reveres (p. 112). Thus
exposed to Darwin and his disciples which had become
"atmospheric" to his time, Allen relates that David's
"investigating hands were slipping eagerly along a mighty

train Of truths" (pp. 115, 120). For David and innumerable

373

others, all new questions "met at a single point . . . at
man's place in Nature, at the idea of God, and in that
system of thought and creed which is Christianity" (p. 124).

David's studies in the new thought do not bring
conclusions, but explusion from his school. In a hearing
by the faculty, Allen summarizes David's position, stating
that "he was full of many confusing voices: the voices of
the new science, the voices of the new doubt. One voice
only had fallen silent in him: the voice of the old faith"
(p. 140). He cannot answer any of the professors' ques—
tions positively, not even an inquiry into his belief in
God (PP. 142-43). David petitions divine patience, but
the faculty exiles him to the farm of his origin.

In narrating David's movement from confusion about
doctrine and sectarian rivalry to basic doubt about Chris-
tianity, Allen devotes greater space and detail to initial
dissatisfactions than to causes Of David's profounder
scepticism. Indeed, the reader knows little of David's
intellectual growth until he relates its final product in
the later part of the novel. AS with Allen's brief men—
tion of doubts about the Bible and of exposure to Darwin,

the author ascribes David's further advance to a happy

374

release from parochial squabbling, making "his religious
Spirit more lofty and alive than ever" (p. 221).

Upon his return home, David meets and falls in
love with the new elementary school teacher, for whose
believing mind he at last explains his intellectual
system. He begins by delineating new fields of study
which have replaced theology as a touchstone for man's
self-understanding. Moving from the inclusvie to the
particular, he enumerates instellar physics, astronomy,
geolOgy, evolutionary biology, anthrOpology, sociolOgy,
and comparative religion. These assorted disciplines
find common purpose in their effort "'to discover and to
trace Law,'" which governs the universe and offers "'all
that we know of Him whom we call Creator, God, our Father'"
(pp. 294, 295). For David, all religions, none more
valuable than another, are a "'perfectly natural expres-
sion of the . . . human desire and effort to find God and
to worship Him through all the best that we know in our-
selves and of the universe outside us'" (p. 294). Spiri-
tual aspiration is itself determined by Law innate in man:

"'We obey, and our seekings are our religions'" (Po 295)-

375

David's understanding of natural law leads to an
evolutionary faith, contending that man's moral progress
is a condition and quality of Law's Operation:

"all things . . . are a growth, a sublime un-

folding by the Laws of God. The race ever

rises toward Him . . . . Its charity grows,

its justice grows. All the nobler, finer

elements of this spirit come forth more and

more--a continuous advance along the paths

of Law. And the better the world, the larger

its knowledge, the easier its faith in Him

who made it and who leads it on. The devel-

opment of Man is itself the great Revelation

of Him!" (pp. 298-99).
David must face the problem of individual freedom if pro-
gress is indeed the fabric of the natural law of which man
is a product. In defense, he argues that "'Nature does
nothing for Man except what She enables him to do for him-
self . . . she has given him his resources and then thrown
him upon them. Beyond that she cares for nothing, does
nothing, provides nothing, arranges nothing'" (p. 320).
This view contrasts notably with the biblical concept of
man's centrality in the universe. Once believing that the
"earth was a planet Of provision for human consumption,"
David now realizes that other creatures "were no more made

for Man than Man was made for them" (pp. 234, 235). Man's

welfare "was not the reason Of their being created: what

376

that reason was in the Creator's mind," David concedes,
"no one knows or would ever know" (p. 235).

The last tenet in David's evolutionary faith em-
braces empirical science as "'the fresh path for the faith
of the race,'" man's sole hOpe for reducing the unknown.
"'For the race must henceforth must get its idea of God,
and build its religion to Him, from its knowledge of the
Laws of His universe'" (p. 381). Authorial comment
throughout the novel endorses this position, although
Allen takes care to emphasize the Open—endedness and mys—
tery of creation and man's existence. In agreement with
the new thought, Allen stresses David's antiquated Bible-
inspired views of man and nature (p. 61). The growth in
toleration among sectarian religion is attributed to the
"modern Spirit which is for us the tolerant transition to
a yet broader future" (p. 84). Similarly, Allen cites the
seminary faculty's unpunitive, patient inquiry into David's
views to indicate man's steady progress "in charity and
mildness" (p. 139). The same historical perspective com-
pliments the "latter half of the nineteenth-century" when
"never perhaps was so much burned out of the intellectual
path of man . . . ." (p. 121). Doubt assumes a positive

agency in the progress of evolution. Questioning has led

377

man "always . . . from less truth to more truth; which is
the inspiration of his mind, the sorrow of his heart . . .
which attempts to solve the universe and knows that it does
not solve it, but ever seeks . . . to clarify reason, and
so to find whatever truth it can" (pp. 137-38).

The facts of man's limited knowledge and the im-
personal mystery and caprice of natural law conflict with

Allen's Optimism, and The Reign Of Law shows an increased

 

awareness of these contingencies from previous works. In
introducing David, Allen calls him an "Obscure item in
Nature's plan which always passes understanding" (p. 35).
He also ponders the way David represents a throwback to
nobler ancestors, "emerging mysteriously from the deeps Of
life four generations down their line" (p. 38). The un-
predictable also Operates negatively, as in the "vast ap—
palling catastrOphes of nature, for which man sees no
reason and detects the furtherance of no plan-—law being
turned with seeming blindness, and the spirit of Sheer
wastage . . . spending its sublime forces in a work of
self-desolation" (p. 205). The process of nature, whatever
its final intent, does not allow the individual security

or certainty in the present.

378

Nature goes ever about her ancient work, and

we cannot declare that we have ever watched

the Operation of her fingers, think on we

will, and reason we must, amid her otherwise

intolerable mysteries, though we accomplish

no more in our philosophy than the poor in-

sect, which momentarily illumines its wander-

ing through illimitable night by a flash from

its own body (p. 184).
This same spirit informs Allen's Closing paragraph which
parallels the fate of man and the hemp of David's fields:
"0 Mystery Immortal! which is in the hemp and in our pas—
sions; by which our poor brief lives are led upward out
of earth for a season, then cut down, rotted and broken--
for they long service!" (p. 385).

Allen dramatizes this tension between cosmic pur-
pose and personal insignificance and isolation with the
character of Gabriella, the schoolteacher with whom David
falls in love. Like her namesake, she is a ministering
angel to David. Impoverished and orphaned by the Civil
War, she has found solace and strength in an undogmatic,
intuitive Christianity of love and compassion. Allen
treats her seriously, stating that while David "had been
repelled by the part [of religion] that passes and is
human," Gabriella had in her travail "been drawn to that

part of worship which lasts and is divine" (p. 275). She

accepts David's scientific outlook until it regards

379

Christianity as Simply another of the world's religions.
To her soul of love and simplicity, David is "a maltreated
Christ—neighbor whom it was her duty to succor if she
could" (p. 277). She tends David through critical ill—
ness, and to his surprise, she accepts his marriage pro-
posal although it will mean years of poverty while he
studies in a Northern university. Beyond this measure of
devotion, Allen injects a somber note which holds reserva-
tions about the emotional-moral adequacy of a religion of
science. In the moment of their betrothal, Allen observes
that while Gabriella "would give her all, she could never
be all to him. Her life would be enfolded completely in
his; but he could hold out his arms also toward a cold
Spirit who would forever elude him--Wisdom" (p. 384).

The Mettle of the Pasture (1903), Allen's fifth

 

novel, again utilizes late nineteenth—century, small-town

Kentucky for its setting. As in The Reign of Law, Allen

 

again emphasizes individual moral struggle within the long
history of evolution. Unlike the earlier novel, however,
Darwinism has already made its impact on the minds of the
major characters. The perception of moral issues is also
more acute than in Allen's previous work; from the har-

nessing of unruly passion, Allen has moved to treat the

380

devious actions Of subtle Spiritual pride. The narrative
begins with the rebuff of a suitor‘s proposal when he con-
fesses that he fathered an illegitimate child, the mother
then rejecting his Offer of marriage. His lover, the
daughter of an aristocratic family, responds with “her
unforgiveness and her dismissal forever," arguing that

She could not "'sacrifice what is best in me without lower—
ing myself'" (pp. 41, 191). After years of solitary global
wandering, the young woman learns the lessons of humility,
reverence, and self-sacrifice. She returns to marry the
now sickly, scandalized man.

While the girl's decisions provide the motive
force for the novel, Allen simply closes with her decision
to return, neglecting to detail its logic. Instead, he
concentrates on lives Of the assorted characters of the
town. There is an elderly judge who lost a wife and a
brilliant career to the town's appetite for salacious
gossip. A middle-aged, magnanimous classics professor
serves the community, although harboring a life-long sor-
row from the deaths of his wife and two young sons. Not
the least of the admiralbe is the jilted suitor who has
contained his youthful instincts and risked love for the

sake of honesty.

381

The judge and the professor, the only raisionneurs

 

in all Allen's fiction, provide interpretation of Allen's
focuses. The judge heralds the "'mettle'" in the young
man's honesty, calling it "'a rallying signal to human na-
ture'" (p. 342). Giving the novel its title, the judge
reflects on the uniqueness of his time in history, stating
that "'What most men are thinking now . . . is of our
earth, a small grass-grown planet hung in space. And, un-
accountably making his appearance on it, is man, a pastur-
ing animal, deriving his mettle from his pasture'" up.342L
In one sense, man seems unchanging to the judge--"'wander-
ing over that green belt for a little while . . . with the
mystery of his ever being there and the mystery of his
dust-~with nothing ever added to him, nothing ever lost
out of him.'" Yet, he observes, there is "'the side of
the new.'" The American ”'has had new thoughts, he has
done things never seen elsewhere or before'" (p. 344).

In addition, this new national type promises to develop

a "mettle" peculiar to himself--"'the virtue of truthful-
ness'" (p. 345). A foreshadow of this appears in the
action of the rejected, guilty lover who chose not "'to
shirk'" the dangers of truthfulness in a deceitful world

(p. 378).

382

To the professor's credit, through equipoise and
humility, he has lived "continually in a world of much
littleness and not himself become little" (p. 178). It
is the professor who articulates Allen's continuing faith
in the reality of moral choice in the face of contemporary
claims of determinism. Regardless of circumscribing fac-
tors, for the characters of the novel and man always, "it
is the high compulsion of the soul itself, the final mys-
tery of personal choice, that sends us forth at last to
our struggles and to our peace . . . there for each is
right and wrong, the eternal beauty of virtue" (p. 435).

Neither the professor nor the judge can affirm of
hope for more in existence than the slim consolations of
moral victory amid personal freedom. The professor, for
example, has searched history and world religions for
proof of immortality. He finds nothing conclusive amid
reason's many denials. There remains in him, nonetheless,
an "unaccountable confidence that the light of human life"
would not disappear with physical death (p. 431). The
words of the teacher and his legal friend, like their acts,

bespeak Allen's main concerns in The Mettle of the Pasture.

 

Foremost is an ethical model of self-discipline and sac—

rifice. Secondly, Allen reiterated his belief in the moral

383

freedom which emerges from suffering and the will to live
rightly. And lastly, there is a hOpe that human history,
despite the individual's private misfortune, has meaning
and direction.

Intended to form a trilogy, Allen's "Christmas"
novels enlarge on the theme of personal suffering to ques-
tion the ability of an Optimistic Darwinian hypothesis to
explain man's existence. In a manner that hearkens back
to the potential isolation of Gabriella in David's devo-

tion to wisdom, The Bride of the Mistletoe (1909) probes

 

the relationship between a scholarly professor and his
admiring wife. For a year, the professor has devoted all
his time to writing a book of which he tells his wife
nothing, thus causing her to suSpect that she is only an
"'Incident'" in his life (p. 31). At last, on Christmas
Eve, their wedding anniversary, he presents the final draft
for her inspection. The book, he tells her, responds to
the questions she asked on the previous Christmas about
the origins and significance of the holiday's symbols.
With method and information paralleling Fraser's Golden
Egggh, Allen's professor traces the pagan meanings behind
the Christianized symbols, which are "a survival of grave

notes in the worship of primitive man . . . ." (p. 107).

384

As they Sit by the fire, the husband summarizes the book's
contents, excluding only the story Of the mistletoe which
his wife has been anxiously awaiting. She has remembered
that on their wedding night years before, he had called
her his "'Bride of the Mistletoe'" (p. 53). Now in his
interpretation of the mistletoe will "be rendered the Judg-
ment of the Years" (p. 106).

Christmas mistletoe, it turns out, has reference
to the Druidic custom of Offering a virgin to the manful
Spirit of the Forest which is ceremonially embodied in the
passion of a young warrior (p. 129). The story confirms
the wife's suSpicions of growing inconsequence when the
husband becomes enwrapt in his telling, returning psycho-
logically to "the summer woods of ancestral wandering, the
fatherland of Old Desire” (p. 131). Believing that She
has only been the object of his youthful "low carnal pro-
pensities" and is now displaced by his scholarship, she
asks, "'Am I the only thing that you care less for as time
passes?'" (pp. 164, 143). To this and other questions
about their marriage, the husband returns silence. With
no consolation or explanation, "wounded and stunned as by

an incredible blow," the wife spends a solitary, Sleepless

385

night, reflecting that through the years, "it was some
Ehipgf-not herself—-that he wanted" (pp. 158, 149).
Critic William Bottorff attributes the wife's
reaction to her emotional immaturity and an inability to
grasp her husband's larger vision of life, which is to be

"serviceable to humanity" (pp. 22, 37-38, 61).23 While

 

23Bottorff, pp. 99-100.

 

there is some reason for this view, nowhere does Allen
suggest that the wife's insight into the marriage is mis-
taken. Indeed, Allen takes pains to emphasize the accur-
acy of her perception of the husband's character. There
still lingers in the middle-aged scholar an aspect of
"brutal vitality" not unlike the "conquering nature" of

a "heavy passionate animal" (pp. 47, 19, 21). All doubt
about Allen's portraiture disappears in the comment that
follows the professor's imaginative identification with
the Forest Spirit, the narrator stating that "he may have
been aware or he may not have been aware that he had re-
vealed to her the truth about himself" (p. 132). In recog—
nition, the wife sits as a "butterfly broken on the wheel
of years: lustreless and useless now in its summer"

(p. 132).

386

Allen further suggests that whereby previously the
professor's marriage was the recipient of his instinctual
energy, its focus has Shifted with increasing age to the
domain of the serious scholar, surveying "the wide commons
where the race forever encamps at large with its problems,
joys, and sorrows" (p. 23). Here, "he was brother to all
brothers who join work to work for the common good" (p.
37). An evolutionist, the professor reaches for the im-
provement of the race in which "knowledge widens and suf-
fering begins to be made more bearable and death more
kind" (p. 22). In this ambition, the professor shares

an inadequacy with David in The Reign of Law. As Gabri—

 

ella, giving her all, would always remain subservient to
David's pursuit of the ever-elusive "cold Spirit" of
"Wisdom," SO the professor has come to "those cold Alps
of learning" which perhaps profit mankind but disenchant
marriage (p. 26).

As in The Reign of Law and other Allen novels, an

 

evolutionary faith contrasts with impinging personal tra-
gedy in the expanse of time and nature. The professor's
studies of man's religious history repeat Allen's dominant
strain: "At the dawn of history we behold man worshipping

the tree as the Creator literally present on the earth"

387

(p.1051 In later millennia, moving from the animism of the
forest, the gods participated with man in human form. Of
late, "this last panorama faded also, and civilized man
stood face to face with the modern woods--inhabited only
by its sap and cells." Now, in a scientific age, "the du—
bious oracle of the forest—-its one reply to all man's
questionings--became the Voice of its own Mystery" “9.103%
It is from this point of View that Allen makes his closing
comment on the novel's troubled couple. The wife's night
of desolation has renewed her dedication to the marriage,
although on a more impersonal base. She awakens her hus-
band, and they both shed tears, repeating the recognition

of Adam Moss in The Kentucky Cardinal: "Tears not for

 

Life's faults but for Life when there are no faults. They
looked in each other's arms--trying to save each other on
Nature's vast lonely, tossing, uncaring sea" (p. 184).

A year later Allen published The Doctor's Christ-

 

mas Eve (1910), which continues the setting, characters,

and themes of The Bride of the Mistletoe. Dr. Downs Birney,

 

a dedicated country physician, is a neighbor and lifelong
friend of the professor. Like other Allen characters, the
doctor shows confused allegiances which surface conspicu-

ously. An evolutionist and fervent believer in science,

388

he has devoted himself to the futurity of the race, the
"World's Path of Lessening Pain" (p. 102). Amid this
altruism, "for the members of his family is reserved ac-
quaintance with the drama of his devotion to himself"

(p. 45). The special victim of the doctor's egoism has
been his wife. Early in his practice, the now middle-aged
healer found himself in love with the professor's new
bride. Unable to subdue his passion, Birney concluded
that "'there is one way out for me . . . I must marry and
fall in love with my own wife and with the mother of my
own children'" (p. 172). Love does not come, however,
and the doctor's hOpe for tranquility becomes his "Neme-
sis" (p. 79).

The doctor's private chaos is compounded by his
wife's perception of his real love. The wife, "a few
years after their marriage, having discovered herself to
be an unloved bride, had thrown her whole agonized nature
into . . . winning his love as young wife and young mother"
(pp. 209-10). Failing also that happiness, slowly out of
the tragedy of her own life, "she had begun to work for
the success Of his" (p. 210). Eventually, the persistent
kindness of his wife and the understanding and sympathy

of the knowing professor and wife render change in the

389

thwarted emotional life of the doctor. New charity and
cheerful acceptance come too late, for the doctor's ado-
lescent son has perceived the father's misplaced love.

In hurt and disillusion, the boy soon dies from a serious
disease.

The doctor at last confronts "guilt and shame"
which he could neither "transfer to . . . another nor lay
upon the mother earth" (p. 296). The measure of his self-
understanding appears in the inscription, taken from Abra-
ham's sacrifice of Isaac, on the boy's gravestone--"Unto
a Land Not Inhabited." "'I chose that for him,'" says the
grieving father; "'it is the truth: he has been sent away,
hearing more than was his'" (p. 300). Allen allows that
in an uncertain future the husband and wife--the "heroic
daughter of the greater vanished people"--might eventually
find happiness in one another, but the logic of their
son's death, as of their discordant marriage, remains in-
penetrable (p. 304).

The question that persists through Allen's many
novels centers on the incongruity of personal chaos and
suffering in a universe supposedly undergirded and di—
rected by beneficent progress. For reasons unknown, Allen

never wrote the third novel in his proposed trilogy. Yet,

390

some interpretive assistance does come from his last pub-

lished work, The Last Christmas Tree: An Idyl of Immor—

 

tality (1924). A brief work, it tells the last conversa-
tion between the last living objects on an earth engulfed
by cold. Two pine trees reflect on their fate and the
nature and accomplishments of absent, long—perished man.
To their many queries about the past and possible immor-
tality and man's knowledge of both, the trees must defer
to "'mystery,'" which is echoed by the universe itself
(pp. 24, 31). After one tree has been covered with snow,
the other, feeling its approaching death, offers a closing
benediction to existence: "'Power, that put forth all
things for a purpose, you have fulfilled, without explain-
ing it, that Purpose. I follow all things with their
sleep'" (p. 34). Of Allen's many novels, some serious and

others light, The Last Christmas Tree concludes a major

 

theme and sounds a somber note in closing a long career.
Henry Adams and James Lane Allen gauged the thought
and experience of their time and respectfully submitted
that Opinions on cosmic questions were premature. Allen
always persisted in wonder at the mysterious ways of man's
suffering and joy on "a small grass-grown planet hung in

Space." The more intellectual Adams debated by means of

391

scientist, priest, and female the nature of indeterminate

Force which moves and encompasses the universe.

 

CONCLUS ION

The six chapters of the dissertation reveal sev-
eral major patterns of doubt and faith operating during
the late nineteenth century in America. Darwinism, the
higher criticism, and comparative religion—-the main crit-
ical studies affecting religion—-constituted an unparal-
leled assault on the traditional sources and rationales
for Christian belief. As several of our authors illus-
trate, these forces gave impetus to perennial dissatis-
factions with traditional orthodox explanations for the
presence Of evil and inordinate suffering in man's exper-
ience, an unavoidable problem for all religions that posit
an all-powerful beneficent deity. These four criticisms
of orthodoxy notably diminished the possibility of regard-
ing nature, the Bible, Christian doctrine, or the workings
of fate as decisive or complete Objective indications of
divine intent in the universe. Insofar as each of these
movements derived its logic and authority from the empir-

ical methodology of science, they together contributed to

392

393

the mounting epistemological dilemma of the late nineteenth
century. With the questioning of such traditional Chris-
tian arguments for belief as design in nature and the
verbal inspiration of the Bible, which had their validity
in objective evidences, religionists faced the problem of
relocating sources for belief. Except for those few who
transferred their faith to the sufficiency of reason and
the empirical, most novelists studied here were forced to
recognize the trustworthiness of non-rational, subjective
insight and feeling as an indispensable alternative to
exclusive reliance on an empirical criteria for truth and
reality.

Of the various threats to orthodoxy noted by these
novelists, Darwinian thought clearly played the largest
role in disputing previous religious assumptions. In Th§_

Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), Harold Frederic's

 

clergyman-protagonist fully accepts the evolutionary views
expounded to him by a heterodox Catholic priest and a
Darwinian scientist. The measure of the Reverend Ware's
new discipleship appears late in the novel when he adopts
evolutionary imagery to justify his new ethic of self-
interest. While the minister sees himself on a progres-

sive evolutionary continuum, his priestly and scientific

394

mentors are Darwinian pessimists, judging man to be more
closely related to the monkey than the angel. For Fred-
eric's literary mentor, William Dean Howells, Darwinian
theory embodied his lifelong fears about the potential
meaninglessness of experience. In the chaos of heedless
natural process, as reflected in the turmoil of industrial
America, Howells was unable to perceive divine intent or
any just moral order which might bespeak divine concern
for man's affairs. Thus, in Howells' mind, the Darwinian
world view symbolized the possibility of irreconcilable,
preponderate evil as the motive force in man's experience.
In Augusta Evans Wilson's Beulah (1859), evolu-
tionary views of a vast pre-history lead the heroine to
repudiate biblical accounts of creation and man's fall
and, quickly thereafter, the general authority of scrip?
ture. Similar references pervade the fiction of Elizabeth
Phelps Ward and help to create the atmosphere of religious
uncertainty that informs her fiction. Although the hetero-

dox heroine of Margaret Deland's best-selling John Ward,

 

Preacher (1888) does not expound evolutionary thought, she

 

is certainly influenced by the religious rationalism of a
friend who discusses his Darwinian philOSOphy with her.

Presbyterian minister-turned-novelist E. P. Roe first

395

resents Darwinian accusations about man's ancestry then
seemingly accepts a vision of progressive piety.

Other novelists of the late nineteenth century
welcomed Darwinism as the occasion for the reformulation
of the traditional understanding of God's providence and
revelation. Helen H. Gardener, a prominent feminist and
disciple of well—known infidel Robert G. Ingersoll, her-
alded man's increasing rationality as a harbinger of
greater social justice and a more accurate formulation
for truth than Christian subjectivism. Similarly, Uni-
tarian minister Minot Judson Savage maintained that a firm
allegiance to the empirical and the reasonable demoted
Christianity's claims to uniqueness and made way for a new
cross-cultural understanding of God. Unitarian clergy-
woman Celia Parker Woolley shared the views of Gardener
and Savage but expressed ambivalence about liberalism's
inordinate insistence upon objectivity and rationalism,
especially as it affected the emotional and subjective in
man.

A comparable attitude appears in the fiction of
James Lane Allen, a popular novelist of the turn of the
century. Allen hesitated in giving complete endorsement

to his heroes' Optimistic allegiance to Darwinian schemes

396

of progress. Too Often such enthusiasms of future feli-
city neglected grievous human problems more immediately
in the purview of the hero. Also, if Darwinism did ac-
curately reflect cosmic process, insufficient evidence
prohibited any conclusion of the nature or fate of this
universal tendency which seemed wrapped in impenetrable
mystery. Historian and sometime novelist Henry Adams
Shared Allen's epistemological agnosticism in his novel
Esther (1884). Although one might intuit the presence of
awesome cosmic force, efforts on the part of either science
or religion to define this energy seemed equally premature.
Whatever doubts Darwinism evoked about the histor-
ical accuracy of scripture were added to by the higher
criticism of the Bible. In its challenge to the transhis-
torical character of the Christian cannon, the higher
criticism pointed out its fully-human aspects and assumed
the mythological origins of Jesus' divinity. Both Harold
Frederic's minister and Elizabeth Phelps Ward's most prom-
inent clergyman are influenced by the higher criticism of
the Bible. The Reverend Theron Ware first finds scrip—
ture's relativity in the cultural primitiveness of the
Israelites. Seminary student Emanuel Bayard cannot accept

the inerrancy of the Bible or his denomination's

397

interpretation of the biblical hell. The marital tragedy

of Margaret Deland's John Ward, Preacher (1888) results

 

in part from the husband's biblical literalism from which
springs his stern and flawlessly logical Calvinism. Un—
fortunately, Mrs. Ward's humane common sense cannot abide
by conceptions of predestination and eternal damnation.
Free-thinker Helen Gardener also employed common
sense, as did her mentor Robert Ingersoll, to devalue the
moral authority of biblical characters and much Christian
doctrine, especially the vicarious atonement which seemed
to deny individual moral culpability. Celia Parker Woolley
and Minot Judson Savage repeated Miss Gardener's rational-
istic criticisms in their attack on scripture, but they
also utilized the more empirical findings of the higher
criticism. Popular orthodox novelist E. P. Roe, on the
other hand, conceded many of these new discoveries only
to argue for the unique quality and durability of the
Bible's effects on the heart of man. The Reverend Stephen
Hazard in Henry Adams Esther (1884) sought to accommodate
biblical criticism and evolution through a metaphorical
hermeneutic which would transcend literalism and subsume
critics' complaints. No such alternative is available to

the protagonists of James Lane Allen who discard biblical

398

literalism to serve, perhaps too fully, the new authority
of science.

A final blow to old-style orthodoxy came in the
researches of comparative religion, which noted the spir-
itual and ethical worth of other major world religions.

A new religious awareness strikes the Reverend Theron Ware
when he first views the "Christ-myth," which is repeated
in numerous other world religions. Historical anthropol-
ogy also discredits for Ware the authority and nobility

of ancient peoples. Augusta Evans Wilson's novels see

the relativistic thrust of comparative religious studies
as a general threat to Christianity. E. P. Roe also notes
this danger but defends the qualitative superiority of
Christianity as it speaks to man's moral and spiritual
nature. Among heterodox writers, novelists Celia Parker
Woolley and Minot Judson Savage accept the implications

of other noble world religions and speak for a non-
parochial universal religion which integrates the best
and common assumptions of non-Western religions. Their
fellow-traveller, Helen Gardener, looks more sceptically
at Christianity, suggesting its practical inferiority to
other religions and, especially, to the new evolutionary

rationalism. James Lane Allen's later novels observed

399

mythological patterns in primitive and world religions
which tried in various ways, like Christianity, to approx—
imate the on-going, pervasive mystery of the universe.

For these novelists in late nineteenth-century
America, all formal intellectual inquiries culminated in
the epistemological dilemma posed by modern science.
Darwinism, the higher criticism, and comparative religion
effectively undercut the objective authority of Protestant
Christianity's traditional sources for belief—~a verbally
inspired Bible and, to a lesser extent, a divinely ordered
nature. In any case, orthodox religionists were forced to
locate new rationales for their religious faith. William
Dean Howells, for example, relinquished his desire for
unmistakable empirical evidence of an afterlife or a moral
order in man's affairs. Instead, he relocated the origins
of faith in the less tangible insight of the non—rational
in man. In the mystical promptings of the heart and in
the mysterious moral and Spiritual efficacy of man's suf-
ferings, as eSpecially represented in the paradigm of
Jesus, Howells found sufficient cause to trust the benefi-
cence of transcendent mystery. The orthodox minister E. P.
Roe adOpted a similar strategy in his defense of Christian

faith. Beset by the threat of a purely empirical criteria

400

for reality, Roe argued for the trustworthiness of the in-
dividual's subjective experience of Christian truth, rea-
soning that the subjective in man necessarily demanded as
much respect as the empirical. Roe, as did Howells, ap-
plied a pragmatic test to this interior experience, looking
for its consequences in a new equilibrium of the self and
in benefits in the social Sphere.

Popular female novelists Augusta Evans Wilson and
Elizabeth Phelps Ward initiated a comparable empirical test
for the authority of the subjective sphere of faith. Mrs.
Wilson's heroines repeatedly attract others with their
tranquil, luminous faith and their observable good deeds.
So also, Mrs. Ward's Emanuel Bayard in A Singular Life
(1896), after doubts about the verbal inspiration and hell,
leads a life of social compassion and final martydom that
illuminates his faith in the ethics Of Jesus and the essen—
tial, ever-abiding love of God.

The epistemological conflict of the Gilded Age took
on other forms as well. Harold Frederic's The Damnation

of Theron Ware (1896) expresses concern about the fate of

 

America when an incipient philosophical empiricism has
fully displaced the nation's traditional Judeo-Christian

resources for morality. Not only does the novel's

401

ministerial protagonist succumb to self-interest, but his
four chief influences exhibit an intellectual and cultural
elitism that foreshadows the end of American democracy.
The actions and rationales of each influence result from
a rigorous empiricism and demonstrate an overriding self-
interest. Frederic's contemporary, James Lane Allen, also
expressed ambivalence toward the moral adequacy of a
strict empiricism. In numerous Allen novels, the protag-
onist is enamored with the empirical, especially as it is
contained in schemes of evolutionary optimism. These

characters fail, however, as does David in The Reign of

 

La! (1900), by neglecting the emotional needs of their
marriage partners. This same ambivalence exists in the
fiction of Celia Parker Woolley, a Unitarian clergywoman.
In particular, she dissents from religious liberalism's
emphasis on the rational and empirical at the expense of
non-rational and mystical modes of knowledge.

Two of Mrs. Woolley's fellow liberals had no such
reservations. Both Helen H. Gardener and Minot Judson
Savage placed a complete faith in rational understanding
of the empirically verifiable in experience. Too often,
the subjective self-interest of orthodoxy had distorted

or inhibited the advance of science and the inquisitive

402

mind, two components of the evolutionary progress which
seemed empirically substantiable. While generally agree-
ing with Savage's and Gardener's assault on the subjective
bias in Christianity, historian Henry Adams opposed an
inordinate faith in science and rationalism. From a thor-
ough fideism, Adams' Esther (1884) suggested the inability
of either religious subjectivism or scientific rationalism
to perceive or understand the nature of the indeterminable
force that moves the universe. James Lane Allen concurred
with Adams' View. He admitted that an evolutionary per-
Spective might accurately reflect cosmic process, but he
maintained that man was incapable of forecasting either
the direction or the nature of that process. For Allen,
as for Adams, present knowledge, either religious or sci-
entific, presented insufficient evidence for a conclusive
statement on the mystery of man and his existence.
Whatever might be said of these novels, they do
give some indication of the nature and experience of the
problems of doubt and faith during the late nineteenth
century in America. The fact that these religious novels
were written and that many of them attained wide popular-
ity suggests that America's considerable reading public

had at least some awareness of the religious problems

403

that were transforming traditional religious understand-
ings. Further, the novels repeatedly evidence the writer's
expectation that his audience, whether popular or elite,
shared some of the same knowledge and concerns which were
bridged in his fiction. As stated in the Introduction,

it is impossible to know the exact reasons for the popu-
larity of some of these novels, for the more popular con—
formed to the public's tastes for melodrama and sentiment.
Even granting this fact as a major element in the public's
response, the preponderance of religious reflection in

the fiction suggests that a broad segment of the American
public, as did its many novelists, responded seriously to

the problems of doubt and faith in the Gilded Age.

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404

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. The Supply at Saint Agatha's. Boston, 1896.

 

 

 

408

. Trixy. Boston, 1904.

. Walled In. A Novel. New York, 1907.

 

 

. Within the Gates. Boston, 1901.

 

 

and Herbert D. Ward. Come Forth! Boston, 1891.

 

an
Bos

 

Wilson, Aug
New

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

d Herbert D. Ward. The Master of the Magicians.
ton, 1890.

 

usta Jane Evans. At the Mercy of Tiberius.
York, 1887.

 

. Beulah. New York, 1868.

Devota. New York, 1907.

Inez: A Tale of the Alamo. New York, 1913.

 

Infelice. New York, 1903.

 

Macaria. A Novel. New York, 1885.

 

St. Elmo. New York, n.d.

 

. A Speckled Bird. New York, 1902.

 

 

Vashti; or, "Until Death US Do Part." A Novel.

 

 

New
Woolley, Ce

 

 

York, 1869.

lia Parker. A Girl Graduate. Boston, 1889.

 

Love and Theology. Boston, 1887.

 

Roger Hunt. Boston, 1892.

 

409

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Belcher, Hannah Graham. "Howells' Opinions on the Reli—
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Bell, Millicent. "Adams' Esther: The Morality of Taste,"
New England Quarterly, XXXV (June, 1962), 147—161.

 

Bennett, George N. William Dean Howells: The Development
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Bottorff, William K. James Lane Allen. New York, 1964.

 

Briggs, Austin, Jr. The Novels of Harold Frederic.
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Brown, Jerry Brown. The Rise of Biblical Criticism in
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Budd, Louis J. "William Dean Howells' Debt to Tolstoy,"
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Burr, Nelson R. A Critical Bibliography of Religion in
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Blackmur, R. P. "The Novels of Henry Adams," Sewanee
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410

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. The Road to Realism: The Early Years 1837—1885
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Carrington, George C., Jr. The Immense Complex Drama: The
World and Art of the Howells Novel. Columbus, Ohio,
1966.

 

 

Carter, Everett. Howells and the Age of Realism. Philadel-
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. "Introduction," The Damnation of Theron Ware.
Cambridge, 1960.

 

 

Carter, Paul A. The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age.
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Clark, Harry Hayden. "The Role of Science in the Thought
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Colacurcio, Michael. "Democracy and Esther: Henry Adams'
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Davies, Horton. A Mirror of the Ministry in the Modern
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Davies, Wallace Evan. "Religious Issues in Late Nineteenth-
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Fidler, William Perry. Augusta Evans Wilson 1835-1909:
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Foster, Frank Hugh. The Modern Movement in American Theol-
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Foster, Richard. "The Contemporaneity of William Dean
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Fox, Arnold B. "Howells As a Religious Critic,"'NewEng-
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Gardener, Helen H. Men, Women and Gods and Other Essays.
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Hackett, Alice Payne. 60 Years of Best-Sellers 1895-1955.
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412

Hochfield, George. Henry Adams: An Introduction and In-
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Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought.
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Hudson, Winthrop S. American Protestantism. Chicago,
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Johnson, George W. "Harold Frederic's Young Goodman Ware:
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Kirk, Clara M. "Reality and Actuality in the March Family
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Kirk, Clara M. and Rudolf. "Howells and the Church of the
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413

Levenson, J. C. The Mind and Art of Henry Adams. Boston,
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Loewenberg, Bert James. "The Controversy Over Evolution
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Lynn, Kenneth S. William Dean Howells: An American Life.
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MacMurray, William J. "The Concept of Complicity in
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. The Literary Realism of William Dean Howells.
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Martin, Jay. Harvests of Change: American Literature
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Marty, Martin E. The Infidel: Freethought and American
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415

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Stevenson, Elizabeth. Henry Adams: A Biography. New
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Suderman, Elmer F. "Skepticism and Doubt in Late Nine-
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. "The Damnation of Theron Ware As a Criticism
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Terrien, Samuel. "History of the Interpretation of the
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Turaj, Frank. "The Social Gospel in Howells' Novels,"
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Utley, George B. "Celia Parker Woolley," Dictionaryof
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Vanderbilt, Kermit. The Achievement of William Dean
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Van Doren, Carl. The American Novel 1789-1939. New York,
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Wagenknecht, Edward. William Dean Howells: The Friendly
Eye. New York, 1969.

 

Warren, Sydney. American Freethought, 1860-1914. New
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416

Washburn, Adelaide. "Helen Hamilton Gardener," in Notable
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Willard, Frances E. and Mary A. Livermore. A Woman of the
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Woolley, Celia Parker. The Western Slopg. Evanston, Ill.,
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Ziff, Larzer. The American 1890's: Life and Times of a
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III. Unpublished Material

 

Carey, Ralph Allison. "Best-Selling Religion: A History
of POpular Religious Thought in America as Reflected
in Religious Best-Sellers 1850-1960." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University,
1971.

Suderman, Elmer F. "Religion in the American Novel 1870-
1900." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Kansas, 1961.

Taylor, James W. "The Swedenborgianism of W. D. Howells,"
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Illinois, 1969.

Turner, John Mills, Jr. "The Response of Major American
Writers to Darwinism, 1859-1910." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1944.

 

I)! .r. 4.4! i ll.