ENGL 3653: English Literature II

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Study Guide 6: Carlyle, Newman, Mill

Nonfiction Prose Writers of the Victorian Period

Revised 2-15-07

“The Victorian Age: 1830-1901”

1. The dates of the Victorian Age in your textbook (1830-1901) are misleading. What are the actual dates of the reign of Queen Victoria?
2. What is the significance of the First Reform Bill? When was it passed?
3. Why is the early Victorian period called a “Time of Troubles”?
4. The main social and economic changes of the Victorian period resulted from England's being the first country to undergo what change?
5. The primary controversy in mid-Victorian prose and poetry was between what two fields of knowledge?

“Prose”

1. What kinds of writing does your textbook include under the heading of “nonfictional prose”? Which of the readings in today’s assignment are nonfictional prose?

2. What other kind of prose writing was prominent in the Victorian Period?

Forces Undermining Christian Faith

One of the most important phenomena affecting Victorian society and literature was the erosion of traditional Christian faith. Several of the most important forces that tended to undermine Christian faith are listed below. Identify each item and explain how it undermined belief in Christianity.

1. Utilitarianism (not to be confused with Unitarianism), led by Jeremy Bentham

and James Mill

2. “Higher Criticism” of the Bible
3. Geology and astronomy
4. Biology

a. Darwin=s The Origin of Species (1859): natural selection

b. Darwin=s The Descent of Man (1871): human evolution

c. T. H. Huxley=s popularization of Darwin

Movements Opposing Utilitarianism and Materialism

In reaction, various movements opposed the materialism inherent in Utilitarianism. Two of these anti-Utilitarian forces were

• Thomas Carlyle’s spiritual values not based on Christianity (vitalism)
• John Henry Newman’s Oxford Movement, also called Tractarianism (not to be confused with Trinitarianism); this High Church movement emphasized church authority and ritual

Thomas Carlyle

Background for Sartor Resartus

Like many other Victorian thinkers and writers, Carlyle grew up in the Christian faith but lost his faith by the time he was a young adult. Although he could no longer rationally accept Christianity, he retained a strong interest in moral values and was disgusted with the materialism of the times (Utilitarianism and other “anti-soul” forces).

Sartor Resartus, Carlyle’s first important book and perhaps his greatest, was published in 1833-34 in serials in Fraser=s Magazine.

1. What does the Latin phrase “sartor resartus” literally mean?

Carlyle’s “Clothes Philosophy” is a metaphor that explains humans’ need for spirituality even when they can no longer believe in organized religions:

• Carlyle believed the physical or material world is like a garment that clothes the indwelling spirit of the universe.
• Similarly, human institutions (such as the Christian church) clothe the human spirit. These institutions are like garments that may get worn out and need to be replaced.

2. How does the title Sartor Resartus relate to Carlyle’s “Clothes Philosophy”?

Prose style: The prose style of Sartor Resartus is difficult, rough, even outlandish, with shifts of tone. Carlyle deliberately wrote the book this way to make it sound like an English translation of German. He even follows the German practice of capitalizing nouns.

Narrator: The fictional narrator of Sartor Resartus is an English editor who is trying to explain the philosophy of an eccentric German professor, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. After the professor’s mysterious disappearance, a friend of the narrator has supposedly sent the narrator a manuscript in which the professor recorded his personal experiences.

Symbolism of professor=s name: The professor’s first and last names symbolize the dual nature of mankind.

3. What does his first name, Diogenes, mean?

4. What does his last name, Teufelsdröckh, mean?

5. Taken together, what do these names suggest about human nature?

According to Carlyle’s fiction, Teufelsdröckh was Professor of Things-in-General at the University of Nobody-Knows-Where. His special field of study was the philosophy of “clothes, their origin and influence.”

Book II of Sartor Resartus contains the biography of Teufelsdröckh, which Carlyle based on his own life. For this reason, Sartor Resartus is classified as nonfiction rather than fiction. In your assigned reading from Sartor Resartus, cite specific passages that reveal each of the following elements of the plot:

6. Teufelsdröckh is unable to win the woman he loves.
7. He wanders the world in sorrow.
8. He experiences a spiritual crisis because he wants to believe in religion but is unable to do so.
9. He is overwhelmed with the “EVERLASTING NO,” the accumulation of all the forces that keep him from embracing spiritual values and having meaning in his life.
10. To these negative forces, he says NO; he refuses to accept that life has no meaning.

Then, beyond your required reading, the professor looks for something positive to fill the void in his life (“The Center of Indifference”). He seeks the spirituality hidden underneath the worn-out clothing of human institutions. (Here’s more of Carlyle’s Clothes Philosophy.) Finally the professor experiences the “EVERLASTING YEA,” a positive assertion that, through work and courage, life has spiritual value and meaning.

* * *

The following information about Christianity in England is necessary to understand the life of the next writer, John Henry Newman. For extra credit, read and respond to “Religions in England, A73-A76, in the back of the textbook.

Christian Churches in Victorian England

Christians in Victorian England were organized into the following churches or groups of churches:

• Roman Catholic Church
• Church of England (Anglican Church; also called “Via Media,” or the “middle way” between Catholics and Protestants)
• Other Protestant churches (also called Nonconformists or Dissenters)

Church of England

Within the Church of England (Anglican Church) the following unofficial factions existed (and still exist today):

• Broad Church (Liberals, Rationalists)
• High Church (Anglo-Catholics)
• Low Church (Evangelicals; called “Puritans” by their detractors)

John Henry Newman

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

Written in response to the Rev. Charles Kingsley=s pamphlet AWhat Then Does Dr. Newman Mean?@ Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Adefense of his life@), published in 1864, explains the steps in his spiritual journey:

· As a young Anglican priest, Newman was briefly allied with the Broad Church. He concluded, however, that this theological position uses reason to determine matters of faith that are not rational.

· Then Newman became a leader of High Church Anglicans (the Oxford Movement). Newman is partly responsible for the High Church tendency in Anglicanism to this day.

· Finally, Newman converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845 and became a Catholic priest and later a cardinal. He thought the authoritarian teaching and papal infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church were necessary to guard against the erosion of religious faith. Catholic student centers at many universities today are named after Newman.

The Idea of a University

Newman contrasts two types of knowledge or education. In your reading, find each of the following pairs of contrasting terms, and explain the contrast.

Technical knowledge/education Liberal knowledge/education

1. useful/practical arts liberal arts

2. science philosophy

3. mechanical philosophical

4. particulars general ideas, universals

5. extrinsic value intrinsic value

6. external gain internal gain

7. instruction education

8. What connection do you see between Newman’s “liberal education” and the general-education curriculum at American colleges today?
9. What, according to Newman, is the value or purpose of a liberal education?
10. What, according to Newman, is NOT the purpose of a liberal education?

John Stuart Mill

Mill was a child prodigy. He was highly educated from a very young age through a personalized educational program designed by Jeremy Bentham and Mill’s father, James Mill, both of whom were leaders of the Utilitarians. John Stuart Mill’s family upbringing was emotionally cold, gloomy, and loveless.

1. What relationship do you see between Mill’s education and home life and the emotional crisis he describes in your reading from his Autobiography?

After experiencing an emotional or mental crisis at age 21, he saw the need for balance between two opposite positions in Victorian society:

• Jeremy Bentham and the Utilitarians, who were rational, practical, and radical (promoting reason)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who, in his later years, was imaginative, spiritual, and conservative (promoting emotion)

Of the two positions, however, Mill inclined more toward Coleridge.

Mill had vast knowledge and wrote many books, but he was an authority especially in two fields in which he wrote definitive books:

· Logic: System of Logic

· Economics: The Principles of Political Economy

Mill was also a political reformer. He was the first member of the British Parliament (and perhaps the first legislator anywhere in the world?) to offer legislation for women=s rights. He later wrote The Subjection of Women.

2. According to your textbook’s introduction to Mill, what does he argue in The Subjection of Women?

Autobiography

1. How did Mill come to feel that he had nothing to live for?
2. What experience was the turning point that led him out of his deep depression?
3. What did Mill decide is the way to achieve happiness?
4. How did Mill go about the “cultivation of the feelings,” which had been neglected in his upbringing and education?
5. What Romantic poet did Mill find it NOT helpful to read? Why?
6. What Romantic poet did Mill find it very helpful to read? Why?