Sentimental Novel: From Defoe to Richardson

Against the prevailing ideology (or philosophy) of the XVIIIth century –also called ‘The Age of Reason’, the epoch of the enlightenment, the time of the exaltation of the norm, science, logic, etc–,  the sentimental novel exalted feeling above reason. By doing so, it paved the way to the romanticism literature, becoming a forerunner of the gothic novel itself.

This fact does not imply that the sentimental novel was not a bourgeois genre, or that it did not serve the interests of the ideology of that social class that gave rise to the novel, or that it is not a realist genre; in my modest opinion, it was indeed a realist genre. Richardson, for example, responded to the concerns and needs of the middle classes, and used the language and the topics of the middle classes. But probably, the middle classes of the 1840s were more interested in intimate and human ‘transactions’ than in commercial transactions, that is, more interested in human relationships than in economic relations. Perhaps –and if it is allowed to add a note of sarcasm– people at this time had enough money and wealth and did not have to worry about those “materialistic” and “chrematistic” values. They finally had time for their sentiments, for human and private ‘transactions’. Their parents, the older generation, the Defoes and the novelists and middle classes of the early Augustan Age did probably not have so much time for this private and intimate “business”: they were too busy creating the economic and political establishment or system that their children –the new middle classes, the Richarsons, for instance– were now enjoying. In other words, the older generation had to spend all their time with, and based their novels on, economic and commercial transactions and, maybe not public or political affairs. To some kind of reading public, this change of topics make probably the sentimental novel more interesting than ‘the realist novel’ written in Defoe’s times. The next clip explains --even though it does it in Spanish-- what the sentimental novel is.

These observations are by no means intended to undervalue the sentimental novel. Neither are they intended to reduce the realist value of the sentimental novels written at that time. They shared with the rest of the realist novels not only style and content, but also a firm teaching purpose. As a matter of fact, they were welcomed by politicians, intellectuals and even clergymen as an ethical project, as a very efficient instrument for the sentimental education of the new society. The fact that they paved the way to the romantic rebellion of the following generation of artists and intellectuals is once again evidence of an undisputed truth: in each literary movement, trend, fashion... grows the seed of its overcoming or, sometimes, its destruction.

Samuel Richardson remains a vital figure in the history of the novel and of ideology. He initiates a discourse on sexual roles which, with all its ambiguities, is as important to nowadays’ reading public as it was in the mid-eighteenth century. His epistolary novel, Pamela (1740), was not a sudden innovation; novels in the form of letter were of fashion in France, and they had been popular for several decades, like Aphra Behn’s Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister. Richardson wanted to raise the tone of the literary works from the level of this kind of subject matter, and in doing so; he created a heroine for the times, a woman of feelings. Poor but virtuous, Pamela suffers a series of trials at the hands of Mr B, culminating in attempted rape. The contrast between female submission, which becomes a paragon of virtue and chastity admired by all in the novel, and male domination, with its implied sensuality, was immediately criticised as hypocritical, and parodied by Henry Fielding in Shamela.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Works Cited

Armstrong, Nancy. "The Rise of the Domestic Woman." Rpt. in The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse. New York: Methuen, 1987.
Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction : A Political History of the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press 1989, 1987.
Samuels, Shirley, ed. The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century England. New York : Oxford University Press, 1992. PS 217 S55 C85 1992.

Defoe's Realism versus Astell's Philosophy

The writings of Mary Astell present a unique but, until recently, largely forgotten intellectual female voice of late-seventeenth-century England –a voice significant to the European Enlightenment not only for its female perspective but for connecting seventeenth-century French rhetorical theory with the emerging philosophical and rhetorical developments of eighteenth-century Britain.

When Astell first began to publish in the 1690s, the Enlightenment ideals of rationality and empirical science were coming into vogue, and the intellectual center of Western Europe was in the process of shifting from France to London.  Ramus, Descartes, the Port Royalists, and Lamy were being read in their native tongue, translated to English, and appropriated by the British educated elite. The ideas of Whig philosopher and empiricist John Locke were gaining prestige in England. One of Mary Astell’s ideas is that marriage can be for money –as it was usual at the time– or for love –what is one of the newest sentimental features of the eighteenth century– which is supported by Tanya Evans in her article “Women, marriage and the family”.

In regard to her literary ties, the fact that Mary Astell was a source of inspiration for the ‘Group of the (16)90s’ is not an exception. The fact that she is a forerunner when she defines ‘marriage’ makes her being connected to authors who portrayed women such as Samuel Richardson or Daniel Defoe. Some scholars have considered Astell to be an anti-marriage author and a forerunner philosopher, but, maybe, they missed the idea that she was trying to support, education. Above all, Mary Astell is trying to defend education, and that is why she is against marriage, considering it a result of bad decisions done by uneducated women. In other words, due to the lack of education women marry and they let themselves to be slaves of their husbands. And it is precisely in this very complex axiom where Defoe and Astell share a female role.

Defoe’s Roxanna has no feelings and her coldness takes her to be practical and cautious. Roxanna does not consider marriage as a love agreement –as Tanya Evan supports as one of the ‘new’ reasons to get married at this time, in her article “Women, marriage and the family”– but as a power relation. Roxanna creates a verbal battle –a kind of game– which paves the path to Richardson’s Clarissa.

Although, Defoe is still influenced by the Puritan ideas that Mary Astell does not support. His Roxana’s sin has been to appreciate money and not the effort and hard work which have gone into amassing it: Roxanna’s death as a penitent affirms the Puritan ethic which she has spent her life transgressing. She is not the role-model for the woman of her time –the one that Tanya Evans affirms as the new woman of the time that is Mary Astell herself– because she is adventurous and pleasure-loving. It is not long before the novel provides a ‘complete’ female role-model in the work of Samuel Richardson.

'The Duchess' and women in the eighteenth century

At the end of the seventeenth century, Robert Burton said that England was “a Paradise for women and [a] hell for horses”. At first sight it is not easy to understand where the incongruity of this statement is, until one realises that women and horses were both living according to the way in which their masters wanted them to live. Evidently, some women did not find England such a paradise as men like Burton believed. In regards to this fact, scholars like Tanya Evans, in her article “Women, marriage and the family” stated that, even after ‘Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753’, which transformed marriage into a contract,

women continued to be defined as the property of their husbands and at no time during this period was the sexual double standard threatened. The adultery of a woman was always treated with more severity than that of a man. (64)

(Eighteenth-century typical woman)

This connects with the movie The Duchess or, generally speaking, with the story of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, an English aristocrat who married at a young age and suffers a variety of struggles in her marriage.

The movie, focused on her marriage to William Cavendish and on the crisis point of Georgiana’s affair with Charles, second Earl Grey, can be compared to Daniel Defoe’s Roxanna and the philosophical writings of Mary Astell, paying attention to the situation of women during the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries.

Right from the beginning one appreciates in Georgiana values such as youth, joy and naivety when she is told by her mother that she is going to get married. Such values would not be values for a character like Roxanna or for Mary Astell; both of them support experience and empirical knowledge as one of the only weapons that women can hold against oppression.

Some of the moments of the film let the audience to compare between Georgiana herself and her mother, for instance, when Georgiana’s mother told her to have patience, fortitude and resignation. This kind of values are important in order to understand Defoe’s Roxanna, because these are the type of qualities that a experienced woman has to understand –but not tolerate– in order to be integrated into society.

Finally, it is important to highlight Georgiana’s change in her way of being –and above all, of acting– when she realises that her husband only wants her in order to have a male heir. It’s then when the Duchess became more active, practical and decisive. This new female role is more similar to the one supported by Mary Astell in her essay “Some reflections upon marriage”.

Jonathan Swift: A multiple life, multiple perspective

Apart from being part of the “Scriblerus Club”, Jonathan Swift was a clergyman and one of the most important figures in literature. His satirical way of writing is probably the axis and the zenith of a mixture of roles that he played throughout his life: orphan, Anglo-Irish, misogynist, misanthropist … Some scholars have also supported the importance of his orphanage as the reason of his problematic sexual life, which is portrayed in fragments from Gulliver’s Travels where one can notice disgusting descriptions of women or scatological themes.

(Customhouse, Trinity College, Dublin)

In regards to his education, it is important to state that Swift had a formal education (Kilkenny School and Trinity College in Dublin) and that, when he decided to move to England, he became Sir William Temple’s secretary. Temple was one of the political Whig leaders and he played the role of father. Temple put the embryo of politics within Swift’s ideas, he also had access to Temple’s library in Moor Park.

(Moor Park, nowadays)

In this new setting, Swift met Esther Johnson –his famous ‘Stella’–. After meeting her, there will other two important women in his life: ‘Varina’ and ‘Vanessa’. Although he had very good relationships with these girl-friends, Sift never married; but the relationships with these girls influenced his literature almost as much as his political inclinations.

The political inclinations of Swift varied throughout his life. At the beginning of his life, he was influenced by Temple, and after living together ten years, when Temple died, Swift asked the British government for a reduction of taxes for Ireland, which was denied. This disappointment led him to be very critical of humans and to show this criticism in his writing. This is also related to the fact that Swift was a religious person. His general dislike of people is explained in the metaphor ‘humans are rationes capas’.

His writing career started with A Modest Proposal (1713), which satirically presented Irish people making a living for selling their children and their kidneys. Even though it was presented –and also understood– as a real proposal, his use of the cannibalistic metaphor symbolizes a mock on the English taxes over Ireland. Another critical approach refers to the comparison of the Irish and the American natives as an unprotected minority.

According to some his aims in writing, Swift dared to mock authority figures and criticise society in general, with ever-increasing venom. Following this pattern, his masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is a severe attack on the political parties of the time, and on the pointlessness of religious controversial differences between Deism, Catholicism...

St. Patrick's Day 2012: Disembodied Voice

The National Geographic News journalist, John Roach, tells us some interesting details in his log. Among them, we find the next review.

According to folklore, a voice came to Patrick in his dreams, telling him to escape. He found passage on a pirate ship back to Britain, where he was reunited with his family.

The voice then told him to go back to Ireland.

"He gets ordained as a priest from a bishop, and goes back and spends the rest of his life trying to convert the Irish to Christianity," Freeman said.

Patrick's work in Ireland was tough—he was constantly beaten by thugs, harassed by the Irish royalty, and admonished by his British superiors. After he died on March 17, 461, Patrick was largely forgotten.

But slowly, mythology grew around Patrick, and centuries later he was honored as the patron saint of Ireland, Freeman noted.

International Women's Day 2012

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/theme.asp

"Each year around the world, International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8. Thousands of events occur not just on this day but throughout March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Organisations, governments, charities and women's groups around the world choose different themes each year that reflect global and local gender issues."

The Science of Deduction -- why not 'seduction'?

The next sample is just one of the cases that one can enjoy in Sherlock Holmes Cases E-Files -- so good!

The Green Ladder




Background: End of last year, Sir Harry Downing died. Left the house to the older son, Jack. House to stay in the family though - it was to go to Keith, the younger brother, if Jack died without having any kids.

Last month: Jack found dead in the garden pond. He'd no reason to kill himself but no signs of a struggle. High level of alcohol in his bloodstream. Looks like a tragic accident. Looks like Keith gets the house.

When Arthur Conan Doyle started to blog!

BBC has achieved an enourmour success with its series Sherlock. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle's works, the series changes the setting of the original stories and frames them into the 2010 London: blackberries, iphones, and BLOGS are part of the way Sherlock fights against Professor Moriarty.

http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/

http://www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk/forum/page5