The City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson

Edition: The City of Dreadful Night (Dodo Press)
PUBLICATION HISTORY:
The City of Dreadful Night is a long poem by Scottish poet James Thomson. It was first published in four parts by The National Reformer in 1874. The National Reformer was a radical, secular periodical; under editor Charles Bradlaugh, also the president and co-founder of the atheistic National Secular Society, the publication was prosecuted for blasphemy and sedition.

SUMMARY:
The poem is made up of 21 Cantos and a proem; these sections vary widely in form.
Proem: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. The proem begins with the speaker quoting Titus Andronicus: "Lo, thus, as prostrate, 'In the dust I write / My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears.'" The speaker asks why it matters to write in such a hopeless position, and answers, "Because it gives some sense of power and passion / In helpless innocence to try to fashion / Our woe in living words howe'er uncouth." The speaker makes clear that he is not writing for the "hopeful young," those who find happiness valuable, those who find material pleasures on earth, or the pious who believe in God. This is a poem for those whose faith and hope are dead. Yet, there is value in this: a "fellowship" or a "sad [f]raternity" in this faithless, hopeless condition.
Canto I: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. Canto I describes the landscape surrounding the city, which is bleak, black, and wild. The city is compared to a necropolis, where occasionally there are mourners wandering. These people are characterized by their immense solitude and isolation: "They often murmur to themselves, they speak / To one another seldom, for their woe / Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak / Itself abroad..." Their only anodyne is the "certitude of Death."
Canto II: Verse form: ababcc in iambic pentameter. Here the speaker follows someone in the city, though they do not speak with each other. The speaker describes the man stopping before a tomb where his faith died, a villa where his love died, and a house where his hope died. He asks the man, "Where Faith and Love and Hope are dead indeed, / Can life still live? By what doth it proceed?" The answer is cryptic, telling the speaker to take a watch and erase its face, suggesting that despite this action time will continue, bereft of purpose. In the end, the speaker stops following him, and realizes that this figure was circling this same path forever.
Canto III: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. This canto describes sights and sounds the dark: shades, shadows, spectres, breathings, muffled throbs, murmurs--all indefinite, amorphous things.
Canto IV: Verse form: with the exception of the first stanza, abbccddee with repeating lines at the beginning and end of each stanza. The first stanza describes a man (John the Baptist?) standing alone in a "spacious square" gesturing but this stanza is truncated with a dash. What comes after are a series of stanzas with the man repeatedly beginning, "As I came through the desert thus it was, / As I came through the desert: [varying words here]" and ending with the certainty of "But [or Yet] I strode on austere; / No hope could have no fear." The experiences between these repeating lines are terrifying images: enormous things, clanking wings, jaws of death, sharp claws, swift talons, serpents, thunderbolts, and so on. Near the end of the canto, he sees a female figure with a red lamp that seems beautiful: this stanza ends differently with "I fell as on my bier, / Hope travailed with such fear." The cantos continue to break form as far as the last lines go, narrating the story of how the speaker divides into two selves, one "corpse-like" who encounters the woman, and one "vile," watching the scene. The woman's red lamp turns out to be her bleeding heart, which drops blood onto the narrator's "white brow." She carries the corpse away as the other "vile" self watches. 
Canto V: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. The speaker asks how an unnamed "he" arrives into the city and doesn't have an answer. This canto abstractedly tells how "he" might have "sweet babes and loving wife," :home of peace by loyal friendships cheered," yet has to "dree his weird" (surrender to his fate), suggesting ultimately that even these are meaningless?
Canto VI: Verse form: first two stanzas in ababcc in iambic pentameter, breaks into aaa, bbb, ccc...for the rest of the canto. The speaker watches the bridge lamps by the river side, hearing voices without bodies talking. At this point the verse breaks and he begins to tell a story of reaching the gates of hell, where he finds that he needs to pay the toll of hope. He doesn't have any hope to pay and watches other spirits "casting off hope" and entering. He can't even gain the certainty of hell, so he resolves: "With care through all this Limbo's dreary scope, / We yet may pick up some minute lost hope; / And sharing it between us, entrance win."
Canto VII: Verse form: ababcccb in iambic pentameter. This canto briefly and abstractly expresses uncertain and strange images of phantoms, mad men, and "unsexed skeletons."
Canto VIII:  Verse form: varying, ababcc--> shortening to 4 and 3 line stanzas. The speaker witnesses two people conversing about the indifference of fate and whether it was better to be their "miserable selves" or "He, / Who formed such creatures to His own disgrace." One of the people concludes: "The world rolls round for ever like a mill; / It grinds out death and life and good and ill; / It has no purpose, heart or mind or will."
Canto IX: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. Three short stanzas give the image of a "Fate-appointed hearse," which bears away "the joy, the peace, the life-hope, the abortions / Of all things good which should have been our portions / But have been strangled by that City's curse."
Canto X: Verse form: ababcc in iambic pentameter, switches to 3 line unrhymed stanzas when speaker switches. The speaker describes a mansion which he enters, pacing "from room to room, from hall to hall." He discovers pictures, statues, and busts of "A woman very young and very fair," and then reaches an oratory where a young man is kneeling before the "lady of the images" who is herself "supine, / Deathstill, lifesweet." The youth murmurs a prayer of eternal grief.
Canto XI: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentamter. This short canto describes the type of men (a group to which the speaker belongs), who have give up hope and their strange fraternity. "They are most rational and yet insane," they know no faith or hope but in this shared melancholy there is a kind of brotherhood. The speaker says, radically, that this kind of brotherhood has no basis "in rank and wealth and power." There are poor men who have given up hope and faith as well as rich men.  
Canto XII: Verse form: varying. Here, the speaker continues on the same themes from the last canto. He begins with the question: "Our isolated units could be brought / To act together for some common end?" In trying to forge a kind of community out of these pessimistic, isolated individuals, all walking towards a cathedral together, the speaker repeatedly affirms the "reality" of their beliefs: the stanzas repeatedly reject various earthly pursuits from hedonism to writing poetry and political revolutions, and conclude instead, "I wake from daydreams to this real night."
Canto XIII: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. Continuing with the same theme, the speaker further consolidates this brotherhood of those who have given up on life and embraced its meaninglessness. He argues against those who complain that life is too short; instead, his brotherhood affirms: "WE do not ask for a longer term of strife...We yearn for speedy death in full fruition, / Dateless oblivion and divine repose."
Canto XIV: Verse form: ababcc in iambic pentameter. The speaker describes the brotherhood assembled within the cathedral to hear a sermon, negating traditional forms of worship: "And all was hush: no swelling organ-strain / No chant, no voice or murmuring of prayer; / No priests came forth, no tinkling censers fumed, / And the high altar space was unillumed." The sermon begins, and though the orator's message is bleak, he is described positively as "steadfast" and passionate. His words, furthermore, are real: "And now at last authentic word I bring," he says, "This little life is all we must endure." There is a comforting definitiveness to the "countless interactions interknit," that "Not all the world could change or hinder..." The sermon ends with the assertion that it would be okay to commit suicide.
Canto XV: Verse form ababccb in iambic pentameter. This short canto observes how the city is dense with thoughts, even if unspoken.
Canto XVI: Verse form: Varying, between ababcc and four line abab. In the congregation, a man speaks out, lamenting how they are offered only one chance of life. The sermon-giver replies: "My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus; / This life itself holds nothing good for us, / But ends soon and nevermore can be; / And we knew nothing of it ere our birth / And shall know nothing when consigned to earth: / I ponder these thoughts and they comfort me."
Canto XVII: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. This canto basically affirms "The empyrean is a void abyss," though men would like to read in the heavens pity or divinity.
Canto XVIII: Verse form ababcc in iambic pentameter. The speaker comes upon a prostrate, grotesque figure on a path that he ventures down. The figure is a man who tells him how, in vain, he looks for a "lost thread of gold" "which unites my present with my past." The description of this figure corresponds closely with Blake's pictorial representation of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King whose pride led to his degeneration into animal behavior, and whom Blake associated with apocalyptic times.
Canto XIV: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. These stanzas describe the River of Suicides that flows through the city. The speaker ponders why people remain "actors and spectators" in this life.
Canto XX: Verse form: ababcc in iambic pentameter. The speaker beholds a stone sphinx and a stone angel. A warrior strikes down the angel but is prostrate and impotent before the sphinx. The warrior actually shatters himself before the vision of the sphinx, which seems "of infinite void space."
Canto XXI: Verse form: ababccb in iambic pentameter. There really aren't women in Thomson's text, though the final two cantos end with mysterious female figures that he seems to align with the blankness of eternity. The final stanza describes Durer's "Melencolia." The figure of melancholy is "the City's sombre Patroness and Queen," who gazes forth much like the sphinx.

CRITICAL APPROACHES/ANALYSIS: 
James Thomson, the son of a Scottish sailor crippled by a stroke, was from humble origins but won significant literary recognition later in his life. Earlier in his career, Thomson's writings criticized middle-class, bourgeois values; his essays for The National Reformer in the 1860s earned him a place amongst other politically radical figures like Bradlaugh and literary figures like Swinburne. The City of Dreadful Night is often considered in conjunction with his all-consuming melancholy and depression later in life but nevertheless the political undertones are apparent. For one, numerous references to Milton and Blake overtly suggest a genealogy of political radicalism. Thomson, however, goes farther than any other political radical has before, in his vision of a "fraternity" based on pessimism, atheism, and looking forward to nothing but the certainty of death. Nonetheless, this radical community responds actively to other Victorian imaginings of community. Thomson's community, of course, is overtly not political; rather it transcends any sort of community which engages in life on earth. Yet, Thomson's fraternity can't help but to share some vocabularies from other Victorian imaginings of community. In a way, Thomson seems to embody Arnoldian Victorian liberalism taken to its logical extreme: Arnold thought that "culture" was a way of transcending social class--rich or poor doesn't matter as long as the individual tried to cultivate his "best self." Thomson rejects "culture," consigning it to the same status as any another unreal social imagining. Like Arnold's cultural community, though, Thomson's nihilistic fraternity finds a kind of triumph in its ability to transcend social status and achieve a kind of radical leveling: mental suffering is something that anyone, rich or poor, might engage in.

Money by Edward Bulwer Lytton

Edition: Money: A Comedy in Five Acts : As Performed at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket
PUBLICATION HISTORY:
Money (1840) along with The Lady of Lyons (1838) are his most successful plays. Money was first produced at the Theater Royal on December 8, 1840 and at the Old Park Theater in New York on February 1, 1841.

SUMMARY:
Act I: The play opens with Sir John Vesey discussing with his daughter Georgina the matter of a her Uncle Mordaunt's will, which will be read to them in the afternoon. Sir John expects that Georgina will be the primary heiress of Mordaunt's India fortune, and decides to tell his daughter a "secret"--that her father wasn't very rich. Indeed, Sir John's precepts are: "First, men are not valued for what they are but what they seem to be. Secondly, if you have no merit or money of your own, you must trade on the merits and money of other people." Eventually, the relations pour in--Lady Franklin (sister to Sir John) and Clara (a poor orphan cousin), Evelyn (a poor scholar cousin that many of them exploit the services of), Sir Frederick Blount (a "man of fashion" who pronounces his r's as w's), Benjamin Stout (a "great political economist"), and Lord Glossmore. With the exception of Evelyn, Clara, and Lady Franklin, they all eagerly expect to gain from the will. Evelyn reveals that his old nurse is dying, and needs charity;  Sir John wiggles out of this but Georgina takes down her name and address, thinking that she would give the money if she ends up being an heiress. The poor Clara immediately plans to help Evelyn anonymously. In conversation, Evelyn reveals that he loves Clara, but she refuses him because she doesn't want to worsen the burden of their mutual poverty. As Stout and Glossmore come in, they demonstrate the hypocrisy in their "liberal" principles--Stout embodying reform bill views of the poor as "ignorant," and Glossmore refusing to give to the poor because he thinks it good to force the parish to do so. Mr. Graves, the executor (whose tyrannical wife has died and who now goes around talking about her as a saint), and the lawyer, Mr. Sharp, arrive and read the will. Mordaunt insults them all (for example, leaving Sir John the empty bottles of "Cheltenham water" Sir John had sent to win his favor), and leave Evelyn most of his fortune. To herself, Clara thinks that her hopes of marrying Evelyn are even less, as she would not want to bring him down.

Act II: Painters, architects, horse dealers, silversmiths, and tailors all want to do business with Evelyn. Stout and Glossmore push Evelyn to support their candidates in a local election (Stout's candidate is for the "enlightenment" and Glossmore's for "the constitution"--Evelyn mocks their empty rhetoric). In conversation with Sharp, Evelyn laments the world's hypocrisies, and confesses his failed love with Clara. He thinks maybe he should marry Georgina, and thinks that it is probably her who gave the money to his nurse. He nevertheless pretends that there was a codicil in the will leaving twenty-thousand pounds to Clara to take care of her. Clara talks to Lady Franklin about Evelyn--she is proud and doesn't allow Lady Franklin to tell Evelyn she gave the money to his nurse because she says, "he would have guessed it had his love been like mine." Meanwhile, Lady Franklin has designs on Graves, successfully jolting out of his miserable demeanor by making him laugh. Sir John schemes to get Georgina married to Evelyn, hinting to others that there has been a prior attachment. Thus Blount, who has previously wanted  to court Georgina, goes after Clara and asks Evelyn to help him. Misunderstanding each other, Evelyn and Clara both try to make each other jealous--Evelyn attending to Georgina, and Clara to Blount. Sir John has Evelyn look at Georgina's drawings (which include a portrait of Evelyn) and tells Evelyn it is Georgina who sent money to his nurse. Overcome, Evelyn offers marriage to Georgina (though admitting, that it is more "esteem" and "gratitude" and not the same love that he has borne for another). Clara overhears, and falls into a chair, though wishes him happiness.

Act III: Georgina is still in love with Frederick, but Sir John pushes the union. Craftily, he sends Clara out of town with one Mrs. Carlton, aunt to his late wife--she agrees because Sir John has hinted that everyone had been gossiping about her attachment to Evelyn and so he was acting nobly in the interests of his own daughter. Evelyn finds Clara by herself, and Clara attempts a reconciliation, as friends. Clara expresses some concern that Evelyn has been engaging in follies of wealth lately; he in return reveals that he has been engaging in luxury and folly because he thought she had rejected him due to his poverty. They remain not completely reconciled, Clara leaving him to Georgina in hopes that he will be happy, and Evelyn deeming her "Let us part friends" as cruel. Evelyn thinks, however, that it seems she loves him since she's interested in her fate. Graves tells Evelyn that Clara has rejected Frederick, and that he sees Georgina with Frederick at times. He also tells him that Sir John is concerned about his gambling, and Evelyn hatches a plan to have Sir John watch him lose money so that Sir John might give him up as well. Meanwhile Lady Franklin advances in her plan to get Graves to fall in love with her. Evelyn whispers a plan to a fellow gambler, Dudley Smooth, and it appears to Sir John that Evelyn loses at least fifteen-thousand pounds to Smooth.

Act IV: To further make it look like he is on the brink of ruin, Evelyn asks Blount, Glossmore, and Sir John if he may borrow money from them. Additionally, he asks Georgina if she might let him have the ten-thousand pounds that she was to inherit from her uncle Mordaunt, and suggests to her that they may have to live in the country and "confine [them]selves to a modest competence." At a dinner at Evelyn's, Evelyn asks his "friends" if they think he has spent his money well. They flatter him that he has. A number of messengers come in, including a sheriff, informing Evelyn that he has debts to settle on extravagances that he has purchased; Graves agrees to lend Evelyn 150 pounds. As Blount, Glossmore, Stout, Sir John and Georgina all prepare to leave, Evelyn suddenly presents dinner and abruptly asks if they might lend ten pounds for his nurse. They all fall back, and he scolds them for being willing to lend him much more money, before, for his extravagances but not now much less for charity. Evelyn sends them all away, and retains his truer friends around him--Graves and Smooth.

Act V: Evelyn means to test Georgina to see if she will help him out with her ten-thousand pounds; meanwhile, Clara hears from Graves that the codicil bequeathing her money was made up. She (accompanied by Lady Franklin) plans  to Evelyn's side. Meanwhile, Evelyn has decided to run for the local election himself, making it seem like he is doing it to avoid going to jail. Evelyn is soon surprised by the news that Georgina is willing to bail him out (from a letter), so he resigns himself to renew the engagement because she is true. Moments after, Clara rushes in, confesses her love for him and explains her past behavior. Evelyn is moved, but says it is too late. When Sir John and Georgina arrive, it is revealed that Georgina has not sent the letter and that it is Clara, once again. Furthermore, Georgina has been engaged to Blount--Sir John is at first horrified, because he has since found out that Evelyn has been faking his ruin. The play ends happily with Evelyn and Clara are reconciled, Georgina and Blount betrothed, and Lady Franklin and Graves also betrothed.

CRITICAL APPROACH/ANALYSIS:

The Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton though generally unknown to modern audiences, was an imposing and influential figure in Victorian literature and politics. He wrote a number of popular novels as well as poetry. In the realm of drama, Bulwer-Lytton also met with writerly success, and additionally was involved in the politics of the Victorian theater. Bulwer-Lytton (in his position as an MP) sought to give writers more rights to their plays, to do away with the Covent Garden and Drury Lane duopoly, and to relax the strict censorship rules under Lord Chamberlain. (Source: Mitchell biography)

Money is pretty standard as far as the historical conventions of comedy go: it pokes fun at social ills and manners, and it ends with the three marriages in which everyone is in the "right" couple. One of the more interesting aspects of the play for me was that its treatment of the topic of "money" isn't one that merely indicates the expected "money corrupts" or "one shouldn't be greedy or materialistic." In fact, Evelyn is a character that money can't seem to corrupt--even when he is being extravagant, he is only performing extravagance either to impress Clara or to trick Sir John, Blount, Glossmore, and Stout. Evelyn is oddly devoid of the desire to consume or purchase things: at the beginning of Act II in which people go to his house to try to get him to buy their wares or services, Evelyn shows that he is so far outside the logic of consumption that he doesn't even look at what is offered, he might agree to buy just so he may rid himself of the individuals pestering him. Yet his strange exemption from the influences of the market doesn't quite make him a hero: if he had not come by his fortune, he would have likely ended up as poorly as Clara's father, who, as Clara says to Evelyn "was poor--generous; gifted, like you, with genius--ambition; sensitive, like you..." and yet he met with "struggle...humiliation...the early death." Through no merit of his own, Evelyn ends up okay because he gets money. Furthermore, though Evelyn ends up being the moral compass of the story in that he reveals the hypocrisy of others in relation to money, he is only able to conduct such revelations because he has inherited money. At the beginning of the play, he is abject, and resigned to being at the beck and call of others and only allowed here and there to create dramatic irony by inserting a snarky comment. The play's ending reflects the irony of Evelyn's morality's dependence on money: when Graves says, "But for the truth and the love, when found, to make us tolerably happy, we should not be without--" each of the characters fill their answers (good health, good spirits, a good heart, an innocent rubber, congenial tempers, etc.), Evelyn ending with "And--plenty of money!" Evelyn is aware that money is needed for him to live life according to the moral principles that he believes in, even while he is independent from it as far as the usual desires for buying and consuming go.    

Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Edition: Aurora Leigh (Oxford World's Classics)
PUBLICATION HISTORY:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epic novel-poem (she herself, when conceiving it called it "a sort of novel poem") was published late in her career, in 1856. It met with significant success. Aurora Leigh was begun soon after Barrett Browning had published Casa Guidi Windows, political reflections on the Italian Risorgimento.

SUMMARY:
First Book: In first person, Aurora Leigh tells us that she is writing for her own uses, and that she is still young. She begins with her mother: "I write. My mother was a Florentine." Her mother died when she was four, and her father (a scholar, and not as good as her mother at raising and loving a child) took her to live in the mountains, where she remembers worshipping a portrait of her mother. Her father learns to love and his advice to her just before he too dies is to "Love, my child, love, love!" She is bereft of both parents by the time she was just thirteen. She then tells of being sent to England to live with her father's sister, who is strict and constraining: "A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage." She receives an English education for girls, which rather cramps her style (Aurora Leigh critiques the conduct books of the Victorian era). She is furthermore disappointed with the English natural landscape, which is hedged in, trimmed, and less free than the nature that she is used to in Italy: "A nature tamed / And grown domestic like a barn-door fowl." Yet she maintains her resilience, catching moments of "Life" from nature, and from her own thoughts. She tells of how the world of books were rather dangerous for a child --  after all, "The world of books is still the world, I write." She eventually learns to love England as she discovers poetry, idolizing Romantic poets like Keats who were young but old with respect to their soul. Like the first generation Romantics like Wordsworth, she privileges a child's guileless appreciation of nature.

Second Book: As a teen, she plays at being a poet, haughtily trying on a crown of ivy. She is caught by her cousin Romney, who playfully says he has seen her "to be a woman also." He tells her that the profession of poet is not for women, saying at best "You write as well...and ill..upon the whole / As other women. If as well, what then?"He argues that she has not seen enough of the world to know it, and says that in the modern age there is enough ill to contend with in the world to deal with abstractions. Thus begins Romney and Aurora's deep rivalry which will define the rest of the "epic." Aurora argues that it is her truncated English education for girls that makes her know not enough of the world: "A woman's always younger than a man / At equal years, because she is disallowed / Maturing by the outdoor sun and air." When Romney proposes to her that day, Aurora rejects him because it's a proposal that she believes asks her to merely be a complement to man. Her aunt chides her and tells her that she won't get an inheritance unless she marries Romney - Aurora's uncle, Romney's father, apparently made a deal so that she could be included in the Leigh line if she married Romney (out of kindness, since the law customarily disallowed half-foreign inheritors). When her aunt dies, her last wishes are for the cousins to marry so that Aurora might get some of the money. This does not happen, and the cousins go their separate ways; Romney to do practical work against the ills of the world, Aurora to devote herself to art via poetry.

Third Book: Aurora labors at poetry, and gains success insofar as winning some acclaim: she receives many letters from admirers and critics. Vincent Carrington, a friend from the time that she was with Romney, is an artist (painter and sketcher) and sends her a letter detailing to her Romney's latest pursuits:   "Strange it is, / Such sudden madness seizing a young man / To make the earth over again, - while I'm content / To make the pictures." Aurora finds that the attention from the public meant that she needed to work harder for something greater than "frivolous fame." She resolves to work for "better ends." She works on in her poetry and since "In England no one lives by verse that lives" she makes her living instead from writing for "cyclopedias, magazines, and weekly papers," learning to use the editorial "we" in review, and wrote tales: these writings were just so she could have "breathing room / for body and verse." She gains one day a visit from Lady Waldemar, an young widow of high connections who loves Romney. Aurora is haughty towards her at first, until she warns her that Romney's exertions are leading him to a fall, unless he makes a marriage which will save him. Lady Waldemar then tells Aurora that Romney wants to make a match with one Marian Erle, "a child of the poor" for political principles and asks if Aurora would meet her and then perhaps influence Romney against it. Aurora meets with Marian, who tells Aurora her story. Marian had been born in a hut. Her father and mother had to move around a lot with odd jobs here and there, but despite such deprivations, she early on felt that there was a "grand, blind Love" coming from heaven. She was able to catch fragments of reading here and there, in her words: "If a flower / Were thrown you out of heaven at intervals, / You'd soon attain to a trick of looking up." One day her mother sold her to a squire and she ran away. She fainted in a ditch, and was rescued and taken to a hospital. The institution cared for her but once she was well they turned her out and she had nowhere to go. Romney found her there though, and sent her to work at a sempstress house.

Fourth Book: Marian's story continues into the fourth book. A sempstress named Lucy was dying and though others are kind of callous about it, Marian leaves her work to be at Lucy's bedside. There she encounters Romney again and he proposes to her so that they may be "fellow-workers." The account is a mix of Marian's words mediated by Aurora; Aurora "cannot render right / Her quick gesticulation, wild yet soft." Marian's voice tells of how she is not afraid to submit to Romney, and this provides a counterpoint to Aurora's independence. Marian recognizes that her submission is because of her class and comparative lack of opportunity. Romney comes in and he and Aurora converse (Marian is not involved in their dialogue). They rehearse the same conflict from before. Romney says of he and Marian: "We two who are not poets, when to wed / Requires less mutual love than common love." The cousins part. On the wedding day, however, Marian leaves Romney at the altar. Aurora's descriptions of the poor people in the church are somewhat dehumanizing, but the portrait she paints of the gossipy gentry is not too flattering either. It seems that the two classes just can't mingle. Marian has written Romney a letter to explain herself: it seems that maybe Lady Waldemar has gotten to her, though it also seems like Aurora's question as to whether Romney loved her also affected her. She describes Aurora's question as one which "a mother asks / her babe, "You'll touch that star, you think?" Romney afterwards begins to concede some things to Aurora, just as she has conceded some things to him: he says that though as a poet removed from the world, she is like a shepherd-maiden "asleep i' the sun, her head upon her knees, / the flocks all scattered, - is more laudable / Than any sheep-dog trained imperfectly, / Who bites the kids through too much zeal." Aurora, however, proudly resents that he thinks her asleep. Romney takes leave telling her that Art has to stand upon the "lower life."

Fifth Book: Romney has clearly had an effect on Aurora, as this book begins: "Aurora Leigh, be humble." In the first part of this book, Aurora remakes her poetic philosophy. She muses on how true poets should not write for fame or even for reaching any one man. Poets should aspire to write to please God. Aurora is nevertheless bothered that she can't reach Romney. Further elucidating her growing philosophy, she says that she doesn't think that epics have died out in their time, but that "every age / Appears to souls who live in't (ask Carlyle) / Most unheroic." Poets should have a "double-vision" which accounts both for seeing things "comprehensively" and also "intimately deep." She sharply critiques (Tennyson's) focus on medieval times or other past ages. The modern poet ought to "Never flinch, / But still, unscrupulously epic, catch / Upon the burning lava of a song / The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted Age." She asks herself what form may be best, and answers that the spirit of a poem should be left to shape itself. She won't write plays, because they are too dependent on the audience. Finally, though, she admits that she misses human love (which fame is equal to), but asserts that it is better to hunger for "man's love" than to hunger for "God's truth." As far as the plot goes, she tells of going over to one Lord Howe's and hearing people talk about Romney marrying Lady Waldemar, and remarking whether he has lost his ideals. There, she encounters Lady Waldemar. Feeling this whole environment to be hostile to her poetic ideals, she decides to leave England for Italy, selling her father's books in order to raise enough money to do so.

Sixth Book: In Paris (on her way to Italy) Aurora Leigh muses on France, which unlike England, is a "poet of nations, who dreams on / And wails on (while the household goes to wreck) / For ever, after some ideal good." She begins to think about how scientists are better in some ways than poets in that they are not afraid to look at the ugly specimens as equally beautiful and interesting. Her account of what it means to be an artist still grows, to the point where she's making more concessions to Romney's way of life, though she still values the power of the word in addition to that of "phalansteries, material institutes, / The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries / Preferred by modern thinkers." Suddenly she sees Marian's face amidst the crowds, with a child in her arms. She assumes she is "damned" because of the child, but then berates herself for thinking the worst of Marian. She encounters Marian again at a marketplace selling flowers, and talks to her. Marian takes Aurora back to where she is living, and shows her the baby. At first,  Aurora assumes Marian's weaknesses have led to her seduction, and she berates Marian for taking joy in her child: "We make henceforth a cushion of our faults / To sit and practise easy virtues on?" Aurora thinks of the child as stolen redemption, in a sense that Marian shouldn't think that she is redeemed because she is a mother. Marian sets Aurora right (saying she was "murdered" and not "seduced") with a story of Lady Waldemar convincing her that she was not good enough for Romney (offering bits of Lady Waldemar's dialogue with her) and that class differences are difficult to uproot. She became convinced that she would have been like a kid (goat) who would trample a garden unknowingly if she had married Romney. She tells of how Lady Waldemar dispatches her to Australia but those that were supposed to take her there took her to Paris instead, where she was drugged and raped. Some peasants took her in later.  

Seventh Book: Marian tells of how a miller's wife took her in but then turned on her when she found out that she was with child. Eventually she found a sempstress to take her in. Aurora then asks Marian to go live with her in Tuscany. Marian agrees (though importantly, "She looked me in the face and answered not, / Nor signed she was unworthy, nor gave thanks, / But took the sleeping child and held it out / To meet my kiss, as if requiting me / And trusting me at once.") It is revealed that Aurora does have feelings for Romney though she intends to live with Marian and that the baby should have two mothers. She writes to Lord Howe and tells him that she and Marian are fine, and tells him not to reveal to Romney Marian's strife. To Lady Waldemar, Aurora reveals that she knows her treachery and tells her that she and Marian will leave her alone as long as she is good to Romney, that she will be obedient to him and even pretend sympathy when unsympathetic (basically condemning her to the role that Aurora herself did not want, as a wife). Aurora receives a letter from Carrington praising her latest book and telling her that he has a wife, who also admires her verses, but also telling the news that Romney isn't well. In Tuscany, Aurora reflects on art and experiences a restorative, humbling time. "Thus is Art / Self-magnified in magnifying a truth / Which, fully recognised, would change the world / And shift its morals. If a man could feel, / Not a day, in the artist's ecstasy, / But every day, feast, fast, or working-day, / The spiritual significance burn through / The heiroglyphic of material shows, / Henceforward he would paint the globe with wingsm / And reverence fish and fowl, the bull, the tree, / And even his very body as a man." Truth is God and Art. She visits her old home, but realizes she will not find her parents there (earth is hell, and where they are is heaven).

Eighth Book: Aurora, while dreaming on a terrace of a "sea-king" while before a vision of the Maria Novella Place (church with phallic obelisks in the front), Romney appears. He says something to her about her not receiving a letter from Lord Howe. Instead of revealing the contents now of the letter,  they reconcile--Romney making most of the concessions: he has read Aurora's book, and says that it has shown him something beyond herself that he now believes in (this is the task of the poet/art as she outlined in the final part of the Seventh Book). He knows now that toiling in the mud of humanity was not enough because he didn't recognize the universal vision of God and the individual's place in that universal vision that poetry might reveal. "To move a body, - it takes a high-souled man." Aurora owns that she had been too arrogant and also too narrow in her vision to recognize the necessity of such toiling and its heroism (even if Romney failed). Still, she accepts his concession that "poets get directlier at the soul, / Than any of your economists: - for which / You must not overlook the poet's work / When scheming for the world's necessities." The cousins basically confess their love but it seems too late, as it is "night," and all they can say is that at least they may look upon the stars. The end of the book closes with Romney revealing that Lady Waldemar was not actually his wife. He brings out a letter from her that Aurora never received.

Ninth Book: In her letter, Lady Waldemar proves that she is not as bad as Aurora has made her out to be. She handed over Marian to an old maid of hers which she trusted, and did not know that she would fall into bad hands. Moreover, she genuinely did not think that Marian and Romney loved as she could have loved him. Waldemar says that she hates Aurora, and says that her letter is "insolent" and "absurd." Romney offers marriage to Marian and she at first accepts, but then on second thought, says that she is "dead" and won't love another other than her child. Perhaps she never loved him, she muses (only that she had wanted to be his slave). She exits the scene and Aurora and Romney reconcile. Romney at first feels that he is unworthy of Aurora but she further humbles herself, saying she is not a generous woman, and that she forgot that she was a woman who loved like the rest. "He mistook the world, / But I mistook my heart" so she judges her crime more seriously. She even admits that his aunt, Lady Waldemar, and finally Marian were all right in seeing that she loved him. The epic ends with the two of them setting off to do God's work and an image of a New Jerusalem.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS/APPROACH:
As a "novel-poem," the form of Aurora Leigh mirrors the eventual joining of Romney and Aurora. After all, the Victorian realist novel's ascendancy in this period consolidated the notion that the novel was the socially-minded genre, and heightened anxieties about poetry's place in social progress. Such anxieties over art's role in life were repeatedly expressed by the most prominent poets of the era, poet laureate Tennyson included. Still, poetry as a genre maintained its status as the more expansive, artistic form which channeled principles that reached beyond the material contingencies of earthly life. Thus Barrett-Browning's yoking together of a socially-mired form and a spiritually-independent form experimentally attempts to forge a unified genre which might better speak to the requirements of modern life. The work is novelistic in its heteroglossia; it includes many other voices than Aurora Leigh's through letters, dialogue, and more subtly, via free-indirect discourse. The poetic form is blank verse, in remarkably regular and controlled pentameter lines--indeed, Barrett Browning's poetry seems to fall into this form quite easily and readily; Aurora Leigh's description of the spirit of a poem shaping its form seems apt here.

Marian perhaps presents the greatest problem for novelistic discourse because she points out important class inequities: while Browning manages to allow the working-class Marian a voice, Marian conveniently "disappears" when necessary, bowing out of marrying Romney once again at the end so that Aurora and Romney may reconcile. Perhaps, though, such a disappearance was meant to seem problematic, and realistic, which indicates an interesting potential critique of Victorian liberalism. Essentially, while Victorian liberalism imagined that individuals might transcend their class situations to realize an abstracted, ideal, higher self, here Browning might be showing that this is a myth, and that this "ideal" self is constructed along class lines. Aurora and Romney are able to meet while espousing "equality" between themselves only because they are both well-off enough to have developed such notions of equality. The terminology and rhetoric of equality which constructs it isn't something which was available to someone who was only able to snatch at fragments of reading in her crucial years of youth. Elaine Hadley's critique of Victorian liberalism today was made by Barrett Browning, if we read Marian's quick exit as intentionally problematic.

Finally, an additional generic label might add to the evidence of an imbedded liberal critique. Aurora Leigh is a kuntslerroman, a story of an artist's growth and maturity. Narrated retrospectively, Aurora ironizes earlier moments in her history (the reader knows, for example, that she is silly as she tries on her crown of ivy because of the exaggerated way in which she describes the moment paired with the anticlimactic arrival of her public--"Romney"). Retrospective narration also enables Aurora to heighten the reader's sense of where she has been wrong by delaying revelations of her wrong. For example, she allows the reader to think badly of Lady Waldemar when presenting her own hateful letter to her, heightening the sense of wrong when it is finally revealed, in Waldemar's own words, that such accusations as Aurora made were "insolent and absurd." The same thing happens with Marian; we don't find out what has happened to her until after Aurora accuses her of weakness. Along with Aurora, the reader experiences the shame of knowledge revealed later, thus making the wrong seem more poignant since it belongs to the (presumably well-off, liberal?) reader as well.

Howards End by E.M. Forster

Edition: Howards End (Norton Critical Editions)
*By the way, I think this is simply a beautiful book. If you only have limited time to read, this is one to spend it on.

PUBLICATION HISTORY:
Forster's fourth novel was first published in November 1910 and met with immediate critical acclaim and general success. Forster's journals and letters reveal some important details about the composition of the work; he early on planned his novel to be primarily about the "spiritual cleavage" between the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes, but other directions for the novel (such as the ending) seemed to come about more during the composition process itself.

Howards End was  based on his childhood home in Rooksnest. (Source: Norton Introduction, Armstrong)

SUMMARY:
During some time abroad, the well-off, intellectual, and London-cultivated Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, make the acquaintance of the Wilcox family. Howards End begins with an embarrassing incident, in which back in England, Helen develops a brief attachment to the youngest Wilcox son, Peter, while staying with them at Howards End, their country estate. Helen sends a telegram about the attachment, but the engagement is soon broken off; unfortunately, however, Margaret has already despatched their Aunt Juley to investigate the situation. An unpleasant altercation ensues, which the Schegel sisters afterwards refer to as a lot of "telegrams and anger."

In the meantime, the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes break off their contact. At a concert at Queens Hall, Helen accidentally takes the umbrella of a insurance company clerk by the name of Leonard Bast. When Margaret asks for Bast's address in hopes to send back the umbrella, Bast, in his comparative poverty, is suspicious and hesitates. Noting this, Margaret summons him to come to their place (Wickham) instead. Bast pays them a visit and sharply feels his own poverty as hindrance to his "acquiring culture" in the way that the Schlegel sisters have. Back at home, Bast snubs his lover, Jacky.

The Schlegel sisters are dismayed to find that the Wilcoxes have actually moved across the street from them in London. Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox end up developing a friendship; the two women seem to recognize each other as kindred spirits, and Margaret seems to deeply admire Mrs. Wilcox's quiet and mysteriously simple stoicism even when her other London friends find her uninteresting. When Margaret goes Christmas shopping with Mrs. Wilcox, Mrs. Wilcox invites her to Howards End and at first Margaret refuses but then changes her mind when she realizes that the house is really important to Mrs. Wilcox. Unfortunately, Margaret doesn't actually get to visit Howard's End before Mrs. Wilcox suddenly dies. A note written before her death tells her husband that she would like to bequeath Howards End to her, but the Wilcox family ignore this request; after all, it isn't legally binding and she wrote it when she was sick. Mr. Wilcox does give Margaret Mrs. Wilcox's silver vinaigrette though, acknowledging the friendship between the two women.

One night, Jacky makes the mistake of thinking Bast was out visiting Wickham because he is out late and she has seen Margaret's card lying around. Bast was actually just walking around during the night, and he goes to apologize to Margaret and Helen, who don't remember him. Margaret and Helen take an interest in Bast, thinking he must have a poetic soul if he enjoyed the adventure of walking around all night long, and they engage their friends at a discussion club as to how one ought to help one such as Mr. Bast, whose poverty seems a hindrance to his intellectual and spiritual advancement: should they offer him money? Offer him partial tutelage and things? Pay for his greater comfort without him knowing? Later, when Margaret asks Mr. Wilcox what he might think on such issues, he offers the very practical insider information that Bast's insurance company is going to go under, ever the good capitalist who doesn't think such larger philosophical principles worthwhile. Margaret and Helen try to warn Bast but he is offended, thinking that they are trying to pump him for information about his business.

Soon, Evie Wilcox marries, and at the same time, Schlegels are looking for a new house because their lease at Wickham up. Mr. Wilcox offers their place at Ducie (from which Evie has moved out) and when Margaret visits the house, he offers her a marriage proposal. Margaret agrees, thinking that she might be able to "save" Henry from his single-minded, materialistic views on life as not much more than laissez faire capitalism. Margaret goes to Howards End for the first time after her engagement to Mr. Wilcox, and immediately falls in love with it. The couple, however, are set to move to Oniton, a countryside town closer to London. Evie's wedding is at Oniton, and after the proceedings, Helen happens to show up with the Basts in tow, claiming that the Basts have been ruined by Mr. Wilcox's advice since Leonard ended up leaving the insurance company to find a new job at a bank which proved no good. At Oniton, Jacky recognizes Henry Wilcox as her former lover in Cyprus--it turns out that he has been unfaithful to Mrs. Wilcox ten years ago. Margaret chooses to forgive Henry, meanwhile, Helen goes abroad to Germany and tries to grant the Basts five-thousand pounds, which they reject.

After they are married, Margaret and Henry decide to build a house at Sussex to live in. In a bit of a mix up, Miss Avery, the old woman who is overseeing things at Howards End (empty, since the tenant went abroad) unpacks the furniture from Wickham place, preparing the place for the new Mrs. Wilcox. Margaret tells Miss Avery, however, that they will not live there. When Aunt Juley falls ill, Margaret is perplexed that Helen is reluctant to visit and as soon as Aunt Juley gets better, Margaret asks Henry to help her find a way to see Helen. Henry comes up with a scheme to entrap her at Howards End, and Margaret finds Helen is pregnant. In an act of sisterly solidarity against the men who do not understand them and their "inner life," Margaret shuts out Henry and the doctor. At Howards End, the sisters reconcile with one another and Helen asks if she might stay in the house for a night before returning to Germany; Henry unwisely turns her down and Margaret and he have a fight in which she points out his hypocrisy in being unwilling to forgive Helen when Margaret has forgiven him for a similar transgression.

Margaret and Helen stay at Howards End anyways, and in the morning, Charles Wilcox goes to confront them. While he is there, Leonard Bast has made his way to Howards End after enquiring after Margaret's whereabouts, intending to apologize for the night of his transgression with Helen. Charles strikes Leonard with the hilt of a sword which belonged to Mr. Schlegel, and unexpectedly, Leonard dies (it is later revealed that he had a heart condition). Leonard never finds out that he has a son. At this point, the Schlegel sisters and the Wilcoxes are estranged from one another to such an extent that Margaret plans to go away with Helen to Germany permanently. However, these plans fall through when they find out that Charles has been charged with manslaughter. Henry is a broken man, and asks Margaret to do with him as she will. Though Margaret hasn't forgiven him, she takes him to Howards End, where she, Henry, Helen, and her baby end up staying for longer than they mean to. In the end, Henry is a changed man--he begins to "notice things" and "connect." Surprisingly, they find that they can all live together at Howards End as a family. Henry bequeaths Howards End to Margaret after all, and after Margaret's death, Howards End is to go to Leonard Bast and Helen's son.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS/APPROACH:
The novel's famous epigraph, "Only connect..." belies the novel's complexity with respect to what it reveals about human connection. The question as to how to connect is an exceedingly difficult one. To be sure, Forster seems largely sympathetic to the Schlegel sisters' attempt to live life through personal connections, a recognition of people's "inner" lives that are not contingent on wealth, class, gender, or race, in opposition to the material, laissez-faire capitalism of the Wilcox men, who believe that there will always be rich and poor and the two kinds of people are simply irreconcilable. Margaret and Helen's universalism, by the way, is the old Victorian liberalism (except now mapped on the female subject, probably much to Arnold's chagrin had he been around), who believe that individual "best selves" might transcend material contingencies.

However, Howards End (and the Schlegel sisters themselves) is highly sensitive to the problems and limitations of such a philosophy of personal connection. Leonard Bast's material wants determine his personality and thoughts much more than the Schlegel sisters imagine--in the end, the narrator tells us that he feels abject and thoroughly blames himself for his transgression with Helen, not even thinking that she might also be to blame because of his class. At a certain point, Bast aligns with Mr. Wilcox in accepting that there will always be the rich and the poor, implying that personal responsibility and the free "inner life" are pretty mythologies. Forster's inability to penetrate the consciousness of Jacky and the Schlegel's sister's inability to see her as anything but ugly and degraded is a concession that the well-off can't truly represent the destitute. Finally, as Margaret herself frequently admits, it is the Wilcoxes who have "made" the "outer world"--the British empire, the metropolis, the capitalist system which enables greater and greater technologies on a scale previously unimaginable to mankind. At one point in the novel, Margaret concedes that both kinds of people are necessary.

And yet, it is no easy "balance" or even fusion between the Germanic idealism and universalism of the Schlegel sisters and the English pragmatism which might "solve" England's problems at the turn of the century. the condition of England." Max Levenson suggests a synecdochal relationship, in which Germanic universalism is capacious enough to contain the imagination of the English capitalist, but even so, such ways of seeing are only intermittently realized and they constantly falter.

The ending of the novel provides a rich ground for thinking through the complexity of where connection--whether between people free of their sociocultural matrices, or between the sociocultural matrices themselves--fails and where it succeeds. Margaret and ultimately the son of Leonard Bast gets Howards End, so in a way, there is a sort of poetic justice that balances out Mr. Wilcox's crime against  the lower class (his affair with Jacky). Yet, "London is creeping" at the end of the novel, and one wonders if Howards End will even be around later on. Howards End is no safe retreat from the metropolis, but yet another territory to be conquered by it. Throughout the novel, London's houses are being converted to flats by an alarming rate, and the idea that one would live in the same home their entire lives is all but gone. Still, "the goblin footfalls" remain, which the narrator describes are the dark side of metropolitan expansion and capitalist growth--the poverty and very real (because material) sufferings that threaten to topple it. Considered all together, it isn't clear at all whether the strange melding of the Wilcoxes and the Schlegels at Howards End will mean anything more than a temporary synthesis. Nevertheless, the temporary connection experienced both on a personal level (Henry Wilcox indeed seems a changed man, who begins to "notice" aspects of the inner life) and on the class level (since Leonard's son is set to inherit Howards End) is an optimistic and rather compelling one. And finally, it might be worth considering that this temporary synthesis at the end is oddly evacuated of anyone's intention; though Helen may attribute it to Margaret, none of them ever thought it would quite turn out in this way--after all, Margaret had not forgiven Henry, and was set to leave England for Germany, had unknown forces not brought Leonard to Howards End and consequently Charles to prison. Forster is deliberately vague about these kinds of unknown forces--they are sometimes naturalistic, sometimes supernatural, or sometimes they are somewhere in between or fate-like, as when he describes human life as a pack of cards in which it isn't known what card will trump what other card). We may as well end with Mrs. Wilcox, though, as the unknown force who continues through the novel as a kind of ghostly presence who possibly brings about the ending, finally arranging everything so that Margaret does end up getting Howards End even if Mrs. Wilcox's own family tries to prevent this. If Mrs. Wilcox did it all, the novel consolidates the personal and spiritual connection which she makes with Margaret, because the inheritance of Howards End ends up, at least for the time being, passing by way of such a connection rather than the more traditional ones of blood or money.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

PUBLICATION HISTORY:
Middlemarch was serialized in eight parts for Blackwood's magazine from December 1871-December 1872. Following the completion of this serialization, Middlemarch was published as a four-volume novel. This format of serialization was one suggested by George Henry Lewes, Eliot's live-in partner and also agent, who thought that the length of the work would necessitate eight two-monthly parts at five shilling each, a method which Hugo used for Les Miserables. Middlemarch, subtitled "A Study of Provincial Life" was indeed a gargantuan undertaking for Eliot, who spent nearly 5 years completing the novel and researching extensively into the 1830s (when the novel was set) on important topics of the day, especially in relation to reform politics from the history of newspapers and elections to medical concerns. The writing of Middlemarch "crept on," in Eliot's own words to her John Blackwood. In November of 1870, she even abandoned the project and begun another, which she entitled "Miss Brooke"--later the pages of "Miss Brooke" would become the first ten chapters of Middlemarch. Eventually, however, Eliot found a way to tie together the different strands telling the lives of those connected to Middlemarch. Not surprisingly, as Eliot was already a successful novelist and public figure, Middlemarch was met with critical acclaim. (SOURCE: Ashton Introduction, Penguin). 


SUMMARY:
The novel fulfills its purposes as "A Study of Provincial life" in closely following the intersecting lives of characters from different class hierarchies in Middlemarch, a rising manufacturing town whose fortunes are inevitably connected to the political and economic turmoil of the 1830s centered in London. The volume edition divides the work into eight books corresponding to the serial parts; my summary will follow this scheme.

"Miss Brooke":
The novel begins with a scene between the two Brooke sisters, Dorothea and Celia, who live with their uncle at Tipton Grange estate. The two sisters are immediately distinguished by their relative interest in their mother's jewels, Dorothea deeming such things beneath her concern and Celia greatly drawn to them. Dorothea has a suitor, one Sir James Chettam, but she snubs him, only enjoying his company when he engages her on some plans that she has for cottages on her uncle's land. Meanwhile, Dorothea is fascinated by the scholarly Edward Casaubon, a man decades her senior who is working on his magnum opus, a so-called "key" to all mythologies. Dorothea, idealistically imagining Casaubon to be working on something of a deeper and higher truth than she could presently understand, accepts an offer of marriage from him, despite people in the town like the outspoken Mrs. Cadwallader (wife of the Rector at Tipton Grange) and Celia's misgivings. After Dorothea's marriage, she is accompanied by Celia and her uncle Brooke to Lowick Manor, where for the first time they all meet the young Will Ladislaw (a second cousin of Casaubon's) as he is sketching in the garden. Not much of an impression is made upon Dorothea, and Will in his turn misinterprets Casaubon's new wife to be cold and caustic. Before the close of this section, Tertius Lydgate, the new young doctor educated in London and on the Continent arrives to town, and Rosamond and Fred Vincy, the daughter and son of a manufacturing family are introduced. Fred, a rather dissipated young man, gets into a scrape with the old, ailing Peter Featherstone because he has ostensibly made some comments about paying off a debt with the old man's money. Rosamond has designs on Lydgate, attracted to him because he is not just a "Middlemarch man." Finally, the Garth family, headed by Caleb, an industrious but nevertheless not so well off businessman, are introduced, and an childhood attachment between Fred Vincy and Mary Garth, Caleb's daughter, is revealed.

"Old and Young":
Bulstrode, a wealthy banker who has built up a reputation through philanthropy and display of his pious Methodist beliefs, decides to collaborate with Lydgate on a new hospital. Lydgate, who has great ambitions to discover "the primitive tissue" (the material basis for all the different functional parts of an organism) by working in a provincial town (after all, it is much harder to retain one's independence in London), is pulled into politics when Bulstrode compels him to vote for one Mr. Tyke as the chaplain for the hospital instead of for Lydgate's friend, Mr. Farebrother. For the first time, Lydgate realizes that to be independent and to care only for one's scientific work wasn't such an easy thing to do. Meanwhile, Walter Vincy, Fred's father and brother to the wife of Bulstrode asks Bulstrode to clear his name to Featherstone. When Fred carries a letter to Featherstone from Bulstrode, he gets a small monetary gift from Featherstone. In Rome, Dorothea begins to feel isolated as Casaubon becomes absorbed in his scholarly pursuits; Will, who is also in Rome, speaks with Dorothea passionately on art, life, and poetry and a warm friendship is struck up between the two.

"Waiting for Death":
Fred Vincy gets into more trouble when he tries to sell an old horse to get out of debt: the new horse lames itself in an accident. Since he has borrowed money from Caleb Garth, he must tell the Garths what has happened and he is especially ashamed because the Garths are in a tight spot--Mary must give up her savings and they are also unable to send her brother Alfred to school. Fred soon falls ill, but Lydgate helps cure him proving more useful than the local doctor, hence stirring up jealousies. Meanwhile, Celia becomes engaged to Sir James Chettam, and Casaubon falls ill. Lydgate is the doctor again, and from him, Dorothea finds out that Casaubon is potentially near death if he overstrains himself. Brooke invites the young Ladislaw to Tipton, furthering the connection between the Brookes and Ladislaw, despite Casaubon's distaste towards Will.  Lydgate and Rosamond are engaged, even though Lydgate has not planned to become engaged until he had become established, he feels the social pressures placed upon him. As Peter Featherstone waist for his death, groups of his relatives swarm his home, each expecting a piece of his wealth. Before he dies, he tells Mary to destroy his second will, but she doesn't do it because there is no witness.

"Three Love Problems":
Unfortunately, it turns out that the first will left Stone Court to Fred Vincy. Meanwhile, Lydgate and Rosamond get married, Will takes a position as editor of the Pioneer via Brooke, who has recently bought up the paper. The people of Middlemarch regard Brooke's connection to Ladislaw, seen as a subversive and potentially radical foreigner for his polish roots, as deeply misguided. An incident with a hired laborer Dagley does not help Brooke's image--Dagley's son kills a hare and Dagley refuses to punish his son telling Brooke that he's a tightfisted landlord. Things are not going well for someone who might enter into the race for MP on the platform of Reform. Luckily for Caleb Garth, Brooke and Chettam respectively hire him to manage Tipton and Freshitt in order to address problems on their estates and the Garths become better off. In a strange, seemingly unrelated scene (but which the narrator explicitly remarks as crucially, though oddly, important), Joshua Rigg Featherstone, Peter's illegitimate son and heir to Stone Court, has a tense moment with his stepfather, the seedy and disagreeable John Raffles, who finds out that Nicholas Bulstrode has bought Stone Court.

"The Dead Hand":
Dorothea agrees to give money to Lydgate for the hospital, eager to be "doing good" with her money. The town's medical men are against Lydgate, however. As Casaboun gets sicker, he tries to get Dorothea to promise she will do as he wishes after his death, but she hesitates and he dies before she promises. It turns out that Casaubon has included a codicil to his will which forbids Dorothea from marrying Will Ladislaw, stipulating that she will lose the Lowick property should she do so. Chettam tries to conceal this codicil from Dorothea, wishing to send Ladislaw away, but Brooke refuses.  Soon Dorothea finds out about the codicil. Meanwhile, Brooke's first public appearance results in humiliation--opposition mounts an effigy of Brooke who repeats Brooke's inarticulate speech back to him. Things look up for Fred and Mary though--Fred sends the good vicar Mr. Farebrother to ask Mary if she loves him, and she says she does. Raffles visits Bulstrode and exacts money from him threatening something about Bulstrode's past; as he leaves, Raffles recalls that Bulstrode's stepdaughter married a "Ladislaw."

"The Widow and the Wife":
Will and Dorothea come close to confessing their love for each other, but Will decides to leave town because he is too proud to be thought of as marrying Dorothea for her money (he does not know about the codicil). Garth meanwhile decides to take on Fred in the management of estates and farms; Fred proves a willing apprentice since he knows that Mary would disapprove of his trying to become clergy. Lydgate has fallen into debt because of the expenses he has felt compelled towards by his marriage to the pampered Rosamond and so he tells Rosamond that they must sell their furniture. Rosamond, estranged from Lydgate, whiles away some time flirting with Will Ladislaw and tells him about the codicil. At an auction where Will is charged to buy a painting for Bulstrode, Will actually meets Raffles, who hints about his past. The narrator reveals Bulstrode's past: as a young clerk, he took over a pawnbroker's business, married a man Dunkirk's wife upon Dunkirk's death, thereby coming by his wealth. He concealed the knowledge of a stepdaughter Sarah's whereabouts so that he might get all the wealth after Dunkirk's widow's death--Raffles was paid to keep silent on this concealment. When Bulstrode offers money to Will, Will refuses to take money from him because of his pride and wish to remain unconnected to money come by unethically. Will takes leave of Dorothea once again.

"Two Temptations":
Lydgate tries to sell their house to the recently married Plymdales (Ned Plymdale had once courted Rosamond) but resentful, Rosamond secretly contradicts his action. Additionally, she secretly writes to Lydgate's uncle Sir Godwin, who snubs them. As a result, their marriage continues under strain, Lydgate becoming angry with Rosamond for meddling, and Rosamond feeling entitled to her meddling. Lydgate asks Bulstrode for money, and Bulstrode at first refuses as he plans to make an exit from Middlemarch due to his own impending fall from grace. Bulstrode tells Caleb Garth he might let Fred live at and manage Stone Court, but Garth finds Raffles sick at Stone Court who tells Garth of Bulstrode's past. Garth thus feels he must refuse Bulstrode's offer. Lydgate tells Bulstrode what to do with the ailing Raffles, and Raffles dies. Bulstrode, feeling the pressures of his moral failings, decides to lend Lydgate the money for his debts. Though Lydgate has no knowledge of Bulstrode's past, the people of Middlemarch assume that Bulstrode intentionally killed Raffles and that Lydgate took a bribe to keep silent.

"Sunset and Sunrise":
Dorothea, however, retains her faith in Lydgate. When Dorothea goes to try to help the Lydgates out by offering them the money to pay off their debts so that Lydgate might return Bulstrode's money, she sees Will and Rosamond together and runs out. Dorothea nevertheless overcomes her jealousy and resolves to go to Rosamond again, the two reach an understanding in which Rosamond is shamed into telling Dorothea that Will loves her best. Will comes back and Rosamond tells him that she settled things with Dorothea. Dorothea and Will decide to be together despite the loss of property. Bulstrode finally suggests Mrs. Bulstrode (formerly Harriet Vincy) to appeal to Garth to allow Fred to manage Stone Court. Garth agrees, and all ends well with Fred and Mary, as well as Dorothea and Will.

**Note on Prelude, and Finale: Both the brief "prelude" and "finale" focus primarily on the figure of Dorothea. In both, the narrator adopts a similar position, comparing Dorothea as a St. Theresa of Avila born during a time in which would not allow her "passionate, ideal nature" to flourish into a (historically) "recognizable deed." In a word, Dorothea Brooke is too great for Middlemarch in the 1830s; but perhaps too Middlemarch was too great for her: the finale gives that "there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it." Put this way, historical greats seem largely accidental. Nevertheless, the narrator ends with the praise of "unhistoric acts" (like Dorothea's, thought he same might be said of the Garths', or Mr. Farebrother's acts) which have perpetuated "the growing good of the world."

CRITICAL APPROACH/ANALYSIS:
To contend with the criticism which has been produced on Middlemarch is probably much like trying to synthesize a key to mythologies and never having it coming to anything. Nevertheless, here are some (arbitrarily) selective thoughts:

First-Person Narration: Despite the expectations of a third-person narration based on the omniscient distance which seems to control Middlemarch, the narration is in first-person. Because this first-person narrator does not often make the first-person point-of-view apparent, the few inclusions of the first person singular or plural feel jarring and interruptive. Often, the effect seems a bit didactic, as with the most obvious example from the ending: "...and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." At other times, the narrator asks readers for understanding when it comes to sympathizing with characters that the narrator anticipates as being not particularly sympathetic--Casaubon, in particular. The narrator seems to caution against the harsh judgment of readers as much as to critique the harsh judgments of Middlemarch residents against fellow neighbors. Sympathy for Eliot, as Rae Greiner points out in her essay "Sympathy Time: Adam Smith, George Eliot, and the Realist Novel,"is not so simply conveyed: in constructing characters like Rosamond who might "know" that others have different points of view but who nevertheless cannot perform the requisite act of imagination that will cause her identification with these other points of view, Eliot shows the limitations of "knowing" if the purpose is to sympathize. Thus, though the narratorial voice occupies every character's thoughts via free-indirect discourse, allowing readerly "knowledge" of all of these points of view, it seems that the narrator feels that further explication and emphasis is necessary, for characters which readers are not likely to readily sympathize with just because they "know" them.

Liberal Critique: Many of the characters in Middlemarch (inadvertently) express the liberal doctrine of "doing as one likes." Most comically, Brooke repeats this phrase in reference to things and people he can't hope to understand or control (e.g., Dorothea "does as she likes"). In Brooke's words, the phrase feels empty and funny because he turns his own lack of influence into a statement that suggests he wants to think that he is merely a trendy, indulgent, liberal guardian. Rosamond, too, wants to "do as she likes," to have everything turn out exactly in the way that she imagines, having been pampered all of her life. Lydgate, in his own way, wishes to "do as he likes" in his science without becoming mired in what he deems to be petty politics of social life. None of these characters, however, can really "do as they like," and Middlemarch seems a critique of an unchecked, doctrinally "liberal" position which believes so blindly in the individual's will and freedom. Yet, it isn't that free "will" isn't desirable (in fact, and probably not coincidentally, Will is the most desirable object for Dorothea, her foremost protagonist)--rather, Eliot suggests that it is naive to overestimate its functionality in the mired social networks of modern life.

History, Historical Evolution: The many references to Walter Scott (in the epigraphs which precede Eliot's chapters, and also Scott is popularly read by the residents of Middlemarch) serve to underscore the sense of social determinism and historical inevitability that largely controls the fate of individuals. As in Scott's historical novels, in Eliot's Middlemarch there is a sense that contingencies (historical and social) beyond an individual's control or purview generally dwarf an individual's will to power over his or her own life. It isn't however, that will doesn't count for anything--it's just that those who overestimate its effect in controlling our outcomes become greatly disappointed (Lydgate being the most obvious example, but Dorothea learns this lesson too). Those who do well in the novel (Mr. Farebrother, Caleb Garth, Mary Garth, and Dorothea at the end) are willing to scale their visions for their own lives according to new circumstances as they come up. (Dorothea makes an interesting accommodation with respect to marriage: in the beginning, she tells Celia that she would never say that she was merely "fond" of a man she would marry; at the end of the novel, she tells Celia that she is "fond" of Ladislaw).

Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle

PUBLICATION HISTORY/BACKGROUNDS: 

Carlyle's Sartor Resartus was published initially as eight serial parts in Fraser's Magazine (a literary magazine generally known for its Tory politics) from 1833-1834. It's success led to several limited reprints in 1834, but the first book edition was actually issued in America, in 1836. Finally, the first British book edition appeared in 1838.  

It would be difficult to overestimate the influence of this rather unusual work (essentially, a fictional editor presents bits and pieces of a German professor's Philosophy of Clothes alongside a fragmented biography and fragmented critical remarks). Carlyle was a crucial figure for his fellow Victorians--George Eliot described him as an "oak sowing acorns." Indeed, Carlyle's influence continues beyond the Victorian era and finds echoes in the works of the late nineteenth-century Symbolists, Joyce, Woolf, and T.S. Eliot. Most famously (and most immediately), Carlyle's Sartor Resartus largely inspired American Transcendentalism: for Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sartor Resartus was his introduction to German idealism, which would become a continuing influence in Emerson's life and thought.    

Concentrating on the widespread influence of Sartor Resartus, however, should not obscure its clear indebtedness to core principles of the Romantic poets as well. In particular, form, allusion, and above all, symbol are controlling themes.    

SUMMARY:

As mentioned brief above, Sartor Resartus is a peculiar work and difficult to describe: in a nutshell, I have given that the work consists of this fictional editor (which at once seems to perhaps be Carlyle, since this editor writes that he applies to Fraser's for publication, but throughout, seems mostly a persona), who becomes fascinated with a German professor by the name of Professor Teufelsdrockh. This editor manages to make the Professor's acquaintance and secure a number of papers he has left; these two sources form the fragmented biography, which along with the editor's critical remarks, frame (or perhaps more aptly, weave throughout) Teufelsdrock's magnum opus, his Philosophy of Clothes.

Book I: The editor begins by telling his readers about his motives behind presenting the professor's work (that the work will prove some yet unforetold benefit to British readers), and also notes some of the editorial problems which he faced in handling and submitting such a disorganized work for publication. The editor also reminisces on his brief encounters with the professor, describing him as rather melancholy and serious, and only laughing once.

The editor presents excerpts from the professor's philosophy, including his sentiments on how clothes originated from a decorative rather than survival impulses. While presenting excerpts from the professor's work on aprons and an excerpt containing a fancy on the leveling of humanity that would occur if royalty were to lose all of their clothes and accoutrements of wealth, the editor is suddenly critical, thinking the professor ludicrous and crude (Yet, the editor seems caught in his own prurience when he reveals, in a list of things he wishes not to reveal, a number of such images as "Kings wrestling naked on the green," or kings "dissected" into "the same viscera, tissues, and livers" which we all share).

Book I closes with Teufelsdrockh's expansion on the metaphor of clothes: language is a garment of thought, and the body is a garment for the spirit. In a word, the "essence of all science lies in the philosophy of clothes." At the very end of the book, the editor tells of how he has received a number of promises papers from a friend of Teufelsdrockh's, the Herr Hofrath, but to his disappointment, they are not an autobiography, but a collection of his various, disorganized observations on life. The editor's hopes for stitching together a factually based, conventional biography are foiled.

Book II: Nonetheless, some tidbits of biography are recovered: a stranger delivers him in as a baby in a basket to kind foster-parents, Gretchen and Andreas Futteral. The professor muses on his own name, written on a card accompanying his basket, as kind of like clothing, to the extent that it becomes constitutive of his identity even if he was unable to discover any historical or social connections through it. Teufelsdrockh's childhood his idyllic, as he passively views the "terrestrial workshop," of which he is not yet a participant. Unfortunately, his schooling affords him little pleasure; learning is rote, mechanistic, and academic (in the bad sense of the term). His university he describes as a regulatory, unthinking system. His saving graces are a friendship with an English colleague by the name of Towgood, and "rebellion" through reading voraciously on his own. 

Soon, Teufelsrockh must seek a vocation (the editor paraphrases this tritely as the British notion of "getting under way"): he tries law, but soon finds that it is not a good fit for his idealistic temperament. He meets a girl (unnamed, but referred to poetically as Blumine), who then runs away and marries his friend Towgood for money. His heart dashed to pieces, Teufelsdrockh becomes a wanderer, as miserable, certainly, as the wandering Jew. With a somewhat ironic tone, the editor gives that his travels all over the earth must have been like the writings of the Sorrows of Werter except written on the earth by his footprints (Teufelsdrockh's romance and its aftermath are mediated all through by the editor's voice of superiority and all-knowningness about such rites of passage experienced by all young, idealistic men uninitiated in the ways of the world). 

Amidst such throes of struggle, Teufelsdrockh goes through this famous "Everlasting No" (an "indignant" and "defiant" rejection of pretty much all beliefs and all of existence), followed by his neutral stance at the "center of indifference," and finally his emergence into his "Everlasting Yea" which comes up with a new affirmation of life based not on a quest for happiness but an acceptance of "love" and "blessedness." He offers an interesting metaphor for the eradication of desire: if the denominator of a fraction which signifies one's view of what he deserves out of life is 0, then life becomes infinite. The editor, however, thinks all of this is a bit too mystical and unclear, and tells the reader that he must be patient. At the same time, however, the editor expresses some doubt about his own endeavors: could it be, that all of the "facts" of his biography are in fact symbolical, "hieroglyphic" facts and is he perhaps Teufelsdrockh's dupe?

Book III: In Book III, what is given of Teufelsdrockh's excerpts are increasingly religious and spiritual. In his section on symbols, for example, he explains how symbols generally have both intrinsic and extrinsic properties, and those who have only "extrinsic" properties are akin to blind customs which no longer possess any living meaning. Symbols with intrinsic properties, however, continue to gain meaning as they pass through human lives. Teufelsdrockh believes that such "superannuated symbols" ought to be discarded. In a word, symbols are an expansion of what he means by the "clothing" through which man experiences the world: "It is in and through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works, and has his being."  

In Teufelsdrockh's margin notes on a tract on population by Herr Hofrath, Teufelsdrockh, taking a rather anti-Malthusian stance, expresses that by fully "forming" every man, rich or poor, by educating him in the loftier concerns of existence as well the so-called practical actions of industry, population problems would "solve" themselves because such men would be able, through ingenuity, to sustain society. In a following section, Teufelsdrockh rejects a world conquered by mindless utilitarianism and laissez faire doctrine, critiquing methods of action and liberal reform in a way which would later be echoed by such different men from Dickens to Arnold. The professor thinks that despite this bleak vision of the world today, a phoenix will soon rise from the ashes of this society's old, worn-out raiments/symbols/doctirines. 

The editor pragmatically chastises Teufelsdrockh for not being more grateful to society for raising, clothing, and feeding him in order that he might be in such a position as to make such criticisms. 

The "new light" that will be the phoenix, Teufelsdrockh holds, is being cultivated in literature, specifically, that of Goethe (in contrast, the newspapers embody worn-out doctrines). Teufelsdrockh's philosophy of "natural supernaturalism" fully explores his belief in nature as a book of "celestial hieroglyphics," a full embrace of wrestling with symbols as the divine way of living. Even "space and time," the professor explains, are perceptions which are mere "thought-forms" and once one apprehends this, the significance of eternity and infinity unfolds itself. The editor approves of these articulations as his most coherent expression of his philosophy.

At the close of Sartor Resartus, the editor ends with a metaphor of how he has constructed a number of "rafts" for the British reader to jump upon in order to get to some sense of a new understanding of his own life via the exploration of Teufelsdrockh's philosophy. At the same time, the editor admits to being "infected" by Teufesldrockh's use of metaphors, he remains derisive of his "mystical" and disorganized means of expression. At the very end, the editor tells how Teufelsdrockh (referred throughout by the editor as a "sanscullotist") disappeared around the time of the "Parisian Three Days" revolution on July 26-29, 1830. "Es geht an," Teufelsdrockh is reported to have said, "It is beginning," signifying, perhaps, that he has joined in the revolution. 

CRITICAL APPROACH/ANALYSIS:

For me, the most interesting critical question is how we are to read the relationship between Carlyle, the editor, and Teufelsdrockh. Conclusions about Carlyle's political and moral beliefs seem utterly mired in the obscurities created by such entanglements. I argue that the editor is supposed to be a stand-in for a typical British reader--generally "pragmatic" and non-mystical, but nevertheless able, on some level, to appreciate that an overly pragmatical (rather, doctrinally pragmatic) character might benefit from an infusion of spirituality. 

The consideration of metaphor provides one particular example of this nascent dualism which Carlyle envisions as part of the British subject: while rejecting metaphorical language as imprecise, the editor yet is able to acknowledge that it has "infected" his own language. In fact, metaphor (knowingly or unknowingly) is part and parcel of Sartor Resartus as a whole: the whole is a weaving or interlacing of biography, critical comments, and the cut apart text of another--in a word, Sartor Resartus itself is clothing. 

It is, however, a new sort of clothing made of hybrid cloths of British pragmatism and German idealism. The work suggests a kind of synthesis of these two spirits in order for the full-formation of the human. In this sense, Carlyle might be basically expressing what Arnold would express nearly a generation later: that the modern British subject had become too rigidly enamored with ossified notions of what constituted action, the practical, industry, and progress, and therefore the British subject needed to adopt a more critical stance at the level of ideas. For Carlyle, however, it is not so much a "critical" light but simply a spiritual light, a "new mythus" which could invigorate and revolutionize British society through the transformation of individual hearts. Symbols would then be revitalized, and the "raiments" would no longer be old, tattered, and merely extrinsic. 

Ultimately, even though there are many moments where it seems that the reader is to sympathize more with Teufelsdrockh than with the interruptive, and often square editor, I think the editor's humility and self-awareness saves him and forces the audience not to look disdainfully on him from high, but to recognize in him their own follies and limitations. The editor often questions whether or not he has been duped by Teufelsdrockh (such as when he asks whether the facts of his biography were in fact "hieroglyphics" or symbols), or when he is not sure (as in Teufelsdrockh's discussion of dandies and the Irish poor) whether the professor is being ironic or not. The editor seems open to the possibility of his own limits, and in this, he prevents himself from being cast off but rather embraced by readers as one of their own. As the editor himself gives, he felt a "mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude, and disapproval" at professor Teufelsdrockh--though contradictory feelings are given, this really seems to be the point that opposing forces make up the fully human.  

The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde

PUBLICATION HISTORY:
"The Critic as Artist" was one of the essays included in Wilde's only book of criticism, Intentions (1891). Written in the three years after Matthew Arnold's death and praised by Pater, Wilde's book of criticism clearly echoes and builds upon the ideas of both men.

SUMMARY:
"The Critic as Artist" is a written dialogue between two friends, Ernest and Gilbert, in two acts. Generally, Ernest asks questions of Gilbert; thus, Gilbert seems Wilde's spokesperson for his philosophy of criticism. (Occasionally, Ernest also summarizes what Gilbert has said, proving himself a crucial tool for getting across Wilde's ideas as well).

Part I: In the first part of the dialogue (subtitled "with some remarks upon the importance of doing nothing"), Gilbert is playing the piano, and Ernest has been perusing a book. They soon get into a conversation about the use of "art-criticism," wherein Ernest asks why the artist might not be left alone. Gilbert launches into an invective against art criticism which seeks too much to explain. On a tangent inspired by his disdain for explanatory societies like the Browning Society, Gilbert praises Robert Browning as a Shakespearean writer because of his capacity to enter into so many different characters' voices. Ernest soon stops Gilbert and states that "in the best days of art there were no art-critics." Following from this question Gilbert once again offers a long answer--this time, vehemently contradicting Ernest by telling him the Greeks were in fact the best critics of all in that they embodied the "critical spirit" in their arts.

Ernest is soon convinced that Gilbert is right, and he then moves on to his next statement (this is the controlling pattern of both dialogues), that the creative faculty must be higher than the critical, to which Gilbert replies that it is the critical spirit which most crucially innovates. Gilbert believes in the power of the individual to innovate--indeed, he says that "it is not the moment that makes the man, but the man who creates the age." It is the critical spirit that "rewrites history," showing a new way of understanding life. Like Arnold, Gilbert critiques the Victorian "man of action"who is tediously self-denying and industrious: in contrast, the critic is the individual who will move the world forward through his ideas. While Arnold suggests that such ideas will then fuel correct action, Gilbert seems to go even further by casting aside action as "puppetry," and embracing entirely the mind-world of criticism as "poetry.

In elaborating on his point, Gilbert makes his statements on the "critic as artist": "the critic occupies the same relation to the work of art that he criticises as the artist does to the visible world of form and colour, or the unseen world of passion and of thought." In other words, the critic and what is traditionally understood as an artist are equivalent, and differ only in the material which inspires their works. In fact, criticism is the highest art according to Gilbert because the critic forms a creation within a creation, and hence is removed from the problems and trap of realistic representation: the "shackles of verisimilitude." Ultimately, as Pater also says, Gilbert says that the critic's subject is autobiographic in the sense that it "chronicle[s] his own impressions." Individual impressions may vary, and Gilbert announces that it completely doesn't matter if Pater's impressions of the Mona Lisa are "untrue" insofar that Pater's impressions don't truly reflect Leonardo da Vinci's intents because the primary aim of the critic, in chronicling his own impressions, is really "to see the object as in itself it really is not." This clever reversal of Arnold, of course, is not a real reversal, as Gilbert basically identifies the same kind of innovative critical spirit of Arnold's. Finally, like Pater, Gilbert closes the first part of the dialogue with his valuation of music for its formal identity and absence of subject matter.

Part II: After pausing for supper, the dialogue picks up again on the same topics (although this section is subtitled, "with some remarks upon the importance of discussing everything"). Ernest dives right in and asks Gilbert if the critic is never an interpreter, if his business is innovation and not explanation. Gilbert explains that the material of historical context is indeed relevant to a piece of art or literature, but the critic ought not to use this material in order to "treat Art as a riddling Sphinx." Instead, the critic ought to make the work of art even more mysterious, in order to multiply its impressions. He mixes in his own "personality" with the art, and the art is made "vivid and wonderful" by this "new and intense personality." Importantly, this kind of criticism keeps art of the past alive for the present day.

Gilbert then delineates an essential difference, as he sees it, between life and art. From an "artistic point of view," life is a failure, because it is sordid, messy, and ugly in its form. Art offers a way of experiencing myriad exquisite emotions without the "mess" of life. Gilbert asks, affectingly, "are there not books that can make us live more in a single hour than life can make us live in a score of shameful years?" In a word, art "can teach us how to escape from our experience, and to realize the experience of those who are greater than we are."

When Ernest begins to protest that art seems "immoral," Gilbert confirms this to be true, but says that this is essentially the point: morals come from society's code of ethics, which is limited and which tends to prevent human individuals from the important act of contemplation. For Gilbert, England needs much less the question of "what are you doing" and more the question of "what are you thinking"?

Ernest then asks what the function of the critical spirit is, and Gilbert gives an exceedingly Arnoldian answer (complete with a quote from Arnold) that it perfects culture, and through the workings of the critical spirit on culture, we reach "the best that is known and thought in the world."Like Arnold, Gilbert critiques Puritan, middle-class ethics of sentimental philanthropy, advocating instead for a "sympathy with thought" which locates itself in the realm of ideas, and the realm of artistic temperament. In other words, as Pater suggests, Gilbert suggests a kind of intellectual, temperamental kinship through the ages.

Near the final part of the two men's dialogue, Gilbert rejects Ernest's premises that art is fair, rational, or sincere, as these are the terms of a moralistic and narrow universe. The aesthetic universe with which Gilbert concerns himself, however, is not one that doesn't care about life or society: rather, it seeks to reform society through instilling the critical spirit in each and every one of its members. "Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths." This might be realized through an education which encourages the self-consciously critical spirit, first through such avenues as an appreciation for the decorative arts, which attunes an individual to form (rather than subject matter). Attention to forms prevents the "tedious realism" which tends to stultify innovative thought. Gilbert proclaims that it is the mission of the aesthetic movement to "lure people to contemplate," to think innovative thoughts and not to try to copy the world. Idealistically, Gilbert believes that "Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than those that can be forged by the shopman or sentimentalist," respectively, the capitalist or the philanthropist (see above).

CRITICAL APPROACH/ANALYSIS:
Gilbert's closing paean to form immediately begs the question of form in Wilde's piece. Taking Wilde on the terms of his own game, the dialogue impresses the absence of an authorial didactic voice, perhaps then allowing the ideas to kind of float more freely and independently. I argue that this absence renders the ideas more palatable, and furthermore, encourages readers to get away from the question of authorial intent which bogs down the innovative spirit of critical response.

Additionally, I suggest that the dialogue models how one acquires and maintains a critical spirit. While the dialogue is skewed clearly in favor of Gilbert's ideas, Ernest's quick understanding, and his capacity to quickly summarize what Gilbert has said, and ability to ask productive questions make him an apt model for what is meant by independent learning. Ernest is earnest, and he is bright, and I think the work suggests that we are to emulate him. He does not merely accept Gilbert's word, but he allows himself the room to ask questions, and requires Gilbert to spend time elaborating. When Ernest summarizes Gilberts ideas, he essentially "tries them on" for himself, but then quickly moves to his next question. This is the very spirit which Gilbert describes: one need not be consistent, but in order to truly realize the truth of oneself, one must try on different modes of thought, checking them all the while with the material of one's own heart (this is, I argue, the most "Millian" moment of Wilde's essay--it mirrors Mill's contention that we arrive closest to truth by first gaining the ability to ventriloquize the thoughts of others).