North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Edition: North and South (Penguin Classics)

PUBLICATION HISTORY:
Gaskell's North and South was serialized in weekly parts in Dickens's Household Words from September 1854 to January 1855. Gaskell found the format limiting; she commented in a note to the volume edition that she felt that she had had to compress her novel. She added, therefore, expansions to the volume edition. In addition to narrative expansions, Gaskell also added epigraph quotations to the beginning of chapters.

SUMMARY:
North and South begins with the marriage of the main character Margaret's cousin Edith to Captain Lennox, and Margaret's subsequent departure from Harley Street in London to go back to Helstone, a country town in the south where she grew up. The wedding puts Margaret in contact with the lawyer and brother of the Captain, Henry Lennox. They exchange some niceties about Helstone, and Margaret feels that he belittles Helstone by making it out to be some kind of fairytale village and refuses to talk about it. To Margaret's surprise, Henry visits her back at Helstone a little while later, and after the enjoy an afternoon sketching together, he proposes to her. Margaret refuses him and he leaves. Meanwhile, Margaret feels that her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hale, don't seem quite as happy and at ease as she had remembered them to be. Mr. Hale, a parson, soon confesses to Margaret that he has decided to leave his post because of doubts that he had as to the true faith espoused by the Church of England. He proposes that they will move to a northern manufacturing town, Milton, where he will serve as a tutor. His own mentor at Oxford, Mr. Bell, had already connected him with a wealthy manufacturer named Mr. John Thornton, who will be his first pupil. Margaret is charged with the difficult task of revealing this plan to her mother, who is of generally weak constitution. Margaret accomplishes the task, and helps her father makes arrangements to move, suggesting that Mrs. Hale remove to a seaside town while she and her father figure out where they will live in Milton.

After settling into the smoky, gray environment of a manufacturing town, Margaret makes the acquaintance of Thornton, and thinks him rather coarse and inflexible. She also makes other acquaintances by chance in the street--Nicholas Higgins, a poor factory worker who is organizing a strike against factory masters like Thornton, and his ailing daughter Bessy who is sick from working at cotton mills. Thornton lives with his mother, with whom he is very close; after his father's failed speculations, Thornton, with the support of his mother built his business up and worked very hard to come to the wealth which he has now. His sister, Fanny, also lives with them, but she is rather vapid and snooty. Mrs. Thornton doesn't really take to Margaret, finding her to be ignorant of the ways of the north, a pampered southern aristocrat who does not appreciate or understand the strength of her son's industrious and manly character. Margaret, after all, is not shy to critique Thornton, especially when discussing the factory workers' strike, she takes a more humane position as to a master's responsibility for the well-being of his "hands." Thornton's philosophy is a capitalist par excellence, believing in the strength and efficiency of machines and ruthless competition, and maintaining a position of laissez-faire as far as the lives of his workers go: "But those hours [referring to the labouring hours of his men] past, our relation ceases; and then comes in the same respect for their independence that I myself exact."

Mrs. Hale's health at Milton continues to decline, and Dixon, Mrs. Hale's faithful maid and Margaret keep the news of her decline from Mr. Hale. Margaret continues to visit with the Higginses, sympathizing with their hardships, and also learning of the divisions amongst the working class: hearing about a poverty-stricken family (the Boucher's) and the difficulty posed by the holding out which the Union strikers require, Margaret begins to see the Union as just as tyrannical as the master's. Higgins respects Margaret for her so-called "plain-speaking," but does not agree. When Mrs. Hale takes a turn for the worse, Margaret is charged with the errand of asking Mrs. Thornton if they might borrow a water bed. At their estate, an angry, rioting crowd has gathered because Mr. Thornton had been attempting to use Irish workers to break the strike. Feeling the injustice which the crowd feels, Margaret charges Thornton to do his manly duty and speak to the crowd as a human speaks to his brother human. Margaret rushes out to face the crowd with him, and a pebble grazes her. Terrified at what they have done, the crowd retreats. After this incident, Thornton realizes that Margaret has taken harm upon herself while protecting him, and feels himself actually deeply in love with her. He asks her for her hand in marriage, which she insolently rejects; Thornton responds by saying that he will nevertheless love her, as a kind of defiance to Margaret's intransigence.

Mrs. Hale, feeling herself fast fading, makes a request that she might be able to see her son Frederick, who has been forced to take shelter in Spain because of his participation in a mutiny aboard a ship. Though Frederick's action was just, he will likely be hanged if he returned to England. Margaret and Dixon make arrangements for Frederick to visit his dying mother in secret. Mrs. Hale also requests of Mrs. Thornton to watch over Margaret as a mother might after she is gone; reluctantly. Mrs. Thornton agrees though she clearly resents Margaret for her pride and rejection of her own, dear son. Bessy dies before Mrs. Hale, and Margaret takes it upon herself to put Mr. Higgins in contact with her father in hopes that he might develop some faith in God which would have been so important to Bessy. The two of them strike an unusual sort of friendship through Margaret. Frederick's visit goes off without a hitch, and Mrs. Hale dies. Afterwards, Margaret suggests that Frederick go to London to seek out Henry Lennox to see if he might help him return to England legally. This turns out to be a mistake, because someone recognizes Frederick at the railroad station; Frederick pushes this man off the platform and boards the train for London and is for the time being safe. Unfortunately, the man dies (likely because he was a heavy drinker and drunk at the time) and Margaret is asked by an inspector if she had been witness to a young man pushing this man off the platform. Stoically, Margaret lies that she was not there, but Thornton has actually seen her. Thornton, thinking that Margaret was out with a lover, actually strives to protect her by canceling the inquest (he has the power to do this because he is the magistrate for the case). Margaret is devastated by this involvement because she realizes that Thornton probably thinks badly of her.

Tragedy soon strikes the Boucher family as well; John Boucher is found drowned in a brook, having committed suicide. Higgins feels badly for his own harsh treatment of Boucher and his pressuring him to maintain the strike. Boucher's widow is rather unsympathetically portrayed in the narrative; she is vulgarly selfish and not particularly responsible as far as tending to her own children goes after her husband's terrible death. On a visit which Mr. Hale makes to visit Bell at Oxford, he suddenly dies, leaving Margaret and Frederick orphans. Margaret is hastened to London, where she can stay with her Aunt Shaw and Edith. Eventually, Bell comes to take Margaret to visit Helstone, thinking it will do her good after the tragic experiences with which she has had to contend. Margaret finds Helstone changed from her idyllic remembrances, though of course, she too has probably changed from her experiences in the north. More tragedy follows when the old Mr. Bell also dies, leaving Margaret with considerable property as his heiress. In the end, Margaret becomes Mr. Thornton's landlord at Marlborough Mills, and also offers to give him some capital when he suffers financial losses. Margaret's own name is cleared when Higgins, who has decided to work for Thornton (now, a much more humanistic factory master), reveals to him that the young man on the railroad platform was Frederick and not Margaret's lover but brother. The novel ends with Thornton as a reformed master, figuring out a better system in which worker and master engage in greater human-to-human interaction and as a result, gain a more personal understanding of each others' roles and the value of these roles. Thornton and Margaret finally reconcile and decide to marry, symbolizing Gaskell's vision of a union between the ruthlessly capitalistic, industrial north and the more humanistic but somewhat stagnant south.

CRITICAL APPROACH/ANALYSIS:
Gaskell's vision of a marriage between north and south crystallized by the marriage of John Thornton and Margaret Hale signals an acceptance of industrial power of machines as key to progress while also suggesting the need for human-to-human interaction between different classes in order for progress to work properly. Margaret's ability to find "human interest" and to connect people of different backgrounds and ideologies, whether Mr. Hale and Mr. Higgins, or Mr. Higgins and the Boucher's, is a corrective to Thornton's de-humanizing laissez-faire which sees his hired workers as merely "hands" (and even if he acknowledges their personhood, he wants nothing to do with that part of their existence). In turn, Thornton's powerful work ethic and faith in capitalism as a way of realizing greater heights of human productivity than ever-to-be imagined before is a corrective to Margaret's complacency in the stagnant, agricultural economy of the south. Though rich and poor might interact on a more personal, and less hostile relation in the south, hard subsistence remains a reality for large amount of poor southerners. The agricultural economy lacks projects backed by capital to carry society beyond this rather feudal state of relations between those who own land by birth and those who work on it in order to survive.

The title, North and South, however, was not Gaskell's original title: Dickens suggested it. Gaskell's title was Margaret Hale. While Dickens's title is useful insofar as it really pulls out the larger allegorical significances of Mr. Thornton and Margaret's marriage with respect to class and historical import, Gaskell's original title tilts the balance of this marriage in favor of Margaret's importance in the marriage. After all, Margaret ends up doing more than just helping to soften and humanize Thornton's capitalism; she also provides the capital for him to rebuild after suffering significant financial losses. In this sense, the "south" bears the greater burden, since not only does it correct the ideologies of a purely dehumanizing capitalist machine, but also pumps money into it so that it might continue to do the positive work of progress. Thinking of North and South as a story of an individual, too, underscores the importance of what an individual (and even more importantly, a woman) can do to contribute to wider workings of social progress.

Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

PUBLICATION HISTORY:
In the winter of 1835, publishing house Chapman and Hall approached the young Dickens and asked if he would write some serials to accompany the sporting plates of one Robert Seymour, a comic artist at the time. The idea was to call this ensemble the "Nimrod Club" in which a group of sportsmen would become entangled in different humorous situations. Dickens managed to secure an agreement more favorable to his own terms--namely, for monthly publication of "The Pickwick Papers" by February. The first monthly part of "Pickwick" (full title: "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club") appeared on March 31st. The advertisement in the Times characterized the work as "containing a faithful record of the Perambulations, Perils, Travels, Adventures, and Sporting Transactions of the Corresponding Members."

"Pickwick," however, was not an instant success. The publishers only printed 1,000 copies of the first installment, and as a result of only a moderate response, they sent in a print order for only 500 for the second installment. In April, Seymour committed suicide, and there was a bit of a scuffle between Dickens and his widow as to who was the originator of "Pickwick." Meanwhile, Dickens sought a new illustrator, and finally settled on Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz" to Dickens's "Boz"). See David Perdue's site for Seymour and Phiz's prints. "Pickwick" finally met with greater success by the fifth installment in 1836, with sales rocketing up to 40,000 for the 15th installment.

In describing the importance of "Pickwick" to the everyday lives of the English reading public, G.K. Chesterton has famously wrote: "In the days when Dickens's work was coming out in serial, people talked as if real life were itself the interlude between one issue of "Pickwick" and another." (SOURCE: Fadiman Introduction)

SUMMARY/KEY FEATURES:
Literary critical reception of Pickwick has generally focused on its "accidental" and episodic nature, especially in the context of its unpredicted rise to popularity. Dickens didn't set out to write a novelistic plot, though Pickwick would come to be known as an originary moment for Dickens's novel writing methods. As Jonathan Grossman has observed in his first book on the English law courts and the novel form, however, a novelistic plot does in fact gain momentum in Pickwick, specifically, one which issues forth from the case Mrs. Bardell mounts against Pickwick, eventually leading to the narrative arc of his incarceration in the Fleet debtor's prison and later release.

Pickwick's premise is that an editor, whose voice predominantly takes on the point of view of a good-humored, third person narrator throughout, has come upon a nine-year old archive of a traveling group of gentleman. The narrative which follows is an account which draws from the information found in these archives. The Pickwickian travelers (comprising of the genial, good-hearted Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Winkle, a sportsman, Mr. Snodgrass, a melancholy poet, and Mr. Tupman, an older man with nonetheless the "ardour of a boy") commence on a journey around English towns and villages, meeting with various and sundry adventures along the way.

Immediately upon commencing their journey to Golden Cross in a cab, Pickwick accidentally offends the cabman, who thinks he is taking notes to inform against him. They get into a bit of a scuffle, and emerge from this scuffle when a man in a green coat, Alfred Jingle, brings Pickwick and his friends into an Inn. Jingle accompanies the Pickwickians to Rochester; Jingle seems friendly enough but soon becomes a source for trouble for the Pickwickians. At Rochester, Jingle convinces Tupman to attend a ball with him, asking Tupman to steal Winkle's clothing so that he might have the proper attire for the event. At the ball, Jingle offends a military officer, who remembers the Pickwickian label on Winkle's coat, and so the next day Winkle is summoned to a duel. When the military man realizes the mistake, all turns out fine for Winkle.

Mr. Pickwick and his friends receive an invitation from Mr. Wardle, a fine country gentleman, to visit him at Manor Farm in Dingley Dell. On the way to Dingley Dell, Pickwick and his friends are involved in a slight accident because they do not know how to ride horses. They arrive eventually, and make the acquaintance of Mr. Wardle's sassy old mother, his spinster sister, and his two daughters, Isabella and Emily. Mr. Tupman falls in love with Miss Rachel, the spinster sister, but ends up being thwarted by Jingle's machinations. Rachel elopes with Jingle to London, and Pickwick follows him, at last finding him at the White Hart where Pickwick first makes the acquaintance of Sam Weller as he is cleaning some boots. Sam directs Pickwick and Wardle to the room where Rachel and Jingle are staying, and the confrontation leads to Jingle letting Rachel go after securing money from Wardle.

Pickwick's own troubles begin when he thinks about hiring Sam as his personal manservant: when he goes to let his landlady at Goswell Street (Maria Bardell) know, she mistakes his proposition as one for marriage. Overwhelmed, Maria faints into his arms, and unfortunately, Pickwick's travel companions are made witness of this strange encounter. After the close of this episode, Pickwick engages Sam, and the group travels to Eatanswill to see an election. At Eatanswill, Pickwick and his friends attend a costume party, where they meet with Jingle once again, who now calls himself Captain Fitz-Marshall. Jingle runs away from them, but Pickwick and his friends decide to pursue him at Bury St. Edmunds, in order to prevent him from conning others. Sam meets a servant, Job Trotter, who now travels with Jingle, and mistakes Job's professions of wanting to leave Jingle as true. Job tells Sam that Jingle will elope with a young lady from a seminary, luring Pickwick into an awkward situation wherein he trespasses on the seminary grounds at night. Meanwhile, Jingle and Job escape from the town.

At Mr. Wardle's, the friends are engaged to shoot birds, and because Pickwick has been slightly injured from his tresspassing encounter, and he is left behind in a wheelbarrow after consuming a large amount of cold punch. A neighbor of Wardle's finds Pickwick asleep and thinks him to be a poacher--again, it turns out that Pickwick has tresspassed because the Pickwickians had unwittingly wandered into this neighbor's ground. Pickwick is taken away to the Pound, where Sam finds him later and rescues him. Sam Weller's father, a coachman, now comes onto the scene, and actually offers a clue as to Jingle's whereabouts. The older Mr. Weller has married a widow, whom the narrative refers to as Sam's "mother-in-law," who is none too good to him, choosing to spend much of her time with a church man (the "shepherd") who is a leech on Weller's money and hospitality. Sam's father carries Pickwick and his friends to Ipswich in order that they might continue in pursuit of Jingle. At Ipswich, Pickwick is involved in another unfortunate incident, where he accidentally stumbles into a room already occupied by a middle aged lady; though Pickwick is very apologetic, she will not hear him and throws him out of the room. Pickwick is arrested when a misunderstanding ensues from the revelation that the lady is their new friend's (Peter Magnus) fiancee. The magistrate, Mr. Lupkin, happens to be in the company of Jingle and Job, and Pickwick manages to distract from his own case by exposing Jingle to be an impostor.

At this point in the narrative, Pickwick can no longer ignore the suit that Maria Bardell has began against him for a breach of promise, since she has thought he would marry her. She hires the profit-motivated Dodson and Fogg to represent her. At Pickwick's trial in London, the lawyers force Pickwick's friends to give testimony against him. The result is that Pickwick must pay damages to Mrs. Bardell, but on principle, Pickwick refuses. Pickwick refuses to pay, and goes off for a short and relaxing two month stay at Bath. Upon his return, he is committed to Fleet Prison, the debtor's prison, where he witnesses many a sad scene. Pickwick generously provides fellow prisoners with some comforts, including food and money, and is surprised to find Jingle and Job in the prison, now much humbled. Pickwick, seeing them humbled, actually pays their debts and arranges for Jingle to go to the West Indies; Job follows.

Sam is an equally devoted manservant: he devises a scheme whereby he becomes indebted to his father and joins Pickwick in prison. When Pickwick is in prison, his friends meet with some further adventures--Winkle is busy courting Arabella Allen, the sister of a medical man, Benjamin Allen. Ben, however, would like Arabella to become engaged to his friend Bob Sawyer, and so Arabella runs away with Winkle. Snodgrass, apparently, continues to write love letters to Emily Wardle.

Pickwick's situation comes to be resolved when Mrs. Bardell too is sent to Fleet, because she cannot pay the high fees which Dodson and Fogg require from her. Pickwick then agrees to pay all the costs, on the condition that his name be cleared.

The narrative ends happily after--and with a number of marriages: between Mr. Winkle and one Arabella Allen (for whom Pickwick intercedes, convincing Mr. Winkle's father to accept the marriage), between Emily Wardle and Mr. Snodgrass, and between Sam and Arabella's pretty servant, Mary.  Pickwick retires to a villa in Dulwich, satisfied that his travels were over.
---
Note: This main narrative is interpolated by many stories; I haven't included a summary of them here but for a good discussion see Patten, "The Art of Pickwick's Interpolated Tales" in ELH. My own reading of the often sensationalistic interpolated tales are that they provide a way of imagining interiority and time which the Pickwick narrative disallows--the stories give insight into character psychologies (e.g., "The Madman's Story") and also sometimes entire life histories (the convict's story). Pickwick's story is very much caught up in the dialogue and actions of the characters (as we might experience them in real life, without privilege into deeper interiors) and also the circumstances of their serialization underscored the "present" of Dickens's audience as each installment came out.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS/APPROACH:
Reading against the common assumption of Pickwick haphazard and accidental, there have been suggestions that the work is a picaresque novel, or perhaps because of the "archive," a historical novel. Grossman reads against both suggestions. He points out that if Pickwick is a picaresque, it does not follow the sequential progress of a journey--rather, Pickwick and his friends don't go very far at all, they travel less than one hundred miles, circulating within the regional, passenger transport system of stagecoaches and cabs. By the 1830s, this regional transport system had already experienced rapid expansion due to the railways, so Pickwick and his friends are rather quite limited in their journeying. If Pickwick makes a nod to the historical novel, the archive is only nine years old. Thus Pickwick makes a joke of both genres rather than adopting them. 

I agree that thinking of Pickwick as haphazard due to its serialization tends to preclude understandings of potentially coherent logics within the work. Just because Pickwick wasn't intended from the first as a novel as defined by plot development doesn't mean that Dickens didn't imagine the series as integral on other levels. I imagine that these integrities may be made up of quite a number of different possibilities. Here are a couple that I'll posit:

• Pickwick Papers abounds in "paper"--most prominently, legal documents drive the plot, but there are also letters, wills, newspapers (e.g., the electioneering chapter), and old leaflets bearing stories, to name a few others. The "Pickwick Papers" seem to counter the official documents which control modern life: legal documents, newspapers. Unlike these latter documents, the Pickwick Papers bring out the whimsical, the pathetic, the "everyday" human (rather than say, institutional) contingencies of the lives they chronicle. The Pickwick papers critique the twisted accounts of legal documents, and the rushed and partial accounts of the newspapers (incidentally, the "villain" of the story, Jingle, seems to speak in reporter's shorthand, which Dickens would have been well-versed in through his work as a Parliamentary reporter just previous to writing Pickwick). The Pickwick papers tell of everyday privations suffered by husbands who marry widows, of romantic machinations and mishaps, of clandestine kisses, of dinners, toasts, drinking, and hearing stories.    
• Pickwick was contemporary with the volume re-publications of Sketches by Boz and also of Oliver Twist. And yet, the three seem pretty different as far as their overall effects go, even if they might bear some obvious similarities. The institutional critiques--of marriage, law courts, prison, for example--so scathing in Oliver Twist and later novels are in Pickwick, and the anecdotal, contained stories of Sketches are replicated in the episodic aspects of the main narrative of Pickwick and even more so in the interpolated tales. Yet what I mean about their overall effects is that Oliver Twist comes across as seriously moralistic bordering on allegorical, Sketches is journalistic but with a similarly moralistic bent, but Pickwick comes across as comic and light, even in the darkest scenes such as when Pickwick is in Fleet Prison, and hardly moralistic, even if there are embedded critiques. Unlike Sketches or Oliver, these critiques are never scathing nor calculated to strike deep emotional chords.
• Pickwick and his gang, however, ask for sympathy as much as Oliver or the characters in Sketches do, but I think that it's of a generally different quality. We like Pickwick not because he is generous, but because his generosity is naive and sincere (this is why Sam likes him too, and we like Sam because he serves this sincerity even when he can see its role in getting Pickwick in trouble). Similarly, we like the others because of their recognizable limitations and foibles (especially when it comes to their romantic altercations). Even Pickwick is by no means a hero, his "good humor" and his incapacity for cynicism even when he begins to learn of "the ways of the world" is infectious--to the point where even Jingle and Job turn out reformed when they reach the West Indies.

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).

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).

The Renaissance by Walter Pater

PUBLICATION HISTORY: Pater's The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry is a collection of critical essays first published together as a volume in 1873, originally titled Studies in the History of the Renaissance. The title change came after Pater's friend Frances Strong Pattison remarked that the title was "misleading" since the works are clearly not concerned with history as it was normally defined. Instead, as the summary below will show, Pater's Renaissance traces the existence of a certain temperament that is more primary than any temporal or spatial (historical) contingencies.

The various essays included in The Renaissance were first published in a variety of periodicals. Pater's "Winckelmann" (1867) appeared in the Westminster Review. "Leonardo da Vinci" (1869), "Sandro Botticelli" (1870), and "Michelangelo" (1871), and "The School of Giorgione" (1877, thus included in the second edition of The Renaissance only) were originally published in the Fornightly Review. Finally, Pater's conclusion, which became infamous because it was (mis)understood as advocacy for hedonism, drew material from the final paragraphs of a William Morris essay originally published in the Westminster Review. The publication of The Renaissance provoked strong reactions--it came to be regarded sharply by both critics and religious contingents as a kind of public apostasy (an important exception was John Morley, editor at the Fortnightly). For the most part, though this indubitably contributed to the strong public response, the male to male love which Pater points to tended not to be acknowledged publically by Victorian audiences.

SUMMARY:
Preface: According to Pater, the role of (aesthetic) critic was to "distinguish, to analyse, separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a [work of art] produce[s]this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced." This is what he seeks to do in his collection of essays, which explore works of art and poetry spanning a historical period of over 500 years (the work is bracketed by explorations of what he sees as the spirit of the Renaissance from the 12th-century and the 18th-century).

Two Early French Stories: Pater makes the case that there were elements of what he considers to be the spirit of the Renaissance much before the traditionally understood Renaissance in fifteenth-century Italy. He cites two early 12th-century French stories as examples, Amis and Amile (the story of deep, male friendship and love, in which Amile is willing to slay his own children to cure Amis's leprosy) and Nicolette and Aucassin (the love story of a Saracen slave girl and the son of a Count).

Pico della Mirandola: Pater singles out Pico as a 15th-century Italian who sought to reconcile Christian and Pagan traditions. Pater particularly admires him for his non-historical/non-intellectual approach of making "Plato and Homer...speak agreeably to Moses." He evinces the spirit of looking for some kind of "diviner signification" than the temporally or spatially specific. Pater says it is not important that he was scientifically wrong about many things (for example, he thought the earth at the center of universe) but values him for his humanist spirit his passion for seeing the world as full of spiritual signification." For Pater, Pico was unmatched in his belief in "the spirit of order and beauty."  In a word, Pico represents how "Renaissance of the fifteenth century was...great rather by what it designed or aspired to do, than by what it actually achieved."

Sandro Botticelli: Botticelli, generally known in Pater's time as a minor artist, embodied for Pater an "undercurrent of original sentiment" which was distinct from the dramatic passion of Giotto's (Generally Pater was critical of dramatic, spectatorial passion and a proponent for an internally motivated passion). Pater describes Botticelli's aesthetic as containing something of exile and loss, as well as struggle (for example, Botticelli's paintings of those who struggle in Dante's Divine Comedy between heaven and hell).  "Sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition" is what Botticelli captures.

Luca Della Robbia: Luca represents the "intense and individualized expression" of Tuscan 15th-century sculptors, shared by greats like Michelangelo. At the same time, Luca also manages to adhere to a sense of Hellenic "breadth, generality, universality."  For Pater, Luca's work in low relief particularly enabled this "middle-way" between individuality and universality, the form's incompletion relieving a sense of the "hard realism" which tended to inhere in Greek sculpture.

The poetry of Michelangelo: Pater mainly characterizes Michelangelo as someone who unites the seemingly paradoxical attributes of "strength and sweetness." Most of his disciples, he argues, are men that tend to recognize only his "strength" and not his "sweetness." Characteristic of Michelangelo is also a kind of "incompleteness, which...trusts to the spectator to complete the half emergent form." The "sweetness" comes in part from a humanistic preoccupation with creation of man (Michelangelo doesn't take forms of nature as subjects). Pater re-reads Michelangelo's poetry/sonnets as not really about Vittoria Collona, as is traditionally thought, but as the "disappointment" of affection that may yet "charm." Finally, within Michelangelo's aesthetic is a willful consideration of serious topics like death, often yielding a serious and dignified sentiment of pity (as embodied by his "Pieta"). Pater views the "Pieta" as not an expression primarily of religious sorrow, but an aesthetic one in which a mother struggles with physical reality of "the stiff limbs and colourless lips" of her son.

Leonardo da Vinci: For Pater, Leonardo is fascinating for the "enigmatical" in his work. Pater narrates different life stages of Leonardo from his apprenticeship to Verocchio, a period of discontentment in which he embarked upon a frenzied study of nature, to his recommendation to Ludovico Sforza in 1483. The fruit of Leonardo's discontentment and desire for knowing how nature (broadly defined, including man) worked, was a "curiosity often in conflict with the desire of beauty, but generating, in union with it, a type of subtle and curious grace." In his landscape paintings, Leonardo looked for the "bizarre" and also did the same with human personality. For example his type of female beauty was often "nervous, electric, faint" and "clairvoyant." The Mona Lisa has "something sinister in it" and though based on a specific Florentine, Pater compares her to a kind of vampire, who has "is older than the rocks among with she sits" and who rather uncannily contains all of human history.

The School of Giorgione: Pater begins with observations on how different arts (art, music, poetry) express via different sensory apparatuses and so they are not equivalent. Aesthetic criticism seeks, in part, to explain such distinctions. One of Pater's most famous theses is that "all art aspires toward the condition of music" because in music, form and matter are least distinct (matter being the subject, or content). Lyric poetry approaches closer to music than other forms of poetry. Pater's "Giorgionesque" (not attributable, necessarily, to Giorgione the man) encompasses the spirit which approaches this kind of identity of form and matter, through its focus on the decorative (colors, lines, sensory details). Pater further describes the "Giorgionesque" as having "tact in selecting such matter as lends itself most readily and entirely to pictorial form." Subjects often include people playing music, listening to something (either in music, in nature, or in poetry), and also pictures which unite landscape and persons.

Joachim du Bellay: Bellay, a literary from the 16th-century French Renaissance, was one who provided a "softening" touch to the hardened, Rabelaisian aesthetic of his contemporaries.  Bellay focused on form, trying to "ennoble the French language, to give it lustre" and to argue that contemporary French culture could be just as refined as classical culture. Bellay's aesthetic is representative of an age which "threw a large part of its energy into the work of decoration."

Winckelmann: This is the longest of the essays in The Renaissance and probably most completely reveals Pater's deep-seated Hellenism. In Protestant, eighteenth-century Germany, Winckelmann became interested in the "Hellenic ideal," finding in it, a more free way of living. Though Winckelmann never made it to Greece, Pater argues for affiliations of spirit rather than of nation: it is perfectly plausible that an individual growing up poor in Protestant Germany might feel a kinship with the artists of antiquity. This is an affinity of temperament, and it is with this kind of affinity that Pater concerns himself in his "history." Central to this Hellenic ideal were male-to-male love, as well as male beauty; Pater's extended musings on this topic is often drawn upon now to speak to Pater's gay sensibilties. Pater gives the interesting history of Winckelmann being murdered before getting a chance to meet Goethe on his return to Germany, but stresses that Goethe is to have been influenced by the Hellenic ideal via Winckelmann (again, affinities of temperament are available without physical meeting).

In delineating the Hellenic ideal, Pater describes "man at unity with himself, with his physical nature, with the outward world," something evident particularly in Greek sculpture which possesses a sensuousness that is not ashamed of itself as a Christian, ascetic might imagine. It is also not weighted down by worldly details that might be apparent from painting (the eyes are blank, the hair is like drapery). In a word, the human form is abstracted from the grossness of everyday life but yet intensely physical in an idealized way. 

The essay ends with Pater saying that the modern world can't have this kind of sculpture but instead needs poetry which he understands as "all literary production which attains the power of giving pleasure by its form, as distinct from its matter. Only in this varied literary form can art command that width, variety, delicacy of resoruces, which will enable it to deal with the conditions of modern life." According to Pater, freedom in modern life is only available through such channelsm and Pater singles out Goethe as one who tries to wrestle with whether the Hellenic ideal of unity, "blitheness and repose" might be brought to the modern world (I think, by the way, this "blitheness and repose" might be something like Bataille's notion of being in water like water).

Conclusion: Pater's conclusion was to become infamous because people thought it might be a call for hedonism. In it, he describes life as a bunch of forces coalescing for a moment, and so thoughts too should have the same existence. Life and thoughts contribute to a "strange perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves," and experiences become subordinated to "impressions" that they make within the mind. Freedom inheres in the individual mind reigning supreme while controlling its impressions. Like Arnold, Pater believes in avoiding the trap of stale orthodoxy, and this is why this "strange perpetual weaving and unweaving" is necessary (and besides, natural, as his imagery of all of life and nature as forces coalescing suggests).

CRITICAL APPROACH/ANALYSIS:
I rather like Pater's original title, because it signals his writing an alternate history--one based on aesthetic temperament as he so explicitly gives throughout his essays. It isn't misleading, then, but illuminating. Pater seeks to stand in place of traditional, scholarly understandings of an artist as constitutive of his biographical realities and sociocultural contexts. As Pater remarks in his chapter on Giorgione, he has no use for the scholars who would argue about whether or not any given painting is “authentic” or not—the point is that he is tracing a certain temperament or passion which he associates with the notion of a Renaissance. (Where Pater’s notions--and also Arnold--seem paradoxical is that he does in fact associate the “Renaissance” spirit with specific historical periods, antiquity, and also 15th-century Italy as somehow particularly productive of this temperament. Thus while writing against scholarly cultural or biographical histories, he acknowledges the effect of such histories on the production of this artistic spirit which he values).

In writing this kind of history of temperamental affiliation, Pater, like Matthew Arnold, envisions the existence of an ideal which stands apart from (or perhaps, takes root deeper than) historical contingencies like social, political, or religious identification. For both, Hellenism is a cornerstone of this ideal, though Pater calls the ideal art and Arnold "culture." Inhering in both Paterian and Arnoldian philosophy is a kind of dream of equality (and relatedly, of freedom) via this apartness from such historical contingencies. Hadley's critique of Arnold, that this kind of dream of equality and freedom is in fact contingent on the culturally specific language of liberalism might then also apply to Pater. Additionally, inhering in both is the notion of universality--the faith that there exists an aesthetic ideal or cultural ideal that is "the best" and which may be agreed upon, which might seem immediately suspect to our modern doubt that such claims can be made.

Wilde’s “Critic as Artist” offers a complementary framework for thinking about Pater’s work as alternate history. In acting as the aesthetic critic, Pater is himself the artist, making known the Renaissance ideal to modern audiences through the literary form of criticism. As Pater himself remarks in his chapter on Winckelmann, such art forms as sculpture don’t quite work anymore, because they can’t account for the “conflicting claims,” “entangled interest” and “distracted…sorrows” of a modern age. Pater’s criticism is an attempt at art in the modern era, which requires variety and reflexivity, but which nevertheless reaches towards the unity, “bliteness and repose” associated with the Hellenistic spirit.

Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens

PUBLICATION HISTORY


This collection of "sketches" was first organized into two volumes in 1836. Prior to that, the sketches were published separately in a variety of newspapers and periodicals between 1833-1836. For more details on the publication history of each, see: Schlicke, Paul. "'Risen Like a Rocket': The Impact of Sketches by Boz."Dickens Quarterly 22:1 (Mar 2005). 3-20. The subheadings below are part of a reorganization scheme in the volume collections. 


SUMMARY/MAJOR FEATURES


I. Our Parish
The section begins with a chapter on "The Beadle, The Parish Engine, and The Schoolmaster." The parish beadle is presented as a particularly officious and grave character, whose gravity is only interrupted by the commotion of when a parish engine was needed. The schoolmaster is described as a mild-mannered man who has been struck, time and again, by misfortune, but who very much accepts his station, living humbly off of parochial relief.


The story of "The Four Sisters" tells how four Miss Willises took over a property and gave every indication that they would "winter through life together," when it was given that one was to be married. Oddly enough, Mr. Robinson seems to marry all of them, and the neighbors are very curious as to who was actually Mr. Robinson's wife. When it is finally found out that it is the eldest Miss Willis who has delivered a child, the narrative describes how quickly interest dissipates.

"Our Next Door Neighbor" is a sketch which famously narrates the ways in which we can speculate about people's characters based on the appearance of their door knockers. After offering some lengthy reflections on this, the narrative goes through the history of a house without a knocker: first occupied by a single gentleman who entertained friends throughout the night, then a serious gentleman who soon mysteriously disappeared, and finally, by a poor widow and her son of eighteen or nineteen who eventually falls ill and dies. We are "actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere curiosity," the narrative remarks, foregrounding the problematic nature of being curious about human suffering.


II. Scenes:


This section begins with two chapters - "The Streets--Morning," and "The Streets--Night." The narration lingers on the changes, hour by hour, and the gradual awakening of people and commerce in the morning until "we come to the heat, bustle, and activity of Noon." "The Streets--Night" is similarly narrated in real time, focusing a large range of characters from theater goers to lingering street vendors and homeless women and children. At the end of this chapter, Dickens makes one of the first of many references to the scenes which he narrates as a sort of theater, contending that he "drop[s] the curtain" to close.

For the most part, "scenes" seems hardly different from any of the other sections and isn't focused on setting especially. Places like "Scotland Yard" are merely the occasion of sketching the life of memorable characters like a miserable old man who seems to remain exactly the same amidst other "change, restlessness, and innovation." "Hackney Coach Stands" capitalizes on the slow speed of hackney coaches and the drama which boarding them produces to tell stories of amusing, old world gentility. Despite the journalistic "we," Boz has been critiqued by contemporaries for his sense of apartness from the scenes he describes; "The River" is a good example in which Boz finds it most fun to look upon people and boaters rather than to participate in their amusements. Most of the sketches are like "The River" in that they describe lively scenes and anecdotes--some form of the word "amuse" comes up frequently in "London Recreations," "Astley's," "Greenwich Fair," or "Vauxhall by Day." Other sketches are more biting: "Parliamentary Sketch" critiques parliamentary procedures as boring and empty, "Public Dinners"and "Criminal Courts" satirizes people's interest in performing social roles and viewing other people's lives like drama or theater. 

The section closes with a heartbreaking sketch entitled "A Visit to Newgate" which deliberately leaves out statistics to narrate anecdotes, ending with an extended and sympathetic imagining of a criminal's consciousness during his last night on earth.
      
III. Characters: 

Again, since the collection of sketches under headings was a later move, these sketches don't necessarily seem that different from the rest or particularly focused on character. The section leads with "Thoughts about People," which offers short anecdotes on various types of people including a clerk who is too officious and precise to enjoy life, an old, disgruntled misanthrope, and a group of young London apprentices "looking easy and unconcerned." 

"A Christmas Dinner" is one of the more sentimental sketches, in which Dickens describes how people set aside petty differences during Christmas. In particular, he includes an affecting scene in which an old mother and father embrace their estranged daughter who has married below her class. For Dickens, however, it seems that the keys to Christmas's efficacy in bringing people together are ritual and tradition, rather than religion or spirituality.

"The Hospital Patient" and "The Prisoner's Van" tell stories of anguish amongst the poor and destitute--the former tells the story of a dying girl who vindicates the "brute" her hurt her on her death bed, and the latter of two sisters in a prisoner's van whose criminality Dickens ascribes to their unpitied, friendless upbringing. In such stories, Dickens stresses that though he only gives individual scenes for their affect, such scenes are a dime a dozen and very real. 

Besides powerfully upbeat and powerfully tragic sketches, the section also include a number of stories which read like cautionary tales against foolish decisions. In particular, in "The Misplaced Attachment of Mr. John Dounce," an "old boy" mistakenly thinks that he has attracted the attention of a young lady, and Boz directs this as "a living warning to all uxorious old boys." In "The Mistaken Milliner," whose vanity overtakes her when she agrees to sing for a wedding-dinner, resulting in a disastrous revelation of her limited abilities. Similarly, in "The Dancing Academy,"one Mr. Augustus Cooper gets carried away by ambition while being introduced to good company at a Dancing Academy, only to be tricked out of his money by the dancing instructor and his daughter. Finally, "Making a Night of It" is a humorous tale of two men who spend their money "making a night of it," only to be kicked out of the theater for their drunken behavior. All of these tales seem cautionary, in particular, against "misjudging" one's place or station, whether with respect to marriage, talent, social class, or means. 
      
IV. Tales: 

Sketches gathered under this section are often slightly lengthier stories, including the two-chaptered "The Boarding House" which chronicles two sets of boarders at the house of one Mrs. Tibbs and her miserable husband whom she bosses around. This sketch, though lengthier than many of the others, makes explicit references to the fact that it is not a novel, and consciously speeds through the ending of each chapter in a summary/epilogue-like fashion. 

Here, again, cautionary tales abound. In "Mr. Minns and his Cousin," one Mr. Budden zealously tries to win the affection of his solitary bachelor cousin Mr. Minns in hopes to advance his own son's fortunes. Mr. Minns, not used to social niceties, leaves the Budden's dinner party, and proceeds to purposefully exclude them from his will. "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," like "The Dancing Academy," or "Making a Night of It" cautions against the vanity of those who come quickly upon money, as it is just as quickly and easily spent. 

The more lighthearted stories are balanced by deeply dark ones such as "The Black Veil," which tells the mysterious story of a woman who oddly appeals to a doctor about someone dear to her about to die, but tells the doctor that he may not attend to him. The reader and the doctor both find out at the end that the woman speaks of her son who has, during the course of the narrative, been executed. "Tales" concludes with the grim story, "The Drunkard's Death," whose poverty leads him to neglect his children, and ultimately after his children blame him for their own misfortunes and misadventures, he drowns himself in the river. Like many of the other grim stories of poverty and destitution, Boz makes the point that this is just one out of many such stories that he could have told. 

CRITICAL APPROACHES

There has been much difficulty as to how to characterize the sketches generically:are they fiction, or are they journalism? Literary critics tend to read Dickens's sketches as early precursors of Dickens's realist novels, since predictably, perhaps, since Dickens is most famous for his novels. J. Hillis Miller contends that Dickens's volume reorganization of his various pieces shows a progression from journalisticsketch to tale which signals the development of Dickens's realist, metonymic mode of storytelling throughout. Amanpal Garcha, more recently, attempts to explain how the "sketch" is of its own genre and moment, but still back-reads elements of the novel into Dickens's sketches. Danielle Coriale also emphasizes Dickens's anxious, retroactive privileging of narrative design in his volume reorganization. 

However, I think we ought to give greater consideration to the sketches in their original publications, thinking about what purposes they served, generically, before they were collected into volume form. We might think of them as "literary journalism," a hybrid genre which captures the dual labors of storytelling and reporting. These dual labors in concert, I argue, are what enable the unusually affective urgencies of the text which make sense in the context of Dickens's passionate ideas specifically on reform in the 1830s.  See my paper for more.