The Influence of Religion on the Victorian Literature

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of contents……………………………………………………………………1

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………..3

Introduction…..…………………………………………………………………….5

1. CHAPTER ONE: The religious context……………………………………6

1.0 A brief introduction into Victorian religion…………………………..6
1.1 The Dissenters…………………………………………………………...8
1.2 The Hegelians……………………………………………………………8
1.3 The Positivists……………………………………………………………10
1.4 The Atheists………………………………………………………………14
1.5 Conclusions……………………………………………………………….14

2. CHAPTER TWO: Crisis of faith in Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘North and South’

2.0 About the novel………………………………………………………….…16
2.1 Mr. Hale, Dissenter or Unitarian?...............................................................17
2.2 Bessy Higgins, a girl with ‘methodee fancies’………………………….…22
2.3 Nicholas Higgins, the agnostic ahead of his time…………………………24
2.4 Conclusions……………………………………………………………….…25

3. CHAPTER THREE: Paganism in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’

3.0 Introduction……………………………………………………………….…26
3.1 Paganism……………………………………………………………………..27
3.2 Angel Clare’s ‘neo – paganism’…………………………………………….29
3.3 Tess, the ‘boundary breaker’……………………………………………….33

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 3.4 Tess, the positivist heroine………………………………………………….34
3.5 Paganism vs. Positivism…………………………………………………….36
3.6 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………..37

4. CHAPTER FOUR: Hate, Evangelicalism, and The religion of love in Charlotte

Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’ Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’……………………………………38
4.0 About the novel……………………………………………………………..38
4.1 Mrs. Reed, the woman whose religion was ‘hate’………………………...39
4.2 Mr. Brocklehurst’s Evangelicalism………………………………………..40
4.3 Helen Burns and the religion of love……………………………………....43
4.4 Conclusions………………………………………………………………….46

5. CHAPTER FIVE: Christianity as an example for humanity in Charles Dickens’s

‘The life of our Lord’……………………………………………………………47
5.0 Introduction …………...……………………………………………………47
5.1 About the story………………………………………………………………48
5.2 Another religious view………………………………………………………50
5.3 Contextualization……………………………………………………….……52
5.4 Rewriting the ‘New Testament’……………………………………..………53
5.5 Conclusions…………………………………………………………...………56

Conclusions………………………………………………………………………..………57

References…………………………………………………………………………………59

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 ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore how religion influenced some of the writings from the
Victorian literature, after the scientific discoveries that shook the era and the continuous
changes within the Church.

The research seeks to answer the question of whether religion still remained an important part
of the era’s literature and how Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy and
Charles Dickens coped with the loss of faith in the Christian dogma after they were acquainted
with Darwin’s writings.

The first chapter of this BA Project presents the religious context of the Victorian era, an
essential introduction for understanding the theme of my work. The second chapter argues that
Elizabeth Gaskell saw the embracing of industrialization as a manner to deal with the loss of
faith, and analyses her most well-known novel, ‘North and South’. The third chapter presents
one of Charlotte Brontë’s writings, ‘Jane Eyre’ and how the author was absorbing currents of
religious thoughts not only from Anglicanism, but also from Catholicism and Methodism. In
the fourth chapter, I tried to show how Hardy embraced an alternative ‘religion’ in ‘Tess of the
d’Urbervilles’, The Positivist ‘Religion of Humanity’, while the fifth chapter is dedicated to
Dickens and his writing ‘The Life of our Lord’, a piece of work composed in his last years,
which offered readers a distilled version of Dickensian Christianity and a direct articulation of
his Jesus-centric belief system.

The methods adopted in planning the research incorporate investigation of primary resources,
textual reading and attempting to concentrate on the themes that are appropriate and suitable
for the paper’s subject.

On the basis of the results of this research, it can be concluded that religion still remained the
most important topic of the era, although the writers had their doubts regarding religion.
Notwithstanding the fact that Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy and Charles
Dickens had different opinions and beliefs about the Christian Church and faith, their works
did not lack in religious references and none of the above mentioned writers renounced
completely in believing in an Absolute Power, even after Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and
industrialization.

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 INTRODUCTION

Religion is a system of beliefs, dogmas, rites and feelings that define the relation between
humans and divinity. Religion existed since the moment mankind existed; Homo Habilius
worshiped natural phenomena, due to the fact that they could not understand or control nature.
Religion changed alongside human’s evolution, meeting the demands of the time. Hence,
when humans renounced to fear the uncontrollable meteorological phenomena, the basis of
religion adjusted to the new needs, as the need of a supreme protection or the idea that
everything has a purpose and every existence is not in vain. Maslow’s hierarchy of human
needs situates the need of protection on the second stage of the pyramid, being considered a
‘basic need’; therefore, religion imposed itself as a very important part of human life.

The theme of my BA Project is ‘The influence of religion on the Victorian literature’ and I
decided to discuss the subject of religion in this era, as the Victorians had faced the notorious
‘religious doubt’. After Darwin’s ‘Theory of evolution’ was published, the religious doubt
started contouring more and more. For the first time in history, people had the opportunity to
‘revoke’ the connection with divinity: they were not God’s creation anymore. They were not
forced to believe in something that cannot be seen, and they were not supposed to fear God’s
punishment if they sinned. Another cause of Victorian doubt was that the religious institutions
were no longer serving the moral sensibility, as they were supposed to. Humanitarianism, the
need of a social reform, the changes and conflicts within churches, the evangelical movement
and the influence of scientific discoveries were also important factors that led to this loss of
faith.
The religious doubt became vocal and widespread in a manner that England had not
previously seen before. It was especially pronounced among the intellectuals, where
manifestos like Charles Hennell's An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838) or
the The Nemesis of Faith (1849), by J. A. Froude and Frank Newman were much debated,
while important scholars as John Henry Newman and Mill wrote autobiographically about
their crises of faith.

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The first chapter of my BA Project represents an introduction into the religion of the Victorian
era and the problems that arise with it. The organization of the English Established Church,
the birth of the Dissenters, the positive theory of Hegel, which started the Hegelianism,
Comte’s Positivism and the Atheists. The chapter concludes that, although the Church of
England lost some of its followers, the religion itself remained present in the Victorian
literature through the remarkable theme of failure and disintegration of a sense of social
integrity.

In an attempt to demonstrate that religious doubt became the most familiar theme of the time, I
selected four novels from four important authors of the era and I tried analysing them with the
purpose of portraying how religion influenced their writings. Therefore, in the second chapter,
I tried to prove that Elizabeth Gaskell considered the loss of religion as important as the
middle class crisis and position of women in the Victorian society.

In addition, in the third chapter of my paper I endeavoured to show that Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess
of the d’Urberville’ is a pagan-positivist writing. The fourth chapter presents Charlotte
Brontë’s Jane Eyre and her refuse to follow any religious cult, considering that religion is a
matter of principles and good thoughts. The final chapter analyses Dickens’s manuscript, ‘The
life of our world’ and his rewriting of the ‘New Testament’ with the purpose of creating his
own compassionate religion.

The final part of this BA Project will present my conclusions over the subject.

The methods adopted in planning the research include textual reading of primary resources,
investigation of secondary resources and attempted concentration on the religious themes.

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 CHAPTER ONE

The religious context

1.0 A brief introduction into Victorian religion

The Victorians1 were concerned with only two subjects: religion and science. As George Eliot
stated in Fortnightly Review (1865): “The supremely important fact [of the period] was the
gradual reduction of all phenomena within the sphere of established law, which carries as a
consequence the rejection of the miraculous [and] has its determining current in the
development of physical science.” Like Eliot, John Stuart Mill also saw the relation between
science and religion as essentially a polemical one: "The war against religious beliefs, in the
last century was carried on principally on the ground of common sense or of logic; in the
present age, on the ground of science" (Mill, 1969: 126). As the winner in this war, science
became the central arena of intellectual life, while the religious doubt was both general and
vehement in a manner it had not formerly been in England, and it was especially noticeable
among the intellectual classes. Despite all the changes and the loss of influence, church
attendance held firm over the course of the century. Although it may be less obvious, religion
still remained a powerful and dominant influence on Victorian literature and all religious
concerns saturated the fiction. But before we could discuss about the religion’s influence over
literature, let us make an idea about the religious context of the era.

In the early 1830, Protestant Christianity was the main religion of England, while religions and
sects as Judaism or Roman Catholicism never really integrated within the English
Ecclesiastical order and were used only as a negative mirror for self – definition. But the
English Victorian Church was in a precarious state, due to the its involvement in the political
regime and parliament of England at that time; the Church started to lose its privileges, as a
consequence of the progressive yielding of its power and control over the monarch and the
Parliament - the key figures of the political arena (Schneewind, 1970: 49).

1
‘Victorian era’ is the name given to period of Queen Victoria's reign (from 20 June 1837 until
her death on 22 January 1901), thus all Englishmen of the time were considered ‘Victorians’.
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The established Church of England had three parties: the ‘low’ churchmen, also known as
Evangelicals, the ‘high’ churchmen (the Tractarians, Puseyites, or Ritualists) and the ‘broad’
church. The first ones were also the larger group and they were always attempting to control
the doctrine and policy within the Church. The latter party was the smallest, but it comprised
men who opposed the idea of the assertive heterogeneity of conflicting parties of churchmen;
they pledge for conformity and accord. The Evangelicals’ doctrine stated individual piety, the
necessity of an individual redemption and the experience of conversion and salvation. The
Ritualists stressed the support to the sacramental ritual of the church and its historical
continuity, attributing to its priests genuine descent from the Apostles. The Methodists
encouraged the revival of emotional religion based on the simple ideology that the vicarious
atonement of Christ had been earned by every Christian man. But the later generations of
Methodists were not successful in keeping the great influence of their predecessors;
consequently, their belief in utter faith in salvation became a reason for haughtiness, pride and
for deprecating other religious ways (Schneewind, 1970: 55). There were some remarkable
literary figures that belonged to the Evangelical Church of England: the Brontë sisters,
Macaulay, George Eliot, Samuel Butler and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Schneewind, 1970:
58). Then again, the power of Evangelicals started to decline after 1870, due to the fact that
their doctrine was based on the Bible and they could not endure the flow of scepticism led by
academics and philosophers such as Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, Hegel or Kant. They
were not able to answer, on a rational basis, to the ideas and questions of the sceptics.

Cardinal John Henry stated, as a response to the increasing conflict between the rationalist
secular thinking and the decline of religious belief, ‘It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture
them, into believing’ (Schneewind, 1970: 60). He considered that churches were not infallible
and he aroused doubts about the authority of the church. This was the context that led to the
arose of the Oxford Movement, whose task was the enhancing of religion’s position by turning
to a conservative attitude of protecting religion against scientific scepticism and the surfacing
of democracy.

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 1.1 The Dissenters
Unlike Anglicans, the Dissenters believed in the necessity of the trustworthiness and honesty
of the clergy. They considered that the credibility and dignity of a clergyman comes from his
spiritual eligibility, and not from his apostolic bloodline. Another difference between them and
the Anglicans was that the latter adopted adult baptism, because they considered that the
individual conscience was the decisive criterion for interpreting the Scriptures. The Dissenters
preached through England, spreading out their doctrine. However, they tended towards a
literal interpretation of the Bible, becoming unable to accommodate the rising power of
scepticism (Schneewind, 1970: 65).

1.2 The Hegelians

The philosopher Hegel (1770-1831) influenced significantly the philosophical thought in

England. He postulated that the universe was the manifestation of the ‘Absolute’ in a state of
‘struggle with itself is the deepest philosophical truth’ (Schneewind, 1970: 68). He imagined
the Absolute as the Supreme Being with absolute power to rule the universe. His beliefs
became known as ‘Hegelianism’ and led the campaign of downgrading the epistemological
(sensory) order of empiricism common in Victorian England to a second-fiddle constituent of
Positivist philosophy.

The positive theory of Hegel set forth ‘a new philosophical basis for theology’ (Schneewind,
1970, 83). As stated by Hegel’s philosophy, the human mind was in a continuous evolution to
a better understanding of universe and our existence; the natural phenomena, history and all
disciplines that studied thought and art were displays ‘of the self-development of ‘the
Absolute’, ‘the ultimate reality’ that our unconscious mind was trying to apprehend in a
multitude of ways.

Accepting Hegel’s idea that the Absolute is God, Christian belief subordinates to higher
abstraction, thus sectarian dogma has to accept a more liberal theology. His postulation gained
support throughout England. As a consequence, a group of Oxford clerics led by the influence
of T.H. Green, published in 1889 an anthology of essays, “Lux Mundi”, where they suggested

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that ‘a combination of the belief in progressive revelation with Hegelian idealism’, could
situate their faith ‘into its right relation to modern intellectual and moral problems’
(Schneewind, 1970, 83). The Hegelians did not take Christ’s Crucifixion as a central point of
their theology, but rather His Incarnation, thereby broking their connections with the
Evangelicals. Moreover, they stated that the only reason that God healed the severance
between Himself and humans was an act of benevolence. Therefore, if God was considered
All-Benevolent, the Hegelians did not perceive Christ as a saviour, ruling out the belief in the
damnation of man. They gathered that religion involved both truth and emotion, and this belief
could be supported without being in disagreement with the discoveries and evolution of
secular science. They reckoned that ‘the advance of secular knowledge…is for faith, an
acquiring gain’ (Schneewind, 1970, 83). Hegel’s disciples contended that the pillar of science
is ‘abstraction’, handling and examining bare facts. Hence, science could not cover the entire
truth of man, because it wasn’t able to go beyond and explore the moral and spiritual side of
man (Schneewind, 1970, 83).

The German clergy was highly educated and more competent to engage in a philosophical
debate in comparison with their English counterparts. Schneewind mentions that, ‘A Liberal
Congregationalist complained of it: “The fact is, that, filled with an unfounded alarm, people
are getting into the habit of listening with nervous anxiety to every student [minister] they
happen to hear...to discover whether he has any leaning to Germanism” (Dale, 1898, 69).
Owing to their strict and factual belief in the Bible, English clerics separated themselves from
Higher Criticism and that separation was also caused by the English jingoistic prejudice averse
to the German Higher Critics. From the clerical originators of Essays and Reviews, only two
were detained and were pronounced guilty of recusancy and heresy in a church court in 1860
(Schneewind, 1970, 69-70).

‘Vestiges of Creation’, an unknown publication, posited in 1844 that the creation of living
beings was the result of biological evolution. Denying the role of a Supreme Architect of the
universe, this theory opened the way for Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. While both
works submitted that all species had developed through a natural process of selection and
adaptation, they eluded the Genesis’ message, that man was God’s creation. It also subverted
the ‘argument from design’, stating that Creation might as well be ‘the result of chance’

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(Schneewind, 1970, 72-73). Nonetheless, like the Hegelians, John Tyndall, a skilful Victorian
physicist, excluded the prospect of warfare between religion and science, since the field of
interest of each discipline was different; whereas science engages the human intellect, religion
appeals to human emotion.

1.3 The Positivists

In the seventeenth century, English philosophy focused on ‘empiricism’: achieving

epistemological knowledge through observation of natural and universal phenomena. In the
eighteenth century, David Hume stated that knowledge that came from observation could not
travel further than the powers of observation; inevitably, ‘empiricism’ was not able to uncoil
the ambiguities and secrets ‘of the future, of laws of nature, of the essence of physical objects,
or the soul’ (Schneewind, 1970, 76). He published ‘Dialogues on Natural Religion’ in 1779, a
work in which he established the ineptness of empiricist principles in reaching rational
‘knowledge of God or the creation of the universe’ (Schneewind, 1970, 76). His criticism was
continued by John Stuart Mill, whose powerful emphasis on empiricism, individualism and
essentially a live-and-let-live ethics advocated humanism connected to another philosophy.
This new school was French Positivism, developed by Auguste Comte (Schneewind, 1970,
76-77).

A French count, Henri de Saint-Simon, employed Comte as his secretary. The count
considered that history unwinds two cycles of chronological eras, which repeat themselves:
‘the organic era’ and ‘the critical era’. Through the ‘organic’ era, society sees stability and
unity under the reign of leaders who reached a common basis ‘of a coherent doctrine of
morality and religion’ (Schneewind, 1970, 77). In the ‘critical’ era, bliss, serenity and peace
are defaced by ‘skeptical writings’, as it were Voltaire’s writings (Schneewind, 1970, 77). The
society’s steadiness is deeply disturbed by revolutions or other intense and brutal changes
caused by the excluded classes. This stormy and turbulent era ends progressively when a new
incorporation of moral and political ideology receives consent between the leaders and the
people. It can be said that the Saint-Simonians conceived this ‘definition’ after the case of the
French Revolution.

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Comte adhered to the above-mentioned view in essence, but he attached to it the theory which
states that the types of thought - serving to unify society over different organic periods -, are
subjected to an evolution which controls the passing of human history. Thorough his writings,
he postulated three stages of thought: in the first stage, thought is ‘theological’ - men decipher
events by ascribing them to the dispensation of a supreme being (a god). After a temporary
period of scepticism, this stage is succeeded by ‘metaphysical’ thinking, in which occurrences
are interpreted by attributing them to astrology and witchcraft, where events can be known
only completely by detecting their effects. In this stage of thought, the state of society is
distinguished by cataclysmic events: insurrections, revolutions, and the like. The final stage ‘is
reached, after another transitional period’, when thought is evolved and becomes ‘purely
scientific or positive’ (Schneewind, 1970, 77-78). Comte claims that when reaching this third
stage, we are not interested anymore in answering the question, ‘Why does this sort of event
occur?’. By contrast, we are concerned with the investigation of the circumstances and
phenomena that cause the occurrence of the event by following logical deduction
(Schneewind, 1970, 78). Comte forecasted that Western Europe was moving towards the
positivist stage and the contribution of intellectuals was to help with the transition:

‘Now, the existing disorder is abundantly accounted for by the existence, all at once, of three
incompatible philosophies – the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive. Any one of these might
alone secure some sort of social order; but while the three coexist, it is impossible for us to understand
one another upon any essential point whatever.’ (Comte, 1876:35) .

As stated by Comte, a parsimonious and peaceful society would be the result of the spreading
of Positivist thought. Society would be united by benevolence, generosity, humanitarianism
and developed meliorism, rather than by fear of celestial beings in Heaven, or by a prevailed
state of terror installed by armed tyrannies. This is because humanitarianism would ultimately
guide to the emergence of ‘a new religion, the Religion of Humanity’ (Schneewind, 1970:78);
therefore Comte posed an alternative and challenging religion to Christianity. Nonetheless, the
positivists did not intend to overthrow Christianity; au contraire, they tried to elucidate it. The
positivists thought that Christianity was in state of anachronism and that was the reason why
Christianity had become invalid by the Victorian era – it lured only to emotion, and not to the
intellect of man. Comte considered that time had come for a new religion, a Religion of
Humanity, that could merge both human emotion and intellect, with an only purpose to instil

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people with self-sacrifice to serve the welfare of man. In 1859, a positivist Church was opened
in England by Richard Congreve (Schneewind, 1970: 78). John Stuart Mill and George Eliot
were only some of the English intellectuals, who were influenced by Positivism, considering
that it offered comfort to humanity from its daily agonies.

John Stuart Mill, although utilitarian, was an exponent for positivism in Britain. In spite of the
fact that he rejected Comte’s Positivist Church, he sided with the major principle of its
philosophy (Mill, 1865: 29-33). He approved the idea of the significance of human thought ‘as
a historical agent’ (Schneewind, 1970: 79). Mill regarded empiricism to be the only new
unifying creed of the human thought and emotion. He intended to prove the genuineness,
rightfulness and accuracy of our experiential knowledge derived from observation, especially
when employing ‘the law of contradiction’ (i.e. the peculiarities of natural phenomena), on
which, according to his view, logic rests, reckoning ‘the law of contradiction’ the exception
that confirms the rule of the consistency of natural laws. Notwithstanding the fact that Mill
fails to agree with Hume’s scepticism in general, he agreed with it in manner and respect of
religion. ‘The rational attitude of a thinking mind towards the supernatural…is that of
scepticism’, Mill wrote once in his ‘The Essays on Religion’, where he led a careful
examination to verify the forthrightness of religious doctrines, by embracing empirical
techniques of observation of nature, matter and the universe. He concluded that, out of all
these techniques, ‘only the argument from design’ could carve the way towards the possibility
of the existence of a god. Even though, dogmatically, this god could or could not be the
Christian God, it would be a product of philosophical ideas based on empiricism and its
purpose would be to integrate the human thought and emotion in one doctrine and ideology:
the Religion of Humanity.

Mill’s god existed due to philosophically and logically deduction, and not by blind adherence
to the Christian dogma. Therefore, his god lacks omnipotence and all-knowledge, being rather
limited in power and knowledge, ergo in his authority. But his god is motivated by kindness
and generosity, and unquestionably by other benign motivations (Schneewind, 1970: 79).
Although Mill saw Christ as the Supreme moral Ideal for Humanity to imitate, his reasoning
was usually disapproved by orthodox believers for its religious scepticism and
epistemologically deduced god.

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 1.4 The Atheists
Thomas Carlyle, an important Victorian philosopher, was a clear example of the Victorian
scholars who condemned their religious faith. Oulton states that his writings were not very
helpful in uncovering his religious views since his ideas, such as in ‘Sartor Resartus’
(published in 1833) were disguised in the language of metaphor. In this book, Carlyle advices
the necessity of the evolution of religion; that is, religion had to develop as society developed,
in order to cope with the evolution of human thought and scientific discoveries.

Even though Carlyle affirms that ‘Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous’,
he lessens the existence of God to a code of morality. God himself has been removed by the
end of the book. Carlyle poses that ‘religion is composed of various symbols, and that the
symbols appropriate to one generation (including Christ himself) are not always helpful to the
next’ (Oulton, 2003: 3). Carlyle’s analysis of the Hebrew Psalm proves his call for liberal
thinking, by virtue of which man can attain an ontological understanding of the universe:

‘Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of
the Universe, God is there.” ‘Thou thyself, cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a
Prosaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least FORCE
is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou
findest it swept away; already on the wings of the North-wind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How
came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there’

(Carlyle, 1833:121)

This Psalm reveals Carlyle’s critique of the instilled and dogmatic faith in God, and his
applause of the evolutionary rational and secular thinking that could lead man to scientifically
understand the significance of existence.

Kingsland states that evolutionary notions originated in Britain, due to the biologists Darwin
and Huxley. The ideas were later developed by radical reformers, as their solely role was to
diminish the power of the aristocracy and the Church in the 1830s and 1840s. In its turn, the
church considered the theories of evolution as heretical and derogatory to the literal belief in
Biblical genesis. Darwin dismissed any role of a divine creator, denying man moral

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commitment or spiritual significance, since Darwin turned the environment where man lives
into an arena ‘where survival is for the fittest’.

Darwin’s theory of evolution shocked the society, because he found no place for dispatched
prophets. As a biologist, he considered that there was no divine revelations and spiritual
development. He lessened the merits of human intellect, considering humanity a descendant
from lower creatures, and not species the rule the earth, made by a god. (Kingsland,
1988:175). His law of struggle for survival may be considered the governor of his theory of
natural selection and it was extended to individuals of various species, not just the humans.
Hence Darwin portrayed the world as a jungle of violent competition amongst men for
resources, where the weaker loses to the stronger (survival of the fittest). This theorem
transformed men into creatures urged by egocentrism and ruthlessness; hence he comes to the
conclusion that this planet does not bring happiness to man.

1.5 Conclusions

Ultimately, we could say that thorough the Victorian era the Church of England lost its
influence over its worshipers because it could not reunite the emerging spirit of scientific
enquiry with dogmatic beliefs in creation and this loss of religious faith became considered
scarcely a subject appropriate to be discussed in the pages of a novel. Nonetheless, it was
disclosed in Victorian fiction through a remarkably prevalent theme: the failure and
disintegration of a sense of social integrity.

‘The disorienting, sometimes hellish urban landscapes of Charles Dickens, the anarchic passions found
in novels by the Brontë sisters, the sexual scandals unwittingly perpetrated by Hardy's characters - all
betray novelists' preoccupation with the loss of spiritual stability in a morally incoherent world. A very
strong element in this lament, beginning in the 1840s, was novelists' concern with deepening alienation
between the various social classes, especially in "working-class novels" like those of Charles Kingsley,
Benjamin Disraeli, and Elizabeth Gaskell.’

(David, 2013: 216)

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Within the next chapters, I will try to portray how this loss of faith and ascension of science
affected some of the works of Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy , Charlotte Brontë and
Charles Dickens.

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 CHAPTER TWO

Crisis of faith in Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘North and South’

2.0 About the novel

Elizabeth Gaskell was born in Lindsey Row, Chelsea, on 29th September 1810. She is known
for her novels and short stories, but also for her friendship with writers Charles Dickens and
Charlotte Brontë, two friendships that influenced her work2.

The first published novel of Gaskell was ‘Mary Barton’, anonymously published in 1848, a
work of a great importance for her. The novel was written after the author lost a child and it
expresses all of her pain, making it amazingly real and touching. Other well-known novels
written by Gaskell are ‘Cranford’ (1853), ‘North and South’ (1854) – which will be further
analysed in this chapter -, and ‘Wives and Daughters’ (1865). She became popular for her
ghost stories, published in Dickens’ magazine, Household Words, but her ‘industrial’ fiction
made her an important name among the Victorian writers.

The title ‘North and South’ was suggested by Charles Dickens and accepted by Gaskell, who
previously thought naming her novel ‘Margaret’ or ‘Margaret Hale’3. For Dickens, ‘North and
South’ was a better title, due to the absolute contrast between the pastoral and industrial
worlds, as presented in the novel. Moreover, he saw a connection between his own “condition
of England novel”, ‘Hard times’, Benjamin Disraeli’s ‘Sybil, or The two nations’ and
Gaskell’s work. But ‘North and South’ is not really shaped as a system of contrasts; nor is it
exactly a “social-problem novel”, because it does not point out a clear account of the industrial
crisis and it does not beg for a solution. ‘North and South’ is more a story about irrevocable
change and changes and about the disordered, chaotic and confusing process of
accommodation and adjustment which results after every change.

2 Elizabeth wrote a biography of Charlotte Brontë (‘The life of Charlotte Brontë’, published in 1857), where she narrates
mostly the author’s personal life; Dickens influence over Gaskell’s work will be discussed in this chapter.
3 Her previous novels were entitled ‘Mary Barton’ and ‘Ruth’, as their eponymous main characters.

16
Although the novel’s action is set around the first half of the third decade of the 1800s,
Gaskell portrays several issues and question that belong to the period of the composition of the
novel. One of the starting points of the work was the strike that incapacitated the industrial
city of Preston (June 1853 – May 1854). Probably the main cause of the strike was the demand
of a ten per cent wage increase by the town weavers; a demand very similar to the one
presented in her novel (the trade union of Milton Northern asks for a five per cent increase of
their wages, in order to better provide for their families). The novel discusses the two opposite
Victorian lines of thought: despite the fact that the workers’ statute changed after 1848, their
conditions were still a problematic reality, contrasting to the impassive attitude of the middle-
class. While ‘North and South’ debates this frames of mind, it also explores the political
economy of the period, as well as the role of state factories regulation and the female seek for
independence and rebellion, portrayed by the evolution of Margaret.

Nonetheless, the author enquires into another intensely conferred about theme: the religious
crisis. Faith and doubts riot against the Victorian Anglican’s ethics and morals, as we can
observe from the confrontation of Margaret Hale’s Anglican mind-set with the mutinous
spirits of Mr. Hale, her father, who is grinded down by his loss of faith in the Established
Church; her friend, Bessy Higgins, whose escapist creed is more than uncommon to the
Established Church; and with Nicholas Higgins, labelled by Margaret as an atheist and an
infidel, in spite of the fact that he embodies a new system of belief, moulded the religious
revolution of the later Victorian Age: agnosticism.

2.1. Mr. Hale, Dissenter or Unitarian?

The chapter four and five of the novel represent the intrigue of the novel, focusing on a very
sensitive topic: Mr. Hale loses his faith and he chooses to renounce to his profession as a
minister of the Established Church of England. We must underline the peculiarity of this,
because, although the reader might be tempted to believe that this loss of faith is a crucial
element of the story, over the next chapters Gaskell lessens the emphasis on the subject 4. Mr.

4It is supposed that Dickens’ opinion that she should revise the section of the novel which dealt with Mr. Hale’s crisis,
believing that it was a “dangerous subject”, may have convinced Gaskell. (Uglow, 1993: 361)

17
Hale’s harrowing confession to his daughter from the fourth chapter of the novel stands as the
pivotal reason for the family’s move away from their community and take up residence in the
North. Prior this decision, he takes into consideration the presumably shame and pain his
family would undergo if they remain in Helstone:

“He made her take a chair by him ; he stirred the fire, snuffed the candles, and sighed once or
twice before he could make up his mind to say – and it came out with a jerk after all –
‘Margaret! I am going to leave Helstone.’
‘Leave Helstone, papa! But why?’
Mr. Hale did not answer for a minute or two. He played with some papers on the table in a
nervous and confused manner, opening his lips to speak several times, but closing them again
without having the courage to utter a word.
Margaret could not bear the sight of the suspense, which was even more distressing to her
father than to herself.
‘But why, dear papa? Do tell me!’
He looked up at her suddenly, and then said with a slow and enforced calmness: ‘Because I
must no longer be a minister in the Church of England.’”
(N&S, 1995: 33)

Margaret cannot understand what extreme and disturbing cause may have led to such a radical
decision from her father’s part. In spite of the fact that Margaret could appear as fervent
Anglican believer (she prays, attends the Church every Sunday, helps the poor and lives her
life according to the Victorian moral codes), her faith is, actually, a more conventional one. It
is important to emphasize, nevertheless, that, to some extent, she is very cautious of heterodox
practices and she is unable to suppress her Anglican roots (she ‘sighs’ her brother Frederick
mentions that Dolores, his Spanish fiancée, is a Romano Catholic), but she does not abide by
the zealous nineteenth-century Evangelical religious demeanour. All thorough the novel she
never disobeys the orthodoxy of her creed, after she has reached an acceptance with her
father’s choice, she tries to avow her faith with a more receptive and unbiased disposition, still
she never relinquishes her habitual commitment to Anglicanism. Even the author characterizes
her as ‘the Churchwoman’ (N&S, 1995: 233), therefore, since her religious attitude is of a
common orthodox Victorian that abides by the nineteenth-century moral customs (at least
while she resides in Helstone and after her father dies), her reaction to her father’s assertion of
being unable to prevail over his doubts (she is “more shocked than ever” - N&S, 1995: 34) is

18
the representative response to be expected from any Anglican Victorian. Margaret refuses to
acknowledge the ‘outrageous’ act that her father has done and “she cannot sympathise with
her father’s doctrinal doubts” (N&S, 1995: 34). Margaret would like to believe that the entire
experience was nothing more than a bad dream and, surely not, the reality. The morning after
Mr. Hale’s confession she asks herself if maybe her father ceded to temptation and his actions
where nothing more than the Devil’s deeds: ‘Where, to what distance apart, had her father
wandered, led by doubts which were to her temptations of the Evil One?’ (N&S, 1993: 45). As
we can see from Margaret’s intensive thinking, confusion and denial, religious doubts were an
extremely serious and disagreeable matter during the Victorian Era. “To raise a doubt about a
creed established by general acceptance” was seen as “a direct injury to the general welfare” 5,
accordingly, Mr. Hale’s mutiny is pertinent because it epitomizes one of the aspects of the
religious upheavals of the nineteenth century.

The vicar of Helstone adheres to the Dissenting path of retirement after he had formerly
spared no effort to cope with the profession of silent obedience. He tells Margaret:

“It is not a month since the bishop offered me another living; [...] Margaret, I tried to do it; I
tried to content myself with simply refusing the additional preferment, and stopping quietly
here – strangling my conscience now, as I strained it before. [...] I have written to the bishop
[...]. He has been most kind; he has used arguments and expostulations all in vain – in vain.
They are but what I have tried upon myself, without avail.”

(N&S, 1995:36)

In the next chapter, Margaret acquaints her mother with her father’s Dissenting behaviour and
Mrs. Hale ponders about what could have the bishop told to her husband: “Can’t the bishop set
him right?” (N&S, 1995: 45), she asks, thinking about if it was possible to persuade him to
‘abjure’ his doubts and continue to perform his duties of Anglican vicar.

Although Gaskell does not explain precisely for how long was Mr. Hale tormented by his
disbelief, over the novel Mr. Hale confesses about “my anxiety for years past, to know
whether I had any right to hold my living – my efforts to quench my smouldering doubts by
the authority of the holy Church from which I am to be shout out!” (N&S, 1995: 38), and he

5J. A. Froude, The Oxford Counter-Reformation, as quoted in W. E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830 – 1870,
New Haven and London, 1957, p. 59

19
later adds: “I must do what my conscience bids. I have borne long with self-reproach” (N&S,
1995:45). These could be viewed as additional proves of how tremendously painful and
struggling was the internal religious conflict that affected the Victorians. The stepping down
from the church led to a visible and powerful social stigmata, that is why only few clergyman
were willing to undergo it, while “the vast majority stayed uncomfortably where they were
and did their unhappy best to ignore the dogmas they disbelieved” (Eason, 1980: 33).

Mrs. Hale addresses her thoughts to her daughter: “if your father leaves the Church, we shall
not be admitted into society anywhere. It will be such a disgrace to us!” (N&S, 1995: 45),
expressing her disagreement with her husband’s decision and the fear of any future ostracism.
Eventually, they all leave the Anglican South to avoid any social isolation (“It is a painful
thing, but it must be done” - N&S, 1995: 37). This decision, although at the moment appears
to be very difficult to accomplish, towards the end of the novel proves to be a well thought.
When Margaret goes back to Helstone, she meets some of her previous neighbours and some
of her father’s parishioners, who tell her that despite Mr. Hale’s decision, he still remained a
much respected, beloved and missed member of the community. Nonetheless, the negative
reaction her mother feared they would face is embodied by Mr. Lennox affirmations:

“Perhaps I have been wrongly informed. But I have been told, by his successor in the living – a
clever, sensible man, and a thoroughly active clergyman – that there was no call upon Mr. Hale
to do what he did, relinquish the living, throw himself and his family on the tender mercies of
private teaching in a manufacturing town; the bishop had offered him another living, it is true,
but if he had come to entertain certain doubts, he could have remained where he was, and so
had no occasion to resign. But the truth is, these country clergymen live such isolated lives –
isolated, I mean from all intercourse with men of equal cultivation with themselves, by whose
minds they might regulate their own, and discover when they were going either too fast or too
slow – that they are very apt to disturb themselves with imaginary doubts as to the articles of
faith, and throw up certain opportunities of doing good for very uncertain fancies of their own.”

(N&S, 1995: 380)

The social smirch and shunning that resigning vicars would be forced to contend with and that
Mr. Hale would have experienced if he had stayed in Helstone it was almost the same
dishonour that the Nonconformist had to struggle with for their heterodox and dissenting
system of belief. Mr. Hale, who has decided to forsake, becomes a Dissenter in the public eye

20
because he had outfaced the dogma. His faith in God appears to be intact; however, Mr. Hale
doubts certain obligations that are expected to be carried out by an Anglican minister. But
although he does not argue and doubt the existence or non-existence of a Supreme Power, and
he does not convert to any Dissenting congregation, he is still branded by the society as a
Dissenter. Although after his resignation he does not became involved in any incompatible
with his former creed or odd type of congregation, the fact that he moved to the North, a place
where dissent was exceedingly strong, automatically transformed him in a person who was
converted to a Dissenting creed in the public opinion.

Gaskell does not mention many details about her character’s religious doubts, yet she makes
Mr. Hale declare that that his doubts did not have a ground on religious faith, as other famous
fictional characters of the time6: “No! Not doubts as to religion; not the slightest injury to that”
(N&S, 1995: 35), on the contrary, his doubts were related to the principles and organizations
of the Church of Thirty - Nine Articles and, ergo, to swear upon the Act of Uniformity
(Easson, 1980: 34). Mr. Hale himself stated that for a possible acceptance for the new living
that was offered by the bishop, he would have been bound to “make a fresh declaration of
conformity to the Liturgy at my institution” (N&S, 1995: 36).

I agree with Easson’s explanation, due to the fact that Gaskell herself creates a powerful
parallel between her character and John Oldfield7. Mr. Hale reads Oldfield soliloquy to
Margaret, as a manner to support his own motives and thoughts. Nonetheless, Gaskell’s
version of the soliloquy was quoted from the work of Theophilus Lindsey, a former Anglican
minister who became a Unitarian priest. His book, ‘The apology of Theophilus Lindsey, M. A.
on resigning the vicarage of Catterick, Yorkshire’ (1774) was very well known at the time,
being reprinted many times over the nineteenth century. Easson goes even forward and states
that Theophilus Lindsey represented a possible inspiration for the fictional character of Mr.
Hale (Easson, 1980: 34). Moreover, he argues that behind Mr. Hale’s doubts there was a speck
of Unitarianism (Easson, 1980: 35).

6 See Chapter three: Paganism in ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’

7 John Oldfield was a former country preacher who presumably lived around 1627 – 1682. He was ordained to retire from his
rectory in Carsington, owing to the fact that he refused to swear faithfulness upon the Act of Uniformity. His story was
primarily cited in 1702, in ‘An Abridgment of Mr. Baxter’s history of his life and times’ by Edmund Calamy, who
characterized Oldfield as a Dissenter.

21
The author’s father, William Stevenson, refused to be a minister because his moral objections
and he declined any payment for his ministerial duties. Easson emphasis the fact that
Stevenson never defied the Unitarian set of beliefs and, although he claims that this idea of his
is not supported by any other attested sources, he posits that Gaskell may have used her
father’s experience as a model for Mr. Hale.

Religious dissent deeply influenced the author. Her mother, her aunt, her husband and their
closest friends were Unitarians, the same creed that she professed her entire life. Unitarianism
was a confession group which developed from Presbyterianism and attracted many
scholarships of the era. Unitarianism was built not only on the Christian creed, but also on
science, medicine and philosophy, gathering notions and theories asserted by Locke, Newton
or Hobbes. From the late eighteen century personalities that inspired Unitarianism, we can
name Theophilus Lindsey and Joseph Priestly. The main Unitarian belief was constituted by
the existence of a solely God and the refusal of the Holy Trinity. Although they accepted the
figure of Christ, they doubted His supernatural birth and only considered Him as an example
to be followed. Another important aspect of Unitarianism is the equality of women in every
domain, as Uglow states: “in the nineteenth century Unitarian women were as influential as
men in social reform” (Uglow, 1993: 360). Although Gaskell herself was very cautious about
separating her fiction from her religious beliefs, some Unitarian values permeated her works,
so the idea that behind Mr. Hale’s decision and character stands a Unitarian creed is not that
odd.

2.2 Bessy Higgins, a girl with ‘methodee fancies’

As I have said earlier, Mr. Hale’s character is not the only embodiment of the religious crisis
and changes from the novel. Bessy Higgins, Margaret’s friend, is portrayed as a very ill and
frail girl. She is the same age as Margaret, but from a different social class and a much
different future. Bessy is a member of the Milton’s working-class and she suffers from a very
common industrial disease, the byssinosis (it was diagnosed in 1860, but the symptoms were
known in the industrial communities). After her mother died, Bessy worked in a cotton-mill,
where she inhaled ‘fluff’, provoking the disease that will eventually lead to her death.

22
Although Gaskell never specifies exactly Bessy’s religion, we know that she was not an
Anglican and there are several hints that she may be a Methodist. Her father says that his
daughter has ‘methodee fancies’ (N&S, 1995: 90) and she is always quoting the Bible, a
Methodist peculiarity:

“‘Sometimes, when I’ve thought o’ my life, and the little pleasure I’ve had in it, I’ve believed
that, maybe, I was one of those doomed to die by the falling of a star from heaven; “And the
name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and
men died of the waters because they were made bitter.” One can bear pain and sorrow better if
one thinks it has been prophesied long before for one: somehow, then it seems as if my pain
was needed for the fulfilment; otherways it seems all sent for nothing.’
(N&S, 1995: 137)

Longeway describes Bessy’s approach to the Bible as an escape from a cruel world into the
arms of a kinder one. This escapism, although it lasted for short periods of time, was a manner
to compensate the depressive tendencies (Longeway, 1990:2). During a conversation with
Margaret, she quotes Isaiah (62:4), expressing her wish to die because of the pains caused by
her disease:

“‘Well, Bessy, how are you? Better, I hope, now the wind has changed.’
‘Better and not better, if yo’ know what that means.’
‘Not exactly,’ replied Margaret, smiling.
‘I’m better in not being torn to pieces by coughing o’ nights, but I’m weary and tired o’ Milton,
and longing to get away to the land o’ Beaulah; and when I think I’m farther and farther off, my
heart sinks, and I’m no better; I’m worse.’”
(N&S, 1995: 89)

One of the several escapist characteristics described by Longeway and connected to Bessy’s
behavior was the “persistent peripheral consciousness” (Longeway, 1980:2). In order to
endure the pain and her terrific fate, she seeks relief in the Bible, dreaming that she will
encounter many fascinating events after her death: “I shall have a spring where I’m boun to,
and flowers, and amaranths and shining robes besides” (N&S, 1995: 73). In another chapter,
she affirms that she is unable to renounce reading the Revelations:

23
 “‘I dare say it would be wiser; but where would I hear such grand words of promise [..] as in
Revelations? Many’s the time I’ve repeated the verses in the seventh chapter to myself, just for
the sound It’s as good as an organ, and as different from every day, too. No, I cannot give up
Revelations. It gives me more comfort than any other book i’ the Bible’”

(N&S, 1995: 137 – 138)

Bessy’s father, Nicholas Higgins has some religious doubts of his own and they are very
different from Mr. Hale’s: he questions the existence of a Supreme Power. In the Victorian
era, mostly after Darwin’s theory appeared, the lack of faith in God or in any other deity was a
common thing. But this un-faith was usually well hidden, for avoiding any social isolation and
a great amount of people attended the church, although they had no belief. As Higgins states:

“‘There’s many and many a one wiser and scores better learned that I am around me, – folk who’ve had time to
think on these things, – while my time has had to be gi’en to getting my bread. Well, I see these people. Their
lives is pretty much open to me. They’re real folk. They don’t believe i’ the Bible, – not they.’”

(N&S, 1995: 226)

Pressed by the society, these people carried on attending the Church services and they were
abide to conduct themselves accordingly to the rules imposed by it, as Higgins points out:

“‘They may say they do, for form’s sake; but Lord, sir, d’ye think their first cry I’ th’ morning
is, “What shall I do to get hold on eternal life?” or “What shall I do to fill my purse this blessed
day? Where shall I go? What bargains shall I strike?”’”

(N&S, 1995:226)

2.3 Nicholas Higgins, the agnostic ahead of his time

Higgins believes in his own senses and he does not approve his daughter’s faith, yet he accepts
it because he realizes that it was her only way to cope with her disease. Nonetheless, he does
not show favouritism towards Margaret’s religious ideas to be ‘preached’ (N&S, 1995: 90-91)
in his house. Nicolas disapproves and clashes with Margaret’s solid religious mind. The girl
considers him to be a good man, but she warns her father that Mr. Higgins is an atheist and an
24
infidel: “‘Papa – you must not wonder at what he says: he’s an –––– I mean he does not
believe in much of what we do.’” (N&S, 1995: 222).

Margaret’s opinion towards him does not change in the course of the novel and it portrays the
exact opinion every other man of the time would have had about him. But his lack of faith
comes from has a deeper understanding. Nicolas Higgins is an atheist who believes in
something, he is aware that faith keeps people going, but he does not believe in any religion or
religious representation. Therefore, he is an agnostic ahead of his time.

‘There’s many a time when I’ve thought I didna believe in God, but I’ve never put it fair out
before me in words, as many men do [….] I have looked round at after, to see if He heard me, if
so be there was a He [...]. There’s but one thing steady and quite i’ all this reeling world, and
reason or no reason, I’ll cling to that’”

(N&S, 1995: 227)

Notwithstanding, for defying the Victorian religious creeds – the most powerful influence of
the time, he is considered to be a Dissenter.

“‘What I mean by belief just now, is a-thinking on sayings and maxims and promises made by
folk yo’ never saw, about the things and the life yo’ never saw, nor no one else. Now, yo say
these are true things, and true sayings, and a true life. I just say, where’s the proof?’”

(N&S, 1995: 226)

2.4 Conclusions

North and South presents a vivid and real world, whose characters are inspired by the reality
of the time. They encounter real problems and they fight with themselves to find solutions.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘vigorous social conscience’ covers not only the working class and the
industrial England. She was equally concerned about the loss of religion and the position of
women within Victorian society.

25
 CHAPTER THREE

Paganism in ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’

3.0 Introduction

Thomas Hardy, born in Higher Bock Hampton, a small village in the parish of Stinsford in the
east part of Dorchester, Dorset, England, on 2nd of June 1840, was one of the most important
writers of the Victorian era. Although thorough his life, Hardy wrote poetry and regarded
himself mostly as a poet, his novels were the ones which brought him fame. His writings were
so successful and his characters gained the public’s hearts in such a manner, that even now his
novels are still a favourite choice among the readers. Two of his novels, ‘Tess of the
d’Urbervilles’ and ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ were present in the top 50 on the BBC's
survey ‘The Big Read.’ It must be said that Hardy has been and will be the centre of attention
and a field of interest for a myriad of literary critics, mostly due to the debates over his alleged
loss of faith and his reticence about his religious beliefs. He has been presented as a sceptic, a
disbeliever or free thinker, a peculiarity and an oddity (and thus a genius) in his Victorian age
(Schweik). Nonetheless, looking at his novels, one can easily see many references and
allusions to Biblical texts and to the church. In this chapter I will try to highlight the major
spiritual influences on Hardy’s writings after his alleged loss of religious faith and I will also
try to show that Hardy’s faith was not entirely lost; on the contrary, as I’ve mentioned in the
first chapter, the Positivist Church became an important part of his religious conceptions. For
this aim to be accomplished, I chose the novel “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” about which, I must
say, that it is a personal favourite.

In ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ Hardy presents some moral and ethical sets of beliefs that could
most likely replace the obsolete doctrine, creeds and norms of the established church and
Victorian society. Despite the fact that the book illustrates his everlasting respect for the forces
of nature, he comes to the conclusion that pagan nature could not successfully replace
Christian orthodoxy, because the organic consciousness Hardy provided it with was unable to
provide a detailed description of how or why something happens and how the human choice of

26
good or evil functions. Seen from another point of view, Hardy’s representation of nature is
multi-levelled in this novel. Aside from his interest in pagan nature, Hardy pictured the natural
phenomena, landscape and land as an equivalent medium to the characters’ psychological and
emotional moods and reactions. On a disparate level, Hardy used the environment he created
as a moral and intellectual crucible in which his characters evolve and through the tribulations
and vicissitudes they experience. Another alternative religion that Hardy discarded and
negatively presented was the ‘Neo-Christianity’, embodied by Angel Clare. Neo-Christianity
is an Arnoldian-established creed which promotes agnostic thinking, retaining in the same
time a Christian code of morality.

In this chapter I will argue that Tess’s tragedy is presented as the result of religious orthodoxy
and society, rather than a Heavenly Dispensation of Fate. Hardy’s philosophical beliefs and
their impact on his idea of tragedy will be enquired into this chapter. The last part of this
chapter will present my considerations over the fact that Hardy had stipulated his own religion
(the Religion of Humanity) as a suppliant for the dying religious and social norms of his time.
Hardy’s motif of ‘loving kindness’ is represented by Tess’s philanthropist proneness along
with the other principal precepts of Positivism as demonstrated by Tess’s character.

3.1 Paganism

One of Hardy’s first choices while exploring new religions was the Pagan nature and its cult.
In May 1877, he wrote: ‘I sometimes look upon all things in animate Nature as pensive mutes’
(Florence Hardy, 1962:112). Two decades later, he acknowledges ‘In spite of myself I cannot
help noticing countenances and tempers in objects of scenery’ (F. Hardy, 1962:131). Hardy
quested in his animation of natural phenomena a representation of a permanent and
unavoidable human urge to resort to Nature to comprehend the concept of existence and the
universe. For Hardy, orthodox Christianity turned out to be withdrawn from daily life and
invalid in soothing human suffering. Whence, he aimed to create ‘a frame of acceptance’
(Robertson, 2003:43) to tolerate human suffering (Bonica, 1982:849). Stave (Stave, 1995:106)
considers Hardy’s pagan religion more sympathetic towards humans, since ‘the God-like

27
creature’ looked down on the earth with ‘interest’, as Hardy’s narrator states in Tess of the
d’Urbervilles:

The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the
masculine pronoun for its adequate expression. His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all
human forms in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment.

One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a
golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and
intentness of youth upon an earth that was of interest for him (Tess of the d’Urbervilles,
1960:109).

This scene reveals Hardy’s pursuit for an alternative religion to Christian dogma. As claimed
by Hardy, the religion of the solar deity was sometimes more generous and kind to man,
unlike the existing disciplines of secular science and Christian theology in Victorian England,
for the former diminishes the value of man in the universe, while the latter is able to oppress
the innocent with its harsh and punitive creed, as is the case for Tess. In the end, all three
systems are dissatisfying since pagan pantheism only gave humans rare recognition, secular
science undermined the significance of man, and orthodox Christianity condemned man for
involuntary committed sin.

Seeking a possible substitute to Christianity, Hardy considered using Angel Clare’s

heterodoxy as a means of expression to contrast Classical and pastoral paganism. As Bonica
affirms, Hardy associates with Angel’s agnostic heterodoxy as long as the last-mentioned
reflects Hardy’s zealous quest for a moral system that could replace the worn out Christian
orthodoxy8. Angel found his way in embracing Classical paganism, as Hardy’s narrator
records:

Once upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his father, in a moment of irritation,
that it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion
of modern civilization, and not Palestine’ (Tess of the d’Urbervilles, 1960, 203).

8
Although Angel is not Hardy’s most favorite character in this novel.

28
This description shows that Angel’s paganism is intellectual, whilst the rustics’ is instinctive.
During Angel’s stay in Brazil, he attains a state of self-realization as he tries to judge Tess in
the light of Hellenic principles of morality. As the narrator tells us,

He had persistently elevated Hellenic Paganism at the expense of Christianity; yet in that
civilization an illegal surrender was not an illegal disesteem. Surely then he might have
regarded that abhorrence of the un-intact state, which he had inherited with the creed of
mysticism, as at least open to correction when the result was due to treachery (TDU, 1960:
435).

At Talbothays, Angel engaged in reading profane books, a habit for which he is praised by the
narrator, for it freed his mind from desperation at no longer being capable to believe in the
particularities of Christian dogma.

Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the chronic melancholy which is
taking hold of the civilised races with decline of belief in a beneficent Power. For the first time
of late years he could read as his musings inclined him (TDU, 1960:152-153).

3.2 Angel Clare’s ‘neo-paganism’

After Angel starts using the Hellenic code of morality, he stops seeing Tess as a temptress, and
more as a victim – only then he wins the author’s consideration. Mixing his own scholarly
paganism with this rustic-pastoral paganism, he creates a balance that leads him to perceive
anew order of morality, which came from the animated nature. This religion was a satisfying
surrogate for Christianity:

Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the great passionate pulse of existence, unwarped,
uncontorted, untrammeled by those creeds which futilely attempt to check what wisdom would
be content to regulate (TDU, 1960:203).

But in the end, not even this religion could save Tess from being raped by Alec. Hardy
wonders, with a bitter tone:

But might some say, where was Tess’s guardian angel? Where was the providence of her
simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking,

29
 or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked (TDU,
1960:90-91).

Hardy’s attraction to heliolatry was an attempt to find comfort and benevolence through
nature, nature becoming a more tolerant Mother for Tess. But the expected comfort never
comes, and Tess’s pagan sexuality gets her into trouble, leaving her soul empty and her mind
concerned: “I shouldn’t mind learning why – why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust
alike” (TDU, 1960:162).

We might say that Hardy’s attitude towards Angel’s ‘neo-paganism’ is quite ambivalent:
although he agrees it, seeing it as a manner of freeing Angel’s intellect from the fading
orthodox Christianity; he condemns it for being unrealistic (Bonica, 1982:861). Before
marrying Tess, Angel saw her as an idol, picturing her as a deity, but after discovering the
truth about her lost virginity, his neo-paganism is not able to endure the new situation: “He
loved her dearly, though perhaps rather ideally and fancifully than with the impassioned
thoroughness of her feeling for him” (TDU, 1960:250).

Nonetheless, Angel’s religion is shaken to its grounds at the first serious situation, the moment
when Tess tells him about how she lost her innocence:

“But you do not forgive me?”

“O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are
another. My God- how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque prestidigitation as that!”

(TDU, 1960:291-293)

Angel’s idealization of Tess might be a need to supply the absence of God from his life, and
when he discovers that she proves herself fallible, all his dreams and beliefs are shattered. In
spite of his Stoicism, Angel is baffled after this discovery: “This is the chief thing: be not
perturbed,’ said the Pagan moralist. That was just Clare’s opinion. But he was perturbed”
(TDU, 1960: 330).

The moment when Angel Clare reads the announcement about the agricultural investments
and opportunities Brazil had to offer, he starts thinking about Brazil as an escape land, where
he and Tess would be free and no one would suspect or question her past.
30
 Brazil somewhat attracted him as a new idea. Tess could eventually join him there, and perhaps
in that country of contrasting scenes and notions and habits the conventions would not be so
operative which made life with her seem impracticable to him here (TDU, 1960: 232)

Tess herself thinks about another land, which could be more forgiven about her unwillingly
mistakes, saving her relationship with Angel. ‘She might have added besides: On an
Australian upland or Texan plain, who is to know or care about my misfortunes or to reproach
me or you’ (TDU, 1960: 311). It is visible that Hardy portrays the environment and landscapes
as linked parts from his characters’ lives, vital character development. Tess’s relocations are
also important, because every place has a symbolic meaning: She leaves Marlott and goes to
Trantridge, depicting the depraved principles and standards of the newly rich, represented by
Alec.

In the same time, Chase, with its Pagan and Druidical connotations, is presented as a sacred
and ancient place lacked the Christian providence; therefore, it sealed Tess’s faith (it was there
where Alec deflowered her. ‘Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose
the primeval yews and oaks of the Chase, in which were poised gentle roosting birds in their
last nap’ (TDU, 1960: 89). As a contrast, the Talbothays farm was the place where Tess
evolved in a psychological manner:

On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved
in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an integral part of the scene. At times her
whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed part of her own
story (TDU, 1960:181)

For Hardy, nature functions as a reflective medium, connected with his characters’ moods and
feelings. Brazil becomes a geographical metaphor for freedom, a place that shows how ‘local’
and narrow are Victorian norms.

The place where Tess has chosen to flee with Angel after she stabbed Alec is no other than
Stonehenge – a place no ordinarily selected -, with its mythical connections and associations
to pagan sacrifice, a place used by Hardy to symbolize her victimization by the flawed and
malfunctioning social and religious principles of the time. Hence, Tess falling asleep near the
‘Stone of Sacrifice’ in the heathen temple of ‘Stone Henge’ (TDU, 1960:502-504) is a
powerful metaphor, picturing the way society victimised her. We could say that Hardy created
31
the landscape for this novel not only as a quest in finding a religion that could replace the
orthodox creed, but also to consolidate his characters’ spiritual and intellectual evolution.

Bonaparte considers that Hardy’s main aim behind this classic allegory was to inspect and
analyse ‘the crisis of faith’ in his time, mostly the Christian creed in the Dispensation of
Heavenly Fate (Bonaparte, 1999:416). Hardy used fate in this novel as something partly man-
made, presenting Tess as a provider for her family against everything, replacing her father.
Even more, Bonaparte postulates that Hardy employed the Greek myth of Persephone (in the
novel, Tess is referred to as the “daughter of soil”), which becomes an idea projecting his dark
expectations of Tess.

I do agree with Bonaparte’s opinion that Hardy insisted on the paradigm of the Classical ideal
– where, on the ruins of a fallen civilization, a new one is built -, trying to convince people to
recreate with the Victorian England (Bonaparte, 1999: 418). This need of social revolution is
another example of Hardy’s affiliation to the Comtean and Saint-Simonian ideas about the
importance of the evolutionary role of time.

3.3 Tess, the ‘boundary breaker’

Hardy created Tess as an exception. She was meant to push the boundaries - ‘she did not know
that she had been made to break a social law’ (TDU, 1960: 292) -, and to promote the concept
of ‘lovingkindness’. She preaches Alec her belief in the Positivist idea of philanthropy and she
has the courage to disbelief when she considers that religion isn’t enough to sooth her mind
and soul: ‘She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in his dull brain two matters,
theology and morals, which in the primitive days of mankind had been quite distinct’ (TDU,
1960: 422).

Hardy’s representation of Tess is one of a social reformist, a person who will inevitable be
persecuted by the ruthless social and religious norms of Victorian England. She has a keen
sense of morals, but her creed is based on love and compassion for others. In the scene where
the workers tell the story of Jack Dollop, a former dairy worker that seduced a dairymaid, the
narrator has an elegiac tone, dramatizing the amusing scene, while Tess evocates her own
32
memories: ‘Yes, there was the pain of it. This question of a woman telling her story – the
heaviest of crosses to herself – seemed but amusement to others. It was as if people should
laugh at martyrdom’ (TDU, 1960: 231).

If we return our attention to Bonaparte’s claim about the connection between Tess and
Persephone, it becomes obvious that they both share the symbol of a prosperity provider, a
‘gift’ attained after a horrible sacrifice: the loss of virginity. Both of them were abducted and
raped (Tess by Alec and Persephone by Hades); both of them were sacrificed to bring
prosperity (the former for her family, after they lost Prince, the family’s horse and the latter to
the earth). Also, Bonaparte posits that Hardy pictures the May Pole dancers as pagan
characters, reviving a Pagan ritual – another resemblance to Persephone’s myth (Bonaparte,
1999: 8).

Moreover, Bonaparte argues that Hardy portrayed Alec as an analogy for Hades. He bases his
convictions on Hardy’s description of Alec: ‘He had an almost swarthy complexion’ (TDU,
1960: 44), ‘as Hades in the Hymn is depicted as “dark-haired”’ (Homer, cited by Bonaparte,
1999: 422); also, he sees another analogy between Alec and Hades in the moment when the
former enters through ‘the door of her ancestral sepulchre’ and he pretends to be dead, only to
taunt Tess: ‘In the dusk she had not noticed it before, and would hardly have noticed it now
but for an odd fancy the effigy moved’ (TDU, 1960: 464). This scene may suggest that the
death was Alec’s kingdom, much like the Greek god (Bonaparte, 1999: 320). But I must note
an important exception between Hardy’s character and Bonaparte’s interpretation: The scene
where Alec compares Tess to Eve, proving his evil thoughts towards her: ‘You are Eve and I
am the old other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal. I used to be
quite up in that scene of Milton’s when I was theological’ (TDU, 1960: 445). When he
described Talbothay’s, Hardy used biblical allusion, braiding them in an ironical manner with
Classical tropes, only to indicate that the utopian idyll survived due to the fact that it was
isolated from modernity. In Bonaparte’s view, Angel Clare was the representation of Apollo,
playing his harp ‘she undulated upon the thin notes of the second-hand harp, and their
harmonies passed like breezes through her’ (TDU, 1960: 158).

The most sublime act of self-sacrifice from Tess is presented when Alec promises to take care
of her brothers and sisters, if she agrees to follow him. And because Tess loved her family, she
33
agreed, sacrificing her flesh to provide for them: “‘About the children – your brothers and
sisters; I’ve been thinking of them.” ‘Tess’s heart quivered – he was touching her in a weak
place’ (TDU, 1960: 446). The last selfless act of Tess was killing Alec:

“Still I owed it to you, and to myself, Angel. I feared long ago, when I struck him on the mouth
with my glove, that I might do it someday for the trap he set for me in my simple youth, and his
wrong to you through me. He has come between us and ruined us, and now he can never do it
any more” (TDU, 1960, 491).

Hardy considered altruism to be an evolved form of the egoism, because the latter seeks
individual survival, while the former wishes the survival of the group. Also Comte thought
that altruism was the highest state of moral and social uplift, stimulating the individual to work
for the outliving of his society. This positivist dogma is obvious in Tess’s fiercely will to
ensure that her small society (her family) will survive. Comte noticed the evolutionary impact
of time as a cause for shifting from the ‘theological’ and ‘metaphysical’ epochs to the
‘sociological’ era (Bonica, 1982: 181).

3.4 Tess, the positivist heroine

As a Positivist heroine, Tess overcomes the ‘theological’ era as it was insufficient to her
redemption; hence she rejects orthodox Christianity as she accepted her husband’s intellectual
dogma. When Alec accuses her of being an infidel (‘“You seem to have no religion – perhaps
owing to me’”), she replies: “‘But I have. Though I don’t believe in anything supernatural”’
(TDU, 1960: 408). Using Tess, Hardy projects to the reader his personal belief in the doctrine
of primitive Christianity on which Positivism was based, concentrated in Tess’s words ‘I
believe in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, and so did my dear husband’ (my emphasis)
(TDU, 1960: 409). In spite of Angel’s intellectual creed mimics the Positivist view, his so
claimed Positivist evolution is compromised by his adhesion to the orthodox Christian code of
morality, which position him with the Arnoldian ‘Neo-Christianity’ more than with Positivist
thinking.

34
Notwithstanding the fact that pagan Nature rendered Tess innocent, it lacks the ability to
triumph over the tyrant religious and social norms that ‘convicted’ her as guilty. Therefore,
Hardy made Tess to adhere to Positivist altruism as a moral doctrine that could transform her
into the initiator of her family’s outliving.

Although the Darwinian Theory believes that the relations amongst all the individuals within a
single species are governed by ruthless competition, Hardy considered those relations to be
guided by love and compassion, particularly when it came to people. And for that reason, he
adopted wholeheartedly the Positivist creed of altruism; he admired its goal to attain the
survival of the group. In his view, our planet does not bring happiness to humans, because
happiness itself was something governed by selfishness and individualism. The true happiness
could only be attained through altruism and intellectual edification. Hardy’s Tess was a model
of altruism, a person willing to accept that other could not understand her pain, nor her
struggle, although she tried every time to understand those around her.

But Tess did not think of this; she took everything as her deserts, and hardly opened her mouth.
The firmness of her devotion to him was indeed almost pitiful; quick-tempered as she naturally
was, nothing that he could say made her unseemly; she sought not her own; was not provoked;
thought no evil treatment of her. She might just now have been Apostolic Charity herself
returned to a self-seeking modern world. (TDU, 1960: 308-309)

Yes, I truly consider that religion was important for Hardy. I think that he could not conceive a
world without a Creator, a Supreme Being whose only care was the welfare of humans. Hardy
was a believer seeking for a religion, seeking a name and a creed for his God. He saw his
novels as a way to test his theories and that gave his characters consistency and made them
seem alive.

His characters were not plain, and one cannot consider them to be pure good or pure evil.
Although both Angel and Tess are firstly described as Positivist, Angel lacks altruism and
philanthropy (his thinking and behaviour is representative for Neo – Christianity). He refuses
to love Tess because of a sin that she was not culpable for. After his staying in Brazil, he
changes his mind and starts seeing Tess as she should have been seen (an innocent woman, a
living, breathing person, and not an ideal) and he comes back for her:

35
 But he could not get on. Speech was as inexpressive as silence. But he had a vague
consciousness of one thing, though it was not clear to him later; that his original Tess had
spiritually ceased to recognise the body before him as hers – allowing it to drift, like a corpse
upon the current, in a direction dissociated from its living will (TDU, 1960: 484).

3.5 Neo - Christianity vs. Positivism

As I’ve said earlier, in ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ Hardy’s portrays two unorthodox religions,
one represented by the paradigmatic Tess, who elevates herself to the rank of a Positivist
priestess with her ‘loving kindness’ and Angel Clare, who represented Matthew Arnold’s
‘Neo-Christianity’, with his incompatible mixture of agnostic thinking and an orthodox creed
of morality. Through the latter, Hardy tries to demonstrate the fact that the Arnoldian doctrine
is nothing more than an ideal and utopic concept; it functions on an intellectual level but does
not work on a moral one:

‘It was the third day of the estrangement. Some might risk the odd paradox that with more animalism he
would have been a nobler man. We do not say it. Yet Clare’s love was doubtless ethereal to a fault,
imaginative to impracticability’ (TDU, 1960:312).

Tess’s confession shook Angel Clare’s intellectual and moral ideals of Neo-Christianity,
putting them to test, a test which they failed. Soon after, Tess implores him to remain his wife
only in name and he starts thinking about his attitude towards Church:

‘Within the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general, there lay
hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft loam, which turned the edge of everything
that attempted to traverse it. It had blocked his acceptance of the Church; it blocked his acceptance of
Tess.’ (TDU, 1960:308).

The Victorian religious and social norms were so definitive and commanding, that they were
governing Angel Clare’s thinking despite his agnostic ideas. A good example for this
affirmation can be found in the scene where Angel worries about the future shame and
stigmata that would stain their children, if they had any: ‘Besides, that’s not all the difficulty;
it lies in another consideration – one bearing upon the future of other people than ourselves.
Think of years to come, and this past matter getting known’ (TDU, 1960:310). Another

36
important scene is set at Angel’s parents’ house, where the narrator paints Angel’s slender and
unfit code of morality as an outcome of his subjection to the hegemonic customs:

‘This night the woman of his belittling deprecation was thinking how great and good her
husband was. But over them both there hung a deeper shade than the shade which Angel Clare
perceived, namely, the shade of his own limitations. With all his attempted independence of
judgment this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product of the last five and
twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his
early teachings.’ (TDU, 1960:338)

3.6 Conclusions

Behind the tragic story of an unlucky girl, Tess of the d’Urbervilles presents Hardy’s true
beliefs and opinions about the Church, the orthodox Christianity and the patriarchal Victorian
society, where women were treated as inferior (And Alec does not let Tess forget this
hierarchy: ‘Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again.’ - TDU,
1960:423). Finally, he lets the reader to conclude that Positivism and its Religion of Humanity
is the most suitable religion for mankind, although it does not save Tess from her tragic faith.

Hardy understood that religion, as flawed as it was, was a necessity for humans.

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 CHAPTER FOUR

Hate, Evangelicalism, and The religion of love in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane

Eyre’

4.0 About the novel

Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1816, in a family of six
children. She was not the only writer from the family - both her sisters Emily and Anne wrote
and they even published together. In May 1846 the three sisters self-financed the publication
of a common collection of poems under the pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The
pseudonyms disguised the sisters' sex while preserving their initials; therefore Charlotte was
Currer Bell. "Bell" was not chosen without a reason; it represented the middle name of
Haworth's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls whom Charlotte would later marry, and "Currer" was
the surname of Frances Mary Richardson Currer, the founder of their school.

This chapter is dedicated to Charlotte Brontë’s first published novel, ‘Jane Eyre’. Through this
writing, Charlotte Bronte uttered several issues of the Victorian Era, as class and gender
inequality, race prejudices or colonialism. But the primary discourse of the novel is
Christianity and the problems attached to it. Throughout the novel, Jane strives with her
dilemmas; she struggles between moral duty and love. Under the aegis of Jane’s experiences,
Brontë weaves a religious cloth, where she presents her opinion about Christianity and the
Evangelical Movement through characters like Mr. Brocklehurst or Helen Burns. In the end,
Jane will reject each system of beliefs that she encounters, creating her own principles and
ideas about faith.

The novel was a great success and it was well received both by the public and the critics. It
was described as an “Autobiography”, although the author never really cleared what was the
autobiographical element; both her career as a governess and the fact that she grew up in a
clerical household – her father was an Irish Anglican priest -, may have influenced her in
writing ‘Jane Eyre’. But this autobiographical is still intensely debated, critics and scholars
trying to discover how much of the novelist’s life story was hidden behind the characters or
the action of the novel.

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4.1. Mrs. Reed, the woman whose religion was ‘hate’

The opening chapters of the novel portray a world where abuse of power and insidious acts of
cruelty are common. Jane Eyre’s childhood’s experiences are presented with repulsion, as the
author disagrees completely with the harsh methods Mrs. Reed used to raise her. The repulsive
and nasty behaviour of John and Augusta Reed, the hateful environment, the “Red Room” and
the continuous chides of John, who liked to remind her that she was an orphan, made Jane
bitter and angered.

Shapiro, in his article ‘In defence of Jane Eyre’ (Shapiro, 1968: 685), postulates that Charlotte
Bronte emphasised the close relationship between Mrs. Reed and Brocklehurst, the preservers
of the social order and the foes of change, freedom or openness, only to display the similarities
between this two hateful characters. The first pages of the novel make clear the fact that the
Reeds do not like Jane, because she does not fit into their standards and she refuses to keep up
appearances, showing her true feelings. Jane describes Mrs. Reed’s attitude:

". . . regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard
from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation that I was endeavouring in good
earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly
manner,-something lighter, franker, more natural as it were-she really must exclude me from
privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children."
(JE, 1969:1)

The irony is that they were expecting to see Jane hiding behind a ‘coat of paint’ (Shapiro,
1968: 658) to become more natural. Mrs. Reed’s aversion towards her comes from the fact
that although Jane was a child, she did not act like one, or at least, according to the child
typology the lady had in mind. In her world, society had set strict standards for every member,
even for the youngest ones; therefore they ought to comply with them. One time, when Jane
dares to ask what she had done wrong, Mrs. Reed replies coldly:
"'Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners, besides, there is something truly forbidding in a
child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated some-where; and until you can speak
pleasantly, remain silent'"
(J-E, 1969:2)

39
It is more than obvious that the most irritating aspect for the author in these first pages is the
constant idea that everyone must comply to the same ‘figure’. Mrs. Reed tries to impose an
identity to Jane, in an attempt to destroy her individuality. Hence, when Jane is left in the ‘red-
room’ and she desperately cries, Mrs. Reed calls her a ‘precocious actress’: “She sincerely
looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity” (JE,
1969: 16). The only relief Jane feels is when Mr. Lloyd, the apothecary, comes to attend to
her. She felt comforted not only because she was not alone anymore, but mostly due to the fact
that he was a ‘stranger’, “an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and related to Mrs. Reed”
(JE, 1969: 17).

Everyone in Mrs. Reed’s house embraced her vision, therefore even the servants considered
Jane to be “a tiresome, ill-conditioned child”, “a sort of infantile Guy Fawkes”. Not even
Abbot pities her, because she is “a little toad” (JE, 1969: 26-27). There is no doubt, Jane is
alone. Her only friend is her doll “human beings must love something, and in the dearth of
worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded
graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow” (JE, 1969: 30-31).

4.2 Mr. Brocklehurst’s Evangelicalism

The fact that Jane ‘worships’ an inanimate object (Shapiro, 1968: 659) is not strange, though it
may seem so; it is her only comfortable alternative. The organized religion, represented by Mr.
Brocklehurst, provides no compassion. Mrs. Reed offers a ‘recommendation’ that although
appears to influence Jane’s future (a liar and a deceitful) in Mr. Brocklehurst’s school, does
not change his attitude. He is untouched by human feelings.

Mr. Brocklehurst is the supervisor of a boarding school for orphaned girls, Lowood Institute,
where Jane is sent to study. His appearance could be frightening for a child, with his “grim
face”, a big nose, prominent teeth, and with a face with “harsh and prim” lines, nevertheless,
his looks are not randomly chosen, as they complete his hypocritical attitude and his cruel and
greedy behaviour. In Jane's eyes he is a "black pillar" and a "stony stranger" (JE, 1969: 34).

40
Mr. Brocklehurst is an adept of Evangelicalism, but, as Brontë depicts him, his actions are
entirely un-Christian. In Chapter VII he required that one of the girls, Julia Sevem, who had a
beautiful curly hear, to have immediately her hair cut off. He considers that removing every
means of vanity and demoralising them, will succeed what Mrs. Reed was trying: the
destruction of individuality.

‘"Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what—what is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma’am,
curled—curled all over?" And extending his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand
shaking as he did so.

"It is Julia Severn," replied Miss Temple, very quietly.

"Julia Severn, ma’am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every
precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly—here in an
evangelical, charitable establishment—as to wear her hair one mass of curls?"

"Julia’s hair curls naturally," returned Miss Temple, still more quietly.

"Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature: I wish these girls to be the children of
Grace: and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be
arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off entirely "I
have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: my mission is to mortify in these
girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and
sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has
a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven: these, I repeat, must be
cut off; think of the time wasted, of—"

Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted; three other visitors, ladies, now entered the room.’
(JE, 1969: 59)

Charlotte did not use ‘Jane Eyre’ to explore religious doubts. She considered religion to be
more than a simple religious establishment, improperly portrayed by conventionality or the
maintenance of the status quo. Shapiro discusses the obvious spiritual values that the novel
emphasis on and he argues that they are connected to moral and human values (Shapiro, 1968:
684).

41
Despite everything Mrs. Reed had done to make her ‘behave’, Jane kept her spirit free and it
may be considered that this freedom of thinking was exactly the catalyser for Mr.
Brocklehurst’s ‘explosions’. As presented in the fragment below, Jane does not hold back her
true thoughts, although she realises that her honesty could bring her problems.

“No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you
know where the wicked go after death?"
"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.
"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"
"A pit full of fire."
"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
I deliberated a moment: my answer, when it did come was objectionable: "I must keep in good
health and not die.”
(JE, 1969: 34)

While the first two answers are obviously remembered from lessons and Bible study, the last
answer, honest and engaging, presents her true nature. Continuing the dialogue, Jane states
that she has no interest in reading the psalm, as she prefers the “Revelations and the Book of
Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel [....] and some parts of Kings […] and Job and Jonah” (JE,
1969: 35) – all stories suited for adults, as they are difficult, apocalyptic and full of suffering
and redemption. Mr. Brocklehurst concludes that she has a ‘heart of stone’ and starts
describing his son, holding him up as an example for proper piety. In his vision, the fact that
his son wished ‘to be a little angel here below’ - he gets gingerbread nuts every time he uses
the phrase (JE, 1969: 36-37) - is a proof that he is a good Christian and a very well raised
child.

Both Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst share the same vision about Christianity; in their
conception, the central doctrine preached by Christianity is ‘humility’ (better said,
humiliation… of others) and ‘consistency’, instead of compassion, forgiveness and charity:

"'consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been observed in every
arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire,
unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the
house and its inhabitants'"
(JE, 1969: 38-39)

42
Shapiro states that under these circumstances, Lowood was nothing more than the
‘institutionalized extension of Gateshead Hall’. I agree with his opinion, in addition, I would
say that Mr. Brocklehurst’s school is more successful than Mrs. Reed’s house in destroying
sprits. Taking advantage on the fact that all the girls are orphan, he has established a terror
regime, where the ‘individual is reduced to the most common denominator’ (Shapiro, 1968:
687). The girls are called by their last name, hence losing their gender. Mr. Brocklehurst's
attitude becomes contagious, and Miss Temple, the pleasant supervisor, starts showing the
same hardness. This inside ugliness changes also her appearance, like a stain that stretches
more and more:

“Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but she now gazed straight
before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be assuming also the coldness
and fixity of that material; especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor's
chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into petrified severity.”
(JE, 1969: 77)

From the moment she steps into the school, Jane tries without success to avoid the
headmaster’s gaze. But Mr. Brocklehurst follows Mrs. Reed’s example and makes Jane the
centre of all eyes. She becomes “an interloper and an alien” while he the other girls are
advised to shun her. But Mr. Brocklehurst’s religion is not the only one that makes Jane turn
away. There is also Helen Burns and her ‘other worldliness’.

4.3 Helen Burns and the religion of love

Helen Burns is a girl from Lowood Institute who befriends Jane. She is portrayed as a saintly
little girl, but Jane refuses to follow her example and rejects her advice. When she sees Helen
undergoing a punishment, Jane is shocked. She does not understand how Helen can remain so
docile and she even affirms that the girl may be living in an alternative world:
"I have heard of day-dreams-is she in a day-dream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I
am sure they do not see it-her sight seems turned in, gone down into her heart: she is looking at
what she can remember, I believe; not at what is really present."

43
 (JE, 1969: 62)
Analysing from outside their circle is not that difficult to understand Jane’s standpoint and her
reaction. Their world is based on fakery, hate, lies and greed and from such an environment
there could be only two possible outcomes: a person who adopts the doctrine of turning the
other cheek all her life or a person who fights back. Helen is a part of the former and she has
Jane friendship, but she cannot gain her respect. Although Helen may appear to be the
portrayal of a saintly ideal, Jane had learned an important lesson from the Reeds: there is no
saint, only humans trying to cope with a hostile world. Jane’s view is different:
"If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people
would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter,
but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike
back again very hard; I am sure we should-so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to
do it again"
(JE, 1969:69)

Helen tries to convince her that such is unchristian, and that she will eventually learn different.

Helen helps Jane, but she cannot help herself. When Mr. Brocklehurst made an example of
Jane and compelled her to stand on a stool in the middle of the class, Helen came to her friend,
although she was also grounded by Miss Scatcherd, condemned to a dinner with bread and
water. When Helen leaves Jane’s side, the latter starts crying “Now I wept: Helen Burns was
not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I abandoned my-self, and my tears watered the
boards” (JE, 1969: 83).

I consider that Helen’s doctrine is born from the need to believe in something better that she
already experienced and Jane has no such need. A religious system of beliefs is not sufficient
for the latter of the girls, because she is not willing to accept an idealistic afterlife full of joy,
after a life of sorrow. Moreover, Jane is a pragmatic person; therefore this belief in the
existence of a better life after death is meaningless if this life is one of suffering and pain.
Jane has the courage to express and accept her weaknesses and she confesses Helen her own
doctrine: the doctrine of love sacrifices.

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 “’I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don't love me, I would
rather die than live-I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real
affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit
to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse,
and let it dash its hoof at my chest,-‘“
(JE, 1969: 84-85).

One beautiful described moment is represented by the death of Helen. Charlotte was careful
enough to transmit emotion, but also to keep the characters, Jane and Helen, in their different
worlds. Although she suffers, Helen considers death to be a salvation, remaining faithful to her
beliefs, while Jane feels that the situation was unfair. Helen’s last words render a coronation of
the ideals that made her who she was; she now finds the compassion she sought all her life as
she meets God.

After Jane sneaks in Helen’s room in a desperate need to see her, she fathoms out a very calm
Helen. This reconciliation with the inevitable death is a strange element for Jane:

‘I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead you must be sure and not grieve:
there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me
is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I
have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young I shall
escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I
should have been continually at fault.’
(JE, 1969: 95)

Furthermore, even with her last breaths, Helen still continues to convince Jane that her religion
is the right way for everyone’s soul. Her words are peaceful and full of wisdom and
benevolence, even when Jane doubts the existence of a God:

‘But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?'
'I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.'
'Where is God? What is God?'
'My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power,
and confide wholly in His goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall
restore me to Him, reveal Him to me.'

45
 'You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven, and that our souls can get to it
when we die?'
'I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign my immortal part to Him
without any misgiving. God is my father; God is my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me’
(JE, 1969: 96 – 97)

In the next morning, Jane is found with her arm around Helen’s neck, as she did not want to
let her friend alone.

4.4 Conclusions

Thorough the novel, Jane discovers herself. She is no atheist, nor agnostic. She believes in
God, in a Christian God, but she refuses to follow a specific cult, although she encounters
various doctrines. Not even when she meets St. John Rivers, whom she started admired and, at
one point, considered to marry. Brontë created a strong character that, in the end, is able to
find her middle ground. Her spiritual understanding does not demand retreat from everyday
world and it is not based on oppression, like Mr. Brocklehurst’s.

46
 CHAPTER FIVE

Christianity as an example for humanity in ‘The life of our Lord’

5.0 Introduction

The portrayals of official religion in Victorian fiction, almost always display a sense of strain
– a scepticism about religion's value, or about precisely what features of religious institutions
need correction - even if that strain scarcely ever proceeds to an open conflict with faith itself.
This type of strain is obvious in Dickens’ works, who, although is known as the most
magnificent Christian of Victorian novelists, he constantly characterizes clergymen as
hypocrite and charlatans, and, more importantly, makes it incisively clear that God is not
present in the world and uninvolved in his creation. This chapter is dedicated to Dickens and
his religious doubt, openly expressed on few novels, and how it was transformed into the
grounds of a deeper faith.

Charles Dickens (Charles John Huffam Dickens), born in Portsmouth, on the 7th February
1812, was considered ‘the literary colossus of his age’ and one of the most prolific writers of
the time, with 15 novels, five novellas and many more short stories and non-fiction articles.
He was much appreciated for his humour, satire, realism, social criticism and keen observation
of character, but also for his prose style. His first published work was ‘The Pickwick Papers’,
a monthly serial publication from April 1839 to November 1837. His next notable work, ‘The
adventures of Oliver Twist’, followed shortly after, also published as a monthly serial in
Bentley's Miscellany, from February 1837 and to April 1839. Almost year after year, Dickens
published another novel, all in monthly or weekly series9. Among the most widely known are:
‘David Copperfield’ (1849 – 1850), ‘Bleak House’ (1852-1853), ‘A tale of two cities’ (1859),
‘Great expectations’ (1860-1861) and ‘Our mutual friend’ (1864-1865).

Leo Tolstoy10 and Feodor Dostoyevsky11 characterised Dickens as ‘that great Christian writer’
(although in his works he expressed distaste regarding the Church clergy, whom he considered

9 With only one exception, the novella ‘A Christmas Carol’, published London by Chapman & Hall in 1843
10 Sally Ledger, Holly Furneaux, (2011), "Charles Dickens in Context", Cambridge University Press. p. 318.

47
responsible to acknowledge and admit the value of intellectual study and investigation into
issues of faith and use it progressively to restore harmony between traditional beliefs and
contemporary study) and Dickens made clear his point of view that “nothing is discovered
without God’s intention and assistance, and I suppose every new knowledge of His works that
is conceded to man to be distinctly a revelation by which men are to guide themselves”
(Colledge, 2012:175). Dickens’ son, Henry Fielding Dickens, referred to his father as someone
who ‘possessed deep religious convictions’ and Colledge described the writer as a professing
Christian (Colledge, 2012:24) and, although Dickens showed an interest to Unitarian
Christianity in the 1840s, he asserted that the author ‘never strayed from his attachment to
popular lay Anglicanism’.

In this chapter I will discuss about Dickens’ religious work, The Life of our Lord, a short book
about the life of Jesus Christ, which was written as a manner to inculcate his faith to his
children and family.

5.1 About the story

On January 22, 1934 in London, an article appeared in The Times with the title “A Manuscript
of Dickens: ‘The Life of Our Lord’ to be Published” (Times January 22, 1934) which
introduced what should have been a significant accompaniment to both the Dickens writings
and its corresponding body of criticism. As it was, however, TLOL’s literary value was largely
overlooked by an emphasis on its complex publication history and new contentious
biographical information disclosed around the same time. These state of things, combined with
the childlike simplicity intrinsic to his project, made the text of the manuscript to be mostly
overshadowed. The article from The Times appeared one month after death of Sir Henry
Fielding Dickens, Dickens’ last surviving son, and included the following extract from his
will:

I give and bequeath to my wife the original manuscript of my father’s “The Life of Our Lord,”
which was bequeathed to my aunt, Georgina Hogarth, in my father’s will, and given by her to
me, to hold on the following trusts:—Being his son, I have felt myself constrained to act upon

11 Cedric Thomas Watts (1976). "The English novel". Sussex Books. p. 55

48
 my father’s expressed desire that it should not be published, but I do not think it right that I
should bind my children by any such view, especially as I can find no specific injunction
against such publication.

(Times January 22, 1934)

He considered that he had fulfilled his commitment to his father’s wishes, so he relinquished
the control of the manuscript to his heirs and family, liberating them from any responsibility or
connection to the original ‘injunction’. His will continues with further instructions, placed in
case they were willing to publish the manuscript. A column from The New York Times, under
the headline “Family Votes to Publish Dickens The Life of Our Lord,” was printed a day
before the London announcement and it referred to Sir Henry obvious desire to publish his
father’s short story:

Sir Henry, it is understood, wished the work to be published, as he felt that thousands of
children throughout the world should be allowed to share in it. Yet he felt that he, personally,
was bound by his father’s expressed desire that it not be published.

(New York Times January 21, 1934)

In her book, “Literature and Religion in Mid-Victorian England”, Oulton affirms that the
author might have “struggled with the dogmatic aspect of religion, but he refused overtly to
target one faith system in his novels, aware that his audience comprised a diversity of
believers” (Oulton, 2003:2). As a successful salesman and businessman, he was aware that it
speaking his mind about religion and specific denominations could alienate one or more
groups of readers; therefore his religious criticism was somehow vague, without a specific
target, but undeniable present. This vagueness led to the idea of an unclassifiable Dickensian
Christianity. Although writers of his era acknowledged Dickens as a Christian writer,
academics and critics debated the particular Christian creed in his work. Until 1934, this
debate discussed the possible doctrines Dickens’ alleged to, or if he alleged to any. Pointing
to a lack of consistency and an absence of a unified Christian belief system underwriting his
fiction, these critics were unable to conclusively classify Dickens’s specific version of
Christianity as displayed in his works. There were important critics, such as Phillip Collins,
who considered that Dickens simply dodged the more complicated ecclesiastical and
theological questions of (his) Christianity in his fiction, asserting that “in his religion, as in the

49
rest of his life and work, Dickens was lacking in intellectual rigor. He naively skirted the
difficulties he found in the Bible, by the simple device of writing off the Old Testament, and
he seems to have been almost unaware of those disputes about Christian Evidences which
made ‘honest doubt’ so familiar to his generation”12. Oulton contradicts him, emphasising on
the beautiful portrayal of his knowledge of New Testament in The Life of Our Lord and the
convolutedness of his Evangelical satires (Oulton, 2003:23).

5.2 Another religious view

The Life of Our Lord provides a different religious view. This fiction is not Unitarian, nor
Evangelical, and it clearly pictures Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Besides presenting His
miracles, Dickens apprises his children that “conducting His Disciples at last out of Jerusalem
as far as Bethany, He blessed them, and ascended in a cloud to Heaven, and took His place at
the right hand of God” (TLOL, 1999:118). Oulton considers The Life of Our Lord to be a
reaction against the more stringent doctrines of evangelicalism, considering Dickens started
writing it in 1846, being disappointed with the greater part of organized religion: “in [TLOL],
he had stressed Christ’s immediacy and his relationship to human beings” and while it was
“liberal in intent, this book certainly does not provide, as has been claimed, evidence of
Unitarian belief” (Oulton, 2003: 32) or a specific similarity or empathy for any one of the
evangelical dissenting factions. Dickens’ work centres on Jesus’s actions as an earthly man,
but doubtlessly presents him as the Son of God. It is the work of a father, who happens to be
an author, who expresses his own faith, derived from the reading of the New Testament.

The Life of Our Lord opens with a very personal salutation, “My Dear Children” (TLOL, 1999:
17) and continues by informing his readers of the importance of the story they are about to
discover. This salutation and the following passage prove what a personal nature the
manuscript had; the voice of the narrator was the voice of a father speaking to his children.
The work was meant to be read aloud, maybe because Dickens imagined a group of uninitiated
listeners, without prior knowledge of the New Testament, who were being introduced to Jesus

12
As quoted in Oulton (2003:23)

50
Christ for the first time. It is important to underline this double perspective – both as an
author and a father, as we analyse the certain aspects of Jesus Christ’s life that he sees fit to
draw his children’s attention to.

The narrator proceeds with another personal phrase “I am very anxious that you should know
something about the History of Jesus Christ…for everybody ought to know about Him”
(TLOL, 1999: 17) and carries on providing grounds for the importance of the account:

‘No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did
wrong, or were in any way ill or miserable, as He was. And as He is now in Heaven, where we
hope to go, and all to meet each other after we are dead, and there be happy always together,
you never can think what a good place Heaven is, without knowing who He was and what He
did.’
(TLOL, 1999: 17)

These opening reflections are some of the most important guidelines for understanding
Dickens’ literary and theological aims in creating the manuscript because they display both a
father that is deeply aware that a life of faith must start as soon as a child may be introduced to
these principles, and an author who believes that his narrative represents the proper way of
communicating them. For children incapable of reading the New Testament and unable to
understand the complexity and uncanny elements of such a belief system, this type of narrator,
who addresses his readers so kindly and affectionate, clearly considers it to be a paternal duty
to imprint upon his children the significance of following Christ at the earliest possible age.
Addressing this important work towards an uninitiated audience, Dickens also understands the
importance of delivering his message in the most condensed and comprehensible way
possible. The author undoubtedly displays his belief in narrative as the most convincing and
proper way to rebuild the base of his children’s faith, and sets out to do so. The fact that
Dickens considered the need of starting a Christian education before his children were able to
read for themselves, and the associated information it offers about the forming stage of his
audience, indicates further support for reading The Life of Our Lord as an indispensable
version of the author’s Christian teachings. In addition, it supplies a noteworthy understanding
of the mind of the author who considers narrative to be the most efficient manner for creating
a proper and righteous faith.

51
This paragraph also provides readers the one of the first places in the manuscript where the
‘father Dickens’, passes on his personal definition or interpretation (sometimes, even
commentaries) on the New Testament, and ‘the author Dickens’ sets up the poetic licence that
will represent the rest of the narrative. In the process of coordinate and chronologically put
together the different versions of the Gospels, Dickens does not hang back to insert his own
particular way of storytelling and he often incorporates the same language and style for which
he has become so famous. We must acknowledge the manner Dickens opts for focusing his
readers’ or listeners’ attention on several specific aspects of the life of Christ, without insisting
on a particular doctrine. Instead of suggesting a precise religious practice through his
interpretation, the author considers proper to picture the events of Jesus’s life almost solely as
they appear in the New Testament. Dickens chooses to do so in order to portray Christ as the
example for his children to imitate without regard to any religious group or doctrine.

5.3 Contextualization

As Colledge mentions, The Life of Our Lord belongs to a wide category of “juvenile Gospel
narrative” that comprises the little known genres of “Gospel harmonies” and “modern Lives of
Jesus” (Colledge, 2009: 23-24). Represented by a belief in the reasonable correctness of the
original Gospels and an emphasis on supplying harmonization, the Gospel harmony had
numerous different forms in the nineteenth century, but it surely was not a literary form when
Dickens began The Life of Our Lord. The second and rather less widespread of these two
genres was the ‘Lives of Jesus’ which, according to Colledge, had its beginning in the
Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment historical studies and generally recreated Jesus’
biography, challenging the historical validity of the Gospels and also the traditional portrayal
of Jesus that emerged from them (Colledge, 2009: 24). While The Life of Our Lord opens by
describing itself as a “History,” Dickens does not try to challenge the Gospels in a different
way that other contemporary ‘Lives’ would have. We could consider that The Life of Our Lord
advocates for the Gospel harmony genre, but, in the same time, attain distinction still from this
larger body of work. Rather than disturb himself with the doctrinal connotations of a specific
exposition of the Gospels, Dickens’ clear concern is for recreating the crucial elements of
52
Jesus’ life in a way that his children could comprehend and appreciate it and he is more
interested in the story itself, rejecting the burden of a preconceived conceptual framework that,
in his mind, would bias a portrait of Jesus derived from the Gospels alone (Colledge,
2009:22). Dickens considers Jesus’ life as the centre of Christian teaching and it could easily
be the only directive by which to guide one’s life. This is the main important difference
between The Life of Our Lord and ‘Gospel harmonies’ or ‘Lives of Jesus’, and it can be
considered more of a Christ Narrative. Counting on his abilities to create a logical and unified
story about the Lord’s life, Dickens produces an exciting experience for his children, which
makes easier to understand even the deepest form of faith.

5.4 Rewriting the ‘New Testament’

To appreciate entirely the way this creed concretizes itself in both The Life of Our Lord and in
his fiction, we must point out the four specific areas of focus that Dickens mindfully
underlines referring to Christ. The author inserts in his story every miraculous occasion of
Christ healing the sick, nourish His Disciples, carrying for the poor and helpless, and proving
His power over death. During the story of His birth and the episodes that follow, Dickens
meticulously displays each New Testament example from His life that belongs to these four
categories of good deeds, and explains thoroughly to his children how important is the
example this works provide. While including this events, the ‘author Dickens’ does not forget
his readers understanding level and provides necessary comments, with a language mostly
informative. After narrating the birth of Jesus, Dickens writes “it was very wonderful, but God
ordered it to be so” (TLOL, 1999: 21), because he considered that it was imperious to provide
a divine explanation for such remarkable events. Then he proceeds to tell the story of King
Herod and the “dreadful murder [which] was called the Murder of the Innocents” (TLOL,
1999: 22), till the moment when Jesus was baptized by John, a moment beautifully presented:
“the sky opened, and a beautiful bird like a dove came flying down, and the voice of God,
speaking up in Heaven, was heard to say ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased!’” (TLOL, 1999: 28). After establishing that all these amazing actions are only
possible through God’s will and because God “ordered it to be so,” Dickens considers that his

53
readers are ready to discover Jesus’s good work. Further on, Dickens writes: “Jesus Christ
then went into a wild and lonely country called the wilderness, and stayed there forty days and
forty nights, praying that He might be of use to men and women, and teach them to be better,
so that after their deaths, they might be happy in Heaven” (TLOL, 1999: 28-29). Perhaps more
importantly, Dickens goes on to inform his children that:

‘When He came out of the wilderness, He began to cure sick people by only laying His hand
upon them; for God had given Him power to heal the sick, and to give sight to the blind, and to
do many wonderful and solemn things of which I shall tell you more bye and bye, and which
are called the Miracles of Christ.’
(TLOL, 1999: 29)

We must admit that this paragraph shows several important features about the Dickensian
Christianity. The author is very concerned with the proper way to pass on and clearly transmit
Christ’s desire to “be of use to men and women” and to make sure they are able to enter
Heaven. Dickens portrays all His selflessness and assiduous work, pointing out that this is the
right example to follow. Furthermore, it is important to consider the manner in which the
author underlines the particular method Jesus uses to accomplish these “wonderful and solemn
things”: “by only laying His hand upon” the people that he heals or comforts.

In his version of the New Testament, Dickens creates a God who is firstly a physical being,
therefore He is an accessible earthly example of kindness and compassion, but who, in the
same time, has all the divine characteristics of a deity. And when the narrator talks about
‘miracles’, he feels the need to explain himself and the concept behind the word, so they (the
readers or listeners) truly understand the majesty and importance of such an event:

‘I wish you would remember that word [miracles], because I shall use it again, and I should like
you to know that it means something which is very wonderful and which could not be done
without God’s leave and assistance.’
(TLOL, 1999: 29)

54
After narrating Jesus miracles and placing them in the centre of his story, Dickens continues
by recounting every one of them and, alongside this wonders, the author also includes all His
parables.
The Life of Our Lord proves that Dickens Christian view was “Jesus-centric”, a personal creed
in which Jesus Christ was the example for all Christians to follow, the only viable example of
pure generosity, kindness, indulgence, patience and tolerance. Reviewing The Life of Our
Lord, the burden of the storytelling becomes obvious and this increases the value and the
importance of the writing.

For a better understanding of Dickens’ last published work, I considered necessary to add
Colledge conclusion which states that Dickens’ last work suggests six fundamental elements
that refer to the author’s personal system of beliefs and repeat themselves through the entire
story, having the greatest significance for future approaches to Dickensian fiction. First of
them states that: “implicit in The Life of Our Lord is God, the heavenly Father, who
providentially looks to the affairs of the lives of men and women, who has established a moral
world of right and wrong” and who holds men and women accountable (Colledge, 2009: 16).
The second one refers to the importance for both man and women to do what is right “not
simply because doing so brings the reward of Heaven after death, but more importantly
because doing what is right is an end in itself” (Colledge, 2009: 16). Moreover, the third
element talks about those who do wrong and “must seek the forgiveness of God and, whenever
it is applicable, the forgiveness of the person wronged”, because, if this forgiveness is not
obtained or there is no remorse for the actions of the culpable one, “judgment awaits those
who obstinately refuse to seek [it]” (Colledge, 2009: 16). The fourth element is the one that, in
my opinion, emphasis itself mostly through Dickens’ story: “in as much as men and women
are accountable to God and His moral standard, they have in Jesus the exemplar through
whom they observe how to discharge their moral responsibility and to do the right, imitating
Jesus in his moral and relational example” (Colledge, 2009: 16), while the fifth element relates
directly to Dickens’ main character and states that “one of Jesus’s outstanding character traits
in The Life of Our Lord is his concern for and attendance upon the needs of his fellows”
(Colledge, 2009: 16). Finally, Colledge argues that for Dickens, “God’s world is a place of

55
supernatural events and influence” where “healings are performed, evil spirits are cast out, the
dead are raised, and other miraculous events occur” (Colledge, 2009: 16).

5.5 Conclusions

In a world where most of the wars started from a religious reason, Dickens created a religion
that did not required sacrifices or loss, nor churches or temples to communicate with the
divinity. Despite the fact that The Life of Our Lord is written in a very simplistic manner and
is structured in a straightforward narrative form in order to offer his audience a basic retelling
of the events of Jesus’s life, the story itself has a powerful humanitarian message, teaching
people to take Jesus’ instance and just be as good as they can possibly be.

‘He is the exemplar of how human beings are to act toward one another. They should be
humble, unassuming, and ready to lend a hand; the true mark of duty and loyalty to God is the
degree to which human beings fulfil their duty toward their fellow creatures.’
(Colledge 2009: 16)

56
 Conclusions

Through this BA Project I tried to demonstrate the presence and influence of religion in the
Victorian literature.

Gaskell shows that in a world of personal and economic crisis, when left without alternatives,
one seeks comfort in religion. No one is without religion, not even Mr. Higgins:

‘There’s many a time when I’ve thought I didna believe in God, but I’ve never put it fair out
before me in words, as many men do [….] I have looked round at after, to see if He heard me, if
so be there was a He [...]. There’s but one thing steady and quite i’ all this reeling world, and
reason or no reason, I’ll cling to that’”
(N&S, 1995: 227)

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Hardy compared Victorian harsh religious and social norms with
his alternative religions of animated Nature, ‘Neo-Christianity’, and Neo-Hellenism leaving
the reader to conclude that the religion embodied by Tess, the Religion of Humanity, is the
only suitable and honest religion. His Positivist ‘priestess’ was able to lead her family and her
community to a positivist stage through her immense power of compassion and her self-
sacrifice.

Bronte’s Jane Eyre is the story of a girl who, despite everything, succeeds to find happiness.
Bronte portrayed Jane as a very independent individual; hence she chooses to follow her own
personal religion. Jane Eyre is the Victorian feminine representation of free thinking, as she
considers better not to adhere to any religious doctrines.

Dickens’s manuscript presents a beautiful religious story, where the author, although not
present in his children’s lives, can still guide their steps into the amazing world of God. His
version of the ‘New Testament’ teaches love, respect and compassion, being the perfect gift
for a child who wants to discover and understand God.

57
In conclusion, the aim of this paper was to demonstrate how religion influenced Victorian
writings. It is clear now that even though all the four authors had their religious doubts, or they
even lost their faith (Hardy), the subject of religion never ceased to influence the Victorian
novel.

Further studies are recommended to examine the evolution of religion’s influence after the
Victorian era and the impact literature had over the readers.

58
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