The late Victorian and Edwardian novel and the birth of liberal guilt.
Item
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Title
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The late Victorian and Edwardian novel and the birth of liberal guilt.
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Identifier
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AAI9108080
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identifier
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9108080
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Creator
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Born, Daniel Keith.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Irving Howe
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Date
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1990
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | Religion, General
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Abstract
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While liberal guilt has its roots in the theological and social crises of late Victorian and Edwardian England, we can best apprehend what this guilt is about through the fiction of the period. Six writers--Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Gissing, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, and H. G. Wells--demonstrate a constellation of recurrent themes which define the term very sharply. Liberal guilt can be situated historically between, on one hand, Victorian Christian conscience, and on the other, modern notions of guilt as individual pathology as perceived by Freud and Nietzsche. Yet liberal guilt in its social nature is distinct from both antecedent and successor. Its recurrent features include: (1) An intensified moral seriousness in spite of (or maybe on account of) a post-theistic outlook. Both Dickens and Eliot, while anticipating Zarathustra's cry that "God is dead," part ways with Nietzsche in seeking new moral terms through their late fiction. At the same time, evil becomes perceived in systemic and complex ways that depart from the traditional, theological notion of sinful individuals. (2) If the initial impulse for liberal guilt is shattered theological conviction, perception of evil becomes primarily sociological. The crisis of the desperate urban underclass haunts Dickens, Gissing, and Forster; the theme of the "abyss" permeates much Edwardian writing. (3) Increasing disquiet about England's empire runs parallel to worry about domestic poverty. Kipling, the poet of empire, becomes a lightning-rod for liberal antipathy. But although they almost all react to his imperialist creed, the Edwardian novelists repeat, by way of their central protagonists, patterns of complicity with imperial ideology. (4) In response to the aforementioned crises, guilty liberal protagonists often seek solace in a romanticized country house tradition. Though tenuous, maybe even illusory, that safe haven of value occupies a central place in the Edwardian imagination, and only Wells openly challenges it.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
