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CYNICISM IN THE FIN DE SIÉCLE by Robert George Dearle A thesis submitted to the Department of English In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen‟s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (May, 2010) Copyright © Robert George Dearle, 2010 Abstract Cynicism is one of the most frequently used, but most polysemic, words in the modern lexicon. This dissertation attempts to shed some light on a dark subject by tracing the idea of cynicism from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century and early twentieth in order to construct a multi-faceted theory of modern cynicism which is in turn applied to, and modified by, the writings of H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, and George Bernard Shaw. The genealogy of cynicism that I construct in the first chapter draws upon existing research in the area as well as original research from a range of books and articles published from 1790 to 1895. This genealogy shows that the idea of cynicism takes shape largely in relation to the nineteenth century‟s anxieties about the social and subjective consequences of modern culture. In the remaining chapters, I examine each writer‟s understanding of and engagement with cynicism and explore the ways that each participates in, modifies, or rejects the pessimistic form of modern cynicism associated with the fin de siècle. I suggest that in rejecting the pessimistic form of realism typical of the period, Shaw comes closer than other authors to recovering a salutary neo-Cynicism; I also argue that he perceived, but was not able to overcome, the subjective barriers to political change that more recent theorists have associated with twentieth-century cynicism. ii Acknowledgements I am grateful to Asha Varadharajan for the support, encouragement, and patience she has offered me throughout this process. I am also grateful to Christopher Fanning for his constructive and timely feedback. I would also like to thank Chris Bongie for his support and encouragement. My greatest debt of gratitude, however, is to my family and especially to my wife, Gillian, who has been there throughout, and without whose love and support this project would not have been possible. iii Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................iii Table of Contents................................................................................................................iv Chapter 1 Introduction.........................................................................................................1 Chapter 2 H. G. Wells................................................................................................ ........45 Chapter 3 Joseph Conrad...................................................................................................89 Chapter 4 Bernard Shaw..................................................................................................148 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................191 Works Cited.....................................................................................................................196 iv Chapter 1 Introduction Cynicism, it seems, is alive and well. A recent Google book search returned nearly two hundred title results, while the web search term “contemporary cynicism” returned six thousand. Commentators from both ends of the political spectrum, both secular and Christian, appear to agree that cynicism is one of the great challenges facing modern culture. In most of these accounts, cynicism is an attitude of contempt for, and disbelief in, participatory politics and collective action. Modern cynicism foresees that efforts to make things better (if not already mere rhetoric on the part of self-interested leaders) are predestined to miss the mark entirely or—more likely—to contribute to the very problem they are intended to resolve. Nor is cynicism seen to be restricted to the lower classes: it extends to the very top of the political and economic order, manifesting itself as the secret understanding that between ideals and reality is a gap that offers profit for those “in the know.” This form of cynicism is abetted by the cynicism it helps create: a public that is conditioned by experience to expect little more from politics than “more of the same.” At the core of this idea of cynicism, like most cynicisms, is disillusionment. The cynic is often regarded—and denounced—as one whose conspicuous illness is the inability to recognize either cultural values or the value of culture. This, of course, is the view of cynicism indicated by Oscar Wilde‟s famous characterization of the cynic as one “who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” But disillusionment and loss of value have long been the preoccupations of modern literature, and this prompts the 1 question of how modern literature reflects and participates in the discourse of modern cynicism. The question is not entirely a new one, but it is one that is overdue for reconsideration. In the nineteenth century, concerns were increasingly expressed about the cynicism of modern art and the effect that it would have on culture. In England, these concerns became especially common toward the end of the nineteenth century in relation to realism and early forms of modernism. Today, one might be apt to dismiss them as the moral panic of a moribund culture, but to do so is not only to discount what they can tell us about the nature of modern cynicism, but also what modern cynicism can tell us about modern literature. In order to facilitate this discovery, this study adopts the position that Victorian moralists were not entirely incorrect in identifying a cynical strain in realism and early modernism. Insofar as modern aesthetic culture regarded established culture with contempt, revealed its dirty secrets, and exposed them to ridicule, it arguably occupied a quintessentially cynical role within culture. But as we shall see, the critics of modern realism also helped redefine cynicism by associating it with pessimism. My primary interest in initiating this study was to answer the question of what cynicism is and its relation to modern culture. Since I began this project, a similar history has appeared in David Mazella‟s Making of Modern Cynicism. Mazella‟s study follows the evolution of the word from its classical roots to the late nineteenth century. However, the present study differs from Mazella‟s in both aim and focus. Whereas Mazella is primarily concerned with semantic changes to cynicism, my intent is to follow as far as possible the idea of cynicism in order to draw out the attitudes that lay behind it. In practice, this means not only tracking the evolution of the word and its application, but also the progress of the 2 concept, particularly where it relates to the question of modernity and modern art. Further, with only a few exceptions, the material used in this study has not been included in Mazella‟s study, so there is little overlap in our accounts. As I attempt to show, many of the anxieties surrounding modern developments in the arts and in thought during the latter half of the nineteenth century can be regarded as a reaction against cynicism even if “cynicism” is not the word that is always used. Nevertheless, Mazella‟s work has offered invaluable insights that have helped me in this study. Like Mazella‟s, my work begins with and builds upon research conducted by the German scholar Heinrich Niehues-Pröbsting who has located the roots of the modern negative idea of cynicism in the Enlightenment. In my first chapter I provide a brief account of this history, and reflect on the connection between modern cynicism and the fears about enlightenment.1 I trace the idea of cynicism through a series of documents from 1790 to 1895 to show that many of the same anxieties about enlightenment re-emerge in Britain in relation to the critical ethos that Matthew Arnold, in his essay on Heinrich Heine, referred to as “the modern spirit.” Reflected in the documents that identify the danger of modern cynicism are anxieties about the decline in manners, civility, and morality in modern culture. These documents record and participate in the conversion of cynicism into a purely negative term, and help to establish a rough theory of cynicism that can be used to cast new light on the cultural tensions that emerge most clearly in the fin de siècle. As my account of cynicism moves closer to the end of the century, I note the importance of Arthur Schopenhauer. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the 1 In this study I follow Schmidt‟s practice of differentiating between the Enlightenment as a historical movement and enlightenment as a process or ethos by reserving the uppercase for the former. 3 question of nature again came to the fore after the publication of Charles Darwin‟s work, but a crucial development for cultural history and the history of cynicism was the belated discovery of Schopenhauer‟s work. Schopenhauer‟s pessimistic philosophy was in many ways the supreme philosophical expression of Biedermeier Weltschmerz. Although the first volume of his World as Will and Idea was published in 1819, his work remained essentially undiscovered until the 1850s, at which point its popularity and influence grew rapidly. Schopenhauer‟s

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