Thackeray, George Eliot & Dickens

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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THE GENTLE HERO IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL: THACKERAY, GEORGE ELIOT & DICKENS by Pamela Loveless Postma A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1991 Approved by Dissertation Adviser ---------- -- POSTMA, PAMELA LOVELESS, Ph.D. The Gentle Hero in the Victorian Novel: Thackeray, George Eliot & Dickens. (1991) Directed by Dr. Charles Davis. 267 pp. The purpose of this study is to identify and define a character type that recurs in English literature from Chaucer to the present but that has its most complete development in the fiction of the Victorian period. This character type is the gentle hero, a literary construct that provides an alternative to the more familiar English gentleman and the traditional hero and embodies a social morality that is distinctly English and decidedly different from other, more aggressive, heroic models. Dobbin in Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Seth Bede in George Eliot's Adam Bede, and Mr. Jarndyce in Dickens's Bleak House are all examples of the gentle hero. This study considers these characters as typical of the gentle hero and examines their novelistic function against the background of contemporaneous English society. Each helps to define a character type that is highly moral, mainly concerned for the well-being of others, somewhat passive in his response to adversity, consistent in his moral position, and quietly stoic. He suffers emotional loss, mainly because he usually fails to win the woman he loves, but he provides a moral standard by setting aside his own desires in favor of the happiness and well-being of his beloved. The gentle hero represents a morality that is self-abnegating, highly civilized, non-violent, and long- ------------- -- suffering. He may have reached his apotheosis in the Victorian period, but in many ways he is decidedly the kind of hero needed by the present age. APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dissertation Adviser Date of Acceptance by Committee Date of Final Oral Examination ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge the help and encouragement of the members of this committee: Dr. James Evans, Dr. James Ellis, and Dr. Ron Cassell. I also wish to extend special thanks to the director Dr. Charles Davis. Finally, I want to acknowledge my great debt to Dr. Randolph Bulgin. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page APPROVAL PAGE.......................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • iii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 1 II. THE GENTLE HERO IN THACKERAY'S VANITY FAIR.... 34 III. THE GENTLE HERO IN GEORGE ELIOT'S ADAM BEDE................................... 118 IV. THE GENTLE HERO IN DICKENS'S BLEAK HOUSE •••••• 185 V. CONCLUSION... • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................... 262 iv 1 CHAPTER I INI'RODUCI'ION The English Gentlanan as a Source for the Gentle Hero Readers of English literature have long been familiar with certain traditional character types: the father figure, the ingenue, the femme fatale, the clown, the youth, the experienced older woman, the hero, to name a few. There is, however, an additional character type that has gone largely unnoticed, whose presence goes all the way back to Chaucer and whose culmination is achieved in the Victorian novel. That character is the gentle hero, a creation wholly English in outlook and design, the vehicle by which the moral freight of the novel is carried. The gentle hero is often overlooked--by the other characters in the book, by readers, by critics--because he sometimes seems peripheral to the major action of the plot. But the gentle hero, a nearly ubiquitous character type in the Victorian novel (Jane Eyre doesn't have one), is of crucial importance, for he embodies the novel's moral order and provides a model for human behavior. Virtually all Victorian novels contain a dynamic hero, or main protagonist, whose fate is determined by the action 2 of the plot. One might naturally assume that the dynamic hero would be its moral center as well. An out-and-out scoundrel is seldom the dynamic hero (Clarissa's Lovelace may be an exception), and while he may begin his quest for whatever good he is after--generally a woman--in a moral fog, by the end of the book the fog will have lifted to reveal a character whose good fortune we heartily approve. Tom Jones is the paradigmatic dynamic hero; his career is certainly marked by plenty of action. He learns his lesson and is rewarded with the getting of wisdom and a wife. But the dynamic hero is not necessarily the reader's moral tutor. With few exceptions the real moral center of the Victorian novel is the gentle hero, often a secondary character in relation to the plot, but one without whose presence the moral structure of the novel's fictional world would collapse. Imagine Tom Jones without Squire Allworthy, if you can. It is he, not his nephew Tom, who represents the moral order Fielding postulates. The gentle hero has antecedents that go back to Chaucer's "varry parfit gentil knight." Shakespeare's Horatio, Sterne's Uncle Toby, Trollope's Roger Carbury, and even Conan-Doyle's Dr. Watson are all variations of the gentle hero. Despite differences of wealth, education, social position, and age, the gentle heroes of English 3 literature do share certain traits. First, the gentle hero stands in a position of moral superiority to the dynamic hero. The gentle hero is self-effacing, and while he is sometimes quixotic, he honestly endeavors to do good to others, often being taken advantage of in the process. He undergoes some growth of awareness, though this awareness is of a practical, not a moral, kind. He discovers something about the nature of the world that he had not known, but his own moral position in relation to it remains unchanged. Despite his good intentions, his good deeds are often hindered by his own limited capacities or understanding. He may, therefore, make serious mistakes, and he often seems to lack energy. He is no saint. He may suffer embarrassment or pain and may lose the things he wants most in life because of his own diffidence or errors of judgment. But if the outcome of the dynamic hero is filled with more dramatic interest, the fate of the gentle hero is invested with more moral significance, for it is he who represents the moral order of the novel in which he appears. William Dobbin in Vanity Fair, Seth Bede in Adam Bede, and Mr. Jarndyce in Bleak House are all gentle heroes--self-effacing, destined to endure significant loss while forwarding the fortunes of those they love, and morally superior to most of the other characters. -----------· -- 4 To arrive at an adequate definition of the gentle hero it is perhaps wise to begin by comparing him to the English gentleman as a social type and to the traditional literary hero, for he offers an important alternative to both, even as he shares many of their characteristics. Recent years have seen a burgeoning of critical treatments of the role of the gentleman in English literature and culture. Shirley Letwin has examined the moral and ethical dimensions of the gentleman's code, using the works of Trollope as a framework for her analysis. Mark Girouard has written about the ethos of the gentleman in the Victorian period, as it derived from the ideals and legends of medieval chivalry. David Castronovo has constructed a detailed definition of the gentleman in English society. Robin Gilmour has discu5sed the function of the gentleman in the Victorian novel, tracing his antecedents back to Richardson and Sir Roger de Coverley. And Philip Mason has offered a definition of the gentleman, beginning with Castiglione and the notion of courtly love and ending with the novels of Thackeray, Dickens, and Trollope. These are but a few of the studies of the gentleman available to us,.

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