Perceptions of Providence: Doing One’S Duty in Victorian England
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Perceptions of Providence: Doing one’s duty in Victorian England Diane Barbara Sylvester Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of Sydney A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. June 2017 Statement of originality This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. ____________________ Diane Barbara Sylvester i Abstract Intellectual history responds to that most difficult question—‘What were they thinking?’ Intellectual historians who concern themselves with the moral thinking of Victorians often view that thinking through a political lens, focussing on moral norms that were broadly accepted, or contested, rather than the moral thinking of particular Victorians as individuals—each with their own assumptions, sensibilities and beliefs. In this thesis, I interrogate the work of nine individual Victorians to recover their moralities, and discover how they decided what is the right, and what is the wrong, thing to do. My selected protagonists contributed variously to Victorian intellectual life—George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, as novelists; Matthew Arnold, John Henry Newman and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, as participants in the public discussion of Christian belief; and William Whewell, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Hill Green, as moral philosophers. I make comparisons between my protagonists’ moralities, but it is not my aim to generalise from them and, by a process of extrapolation, define a ‘Victorian’ morality. Rather, my aim is to understand the reasoning underpinning the individual moralities of these particular Victorians. My strategy has been to take a deep dive into my protagonists’ works— including their treatises, lectures, sermons, essays, novels, letters and diaries—to recover their moral beliefs, sometimes communicated explicitly but often implicitly, and to weave them together into webs of belief. Following R. G. Collingwood, I have sought to transpose myself into the perspective from which my protagonists formed their views and created their works, and, as a historian, re-think their thoughts. My approach has also been informed by the hermeneutics of both Hans-Georg Gadamer and Mark Bevir. My thesis focuses on two key themes—conceptions of providence and conceptions of duty. My initial aim was to simply explore the moralities of my protagonists, but as I read their works for this purpose, it became apparent to me that, for the most part, conceptions of providence and duty are central to their moral beliefs. I have found that, while the practical duties they acknowledge are very similar, the conceptions of providence that inform their moralities are both diverse ii and contested. Further, I have identified tensions in their various webs of belief— some inherent in their conceptions of providence and some in the relationship between their conceptions of providence and their moralities. It seems to me that these synchronic tensions indicate likely drivers of diachronic change in moral thinking, warranting further study outside the scope of this thesis. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Chris Hilliard, for his invaluable criticism and advice. I would also like to thank Michelle Borg, for her initial inspiration and ongoing encouragement, and Pat Irwin for her very practical assistance when I needed it most. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Greg McElvenny, for his unflappable good humour and unfailing support. iv Every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. … Every beating heart … is, in some of its imaginings, a secret … inscrutable. — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Three novelists ............................................................... 20 Chapter 3: Three theologists ............................................................ 47 Chapter 4: Three philosophers......................................................... 72 Chapter 5: Moral causation and its laws........................................... 89 Chapter 6: Providence and prayer.................................................. 109 Chapter 7: Beyond Providence....................................................... 137 Chapter 8: Dutiful moralities ........................................................... 157 Chapter 9: Beyond duty.................................................................. 187 Chapter 10: Snags, knots and gaping holes................................... 219 Chapter 11: Conclusion.................................................................. 240 Bibliography.................................................................................... 251 vi Chapter 1: Introduction Intellectual history responds to that most difficult question: ‘What were they thinking?’ In this thesis I interrogate the work of nine individual Victorians to discover what they thought about right and wrong; to recover their moralities. My selected protagonists contributed variously to Victorian intellectual life—George Eliot (1819–1880), Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) and Charles Dickens (1812–1870), as novelists; Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892), as participants in the public discussion of Christian belief; and William Whewell (1794–1866), John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882), as moral philosophers.1 Clearly, in selecting my protagonists I have had to negotiate the practical tension between breadth of scope and depth of study. I have chosen nine protagonists so as to engage with a variety of viewpoints, while retaining sufficient focus to engage intimately with their work. Further, I have chosen three groups, each of three protagonists, with similar focuses but different approaches. So, while Arnold, Newman and Spurgeon all write concerning Christian belief, Arnold does so as a liberal Anglican, Newman as an Anglo-Catholic, and Spurgeon as a Baptist preacher. And while Whewell, Mill and Green all write on moral philosophy, Whewell does so as conservative, Mill as a utilitarian liberal and Green as a radical liberal who grounds his morality in philosophical idealism. Similarly, while George Eliot, Gaskell and Dickens all write with a mid-Victorian moral purpose—‘seeking to illuminate the process of “salvation” by which the [reader’s] inward world might survive’ the ‘sordid realities’ of Victorian England—they each do so in the light of their own moral philosophy tempered by their own world view.2 I make comparisons between my protagonists’ moralities, but it is not my aim to generalise from them or otherwise articulate a shared ‘Victorian’ morality. Rather, my aim is to discover the individual moralities of 1 The philosophical work of each of Whewell, Mill and Green extends well beyond moral philosophy, but my focus is on their works bearing (directly or indirectly) on moral philosophy. 2 Barry V. Qualls, The Secular Pilgrims of Victorian Fiction: The novel as book of life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 15. 1 nine particular Victorians. Further, I am not concerned to establish the worthiness of my protagonists’ moralities, nor to determine whether my protagonists’ actions sit squarely with their moralities. I reject the notion that inconsistencies between one’s actions and one’s moral beliefs show those beliefs to be a sham—it is apparent, on a moment’s reflection, that few of us who aspire to live at all well can claim to live as we believe we ought.3 I am concerned only with recovering the webs of belief that constitute their moralities and identifying any tensions inherent in those webs of belief. My strategy has been to take a deep dive into my protagonists’ works to recover their moral beliefs. These beliefs may be stated explicitly—in their treatises, lectures, sermons, essays or, sometimes, in their letters or even in novels. But often these beliefs are communicated implicitly—in their letters, diaries and in novels, but also in their lectures, sermons and essays. Writing their novels, our novelists write fiction, not philosophy or theology. Similarly, in their sermons and essays, our theologists offer criticism or encouragement suited to particular circumstances, rather than a comprehensive moral philosophy.4 So the works of our novelists and theologists provide fragmentary evidence, rather than complete expositions, of their moralities. Nevertheless, because our novelists and theologists write deliberately, with a moral purpose, their works are rich sources of such evidence.5 As Dickens himself explained—‘a reader will rise from the perusal of a book with some defined and tangible idea of the writer’s moral creed and broad purposes, if [the writer] has any at all’.6 But, because so much of our understanding of their moralities is garnered from the incidentally implied rather than the deliberately explained, it is unsurprising that we find complexities, inconsistencies and gaps in the recovered moralities. This thesis focuses on two key themes—conceptions of providence and conceptions of duty. My initial aim was to simply explore the moralities of my protagonists,