Augustinian Virtue in the Dickensian World: the Role of Christian Friendship in the Conversion of Souls and the Move Toward the Heavenly City
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AUGUSTINIAN VIRTUE IN THE DICKENSIAN WORLD: THE ROLE OF CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP IN THE CONVERSION OF SOULS AND THE MOVE TOWARD THE HEAVENLY CITY by Jill A. Kriegel A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, FL August 2010 Copyright by Jill A. Kriegel 2010 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Support from the Florida Atlantic University community, in the form of a dissertation-year fellowship from the Lifelong Learning Society and a devoted committee, has been invaluable to my work. My advisor, Dr. Oliver Buckton, played a vital role throughout my graduate work, generously and tirelessly offering expansive knowledge on the Victorian period, fruitful intellectual debate, and invaluable professional guidance. As a manifestation of his creative spirit he applauded my desire to forge a scholarly path that challenges commonly held views on Dickensian themes. In addition, Dr. Thomas Martin provided longtime encouragement of my passion for the Christian themes in literature; Dr. Joanne Jasin conducted careful critique of my work; Dr. Carol Gould introduced me to the philosophy of ancient Greece; and Dr. James Wetzel of Villanova offered his support of my Augustinian focus. My heartfelt thanks I extend to each of them. To all my family and friends, too, I am so grateful. My niece, Hannah, always inquiring and enthusiastic, was especially inspiring. Bill Mistichelli, Joseph Pearce, Mary Bevilacqua and Rosemary Timoney propelled my enthusiasm with scholarly and convivial exchanges. At home, Christina Gardiner, Virginia Wells (my ever-calming editor), and David Wells stood by with steadfast confidence, patience, and moral support. This dissertation‘s theme of the virtue and spiritual value of true friendship is in no small way inspired by their presence in my life. iv ABSTRACT Author: Jill A. Kriegel Title: Augustinian Virtue in the Dickensian World: The Role of Christian Friendship in the Conversion of Souls and the Move Toward the Heavenly City Institution: Florida Atlantic University Dissertation Advisor: Oliver S. Buckton Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Year: 2010 The novels of Charles Dickens resonate with ancient and Christian moral messages: From plots and characters representative of Victorian ideals and concerns emerge themes that reflect centuries of moral, and, as I argue, specifically Augustinian, teaching. While the Christian overtones of Charles Dickens‘s novels are seldom denied, their Augustinian nature, their purpose, and Dickens‘s hopes for their effect are rarely given their proper due. In opposition to the postmodern idea of an increasing nihilism and despair in Dickens‘s message, I examine instead his steadfast fascination with and joy in the power of charitable friendships— friendships that embody goodness and the possibility for conversion, friendships that are especially noteworthy amid the societal darkness ushered in by the crises of faith that accompanied nineteenth-century industrialization, commercialization, and de-moralization. v Preparing to highlight the undeniable moral value in both the rejected and realized friendships and conversions of Dickens‘s Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, first I focus on true friendship as a necessary part of a soul‘s ascent developed in Plato‘s Symposium and Phaedrus, as well as in Aristotle‘s Nicomachean Ethics, illustrating how these classical texts anticipate the Augustinian notion of a soul‘s transformation from the earthly city to the city of God. With this literary continuum thus established, I contend that the Heavenly City as it is reflected in the Dickensian world relies on its virtuous citizens, those true friends who consistently manifest Christian charity, humility, and forgiveness. vi DEDICATION This manuscript is dedicated to the memories of Fr. Daniel Cernauskas, David Kriegel, Howard Pearce, and Helene Tiber, all of whom had an immeasurable influence on my life, as well as on this project. AUGUSTINIAN VIRTUE IN THE DICKENSIAN WORLD: THE ROLE OF CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP IN THE CONVERSION OF SOULS AND THE MOVE TOWARD THE HEAVENLY CITY Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter One: A Literary Continuum: Plato to Augustine to Dickens ............................................ 39 Chapter Two: Dickens‘s World: Christian, Moral, and Personal Perspectives ............................. 82 Chapter Three: Martin Chuzzlewit: Friendship, Forgiveness, Family Restoration ........................ 127 Chapter Four: Bleak House: Souls Saved, Souls Lost .................................................................. 156 Chapter Five: Great Expectations: Conversion Long Awaited ................................................... 186 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 220 Appendix: Dickens Chronology ............................................................................................. 226 Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 233 vii INTRODUCTION While it is now widely recognized by literary scholars and philosophers that the marriage of classical antiquity and Christianity integrated reason and faith, thus helping solidify the foundations for Western civilization,1 this union has often been scrutinized. The Victorians, on whose literature this dissertation focuses, struggled with their sincere debt to and love for the classics, as they feared its conflict with their strong, but sometimes tenuous, Christian faith. John Henry Newman, for example, simultaneously renowned and infamous for his nineteenth-century conversion from the Anglican to the Catholic Church, wrote in a sonnet of his dilemma over an unresolved passion for the masterpieces of ancient Greece: ―Why, wedded to the Lord, still yearns my heart / Towards these scenes of ancient heathen fame? ... Nay, from no fount impure these drops arise / ‗Tis but that sympathy with Adam‘s race / Which in each brother‘s history reads its own.‖2 Frank M. Turner explains that the revived attraction to antiquity resulted from the social, political, religious, and intellectual tumult of the Enlightenment and a seemingly persistent state of revolution. In this era of tremendous religious, scientific, and industrial change, the tenets and institutions of Christianity did not always align to the more 1. See, for example, Lucy Beckett, In the Light of Christ: Writings in the Western Tradition (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), p18-57; C. S. Lewis, ―Christianity and Literature,‖ The Seeing Eye, Ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Ballantine, 1967), p1-14; Peter Milward, The Simplicity of the West (London: St. Austin P, 1998), 24-31; Josef Pieper, “Divine Madness”: Plato‟s Case Against Secular Humanism, Trans. Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995). 2. Quoted in Richard Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1980), 68. 1 progressive nature of these cultural changes. Such a conflict of interests was, at this time, relatively new. Until the latter part of the eighteenth-century Western Europeans identified predominantly with their Roman and Christian foundations: ―Europe had a Roman past, and European civilization was congruent with Latin Christendom.‖3 The new conflict, however, was undeniable, as it manifested itself in all parts of society, literature being no exception. Referencing Charles Dickens‘s A Tale of Two Cities, Richard Jenkyns elucidates, via Dickens‘s eighteenth-century example, the Victorian situation at hand: It was a time certainly when both faith and doubt grew in strength and fervor; and similarly progress and decline, hypocrisy and integrity, all forms of conformity and disaffection, social, moral and political, seemed to have intensified. The religious conflict was often fought out within the compass of a single human mind, and in other ways too many of those eminent men whom we or their contemporaries have chosen to regard as typically Victorian seem to have represented their age in microcosm by being pulled in different directions by contrary impulses.4 Dickens, Jenkyns points out, was no exception, as he wavered between reformism and convention. For his struggles, as well as for his pervasive Christian optimism, Charles Dickens, I maintain, can be seen as one of the many fruits of the two- thousand year union of antiquity and Christianity, steeped as he was in the traditions of his Western, Christian heritage as well as in his own English Victorian society. Dickens‘s work resonates with ancient and Christian moral messages: From plots and characters representative of Victorian ideals and concerns emerge themes 3. Frank M. Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1984), 2-3. 4. Jenkyns, 69-70. vii that reflect centuries of moral, and specifically Augustinian, teaching. Augustine, as I will argue, provides a foundation on which authors interested in moral transformation build throughout subsequent history. For, as Kenneth Boa asserts, By universalizing the dynamics of the human soul in his Confessions, [Augustine] developed a theology of personal engagement in which the quest of the finite seeking the infinite and the flight of the soul to God became paradigmatic of the need for all human activity to be directed toward