Hannah More and the Evangelical Influence on the English Novel

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Hannah More and the Evangelical Influence on the English Novel HANNAH MORE AND THE EVANGEUCAL INFLUENCE ONTHEENGUSHNOVEL by Karen Irene Swallow Prior July 14, 1999 Dr. George R. Levine, Dissertation Committee Chairman A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of State University of New York at Buffalo in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Copyright by Karen Irene Swallow Prior 1999 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With eternal gratitude to: Jacqueline Miller and Michelle Pelton-Fall, for making it better; Dr. George Levine, for making it happen; Roy Prior, for making it possible; and to Jesus Christ, for everything. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Introduction 1 Chapter 1: A Brief Biography of Hannah More 4 Chapter 2: Evangelicals and the Novel 53 Chapter 3: Hannah More and the Didactic Tradition 122 Chapter 4: Cre/ebs in Search of a Wife and the Reading Public 180 Chapter 5: A Critical Reading of Cre/ebs in Search of a Wife 231 Afterword 277 Works Cited 278 ABSTRACT Hannah More was a significant literary, political. and social figure of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Ample evidence exists that More's only novel. Ccelebs in Search of a Wife (1808). played a significant role in increasing the popularity and acceptability of the genre of the novel. Yet. More's rightful place in the story of the "rise of the novel" has been largely overlooked in literary criticism today. This dissertation examines the life, work. and influence of Hannah More, an Evangelical Anglican, feminist, and social reformer. Emphasis is placed on those aspects of her life that demonstrate More's unique position as a bridge between the social. religious, economic, and cultural chasms that helped to define eighteenth-century English society. As an Evangelical, More helped to shape this influential movement's attitude toward the novel. Evangelicals tended to view the novel as. at best. a diversion from more pious pursuits and, at worst, a means of corrupting readers (particularly female readers) during an era experiencing an increase in leisure time and a perceived decrease in manners and morality. Because she was an Evangelical and because her work was imbued with the language and guided by the perspective of this increasingly influential movement, More exploited with remarkable success an otherwise objectionable art form for her didactic purposes. The foundation for the success of More's novel can be found, in part. in the didactic tradition in literature. Conduct books, tracts, spiritual biographies and periodical literature all share a tradition whose influence can be seen in More's novel and in its public acclaim. A survey of the periodical reviews finds a wide range of views on the literary and cultural implications of More's novel. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park provides a case study of how More's novel shaped the development of the novel into the nineteenth century. Ultimately, however, understanding the limits of the relationship between art and didacticism help to reveal the flaws in Ccelebs in Search of a Wife and to explain its failure, despite tremendous contemporary success, to maintain a place in the canon of English literature. INTRODUCTION The greatest significance of Coelebs in Search of a Wife, the only novel of the otherwise prolific eighteenth-century writer, social reformer, feminist. and Evangelical Anglican Hannah More, lies less in its contribution to the novel as an art form than in its role as a popularizer of the genre, and thus its importance in paving the way for the age of and literary and cultural influence of the nineteenth-century English novel. The remarkable sales, circulation and popularity of More's novel and its phenomenal critical and popular attention earned More a prominent place among her contemporaries in both literary and religious circles, as well as among reading audiences in England and America. More's life and works received considerable critical attention in the late eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century. Yet, More has been all but forgotten in the twentieth-century canon, and her rightful place in the story of "rise of the novel" has been largely overlooked in literary criticism today. As her most recent biographer, Charles Howard Ford, paints out, over a dozen biographies and about half a dozen articles about More were published between her death in 1833 and 1952 (ix). While these studies have examined More and her work from feminist, social, or political perspectives, none has given a full treatment to the literary significance of More's work, particularly her role in the rise of the English novel. No examination of More's life and works could exclude those elements that contributed 1 to More's considerable influence in both literary and Evangelical circles. As a successful "bridge" between these two often exclusive realms, More managed to direct the literary tastes of the English elite to more didactic ends, and, on the other hand, to enlarge the audience of the novel to include more conservative readers. This more conservative audience included Evangelicals, a religious group experiencing a growing influence on the tastes and behaviors of late eighteenth­ century England and who had long been wary of the potential "dangers" of reading novels. One significant factor in the growth and development of the genre of the novel was the warily disdainful attitude of the Puritans toward the form and, subsequently, that of the growing population of Evangelical Anglicans of eighteenth century England. They viewed the novel as, at best, a diversion from more pious pursuits and, at worst, a means of corrupting readers (particularly young ladies) during an era experiencing, along with the growth of the middle class, a corresponding increase in leisure time and a (perceived) decrease in both manners and morality. Because she was an Evangelical and because her work was imbued with the language and guided by the perspective of this increasingly influential subculture, More exploited with remarkable success an otherwise objectionable art form for her didactic purposes. Coelebs in Search of a Wife was a powerful demonstration of the uses and merits of the novel, and thus advanced the exoneration, and therefore the popularity, of the novel as an art form. The role of the didactic tradition in literature and its influence on the development of the novel and on More's work will also be examined here. Didactic literature such as conduct books, tracts, and other forms of narrative fiction were important in the novel's overcoming the objections of conservative and religious readers and, subsequently, reaching its height in the Victorian age. Following in the footsteps of such writers as Samuel Richardson (who relied heavily in his own novel-writing on input from the Bluestocking Ladies, of which More was a member), Hannah More attempted to use what she otherwise considered a dangerous form of entertainment for her own didactic purposes in Coelebs in Search of a Wife. The character of Coelebs, in fact, has many parallels in Richardson's paragon of male virtue, Sir Charles Grandison. 2 As she stated in her introduction to CCElebs, More's purpose in writing a novel -- a form which she had often condemned -- was "to show how religion may be brought to mix with the concerns of ordinary life." Though her novel has received little praise for its artistic merits, More believed, as voiced by one of the central characters in Coe/ebs, "bad taste could never advance the interests of Christianity." Thus, her novel provides an important case study in the potential and the limits of didactic art, those creative endeavors undertaken for the primary purpose of imparting a message. A survey of contemporary reviews and criticism of More's novel reflects the greatly divided opinion of the genre of the novel as well as of More's work in particular. Questions about the role of religion in any art form and the suitability of the form of the novel for religious or moral purposes were widely debated; this debate is clearly seen in the critical reception of CCElebs in Search of a Wife. The close reading of CCElebs in Search of a Wife included here will show why such questions were important ones and how attempts to answer them influenced the rise of the English novel in the nineteenth century. A critical examination of the work in light of its literary debt to conduct books, spiritual biography, and earlier novels will illuminate some of the overlooked artistic and literary merits of the novel, as well as its important religious and social contributions to early nineteenth century England. Most twentieth century criticism, in examining the politics, purposes and methods of the eighteenth century More through twentieth century eyes, has minimized or failed to recognize the importance of More and her only novel. The success of Coe/ebs in Search of a Wife, along with its role in advancing the popularity of the English novel, is too important to leave in the obscurity where it has rested most of this century. The following study of this novel and its author in the context of evangelical Christianity's widening influence during the era of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is an attempt to enlarge the critical understanding of the development, direction, and growth in popularity of the novel as a literary form as well as of the role in this development played by the evangelical movement. 3 CHAPTER ONE: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF HANNAH MORE INTRODUCTION In whatever sense the appellation GREAT can be legitimately applied to any human being, history perhaps will not fumish one name more truly deserving the appendage than hers who is the subject of these pages. Thus begins the first biography of Hannah More, published in 1838, five years after her death, by Henry Thompson, who served as minister of the parish where More lived for nearly fifty years.
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