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Wednesday
I have fallen in love with the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell but find my vision of literature directly challenged by a character in North and South. John Thornton is a mill owner who has hired the father of protagonist Margaret Hale as tutor so that he can catch up on the education that he was deprived of as a child. While this is laudable, he doesn’t see reading the classics as essential, regarding such activity more as a decorative flourish that one adds to one’s life only when one can afford it.
It’s the vision of a character in another book I’ve just finished, Kate Quinn’s light but enjoyable The Rose Code. In that World War II-era thriller about the women who worked at Bletchley Park decoding German war signals, Mab is working her way through the classics to help her escape her impoverished working-class background. There’s a great passage describing her reaction to Rebecca:
I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six, dressed in black satin with a string of pearls,” Mab Churt read aloud. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said, you silly twit.”
“What are you reading?” her mother asked, flipping through an old magazine.
Rebecca. Daphne du Maurier.” Mab turned a page. She was taking a break from her dog-eared list of “100 Classic Literary Works for the Well-Read Lady”—not that Mab was a lady, or particularly well-read, but she intended to be both. After plowing through number 56, The Return of the Native (ugh, Thomas Hardy), Mab figured she’d earned a dip into something enjoyable like Rebecca. “The heroine’s a drip and the hero’s one of those broody men who bullies you and it’s supposed to be appealing. But I can’t put it down, somehow.” Maybe just the fact that when Mab envisioned herself at thirty-six, she was definitely wearing black satin and pearls. There was also a Labrador lying at her feet, in this dream, and a room lined with books she actually owned, rather than dog-eared copies from the library.
Anyway, back to Gaskell. While mill owner Thorton attended school as a child, he was forced into the work force after his father committed suicide over gambling debts he couldn’t pay. From a shop assistant, Thornton has gradually worked his way up to a position of wealth and prominence. Margaret’s father wants Homer to get some of the credit, but Thornton will have none of it.
Here’s their interchange:
“But you have the rudiments of a good education,” remarked Mr. Hale. “The quick zest with which you are now reading Homer, shows me that you do not come to it as an unknown book: you have read it before, and are only recalling your old knowledge.”
“That is true,—I had blundered along it at school; I dare say, I was even considered a pretty fair classic in those days, though my Latin and Greek have slipt away from me since. But I ask you, what preparation were they for such a life as I had to lead? None at all. Utterly none at all. On the point of education, any man who can read and write starts fair with me in the amount of really useful knowledge that I had at that time.”
“Well! I don’t agree with you. But there I am perhaps somewhat of a pedant. Did not the recollection of the heroic simplicity of the Homeric life nerve you up?”
“Not one bit!” exclaimed Mr. Thornton, laughing. “I was too busy to think about any dead people, with the living pressing alongside of me, neck to neck, in the struggle for bread. :
The conversation occurs immediately after Thornton has laid out his philosophy of life and, as he sees it, his reasons for success: self-denial and refusal to indulge in sensual pleasure. As he puts it,
Now when I feel that in my own case it is no good luck, nor merit, nor talent,—but simply the habits of life which taught me to despise indulgences not thoroughly earned,—indeed, never to think twice about them,—I believe that this suffering, which Miss Hale says is impressed on the countenances of the people of Milton, is but the natural punishment of dishonestly-enjoyed pleasure, at some former period of their lives. I do not look on self-indulgent, sensual people as worthy of my hatred; I simply look upon them with contempt for their poorness of character.
Homer, as it was taught in the British schools at the time, was believed to inculcate in pupils a warrior ethos, so it makes sense that Mr. Hale would seek to connect Greek heroes and enterprising capitalists. But because he is a modest man, the tutor self-deprecatingly withdraws his remark following Thornton’s objection, saying what I would have said in his place:
I dare say, my remark came from the professional feeling of there being nothing like leather.
Yes, we lovers of leather-bound classics can sometimes exaggerate literature’s impact.
That being acknowledged, however, I think Mr. Hale’s mistake is in trying to connect his interpretation of The Iliad with the 19th-century Puritan work ethic, which believed that those who work hard while denying themselves sensual pleasure will emerge the winners. This is not the vision of Homer’s warriors, whose lust for loot and whose view of the gods as fickle is almost the polar opposite of this. I could even imagine Thornton regarding them as negative role models. In any event, he’s not willing to let his tutor use his bookish expertise to define the narrative of his life.
All of which is to say that Homer might have had more of an impact that Thornton lets on or realizes. Perhaps that’s why he’s returned to those works now. But that impact may be different than Mr. Hale thinks.
Follow-up Quotation: Thornton’s mother regards a classical education with even more skepticism than her son does, reminding me of those persons that want to banish the arts from education and focus only on fundamental skills and the STEM disciplines. His mother is explaining why her son had to miss his class the previous evening:
“He told me he could not get leisure to read with you last night, sir. He regretted it, I am sure; he values the hours spent with you.”
“I am sure they are equally agreeable to me,” said Mr. Hale. “It makes me feel young again to see his enjoyment and appreciation of all that is fine in classical literature.”
“I have no doubt that classics are very desirable for people who have leisure. But I confess, it was against my judgment that my son renewed his study of them. The time and place in which he lives, seem to me to require all his energy and attention. Classics may do very well for men who loiter away their lives in the country or in colleges; but Milton men ought to have their thoughts and powers absorbed in the work of to-day. At least, that is my opinion.” This last clause she gave out with “the pride that apes humility.”
“But, surely, if the mind is too long directed to one object only, it will get stiff and rigid, and unable to take in many interests,” said Margaret.
“I do not quite understand what you mean by a mind getting stiff and rigid. Nor do I admire those whirligig characters that are full of this thing to-day, to be utterly forgetful of it in their new interest to-morrow. Having many interests does not suit the life of a Milton manufacturer. It is or ought to be enough for him to have one great desire, and to bring all the purposes of his life to bear on the fulfillment of that.”