{"id":12345,"date":"2009-08-30T20:50:11","date_gmt":"2009-08-31T00:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2009\/08\/30\/12345.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:52:46","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:52:46","slug":"book-report-robert-elsmere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2009\/08\/30\/book-report-robert-elsmere\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Robert Elsmere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your Humble Blogger has been on something of a Victorian Lady Novelist kick. Well, a very slow kick. I mean, there was Persuasion<\/a> back in June, and Cranford<\/a> last December, and Felix Holt<\/a>last August. That makes four in a year, now that I’ve read Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Robert Elsmere<\/a>. Or five, if you are willing to count Elizabeth von Arnim as a Victorian novelist, although the book I actually read was written under George.\n

Anyway, this is one of those best-sellers that disappears from the cultural literacy altogether. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if a college course in the Victorian Novel, even a course in Women Writers of the Victorian Novel, skipped Mrs. Humphry Ward entirely. And, in fact, a quick Googling confirms this. None of the courses at Columbia<\/a> seem to require this novel, either. And yet, absolutely number one runaway hit of the turn of the century. To the point where when the JPS<\/a> commissioned Israel Zangwill to write King of the Schnorrers<\/a> for them, the commission was to write a Jewish Robert Elsmere<\/i>. Which was the first I had heard of it.\n

And, fair enough, it’s quite dull, it’s terribly long, and the characters are not terribly sympathetic. And besides, if you are reading four or five big books in a semester, Elsmere<\/i> is going to be down on the list. You have to have an Austen, a Bronte, an Eliot, and maybe a Gaskell. The book is one of those late-Victorian things where the author is examining an idea, and the characters and plot serve primarily to bring about discussion of that idea. We don’t really go in for that, these days.\n

On the other hand, the idea seems to me to still be fairly current. The titular Mr. Elsmere is a priest (Anglican, of course) who suddenly finds the scientific arguments against the historical accuracy of the Gospel compelling, which prevents his continuing in the pulpit. It does not, however, prevent his devotion to the Divine; the real plot of the book is his development of a theology and church of rational Christianity. This is not just deism or Unitarianism; it takes the Gospels as Gospel, just not as factually accurate.\n

The reconciliation of scientific skepticism with Scriptural faith is still something we deal with. Well, I deal with, but I think a lot of people do. And then there’s the marriage between two people who wind up having very different religious beliefs—the couple in question aren’t very interesting characters, but the situation is. And I do like the other thread of the plot, with the talented and modern sister and the depressive academic.\n

Digression:<\/i> Ms. Ward seems to be portraying clinical depression without the benefit of a hundred years of clinical study. Which is not to say that people didn’t suffer from it before it was diagnosed, but the ideas about what it was, what the symptoms of it were and weren’t, what went along with it, all that sort of thing. I am always a little surprised when a Victorian (or Edwardian) novelist seems to get mental illness on some diagnostic level way after their time, but then, it happens fairly often, so maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. End Digression\n

So here’s a question for those of you who are Christians and are part of a congregation (or have been or plan to be again): how much would it bother you if your pastor\/priest\/congregational leader did not believe that the Passion events, particularly the Resurrection, actually happened? I mean, yes, believed that there was a Historical Jesus, was all Q-document and so on, and felt that the New Testament and Old Testament were vastly important cultural<\/i> documents of the relationship between people and the Divine, but that the Man from Galilee was a human, son of a carpenter, and not a messiah or part of the Divine?\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger is probably the only one around here who has finished this one. Anyone? Come on, now, don’t be shy? Well, then. Points for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18864,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12345\/revisions\/18864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}