Roy Porter, Enlightenment
Ch. 12 From Good Sense to Sensibility
Notes
I. Introduction
· Pacesetters of Early Enlightenment
· Public men holding forth on public matters
§ State had to be set upon a legitimate basis of law and freedom
§ Religion had to be made rational and tolerant
§ Philosophy had to be purged
§ Reason had to be rectified
§ The new science had to be promoted
§ Urban living had to be elevated on to a superior plane of polite sociability
§ a coherent and powerful élite
§ noblemen, clergy, academics, lawyers
· Situation changed socially, intellectually and culturally during the course of the century
· Focus of intellectual inquiry shifted to enlightenment within
§ The personal became political [compare with radical politics of the 1970-70’s]
§ This lead to a distancing or disengagement from ideals formerly promoted
· Domestic peace and prosperity promoted consumption and print capitalism
§ More people had more time to participate in new venues of polite culture
· Larger numbers of women, provincial, middle and low class participants
· A development encouraged and legitimized by enlightened vox populi universalism combined with sense of identity as ‘excluded’
· Statement of purpose: This chapter traces the dialectic ‘inner enlightenment’ (post 1750) of these ‘marginal’ people; it examines new discursive modes of figuring the self and its dilemmas.
II. Psychglogical basis for new concept of sensibility
Psychology
· Enlightened philosophy modelled modern concepts of individual psyche and of ‘psychology’ (see. Ch. 7)
· Dialect between Lockean philosophies of the mind and models of subjectivity
§ Elaborated in novels, belles lettres, portraits, diaries, letters (less rigid genres)
§ This dialect had a primary role in modelling emergent concepts of individualism, self-consciousness, self-definition and self-improvement
· n.b. word ‘autobiography’ introduced in this period
· The new selves: best portrayed by Tristram Shandy
o Elaborated in detail in 1st person accounts (letters, fictions)
o Rebellious characteristics
§ Defiantly unconventional, decentred from canonical structures, self-absorbed, in love with their own singularity
§ As ‘authenticity’, ‘experience’, ‘feeling’ and ‘the truth within the breast’ came to acquire greater status, ‘tradition’, ‘convention’, ‘patriarchy’ came to be called in question
§ Role of J-J Rousseau as male icon of rebelliousness (p. 278)
· “If I am not better, at least I am different”
o late Enlightenment credo before being adopted by Romanticism
o new privileging of inner experience
o Reopening of creativity debate
§ Godwin: “Genius… is not born with us but generated subsequent to birth” (p. 279)
§ Genius became a celebration of uniqueness
§ The greatest geniuses were those who looked to Nature for inspiration
· Geniuses should have no other teacher!
Rethinking the idea of genius gave ‘enthusiasm’ new positive connotations
For W. Blake: “the first Principle of Knowledge & its Last” (p. 281)
Sensibility
o Key concept that validated the inner self
§ Earlier sources
· Ex. The Spectator had appealed to superior males to repudiate traditional machismo
o Ever larger portions of society had ever more opportunities for self-cultivation
§ Role of material culture, print media and prosperity
§ ‘Longing as a permanent mode’: a key to understanding modern consumerism
o The private sphere (home, family, intimate friendship) became site of intense emotion, affection
§ The new Enlightenment domesticity liberated individuality (vs. 20th c. narratives in which the family is seen as hindering self-realization)
o Examination and intensification of the sense of self: relied on new psycho-physiological models
§ Neurology as a term, as a science, is introduced at this time
§ ‘The English malady’: malaise of introspection and depression
· sufferer seen as a creature of politeness
§ dependency on stimulants (tea, tobacco, alcohol, narcotics)
· consumption of powerful, habit-forming stimulants resulted in pain, insomnia, hypochondria, etc. which led to consumption of tranquilizers (opiates) which were equally habit forming and had devastating side effects
· Society was becoming addicted: result of ‘fast lane’ living
§ Nervousness led to narcissism which led to hypochondria and hysteria
§ Man and woman of sensibility or feeling
o too good for the bad world became à la mode
o Admiration for those with Superior feelings, elegantly refined
o for the man or woman of sensibility: the ‘good’ was:
§ what felt right
§ the impulsive outpourings of the honest and virtuous heart touched by desire or distress
Emergence of fiction (the novel) as a medium for ‘rethinking the self
· Associated from its inception with individualism and a certain political liberalism
o Defoe’s protagonists (R. Crusoe, M. Flanders) seen as outsiders, loners
o Novels of sensibility
§ Examples:
· S. Fielding, The Adventures of David Simple (1744)
· Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1764)
· Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759-67); Sentimental Journey (1767)
§ Sentimental novelists often drew on personal experience
· Ex. Of Charlotte Smith (p. 284)
§ “The moral centre of gravity in sentimental novels always lay in the man or woman of feeling hurt by a heartless world” (p. 285)
§ “In sentimental narratives the generous man or woman of sensibility would confront the crimes and cruelties of the world – would… feel such evils – and respond with oceans of tears”. (p. 285)
o Reading of novels (and shorter magazine fiction) served the individual pursuit of knowledge of the self, its desire and ambiguaties
o The novel became literary genre of women, of the middle class
§ Novel represents women’s first significant contribution to shaping of public manners and morals
· Ex.: authors like Charlotte Smith, Maria Edgeworth, Amelia Opie and Mary Brunton
o Criticism of the novel:
§ Novels corrupted virtue (p. 286)
§ Novels set expectations for women that read life could not satisfy
§ Novels glamorized private passions over public duty
· Ex. Jane Austen’s novels, Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813)
III. Novels as explorations of moral predicaments and social dilemmas
· Novels that portrayed the pains and deaths of ordinary people which engaged readers’ sympathies
· Their realism made them powerfully attractive to the middle class
· Widespread fear that readers in general (but esp. young ingenuous women) would empathize with the characters and plots of fictions to the point of confusing them with reality
o Cf influence of Cervantes’ Don Quixote
o Ex. Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote (1752)
o Richardson’s heroines Pamela and Clarissa
· Confusion between author and his characters
§ Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Parson Yorick
· Variety of emotional tones:
o Comically sentimental (Tristram Shandy), Romantic, melodramatic, sexual (ex. Horace Walpole’s Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764)
o “Fascination with the subterranean depths of the emotions engaged writers at the dawn of Romantic self-expressions” (Coleridge, Wordsworth) (p. 291)
· Novel (esp. first person narratives, epistolary novels) and non fiction autobiographical writing (letters, diaries, etc) explored the mysteries of consciousness, psychologizing and philosophizing them
o Ex. Mary Hays’ Emma Courtney (1796) (discussion begins on pl 291)
IV. Interaction between sensibility and individualism
Novel as source of vicarious experience that released and shaped the expression of feelings
Sensibility also contributed significantly to sexual transformation
o Previously, sex was functional (procreative)
o In the late 18th c.: Eros (sexual desire) became expressive, the supreme secret of the inner, hidden self.
o Exs.: Richardson’s wanton womanizing Lovelace and his desiring Clarissa; Sterne’s sentimental philanderer Parson Yorick, Jane Austen’s passionate Emma.
o Truth was subjectivized and Eros became the idiom of the modern.
o Such radicalisms provoked horror (moral collapse, diseases of civilization, etc)
o For women, personal emancipation had its costs (see p. 294)
o Women as sexual objects, seductively fragile, tearful victims of perilous impulses
o Idealization of motherhood led to suffocating domestic ‘doll house’ atmosphere (house as a kind of prison for housewives)
o For men, anxieties about effeminacy, homoerotic desire
V. Conclusion
o This chapter is an excursus on late 18th c. confusion between
o Life and art
o Reality and fiction
o Print boom: writing became a mirror that served readers in fashioning their self-image; as a guidebook for life
o Enlightened aspirations became privatized
o Emotional individualism prevailed, symbolized by the Bildungsroman (The ‘coming of age’ novel; the ‘novel of formation’)
o A new phase in the dynamic enlightened quest for truth and freedom
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