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CHRISTIAN IDEALS OF MANLINESS IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURIES*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2009

WILLIAM VAN REYK
WILLIAM VAN REYK*
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford
*
Keble College, Oxford, OX1 3PG. william.vanreyk@gmail.com
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Abstract

Christian ideals of manliness were articulated by writers across the religious spectrum throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At their heart was the shared ideal of the imitation of Christ, an all-encompassing Christian ideal of personhood. Whilst non-partisanship was itself an important ideal, theological differences and disagreements over the strictness of ideals led to accusations that some Christians, attacked as ‘moralists’ or ‘enthusiasts’, undermined or neglected ideals of manliness. At the same time, there were attempts to associate Christian ideals of manliness exclusively with the emerging ‘Evangelical’ party. In the historiography of masculinity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, Christian ideals have often been marginalized, and, when considered, they have tended to be misconstrued by the adoption of church-party approaches. This review offers a detailed critique of Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall's account of Evangelical ideals of manliness in Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (1987; rev. edn, 2002). Their notion of distinctive ‘Evangelical’ ideals of manliness does not withstand scrutiny, and the key concepts associated with them, including ‘domesticity’, ‘the calling’, ‘the world’, ‘public’, and ‘private’, demand revision. At the same time, they gave insufficient consideration to ‘solitude’ and ‘charity’.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 1053 - 1073
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Jane Garnett and the Historical Journal's two anonymous referees for their comments on drafts of this review.

References

1 This review draws on the findings of my doctoral thesis; see William Van Reyk, ‘Christian ideals of manliness during the period of the Evangelical Revival, c. 1730 to c. 1840’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 2007).

2 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (1987; rev. edn, London and New York, NY, 2002), pp. 108–13 and passim; see also Catherine Hall, ‘The early formation of Victorian domestic ideology’ (1979), in Robert Shoemaker and Mary Vincent, eds., Gender and history in western Europe (London and New York, NY, 1998), pp. 181–96.

3 See esp. Tosh, John, ‘Methodist domesticity and middle-class masculinity in nineteenth-century England’, Studies in Church History, 34 (1998), pp. 323–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, A man's place: masculinity and the middle-class home in Victorian England (New Haven, CT., and London, 1999), pp. 5, 36–9, 112; idem, ‘The old Adam and the new man: emerging themes in the history of English masculinities, 1750–1850’, in Tim Hitchcock and Michèle Cohen, eds., English masculinities, 1660–1800 (London and New York, NY, 1999), pp. 217–38, at p. 234.

4 See esp. Vickery, Amanda, ‘Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 383–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, p. 113.

6 See Jeremy Gregory, ‘Homo religiosus: masculinity and religion in the long eighteenth century’, in Hitchcock and Cohen, eds., English masculinities, pp. 85–110, quotation at p. 86.

7 Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness: moral discourse and cultural politics in early eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1994), p. 9.

8 G. J. Barker-Benfield, The culture of sensibility: sex and society in eighteenth-century Britain (Chicago, IL, and London, 1992), p. xvii.

9 Tim Hitchcock, English sexualities, 1700–1800 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. viii.

10 Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, pp. 13, xvi.

11 Tosh, ‘Old Adam’, pp. 219–25; idem, Man's place, pp. 5, 36–9; idem, ‘Methodist domesticity’; idem, ‘Masculinities in an industrializing society: Britain, 1800–1914’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), pp. 330–42.

12 Tosh, ‘Masculinities’, p. 335.

13 Norman Vance, The sinews of the spirit: the ideal of Christian manliness in Victorian literature and religious thought (Cambridge, 1985).

14 See, for example, Jeremy Taylor, ‘The great exemplar of sanctity and holy life’, in The whole works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, ed. Reginald Heber, rev. Charles Page Eden (10 vols., London, 1850–4), ii, p. 45; Isaac Ambrose, Looking unto Jesus: a view of the everlasting gospel; or, the soul's eyeing of Jesus, as carrying on the great work of man's salvation, from first to last (1658; Edinburgh, 1723), p. 299; The works of the Most Reverend Dr John Tillotson, ed. Thomas Birch (3 vols., London, 1752), iii, p. 299.

15 See Henry Abelove, The evangelist of desire: John Wesley and the Methodists (Stanford, CA, 1990), esp. ch. 4. Though Wesley never entirely rejected marriage as Abelove claimed; see Van Reyk, ‘Christian ideals’, pp. 76–7.

16 See Jeremy Taylor, The rule and exercises of holy living (1650; London, 1710), p. 67; though he strongly encouraged marriage in ‘The marriage ring’ (1653), for which see The practical works of Jeremy Taylor (8 vols., London, 1838), vii.

17 See William Law, A serious call to a devout and holy life (London, 1729), p. 134; idem, An appeal to all that doubt, or disbelieve the truths of the Gospels … to which are added, some animadversions upon Dr Trap's [sic] late reply (London, 1742), pp. 254–67.

18 See Vance, Sinews of the spirit.

19 See Martin Madan, Thelypthora; or a treatise on female ruin, in its causes, effects, consequences, prevention and remedy (2 vols., London, 1780); Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, i: Heterosexuality and the third gender in Enlightenment London (Chicago, IL, and London, 1998), pp. 189–90.

20 William Law, The absolute unlawfulness of the stage-entertainment fully demonstrated (London, 1726), pp. 35, 7.

21 John Dennis, The stage defended, from scripture, reason, experience, and the common sense of mankind, for two thousand years (London, 1726), p. 20.

22 Philip Carter, Men and the emergence of polite society, Britain, 1660–1800 (Harlow, 2001), pp. 28–9.

23 See ibid., pp. 41–4.

24 Lawrence E. Klein, ‘Politeness and the interpretation of the British eighteenth century’, Historical Journal, 45 (2002), pp. 869–98, at p. 898.

25 Lawrence E. Klein, ‘Shaftesbury, politeness and the politics of religion’, in Nicholas T. Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, eds., Politics discourse in early modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 283–301, at p. 283.

26 The works of Vicesimus Knox (7 vols., London, 1824), vi, p. 160.

27 Law, Absolute unlawfulness, p. 43.

28 See George Whitefield, The polite and fashionable diversions of the age, destructive to soul and body (London, 1740).

29 See below, pp. 1059–60.

30 See also Gregory, ‘Homo religiosus’, p. 99; Carter, Men and the emergence, pp. 106–8.

31 Philip Doddridge, Meditations on the tears of Jesus over the grave of Lazarus (London, 1751).

32 Hugh Blair, Sermons (5 vols., Edinburgh, 1777–1801), iii, pp. 27–8.

33 Works of Knox, iii, pp. 110–11.

34 Qu. in Robert I. Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The life of William Wilberforce (5 vols., London, 1838), iv, p. 273.

35 See Janet M. Todd, Sensibility: an introduction (London, 1986), pp. 137–41.

36 See The collected works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn (general ed.) and Bart Keith Winer (associate ed.) (16 vols., London, 1969–2002), vii, pp. 59–62.

37 See esp. the collection of essays in John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor, eds., The Church of England c. 1689 – c. 1833: from toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge, 1993).

38 John Walsh and Stephen Taylor, ‘Introduction: the church and Anglicanism in the “long” eighteenth century’, in Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor, eds., Church of England, pp. 1–64, at pp. 1–2.

39 See esp. Peter Nockles, ‘Church parties in the pre-Tractarian Church of England 1750–1833: the ‘Orthodox’ – some problems of definition and identity', in Walsh, Haydon, and Taylor, eds., Church of England, pp. 334–59.

40 Ibid., p. 347.

41 Crane, Ronald S., ‘Suggestions towards a genealogy of the “man of feeling”’, English Literary History, 1 (1934), pp. 205–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 See esp. Greene, Donald, ‘Latitudinarianism and sensibility: the genealogy of the “man of feeling” reconsidered’, Modern Philology, 75 (1977), pp. 159–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 John K. Sheriff, The good-natured man: the evolution of a moral ideal, 1660–1800 (University, AL., 1982), pp. x, 3–5, 104–5 n. 8.

44 Barker-Benfield, Culture of sensibility, pp. 66–71, 421 n. 133.

45 J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The varieties of Whiggism from Exclusion to reform: a history of ideology and discourse’, in Virtue, commerce, and history: essays on political thought and history, chiefly in the eighteenth century (New York, NY, and Cambridge, 1985), pp. 215–310, at p. 236; Klein, ‘Shaftesbury’, p. 291.

46 See Spurr, John, ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration Church’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), pp. 61–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; below, p. 9.

47 Vance, Sinews of the spirit, pp. 42–5.

48 Ibid., pp. 1, 4–6.

49 Lawrence Stone, The family, sex and marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1977), p. 667; Christopher Tolley, Domestic biography: the legacy of Evangelicalism in four nineteenth-century families (Oxford, 1997).

50 David Newsome, Godliness and good learning: four studies on a Victorian ideal (London, 1961), pp. 3–4, 7–8; cf. Van Reyk, William, ‘Educating Christian men in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 (2009), pp. 425–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Robert W. Malcolmson, Popular recreations in English society, 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 100–7; Peter Bailey, Leisure and class in Victorian England: rational recreation and the contest for control, 1830–1885 (London and Buffalo, NY, 1978), pp. 3, 17, 64, 69, 72.

52 Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian family (New York, NY, and Oxford, 1996), pp. 2–3, ch. 1.

53 See J. D. Walsh, ‘Origins of the Evangelical Revival’, in G. V. Bennett and J. D. Walsh, eds., Essays in modern English church history, in memory of Norman Sykes (London, 1966), pp. 132–62.

54 See Gregory, ‘Homo religiosus’, pp. 87, 103.

55 Job Orton, Memoirs of the life, character and writings of the late reverend Philip Doddridge (Salop, 1766), p. 184.

56 Thomas Birch, ‘The life of the Most Reverend Dr John Tillotson’, prefixed to Works of Tillotson, i, p. xcvii.

57 Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, pp. 108–18 and passim.

58 Boyd Hilton, The age of atonement: the influence of Evangelicalism on social and economic thought, 1795–1865 (1988; pbk edn, Oxford, 1991); this edition included a postscript in which the contrast was defended.

59 Boyd Hilton, ‘Manliness, masculinity and the mid-Victorian temperament’, in Lawrence Goldman, ed., The blind Victorian: Henry Fawcett and British Liberalism (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 60–70, at p. 66; see also Boyd Hilton, A mad, bad, and dangerous people? England, 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 633–4.

60 See above, pp. 1058–9.

61 Andrew, Donna T., ‘The code of honour and its critics: the opposition to duelling in England, 1700–1850’, Social History, 5 (1980), pp. 409–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Drawing on Andrew's article, Hilton acknowledged late eighteenth-century Evangelical critiques of duelling in the Age of atonement, p. 268.

62 See, for example, Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, the history of a young lady (1747–8), ed. and introd. Angus Ross (Harmondsworth, 1985), p. 444; William Webster, A casuistical essay on anger and forgiveness; wherein the practice of duelling, and some defects in our laws, are consider'd. In three dialogues between a gentleman and a clergyman (London, 1750); William Dodd, Sermons to young men (3 vols., London, 1771), iii: ‘On duelling’.

63 See Daniel L. Pals, The Victorian ‘lives’ of Jesus (San Antonio, TX, 1982), esp. ch. 1.

64 Gregory, ‘Homo religiosus’, p. 101 n. 62. The imitation of Christ's date of first publication and authorship are unclear: scholars have dated it to various periods between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries; the main contenders for author are Thomas à Kempis, Gerard Groote, and John Gersen of Canabaco (Giles Constable, ‘The ideal of the imitation of Christ’, in Three studies in medieval religious and social thought (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 239–40).

65 See Taylor, Holy living; idem, The rule and exercises of holy dying (1651; 25th edn, London, 1739).

66 See Ambrose, Looking unto Jesus.

67 Robert Nelson, A companion for the festivals and fasts of the Church of England (1704; 20th edn, London, 1752), p. 68.

68 See William Law, A practical treatise upon Christian perfection (London, 1726), ch. 13 and passim; idem, Serious call. On the influence of the latter on Evangelicals and Dissenters see Rivers, Isabel, ‘William Law and religious revival: the reception of A serious call’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 71 (2008), pp. 633–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Isaac Watts, An humble attempt toward the revival of practical religion among Christians, and particularly the Protestant Dissenters (London, 1731), p. 339.

70 Philip Doddridge, The rise and progress of religion in the soul (1745; 14th edn, London, 1796), p. 128.

71 John Wesley, ed., A Christian library (50 vols., Bristol, 1749–55), xvi, xiv–xv.

72 John Wesley, A plain account of Christian perfection … from the year 1725, to the year 1765 (Bristol, 1766), pp. 3–5.

73 George Whitefield, ‘Law Gospelized; or an address to all Christians concerning holiness of heart and life’, in The works of the Reverend George Whitefield (7 vols., London, 1771–2), iv.

74 Qu. in Ernest Gordon Rupp, Religion in England, 1688–1791 (Oxford, 1986), p. 226.

75 Most literary critics have presented Richardson's theological position as orthodox Anglican, though some have argued for mystical or Gnostic tendencies in Clarissa; others, misleadingly, have argued that he secularized religious ideals (Stewart, Carol, ‘Pamela and the Anglican crisis of the 1730s’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 (2009), pp. 37–51, at p. 37).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 See John A. Dussinger, ‘Conscience and the pattern of Christian perfection in Clarissa’, Papers of the Modern Language Association, 81 (1966), pp. 236–45.

77 Richardson, Clarissa, pp. 295, 525, 1001.

78 Selected letters of Samuel Richardson, ed. and introd. John Carroll (Oxford, 1964), p. 117.

79 Qu. in Samuel Richardson, The history of Sir Charles Grandison (1753–4), ed. and introd. Jocelyn Harris (3 parts, Oxford, 1986), pt iii, p. 466.

80 Arminian Magazine (1790), p. 271.

81 William Wilberforce, A practical view of the prevailing religious system of professed Christians, in the higher and middle classes in this country, contrasted with real Christianity (3rd edn, London, 1797), p. 150.

82 Ibid., p. 385n.

83 Hannah More, Practical piety; or, the influence of the religion of the heart on the conduct of life (2 vols., 2nd edn, London, 1811), i, p. 3; idem, Strictures on the modern system of female education (2 vols., 3rd edn, London, 1799), ii, pp. 210–11n.

84 See Charles Daubeny, A guide to the church, in several discourses … addressed to William Wilberforce (London, 1798), pp. 315, 376–7.

85 Works of Coleridge, vii, p. 367.

86 Ibid., vii, pp. 384–5.

87 See John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1991), pp. 296–311.

88 See, for example, The works of John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (26 vols., Nashville, TN, and Oxford, 1984–), iv: Hypocrisy in Oxford, i: The almost Christian; George Whitefield, Three Letters from the Reverend Mr George Whitefield (Glasgow, 1740), esp. Letter one.

89 See John Overton, The true churchmen ascertained or, an apology for those of the regular clergy of the Establishment who are sometimes called Evangelical ministers: occasioned by the publications of Drs. Paley, Hey, Croft; Messrs. Daubeny, Ludlam, Polwhele, Fellowes; the reviewers, &c. &c. (1801; 2nd edn, York, 1802), pp. 36–42; though also see below, p. 1067.

90 Klein, Shaftesbury, pp. 164–5, 167–3; Klein, Lawrence E., ‘Sociability, solitude, and enthusiasm’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 60 (1998), pp. 153–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

91 George Lavington, The enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists, compar'd [1749–51], ed. Richard Polwhele (3 parts, London, 1833), pt ii, pp. 145–6; see also Albert M. Lyles, Methodism mocked: the satiric reaction to Methodism in the eighteenth century (London, 1960).

92 See above, p. 1065.

93 Charles Daubeny, An appendix to the ‘Guide to the church’ (2 vols., London, 1799), ii, p. 581.

94 See Joseph Trapp, The nature, folly, sin, and danger of being righteous over-much; with a particular view to the doctrines and practices of certain modern enthusiasts (3rd edn, London, 1739); below, p. 1071.

95 D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in modern Britain: a history from the 1730s to the 1980s (London and New York, NY, 1989), p. 1.

96 Overton, True churchmen, passim; for the bishops' Charges see pp. 36–42.

97 Charles Daubeny, Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae (London, 1803), p. vii.

98 Qu. in Peter B. Nockles, ‘Edward Pearson’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edn).

99 Stone, Family, sex and marriage, esp. p. 667; Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, pp. 112, 113; Tolley, Domestic biography; Tosh, Man's place, pp. 5, 36–9.

100 Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, p. xviii.

101 See above, pp. 1056–7.

102 Stone, Family, sex and marriage, pp. 245–6, 667; Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, pp. 89, 109; Tosh, Man's place, pp. 35, 36–7.

103 Works of Tillotson, i, p. 482.

104 The date of first publication is unclear; the earliest surviving copy is from 1750; 10,182 copies had been distributed by the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge by 1795 (Rivers, Isabel, ‘The first evangelical tract society’, Historical Journal, 50 (2007), pp. 1–22, at p. 9).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

105 The works of the Rev. P. Doddridge, ed. E. Williams and E. Parsons (5 vols., London, 1803–4), ii, p. 229.

106 James Allan Park, Memoirs of William Stevens (1812; rev. edn, London, 1859), pp. 47–8.

107 Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, pp. xxxviii–ix, 31.

108 Ibid., p. 100.

109 Orton, Memoirs, pp. 101, 120.

110 Arthur P. Stanley, The life and correspondence of Thomas Arnold (2 vols., London, 1844), i, p. 160, ii, p. 128.

111 Works of Wesley, ii, p. 268.

112 Park, Memoirs of Stevens, p. 33.

113 Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, p. 111; Tosh, ‘Old Adam’, p. 234; idem, Man's place, p. 112.

114 Taylor, Holy living, p. 5.

115 Vicesimus Knox, Essays, moral and literary (1778; 2 vols., London, 1782), i, pp. 234, 86, 91, 156, 247, ii, pp. 104, 121.

116 Max Weber, The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons and fwd. R. H. Tawney (1904–5; New York, NY, 1958).

117 See John Walsh, ‘John Wesley and the community of goods’, in Keith Robbins, ed., Protestant evangelicalism: Britain, Ireland, Germany, and America, c. 1750 – c. 1950: essays in honour of W. R. Ward (Oxford and New York, NY, 1990), pp. 25–50; idem, ‘“The bane of industry”? Popular Evangelicalism and work in the eighteenth century’, Studies in Church History, 37 (2002), pp. 223–41; E. J. Garnett, ‘Aspects of the relationship between Protestant ethics and economic activity in mid-Victorian England’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1986); Donna T. Andrew, Philanthropy and police: London charity in the eighteenth century (Princeton, NJ, 1989), pp. 12–22; James Raven, Judging new wealth: popular publishing and responses to commerce in England, 1750–1800 (Oxford, 1992), ch. 5.

118 Works of Tillotson, iii, p. 216.

119 See Jane Shaw, Miracles in Enlightenment England (New Haven, CT, and London, 2006), passim.

120 On Law and Wesley see Walsh, ‘Community of goods’; though Law's position was more ambiguous than Walsh acknowledged, for Law emphasized that charity involved a spiritual, not a literal, rejection of goods in his earlier work; see Law, Christian perfection, pp. 88–9.

121 Works of Coleridge, i, p. 229.

122 Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes, p. 122; Tosh, Man's place, p. 38.

123 See Law, Christian perfection, chs. 3–5.

124 Trapp, Righteous over-much, pp. 13–25; see above, pp. 1066–7.

125 Works of Wesley, iii, pp. 138–9.

126 See Vickery, ‘Golden age’; Klein, Lawrence E., ‘Gender and the public/private distinction in the eighteenth century: some questions about evidence and analytic procedure’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29 (1995), pp. 97–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

127 Thomas Gisborne, An enquiry into the duties of men in the higher and middle classes of Great Britain (Dublin, 1795), p. 493.

128 Thomas Gibbons, The religious observance of the Sabbath practically stated and enforced (London, 1748), p. 51.

129 Jonas Hanway, Thoughts on the importance of the Sabbath, with a caution not to trespass on the design of it: also on the use and advantages of music, as an amusement to the polite part of mankind (London, 1765), p. 57.

130 Gregory, ‘Homo religiosus’, p. 86.

131 Harvey, Karen and Shepard, Alexandra, ‘What have historians done with masculinity? Reflections on five centuries of British history, circa 1500–1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), pp. 274–80, quotation at p. 280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

132 See Constable, ‘Imitation of Christ’; Hudson, Elizabeth K., ‘English Protestants and the imitatio Christi, 1580–1620’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 14 (1998), pp. 541–58Google Scholar; J. Sears McGee, The godly man in Stuart England (New Haven, CT, and London, 1976), pp. 107–13.

133 Focusing on masculinity as a social status and paying considerable attention to religion, Hannah Barker has come to similar conclusions regarding continuity; see ‘Soul, purse and family: middling and lower-class masculinity in eighteenth-century Manchester’, Social History, 33 (2008), pp. 12–35, esp. p. 34.

134 See above, p. 1062.

135 See Vance, Sinews of the spirit, pp. 1, 4–6.