Transformed religion: Matthew Arnold and the refining of dissent

Renascence, Winter 2001 by Ward, David A

In short, in Arnold a new discursive strategy for confronting Dissent emerges, grounded not in a rhetoric of repression, like Dickens', but in a rhetoric of assimilation. The Dissenter is no longer an abhorrent and misshapen monstrosity to be forever exiled from English culture but rather a wayward citizen who must be re-educated and re-fitted for a role in national life; he is not a stranger to be repulsed but a patient to be restored. Dickensian banishment gives way to Arnoldian therapeutics: "ousted they will not be, but transformed" (37); their lives are blighted by narrowness, but we "wish to cure it" (23).

Accordingly, the temper of Arnold's texts concerning Dissent is altogether different from Dickens', most notably in their pose of charity and compassion. For beneath the comic and ironic elements in Arnold's prose (or what he called his "persiflage"), there is a bedrock of serious intent and earnest argument; what is most memorable is not the colloquialisms and deft humor (e.g., his recounting of "Mrs. Gooch's Golden Rule" and "Mr. Murphy's lectures") but the elevated ideals of his work, as suggested by his famous chapter titles ("Sweetness and Light"; "Doing As One Likes"; "Barbarians, Philistines, Populace"; "Hebraism and Hellenism"; "Porro Unum Est Necessarium"; "Our Liberal Practitioners"). For all his commentary on the sermonizing of Dissenters, Arnold can wax homiletic himself at times: the program of culture, he observes, "moves by the force, not merely ... of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good" (45). It is grounded in "the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it" (44). It is my argument that high-minded statements such as these by Arnold need to be taken at more than face value. They need to be read in the broader context of his hostility toward Dissent and with an awareness that his seeming benevolence actually furthered a malevolent intent, at least as it concerned that standing and influence of Dissenters in Victorian society.

These encouragements to altruism, it is important to note, were directed primarily at the influential members of society whom Arnold regarded as his main audience (Keating 212), rather than Dissenters themselves or the public at large. Dickens writes, invariably, for the common Englishman, whose revulsion at Dissent, he hoped, would block its advance in British culture, but Arnold sets for himself a quite different task: to persuade the national elite, with whom he was well acquainted-- royalty, Parliamentarians, Churchmen, authors, and the like-that inclusion of Dissenters in a more broadly conceived Establishment was in the country's best interests-and the best way of dealing with the problem of Dissent. Hence, the complex tone and style of Culture and Anarchy-- Geoffrey Tillotson speaks of its "opposed aesthetic constituents" (56) and Jean Gooder of its "posturings ranging from knock-about clowning to the solemnities of the sacerdotal" (6)-for in his scheme Arnold must demonstrate both the deficiencies of Dissent and its worthiness for reclamation; both the damage its absurd divisiveness inflicts and the benefits of national unity. These dual purposes perhaps help account for the appellation "elegant Jeremiah," which a contemporary critic had applied to him, which aptly suggests, says James A. Berlin, "that even as Arnold criticizes and questions, he is trying to charm" (35). Throughout the work, the idea of acting decisively upon Dissenters-to "extirpate" their provincialism (22)-must be made palatable to his readers through the language of "right reason" and Christian charity; the curtailing of their power must be seen as a byproduct not of crass worldly motives but the enlightened ideals of sweetness and light. If Culture and Anarchy is indeed "a skillfully improvised, virtuoso performance" (Marshall 360), nothing is more brilliantly handled in it than his highly calculated representation of religious Dissent.