THE WARDEN - ethical issues
Dec. 6th, 2013 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blueinkedfrostAnthony Trollope's THE WARDEN raises ethical questions that it refuses to resolve, except insofar as the characters' personal journeys are concerned. All the characters are good men; the opposite to Thackeray's novel without a hero, this is a novel without an antagonist.
The central problem is John Hiram's will, written in Henry VI's time to support twelve old wool-carders. Times change, property increases in value, money inflates, and the twelve old men are left with a shilling and fourpence a day while the warden receives eight hundred pounds a year in return for light duties. Local activist John Bold notes this discrepancy and brings it to public attention, and as a result the warden Septimus Harding is vilified in the public press - even though he is a kindly, unworldly old man who is liked by his twelve charges and does a great deal of good for them. Add to this John Bold's love for Harding's daughter Eleanor and the interference of Eleanor's brother-in-law Archdeacon Grantly, who's always keen for a fight to support the church's powers, and there's a crisis between family and friends.
John Bold's actions drive the plot and he is a young man who intends to do right and win the love of a lady he admires - Bold has all the requisite traits of the hero or wouldbe hero, and his actions that upset Harding's life are done from good motives. Septimus Harding is a kind and gentle man, the protagonist and something reasonably close to a saint. The narrator assures the reader that Archdeacon Grantly is a man of benevolent intent who does his work to the best of his ability, even though his actions in the novel show his weaker points. The pensioners of Hiram's Hospital may be misguided but are poor old men. Tom Towers of the Jupiter is a self-serving newspaper editor, but he's hardly an antagonist.
Harding is gentle, kind, wise, soft-spoken, and a hero if there is a hero. Harding's response to trouble is also inactivity: he does not wish to fight in the first place, and when he is convinced that the interpretation of Hiram's will has been unjust in his favour, he only wants to resign his position. The result is net loss to all concerned, including the twelve old men who lost a kind caretaker. Harding is a good man who does more good than any other character in the story, but he is perhaps not enough.
This is Trollope's main quote on the reasons behind the choices he made in this novel, from his Autobiography. It's worth quoting again:
It was open to me to have described a bloated parson, with a red nose and all other iniquities, openly neglecting every duty required from him, and living riotously on funds purloined from the poor,—defying as he did do so the moderate remonstrances of a virtuous press. Or I might have painted a man as good, as sweet, and as mild as my warden, who should also have been a hard-working, ill-paid minister of God's word, and might have subjected him to the rancorous venom of some daily Jupiter, who, without a leg to stand on, without any true case, might have been induced, by personal spite, to tear to rags the poor clergyman with poisonous, anonymous, and ferocious leading articles. But neither of these programmes recommended itself to my honesty. Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
Trollope refuses to create strawpeople to make a point. He chose to write a novel where all the characters have valid, sympathetic reasons for their actions (with the possible exception of the media). Which brings up an obvious point about any discussion of ethics: there's a basic assumption here about what good ethics are. Is a good morality a morality that detatches itself, perceives both sides of a question, and does not conform to social or economic standards but instead personal moral and aesthetic principles? The answer to that is already, not necessarily. Humans who detach themselves too much from moral questions - for example, most people think poorly of abstract debaters who argue the Holocaust-denial side simply because they enjoy arguing - can lose sight of important matters, missing proverbial forests for trees. For looking at both sides of a question, I think that should always be done but in some cases it has already been done and needs no more doing - such as the Holocaust-denial example again. For social and economic standards, the gap of above a century-and-a-half since the novel's publication date speaks for itself. Characters who rely on an inner compass rather than the prevailing trends of their local time and space show independent choice, which can earn readers' respect even when sweeping social change has occurred in the intervening years.
Trollope's morality in THE WARDEN can be discussed from a dualistic perspective - which is also a choice I've made, to phrase ethical questions as if they had to be A versus B on a one-dimensional continuum. THE WARDEN examines stability versus change; age versus youth; private versus public morality; action versus inaction; and spiritual against physical. Underyling all this is the church itself.
When it comes to stability versus change, Trollope's arguments on Harding's side seem to distill to pure nostalgia - because it has been so it must be, even if the it in question is unjust. Harding's character and the fact the men he looked after were happy with him add nuance to the question. Trollope counsels against vigorous reformation and harms by swift change.
I fear that he [John Bold] is too much imbued with the idea that he has a special mission for reforming. It would be well if one so young had a little more diffidence himself, and more trust in the honest purposes of others,—if he could be brought to believe that old customs need not necessarily be evil, and that changes may possibly be dangerous; but no, Bold has all the ardour and all the self-assurance of a Danton, and hurls his anathemas against time-honoured practices with the violence of a French Jacobin.
Here's a counterargument to this stability-versus-revolution argument, a good deal later, from Martin Luther King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail':
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
King's words have a ring of truth (he was right). I want to say that both Trollope and King have a good point, that there's a way to reconcile the views. Ongoing racial inequality after a history of slavery is not the same as twelve old men who are being well cared for even if they aren't getting enough money as a stipend; the contexts of Bold's radical change to a local retirement home and King's radical changes toward the world to give people equal justice are very different. (A note here that when it comes to racism, Trollope was subject to the prejudices of his time; AN OLD MAN'S LOVE is a novel of his that treats African people badly in a minor part of the story, and Trollope's Australian novels contain occasional typical contemporary attitudes to Aboriginal people.) As I've grown older, I've become more inclined to the Trollope view than I was: we all make mistakes even when we try to avoid them and sometimes radical change can have unexpected negative consequences. But some radical things are warranted by common justice and long overdue, and will later become accepted by the vast majority.
If you look into the future of King's work, he was right: ending racism is basic justice, although this work is still far from finished today. And give Trollope's work a preview through dipping into BARCHESTER TOWERS, the sequel to this novel, and one will find that Bold was basically right. John Hiram's will returns to discussion and it's decided to expand the number of old people served, give the warden a more reasonable salary, and install more employees. It turns out in Trollope's sequel that Bold's acts result in a better outcome for twelve additional old people plus the new staff employed to look after them. Sadly, Harding doesn't resume his old place, but the new warden Quiverfull is decent and hardworking. Slow change might've been better than quick change in these specific circumstances - but Bold was right on the essentials. We're left to consider that Trollope's novel shows the pathos of Harding, a gentle man caught up in swift change of a system that he didn't create.
Secondly, there's what one might call public versus private morality in THE WARDEN: the question of a general public good versus a specific private good. It would be privately good for Bold to let Harding go on his way: he would easily maintain a friendship he values, marry Harding's daughter whom he loves, and his father-in-law will have plenty of money. Instead, Bold acts for what he thinks is his public duty: to act for the general good of the people affected by John Hiram's will.
Humans have, or are said to have, monkeyspheres: by studying monkey social groupings, we learn the approximate outer limit of close personal relationships per monkey. We ourselves have a limited number of people we care for on a personal level - however much good we may say we want to do for general humanity. Bold places the needs of the many outside his personal monkeysphere (the public good that there shouldn't be sinecures, the twelve old retirees that he doesn't even know - although he should've got to know them) above the few inside his monkeysphere, his friend Harding and his love Eleanor. Trollope contrasts Bold's abstract morality with his personal humanity in quotes such as this one, where Mary Bold pleads with her brother not to act against Harding:
"I do understand it, John. I understand that this is a chimera,—a dream that you have got. I know well that no duty can require you to do this mad—this suicidal thing. I know you love Eleanor Harding with all your heart, and I tell you now that she loves you as well. If there was a plain, a positive duty before you, I would be the last to bid you neglect it for any woman's love; but this—; oh, think again, before you do anything to make it necessary that you and Mr Harding should be at variance." He did not answer, as she knelt there, leaning on his knees, but by his face she thought that he was inclined to yield. "At any rate let me say that you will go to this party. At any rate do not break with them while your mind is in doubt." And she got up, hoping to conclude her note in the way she desired.
"My mind is not in doubt," at last he said, rising. "I could never respect myself again were I to give way now, because Eleanor Harding is beautiful. I do love her: I would give a hand to hear her tell me what you have said, speaking on her behalf; but I cannot for her sake go back from the task which I have commenced. I hope she may hereafter acknowledge and respect my motives, but I cannot now go as a guest to her father's house." And the Barchester Brutus went out to fortify his own resolution by meditations on his own virtue.
Poor Mary Bold sat down, and sadly finished her note, saying that she would herself attend the party, but that her brother was unavoidably prevented from doing so. I fear that she did not admire as she should have done the self-devotion of his singular virtue.
This is surprisingly similar to John Neverbend from Anthony Trollope's science fiction novel THE FIXED PERIOD. Neverbend believes that a law of involuntary euthanasia for anyone over the age of sixty-seven is great for the public good, but falls into conflict when Neverbend's private friend is to be the first victim of such a law. Trollope dismisses the point of view that public good is above private, in both Neverbend's situation and this more nuanced one: [H]e [Bold] had nothing for it but to excuse himself by platitudes about public duty, which it is by no means worth while to repeat, and to reiterate his eulogy on Mr Harding's character.
It seems that Trollope's ethics require a consideration of the private sphere first. Personal good might be a check and balance: if you can't treat those around you kindly but believe you know what's best for all humanity, it's likely that you are wrong. Bold has to treat his father-in-law well before he can try to stand up for the general mass of humanity. He should also get to know the group of men affected by his reform before springing it on them: perhaps if he'd become personally friendly with Bunce and the others, Bold could have thought of a better way to approach the justice of the hospital charter. (Where, indeed, the warden is paid a ridiculously high sum for minimal duties while the people the trust was intended to benefit receive pennies. And where it doesn't look good that an old man receives a rich sinecure meant to benefit the poor, and the reformer drops the cause as soon as he's engaged to the old man's daughter.)
As a literary counterpoint to personal-sphere-first, there's Terry Pratchett's Captain Carrot. On Discworld (floating on four elephants on the back of a turtle), Captain Carrot is a hero. When his girlfriend Sergeant Angua is kidnapped he chooses not to save her because he has to do a more pressing duty to save his city instead. Carrot's absolute sense of morality is keen and possessed of little fallibility. Captain Carrot's choice of 'what's right' above 'what's personal' are a little scary to those around him even though he's right. Carrot is a fictional character in a parodic fantasy world; he has an ability and destiny to be right about everything. Carrot is always right because he's Carrot - but in the real world it's difficult to impossible to be Carrot. Commander Vimes in the same universe is more like a real person: unable to separate the personal from the important, but having the personal is the reason why we don't go off on the deep end while deciding on the important.
I'm convinced that in the public-versus-private argument THE WARDEN serves to argue to place the personal above the general public good, and not to sacrifice a personal friend for the sake of a general good cause. I'm not convinced that I agree - Bold was right on the essentials, surely sometimes placing the general public first is the right thing to do. But Trollope expresses the potential inhumanity of such a stance and the use of the personal sphere as a check and balance.
Age is also pitted against youth in THE WARDEN. Young people want to change things; older people want to keep what works for them. This is a stereotype; there are young conservatives and old revolutionaries. Agatha Christie's a writer who chooses several times to talk about age versus youth, and stress youth's propensity to choose a general ideal as more important than the lives of any specific people - making Bold's mistake of considering abstract principles more important than the individuals around oneself. This is a quote from PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT, one of Christie's more conspiracy-theory-devoted novels:
Youth is what you might call the spearhead of it all. But that's not really what's so worrying. They - whoever they are - work through youth. Youth in every country. Youth urged on. Youth chanting slogans, slogans that sound exciting, though they don't always know what they mean. So easy to start a revolution. That's natural to youth. All youth has always rebelled. You rebel, you pull down, you want the world to be different from what it is. But you're blind, too. There are bandages over the eyes of youth. They can't see where things are taking them. What's going to come next? What's in front of them? And who it is behind them, urging them on? That's what's frightening about it. You know, someone holding out the carrot to get the donkey to come along and at the same time there is someone behind the donkey urging it on with a stick.'
Christie's novels are full of the dangers of youth: callow, grasping, eager youth, who lack wisdom and sometimes do terrible things because they can't see the outcome of their selfish desires. (See particularly FIVE LITTLE PIGS and PERIL AT END HOUSE.) Youth are prone to becoming so fanatically devoted to general ideologies that they cause specific horrors. PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT, DESTINATION UNKNOWN, and THEY CAME TO BAGHDAD mix this particular aspect in with Agatha Christie's favourite conspiracy theories. The Christie thrillers are not nearly so good literature as THE WARDEN or even as Pratchett's work (much as Christie was a writer of amazing talent and work ethic who revolutionised the detective genre), but the connected idea's in there - even if taken to unusual conclusions.
Trollope, in all his works, gives great sympathy and interest to his older characters - a trait shared by Christie and Miss Marple. Old people have complex, meaningful inner lives and the benefits of experience. As I grow older, I've learnt things that I could never have convinced my younger self of with any amount of argument. Experience is a valuable intangible, but there's a problem with doling out the advice 'always go for the views statistically associated with experience and maturity' - we humans do not have the ability to know what's going in the history books as a regrettable and brief trend and what's going in the history books as a revolutionary reformation eventually adopted by all to great general satisfaction. Trollope's work is fine at showing older people, but THE WARDEN and other novels also show that the conflict between the stable old and the revolutionary young can never be easily resolved - and that Septimus Harding's silver hair does not make his life less important than Bold's or Eleanor's handsome young faces.
Trollope's dichotomy between the passive and the active is also incredibly interesting. Not just THE WARDEN but the later novel COUSIN HENRY engage with this question; I think that the latter is more sophisticated. In THE WARDEN, Harding's ethics prompt him to flee all conflict; he reacts to the corrupt world by removing himself from it. His refusal to hold a post that's tainted by sinecure is admirable, but his removal from the world stops him from doing active good. If Harding's solution of inactivity shows his beautiful character, then beautiful characters are not very effective.
THE WARDEN is Trollope's fourth novel from 1855; COUSIN HENRY was published in 1879. Septimus Harding and Isabel Brodrick both choose to withdraw from the world, though these two characters are very different. Harding is an abstract man who cares for music; Isabel is energetic, sternly principled, and the occupation to which she's best suited is land manager. Harding refuses to engage because he does not wish to be tainted by the world. Brodrick refuses to engage because she has pride and principles that she shall not be seen to act in her own self-interest; as a result Brodrick refuses to challenge the person doing her injustice, her Cousin Henry. In both books, there are active characters to supply forward motion to the plot: John Bold and Lawyer Apjohn. Bold attacks, but attacks too vigorously without enough thought. Lawyer Apjohn engages Brodrick's Cousin Henry in a wise way that results in compassion for the wrongdoer and Brodrick regaining her inheritance. Trollope chooses to represent action more sympathetically in COUSIN HENRY than in THE WARDEN: Apjohn's choice to take action means that all in the story - even the antagonist - receive the best possible ending. Whereas THE WARDEN ends with the twelve old men and Harding suffering as a result of the changes (but BARCHESTER TOWERS shows a more positive long-term outcome).
Trollope's writing is realistic, complex, and nuanced, but the narrator is also an idealist. For example, Trollope's novel ORLEY FARM expresses the greatest of surprise that any lawyer would consider acting for a client they personally believe to be guilty. Engaging with the world can mean badly compromising ethical standards. Harding's choices in THE WARDEN are much less sordid than Archdeacon Grantly's (Grantly tries to make Harding fight, and comes off poorly) - although the narrator acknowledges that Grantly's life generally does more good than harm. By the time of COUSIN HENRY, Trollope is acknowledging that good can come from those who engage with the sordid world.
In a final split, THE WARDEN uses both spiritual and physical glories. Harding's love for music is spiritual; the Grantlys' physical concerns are practical. Trollope's narrative chooses to praise both spiritual and physical, rooted in a practical, pragmatic world where comfortable, clean clothing and a hard-boiled egg are wonderful things to have.
As the archdeacon stood up to make his speech, erect in the middle of that little square, he looked like an ecclesiastical statue placed there, as a fitting impersonation of the church militant here on earth; his shovel hat, large, new, and well-pronounced, a churchman's hat in every inch, declared the profession as plainly as does the Quaker's broad brim; his heavy eyebrows, large open eyes, and full mouth and chin expressed the solidity of his order; the broad chest, amply covered with fine cloth, told how well to do was its estate; one hand ensconced within his pocket, evinced the practical hold which our mother church keeps on her temporal possessions; and the other, loose for action, was ready to fight if need be in her defence; and, below these, the decorous breeches, and neat black gaiters showing so admirably that well-turned leg, betokened the decency, the outward beauty and grace of our church establishment.
And then there's the food porn:
The tea consumed was the very best, the coffee the very blackest, the cream the very thickest; there was dry toast and buttered toast, muffins and crumpets; hot bread and cold bread, white bread and brown bread, home-made bread and bakers' bread, wheaten bread and oaten bread; and if there be other breads than these, they were there; there were eggs in napkins, and crispy bits of bacon under silver covers; and there were little fishes in a little box, and devilled kidneys frizzling on a hot-water dish; which, by the bye, were placed closely contiguous to the plate of the worthy archdeacon himself. Over and above this, on a snow-white napkin, spread upon the sideboard, was a huge ham and a huge sirloin; the latter having laden the dinner table on the previous evening. Such was the ordinary fare at Plumstead Episcopi.
Worldly comforts are certainly not a sin in this book, as long as they are moderate and healthy. The Grantly children are a shallow lot - Charles never met a compromise he didn't like, Henry is a bully, Samuel a fibber, Grizzel and Florinda very very quiet. Grantly and his wife Susan (nee Harding) are more solid figures. John Bold, if anything, is more spiritual than physical: he has a physician's profession but neglects it, and much of his motivation is that he enjoys the conversation of intelligent writers who share his political opinions. Perhaps Bold's neglect of the physical can be read as another sign of his lack of practicality - that he chooses his ideal above his friend Harding. But Harding is also more spiritual than physical, though he looks after his twelve old men. The only conclusion to be drawn here is that THE WARDEN supports that both spiritual matters and physical should be considered. Trollope's other works are certainly alive to the conclusion that both true love and a sufficient amount of money are requisites for a good marriage.
To finish this hopelessly long discourse about the ethics in THE WARDEN, there's one aspect that's given much less emphasis than one would expect - the general question of the church itself. In other of Trollope's novels (such as AMERICAN SENATOR, OLD MAN'S LOVE), harsher criticism of the church is expressed by various characters - the large amounts of money that some clerics earn for few duties, the way that entering the clergy can be a soft profession for well-born men with few brains and less industry, the favouritism through politics or family connections, the lack of oversight, and so on. This novel mentions some examples of church injustices, other men who unjustly claim personal fortunes, but the scope of this novel isn't sufficient to reach into the general question. It seems as if Trollope's books become more daring to criticise the church as time goes on. Either way, Harding is a good man in a corrupt system, and the question raised is really about the best way to deal with such a circumstance.
THE WARDEN raises the issues of stability versus change, private versus public morality, age versus youth, activity versus inactivity, and spiritual versus physical. It presents a nuanced, complex interaction between all the above. These conflicts are echoed in other literary works. Trollope's work thoughtfully examines the ethical dilemmas and refuses to come to any single strong conclusion. This in turn gives the novel so much of its interest, and its ability to resonate with later writers who have examined similar issues.
The central problem is John Hiram's will, written in Henry VI's time to support twelve old wool-carders. Times change, property increases in value, money inflates, and the twelve old men are left with a shilling and fourpence a day while the warden receives eight hundred pounds a year in return for light duties. Local activist John Bold notes this discrepancy and brings it to public attention, and as a result the warden Septimus Harding is vilified in the public press - even though he is a kindly, unworldly old man who is liked by his twelve charges and does a great deal of good for them. Add to this John Bold's love for Harding's daughter Eleanor and the interference of Eleanor's brother-in-law Archdeacon Grantly, who's always keen for a fight to support the church's powers, and there's a crisis between family and friends.
John Bold's actions drive the plot and he is a young man who intends to do right and win the love of a lady he admires - Bold has all the requisite traits of the hero or wouldbe hero, and his actions that upset Harding's life are done from good motives. Septimus Harding is a kind and gentle man, the protagonist and something reasonably close to a saint. The narrator assures the reader that Archdeacon Grantly is a man of benevolent intent who does his work to the best of his ability, even though his actions in the novel show his weaker points. The pensioners of Hiram's Hospital may be misguided but are poor old men. Tom Towers of the Jupiter is a self-serving newspaper editor, but he's hardly an antagonist.
Harding is gentle, kind, wise, soft-spoken, and a hero if there is a hero. Harding's response to trouble is also inactivity: he does not wish to fight in the first place, and when he is convinced that the interpretation of Hiram's will has been unjust in his favour, he only wants to resign his position. The result is net loss to all concerned, including the twelve old men who lost a kind caretaker. Harding is a good man who does more good than any other character in the story, but he is perhaps not enough.
This is Trollope's main quote on the reasons behind the choices he made in this novel, from his Autobiography. It's worth quoting again:
It was open to me to have described a bloated parson, with a red nose and all other iniquities, openly neglecting every duty required from him, and living riotously on funds purloined from the poor,—defying as he did do so the moderate remonstrances of a virtuous press. Or I might have painted a man as good, as sweet, and as mild as my warden, who should also have been a hard-working, ill-paid minister of God's word, and might have subjected him to the rancorous venom of some daily Jupiter, who, without a leg to stand on, without any true case, might have been induced, by personal spite, to tear to rags the poor clergyman with poisonous, anonymous, and ferocious leading articles. But neither of these programmes recommended itself to my honesty. Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
Trollope refuses to create strawpeople to make a point. He chose to write a novel where all the characters have valid, sympathetic reasons for their actions (with the possible exception of the media). Which brings up an obvious point about any discussion of ethics: there's a basic assumption here about what good ethics are. Is a good morality a morality that detatches itself, perceives both sides of a question, and does not conform to social or economic standards but instead personal moral and aesthetic principles? The answer to that is already, not necessarily. Humans who detach themselves too much from moral questions - for example, most people think poorly of abstract debaters who argue the Holocaust-denial side simply because they enjoy arguing - can lose sight of important matters, missing proverbial forests for trees. For looking at both sides of a question, I think that should always be done but in some cases it has already been done and needs no more doing - such as the Holocaust-denial example again. For social and economic standards, the gap of above a century-and-a-half since the novel's publication date speaks for itself. Characters who rely on an inner compass rather than the prevailing trends of their local time and space show independent choice, which can earn readers' respect even when sweeping social change has occurred in the intervening years.
Trollope's morality in THE WARDEN can be discussed from a dualistic perspective - which is also a choice I've made, to phrase ethical questions as if they had to be A versus B on a one-dimensional continuum. THE WARDEN examines stability versus change; age versus youth; private versus public morality; action versus inaction; and spiritual against physical. Underyling all this is the church itself.
When it comes to stability versus change, Trollope's arguments on Harding's side seem to distill to pure nostalgia - because it has been so it must be, even if the it in question is unjust. Harding's character and the fact the men he looked after were happy with him add nuance to the question. Trollope counsels against vigorous reformation and harms by swift change.
I fear that he [John Bold] is too much imbued with the idea that he has a special mission for reforming. It would be well if one so young had a little more diffidence himself, and more trust in the honest purposes of others,—if he could be brought to believe that old customs need not necessarily be evil, and that changes may possibly be dangerous; but no, Bold has all the ardour and all the self-assurance of a Danton, and hurls his anathemas against time-honoured practices with the violence of a French Jacobin.
Here's a counterargument to this stability-versus-revolution argument, a good deal later, from Martin Luther King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail':
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
King's words have a ring of truth (he was right). I want to say that both Trollope and King have a good point, that there's a way to reconcile the views. Ongoing racial inequality after a history of slavery is not the same as twelve old men who are being well cared for even if they aren't getting enough money as a stipend; the contexts of Bold's radical change to a local retirement home and King's radical changes toward the world to give people equal justice are very different. (A note here that when it comes to racism, Trollope was subject to the prejudices of his time; AN OLD MAN'S LOVE is a novel of his that treats African people badly in a minor part of the story, and Trollope's Australian novels contain occasional typical contemporary attitudes to Aboriginal people.) As I've grown older, I've become more inclined to the Trollope view than I was: we all make mistakes even when we try to avoid them and sometimes radical change can have unexpected negative consequences. But some radical things are warranted by common justice and long overdue, and will later become accepted by the vast majority.
If you look into the future of King's work, he was right: ending racism is basic justice, although this work is still far from finished today. And give Trollope's work a preview through dipping into BARCHESTER TOWERS, the sequel to this novel, and one will find that Bold was basically right. John Hiram's will returns to discussion and it's decided to expand the number of old people served, give the warden a more reasonable salary, and install more employees. It turns out in Trollope's sequel that Bold's acts result in a better outcome for twelve additional old people plus the new staff employed to look after them. Sadly, Harding doesn't resume his old place, but the new warden Quiverfull is decent and hardworking. Slow change might've been better than quick change in these specific circumstances - but Bold was right on the essentials. We're left to consider that Trollope's novel shows the pathos of Harding, a gentle man caught up in swift change of a system that he didn't create.
Secondly, there's what one might call public versus private morality in THE WARDEN: the question of a general public good versus a specific private good. It would be privately good for Bold to let Harding go on his way: he would easily maintain a friendship he values, marry Harding's daughter whom he loves, and his father-in-law will have plenty of money. Instead, Bold acts for what he thinks is his public duty: to act for the general good of the people affected by John Hiram's will.
Humans have, or are said to have, monkeyspheres: by studying monkey social groupings, we learn the approximate outer limit of close personal relationships per monkey. We ourselves have a limited number of people we care for on a personal level - however much good we may say we want to do for general humanity. Bold places the needs of the many outside his personal monkeysphere (the public good that there shouldn't be sinecures, the twelve old retirees that he doesn't even know - although he should've got to know them) above the few inside his monkeysphere, his friend Harding and his love Eleanor. Trollope contrasts Bold's abstract morality with his personal humanity in quotes such as this one, where Mary Bold pleads with her brother not to act against Harding:
"I do understand it, John. I understand that this is a chimera,—a dream that you have got. I know well that no duty can require you to do this mad—this suicidal thing. I know you love Eleanor Harding with all your heart, and I tell you now that she loves you as well. If there was a plain, a positive duty before you, I would be the last to bid you neglect it for any woman's love; but this—; oh, think again, before you do anything to make it necessary that you and Mr Harding should be at variance." He did not answer, as she knelt there, leaning on his knees, but by his face she thought that he was inclined to yield. "At any rate let me say that you will go to this party. At any rate do not break with them while your mind is in doubt." And she got up, hoping to conclude her note in the way she desired.
"My mind is not in doubt," at last he said, rising. "I could never respect myself again were I to give way now, because Eleanor Harding is beautiful. I do love her: I would give a hand to hear her tell me what you have said, speaking on her behalf; but I cannot for her sake go back from the task which I have commenced. I hope she may hereafter acknowledge and respect my motives, but I cannot now go as a guest to her father's house." And the Barchester Brutus went out to fortify his own resolution by meditations on his own virtue.
Poor Mary Bold sat down, and sadly finished her note, saying that she would herself attend the party, but that her brother was unavoidably prevented from doing so. I fear that she did not admire as she should have done the self-devotion of his singular virtue.
This is surprisingly similar to John Neverbend from Anthony Trollope's science fiction novel THE FIXED PERIOD. Neverbend believes that a law of involuntary euthanasia for anyone over the age of sixty-seven is great for the public good, but falls into conflict when Neverbend's private friend is to be the first victim of such a law. Trollope dismisses the point of view that public good is above private, in both Neverbend's situation and this more nuanced one: [H]e [Bold] had nothing for it but to excuse himself by platitudes about public duty, which it is by no means worth while to repeat, and to reiterate his eulogy on Mr Harding's character.
It seems that Trollope's ethics require a consideration of the private sphere first. Personal good might be a check and balance: if you can't treat those around you kindly but believe you know what's best for all humanity, it's likely that you are wrong. Bold has to treat his father-in-law well before he can try to stand up for the general mass of humanity. He should also get to know the group of men affected by his reform before springing it on them: perhaps if he'd become personally friendly with Bunce and the others, Bold could have thought of a better way to approach the justice of the hospital charter. (Where, indeed, the warden is paid a ridiculously high sum for minimal duties while the people the trust was intended to benefit receive pennies. And where it doesn't look good that an old man receives a rich sinecure meant to benefit the poor, and the reformer drops the cause as soon as he's engaged to the old man's daughter.)
As a literary counterpoint to personal-sphere-first, there's Terry Pratchett's Captain Carrot. On Discworld (floating on four elephants on the back of a turtle), Captain Carrot is a hero. When his girlfriend Sergeant Angua is kidnapped he chooses not to save her because he has to do a more pressing duty to save his city instead. Carrot's absolute sense of morality is keen and possessed of little fallibility. Captain Carrot's choice of 'what's right' above 'what's personal' are a little scary to those around him even though he's right. Carrot is a fictional character in a parodic fantasy world; he has an ability and destiny to be right about everything. Carrot is always right because he's Carrot - but in the real world it's difficult to impossible to be Carrot. Commander Vimes in the same universe is more like a real person: unable to separate the personal from the important, but having the personal is the reason why we don't go off on the deep end while deciding on the important.
I'm convinced that in the public-versus-private argument THE WARDEN serves to argue to place the personal above the general public good, and not to sacrifice a personal friend for the sake of a general good cause. I'm not convinced that I agree - Bold was right on the essentials, surely sometimes placing the general public first is the right thing to do. But Trollope expresses the potential inhumanity of such a stance and the use of the personal sphere as a check and balance.
Age is also pitted against youth in THE WARDEN. Young people want to change things; older people want to keep what works for them. This is a stereotype; there are young conservatives and old revolutionaries. Agatha Christie's a writer who chooses several times to talk about age versus youth, and stress youth's propensity to choose a general ideal as more important than the lives of any specific people - making Bold's mistake of considering abstract principles more important than the individuals around oneself. This is a quote from PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT, one of Christie's more conspiracy-theory-devoted novels:
Youth is what you might call the spearhead of it all. But that's not really what's so worrying. They - whoever they are - work through youth. Youth in every country. Youth urged on. Youth chanting slogans, slogans that sound exciting, though they don't always know what they mean. So easy to start a revolution. That's natural to youth. All youth has always rebelled. You rebel, you pull down, you want the world to be different from what it is. But you're blind, too. There are bandages over the eyes of youth. They can't see where things are taking them. What's going to come next? What's in front of them? And who it is behind them, urging them on? That's what's frightening about it. You know, someone holding out the carrot to get the donkey to come along and at the same time there is someone behind the donkey urging it on with a stick.'
Christie's novels are full of the dangers of youth: callow, grasping, eager youth, who lack wisdom and sometimes do terrible things because they can't see the outcome of their selfish desires. (See particularly FIVE LITTLE PIGS and PERIL AT END HOUSE.) Youth are prone to becoming so fanatically devoted to general ideologies that they cause specific horrors. PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT, DESTINATION UNKNOWN, and THEY CAME TO BAGHDAD mix this particular aspect in with Agatha Christie's favourite conspiracy theories. The Christie thrillers are not nearly so good literature as THE WARDEN or even as Pratchett's work (much as Christie was a writer of amazing talent and work ethic who revolutionised the detective genre), but the connected idea's in there - even if taken to unusual conclusions.
Trollope, in all his works, gives great sympathy and interest to his older characters - a trait shared by Christie and Miss Marple. Old people have complex, meaningful inner lives and the benefits of experience. As I grow older, I've learnt things that I could never have convinced my younger self of with any amount of argument. Experience is a valuable intangible, but there's a problem with doling out the advice 'always go for the views statistically associated with experience and maturity' - we humans do not have the ability to know what's going in the history books as a regrettable and brief trend and what's going in the history books as a revolutionary reformation eventually adopted by all to great general satisfaction. Trollope's work is fine at showing older people, but THE WARDEN and other novels also show that the conflict between the stable old and the revolutionary young can never be easily resolved - and that Septimus Harding's silver hair does not make his life less important than Bold's or Eleanor's handsome young faces.
Trollope's dichotomy between the passive and the active is also incredibly interesting. Not just THE WARDEN but the later novel COUSIN HENRY engage with this question; I think that the latter is more sophisticated. In THE WARDEN, Harding's ethics prompt him to flee all conflict; he reacts to the corrupt world by removing himself from it. His refusal to hold a post that's tainted by sinecure is admirable, but his removal from the world stops him from doing active good. If Harding's solution of inactivity shows his beautiful character, then beautiful characters are not very effective.
THE WARDEN is Trollope's fourth novel from 1855; COUSIN HENRY was published in 1879. Septimus Harding and Isabel Brodrick both choose to withdraw from the world, though these two characters are very different. Harding is an abstract man who cares for music; Isabel is energetic, sternly principled, and the occupation to which she's best suited is land manager. Harding refuses to engage because he does not wish to be tainted by the world. Brodrick refuses to engage because she has pride and principles that she shall not be seen to act in her own self-interest; as a result Brodrick refuses to challenge the person doing her injustice, her Cousin Henry. In both books, there are active characters to supply forward motion to the plot: John Bold and Lawyer Apjohn. Bold attacks, but attacks too vigorously without enough thought. Lawyer Apjohn engages Brodrick's Cousin Henry in a wise way that results in compassion for the wrongdoer and Brodrick regaining her inheritance. Trollope chooses to represent action more sympathetically in COUSIN HENRY than in THE WARDEN: Apjohn's choice to take action means that all in the story - even the antagonist - receive the best possible ending. Whereas THE WARDEN ends with the twelve old men and Harding suffering as a result of the changes (but BARCHESTER TOWERS shows a more positive long-term outcome).
Trollope's writing is realistic, complex, and nuanced, but the narrator is also an idealist. For example, Trollope's novel ORLEY FARM expresses the greatest of surprise that any lawyer would consider acting for a client they personally believe to be guilty. Engaging with the world can mean badly compromising ethical standards. Harding's choices in THE WARDEN are much less sordid than Archdeacon Grantly's (Grantly tries to make Harding fight, and comes off poorly) - although the narrator acknowledges that Grantly's life generally does more good than harm. By the time of COUSIN HENRY, Trollope is acknowledging that good can come from those who engage with the sordid world.
In a final split, THE WARDEN uses both spiritual and physical glories. Harding's love for music is spiritual; the Grantlys' physical concerns are practical. Trollope's narrative chooses to praise both spiritual and physical, rooted in a practical, pragmatic world where comfortable, clean clothing and a hard-boiled egg are wonderful things to have.
As the archdeacon stood up to make his speech, erect in the middle of that little square, he looked like an ecclesiastical statue placed there, as a fitting impersonation of the church militant here on earth; his shovel hat, large, new, and well-pronounced, a churchman's hat in every inch, declared the profession as plainly as does the Quaker's broad brim; his heavy eyebrows, large open eyes, and full mouth and chin expressed the solidity of his order; the broad chest, amply covered with fine cloth, told how well to do was its estate; one hand ensconced within his pocket, evinced the practical hold which our mother church keeps on her temporal possessions; and the other, loose for action, was ready to fight if need be in her defence; and, below these, the decorous breeches, and neat black gaiters showing so admirably that well-turned leg, betokened the decency, the outward beauty and grace of our church establishment.
And then there's the food porn:
The tea consumed was the very best, the coffee the very blackest, the cream the very thickest; there was dry toast and buttered toast, muffins and crumpets; hot bread and cold bread, white bread and brown bread, home-made bread and bakers' bread, wheaten bread and oaten bread; and if there be other breads than these, they were there; there were eggs in napkins, and crispy bits of bacon under silver covers; and there were little fishes in a little box, and devilled kidneys frizzling on a hot-water dish; which, by the bye, were placed closely contiguous to the plate of the worthy archdeacon himself. Over and above this, on a snow-white napkin, spread upon the sideboard, was a huge ham and a huge sirloin; the latter having laden the dinner table on the previous evening. Such was the ordinary fare at Plumstead Episcopi.
Worldly comforts are certainly not a sin in this book, as long as they are moderate and healthy. The Grantly children are a shallow lot - Charles never met a compromise he didn't like, Henry is a bully, Samuel a fibber, Grizzel and Florinda very very quiet. Grantly and his wife Susan (nee Harding) are more solid figures. John Bold, if anything, is more spiritual than physical: he has a physician's profession but neglects it, and much of his motivation is that he enjoys the conversation of intelligent writers who share his political opinions. Perhaps Bold's neglect of the physical can be read as another sign of his lack of practicality - that he chooses his ideal above his friend Harding. But Harding is also more spiritual than physical, though he looks after his twelve old men. The only conclusion to be drawn here is that THE WARDEN supports that both spiritual matters and physical should be considered. Trollope's other works are certainly alive to the conclusion that both true love and a sufficient amount of money are requisites for a good marriage.
To finish this hopelessly long discourse about the ethics in THE WARDEN, there's one aspect that's given much less emphasis than one would expect - the general question of the church itself. In other of Trollope's novels (such as AMERICAN SENATOR, OLD MAN'S LOVE), harsher criticism of the church is expressed by various characters - the large amounts of money that some clerics earn for few duties, the way that entering the clergy can be a soft profession for well-born men with few brains and less industry, the favouritism through politics or family connections, the lack of oversight, and so on. This novel mentions some examples of church injustices, other men who unjustly claim personal fortunes, but the scope of this novel isn't sufficient to reach into the general question. It seems as if Trollope's books become more daring to criticise the church as time goes on. Either way, Harding is a good man in a corrupt system, and the question raised is really about the best way to deal with such a circumstance.
THE WARDEN raises the issues of stability versus change, private versus public morality, age versus youth, activity versus inactivity, and spiritual versus physical. It presents a nuanced, complex interaction between all the above. These conflicts are echoed in other literary works. Trollope's work thoughtfully examines the ethical dilemmas and refuses to come to any single strong conclusion. This in turn gives the novel so much of its interest, and its ability to resonate with later writers who have examined similar issues.
