Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling (Unit Three) Flashcards
1
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Form
A
- The “Literary Loneliness” phenomenon
- The “sensibility” movement
- Novel (prose fiction)
- Frame Narrative
- Two 1st-person narrators (the unnamed narrator & Harley’s ‘historian’ / biographer, “Charles” [p. 136])“Lost Manuscript,” fragmentary / episodic structure (re: gothic)
- “Sentimental Novel”
2
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Frame Narration
A
- A story which contains another story, a story within another story, or a series of stories
- Strategically designed & placed so as to comment back on one another
- Our story:
- “Outer” Frame: Narrator #1 (unnamed) & the curate, hunting; exchange of MSS
- “Inner” Frame: Narrator #2 (“Charles”) tells the tale of Harley’s life & adventures; features a number of interpolated short stories of the figures he meets
3
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Sentimental Novel
A
- An “emotionally extravagant” novel that flourished in Britain during the second half of the eighteenth century (1740s-1790s); falls into disrepute during the revolutionary period (1790-1815), never recovers its position of prominence
- Features highly sentimental scenes designed to elicit an emotional reaction (tears) from readers
- Asserts a close connection between “virtue and sensibility”: those characters (and readers) who respond emotionally to set tableau scenes are those who are “pure of heart” (virtuous); tears as an index to virtue
- Influential examples: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747-48), J.-J. Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Heloise (1761), Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Lawrence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (1768), and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).
4
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Some Key Themes & Recurring Concerns: Sensibility
A
- Feeling as an ‘index to virtue’; modeling appropriate responses
- The failure of language to adequately articulate feeling
- But also, sensibility as a mask/disguise, seeming vs. actuality, sensibility’s vulnerability to being co-opted to contrary ends
- Not separate from this new world of exchange, either; scenes of sensibility often conclude with an exchange of money
5
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Some Key Themes & Recurring Concerns: Class & the Social Order
A
- Records the suffering of the poor, the lower classes; like Gray, Mackenzie invites us to remember & honour those sufferings, & even models appropriate responses
- Class hierarchy still very much in effect (Harley’s aunt; Miss Walton’s status as heiress); a feature of the old world the text works against
- Framework of sensibility, however, puts pressure on these artificial distinctions; ‘the feeling heart’ as something that erases those differences, that equalizes
6
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Some Key Themes & Recurring Concerns:
A
- Colonization, empire
Discussion with Edwards, p. 117-20 - Judgment, discrimination, ‘reading’ (of faces, people, situations)
Esp. the chapters on ‘physiognomy’ - Seduction & betrayal, women’s vulnerability in the existing social order
Emily’s story, the Edward Sedley vignette
7
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Some Key Themes & Recurring Concerns: The depredations of Modernity
A
- The ruins of the (admirable) past vs. the callous selfishness of the (deplorable) present
- Modern commercialism & improving whims wiping out older, traditional ways of life, disrupting social cohesion
- Harley as an anachronism in this new world, alongside Silton, Edwards, & other ruins; the inevitability of defeat/loss
8
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Analysis - Part One
A
- His repeated misreadings, esp. his reliance on ‘physiognomy’ (pp.78, 83-84)
- RE: sensibility equates the outward expression of sympathy (esp. the visible tear) with inner virtue
- But many figures in this novel seem to know how to perform the outward show of sensibility without that corresponding inner virtue
- Consider the Edward Sedley fragment (pp.129-34)
9
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Analysis - Part Two
A
- Harley’s own involvement in forms of exchange, the ‘exchange’ inherent in each moment of sensibility
- Pattern: encounter w/ a suffering figure; communication that leads Harley to feel that other’s pain ‘inwardly’; ends with H paying (giving charity to) that figure
Pp. 61, 71, 78, 82, 116-17 - The ‘purchasing’ of the pleasures of sensibility; who is benefiting here—the object of charity, or the man of feeling who ‘purchases’ a sentimental moment?
10
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Analysis - Part Three
A
- Harley’s ineffectuality / limited impact; his association with anachronism, ruins, relics, & bygone days & ways
- Marked out as separate from the selfishness & seeming of the modern world, but also strangely ineffectual; has limited meaningful impact on those around him
- Sensibility prompts action, but that action is patently unable to countermand the ills it laments
11
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Analysis - Part Four
A
- His class-eroding sensibility is at odds with the old-world hierarchical order he is otherwise associated with
- Sensibility is repeatedly configured as a force with radical class implications, one that potentially equalizes the relations between people otherwise separated by their social standing
- In this sense, his own behavior participates in the sort of ‘class leveling’ traditionalists associated with the rise of monied interests in 18thC Britain
12
Q
Henry Mackenzie - The Man of Feeling
Analysis - Part Five
A
- The narrator’s / editor’s occasionally undermining comments
- Fragment, pp. 117-20, “The Man of Feeling talks of what he does not understand”
- Chapter 26, pp. 80-82, “The Man of Feeling in a Brothel”; “From what impulse he did this, we do not mean to inquire…”
- Such comments undermine Harley’s earnestness & sincerity, as well as the substance of his arguments (against colonialism) & his charity/sensibility
