SOCIAL MEDIA IN ONLINE CLASSROOMS

 Social Media in Online Classrooms

                                                                    Ipatia K. Apostolides

                                                                              2021

 

    Technology, the principal driving force in online classrooms, has been aided by Learning Management System tools.  However, more and more teachers have been turning to social media to provide a social exchange of knowledge and ideas for their students.  Facebook is one of several social media platforms that are being used in this capacity.  It is easily accessible through a computer and a cell phone, easy to use, and allows for private group sessions.  One study by Thailure & Penman (2015) used Facebook as a platform for group learning activity, and it showed that Facebook increased students’ interest in the subject, and provided opportunities to interact with the lecturer and other students (p. 459).  However, Facebook could not substitute for face-to-face learning and teaching, yet was used as an additional tool for lectures and tutorials (p. 459).  In addition, Facebook offers a psychosocial aspect that promotes a supportive environment for cognitive learning in students; this is observed in developing harmony and social cohesiveness, and group cohesiveness (p. 462).

Another social media tool, WhatsApp, has exposed students to new literacies where they shorten words, remove punctuation and capitals, and use abbreviations (Songxaba & Sincuba, 2019).  David(2001), Cal(2001), and Dovey (2010), state that “..writing is an important tool in education and in the working environment, hence it is important that it is not polluted by social media scripts such as WatsApp (as cited in Songxaba & Sincuba, 2019, p.2).  This poses a problem in school, particularly in essay writing, and eventually in job situations.  Thus, depending on which social media is used and in what context, each teacher should assess them individually in e-learning.

References

Songxaba, S.L., & Sincuba, L. (2019). The effect of social media on English second language essay 

            

                writing with special reference to WhatsApp. Reading & Writing – Journal of the Reading 

    

                Association of South Africa, 10(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.179

 

Thailuri, J., & Penman, J. (2015). Social media for learning and teaching undergraduate sciences: Good

                 practice guidelines from intervention. The Electronic Journal of e-learning, 13(6), 455-465.

                 http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v10i1.179

 

Meet the Author: Patty Apostolides Presention - March 27, 2021

 

 Ole Edvart Rolvaag’s Place, Heritage, and Gender in the Immigrant Experience: Giants in the Earth and Peder Victorious

 

 

 

By

 

 

 

 

Ipatia Apostolides, B.A., M.F.A.

 

 

 

 

December 7, 2020

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

            

The life of Ole Edvart Rolvaag and his literary works Giants in the Earth (1927), and Peder Victorious (1929),will be examined in this paper in relation to place, heritage, and gender (sexual), in the immigrant’s experience. Ole Edvart Pedersen was born on April 22, 1876 in the small fishing community on the barren island of Donna in Norway (Rolvaag, 1971), and was the third child of eight children born to Peder Jakobsen and Ellerine Johanna (p. vii). He would walk to school, which was seven miles away, and during the winter, he and his siblings stayed at a farm near the school (p. ix). The fishermen worked in small boats, but in the winter, groups of four to six fishermen would travel in larger ships to the Lofoten islands to fish. He became a fisherman early in life (age 14) and during a winter storm in 1893, he was affected negatively when several fishermen on the ship they were traveling in did not survive the storm, and he decided that this life as a fisherman was not for him. In later years, he changed his surname from Pedersen to Rolvaag which was taken from a bay on his island.

O.E. Rolvaag wrote to an uncle who lived in Elk Point, South Dakota and asked to lend him the money to buy a ticket for America. In 1896, at the age of twenty, the money for the ticket finally arrived from his uncle, and that same year Rolvaag embarked on the journey to America  (Rolvaag, 1971). 

 

 

 

Rolvaag’s Immigration and Education

 

Rolvaag wrote about his immigration experience through letters to his brother and father, which were collected and published posthumously in a book titled The Third Life of Per Smevik (Rolvaag, 1971). These first impressions and experiences of his own life are also captured in his later novel Giants in the Earth.

During the first few years with his uncle, Rolvaag was a farm hand. He did not like the heavy work. He saved his money and attended Augustana Academy of Canton, South Dakota, where he met his future wife Jennie Marie Berdahl. He studied hard and then attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota where he earned a B.A. and a M.A. 

Once he graduated, Rolvaag became employed as a professor at St. Olaf College in the fall of 1906 and continued teaching there until his death in 1931. According to the St. Olaf College website (St. Olaf College), it was founded first as an academy in 1874 by a group of Norwegian immigrants, pastors, farmers, and businessmen. In 1889, it became a college. The name St. Olaf was derived from Olav II Haraldsson, king of Norway from 1016 to 1030; he became Norway’s patron saint after his martyrdom. St. Olaf College has also been affiliated with the Lutheran Church throughout its history. This higher education institution has maintained a focus on Scandinavian culture, and it was this environment that Rolvaag immersed himself as a professor.

At St. Olaf College, Rolvaag’s work routine was harsh, as he would arise at seven or eight o’clock each morning and continue working until two o’clock the following morning (Jorgenson, n.d.). This heavy workload affected his health. During 1905-1906, and in December, he was diagnosed with diphtheria.

In 1908, Rolvaag became a United States citizen and married Jennie Berdahl, whom he had met while attending Augustana Academy. The couple had three sons and one daughter; however, two of their sons died tragically. One of their surviving children, Karl, became a politician, and was elected governor of Minnesota from 1963-1967 and later became an ambassador to Iceland (1967-1969).

Rolvaag was often ill for the remainder of his life. He suffered “periodic nerve attacks which can have been nothing else than the beginning of the heart ailment that finally took his life,” and in 1911, Rolvaag suffered a mild attack of pleurisy (Jorgenson, n.d.). In 1918, he had an operation for Appendicitis, and in 1924, experienced heart attacks that grew increasingly severe (p.5). In 1931, he died from a massive heart attack at age fifty-five.

 

 

His Writing

 

While in college, Rolvaag’s sketches, poems, and short stories found their way into the school paper and the annual published by his class (Jorgenson, n.d.). His first novel, a love story, “Nils and Astri” was written while in college, but he could not publish it in America or in Norway (p.5). 

He successfully published Amerika-Breve, (Letters from America) his first book, in 1912, written in Norwegian and in 1914, another book titled Pa Glente Veie (Forgotten Paths) which showed the life of an immigrant in America. 

In 1923, Rolvaag learned that Johan Bojer, a successful Norwegian author, would travel to America to gather information for his novel on Norwegian immigration in America (Filanti, 2019). Bojer was well known for his 1921 translated book The Last of the Vikings, whereas Rolvaag had not received such popular attention for his works, and this motivated him to work on his book. Rolvaag had been gathering material all this time, to beat Bojer’s deadline (p. 311). Rolvaag requested a sabbatical and retreated to a log cabin in Minnesota, where he worked up to sixteen hours a day. He finished the Norwegian version of Giants in the Earth by the deadline for the celebration of the centennial for Norwegian migration to America paid. (p. 311

Rolvaag successfully published I de Dage (In Those Days) in 1924, and Riket Grundlægges (Founding the Kingdom) in 1925, first in the Norwegian language by the Aschehoug publishers in Norway, and later in America, having translated both volumes into English with the help of Lincoln Colcord, and published as one volume titled Giants in the Earth (p. 4). His book received the acclaim that it deserved. Giants in the Earth focused on the “suffering and toil of Norwegian homesteaders in the Dakota territory” during the 1870s (Filanti, 2019). He used the experience from his own life on the farm, as well as his wife’s family, who had immigrated earlier to the plains area. Yet, his book’s storyline was very similar to Bojer’s book The Emigrants, and Rolvaag pleaded “not guilty” to plagiarism (p. 312). Both men corresponded frequently, before and after publication. Filanti (2019) believes that the likenesses seen in these two authors’ novels, as well as in other novels about immigration, “expressed very similar colonizing attitudes with regards to indigenous people, other animal species, and the land, as all of them knowingly compromised their own cultural values in the quest of a new home” (p. 313).

Rolvaag’s next two novels, Peder Victorious (Rolvaag, 1927) and Their Father’s God (Rolvaag, 1931) were part of the trilogy, focusing on the Holm family after Per Hansa died in Giants in the Earth. It’s interesting that Rolvaag would have three boys and one girl in this story, because that is the number of children he also had. According to Gudrun Hovde Gvale, who wrote the Introduction to Peder Victorious (Rolvaag, 1929), Rolvaag wrote most of Peder Victorious in his cabin at Big Island Lake during the summer of 1927. After it was published by Aschehousg in Oslo the following year, the English translation by Nora Solum was published by Harper & Brothers in New York in 1929 (p. ix). His last book of the trilogy, Their Father’s God, is translated from Norwegian into English by Trygve M. Ager, and was published in 1931 by Harper & Row, the year of Rolvaag’s death. 

His last novel, which depicted the life of a young immigrant traveling from Norway to Minneapolis in 1912, and titled The Boat of Longing, was published posthumously in 1933.

By the end of his lifetime, Rolvaag had published six novels, two readers for class use, a couple of handbooks on Norwegian grammar and declamation, and one volume of essays (Rolvaag, 1927). Most of his writing focused on the immigrant experience.

 

 

Place

 

According to Patterson-Black (1976), The Homestead Act in 1862 by Senator William Borah announced, “The government bets 160 acres against the entry fee of $14 that the settler can’t live on the land for five years without starving to death” (p. 67). This was the impetus that brought many immigrants journeying to the west, hoping for a piece of land, and this included the Norwegians, Rolvaag’s uncle, and Rolvaag’s in-laws. Rolvaag’s characters Per Hansa and Beret Holm, in Giants in the Earth represent such Norwegian immigrants journeying to claim their land and become homesteaders. Owning a piece of land was a big deal to them because they came from a country where land was scarce and poverty prevailed. Their dream was to work the land and live off of it. However, in Giants in the Earth, they did not anticipate the harsh winter climate and locusts that would eat away at their dreams and leave them destitute.

In the article by Diane Quantic, she believes that the frontier in Giants in the Earth is a “liminal space: an acknowledged, inhabited landscape where people consciously can choose to remain between one culture and another…” (Quantic, 2003). Filanti (2019) also states, that in Giants in the Earth, “the frontier was, in the collective imaginary of the time, an uninhabited space that one could settle in and claim possession of while remaining indefinitely suspended between the old European culture and the new American one,” and it could only be described in terms of absence (p. 308). 

In Peder Victorious, Beret victoriously faces the challenges on the prairie as a widow, mother, and landowner after Per Hansa’s death. However, the land is not as prominent in this sequel to Giants in the Earth as is heritage and gender.

 

 

Heritage

 

Rolvaag was a Norwegian immigrant who wrote primarily in the Norwegian language about the immigrant experience in America. He did not believe in cutting ties to Norway, his Old-World past, and his books were first published in Norway and later translated into English. According to Thorson (1976), Rolvaag “viewed the individual immigrant, shorn of his ties with his native culture and traditions, as doomed to failure” (p.6). Rolvaag believed that man’s creativity relied on continuity with his heritage, otherwise he would be plagued by misfortune and futility (p. 6). 

Rolvaag’s heritage was influenced by his parents, religion, culture, and language. His father Peder, a fisherman, read the Bible and was engaged in a dogmatic religion (Jorgenson, n.d.); heavy handed with the children, he provided a strict and unbendingly Puritan environment in the home (p.3). Rolvaag’s mother, on the other hand, was a “simple woman, without learning and logic, but strong in the emotions of a warm heart; infinitely patient in her work, possessed of great charm, and completely devoted to her children” (p.1). Rolvaag was very close to his mother and writes in his diary, “If I had known how hard it would be to leave Mother, I probably should not have taken this step” (p.1.). 

One other factor that influenced Rolvaag’s formative years, was oral tradition, which was particularly poignant during the cold winters while preparing for the annual fishing expeditions (Jordahl, 1975). These stories exposed him to a variety of Norwegian folklore, like supernatural holder, nisse, draug, and trolls (p.15). The trolls and archtrolls appear in Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth, when Per Hansa discovers the Irish stakes on Hans Olsa’s southwest corner and thinks, “By God! The trolls must be after him!” (p. 132), and later, he thinks: “how would it turn out when the trolls came? Would he be able to hack off their heads and wrest the kingdom from their power?” (p. 142).

It has been written about that Rolvaag’s mother resembled the character of Beret. In Giants in the Earth, he promotes Norwegian ethnicity and a return to traditional Norwegian ways. This included religious faith, respect for one’s parents, love of home, and an appreciation of the collective ethnic past (Haugtvedt, 2008). However, the Norwegian immigrant community during Rolvaag’s time (1920s) was already beginning to assimilate into the American society (New World) and English was becoming the prominent language. He was concerned about this, and he wrote about this assimilation into American society; it is more pronounced in Peder Victorious, when Peder, Beret’s son refuses to speak the Norwegian language or become a minister, and in Rolvaag’s next sequel, Their Father’s God, instead of marrying a Norwegian Lutheran girl, Peder ends up marrying an Irish Catholic girl (Kongslien, 2012). 

 

 

Gender

 

In Giants in the Earth, Per Hansa and his wife Beret play traditional roles, where he is the hunter, builder, and king, and she is the nurture, homemaker, and queen (Muthyala, 2005). Per Hansa focuses on building a house while Beret focuses on female domesticity (p. 232). According to Muthyala (2005), as long as these two separate spheres are maintained, a certain kind of predictability and stability exists, and only are undermined when the borders of these spheres are crossed (p. 232). On the surface, Beret obeys her husband and performs her duties, but internally, she experiences fear and depression, as she has a difficult time assimilating to the prairie’s challenges (sod house, harsh winter, locusts) and being far away from her family. 

In Peder Victorious, Beret assumes both feminine and masculine duties. She is father and mother to her children, and also maintains the house and land. This is a surprising adjustment, coming from a person who has been fearful and limited in her assimilation to America in Giants in the Earth. Only after Per Hansa’s death, does she emerge in Peder Victorious as a successful “female pioneer woman” raising her children and overseeing the farm (Muthyala, 2005).

It isn’t until two-thirds into the Peder Victorious novel, however, do we learn how Beret reacts to Per Hansa’s death. When they brought Per Hansa home, “things went black” for Beret. The minister visits her, and she confesses to him, “it was she who had driven Per Hansa to his death…There had been angry words, she had nagged him, he had left in a terrible temper!” (Rolvaag, 1929, p. 167). The minister believes that Beret’s “worst sin does not consist in what you did to your husband that day; rather it lies in your discontent with God’s special creatures, with your fellow men” (p. 169). Even though this is a surprising revelation to her, she doesn’t appear to do anything about it. Her actions and thoughts still separate her from others. The feminine, nurturing side of her remains glued to her family. Her thoughts are predominantly controlled by her religion and language, and both factors stem from her heritage.

Another gender issue that arises in Peder Victorious is young Peder’s Oedipal complex with his mother. Later as he grows into a handsome young man, his love affairs consume his time as he chases one girl after another.

 

 

Giants in the Earth

 

In the first book of the trilogy, Giants in the Earth (Rolvaag, 1927), Rolvaag uses place, heritage, and gender equally in the story. The Norwegian heritage that Rolvaag and his Norwegian characters came from was basically a poor fishing community where the inhabitants owned little property and relied on fishing to survive. However, it was an established society, complete with schools, churches, and communities. The South Dakota plains offered only land and sky, and nothing else. There were no established schools, churches, or roads, when the Holm family arrived in their wagon, and the small community consisted only of a handful of Norwegian immigrants. The closest town was almost eighty miles away. It was a bare canvas waiting to be worked on, and Rolvaag did an incredible job in this first novel of his trilogy.

With regards to place, the plains of South Dakota consumed much of the story, as the Holm family and the other Norwegians settled their wagons and families there. They had to first overcome the land, plowing and digging, building homes, fighting against the harshness of the climate, and deal with being away from their country, family and friends, and their culture. It was open land, with no place to hide, yet fertile enough to provide them food and a sod house. It was also fertile enough to feed cattle and provide for a living. They survived, but at a price. Those years, they worked very hard and struggled against the natural forces, but were still poor.

In the first two weeks on the prairie, Per Hans and the other characters of Giants in the Earth cannot “read” the landscape which has no real human-made markers (p. 249). However, Per Hansa’s imagination enables him to fill in the blank prairie space with buildings, animals, and crops. He journeys fifty-two miles to ensure that this land becomes officially his. His wife Beret, on the other hand, sees things differently. Her thoughts about the prairie when they first arrive are expressed here, “Had they travelled into some nameless, abandoned region? Could no living thing exist out here, in the empty, desolate, endless wastes of green and blue?...If life is to thrive and endure, it must at least have something to hide behind!” (p. 43). Her fear about this new place is quite clear throughout the novel. When Beret learns about the Indian grave with its bones, and the uprooted claim stakes by her husband; she does not approve but fears the “empty, haunted land” (p. 250). Yet she does not betray Per Hansa regarding the stakes.

With regards to heritage, Per Hansa appears to be eager in leaving behind his heritage and wholeheartedly embracing this alternative way of life on the prairie. He works hard on the farm, plowing and digging, and also in building the sod house. This all-consuming desire to work long hours is evident in this passage:

“As Per Hansa lay there dreaming of the future it seemed to him that hidden springs of energy, hitherto unsuspected even by himself, were welling up in his heart. He felt as if his strength were inexhaustible. And so he commenced his labours with a fourteen-hour day….he accordingly lengthened the day to sixteen hours” (p. 53). 

 

Per Hansa’s working sixteen-hour days is very similar to Rolvaag’s own life, where he worked several hours a day with little sleep. This energy is all consuming and fills Per Hansa’s days, and he is driven to finish his projects. He is content.

Beret, Per Hansa’s wife, however, has a very difficult time adjusting to the plains. Her familial place, Norway, is difficult to let go and forget. Pregnant with her fourth child, Beret reminisces about her family in Norway, the churchyard where her ancestors are buried, and thinks that she will not survive this pregnancy. Unable to escape the prairie, however, she succumbs to depression.

Per Hansa approaches her one day about building a barn under the same roof as their house in order to keep the house warm. “Man and beast in one building? How could one live that way?...but then she thought of how desolate and lonesome everything was here and of what a comfortable companion Rosie might be on dark evenings and during long winter nights,” she thinks (p. 62). So she accepts. 

An emphasis on gender differences is obvious in Giants in the Earth, as it shows the differences between Per Hansa and his wife Beret. According to Muthyala (2005), Per Hansa and Beret inhabit gendered spheres of work and activity and play traditional roles. The man is the hunter, builder, and king, and the woman is the nurturer, homemaker, and queen (p. 232). 

Beret’s role as wife and mother are traditional and restricted, as she focuses on staying in the house and taking care of the family and the meals. Only when her husband is away, does she venture outside to do the work with her children. 

By continuing these traditional roles, this brings predictability to their lives, and as long as they maintain these borders and do not cross them, Per Hansa and Beret have a stable relationship. However, Muthyala (2005) notes that Per Hansa disturbed this border by doing things that were normally associated with “the goddess of fertility: planting seeds, providing sexual pleasure, and procreating” (p. 233). Per Hansa is intent in transforming the frontier into a place of “habitation and eventually into a kingdom” (p. 233).

In Giants in the Earth, the land, a source of love and fertility, becomes Per Hansa’s metaphorical mistress, and he “exults that this vast stretch of beautiful land was to be his” (Moseley, 1978, p. 34). He “plowed and harrowed, delved and dug; he built away at the house, and he planted the potatoes; he had such a zest for everything and thought it all such fun that he could hardly bear to waste a moment in stupid sleep” (Rolvaag, 1927, p.56). 

Another example of the land as metaphorical mistress, is when Per Hansa decides to grow wheat. “He ran his hand around in the bag, stroking the grain caressingly, taking great handfuls and giving them a gentle squeeze…And now the wheat rained down in yellow semicircles from Per Hansa’s hand” (p. 340). 

According to Moseley (1978), Per Hansa is making love to the land, trying to satisfy both himself and his mistress through the following passages, “working slowly and carefully,” but “almost at once he grew very heated; his body was dripping sweat” (p. 35). Beret senses his infidelity as he spends less and less time with her, and yet she is loyal to him. 

Per Hansa unwittingly encourages Beret to become more masculine. On one occasion, Per Hansa, enticed by Beret to make love to her (her traditional role in fertility), thinks about the work that still needs to be done, but at the same time, remembers the masculine work she had done, and likes it. By seeing role reversal in a positive light in his mind, he crosses the traditional border; for example, he likes that “she had let the children roam around and play in the grass while she herself had joined in their labor; she had pitched in beside them and taken her full term like any man” (Rolvaag, 1927, p. 57). This could also tie into their heritage, where women from the Old Country were involved in manual labor.

Meanwhile, Beret continues her traditional role, and sees life on the plains differently than Per Hansa does: “It seemed plain to her now that human life could not endure in this country. She had lived here for six weeks, and more without seeing another civilized face than those of their own company…To get what supplies they needed they must journey four whole days” (p.116). 

These three forces of place, heritage, and gender tug and pull equally at the traditional life that the Holm family have left behind in Norway. As Beret becomes more fearful and introverted, she relies more and more on her religious ideals and sinks into madness, and Per Hansa seeks emotional satisfaction through the land (Moseley, 1978). It becomes apparent that Beret isn’t willing to assimilate along with her husband and children, because she is still attached to her Old-World thinking, to her language and religion, and she doesn’t adapt to the new place as does Per Hansa, who is busy building a home for her and the family; in the process, she becomes brittle and inflexible, and this fuels her mental maladies. 

At one point, Per Hansa could not find her. As he searches for her, he finds her inside her trunk with her two children, and “Per Hansa flung the cover open with frantic haste. The sight that met his eyes made his blood run cold. Down in the depths of the great chest lay Beret, huddled up and holding the baby in her arms; And-Ongen was crouching at her feet – the whimpering sound had come from her” (Rolvaag, 1927, p. 397). This is one example of Beret’s fear and madness, and it adds one more break to their relationship, as he starts to treat her like a child after that.

Per Hansa is willing to overcome his differences and to step occasionally outside of his traditional gender role by being more feminine once in a while, but Beret’s fear possesses her and doesn’t leave her free to adapt to the new place and assimilate to it. Without her meeting Per Hansa halfway, their relationship continues to spark tension and conflict, and this is witnessed at the end of the story, which has reached a crisis when she urges Per Hansa to go out there in the bitter winter to fetch the minister for their ailing friend Hans Olsa. He resists at first and believes Beret’s insistence “that he leap right into the arms of death” is a sign that she is flinging all that he had done for her and the children in his face (Rolvaag, 1927, p. 520). He does end up going for the minister, but alone and in anger, and unfortunately dies in the bitter storm. 

 

 

Peder Victorious

 

Rolvaag’s next novel in the trilogy is Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later (Rolvaag, 1929). The story is supposed to take place twenty years after Per Hansa’s death in Giants in the Earth. It focuses on Peder, the youngest son of the Holm family, from the time that he is young, and it depicts the passage of time as we see him grow up into a young man. In the story, schools have been formed, and churches are being built in the territory where the Holm family live. The Irish have arrived and built their homes there. During this passage of time, the community that has formed is a mixed community, and includes different cultures, religions, and languages. 

In this sequel, Beret remains in their home, learns to work on the land, and raises her family successfully. Very few references are made to the land, as in the previous novel, where Per Hansa spends much time plowing and digging, and building their home. Everything has been done already. The children are older and do most of the outside chores. Beret has changed as a person from the time Per Hansa was alive. Her fear seems to have left her. She embraces the challenges of life on the prairie and even builds a barn. She is content being a homemaker and mother, where she reads her Norwegian bible and speaks Norwegian to her family.

It is through Peder and the mixed community that Beret’s heritage, language and religion are challenged every step of the way. Other immigrants in the story appear to have assimilated to America; their children are learning the English language, yet Beret continues to hold on to her beliefs and fight assimilation. She wants her children, particularly Peder, to continue speaking and reading the Norwegian language and religion. One day, Peder asks her, “Why can’t I learn my lessons in English?” and she resists, saying “How you talk, Permand!” and she calls him a “Norwegian boy” (p. 31). His thoughts contradict the idea that he is “a Norwegian boy…huh…The idea!” (p. 31). 

Beret continues to retain strong ties to her Norwegian background, religion, and language. She does several things to show that. She moves Peder from one school, which had Irish students in it, to another school where Norwegians are attending it. He does not like this move, and thinks, “Here he was off to English school among the Norwegians because Mother was afraid…well, just what did she fear might happen to him among the Irish?” (p. 138).

The new minister, Pastor Gabrielsen is intent on speaking English and not Norwegian, and promoting Peder’s Americanization, for he believes that “in twenty years from now not one word of Norwegian would be heard in America” (Rolvaag, 1929, p. 201). This recurring theme about assimilation, and losing one’s language to English is particularly important as it ties into Rolvaag’s own philosophy about the Norwegian language being important. The fact that he wrote his novels in Norwegian even though he lived in America is a testimony that he never really forgot his heritage. Beret challenges the minister about his speaking English, and he replies, “Do you think I was committing a sin by speaking English here today?” and she replies, “Yes” (p. 206). In response to her reply, the minister thinks this is ridiculous and can’t help laughing. 

In addition, as Peder grows into manhood, it is increasingly apparent that he is spiritually dead when it comes to the Norwegian religion and this bothers Beret to no end. Several things occurred to push him away; one is his father’s death, and the pregnant girl’s (Oline) death, and his questioning God about these; another incident is the minister trying to force him to become a minister. When the minister visits Beret to tell her that he’d like Peder to go away to school to become a minister, Peder has other thoughts about this, “And now Gabrielsen was wanting to get him off to school and make a preacher of him – just let him try it!” (Rolvaag, 1929, p. 260). Peder was more interested in chasing girls at this stage in life. He also did not want to leave his mother alone and go off to school. The other siblings had already moved out of the house.

This story also focuses on gender and sexual relations, particularly as seen through Beret’s Oedipal relationship with her youngest son Peder and later, through Peder’s eyes in his relationships with girls. Beret’s nurturing, female side is revealed as she raises her children and feeds the cattle. This is seen in the following passage, “More than anything else she enjoyed taking care of the cattle; every creature on the farm responded to her voice” (p. 172).

Using Peder as his conduit, Rolvaag is able to place an emphasis on gender and sexual occurrences. When Peder was young, he became a substitute for his father Per Hansa, in that his mother seems to have spent more time with him than any of the other children. He is a sensual, handsome boy and later, an amorous young man. There are also some Oedipus complex issues with his mother; the Oedipus complex is a psychoanalytic theory written about by Sigmund Freud in 1899. Similarities between the sensual way young Peder relates to his mother Beret, are seen with Paul, the son in Lawrence’s 1913 novel Sons and Lovers; where Paul has an Oedipal complex with his mother. 

In one defining incident, Peder learns about a pregnant girl’s (Oline’s) death, and he becomes terrified when he thinks he sees her ghost outside their home, and rushes to his mother’s bedroom. There, he throws himself into her bed; he tells her he sees the girl “standing over in the grove and wants us to help her” (p. 41). His mother tries to talk him out of having seen the ghost and then admonishes him when he believes God allowed this terrible thing to happen to the girl. Beret pleads he must pray unceasingly and ends up crying. He cries with her, and in the end, “she petted him and stroked him; and he snuggled closer to her, sank down into something wonderfully soft and pleasant” (p. 44). This sensual moment defies the pure mother-son relationship and becomes a pseudo-male-female relationship with an Oedipal overtone where Peder subconsciously replaces Per Hansa. 

Yet Peder outgrows this phase and increasingly spends less time with his mother. As he grows older, he becomes even more sensual, noticing his body and its reaction to the local girls like Else, Miriam, and Susie. Another similarity between Paul in Sons & Lovers is Peder’s relationship to Miriam Nelsen, which goes nowhere, as in Paul’s relationship to Miriam Lievers, who is deeply religious. In both stories, Peder and Paul move on to other relationships. Also, both girls have the same first names.

The strong male role is evident in Peder’s burgeoning love affairs. He pursues different girls and courts them, staying out until late hours. One such girl is his best friend’s sister, Susie, who is Irish Catholic. He chases her in the new barn and jumps on her as she hides in the hay. “he had never felt anything so silken and soft. His chin sank down into the warm hollow of her throat, his cheek pressing close” (p.89). This critical physical moment in their relationship, aptly described by Rolvaag, is remembered and as time passes, Peder marries Susie later in Their Father’s God the third book of the trilogy.

According to Martin (1989), he posits that in the last chapter of Rolvaag’s Peder Victorious, Rolvaag expresses “sexual humor.” This is evident when Beret discovers in Peder’s Bible some verses titled “To My Beloved” and fails to connect it to the Old Testament’s “The Song of Songs.” She believes these verses about love were actually written by Peder, and she burns them. She had conceived her first child out of wedlock, and “decides to prevent Peder from behaving like his parents” (p. 256).

 

Conclusion

Much of O.E. Rolvaag’s own life as an immigrant from Norway, and the lives of his parents, siblings, his wife, his family, his wife’s family, all seem to have found their way somehow into his immigration novels. He is Per Hansa in Giants in the Earth, working hard on the farm as he did in his uncle’s farm in Elk Point, South Dakota. His mother and mother-in-law can be seen in Beret who had a difficult time acclimatizing to the American way of life, her Norwegian language and religion being so important to her identity. His own siblings can be seen in Per Hansa’s sons in Giants in the Earth and later, his own sons in Peder, in Peder Victorious, a young American-born boy growing up in America, and assimilating into the American way of life through the school system. Even his wife can be witnessed in Peder’s relationship with Susie in Peder Victorious.

Rolvaag was successful in addressing place, heritage (vs assimilation), and gender in his writing on immigration. Yet, once he chose the topic of immigration for his writing, he was limited artistically. Filanti (2019) believes that the likenesses seen in Rolvaag’s and Bojer’s novels, as well as in other novels about immigration, “expressed very similar colonizing attitudes with regards to indigenous people, other animal species, and the land, as all of them knowingly compromised their own cultural values in the quest of a new home” (p. 313).

Although he was successful as a writer in Giants in the Earth, Rolvaag was not able to go beyond the immigration experience or the Norwegian background in any of his other novels. In Peder Victorious, the focus was on Beret’s difficulty letting go of her language and religion, and her conflict with her American-born son Peder who embraces the American culture and language quite easily. Even Rolvaag’s last novel, The Boat of Longing, posthumously published in 1933, focuses on immigration from Norway. Yet, he contributed significantly to the pioneer experience by writing about it and about the hardships faced by immigrants.

One wonders, though, if his life hadn’t been cut short, if Rolvaag would have written on other topics besides immigration. 

 

 

References

 

Filanti, R. (2019). “Facing the great desolation: Migration and translations in Giants in the Earth.  In S. Guslandi, P. Loreto, A. Cardone, & A. Tiengo (Eds.), The US and the World We Inhabit (pp. 300-319). https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ahHCDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA302&dq=gender+in+o.e.+rolvaag&ots=SxGS1rndpi&sig=KAro0f3knjReqNDez1mLkoK5yT8#v=onepage&q=p.%20319&f=false

 

Haugtvedt, E. (2008). Abandoned in America: Identity, dissonance and ethnic preservationism in “Giants in the Earth.” MELUS, 33(3), 147-168. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20343495

 

Jordahl, O. (1975). Folkloristic influences upon Rolvaag’s youth. (34)1, 1-15. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1498749?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents

 

Jorgenson, T. (n.d.) The main factors in Rolvaag’s authorship. (X), 135-142. https://naha.stolaf.edu/pubs/nas/volume10/vol10_6.htm

 

Kongslien, I. (2012). Culture, difference, and diversity in O.E. Rolvaag’s immigrant epic. Scandinavian Studies, 84(2), 177-190. https://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=96d202b5-21b5-49b2-af1f-04e512257926%40sessionmgr4006

 

Martin, D. (1989). Rolvaag’s “roguish smile” in Peder Victorious. Western American Literature, (24)3, 253-256. https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.1989.0033

 

Moseley, A. (1978). The land as metaphor in two Scandinavian novels. Melus, (5)2, 33-38. http://www.jstor.com/stable/467458

 

Muthyala, J. (2005). Gendering the frontier in O.E. Rolvaag’s “Giants in the Earth.” Great Plains Quarterly, 25(4), 229-244. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23533679

 

Patterson-Black, S. (1976). Women homesteaders on the Great Plains frontier. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, (1)2, 67-88. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3346070

 

Quantic, D.D. (2003). Fairy castle or steamer trunk? Creating place in O.E. Rolvaag’s “Giants in the Earth.” Great Plains Quarterly, 23(4), 245-259. https://jstor.org/stable/23533283

 

Rolvaag, O.E. (1927). Giants in the Earth. HarperPerennial Modern Classics. 

 

Rolvaag, O.E. (1929). Peder Victorious. Bison Books. 

 

Rolvaag, O.E. (1971). The Third Life of Per Smevik. Dillon Press. https://archive.org/details/thirdlifeofpersm0000rlva/page/n3/mode/2up

 

Rolvaag, O.E. (1931). Their Father’s God. University of Nebraska press. 

 

St. Olaf College. The history and heritage of St. Olaf College. https://wp.stolaf.edu/about/history/history/

 

Thorson, G. (1976). Ole Edvart Rolvaag: 1876-1931. MELUS, 3(3), 6-7. https://www.jstor.org/stable/763502

 

 

 

Poetry Book Anthology

 

With great pleasure, I want to share with you the new release of our poetry book anthology GLIMPSES OF OUR WORLD. It is bilingual (Greek and English) and the Hellenic Writers' Group of Washington DC (HWGW) poets and I (as editor and poet) published it in 2020. 

It began 2-3 years ago as an idea of mine. It was adopted with enthusiasm by the writers' group. Thirteen poets from HWGW engaged in this effort. We were fortunate to have Dr. Polyvia Parara from the Modern Greek Studies Program of the University of Maryland help edit the Greek poems, and we also received assistance from Magdalene Kantartzis, president of H.S. Prometheas. Through painstaking detail, we went through every poem and edited them. Several others have also aided us during the review process.

The topics of the poems varied from loss, to philosophy, to nature, to love. The flowers in the book cover represent the poets. The painting is by a good friend of mine, Maria Costas.

UPDATE

We were fortunate to arrange a GLIMPSES OF OUR WORLD poetry recital on April 3, 2021 through Zoom, and with the help of my son Anthony, who is the technical aide and event manager. I moderated the recital and Dr. Polyvia Parara of the Modern Greek Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, graciously accepted the invitation to present the introduction. She spoke in Greek about poetry and the Greek poet Cavafy. Most of the HWGW poets attended and recited 2-3 poems. A poem by Dr. Peter Paras, who passed away in 2020, was also recited by Antigone Petrides in his memory.

 

Click here to listen to the poetry recital from GLIMPSES OF OUR WORLD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5O6tW1RU9s

Click here to get a copy of GLIMPSES OF OUR WORLD: https://www.virtualbookworm.com/collections/poetry-short-stories-screenplays/products/glimpses-of-our-world-a-billingual-anthology-of-greek-american-poetry

G.K. Chesterton's Philosophy, Madness, and Humor in His Novels

 G.K. Chesterton’s Philosophy, Madness, and Humor in His Novels, The Napoleon of Notting Hill and Manalive: As Compared to Edwardian Culture

 

Ipatia Apostolides, B.A., M.F.A.

 

 

October 13, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Although Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in 1874 in Kensington, London, during the Victorian period, he was considered an Edwardian author. His extensive writing began during King Edward VII’s reign (1901-1910) and beyond. England’s society, influenced by King Edward VII’s modern views, experienced social change - from the prim and proper Victorian age to the looser Edwardian age - along with industrialization, science vs religion (Darwin’s evolution), and women suffragettes. These changes seemed to jar with Chesterton’s conservative and moral principles; he favored past traditions, family life, and marriage. According to Chesterton’s friend, Hilaire Belloc (1936), the Edwardian environment, in essence, was hostile to the free family, and this continued even up to the year of Chesterton’s death; during Chesterton’s time, England was both an aristocratic state and anti-Catholic, and it had more respect for societies of Protestant culture; it was also a commercial society where wealth was important.

Novelists during that time, like Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness), D.H. Lawrence (Sons & Lovers), E.M. Forster (Howard’s End), Ford Maddox Ford (The Good Soldier) and Virginia Woolf (The Voyage Out), wrote stories that depicted decadent Imperialistic England with its aristocrats and their scandals, and where adulterous affairs and suicide were common themes. However, Chesterton’s stories were a different breed. Dubbed “the prince of paradox,” Chesterton’s fiction, such as the novels Manalive (Chesterton, 1912) and The Napoleon of Notting Hill (Chesterton, 1904), was filled with paradox, satire, and humor. His family life and happy childhood played a large part in influencing the archetypal figures in his stories, and he essentially remained a child all his life, where a child may be open to possibilities and accept fantasy just as easily as reality. He even states this in his autobiography:

“I believe in prolonging childhood…and have partly

preserved out of childhood, a certain romance of receptiveness” –

(Chesterton, 1937).

 

This thinking could be seen as madness in an adult, and Chesterton, having applied both fantasy and reality in his stories, has often been referred to as mad. He was not mad, but an artist and a genius in his own right, drawing upon his solipsism to battle the evils of the modern Edwardian world.

This paper will first explore Chesterton’s life, philosophy, madness, and humor, and then address these concepts in his two novels, The Napoleon of Notting Hill and Manalive, and show how diametrically opposed his novels were to the Edwardian culture.,

 

History

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born May 29, 1874, in Kensington, London, to Marie Louise and Edward Chesterton. In his autobiography, Chesterton reflects on his mother’s side of the family, consisting of a French soldier and Scottish ancestors, while his father’s side was all English (Chesterton, 1937). He also refers to his childhood as mainly being happy, yet he and his brother Cecil argued constantly, and he lost his brother during the Great War; also, Chesterton’s little sister died after falling off a rocking horse when he was a child (p. 35). These tragic happenings in the family were noted in his autobiography, but did not appear to affect his humorous writing.

Chesterton didn’t learn to read until his ninth year (Kimball, 2011), yet he made up for it later in life, producing more than 100 books, 5,000 essays, and other literary works. As a child, he and his father, a successful real estate agent, performed fairy tales in a toy theater in their Kensington home, and this was a habit that he continued into adulthood (p. 29). These fairy tales provided a moral universe that stayed with him. 

This childlike way of thinking not only influenced his stories but also those around him. A year after The Napoleon of Notting Hill was published, Louis Napoleon Parker organized the Sherborne pageant, which was a show of opposition to “the utilitarian demands of commercial modernity” and was very similar to the pageant in the novel (Shallcross, 2020). Chesterton also applied this pageant theme years later to his metaphysical “pageant of creation” in his next book, The Man Who Was Thursday (Chesterton, 1908). 

After graduating from St. Paul’s School, Chesterton attended the UCL Slade School of Fine Art, the art school of University College London. Besides art, he also attended classes in literature but did not receive any degree (G.K. Chesterton, 2020). In 1895, at age 21, he worked for the publisher Redway for a year, and then worked for T. Fisher Unwin, another publisher, developing his journalistic skills. By 1900, he had made a name for himself in the literary world. Besides his journalism, he published two volumes of poems (Kimball, 2011). 

He married Frances Blogg in 1901; she was five years older than him and also an author, and she helped manage his life and writing. Considered an eccentric, on his wedding day, Chesterton took his bride to a dairy farm to drink milk, where he used to go with his mother, and then he stopped at a shop to buy a gun to protect his wife (Chesterton, 1937). However, she “couldn’t resign to the physical realities of marriage” (Kimball, 2011), and even though they both wanted children, they could not have any. He remained faithful to her the rest of his life.

In 1902, the Daily News hired him to write weekly opinion columns. In 1906, The Illustrated London News hired him, and he stayed there for thirty years, writing a weekly column. His prolific literary career included journalism, novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and apologetics. 

According to Kelly (1942), G.K. Chesterton’s intellectual and moral life directed much of his writing. In Fancies Versus Fads (1923), he states: “I thought that all the wit and wisdom of the world was banded together to slander and depress the world, and in becoming an optimist I had the feeling of becoming an outlaw” (as cited in Kelly, 1942). Here, he alludes to an important dichotomy that represents his life compared to the rest of Edwardian society; he was an optimist in a pessimistic society. 

 

Philosophy

During Chesterton’s attendance at London’s Slade School of Art, he struggled with solipsism, where his “eyes were turned inwards rather than outwards” and where he believed more in his mental pictures and reality than in Impressionism and rationalism, which represented the subjectivism of the world (Isley, 2010). He had difficulty assimilating the changes the external world had to offer him. This inward focus seemed to stay with him the rest of his life.

His philosophy, as explained by Kelly (1942) was shaped by: “Tradition, authority, the instincts of childhood, homely common sense, a vast reading, a sense of the individual value of man, a blessed understanding of the poor, an intelligence as fine, vigorous and balanced as any of his generation, sincerity, true humility…” (p.86). Chesterton also believed that humor came from having a sense of humility (Chesterton, 1937).

In addition, the exuberant Chesterton asserted that he was still a Victorian and supported its virtues: “a rich sense of romance, a passionate desire to make the love of man and woman once more what it was in Eden, a strong sense of the absolute necessity of some significance of life” (Eaker, 1959), and he believed that “mere existence is extraordinary enough to be exciting” (p.153).

Eaker (1959) also posits that Chesterton opposed the socialism of Shaw and Wells and the capitalism of modern industry. In its place, he offered the theory of “distributism” where each person is guaranteed rights of property and is given some ground “in which he can dig” (p.153). Chesterton’s preference for small land holdings, as compared to ample land that has absorbed the small land, appears in his novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill, where the newly appointed king wants to revert to old times and divide the large city into its original smaller boroughs.

Chesterton, a lay theologian, also studied Christianity and discovered that “it took account of all the elements of the problem, that it did not simplify artificially, that it found place for good and bad, for complexity and simplicity, for pessimism and optimism, for realism and idealism, for matter and spirit, for freedom and determination” (p.96). To him, Christianity was the “philosophy of sanity” (p.23). In 1922, he converted to the Catholic faith. His popular Father Brown short stories were about a Roman Catholic priest who solved mysteries as an amateur detective. According to Kelly (1942), there was no man of letters during his time who was so “consistently interested in fundamentals” (p.84).

 

Madness

While a student at the Slade School of Art, Chesterton experienced a “period of madness” (Schwartz, 1996), which appeared in his autobiography. He thought his breakdown represented a microcosm of “a greater cultural collapse” (p.23). As a consequence, his lifelong interest was the theme of madness and sanity, and according to Schwartz (1996), it became “the chief trope of his writing” (p.23). In Chesterton’s Autobiography (1937), sanity included three elements: externality, commonality, and Christian orthodoxy (cited in Isley, 2010). He also stated, 

“My madness, which was considerable, was wholly within. But that madness 

was more and more moving in the direction of some vague and visionary revolt 

against the prosaic flatness of a nineteenth century city and civilization” (p. 137).

 

 

Humor

English humor was a strong trait in Chesterton’s novels. Both Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens’s writing often used humor and were said to have influenced Chesterton (Chesterton, 1937). The prolific author and poet, Hilaire Belloc, wrote that English humor was a “by-product of the vivid, exaggerated, and therefore most powerful English visual imagination” (Belloc, 1936). In addition, he said this about Chesterton’s humor: “Here he was in the very centre of the national spirit. Here he was understood and accepted, as in no other thing” (p.375). 

In an essay on humor that was written three months before his death and posthumously published in 1964 by Dorothy Collins (Chesterton, 1964), Chesterton says this about humor:

“In any case, humour is the very foundation of our European literature, which alone is quite sufficiently a part of ourselves…a schoolboy can see it in such scenes of Aristophanes as that in which the dead man sits up in indignation at having to pay the toll of the Styx…” (Chesterton, 1964).

 

Humor is also tied to madness and fairy tales, where anything goes, and worlds are turned upside down. Chesterton was also called the “prince of paradox” because he showed his readers that life was full of contradictions that carried truths.

 

Edwardian Culture

Under Edward VII's reign, the Edwardian era was known for its richness and fashion. The English aristocrats held house parties and banquets. A significant number of Edwardian era novelists slowly abandoned the moral fabric of the conservative Victorian period and explored themes of Imperialism, cannibalism, sexuality, immorality, suicide, and death. Some Edwardian novels primarily focused on the lives of the wealthy, such as those seen in The Good Soldier and The Voyage Out. Howard’s End, on the other hand, also included the dichotomy of the rich and the poor. God didn’t appear to be a part of their lives, either, and He was rarely mentioned in Edwardian fiction. Humor was also not inherent in their writing, as in G.K. Chesterton’s writing. Chesterton’s vision was broader and more fundamental. Instead of focusing on the conforming views of modern Edwardian society, he chose the traditions of the past, like the pageants from the time of Chaucer (Chesterton, 1904), as well as his philosophy, Christianity, optimism, and humor. 

 

 

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

 

Chesterton’s first novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (Chesterton, 1904), is set in the 1980s in London. This futuristic tale is not a science fiction story, for it does not take into account any future technological changes, but is a satirical fantasia (Shallcross, 2020). It assumes that nothing has changed in England since 1904. It has been described by Eaker (1959) as Chesterton’s greatest fable, “where romance and glory are found in the tiniest village or the meanest suburb” (p.153).

Chesterton’s introduction gives us not only a philosophical foundation of the reason why nothing has changed but also presents it in an absurd, farcical manner that is humorous and entertaining at the same time. He believes that the “human race has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it until the end” (p. 13). In one of the games, “Cheat the Prophet,” the players listen to the prophets and then, when they die, bury them and “go and do something else” (p. 13). This ties into Kimball’s (2011) claim that Chesterton’s childhood of performing fairy tales in his home theater with his father lasted into adulthood. 

Everything eighty years later is the same as in 1904, except that people had “lost their faith in revolutions” but believed in “Evolution,” which was “Nature’s revolutions” (p. 22), and no one cared how a king was made. Anyone could become king, opening up a Pandora’s Box of endless possibilities. Who would the next king be? The ludicrous nature of this story continues with two government workers walking in front of a short government official in London, and their coattails appear to him as “two black dragons were looking at him with evil eyes” (p.24). This vivid imagery and metaphor are humorous and childlike at the same time. One would think this is a children’s book, but it is not. The short government official is Auberon Quin, who greatly likes humor. He is so short that he has often been mistaken for a boy whenever he entered a room of strangers. This reference to a boy’s height embodies the image of a child and suggests that this person not only looks like a child but thinks like a child. 

According to Isley (2010), one should look at the recurring images in his writing to understand how Chesterton thinks. The use of color is strongly evident in this novel. The brief entrance of Del Fuego, the proud ex-President of Nicaragua, introduced as a man dressed in a military uniform of brilliant green, who chose yellow and spilled blood on a rag to represent the yellow and red colors of his flag, caught my attention. The color green is also Innocent Smith’s clothing color in Chesterton’s Manalive (Chesterton, 1912). Green tends to symbolize nature and tranquility. Nicaragua had severed its ties with England since 1860, and it is now the 1980s. 

In his conversation with Barker, Del Fuego states, “But Nicaragua is not dead. Nicaragua is an idea” (p. 37), and Barker counters with, “We moderns believe in a great cosmopolitan civilization, one which shall include all the talents of the absorbed people-” (p. 40). This contradicts Chesterton’s philosophy of “small is better.” Del Fuego, who represents Chesterton, explains that the small nation loses its identity when nations want to unite and become one (Imperialism). After he makes his point, Del Fuego dies a short time later. 

Humor is rampant here. While capering about and “putting his head between his legs and making a noise like a cow” (p.57), Auberon Quin is chosen to be king, which is a ridiculous moment. How could anyone take this childlike man seriously? It’s as if Chesterton took the court jester and converted him to king. King Auberon says this about his thoughts on humor, “one should be funny in public, and solemn in private” (p. 67).

Yet, the fact that he becomes king is enough for people to follow what he decrees. This satirical jab at King Edward VII is too obvious to ignore. King Auberon speaks at The Society for the Recovery of London Antiquities about bringing “ a keener sense of local patriotism in the various municipalities of London” (p.75). King Auberon wants to divide London back into its ancient boroughs by forming The Charter of the Cities, which initially causes confusion. He wants each borough to have alarm bells (tocsins), city guards, and walls, and these changes include halberdiers who carry medieval poles. He also wants the provosts to wear colored uniforms for their borough. 

Ten years pass, and young Adam Wayne becomes the provost of Notting Hill, replacing the previous provost, a businessman, who had died. This causes problems because during these ten years, a road going through Notting Hill had been in the process of being designed, and now Adam Wayne does not want that road to pass through his borough. 

Auberon Quin had met Adam Wayne ten years earlier, when he was a child, thrusting his sword into his side. This childlike tendency to play with the sword is carried into adulthood. Now a young man and provost of his own borough, Adam Wayne takes his role seriously and carries a sword to defend his turf. He declares war upon those wanting to build the road through Notting Hill and goes from shopkeeper to shopkeeper in his borough, looking for help. The one who helps him is Turnbull, who owns the toy shop. He had been studying wars as a hobby, but the last one was the Nicaraguan War fifteen years ago. Trumbull told Wayne that there had been no wars since then because “The big Powers of the world, having swallowed up all the small ones, came to that confounded agreement, and there was no more war” (p. 157). Again, this references Imperialism, a recurring theme in this tale.

Adam Wayne makes Turnbull his Commander-in-Chief after he finds out that Turnbull had already worked on a plan to defend the town. This allegorical twist in the story is humorous. Turnbull pays forty children to come to the spot with hansom cabs to make a barricade, which will be helpful during the battle. The fact that children are used in this battle also provides a lighthearted aspect to the story.

Afterwards, Adam Wayne reflects on Turnbull and his philosophy: “Turnbull enjoyed it partly as a joke, even more perhaps as a reversion from the things he hated – modernity and monotony and civilization” (p. 162). This philosophy is similar to Chesterton’s; one might think that Chesterton identified with the toymaker. Another interesting angle is that Chesterton never had children, but he liked children very much. It was almost as if he were writing stories for the world's children, entertaining them as his father had spent time playing with him.

Like Napoleon, Adam Wayne fights to defend his borough of Notting Hill when other Provosts want to build the road through his part of town. His clever modes of battle include turning off the lamps at night so his enemies could not see; another one was to pour water over their heads from the water tower.

After many years, another battle occurs, and he and King Auberon, who abdicates his throne to join him, die. When they are resurrected, Auberon Quin reveals to Adam Wayne that his idea of dividing the city into boroughs was only a joke. But Wayne comes back and tells him:

“You and I, Auberon Quin, have both of us throughout our lives been again and again called mad. And we are mad. We are mad, because we are not two men but one man. We are mad, because we are two lobes of the same brain, and that brain has been cloven in two” (p. 299).

 

Wayne goes on to say that they are opposites, like a man and woman, aiming at the same thing. Each one was different and yet the same. Again, the reference to being mad is apparent here, and Chesterton is not afraid to say so. 

 

 

Manalive

 

Eight years later, Chesterton published another humorous novel, Manalive (Chesterton, 1912). The novel's first half, The Enigma of Smith, focuses on Innocent Smith. Inglewood, who is residing in Beacon House, a boarding house in London, recalls Smith during his conversation with two other male boarders, Michael Moon and Dr. Warner; Inglewood says “I was shocked to learn that poor Smith had gone off his head” and he goes on to validate this through a telegram he had received from Smith a year ago stating “Man found alive with two legs;” this is also confirmed by Dr. Warner’s statement “The message is clearly insane” because all men have two legs (Chesterton, 1912, p. 22). He also states, “insanity is generally uncurable” and is countered by Michael Moon’s response “So is sanity.” Chesterton is well known for quips like these.

Thus begins Chesterton’s identification with Smith’s alleged “insanity,” as Chesterton himself had had a bout of madness while in school (Schwartz, 1996). This recurring theme sets the stage for light-hearted reading that appears not to be taken seriously at first. Yet, plenty of thought-provoking ideas exist to consider, such as what constitutes madness and whether someone who thinks differently could be a criminal. 

As previously stated, Chesterton liked to use humor in his novels. In Manalive (Chesterton, 1912), Innocent Smith enters the boarding house on a windy day, chasing his hat up a tree, and then hanging from the tree like a monkey. This comical pose is only a glimpse of Chesterton’s humor in the story. Smith was also a massive man with “vast shoulders,” and a “prodigy of a big man in green,” and yet he can leap “the wall like a green grasshopper,” and this description of such a large man being so agile appears ridiculously funny. Large men don’t jump walls; they usually go around them or have someone help them up the wall. They don’t climb trees, because the branches might break from their heavy weight. So here, Chesterton defies the image of a “massive” man by coupling it with an athletic and agile man, thus producing humor. This “massive” man could very well be that of the author himself. Chesterton was known to be six feet four inches tall and weighed close to 300 pounds. He previously used this massive and agile image of himself in the character of Sunday in The Man Who Was Thursday (Chesterton, 1908). Could it be that what was impossible for him to do in real life, he imagined in his stories?

The name of “Innocent Smith” is also worthy of attention. It is nowhere close to a name reminiscent of madness, but rather that of a baby. The word “innocent” reminds one of a baby’s character, naïve and harmless, and the word “Smith” reminds one of a common name, in other words, nothing special. When Inglewood recognizes Smith and asks him, “Is your name Smith?” the response he gets makes him think of a “speech of a new-born babe accepting a name than of a grown-up man admitting one” (p. 43). 

Smith decides to become a lodger at the boarding house. Because of Smith’s unorthodox ways, he brings the boarders at Beacon House together. They feel they are celebrating their birthdays and go about in “high spirits,” elaborating on their hobbies. For years, the five boarders, three men and two women, had avoided each other, but when Smith arrived, “He somehow got the company to gather and even follow (though in derision) as children gather and follow a Punch and a Judy.” 

However, sinister thoughts intrude in this lighthearted story. When Inglewood sees Smith’s pistol on the attic floor, he asks him, “Are you afraid of burglars?” and Smith explains, “I deal life out of that.” This is one of the paradoxes explained later in the story; one appreciates life better by being fired upon and fearing for one’s life. After only ten hours of knowing Mary Gray, Smith proposes to her, and her wealthy friend Rosamund Hunt is frantic and seeks Michael Moon, an Irishman who also boards at Beacon House, for advice. She tells him “That maniac Smith wants to marry my friend Mary, and she- and she- doesn’t seem to mind” (p.92). 

In another section, Smith is called “balmy.” Yet, his boy-like actions influence the other boarders to open up and seek each other and to propose marriage, as seen when Michael Moon proposes to Rosamund by telling her, “We have had a little nap for five years or so, but now we’re going to get married, Rosamund” (p. 93). In addition, Arthur Inglewood and Diane Duke are considering marriage.

Humor and childlike happiness set in when the boarders Michael Moon, Rosamund Hunt, the landlady Diane Duke, and Arthur Inglewood hold hands and dance around Dr. Herbert Warner as he returns to the boarding house. Dr. Warner shouts at Inglewood, “Are you mad?” (p.106). He has arrived with a criminologist from America, Dr. Pym, to prove Innocent Smith’s crimes of theft, murder, and bigamy, among other things. 

The story shifts to a darker mood as Dr. Warner searches for Smith in the boarding house. Smith fires a shot at him, and Dr. Warner rushes back outside, shrieking, “Stop that murderer there!”(p.113), and this is followed by two shots that pierce his hat. Smith comes outside holding the smoking pistol, and laughing, surrenders it to his friend Inglewood. Even this scene brings humor to something that could be dark. This is probably the strangest behavior of Smith’s that would be considered insane from an adult perspective, yet when looked at from the perspective of a child firing shots with a toy gun, it appears harmless. 

The second half of the novel “The Explanations of Innocent Smith” is spent on Dr. Warner and Dr. Pym reading the evidence from handwritten notes of people who knew Innocent Smith in the past to prove their case that he was a criminal. It is allegorical because it tells Innocent Smith’s story within this story. It is also an opportunity for his defense.

Without defending his actions, like shooting his gun at people, Smith remains mostly in the background, listening, and the two doctors move the story forward. Michael Moon realizes that Innocent Smith has not escaped, and that he is innocent and “an allegorical practical joker” who uses his body to show his trust and innocence by not escaping. Innocent Smith is an apt title for the main character. 

In Innocent Smith’s defense, a document written and signed by the Warden of Brakespeare College and Innocent Smith, reveals that Smith, as an undergraduate at Brakespeare College, after having attended Dr. Eames’ lecture, and after having done pistol practice and fencing, was feeling sullen afterwards. He was thinking, “existence is really rotten,” and decided to visit his master and friend, Dr. Emerson Eames, the Warden at Brakespeare College, who liked to stay up late at night. When he visits Dr. Eames, he states, “And knowing you were the greatest living authority on pessimist thinkers,” but he is interrupted by Dr. Eames with “all thinkers are pessimists” (p. 209). Smith bangs his fist on the table and says, “Oh, hang the world!” and Dr. Eames goes on to say this about the world: 

“Let’s give it a bad name first,” said the Professor calmly, “and then hang it. 

A puppy with hydrophobia would probably struggle for life while we killed it. 

but if we were kind we should kill it. So an omniscient god would put us out of 

our pain. He would strike us dead” (p. 211).

 

Smith takes his words literally and picks up his pistol and aims it at him. He claims he wants to put him out of his misery, just like the puppy, but Dr. Eames shouts, “Put that thing down,” and sprints for the window and balcony. He leaps from there and “hangs” on a buttress. This is a hilarious scene, but at the same time, serious. With so many words, Dr. Eames tells Smith that he wants to live. But Smith wants him to confess that there is a god and other things first, and then he fires shots around him. Dr. Eames complies. Smith confesses to him afterwards that he had to do it, to prove him wrong, or to die. He saves the remaining shots and states, “I mean to keep those bullets for remaining pessimists” (p. 225). Smith continues:

            “I am going to hold the pistol to the Modern Man. 

But I shall not use it to kill him – only to bring him life” (p. 226)

 

This is clearly a message to the pessimistic world that Chesterton was living in at that time. His “pistol,” aimed at the modern world, symbolized his writing. According to Arthur Inglewood, who is defending Smith, Dr. Warner was shot at by Smith because when Smith asked him about his birthday, he had replied that he didn’t see that “birth was anything to rejoice about” (p.233). Smith felt compelled to use his gun the way he did with Dr. Eames, pointing it harmlessly at Dr. Warner but sending a message, loud and clear.

As the two doctors read each letter or document against Innocent Smith, they also listened to the papers for Smith’s defense, and they found out that Innocent Smith was quite innocent after all. He has never murdered anyone or stolen anything. When Rosamund Hunt tries to talk Mary Gray out of going away with Innocent Smith, Mary Gray does not change her mind. Dr. Pym also tries to convince Mary Gray about Innocent Smith by saying, “to begin with,” he said, “this man Smith is constantly attempting murder. The Warden of Brakespeare College-” and is interrupted by Mary Gray, who says, “I know” (p. 131). After Rosamund Hunt calls Innocent Smith “a wicked man,” Mary Gray laughs and replies, “He is really rather naughty sometimes” (p. 133). The other boarders are unaware that Mary Gray continually defends Innocent Smith because he is her husband. It is later discovered that Mary Gray is Innocent Smith’s wife, and she happens to be the same woman he marries each time. They had arranged to meet at different places and to remarry. Therefore, no bigamy has occurred.

Reading this allegorical story is like watching a play in a toy theater where adults who avoided each other for years at Beacon House were “given permission” by Innocent Smith to become free, act like children, and thus, were allowed to interact, jump, play, dance, and be merry. It also allowed the reader to live vicariously through these characters and decide whether Innocent Smith was truly “innocent.”

 

 

Conclusion

In essence, what people see before them is not what they think they see, and Chesterton proves this in his fiction. Chesterton’s childlike humor in his fiction represents Chesterton himself; it is a continual breath of fresh air in his two novels, The Napoleon of Notting Hill and Manalive. He uses humor, madness, paradox, and allegories in his books to prove or disprove a point. He also uses color and art to add vivid images to his scenes. In addition, some of his fiction reads like a mystery, where the detective finds evidence to prove or not prove a crime, as in Manalive. 

Chesterton was also dogmatic and believed in God, marriage, and family. When Innocent Smith was accused of bigamy in Manalive, it is revealed that he varied his living abode and remarried his wife several times instead of being a philanderer. He was perfectly happy being married to the same woman all these years. 

Yet, in Chesterton’s fiction, he never really probes deeply into the human mind (except for bouts of madness in his characters) or complex human relations as did the other Edwardian novelists. He never explores romance and sexuality as does Paul Morel in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, or writes about coming of age and finding love, as did Rachel in Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out. His fiction, with its broad strokes of colorful images, childlike characters, mad adults, philosophical themes, and paradoxes and allegories, was meant to challenge the popular social change sweeping England. He wanted to challenge the “Modern Man” as did Innocent Smith, in seeing life differently, where money, their new god, couldn’t buy everything. By doing this, he hoped to offer them an alternative, life-sustaining freedom – to live happily and as freely as a child.

 

References

 

 

Belloc, H. (1936). G.K. Chesterton and modern England. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 25(99), 369-378. http://www.jstor.com/stable/30097363

 

Chesterton, G.K. (1937). Autobiography. Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.171708/page/n5/mode/1up

 

Chesterton, G.K. (1964). Humor. In D. Collins (Ed.) The Spice of Life and Other Essays. Beaconsfield.

 

Chesterton, G.K. (1912). Manalive. Thomas Nelson and Sons. https://ia802708.us.archive.org/18/items/manalive00chesiala/manalive00chesiala.pdf

 

 

Chesterton, G.K. (1908). The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. Pantianos Classics.

 

 

Chesterton, G.K. (1904). The Napoleon of Notting Hill. John Lane. https://ia800207.us.archive.org/30/items/cu31924013462936/cu31924013462936.pdf

 

Eaker, J.G. (1959). G.K. Chesterton among the moderns. The Georgia Review, 13(2), 152-160. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41398145

 

G.K. Chesterton. (2020, October 10). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

 

Isley, W.L. (2010). Mental pictures: Shapes and colors in the thought of G.K. Chesterton. Inklings Forever, 7(9), 1-9. https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol7/iss1/9

 

Kelly, H. (1942). G.K. Chesterton: His philosophy of life. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 31(121), 83-97. http://www.jstor.com/stable/30098025

 

Kimball, R. (2011). G.K. Chesterton: master of rejuvenation. The New Criterion, 26(32), 26-32.  http://content.ebscohost.com/ContentServer.asp?T=P&P=AN&K=66893912&S=R&D=a9h&EbscoContent=dGJyMNHX8kSeqLQ40dvuOLCmsEieqK9Sr6e4S7aWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGus0ivrrRRuePfgeyx43zx1ex99QAA

 

Schwartz, A. (1996) G.K.C.’s methodical madness: Sanity and social control in Chesterton. Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 49(1), 23-40. 

DOI: 10.5840/renascence199649120

 

Shallcross, M. (2020). The pomp of obliteration: G.K. Chesterton and the Edwardian pageant revival. In A. Bartie, L. Fleming, M Freeman, A. Hutton, & P. Readman (Eds.), Restaging the Past: Historical Pageants, Culture and Society in Modern Britain (pp.80-107). UCL Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv13xprsc.