Previews

From Pen-Wielding Papist: Transitional English Catholicism in Josephine Ward’s One Poor Scruple

(To be published in the StAR)

Space, as a defining attribute, is a vital aspect of the Catholic aesthetic issue, as has been demonstrated repeatedly. Ruskin pits a de-Catholicized English cathedral against St. Mark’s in Venice. Brontë’s Lucy Snowe leaves the safety of Protestant England to traverse the dangerous realm of a Catholic continent. Stoker’s novel spans continents in a complicated and sometimes contradictory web of national or cultural identify, supernatural empowerment, and religious affiliation. Within Mrs. Ward’s novel, the historic situation of English Catholicism is embodied in the fictional Skipton-le-Grange, the 400-year home of the Riversdale family. The Catholic characters of the One Poor Scruple gravitate towards and about Skipton, symbolically identifying it as a place of religious pilgrimage. This “Home of the Persecuted” is separated from the rest of England. The land, the house, and the people are essentially defined by their faith in both its ritualistic and its historical sense: “The persecuted had come, in many cases, to idealise the enforced seclusion and inaction of penal days.” English Catholics remain “so secluded and so inactive” and are “satisfied” in this situation, much to the frustration of pro-active and assertive converts of the period. This problem is solved, Ward suggests, by the rising generation who, unencumbered by a personal remembrance of pre-Emancipation struggles, are anything but socially secluded; yet the residual sense of exile within the English Catholic community remains. Cut off geographically from the center of their own religion, these are naturalized outsiders who problematically inhabit a national scene.

From A Bite of Theology: The Catholic Aesthetic and Bram Stoker's Dracula

(To be published in the StAR)

The use of the crucifix and the consecrated host in particular is deeply bound up with the theoretical basis of the vampire’s habits of consumption. Blood is the source and summit of Dracula’s (and all other vampire’s) existence: “he cannot flourish without the diet; he eat not as others [sic].” Stoker never clearly defines the process by which certain individuals are transformed into vampires and others are not, but blood remains as the most relevant attribute of vampiric existence. Ironically, the clearest presentation of the novel’s underlying sanguivorous theory is exemplified in a character who is not technically a vampire: Renfield, Dracula’s self-proclaimed disciple. Renfield, a lunatic in the asylum over which Dr. John Seward, of the anti-vampiric force, presides, interests Seward early in the novel because of the oddity of his maniacal practices, particularly the collection and consumption of flies, the collection of spiders to which he feeds the flies, and birds to which he feeds the spiders. Renfield eventually begs for a kitten to “feed—and feed—and feed!” At times Renfield consumes his various pets—including the birds—raw. This “zoophagous (life-eating) maniac” wants to “absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way”. Dracula promises him flies, moths, rats, dogs and cats—“All these lives will I give you, ay, and many more and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!” The lunatic looks to the vampire with a sense of assurance of “some higher life” through the consumption of “lives! all red blood, with years of life in it”.

From The Triumph of Magdalen Montague

(To be published in Dappled Things)

It was a long walk and often puzzling in the unremitting darkness. Many of the streets have been summarily closed by the Luftwaffe. The young man knew the city well, so we threaded our way through back alleys as a rat weaves through the sewer, possessed with a sort of second sight, and guided by the inner promptings of an unseen instinct. 

We were stopped twice, each time by gruff men with watchful eyes and faces strained by night upon night of such lonely watches. London is full of such faces—soldiers, nurses, politicians, and refugees. There are no other classes of people in this changed world. 

The city is pervaded by an unearthly quiet. The darkness, sometimes interrupted by the pale beam of regulated and downcast lights, impresses upon each building the aura of grim expectancy. Even the starlight has turned menacing, as it may expose the cloaked security of the besieged city. Each step echoes with horrible resonance in the pregnant silence. The streets are haunted by the ghosts that will be tomorrow. The heaviness of fear intensifies as the minutes pass into hours of darkness. London stands, most vulnerable in sleep, and therefore most watchful of cities in the nighttime of war.

From The Game of Sean McTeague

(To be published in Dappled Things)

Sean McTeague was the sort of fellow who used righteous anger for everyday occasions. Had he lived in epic times, Sean McTeague certainly would have been an epic hero...or perhaps an epic villain. The trouble with epic times is that the difference between heroes and villains is sometimes rather vague. Take Achilles, for example—a more sorry excuse for a human being has never lived. One treasures the knowledge of his heel and waits with bated breath for the moment when someone will have the inspiration to tap the blighter’s hamstring. 

Sean McTeague knew nothing of Achilles beyond Achilles Clark who owned The Blue Boar. No one knew why it was called The Blue Boar, and no one knew why its owner was named Achilles. But everyone knew that Sean McTeague had broken many chairs and shattered the big mirror behind the bar one Saturday night because Achilles Clark had laughed at the Protestant minister. The Protestant minister had not minded, and the Protestants of the parish had not minded, and Achilles Clark had not minded…at least, not until Sean McTeague had come into The Blue Boar with all the energy of the avenging angel to right the slight against Mr. Josiah Phiddlegree.