Brief note: A Christian with Two Wives

The Christian Socialist clergyman and satirist James Dennis Hird got into some hot water over A Christian with Two Wives (1896), a novel (for some definition of "novel") that understandably failed to impress the Church of England hierarchy.  Hird's novel mostly falls into the relatively capacious category of late-Victorian "faith and doubt" fiction: its viewpoint character, Wentworth Manley ("manly," get it?) is a disaffected Anglican clergyman who has fallen into the business because he inherited his father's living, even though on taking up his duties, "his sensations resembled those of a man who should become conscious that he was in a coffin" (17).  While by no means an intellectual, Manley understands the basic currents of German biblical scholarship, and does not believe in Biblical inspiration (of any sort), the miracles, etc., etc., etc.  To make matters worse, he is surrounded by odious Christian hypocrites, ranging from his half-sister (whom the novel diagnoses as suffering from a bad case of sexual frustration) to the sanctimonious Mr. Skipworth (who turns out to be sexually harassing his servants).  Life, in other words, is bad.  But it's even worse for young Mary Skinner, who is ostracized after her lover impregnates her.  There is an alternative, however, in the form of Mr. George Bretton and his two wives, Raven and Lily, whom he purchased in a Cairo slave market and converted to Christianity.  As the initials may hint to the reader, Raven and Lily are stand-ins for Rachel and Leah; if you fail to notice this on your own, the novel cheerfully points it out to you.  Bretton's life with Raven, Lily, their six children (another Rachel/Leah parallel), and various cast-off women whom they have rescued is a Christian Socialist utopia, a veritable Eden within the otherwise fallen landscape of industrial Britain (the gorgeous garden should be a clue).   

In fact, Bretton is quite clear that he is a devout, if heterodox, believer, someone who insists that "the Bible is the guide of life in all things" (79).  What he isn't, of course, is an Establishment Christian.  Bretton's back-to-the-Bible position is, also of course, isomorphic with standard-issue Victorian Evangelical discourse, which fuels much of the novel's polemical energy.  (He's all about the sola scriptura, although somewhat hand-wavily so.) Once we get into the second half of the novel, in which Manley and Bretton chat, Hird turns the format of the controversial novel to heterodox ends: the two men exchange prooftexts, Bretton argues that a literal reading of the Bible supports a pro-polygamy interpretation, and Manley's objections are all overturned with miraculous ease.  In particular, Bretton insists that it is important for Christians to reinstate a non-allegorical reading of the Song of Songs as a key aspect of faith: by celebrating the Bible's endorsement of "the ecstatic embrace of two young lovers" (123), Bretton claims, Christians can liberate themselves from their oppressive attitudes to sexuality (female sexuality in particular).  Thus, Mary, whose name also seems to be pertinent, is no sinner in this line of argument, but someone who has been horribly treated by the powers that be; by novel's end, she has accepted Bretton's offer of help.  Meanwhile, Manley's religious doubts are alleviated by his conversation with Bretton, and--now converted to Bretton's brand of belief--he takes off at the end to Cairo.

Beyond the novel's "Song of Songs, yay!" approach to things, there are a couple more things of interest.  One is the novel's association of Christian Socialism with benevolent patriarchy.  For all that Bretton and his little society live what appear to be an egalitarian lifestyle, the endeavor is Bretton's project, the wives start out as literally Bretton's property, and Bretton's voice is the only one we really get to hear.  Bretton educates his wives into Christianity, and in turn his wives appear to submit wholeheartedly to his wishes.  By the same token, much of what evil befalls the other characters derives from behavior inspired by "bad" patriarchs, like Skipworth.  The second has to do with Bretton's engagement with the Middle East.  Bretton explicitly parallels the Cairo slave market, the Bristol slave trade, and the British marriage market--"our modern method of selling them secretly to any leprous old lecher" (69)--and this rhetorical slippage enables him to cast himself as both a non-hypocrite and a liberator.   Moreover, as a member of the "chosen race" (68) (whether ironically or not), Bretton understands his purchase of the two girls as a civilizing act: he teaches them to semi-assimilate (even though, in Britain, they cannot socialize with anyone outside their utopian space) and to interpret their lives through the lens of the Old Testament.  At one point, Bretton tells Manley, Raven and Lily suggested that he ought to father more children with "two lovely Nubians" (115-16)--another link to the Song of Songs, but one that here raises some unanswered questions about Hird's understanding of Christian Socialist masculinity.  On the one hand, his wives propose it (nobody owns anyone's body); on the other, his wives themselves apparently have no other sexual outlets (in fact, even a "fallen woman" like Mary is monogamously in love); on a third, Hird seems to have a vague "universal brotherhood through eroticism" notion going on, but with no attention to any actual power dynamics on the ground. 

Comments

[Kaleberg]

This one sounds hard to read without giggling. I'm giggling just reading your synopsis. I ask you, a trained, professional scholar, did you giggle when reading this tale? Really?