Thomas Wingfold, Curate. Chapters 1 - 10
THOMAS WINGFOLD: CHAPTERS 1 - 10
This novel was published in 1876, about midway through George MacDonald’s novel writing career. He thought it was his best to date, having achieved a way to express and explore in imaginative literature his deepest convictions as to how individuals come into a vital relationship with God and grow spiritually. He also incorporates in the novel his responses to the main issues of the time: the historicity of the miracles, the authority of the biblical text, and the validity of Darwinian evolution.
In Chapter One we are introduced to Helen Lingard. She has just finished reading a novel and is annoyed by the way the author ends it; however, her annoyance opens a new and very necessary phase in her life: it prompts her to begin to think. Thinking–we are told–is something that she has not yet begun to do. “She was even on the borders of making the unpleasant discovery that the business of life . . . for every man and woman born into the blindness of the planet, is to discover. . . .”
“Discover what?” a reader must ask; why doesn’t GMD say? Discovery is the central concern of the novel, which explores the mental processes by which an individual discovers for oneself what life is really about.
We are then introduced to Thomas Wingfold, a perfunctory cleric in the Church of England, whose problem is similar to Helen’s: “The church was to him an ancient institution of such approved respectability that it was able to communicate it, possessing emoluments, and requiring observances . . . . He did not concern himself with the meaning of life, or his position in it, taking everything with “a cold, hopeless kind of acceptance. . . .” He does not bother to think about life.
IN OUR WORLD TODAY, HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE LIKE HELEN AND WINGFOLD IN THAT THEY FAIL TO THINK ABOUT THE MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE? WHY IS IT SO?
George Bascombe, tall, handsome, and self-satisfied, is one who is convinced he knows in a negative way what life is about. His mission is to destroy people’s illusions, the greatest of which is that Christianity is true. Wingfold is jolted out of his complacency by the challenge Bascomb offers him: “Tell me honestly–do you believe one word of all that?” that is, all that the Church stands for.
MacDonald remarks that Bascomb “was a peculiar development of the present century.” He “had persuaded himself. . . that he was one of the prophets of a new order of things.” MacDonald no doubt had in mind the contemporary interest in Darwinism (the Origin of the Species had been published some twenty years before) and the rise of German higher criticism of the Biblical text, which worked to undermine its authority. But such people are contemporary today as well.
WHY DO YOU THINK SUCH PEOPLE FEEL THIS WAY? WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS THEIR MOTIVATION?
Later recalling his encounter with Bascomb, Wingfold is dismayed with himself: he had not been “able to utter the simple assertion that he did believe the things which, as the mouth-piece of the church, he had been speaking in the name of the truth every Sunday. . . . why could he not say he believed them?” Judged by worldly standards, Wingfold appears less than admirable in comparison with Bascome. But certain traits of his character serve to explain his manner of response.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY THESE TRAITS ARE? ARE THEY IN HARMONY WITH CHRISTIAN VALUES?
Mrs Ramshorn, Helen’s aunt with whom she lives, is described as a person who, in spite of her wealth and social standing, is aggrieved and discontented with life. She is concerned for her niece Helen, and desires to see her comfortably married. Her choice for Helen’s hand is her nephew, Bascomb, and it is she that has arranged the dinner at which Wingfold and Bascomb meet. She invited Wingfold “partly with design that he should act as a foil to her nephew, partly in order to do her duty by the church.”
Out walking together through the meadow one morning, Bascomb and Helen come upon two dwarfs, a father and daughter. Repulsed by their deformities, he becomes eloquent on the need not to let such babies live; today he would be a strong advocate for the abortion of all such. They attend perfunctorily a church service that does nothing to urge them to a closer walk with God, and the next morning Bascombe leaves for London, enchanted with Helen. Helen is left with a favorable impression of him, but the only person she is strongly attached to is her brother Leopold.
Note: Please feel free to respond to my questions, or to express whatever thought the text may provoke in you. I very much miss seeing each of you, and I know you miss being with the group of friends. But we can interact with each other simply by clicking the comment image below and typing in our thoughts.
This novel was published in 1876, about midway through George MacDonald’s novel writing career. He thought it was his best to date, having achieved a way to express and explore in imaginative literature his deepest convictions as to how individuals come into a vital relationship with God and grow spiritually. He also incorporates in the novel his responses to the main issues of the time: the historicity of the miracles, the authority of the biblical text, and the validity of Darwinian evolution.
In Chapter One we are introduced to Helen Lingard. She has just finished reading a novel and is annoyed by the way the author ends it; however, her annoyance opens a new and very necessary phase in her life: it prompts her to begin to think. Thinking–we are told–is something that she has not yet begun to do. “She was even on the borders of making the unpleasant discovery that the business of life . . . for every man and woman born into the blindness of the planet, is to discover. . . .”
“Discover what?” a reader must ask; why doesn’t GMD say? Discovery is the central concern of the novel, which explores the mental processes by which an individual discovers for oneself what life is really about.
We are then introduced to Thomas Wingfold, a perfunctory cleric in the Church of England, whose problem is similar to Helen’s: “The church was to him an ancient institution of such approved respectability that it was able to communicate it, possessing emoluments, and requiring observances . . . . He did not concern himself with the meaning of life, or his position in it, taking everything with “a cold, hopeless kind of acceptance. . . .” He does not bother to think about life.
IN OUR WORLD TODAY, HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE LIKE HELEN AND WINGFOLD IN THAT THEY FAIL TO THINK ABOUT THE MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE? WHY IS IT SO?
George Bascombe, tall, handsome, and self-satisfied, is one who is convinced he knows in a negative way what life is about. His mission is to destroy people’s illusions, the greatest of which is that Christianity is true. Wingfold is jolted out of his complacency by the challenge Bascomb offers him: “Tell me honestly–do you believe one word of all that?” that is, all that the Church stands for.
MacDonald remarks that Bascomb “was a peculiar development of the present century.” He “had persuaded himself. . . that he was one of the prophets of a new order of things.” MacDonald no doubt had in mind the contemporary interest in Darwinism (the Origin of the Species had been published some twenty years before) and the rise of German higher criticism of the Biblical text, which worked to undermine its authority. But such people are contemporary today as well.
WHY DO YOU THINK SUCH PEOPLE FEEL THIS WAY? WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS THEIR MOTIVATION?
Later recalling his encounter with Bascomb, Wingfold is dismayed with himself: he had not been “able to utter the simple assertion that he did believe the things which, as the mouth-piece of the church, he had been speaking in the name of the truth every Sunday. . . . why could he not say he believed them?” Judged by worldly standards, Wingfold appears less than admirable in comparison with Bascome. But certain traits of his character serve to explain his manner of response.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY THESE TRAITS ARE? ARE THEY IN HARMONY WITH CHRISTIAN VALUES?
Mrs Ramshorn, Helen’s aunt with whom she lives, is described as a person who, in spite of her wealth and social standing, is aggrieved and discontented with life. She is concerned for her niece Helen, and desires to see her comfortably married. Her choice for Helen’s hand is her nephew, Bascomb, and it is she that has arranged the dinner at which Wingfold and Bascomb meet. She invited Wingfold “partly with design that he should act as a foil to her nephew, partly in order to do her duty by the church.”
Out walking together through the meadow one morning, Bascomb and Helen come upon two dwarfs, a father and daughter. Repulsed by their deformities, he becomes eloquent on the need not to let such babies live; today he would be a strong advocate for the abortion of all such. They attend perfunctorily a church service that does nothing to urge them to a closer walk with God, and the next morning Bascombe leaves for London, enchanted with Helen. Helen is left with a favorable impression of him, but the only person she is strongly attached to is her brother Leopold.
Note: Please feel free to respond to my questions, or to express whatever thought the text may provoke in you. I very much miss seeing each of you, and I know you miss being with the group of friends. But we can interact with each other simply by clicking the comment image below and typing in our thoughts.
Comments
Pat C.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY THESE TRAITS ARE? ARE THEY IN HARMONY WITH CHRISTIAN VALUES?"
Wingfold is not as yet, as we might say in our time, "WOKE." This is in part because he has an accepting nature, which is perhaps a cousin to contentment but in the end a counterfeit. If we are made in the image of God, than our surface ought to be bright enough to reflect His goodness into this world. Having no quarrel with life in a fallen world is much closer to fatalism than contentment. Contentment, at least as I am using the word, sees hears & feels a thing clearly and accepts it by choice not by default or laziness. I think, if I understand MacDonald, he would not say that Wingfold's nature is "out of harmony" with Christian values; rather that his nature is the seed, the immature starting place, of what - with soil and water and warmth - can grow into full-bodied and lively contentment in the midst of joy and hardship in this world.