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So, should Christians vote for Christian parties? Here’s why not…

Martin Turner — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:51:46 +0000

Former vicar in Hyndburn MP bid — Lancashire Evening Post
Two Christian parties stood on the same ticket at the recent Euro elections, and now a former Vicar is planning to stand on a Christian ticket in Hyndburn, Lancashire. In these times of national distrust of politicians (more so even than usual), doesn’t the existence of Christian parties offer hope and an alternative to traditional politics? And, as a protest vote, it is surely better than voting BNP? Here’s why I think not.

1 Christian parties do not stay Christian for long
We don’t have a history of Christian parties in Britain, but they have lots of them in mainland Europe. The problem is, that it’s fairly hard to identify what the ‘Christian’ component of the Christian Democrats is. This is a problem which has particularly taxed the Dutch, whose own struggles with ‘Christian’ parties that were no longer Christian enough, resulted in a baffling 23 distinct Christian parties during the last hundred or so years. A fascinating timeline of their mergers, splits and acquisitions is presented in this Wikipedia article. Christianity grew up as a counter-culture within the Roman state, and flourished despite intense persecution for around 300 years. It was Constantine, the only emperor to be proclaimed in Britain, who proclaimed toleration for Christians in 313 AD, followed later by the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the empire. We can argue backwards and forwards about the real impact of this, but, certainly, by the fall of the Roman empire, a great many practices, symbols and philosophies from the pagan world had been adopted into Christianity, and the track record of supposedly Christian emperors was, to say the least, patchy, when it came to implementing the teaching of Jesus Christ.

Clearly, in the modern world, no Christian party is going to advocate persecution of non-Christian minorities, or crusades to recover lost ‘Christian’ lands, but the history of a too-close union between Christianity and political power is that the, quite soon, Christian regimes and Christian parties lose the Christian distinctive, and become just like other regimes and other parties. For Christians — such as myself — this creates huge problems. Get into any argument with atheists about the existence of God, and they are certain to bring up the Crusades and the Inquisition as examples of the malign impact of religion on the world. The solution to this problem is to challenge them to identify exactly how the philosophy and practices of the Crusades and the Inquisition were derived from the teachings of Jesus. In fact, they derived almost exclusively from the philosophy and practices of the Roman empire. But, at this point, we, as Christians, need to step away, and accept that applying the label ‘Christian’ to really any brand of politics creates enormous risks for the faith itself.

Over the last years, we have seen the spectacle of American presidential candidates scrabbling to present how ‘Christian’ they are. But, with the exception of Jimmy Carter (and, we hope, Obama), their actions once inside the White House have shown no particular Christian influence. If the only purpose of having ‘Christian’ parties is to bring out a captive vote, which can then be treated in a cavalier fashion, just as Tony Blair was able to treat the left-wing vote, then we would be better off without such parties.

2 Christians are called to be involved in mainstream society
Jesus called his followers to be salt and light in society. Through the pages of the New Testament, we see the early Christians engaged in all manner of ordinary, secular jobs. One of them was a city administrator. At no point do any of the New Testament writers suggest that Christians should distance themselves from secular politics. Going a little further back, the book of Daniel presents a clear picture of godly action by a civil servant and later prime minister in a thoroughly pagan regime.
The moment that we create Christian parties, we put a dilemma before Christian voters: should we vote for the best candidate, or should we vote for the Christian party. In some cases we may even be faced with the challenge of voting for the best candidate who is a Christian in a mainstream party, or the Christian party candidate.
Great Christian politicians such as Gladstone and Wilberforce were Christians active in ordinary mainstream parties. Their influence was much greater because they were involved in regular politics.
At the European elections, which traditionally favour minor parties, less than a quarter of a million people voted for the Christian parties, and their average vote was just 1.64%. But even if all regular church-goers had voted for them, they would not have attracted more than 10% of the vote. Of course, with a low turn-out, as we saw for the last election, 10% of the total electorate, if every church-goer voted, would be 20% of the actual vote — enough to put a Christian MEP into every region, but nowhere near enough to make those MEPs any more than an irritation, in the way of UKIP or the BNP.
For Christian politicians to have an impact on the society in which they live, they need to work with non-Christians. Which, of course, is exactly the way of things in business, the public sector, and most of the voluntary sector. And that means being in parties made up of many kinds of people.

3 Protest votes of any kind do not work
And that brings me to my third point. Everyone likes to make a protest, and the protest vote has a long tradition in British democracy. But not a very healthy tradition. Labour voters protested in their droves at the Euro election by simply not bothering to vote. The result? Two BNP MEPs were elected. And, rather worse for Christians, these BNP MEPs actually claim to speak for Christians. As I have pointed out in a previous article, they have no credentials for doing so, and they have no track record which would support it. However, the result of all the protest voting that took place is that the BNP got seats, whereas the Christian parties got none. I struggle to believe that all the people who voted for non-mainstream parties were happy to see the BNP elected. Nonetheless, the English Democrats, the Christian parties, and Socialist Labour were each worth an average of around one and a half percent, with the others all together probably worth another couple of percent between them. Even if these votes had been evenly distributed across the three mainstream parties, it would have been enough to keep the BNP out.

I am, personally, a committed Christian, and I joined a mainstream political party because I believe that faith does matter in politics. I certainly wouldn’t agree with anyone who suggests that you should keep religion out of politics. This is a frankly baffling and illogical perspective: why should we arbitrarily reject one part of our society from having a role in our common life. We might as well suggest that scientists should keep out of politics, or musicians, or dog-owners, or people who drive particular kinds of motor-cars, or people who do not drive at all. But, just as I would advise against a ‘Science party’, or a ‘Musicians’ party’, or any other kind of single-issue or special-interest party, I would advise Christians who want to have an impact through the democratic process against Christian parties. No party can possibly have a monopoly on Christians, nor can any party guarantee its future to the extent that it can be sure it will always behave in a scrupulously Christian way. History — and mainland European politics — is littered with too many examples of people who believed passionately in what they were doing, but were also entirely wrong.

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Bus atheism revisited

Martin Turner — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:02:32 +0000

As I predicted, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that the bus advertising ‘there’s probably no God…’ is an expression of an advertiser’s opinion, and not capable of objective substantiation. Good for them. Any other ruling would have put bus advertising for Alpha Courses and other Christian events into danger, and would have set us on a course of censorship of freedom of thought which would have been far worse for all concerned than any offence caused by the advertisements.

But the ruling itself is, in a philosophical sense, a slap in the face for the advertisers. The ASA has effectively ruled that the claim is unfalsifiable, and therefore empirically meaningless. Such a ruling wouldn’t bother Christians too much, since they (that is, we) argue that empiricism is an insufficient tool for exploring the existence of God. But for the likes of Richard Dawkins, who have built their public personas on arguing that empirical evidence (remember that Doctor Who? episode?) is the measuring rod, the bus is travelling in the wrong direction.

I did urge that Christians should not contact the ASA to complain. But I knew that Stephen Green of Christian Voice would. I suspect the Dawkins-ites were rather counting on it, and were counting on the ASA ruling against the complaint.

Of more interest is Ron Heather’s decision to refuse to drive a bus with the advertisement on it. This has prompted a storm of bloggers and commentators arguing that he should have no right to refuse, and that advertisers should be allowed to put anything they like on buses, with no come back. Actually, this indicates a lamentable lack of understanding of how bus advertising works. CBS Outdoor, who sell the majority of the UK’s bus advertising, will send you quite a long list of things you can’t put on your advertisements. This includes lingerie, and any writing that looks like graffiti (I suspect because bus companies are worried it might prompt vandalism).

But Ron Heather’s decision to risk his job for the sake of a principle has gained grudging respect from most people. Whether or not you agree with his point of principle, you have to accept that for a man to put his job on the line for his beliefs is a welcome return to courage and conviction in the public arena. Of course, many people have instantly leapt in to accuse him of hypocrisy (the standard charge against Christians, whenever you can’t really think of something more substantial), but the explanations of just why this constitutes hypocrisy are sufficiently far-fetched to rebound more on the heads of the accusers than of the accused.

Considering the campaign again, I think it will eventually backfire heavily for its sponsors. It is achingly asking for the riposte “but why take the risk?”, bringing about echoes of Pascal’s Wager, a famous (although, in fact, insufficient) argument against atheism that seems to annoy atheists more than any other.

Imagine that you saw any of the following advertisements:
“The speed camera probably isn’t loaded”
“You probably won’t die in a car crash”
“You probably did turn off the gas”
Telling someone that something probably won’t happen doesn’t stop them worrying about it. Quite the contrary. And, if the millions of lottery ticket buyers are anything to go by, telling someone that something they very much hope for is unlikely to happen does nothing to stop them hoping.
If “there’s probably no God” is the strongest statement that, on reflection, atheists dare to make in public, then they have moved a long way from the certainties implied in their name.
To paraphrase a quote from the Psalms: “The fool says in his heart ‘there’s probably no God’”. Ouch.

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Atheist buses deny existence of God. So what?

Martin Turner — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:40:07 +0000

The long promised atheist buses have gone onto the streets of London, touting the message: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. The planners of this campaign faced some criticism from their own side, who wanted a stronger message. But it appears that fears that it might breach advertising codes softened it.

Actually, I’m fairly certain even the message they’ve chosen would breach the normal guidelines applying to products, though, I, for one, will not be complaining.

How’s that, you ask? Essentially, if it were a product, the advertisers would have to prove their claim that ‘God probably doesn’t exist’. But in order to prove this, they would have to find some way of quantifying ‘the probability that God doesn’t exist’. Being as there is no ISO standard on the probability of the existence of a deity, this would be tough to prove. Atheist leaders may be hoping that they get the same dispensation as the phrase ‘probably the best lager in the world’, but that was clearly a joke, and this clearly isn’t.

In reality, they are probably (and I mean a measurable probability) quite safe, because the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) doesn’t intervene on issues of a political nature, and takes a nuanced position on religious offence. More importantly, they aren’t selling a product.

I suspect, though, that half of the aim of this campaign is to spur hordes of Christians (and others) to complain vociferously. If you are a person of faith, let me urge you not to give Richard Dawkins and his crew the satisfaction. In advertising terms, it’s not very probable that this ad will achieve anything other than prompting complaints. For a start, it’s too long: the eye takes in typically 18 letters in one go, which is why bus adverts, bill-boards and newspaper headlines are usually no longer than that. Most advertisers work to the old adage ‘AIDA’, standing for ‘attention, information, decision, action’. A good ad is generally considered to have an attention getter, some informative content, something that makes you decide to buy the product or service, and a call to action. The good folks at the ASA did some research a few years ago, where they discovered that messages which work in the UK are first of all informative, then clever, and, finally, enter popular culture. In my own experience, the three other things which make or break an ad are clarity (do I get the message?), credibility (does it sound believable?), and relevance (do I care?).

The British Humanist Association may be very good at representing its members, but (my personal view) probably not going to be getting calls from other voluntary organisations asking for advice on campaigns. This is an ad which will only appeal to people who already agree with it, and (again my view) quite a few of those will be embarrassed by it. Of course, they won’t be admitting that, and certainly not to me. Well, probably not, any way.

If you’re a Christian, and have been embarrassed in the past at well-meant but unappealing church adverts, take some consolation from the fact that the other side are now facing the same thing.

PS: If you’re interested in actual debate on the existence of God, you can catch the video they shot of me (and others) at the Cambridge Union autumn 2007, on the motion (which was defeated) This House Believes that God is Dead.

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Blair’s Faith Move Misguided

Martin Turner — Sat, 31 May 2008 10:16:27 +0000

Blair’s faith in difficult task. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has set himself what is arguably the challenge of the millennium: to unite the world’s religions for the general betterment of mankind. His argument is simple: religions can create peaceful co-existence, but, right now, extremists seem to have control of the agenda. “It is a massive undertaking, but how important is it? If all the good tunes are with the extremists … if they’re the ones out there with the strong message and those of us who believe that religious faith is about peaceful co-existence are silent we’ve got a real problem on our hands,” he said at the New York launch alongside his old friend Bill Clinton.
But how valuable, practical, and, indeed, coherent is this new approach? Pundits have already pointed out that, if there was one man to unite the world in peaceful co-existence, it wouldn’t be Tony Blair, a man who’s primacy in Britain is primarily associated with the war in Iraq. But there are deeper issues here, and the usual sport of side-swiping Blair for his past may obscure them. It’s instructive that the last US president who could point to genuine religious credentials both before, during and after his presidency — Jimmy Carter — has indeed spent his post-presidential years campaigning for world peace, but has not attempted anything so grandiose as uniting the world’s religions.
Secularists might argue that this is because Carter, deep down, recognises that religions are the cause of the problem, and can never be the cure. The truth is more likely the opposite: it is Blair, and not Carter, who has swallowed this particular piece of secularist spin.
The real truth (as opposed to any other kind of truth which you might read elsewhere) is that dividing culture and belief into two categories — non-religions versus religious — is a gross over-simplification of the way things are. It is, however, a very common way of seeing the world in Britain, and among British politicians. The equation goes “secular=rational, objective, sane, clean”, “religious=irrational, subjective, unbalanced, tainted”. To accuse someone of being a fundamentalist is (at least in popular discourse) one step away from accusing them of being an extremist, which is itself only one step from being a terrorist. But a fundamentalist is no more than someone who believes in the fundamentals of their religion. The suggestion that fundamentalists of all religions are essentially (one might even say fundamentally) the same is, logically speaking, nonsense. But people who use the term rarely have much contact with fundamentalists of any religion, or, if they do, are not aware that the good, sane people they know are the ones they deride in public.
The key to understanding this is to recognise that religions are not ‘all the same’, but, like the cultures of which they are a part, are remarkably different. What’s more, atheism and secularism are no more different from religions than religions are from each other. If we wish to make a logical category, then we should include atheism, secularism and nationalism along with the religions. Or, better, we should include the different cultural forms which give rise to atheism. Marxist atheists (such as Terry Eagleton) are quite different from neo-Darwinian atheists (such as Richard Dawkins), and are not afraid to say so (viz Terry Eagleton, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching”, LRB, Vol.28, No.20,19 October 2006“), while both are quite different from Nietzchian atheists, who in turn would argue that the atheism of Hitler and the Nazis was a misinterpretation of Nietzche, in the same way that modern Marxist atheists would argue that the atheism of Stalin and Mao was a misinterpretation of Marx. Equally, forms of secularism cover most of spectrum of religion. The world’s first secular state, France, probably conformed most closely in its original incarnation to the ideals put forward by Britain’s National Secular Society (which uses ‘secular’ as a pseudonym for atheism), but the second secular state, the USA, with its frequent references to God in its constitution and other foundational documents, was really created as a nation in which minority Christian evangelical groups could flourish, while the third major secular state, Turkey, is thoroughly Islamic in its outlook. Nor should we forget that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a secular state.
Religions, too, differ widely not only in the code of their beliefs, but in the categories which they regard as belief at all. Most people in Britain are most familiar with Christianity, Islam and Judaism, and so assume that religions are about a book of instructions based on a belief in God. Not all religions believe in the existence of a God! Not all religions even accept the category of a ‘God’ as a valid one. Most of the world’s religions do not have a set of sacred writings, and one of the mistakes which Westerners have often made with Buddhism and Hinduism is that they have taken the writings of these religions, and assumed that they have understood the religions once they have read and (in their view) understood the writings. Many Westerners see religion as a quest for truth or a quest for God, but identifying any kind of quest at all is problematic in many religions.
Tony Blair — to return to him — seems to think that religions are really about co-existence and harmony. Some religions are. Many religions favour co-existence and harmony along with a raft of other virtues which may at times conflict with them. Some religions are largely uninterested in how society is organised. And there are religions which are closely bound up with notions of violent victory over other groups. This last group are not necessarily more fundamentalist than others. Taking a historical example (for reasons of safety as much as anything), the Norse culture of 500-1500 has left us with a wide legacy of literature and recorded history. We know that war, battle and honour were integral to Old Norse religion. But there is no particular evidence to show that the predations of Vikings on the coast of England was linked to any particular upsurge of religious fundamentalism. In defeat, the most active of Viking leaders and their followers were at times willing to ‘convert’ to Christianity as part of the peace terms.
The real problem for Tony Blair is that he has believed the spin that wars are caused by religion, and believed the counter-spin that religions are really about peaceful co-existence. These might be interesting (though ultimately invalid) points in a debate about the net benefit or dis-benefit of religion on mankind. But they are a dangerous oversimplification as the basis of a programme for peace-making.
Fortunately, the notion that Mr Blair himself will make a big difference, is itself a piece of spin which it seems he has also believed. Having guided (he thinks) Britain through ten years of peace and prosperity (if we ignore some inconvenient counter-examples), Blair has left Downing Street to his successor, who, in a few short months, has plunged Britain back into the ill-led and pessimistic world it inhabited under John Major. As the world situation has not dramatically changed (again, if we ignore some inconvenient counter-examples), the difference is clearly Blair himself. Before Blair, chaos under Major. During Blair, peace and prosperity. After Blair, chaos under Brown. Tony Blair really does believe that he can make a difference to the world, and he can do it quickly, and he can do it right.
Once again, we are drawn back to the comparison with Jimmy Carter. Carter was the John Major and Gordon Brown of the USA, rolled into one. He pursued sensible policies, and a visionary foreign policy, but was a victim of circumstances beyond his control, lost his popularity at home, and was the first elected president since the war not to be re-elected for a second term. However, since losing his job, he has campaigned tirelessly for world peace, bit by by, rather than in one grandiose gesture, for which he has been awarded the Nobel prize. Carter’s achievements have been brick by brick, not a single grand design. His credibility has grown as he has done it, and it continues to grow.
People have always said that Blair was good on the big picture, but weak on the details. In this particular case — and perhaps in all cases — it’s the details that matter. And they are not on Blair’s side.

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What is the Archbishop of Canterbury on about?

Martin Turner — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:59:17 +0000

BBC NEWS | UK | Archbishop defends Sharia remarks

Rowan Williams is undoubtedly a profound thinker leading the Anglican Church through some of its greatest crises in recent years. The ordination of women, gay priests and the adoption issue, alongside more traditional subjects such as the war in Iraq are areas where he has – successfully so far – walked a tightrope.

So whatever possessed him to sound off on a subject which he admits is largely beyond his competence? And, after so many years walking a careful path through many minefields, how is it that he so misjudged the prevailing mood?

For the record, the actual text of the Archbishop’s speech is here.

It is quite clear that the hysterical presentation of Dr Williams’s views in parts of the media is both unhelpful and unfair. But it is also clear the Dr Williams really is advocating (in his words) “a higher level of public legal regard being paid to communal identity”, or, in other words, the genuine enshrinement into national law of some of the religious laws of a particular community.

It has since been suggested that Williams is simply trying to put ideas into the public debate. But this leaves us with the question: why is it necessary to consider these ideas? In academic debate, certainly all ideas can be considered, and all ideas are in some certain sense (purely as ideas) acceptable. But, equally, in public political debate, some ideas are simply dangerous. Enoch Powell’s famous ‘rivers of blood‘ speech might have had a different impact if published in a dusty academic journal, and written in academic language. But its actual effect, in Birmingham in 1968, was purely negative.

Why might these ideas be dangerous? (I am not, at this point, saying that they are). Essentially, they create the notion in a community that (in parts at least) already sees itself as poorly served and beleaguered, that certain rights or moral expectations are denied to them.

Is this a bad thing in itself? Quite possibly not. If we decided to outlaw ideas which might be disquieting or destabilising in a particular community, then we would not have many ideas left, and they would not be very interesting ones.

Is it a bad thing that the Archbishop of Canterbury is putting this forward? I think, most definitely, yes. There is no ‘ex cathedra’ in Protestant religion in the way it exists in the Roman Catholic church. Rowan Williams does not speak for all Anglicans, and certainly not for all of Britain. But the people who know that are Anglican and other Protestant Christians, and people who are culturally close to them. Very few people – unless they have made a special study – have much awareness of how other religions function. Witness the Western reaction to the pronouncements of the Ayatollah Khomeni which, in yet less enlightened times than these, were interpreted by many as the statements of all of Islam for all of the Muslim world. Rowan Williams’s ideas are couched in the careful language of the academic, which denies as much as it affirms. But the authority they appear to carry immediately cancels that out. I won’t labour the point: the reaction which the Archbishop’s comments have generated in the secular British press clearly indicate the ambivalent status of Archepiscopal pronouncements.

But there is another question: are his ideas right? Are we fooling ourselves with the belief that the British legal system can continue without compromise with Sharia, or other legal systems? If the Archbishop is right, then his comments are all the more important for being controversial.

Rowan Williams makes much play of deconstructing Sharia, the Enlightenment, and the nature of Law itself. Has no-one mentioned to him that deconstruction, which was all the rage in the 1980s, has gone out of fashion as an academic tool? He talks about overcoming the crude opposites and mythologies, but he fails to recognise (at least in this lecture) that both the enlightenment discourse and Sharia are founded on opposites (crude or not) and on unproven, a priori positions (generally referred to by atheists with the shorthand ‘mythologies’).

Deconstruction is not, in any case, a tool which has been much used by constitutional experts or by lawyers. We can talk about multi-layered discourse and contextualisation as much as we like, but the purpose of constitutions and legal systems is to be as unambiguously prescriptive as possible. Law is by its nature normative. Non-normative law is a contradiction in terms.

The progress of British jurisprudence from the Middle-Ages to today is the simplification of many systems into one system. In fact, to some extent, we still have two systems because civil and criminal law operate in tandem. However, civil and criminal law are administered by the same organisation. We have dispensed with ecclesiastical courts, courts of honour, courts for the nobility, for the commoner and for the serf. Whether or not this makes sense in a different cultural context is a moot question.

It was Samuel Rutherford in 1644 who, in Lex Rex (the law is king) refuted the doctrine of Rex Lex (the king is the law). After the Restoration of the monarchy he was cited for high treason, but his ideas (incidentally argued straight from the Bible, from Deuteronomy 17) set the stage for limited government and constitutionalism.

Rowan Williams argues that Sharia and Rabbinical courts are already in use in Britain for arbitration. This is a red herring: two persons may choose any means they like of arbitration, provided that they both accept the outcome. If, in retrospect, one party is unhappy with the outcome, they can still go to the courts. In many cases of civil law, the courts will first ask what attempts at arbitration have been made, and look askance at a case where no attempt at arbitration has been made.

In reality, while there may be space for more than one system within British jurisprudence – even if that is undesirable – there can be no basis for accommodation with a system which cannot exist as a subordinate partner. Rutherford’s argument about limited government and constitutionality apply as strongly to Sharia law as to absolutist monarchs. A system which cannot accept a restriction on its authority cannot be accommodated: and, without any attempt to mythologise or trade in crude opposites, Sharia is not a system (or tradition, if you like) which is designed for compromise.

For such an intelligent and profound thinker, it is surprising, and dismaying, that Rowan Williams did not think this through.
Finally, one more question. Should he resign? He may resign, but he should not. When we reach the point where Archbishops are subject to popular opinion in the same way that politicians are, we have reached a point where the freedom of the church – or any non-government body – has been fundamentally compromised. Rowan Williams has made a mistake. He should answer to his employer on this issue. But since, quite literally, his employer is the divinity, we should reflect on this common proverb: To err is human, to forgive divine.

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How to write about a novel

Martin Turner — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:26:28 +0000

If you’re studying English literature at university, you almost certainly have to face the task which you didn’t face at A-level: read a novel fairly quickly, and write about it without a term of teaching. And it’s a daunting task.

Novels, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, are the dominant form of modern English literature. In fact, they are so dominant that we don’t (outside of literature studies, prize lists, and Radio 4 discussions) refer to them as novels at all. Rather, we hear about: “The new bestseller”, “His fascinating thriller”, “the epic adventure’, “this science-fiction classic”, “the latest romance from…”, and so on. Perhaps, rather than disparaging this, we should learn from it. Like the course of true love, the pathway of a novel from pen (or processor) to public ne’er runs smooth, and we should at least reflect on the process by which it got there. In fact, we might do well to consider a number of issues of this kind before considering the content of the novel itself. Allow me to offer some suggestions:

Process — what do we know about the author’s creative and literary process? Will this affect the way we approach the novel, or is it irrelevant in this case?
Publisher — did the publisher or another intermediary have a role in shaping the novel? Again, is this important?
Public — how did the public at the time respond to the novel, and did this have an impact on the novel?
Posterity — how have people since responded to the novel, and does this change its importance?
Politics, philosophy and polemic — is the author informed by a particular world-view, and are they seeking to use the novel to impose this upon us
Priorities — what does the author think is important in a novel (if we know this?)

Purpose — collecting the aforementioned together, why did the author write?

Picking these up together, let’s consider for a moment arguably the two greatest novelists of the 19th century, Charles Dickens and George Eliot. We know a great deal about both of them, since they wrote many letters and were much discussed in their day. — In terms of process, both Dickens and Eliot wrote novels which were published chapter by chapter, week by week in magazines. This was a common process then, but would be unusual now. Dickens did not generally write a chapter until the previous one had been published, and fairly frequently changed the later chapters based on reaction to earlier chapters. While writing Dombey and Son, he received a letter stating “I cannot believe that Edith can be Carker’s mistress”. Dickens concurred, and changed the planned plot accordingly. George Eliot, on the other hand, preferred not to allow publication to begin until she had completed the final chapter. —Dickens’s publisher also had a profound effect on his writing, demanding, and getting, an alternative, more ambiguous ending to Great Expectations, although, thankfully, we also have the original ending to compare it with. — Both Eliot’s and Dickens’s writing were highly successful with the public, greeted with the same kind of enthusiasm (though on a smaller scale) that the publication of a Harry Potter novel has been met with in our century. — Posterity has been extremely kind to George Eliot. Although Daniel Deronda is rarely read, most of her books have been filmed and televised, and critics find few flaws in them. Dickens has remained popular as an author, but some aspects of Dickens – particularly his hypocrisy and his sentimentality – are now looked down on. Referring to The Old Curiosity Shop, with it’s famously sentimental death scene, Oscar Wilde later quipped: “it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell”. On the other hand, Dickens has been filmed and televised more often than any other author except Shakespeare, and is quite properly regarded as Britain’s greatest novelist. An extremely useful series of books for understanding the posterity of a novel – which is to say, the responses of its readers over decades or hundreds of years – is the Critical Heritage Series. These books, with titles like Thomas Hardy, the Critical Heritage are compendiums of key criticism or comment from contemporary readers up to the present. — Dickens has often been seen as a reformer in terms of his politics, philosophy and polemic, although the issue of hypocrisy might brand him as someone who preferred pontification to action. He presided over a magazine promoting Victorian values, but was himself an adulterer. One of his daughters, who was a don at Oxford, was once shown an early photograph of her father. After a moment of reflection, she is reported to have said: “What a wicked man.” George Eliot, on the other hand, should be understood at least partly from her philosophy. From a strict evangelical upbringing, she moved into a form of atheism and translated Strauss’s Life of Jesus, which as aimed at ‘demythologising’ the gospels. However, later in life she wrote that she found herself closer to her natural enemies (the evangelicals) and further from her natural allies (atheists and liberals). This tension – with a strong fondness for and affection for evangelicalism which is seldom found in other Victorian writers – is clear in Adam Bede and Silas Marner.—This is probably reflected in George Eliot’s priorities as a writer, and it is clear that she is concerned to weigh the moral character of each of her characters. Dickens’s priorities are best illustrated in a letter written to him by Wilkie Collins, in which he is counselled: “Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, but above all, make ‘em wait”.—With two such great writers, who wrote over a long period of time, there is no single purpose which is apparent. Dickens clearly wrote, at least in part, to be popular, famous, rich and successful, but his need to write in order to achieve this became less as time went on. His father had been imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtors’ prison, and Dickens himself had been forced to work ten hour days at the age of 12. This explains to some extent his desire for financial security early in his career, but his direct contact with poverty and the debtors’ prison also accounts for much of his social commentary and real anger at the condition of those who fell on the wrong side of the law. George Eliot wrote under a pseudonym at least to some extent so that her work would be taken more seriously than that of an obviously female author. She sets out a manifesto of a sort in Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, in which she criticises trivial and ridiculous plots, and praises European Realism.

All of this is very good, but it does not actually take us into the novel itself – though it is probably fair to say that there is no profound discussion of a novel without at least some understanding of the novelist. At their most basic level, novels have three things: story, characters, and context, and anything more ambitious than the most prosaic chronicle also has a writing style, often encapsulated in the narratorial voice. Context is the space in which the novel takes place. At its simplest, context is established by description, as in the first chapter of Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native, where the heath is described in great detail. Hardy’s novels are hugely visual. In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, though, a great deal of context is established by recounting the histories of the characters and of the circles they move in, and in direct comparison of one character with another. A novel must have a story of some kind, though this is not necessarily the same as the plot. A story can be very simple – the dean of a cathedral who suffers from tuberculosis of the spine decides to build a spire, against the advice of his colleagues, whose construction is so colossal that it destroys the lives of all those involved (William Golding’s The Spire). We will come back to this plot in a moment. Equally, it can be highly complex. Dickens plotted his novels in vast spider webs of interrelating characters. A thriller or a detective novel depends for its effect on a convoluted plot, while a sophisticate espionage novel, on the lines of LeCarré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy may leave some of the readers baffled at the first reading as to what actually happened. Traditionally, the novel takes characters and tests them, or allows them to develop, in situations which are outside the normal compass of their lives. However, for example in Jane Austen’s Persuasion, this testing and development may be extremely subtle, by comparison, say, with the boys on the island in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Characters have more or less detailed lives and personalities in novels. In many examples of genre-fiction, characters may be little more than figures, fulfilling a role governed by the plot. However, most often we know the characters best through their voices, so it would be appropriate to describe a novelist’s eye for description, and ear for character. Thomas Hardy has a magnificent eye for description, but, except in The Mayor of Casterbridge, his characters tend to be wooden, or worse, inconsistent in order to suit the needs of the plot. The most striking example of this is when Tess murders Alec in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and shows no remorse or guilt, despite the fact that everything else we know about her is that she is an amiable and compassionate young woman. George Eliot has a magnificent ear for character. We can tell which character is speaking in Eliot without having to have it spelled out. However, the descriptions, though competent, are less gripping. Dickens, of all novelists, has the most complete sense of both. It’s been pointed out frequently that we know more about the minor characters in Dickens than we do about the leading figures in the novels of many other writers. Writing style may be more or less overt. The plot of William Golding’s The Spire is hard to discern because it is written in a stream-of-consciousness style which presents everything through the eyes of dean Jocelin, who, apart from being driven mad by his spinal tuberculosis, has very little understanding of what is really going on and his own part in it.

What then, to say about a novel? To my mind, the author begins with an intention. William Golding, in The Hot Gates, explains that he was sure he had a publishable novel on his hands when, after several failures, he worked out the plot of Lord of the Flies. There is nothing dishonourable in wanting to be published. Joseph Conrad, in discussing The Secret Agent, said he wanted to work out how a series of apparently unconnected events on the same day, reported in the newspaper, could have had a single cause. The author clearly has to have a readership in mind, and he (or she) has to come up with something to say to them which will achieve his intention – whether that be to see the futile brutalities of the Belgian Congo brought to an end (Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was part of this movement), or to simply persuade people to buy the book. Finally, the author must put pen to paper, and tell the story, getting enough of the character, context and story down in a suitable style to keep the reader reading, but not at such length that the book becomes unpublishable.

In writing about the book, you can’t really start with the author’s intention: that would be presumptuous. Rather, you can only start at the other end with the words, going on to analyse the key characters, observe the context and the way it relates to the characters, and noting how the story develops. If you look at this in the light of the writing style, you should be able to discern the key messages or themes that the author is trying to bring out. If you can observe this in the light of the likely audience – and you should be able to pick up clues to what that audience was – then you should finally be able to conclude by discussing likely authorial intention, and, from there, assessing the success and impact of the novel, in which case your structure would be something like this:

How the story is told
- writing style
- context
- characters
- plot/storyline
What themes and underlying messages emerge
Who the author was writing to
- Generally a lot of information is contained in the novel about the assumptions the writer is making about their readers
- Background information can help to fill this out
- In critiquing a novel from another time or another country, it is particularly important to understand the intended reader, because assumptions from your time and your culture can be quite misleading
What the author was trying to achieve, and how well it was achieved

Of course, in real life, you rarely get asked to just critique a novel. You are much more likely to be asked to answer a question. The really good questions often focus on authorial intention, which gives you a way in. Sometimes they focus on the reaction of the original readers, perhaps by comparing it with the assessment of later critics. The less good questions will tend to dive straight in at the themes or messages level, which can make it hard to reach a point any deeper than that. The very least helpful questions are the ones which limit you to analysing one or two characters, or commenting on the writing style, or the description, or, heaven help you, on the story line. However. When faced with a question, there is only one thing to be done: informed by all the background, and by what you know of the story, characters, context and style, what you have been able to deduce about the audience, and your surmises about authorial intention — with all that in mind ANSWER THE QUESTION. No examiner ever gave points for answering a different question from the one set.

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