The `man Of Feeling` In Eighteenth-century English Literature

'.the sympathetic responses of the man of feeling, while giving opportunity for otherness to manifest itself, also help to maintain social hierarchy and existing power structures' (Ildiko Csengei). Do you agree?

In their encounters with the poor, the elderly, the abandoned or fallen woman and those with little power in a commercial and male-dominated society, Yorick and Harley, the protagonists of The Man of Feeling and A Sentimental Journey help to articulate the narratives of the 'other'. Many critics such as John Mullan and Ildiko Csengei however, have seen the protagonists' treatment towards the 'other' as largely ineffective. Their donations of money are a means in which poverty is perpetuated and their sympathy is futile without addressing the social and political ills which cause suffering. Indeed, the motives which drive the protagonists to aid the 'other' are arguably questionable. Harley and Yorick can be seen as being more interested in the sufferers' stories and their ability to produce an outflow of emotion than the sufferers themselves. On the other hand, it is important that we consider how both novels take part in the contemporary ethical debate on benevolence. To some extent the novels do not simply maintain social and power structures. Instead they can be seen as offering many differing perspectives on society and politics through the use of form, giving voices to 'others' such as prostitutes, and through the novel's self-conscious concern about its role as a vehicle for moral instruction.

From the 1760s onwards, the success of sentimental novels increasingly depended on their capacity to provoke feelings of tender and refined emotion from the novels' characters and their assumed readers. As Ildiko Censgei claims, the success of The Man of Feeling was 'due to its capacity to move and affect deeply'. In a literary context where virtue became synonymous with extreme sensibility, the capacity to feel sympathy for the suffering of others was believed to be morally improving. With this background we can argue that the charitable benevolence and sympathetic responses of Harley and Yorick to those who suffer is problematic. Like the commodification of sentimental fiction itself in its ability to provoke feeling, tales of suffering in both Laurence Sterne's and Henry Mackenzie's novels also become a commodity of commercial value. The suffering and distress that the protagonists want to relieve become the very thing they are reliant on to provoke and produce theirs' and the reader's sensibility. This undermines the supposed benevolence of Harley and Yorick in helping the 'other'. Evidence of this can be seen in The Man of Feeling when Harley visits Bedlam and his attention is attracted by a young woman driven mad by the death of her lover. The keeper's narration of her story is described as provoking a 'tribute of some tears' from Harley who afterwards 'put a couple of guineas into the man's hand: Be kind to that unfortunate'. Importantly, Harley does not give money to any of the other inmates who have been introduced to him but only towards the woman arguably because she alone has moved him and made him cry. As Markman Ellis notes, sentimental tales are 'brought' depending on their 'ability to move' the listener. Suffering and the sentiment it provokes thus becomes associated with 'cash,' 'consumption' and 'leisure' in short a 'luxury for the leisured classes'. We can argue therefore that benevolence towards the 'other', in this case the politically disenfranchised woman does help to maintain social hierarchy in its commodification and reliance on the other's suffering.

In A Sentimental Journey Yorick similarly obtains a kind of profit from the act of charity. This is demonstrated in the scene where Yorick attempts to decide how to dispose of his 'eight sous' amongst sixteen beggars. He impulsively gives a sous because of a beggar's 'politesse' and his 'last sous' to a beggar who flatters him 'My Lord Anglois - the very sound was worth the money.' He is self-conscious in his act of benevolence, announcing that 'this was the first publick act of my charity in France' yet by the beginning of the next chapter can brush off the beggars from his conscience as 'little matters' which have been 'settled'. Whereas charitable benevolence for Harley results in an emotional payment, this scene suggests that Yorick finds egotistical affirmation of his virtue and self-worth. We can argue therefore that there is an essential paradox in the charitable benevolence of Yorick and Harley. As Robert Markley astutely observes, Sterne's and also Mackenzie's 'conjunction of money and sentimental good nature' both 'dramatize and yet subtly revise' the protagonists' 'relation to commerce'. Both Harley and Yorick criticize an unequal social world 'engendered by monetary difference' and yet revise this critique by relying on social inequality and its ability 'to produce moments of sentimental contact.' Both Harley and Yorick therefore help maintain class structures with their reliance on social ills and the distress they cause.

On the other hand, we can argue that far from promoting or condemning a particular perspective on benevolence, both novels engage in the eighteenth-century debate in philosophy and fiction about human behaviour and the question of whether it is fundamentally motivated by 'impulses of benevolence or sympathy rather than by those of acquisitiveness or mere self-preservation.' They do so by offering constantly shifting perspectives on the debate. In A Sentimental Journey the selfish nature of benevolence seems to be suggested by the fact that Yorick gives charity primarily to working-class women in exchanges full of sexual innuendo. In the scenes with the 'fair fille de chambre' Sterne plays on the sexually suggestive word 'purse' and uses dashes 'in Paris, as none kiss each other but the men - I did, what amounted to the same thing ?? ?? I bid God bless her' to leave the reader in no doubt of the scene's sexual undertones. The puncturing of sentimental moments through sexual allusions can be read as evidence of A Sentimental Journey being a satire of sentiment and evidence for the impossibility of altruistic benevolence. Sterne can therefore be seen as intending to expose the sham self-interest of those in Yorick's class or higher and the status quo that they maintain.

However, we can argue that the novel also offers a different point of view that does not entirely condemn sympathy and benevolence motivated by desire. A Sentimental Journey can be read as a 'plea for a more honest acceptance of human physicality'. In his Sermons, Sterne asserted that human beings are 'not angels, but men cloathed with bodies' suggesting that all humans are susceptible to sexual desire and only those with 'clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts' can 'argue down or mask' their passions. Indeed, in eighteenth-century debate, the philosopher David Hume asserted that it is passion that motivates human benevolence. That 'morality [.] is more properly felt than judged of [.] To have a sense of virtue is nothing but to feel satisfaction of a particular kind'. Sterne engages with this contemporary debate. He argues that Yorick's sympathy is not insincere even though it is often mixed with desire. Indeed, it prevents Yorick's self-approving and 'complacent celebration of his angelic benevolence' as he honestly accepts after his meeting with the fille de chambre that his feelings for her are entangled with 'threads of love and desire'. Sterne's novel therefore shows a clear preoccupation with the ethical dimensions of feeling and sympathetic response. Sterne asks the reader to question and test the responses of the man of feeling rather than merely accepting them as right, indicating that the novel does not simply accept the morals of those who maintained the social and power structures of society.

Moreover, Sterne examines the sentimental novel's role in this ethical debate of morals. A Sentimental Journey is preoccupied with investigating the moral relevancy of fiction and questions its own sincerity of motive and its success in giving moral instruction, the perceived goal of sentimental fiction. When Yorick refers to those who 'argue down or mask' their passions and insists on the integral part of 'love and desire' in humanity, Sterne highlights how sentimental language often dishonestly masks desire and how sentimental literature can become self-complacent, as Yorick often does, in celebrating their virtuous ability in teaching readers how to respond sympathetically to suffering.

The Man of Feeling similarly engages in the debate on the status of sentimental fiction as moral instruction. This is demonstrated in the scene where Harley visits the prostitute, Miss Atkins, who recounts how she was seduced and then abandoned by her lover. In her narrative, Miss Atkins notes that her reading was 'principally confined to plays, novels, and those poetical descri ptions of the beauty of virtue and honour' and that it was because of her reading that she 'did not [.] conclude, that his [her lover] expressions could be too warm to be insincere'. The implication of this passage is that the novels Miss Atkins read were partly to blame for her decline into prostitution as it indoctrinated her with an idealised belief of people's 'virtue and honour' and made her unwary of rake figures like her lover. As Markman Ellis remarks, this scene portrays novels as 'morally dangerous'. Mackenzie thus highlights the 'ideological power' of the novel. By exploring the ideological influence of sentimental literature and highlighting their potentially questionable or damaging morals, Mackenzie draws attention to the moral fabric of The Man of Feeling. By investigating the very value of their own novels and drawing the reader's attention to the moral worth of the virtues they prescribe, it is clear that Sterne and Mackenzie do not ask the reader to easily accept the benevolence and virtue of their protagonists as well as the social hierarchy and political structures they support.

Both novels further engage in the ethical debate on benevolence by exposing Harley and Yorick to an array of characters which allow different viewpoints on benevolence to be expressed. Against the views of altruistic benevolence, the misanthropist in The Man of Feeling argues that sympathy and benevolence are inherently motivated by egoism and selfishness. He claims that we are benevolent because we derive 'happiness' from seeing people who are less fortunate than ourselves, finding 'comfort' in 'the comparative littleness of our own misfortunes.' In A Sentimental Journey a similarly controversial view on benevolence is expressed through the figure of the beggar who uses flattery to gain charity. On a Parisian street, Yorick observes two women who though they claim to 'have no money,' are eventually coerced into giving the beggar a large sum as he appeals to their ego, obsequiously complimenting them on their high 'rank', beauty and 'goodness and humanity'. We can argue that these differing views on benevolence are prevented from being disregarded against views which favour altruistic benevolence by the sentimental novel's fragmentary, episodic, and 'meandering form'. Indeed, the fragmentary or episodic nature of both novels allows for each scene and each point of view expressed to 'lend themsel[f] to free-standing appreciation'. The use of form therefore, allows a constant shifting of perspectives in the novel, preventing one moral position from gaining ascendancy. Both novels thus do not seek to entirely mask the selfish motives behind benevolence. Through their form and by using differing voices, the novels draw attention to the dishonesty of the middle-upper class and their denial that their 'benevolence' can be seen to perpetuate poverty.

However, whilst both novels show a concern for poverty, prostitution and other social ills they do not offer any effective means to solve these problems. When Harley and Yorick do take action to remove social distress they are largely ineffective. This is demonstrated when Harley takes an interest in the politically topical subject of prostitutes when he visits the prostitute Miss Atkins at her lodgings. Harley, although sympathetic and charitable towards Miss Atkins, does not bother to discover the root social factors which have created her misery in the first place, primarily the double sexual standards in society which made women's sexual transgressions unforgivable whilst turning a blind eye to men's. Harley is interested in prostitutes only as victims and has no interest in challenging the unequal social standards that have made them victims. Thus, Brian Vickars' comment that the eighteenth-century reader expected the sentimental novel to 'gently intervene in [.] adversarial political and social controversies' is illuminating. The sentimental novel fails precisely because its intervention in political and social matters is too 'gentle', too reticent to specify and address the real causes of social ills or offer a practical solution to permanently help and relieve those in distress. This can therefore be seen as a failure of sentimental fiction and sentimental morality to be relevant in existing society. Thus, whilst Sterne's and Mackenzie's novels may give a voice to the 'other,' the novels' sentimental morals do little to raise the 'other's' inferior and subordinate rank, helping to maintain social and political structures.

For Sterne and Mackenzie, the aim of their novels was ultimately to instruct. As Sterne states, A Sentimental Journey aims to 'teach us to love the world and our fellow creatures better than we do'. We can argue however, that both novels fail to do their proposed function and ultimately reach an impasse as the ideals and way of life prescribed in their novels 'could [n]ever be a practical model of being in society.' The types of sentimental virtues upheld by the novels are indeed unable to be translated into practical precepts and social obligations and both novels recognise this. Harley and Yorick are depicted in the novels as 'other' by their extreme sensibility and it is this sensibility which leave them vulnerable and unfit to survive in the competitive, mercenary and selfish world they are thrown into. As the eighteenth-century philosopher Adam Smith notes, the 'character of extreme humanity' is 'unfit' to survive in a world which is 'in general selfish, interested, and unthinking.' Mackenzie for example shows how Harley's extreme sensibility and virtuous ideals make him constantly unsuccessful in his goals, beaten to the lease of some land by a dishonest but cunning footman and frequently duped by various figures into giving money. Indeed, with Harley's death at the end of the novel The Man of Feeling goes further than A Sentimental Journey in suggesting that the only way the man of feeling can remain virtuous and uncorrupted in this world is through death. As Janet Todd argues, the 'progress of the male sentimentalist [.] is towards crucifixion.' We can argue therefore that Yorick and Harley do to some extent help maintain social and power structures, not because they are in agreement with them, but because they are ineffective in being able to come up with a practical way of life to help change them.

Both novels further fail to do their proposed function as they depict a type of sensibility which is possessed only by a minority. John Mullan argues that sentimental texts pretend to appeal to a minority audience by implying to each reader that they, like the protagonists are an 'exceptional connoisseur of commendable sympathies' (own italics) whose refined sensibility allows them to understand the sentiments expressed in the sentimental novel. This is done through several techniques, one of which is the common sentimental trope of flattering the reader as one of 'the few' who can understand the speaker of the novel: 'Let it not torment the few who know what must have been the grounds of this exclamation.' By thus appealing to a minority audience the novels imply that the sentiments expressed can be understood only by a minority too. However, by prescribing sentiments purported to be understood by only a few, it cannot provide a practical model of sympathetic and benevolent behaviour for society. Thus, both novels can be said to help maintain social and political structures, because in their inability to bridge the gap between ideal and practice, they fail to prescribe any meaningful precepts which help lift the 'other' out of their subordinate position.

A Sentimental Journey and The Man of Feeling certainly give many opportunities for the manifestation of otherness. They give a voice to the disenfranchised and socially inferior, and they allow for the criticism of their sentimental heroes by exposing the commodification of suffering by their protagonists and through the use of comedy to cast doubt on moments of benevolence. More surprisingly, Sterne and Mackenzie ask the reader to test and question the very moral relevancy of the novels themselves. All these techniques provide expression for 'otherness' and interrogate the self-interest of the protagonists' class. On the other hand, we can argue that ultimately both novels fail in championing the 'other'. The novels offer what Brian Vickers has described as a 'troublesome sociability of mixed motives and alternative perspectives' on benevolence. Sterne and Mackenzie however, when called to take a decisive stance, fail. After highlighting social ills, the protagonists enact 'private manifestations of sensibility,' a 'poor substitute' to social and political action urgently needed. Although Thomas Jefferson may praise Sterne's novel as 'the best course of morality that ever was written' the morals that Mackenzie and Sterne do uphold are ones inimitable and impractical for existing society. In their failure to confront social and political ills and in their inability to promote a set of practical morals the novels fundamentally do help to maintain social hierarchy and existing power structures.