Victorian Triple-Decker Blogging: The Monk and the Married Man, vol. II

Despite the patent lack of theology in this anti-Catholic novel, The Monk and the Married Man declares itself antagonistic to theological controversy.  In fact, a good chunk of the opening volume implicitly sets itself against the post-Grace Kennedy tradition in evangelical anti-Catholicism.  And yet, the reader cannot help noting that the writer apparently feels no compunction about trotting out the more Gothic tropes in anti-Catholic fiction, including gliding Jesuits, agonizing monastic disciplines, Eeevil Catholic Plots (TM), and so on; moreover, except for Our Hero, all of the novel's Catholics are either nominal or critical of some Catholic practice, stereotypical or otherwise (e.g., fasting and other ascetic practices, monasticism).  As we would now say, the author's critique rests on an argument about tone, not content. 

The novel's poster woman for poor evangelical behavior is Mrs. Leyton, who develops a purely faddish enthusiasm for "a false assumption of religious strictness" (II.57).  Mrs. Leyton turns out to be the product of unpredictable spiritual excess: although the enthusiastic new clergyman, Mr. Fludyer, improves most of the parish, his pastoral work ricochets in all sorts of unexpected ways, producing hypocrites like Mrs. Leyton among them (II.58).   In a way, Mrs. Leyton is the Protestant parallel to Reginald's brother, Clement, who hies off to become a monk on a sulky whim.  Both deploy religion to consciously or unconsciously produce harm; both base their religious convictions on worldly motives.  Like Clement and other Catholic characters we've seen so far, Mrs. Leyton turns the rhetoric of devotion into self-flattery: "Up to this time, she had piqued herself on being frank; now, she called her love of making unkind and disagreeable speeches, faithfulness, springing from zeal" (II.60). Her evangelical ambitions soon succumb to various comic deflations, ranging from the local Catholic priest's "casuistry" (II.64), sufficient to pop Mrs. Leyton's theological pretensions, to Reginald suggesting that her presence might be dispensed with (II.64-65).  Here, the novel incorporates the burgeoning critiques of the controversial novel, which frequently noted the dialogue's one-sidedness (these novels aim to be monological, as it were) and the sheer unlikelihood of anyone actually deigning to hold this sort of conversation.  Mrs. Leyton plays her trump card by breaking out a controversial text, in "'the style and manner of fictitious narrative,'" but not "'a mere fiction'"; rather, it is "'but a single instance, amongst many, in which we see the workings of a blind, deluded Church'" (II.83-84).  Mimicking the disclaimers that frequently prefaced both fictional and biographical anti-Catholic narratives, Mrs. Leyton inadvertently points to the problematic relationship of fiction to religious controversy: to what extent does the plotting of fictional narrative exaggerate the "workings" it professes to reveal? Do such texts "blind" the evangelical listener, instead of enlightening them? Tellingly, Clara, whom Mrs. Leyton forces to read the text aloud to a Catholic audience, feels horrified rather than otherwise, and bluntly tells Reginald later that "'I don't believe a word of it'" (I.91). 

But even as she transfers authority to her own, purportedly more "charitable" novel, the narrator seems to fear the excessive effects of her own caricature: 

Thus encouraged, Mrs. Leyton persevered; and did an infinity of harm to the very cause she professed herself so anxious to advance. She had always been disagreeable, and, as such, disliked; but, heretofore, her failing was imputed to her nature; now, it was said to spring entirely from her religious views. And this is not a solitary instance, in which religion meets with unfair treatment; it is, and always has been, the bias of man's mind to place to her account the follies and the crimes, the weaknesses and vices, of her professed adherents.  (II.62-63)

Mrs. Leyton's behavior is, by definition, non-evangelical, even though it dovetails with one trend in Protestant proselytism.  And yet the argument appears, at first, to pose its own dangers: given that the narrative tends to read Catholicism in terms of its negative moral and social effects, surely The Monk itself indulges in "unfair treatment"? As we shall see, the narrative comes down very firmly on the necessity of being anti-Catholic; yet it does so by advocating an anti-Catholicism disseminated through private Bible-reading, love and domestic relationships, not the more public transactions of religious controversy.