Philanthropic Discourse in Anglo-American Literature, 1850–1920 ed. by Frank Q. Christianson and Leslee Thorne-Murphy (review)

Philanthropic Discourse in Anglo-American Literature, 1850–1920 comes with rather too much wrapping. Not only do the editors, Frank Q. Christianson and Leslee Thorne-Murphy, supply an introduction, but there is also a preface (written, presumably, by the editors) to that introduction. Not only is there a conclusion by the editors, but there is also an interesting but not entirely relevant afterword (by Kathleen D. McCarthy). The effect of all this framing is compounded by the excessively strong claims the introduction makes for the coherence and significance of the collection. Arguing for the existence of a transatlantic "discourse of philanthropy" (3) that took on a distinctive character in the period from 1850 to 1920, the editors see it as no less than "a central modernizing agent in the development of Anglophone culture on both sides of the Atlantic" (5). It almost seems as if the editors felt they had a hard case to make for this book. If so, it is too bad they did, because this volume is full of strong, provocative essays for which no such efforts need have been made.

Apart from the final essay, Sarah Ruffing Robbins's "Sustaining Gendered Philanthropy through Transatlantic Friendship: Jane Addams, Henrietta Barnett, and Writing for Reciprocal Mentoring," which meticulously tracks the mutuality of influence of Henrietta Barnett and Jane Addams over each other's careers and reputations as philanthropists and settlement house pioneers, there is little in this volume that can properly be considered "transatlantic." Lori Merish's "The Poverty of Sympathy" does read fiction by American working-class women writers through Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus and compares attitudes toward the poor in the U.S. and Britain in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. The gestures Merish makes toward synchronous transatlantic conditions are less valuable, however, than her claim that American factory-women's fiction of the period posed a challenge to dominant modes of bourgeois sentimentality. In the hands of writers such as "Miss J. A. B. from Manchester" (Manchester, New Hampshire, that is), she argues, sympathy for the poor gets transformed from a philanthropic affect that had come by this time to diminish its object and validate American laissez-faire individualism into a defense of solidarity and feminine subjecthood.

Several essays in this collection, including Merish's, view the nineteenth-century philanthropic project in a critical light, or more accurately, show the ways in which nineteenth-century authors were themselves critical of the philanthropic enterprise. Daniel Bivona's fine "Self-Undermining Philanthropic Impulses: Philanthropy in the Mirror of Narrative" undertakes to demonstrate the shift from ambivalent representations of philanthropists into outright suspicion in British novels from the middle of the century into the late-Victorian period. Bivona's compelling reading of John Jarndyce in Bleak House (1852–53) makes clear that if Charles Dickens is known for his rejection of philanthropy of the "telescopic" variety, he does not unreservedly endorse the local, "good" kind of philanthropy, either, as it is founded on cryptic self-interest. But Dickens's suspicions of philanthropy and philanthropists pale next to those of the next generation of Victorians, in Bivona's telling. By the time we get to George Gissing's Thyrza (1887) and The Nether World (1889), he shows, the philanthropist has become a veritable monster of disguised narcissism, a sinister degenerate. In combination with his dire assessment of the poor themselves, Gissing's skepticism regarding the motives of the philanthropist ends up underscoring his bitter conviction that there is no saving the poor.

Also exploring the darker side of philanthropy is Francesca Sawaya's "Patrons, Philanthropists, and Professionals: Henry James's Roderick Hudson." Sawaya reads James's 1875 novel through a reconsideration of its theme of patronage in relation to philanthropy and free-market capitalism. Patronage may seem to be a remnant of older times, but in the novel it blurs, in...