The New Paul and Virginia
Encyclopedia
The New Paul and Virginia, or Positivism on an Island is a satirical
dystopian novel
written by William Hurrell Mallock
, and first published in 1878
. The book is one item in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the later nineteenth century in both Great Britain and the United States.
's 1787 novel Paul et Virginie
. As in that book, Mallock includes a shipwreck and a tropical island, though his satirical outlook is far from Saint-Pierre's earnest idealism.
As his subtitle indicates, Mallock targets the Positivist
and Utilitarian
thinking of his era for satirical attack. He mentions John Stuart Mill
, Auguste Comte
, Frederic Harrison
, John Tyndall
, and Thomas Henry Huxley by name in his text. Consistent with his other books, like his satirical novel The New Republic
(also 1878), Mallock's stance is that of a conservative and a religious believer. "Comically, but ruthlessly, Mallock exposes the moral vacuity he believes to lie behind the positivist creed," reducing it to "utter absurdity...."
To support his satire, Mallock closes his book with a ten-page section of Notes, which contains twenty-nine quotations from positivist and liberal thinkers and writers of Mallock's era, including eleven quotes from Tyndall and nine from Harrison, plus five from Huxley and two each from Harriet Martineau
and William Kingdom Clifford.
Both characters are traveling abroad the steamship Australasian, sailing from Melbourne
to London
; Virginia is on her way to Chausible Island to meet her new husband, while Paul is journeying home to his elderly wife, whom he has been avoiding for the past eighteen months. (Mrs. Prof. Darnley has an irrational determination to convince her atheist
and materialist
husband of the existence of Hell
.) On the voyage, Paul lectures on his value system, which is essentially Comte's "Religion of Humanity," and manages to convince many passengers and crew of the truth of his outlook (though Virginia does not listen to him).
An approaching storm inspires the crew to load the ship's cutter with survival supplies, including tinned meats and cases of champagne. The storm passes, but the ship's boiler suddenly explodes; the Australasian quickly sinks with the loss of almost all on board.
Yet Paul and Virginia manage to reach a nearby island in the cutter. (Shipwreck on a deserted island, as a start for a new and better society, is a staple in the utopian genre — as in the Spensonia
books of Thomas Spence
, among other possible examples.) Paul finds a deserted house built from wreckage; it is a comfortable and neatly-furnished cottage, and the two survivors move in. Virginia is deeply distraught over their recent tragedy — but her state of mind improves when she realizes that the largest trunk in her luggage is on the cutter. The tinned meats and champagne also come in handy.
Two other survivors appear: an English clergyman who has been converted to Positivism by Paul, and an elderly woman. The latter soon dies, giving Paul and the clergyman opportunity to debate the meaning of her death from the Positivist viewpoint. Paul keeps himself busy searching for the missing link
. Liberated from the trammels of traditional culture and belief, Paul confidently expects instant attainment of the sublime happiness that is the natural state of free human beings.
The clergyman proves to be an inconvenient convert, however; he spends his time getting drunk and trying to kiss Virginia, and Paul's intellectual arguments have little influence on him. Physical intimidation is more effective, since the clergyman is both a "coward" and a "weakling." When the drunken clergyman falls off a cliff, Paul meditates on the utilitarian aspects of his death. Paul eventually converts Virginia; she gives up her religious faith, and replaces it with a sexual desire for Paul — which the intellectual Paul finds very uncomfortable. In her new commitment to "glorious truth," Virginia snoops through all of Paul's private papers, and discovers his secret: he himself was once a clergyman.
By the final chapter of the story, Paul is reduced to baying at the moon. His howls attract the notice of another couple. The woman turns out to be Paul's wife, who has come searching for her errant husband. And the man is Virginia's husband the Bishop. It happens that the island on which Paul and Virginia landed is none other than Chausible Island, her destination, and the cottage they've been occupying was prepared by the Bishop for Virginia. At the end of the book, Paul discovers that his wife has attained her goal, and that he now believes in Hell.
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
dystopian novel
Utopian and dystopian fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia...
written by William Hurrell Mallock
William Hurrell Mallock
William Hurrell Mallock was an English novelist and economics writer.-Biography:He was educated privately and then at Balliol College, Oxford. He won the Newdigate prize in 1872 and took a second class in the final classical schools in 1874, securing his Bachelor of Arts degree from Oxford...
, and first published in 1878
1878 in literature
The year 1878 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*January 28 - The Yale News becomes the first daily college newspaper in the United States.*Guy de Maupassant becomes an employee of the Ministry of Public Instruction....
. The book is one item in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the later nineteenth century in both Great Britain and the United States.
Satire
Mallock derives the title of his book from Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-PierreJacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was a French writer and botanist...
's 1787 novel Paul et Virginie
Paul et Virginie
Paul et Virginie is a novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, first published in 1787. The novel's title characters are very good friends since birth who fall in love...
. As in that book, Mallock includes a shipwreck and a tropical island, though his satirical outlook is far from Saint-Pierre's earnest idealism.
As his subtitle indicates, Mallock targets the Positivist
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
and Utilitarian
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
thinking of his era for satirical attack. He mentions John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
, Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
, Frederic Harrison
Frederic Harrison
Frederic Harrison was a British jurist and historian.Born at 17 Euston Square, London, he was the son of Frederick Harrison, a stockbroker and his wife Jane, daughter of Alexander Brice, a Belfast granite merchant. He was baptised at St...
, John Tyndall
John Tyndall
John Tyndall FRS was a prominent Irish 19th century physicist. His initial scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he studied thermal radiation, and produced a number of discoveries about processes in the atmosphere...
, and Thomas Henry Huxley by name in his text. Consistent with his other books, like his satirical novel The New Republic
The New Republic (novel)
The New Republic or Culture, Faith and Philosophy in an English Country House by English author William Hurrell Mallock is a novel first published by Chatto and Windus of London in 1877. The work had its genesis as a serialization...
(also 1878), Mallock's stance is that of a conservative and a religious believer. "Comically, but ruthlessly, Mallock exposes the moral vacuity he believes to lie behind the positivist creed," reducing it to "utter absurdity...."
To support his satire, Mallock closes his book with a ten-page section of Notes, which contains twenty-nine quotations from positivist and liberal thinkers and writers of Mallock's era, including eleven quotes from Tyndall and nine from Harrison, plus five from Huxley and two each from Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....
and William Kingdom Clifford.
Synopsis
The novel opens with the introduction of its titular characters. The heroine is "the superb Virginia St. John," a celebrated beauty, famous for being famous. At the age of thirty she is the newlywed wife of an English bishop. The hero (the term has to be applied satirically) is Prof. Paul Darnley, a prominent intellectual:- "He had written three volumes on the origin of life, which he had spent seven years in looking for in hay and cheese; he had written five volumes on the entozoa of the pig, and two volumes of lectures, as a corollary to these, on the sublimity of human heroism and the whole duty of man. He was renowned all over Europe and America as a complete embodiment of enlightened modern thinking. He criticised everything; he took nothing on trust, except the unspeakable sublimity of the human race and its august terrestrial destinies."
Both characters are traveling abroad the steamship Australasian, sailing from Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
; Virginia is on her way to Chausible Island to meet her new husband, while Paul is journeying home to his elderly wife, whom he has been avoiding for the past eighteen months. (Mrs. Prof. Darnley has an irrational determination to convince her atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
and materialist
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
husband of the existence of Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
.) On the voyage, Paul lectures on his value system, which is essentially Comte's "Religion of Humanity," and manages to convince many passengers and crew of the truth of his outlook (though Virginia does not listen to him).
An approaching storm inspires the crew to load the ship's cutter with survival supplies, including tinned meats and cases of champagne. The storm passes, but the ship's boiler suddenly explodes; the Australasian quickly sinks with the loss of almost all on board.
Yet Paul and Virginia manage to reach a nearby island in the cutter. (Shipwreck on a deserted island, as a start for a new and better society, is a staple in the utopian genre — as in the Spensonia
Spensonia
Spensonia is a fictional Utopian country created by the English author and political reformer Thomas Spence. Spence laid out his ideas about Spensonia in a series of literary works published in the late 18th century:...
books of Thomas Spence
Thomas Spence
Thomas Spence was an English Radical and advocate of the common ownership of land.-Life:Spence was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England and was the son of a Scottish net and shoe maker....
, among other possible examples.) Paul finds a deserted house built from wreckage; it is a comfortable and neatly-furnished cottage, and the two survivors move in. Virginia is deeply distraught over their recent tragedy — but her state of mind improves when she realizes that the largest trunk in her luggage is on the cutter. The tinned meats and champagne also come in handy.
Two other survivors appear: an English clergyman who has been converted to Positivism by Paul, and an elderly woman. The latter soon dies, giving Paul and the clergyman opportunity to debate the meaning of her death from the Positivist viewpoint. Paul keeps himself busy searching for the missing link
Missing Link
Missing link is a nonscientific term for any transitional fossil, especially one connected with human evolution; see Transitional fossil - Missing links and List of transitonal fossils - Human evolution.Missing Link may refer to:...
. Liberated from the trammels of traditional culture and belief, Paul confidently expects instant attainment of the sublime happiness that is the natural state of free human beings.
The clergyman proves to be an inconvenient convert, however; he spends his time getting drunk and trying to kiss Virginia, and Paul's intellectual arguments have little influence on him. Physical intimidation is more effective, since the clergyman is both a "coward" and a "weakling." When the drunken clergyman falls off a cliff, Paul meditates on the utilitarian aspects of his death. Paul eventually converts Virginia; she gives up her religious faith, and replaces it with a sexual desire for Paul — which the intellectual Paul finds very uncomfortable. In her new commitment to "glorious truth," Virginia snoops through all of Paul's private papers, and discovers his secret: he himself was once a clergyman.
By the final chapter of the story, Paul is reduced to baying at the moon. His howls attract the notice of another couple. The woman turns out to be Paul's wife, who has come searching for her errant husband. And the man is Virginia's husband the Bishop. It happens that the island on which Paul and Virginia landed is none other than Chausible Island, her destination, and the cottage they've been occupying was prepared by the Bishop for Virginia. At the end of the book, Paul discovers that his wife has attained her goal, and that he now believes in Hell.