Dalton, Dale C. “MacEvoy’s Room.” The Frederic Herald 3.2 (1969): 5.

Eggers, Paul. “By Whose Authority? Point of View in the First Chapter of Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Style 31.1 (1997): 81-95.

Hirsh, John C. “The Frederic Papers, The McGlynn Affair, and The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 17.1 (1984): 12-23.

Howells, William Dean. “My Favorite Novelist and His Best Book.” Munsey’s Magazine 17 (Apr. 1897): 24. Rpt. in W. D. Howells as Critic. Ed. Edwin H. Cady. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. 268-80.

Johnson, George W. “Harold Frederic’s Young Goodman Ware: The Ambiguities of a Realistic Romance.” Modern Fiction Studies 8 (1963): 361-74.

Kantor, J. R. K. “The Damnation of Theron Ware and John Ward, Preacher.” The Serif 3.1 (1996): 16-21.

Luedtke, Luther S. “Harold Frederic’s Satanic Sister Soulsby: Interpretation and Sources.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 30.1 (1975): 82-104.

Michelson, Bruce. “Theron Ware in the Wilderness of Ideas.” American Literary Realism 25.1 (1992): 54-73.

Miller, Linda Patterson. “Casting Graven Images: The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 30 (1978): 179-84.

O’Donnell, Thomas F. “Theron Ware, the Irish Picnic, and Comus.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 46 (1975): 528-37.

Prioleau, Elizabeth S. “The Minister and the Seductress in American Fiction: The Adamic Myth Redux.” Journal of American Culture 16.4 (1993): 1-6.

Steele, Mildred R. “Ware’s Post-Seattle Career Dept.” Frederic Herald 3.2 (1969): 6.

Stein, Allen F. “Evasions of an American Adam: Structure and Theme in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 5 (1972): 23-36.

Strother, Garland. “The Control of Distance in Theron Ware.” Frederic Herald 3.2 (1969): 4.

Strother, Garland. “Shifts in Point of View in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Frederic Herald 3.1 (1969): 2.

Vanderbeets, Richard. “The Ending of The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 36 (1964): 358-59.

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Dalton, Dale C. “MacEvoy’s Room.” The Frederic Herald 3.2 (1969): 5.

Dalton’s note examines MacEvoy’s room as a recurring structural device significant to Theron Ware’s fall in The Damnation of Theron Ware. When the Irish-Catholic wheelwright MacEvoy is fatally wounded falling from an elm tree he was ordered to trim on the Madden’s property, he is carried to his house in the outskirts of town. Theron Ware follows the bearers to MacEvoy’s house, the first house Ware visits upon moving to Octavius. MacEvoy’s room, described as “‘dark and ill-smelling,’” might also be called “Theron’s chamber of death,” observes Dalton, “for it holds other agents of Theron’s approaching ‘damnation,’” specifically Celia Madden and Father Forbes. In Chapter 10, when Ware has just returned from a visit to Forbes’ house, he finds his own house “‘bare and squalid’” and the fumes from the kerosene lamp “‘offensive to his nostrils.’” Lying in his room later that night, Ware can hear Madden playing her piano and recalls his first image her in MacEvoy’s room. In Chapter 15, MacEvoy’s room is again recalled: Ware rejects the Methodist Love-Feast as a “low” ceremony, held in the basement of the church; yet only three months earlier, he was mesmerized by the religious rites performed by Forbes in MacEvoy’s room. “MacEvoy’s fall is prophetic of Theron’s moral decline and spiritual death,” argues Dalton, and “MacEvoy’s room is [. . .] the structural device with which Frederic portrays Theron’s first acceptance of the new and rejection of the old” (5).

Eggers, Paul. “By Whose Authority? Point of View in the First Chapter of Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Style 31.1 (1997): 81-95.

Eggers’ article combines reader-response and structural criticism in an examination of Chapter 1 of The Damnation of Theron Ware. Eggers argues that other critics who have examined authority in this novel (Oehlschlaeger and Becknell) have begun in Chapter 2, where the narrative focus and main characters are established. He contends, however, “that the first chapter both initiates and encapsulates the novel’s exploration of authority through a perplexing usage of shifting points of view.” Identification of these shifting points of view alternates between clarity and ambiguity, not only implicating readers in “‘unauthoritative’ readings” of the text but also focusing on the “book’s concern with authority.” The opening three paragraphs are traditional omniscient narration, but one word in the third paragraph, “nay,” suggests an “internal debate” that should give careful readers pause. The narrator changes for paragraphs four through six to an unnamed “observer.” The point of view appears to shift again in paragraphs ten and eleven to the “venerable Fathers” of the Methodist clergy. Their “sincerity” is called into question if the judgments rendered are not the implied author’s (as reported by the omniscient narrator). Point of view clearly shifts back to the omniscient narrator in paragraphs twelve through fifteen, influencing the reader’s perceptions of Theron and Alice Ware in later paragraphs in contrast to the proud Tecumseh congregation. Eggers’ analysis continues along this line, scrutinizing each paragraph in turn. When Ware is finally introduced to the reader, it is through the “objective” tone of a limited-omniscient narrator who has just replaced the “vitriolic tone of the parishioner-controlled narrative.” Since the reader is predisposed to be sympathetic toward the seemingly stoic and pious Reverend Ware, this impression influences the reader well into the book. As Eggers demonstrates, “both text and reader are rendered ‘unauthoritative’ through the agency of point of view.” (Note: The above is from WilsonSelect, an electronic database that does not include Style’s page numbers.)

Hirsh, John C. “The Frederic Papers, The McGlynn Affair, and The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 17.1 (1984): 12-23.

Hirsh combines textual and biographical approaches in his examination of the Frederic Papers, preserved in the Library of Congress, “to help illuminate some of the more important structural and thematic concerns of the novel, particularly those affecting Fr. Forbes and the Catholics” (12). In his article, Hirsh produces excerpts from the author’s early notes that indicate some of the relationships that Frederic intended to develop, among them Theron Ware, Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar; Celia Madden and Father Forbes; Father Forbes and his Bishop. Hirsh cites Paul Haines’ 1945 unpublished dissertation that identifies Father Edward Terry, a priest whom Frederic knew in Utica, as a possible source for the development of Father Forbes. However, Hirsh suggests that a more influential source may have been Father Edward McGlynn, an Irish-Catholic priest in New York who made newspaper headlines in the 1880s for his political activism and American ideal of Catholicism (he was excommunicated in 1887 and reconciled with the church in 1893). The character of Father Forbes, as it emerged in The Damnation of Theron Ware, is forceful, powerful, and sophisticated. Elements of the role that were in Frederic’s working notes but eliminated from the novel include public condemnation of the priest for a scandalous relationship with Celia Madden and serious political activism.

Howells, William Dean. “My Favorite Novelist and His Best Book.” W. D. Howells as Critic. Ed. Edwin H. Cady. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. 268-80.

Howells’ review of Frederic’s novel was published in Munsey’s in April 1897. Howells names The Damnation of Theron Ware one of his favorite books. His comment on Frederic’s novel is often quoted by critics: “I was particularly interested in the book, for when you get to the end, although you have carried a hazy notion in your mind of the sort of man Ware was, you fully realize, for the first time, that the author has never for a moment represented him anywhere to you as a good or honest man, or as anything but a very selfish man” (278).

Johnson, George W. “Harold Frederic’s Young Goodman Ware: The Ambiguities of a Realistic Romance.” Modern Fiction Studies 8 (1963): 361-74.

Johnson's article combines structural and genre criticism to explore the “sinning minister” in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works as an influence on Frederic’s minister, “brought up to date and given topicality in the ‘turbulent’ milieu of the 1890’s” (362). Although sensitive to Sister Soulsby’s duplicity, Johnson regards her influence as comparable to that of Celia Madden. Johnson writes, Sister Soulsby “patches together Theron’s splintered ego by giving him a role to play. Henceforth, she counsels, he is to be a conscious fraud, an actor superior to his audience.” Her seduction of Theron Ware takes a different tack from Celia Madden’s, “[b]ut Sister Soulsby has in a way seduced him” by appealing to his pride and fueling his ego. Ware emerges from the forest scene with Madden, “like another Dimmesdale,” unable to reconcile the “radical contradictions” that plague his mind (365). Johnson observes that Frederic’s novel is, on the one hand, “a realistic rendering of societal relationships” and, on the other, “a romancer’s poetic rendering, complete with archetypal trees, gardens, and snakes, of a representative figure” (367). In the character of Theron Ware, Frederic has created a “seeker who combines the temperament of both a romancer and a realist”; however, Johnson concludes that the novel “remains a literary near-miss” because “Theron Ware is an average man who remains throughout the book merely a boy” (372). A novel “[a]t the last more complicated than complex,” Johnson asserts that The Damnation of Theron Ware is “a flawed monument to an endeavor audacious, artful, and American” (374).

Kantor, J. R. K. “The Damnation of Theron Ware and John Ward, Preacher.” The Serif 3.1 (1996): 16-21.

Kantor’s article is an analysis of the character development and structure of The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) and Margaret Deland’s John Ward, Preacher (1888). The similarities in the treatment of religious doctrine in the two stories, according to Kantor, support the thesis that Frederic was familiar with Deland’s novel. First, Kantor notes that critics have argued Frederic was familiar with Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s Robert Elsmere, a novel published the same year as John Ward, Preacher, and often reviewed with it because of their similarities. Second, attitudes toward religion are central to character development in both Frederic’s and Deland’s novels. The pragmatic attitudes of Sister Soulsby and of Gifford Woodhouse complement one another, and in the end, both characters are a source of consolation and hope. Kantor also notes similarities between the meetings of the ministers and the trustees in both novels. The trustees are in control, and both groups have one dissenter among them: Levi Gorringe opposes the high interest rate charged by the other trustees, and Elder Johnson defends Helen Ward against the judgment of the others. In both novels, church officials are opposed to all things Catholic. Finally, the names of the two ministers—Ware and Ward—cannot be ignored.

Luedtke, Luther S. “Harold Frederic’s Satanic Sister Soulsby: Interpretation and Sources.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 30.1 (1975): 82-104.

Luedtke’s thematic, especially moral, approach to The Damnation of Theron Ware identifies Sister Soulsby as “the agent of a damnation that has moral as well as social reality” (82; emphasis Luedtke’s). Luedtke writes in his article, “Frederic intends Sister Soulsby, the materialist, to function as a Mephistophelean tempter of Theron’s soul and a minion of spiritual darkness” (84). Tracing the four parts of the novel, Luedtke states that it is not Theron Ware’s introduction to his new church or town, Father Forbes, Dr. Ledsmar, or Celia Madden in Part I that sets him on the path to damnation, but rather it is his interaction with the Soulsbys in Part II that plants the seeds of his destruction. Sister Soulsby’s remarks about Alice Ware cause Theron Ware first to re-evaluate his marriage and, later, to suspect his wife of infidelity. Her lecture to Ware on the art and uses of performance prompt him to brag about his new perspective to Dr. Ledsmar and Celia Madden, alienating them in the process. Luedtke recites the Soulsbys’ long history of questionable employment and concludes that they are confidence artists for whom religion is “only the latest con game” (92). Ware believes Sister Soulsby when she tells him that she and Soulsby had “both soured on living by fakes” and were now “good frauds” (93). Luedtke notes Frederic’s debt to Nathaniel Hawthorne in the character of Westervelt (The Blithedale Romance), who, like Sister Soulsby, has false teeth and is “stamped with [. . . the] totems of the serpent and the evil eye” (94). Although Luedtke contends that The Damnation of Theron Ware offers ample evidence of Frederic’s “judgments on Sister Soulsby” (98), he concludes his essay by offering two British models for the character of Sister Soulsby: Lucy Helen Muriel Soulsby (1856-1927) and Charles Dickens’ fictional Mrs. Jellyby (Bleak House).

Michelson, Bruce. “Theron Ware in the Wilderness of Ideas.” American Literary Realism 25.1 (1992): 54-73.

Michelson’s article combines thematic and structural criticism in his examination of Theron Ware’s “modern intellectual experience” in The Damnation of Theron Ware (55). First, Michelson focuses on establishing the date for the novel’s action—late 1880s—in an effort to understand Ware’s “culture-crisis at the hands of Father Forbes, Dr. Ledsmar, and Celia Madden.” The trio, argues Michelson, are “intellectual-pretenders” for whom ideas are merely “social weapons, rationalizations, playthings for idle hours” (57). Initially regarding Ware as an acquisition, the poseurs compete in a game of one-upmanship, exhibiting for Ware their intellectual sophistication. When Ware tries to join their game, however, he fails to understand that “sayings and doings require no reconciliation” (60) and “self-interest and the protection of a public mask” are survival skills he has not mastered (61). Sister Soulsby tries to teach Ware this lesson, but he “never hears the right words at the right time” (67), and he “misses obvious signs of duplicity” in the actions of the trio (68). Ultimately, Forbes, Ledsmar, and Madden do not reject Ware for his duplicity, but for his “clumsiness in trying to do what they manage deftly” (70). “Disaster has taught [. . . Theron] little,” insists Michelson, “the consequences of stupidity have not crushed him.” Rather, “[a]s a modernized, incoherent man he may now be on his way to public triumphs, readier for them than ever before” (71). Thus Ware’s story, concludes Michelson, “is ultimately ‘about’ a change in American intellectual and cultural life, [. . .] of a degradation of the intellect” (72).

Miller, Linda Patterson. “Casting Graven Images: The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 30 (1978): 179-84.

Miller's article combines moral and structural criticism in her analysis of the “moral wasteland” that confronts Alice Ware, Celia Madden, Sister Soulsby, and Theron Ware in The Damnation of Theron Ware. Their “search for personal salvation” transforms the concept of the church into something familiar and comforting: for Alice Ware, it is her “garden”; for Celia Madden, it is her “‘sacred chamber’ of art”; for Sister Soulsby, it is a “theatrical stage”; and for Theron Ware, it is the “‘maternal idea’ as embodied in Alice, Celia, and Sister Soulsby” (179). Alice Ware’s religion is her garden. Images of flowers blossoming and, later, withering are associated with her vivaciousness and despair. Miller observes that, rather than freeing her, both Methodism and her garden serve to isolate Alice Ware until she despairs, “[I]f there is a God, he has forgotten me” (180). Celia Madden seeks to transcend the wasteland in the “sacred chamber” of her rooms where she is worshipped as both seductress and madonna. When Celia Madden “cannot realize moments of transcendence,” she regards herself as “the most helpless and forlorn and lonesome of atoms” (181). Sister Soulsby’s approach is to disguise the wasteland with the machinery of the theatrical stage, all the while knowing that the performance is only an illusion. Theron Ware’s quest for salvation turns first to Alice Ware, then to Celia Madden, and finally to Sister Soulsby, but his misplaced faith in Sister Soulsby seals his damnation. Miller agrees with Stanton Garner’s assessment of Sister Soulsby’s failed religion: “to look for stage machinery instead of truth is to invite degeneration, to confuse darkness with illumination, to strike a bargain with Satan, to lose what weed-grown Paradise is left in a diminished world.” Miller concludes that none of the characters finds “real personal salvation”; none finds God (184).

O’Donnell, Thomas F. “Theron Ware, the Irish Picnic, and Comus.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 46 (1975): 528-37.

O’Donnell combines textual and structural criticism in an examination of possible literary sources for the scene of the Irish picnic in Frederic’s novel. In his article, he acknowledges Nathaniel Hawthorne’s influence on Frederic, but argues that John Milton’s masque Comus may have inspired the picnic in The Damnation of Theron Ware. Elements of Comus are echoed throughout the novel. According to O’Donnell, Comus is Theron Ware; the Lady is Celia Madden; and the Attendant Spirit is Father Forbes. However, Frederic’s version inverts certain elements: “Comus-Theron rather than the Lady moved along through a thick wood,” and he eagerly accepts the potion (lager beer) Milton’s Lady refuses (531). The Lady’s brothers do not rescue Celia Madden; rather she and Comus-Theron are left alone in the forest. And though it appears that Celia Madden may allow herself to be seduced by Comus-Theron, he receives only a perfunctory good-bye kiss from his Lady. While Milton’s Comus is a rewriting of the Circe legend, O’Donnell observes, “Abundant precedent for the naturalizing—and nationalizing—of European and classical myth was available in American literature” (535). He concludes that Comus clearly provided the elements necessary to Frederic’s “final climactic temptation” of Theron Ware (537).

Prioleau, Elizabeth S. “The Minister and the Seductress in American Fiction: The Adamic Myth Redux.” Journal of American Culture 16.4 (1993): 1-6.

Prioleau’s structural approach identifies the “odd couple” of American literature that reveals “surprising shifts and reversals in the minister-temptress drama” (1) in six novels: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), Winston Churchill’s The Inside of the Cup (1913), Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry (1927), Peter De Vries’ The Mackerel Plaza (1958), and John Updike’s A Month of Sundays (1974). In her article, Prioleau observes that Hawthorne’s Dimmesdale is the model clergyman, a “saint on earth,” for whom Hester Prynne’s freedom and lawlessness prove to be powerfully seductive. When Dimmesdale falls, “the reverberations are momentous.” The title character in Frederic’s novel is a “diminished version” of Dimmesdale, and Celia Madden is a “spoiled, vain, fin de siecle voluptuary” (2). Prioleau observes, “Due to the minister’s lowered status at the century’s end,” Ware’s “fall resembles more of a pratfall, for which the reader feels mixed pathos and contempt.” Churchill’s innocent and idealistic minister, John, “denounces everything he had believed”; and his seducer, wealthy and freethinking “pagan” Alison Parr, “metamorphoses into a Victorian hausfrau—domestic and dependent” (3). Prioleau concludes that Churchill’s attempt to create “a happy resolution of the clergy-temptress drama” misses the mark. Literature in the 1920s reveals a decline in the clergyman’s reputation. Lewis’ Elmer Gantry is already corrupt when he meets Sharon Faulkner, an even more corrupt tent revivalist. By novel’s end, Faulkner is dead and Gantry has become the new “seducer, exploiter, megalomaniac, and muddled nonbeliever.” De Vries’ Andrew Mackerel is a degenerate minister who believes in nothing. The women in the novel are a parody of earlier seductresses such as Hester Prynne, prompting Prioleau to observe, “The temptations of America for clergymen in the fifties have been indulged to a point of satiation, ennui, and meaninglessness.” Lastly, Updike’s Tom Marshfield is both minister and seducer, and the temptresses—Ms. Prynne and Alicia—have “evolved into the seduced” (4).

Steele, Mildred R. “Ware’s Post-Seattle Career Dept.” Frederic Herald 3.2 (1969): 6.

Steele’s sketch describes Theron Ware’s political career in Seattle and, later, in Washington. This “sequel,” inspired by Steele’s reading of Ralph Rogers’ 1961 dissertation entitled “Harold Frederic: His Development as a Comic Realist,” outlines the major events of Ware’s new career with striking thematic and structural similarities to The Damnation of Theron Ware (6).

Stein, Allen F. “Evasions of an American Adam: Structure and Theme in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 5 (1972): 23-36.

Stein’s structural analysis of The Damnation of Theron Ware reveals “a whole series of spurious ‘fresh starts’ for Theron, recurring at virtually equidistant intervals in the plot-line” (23). Stein notes in this article that Theron Ware’s character, unlike that in most portrayals of an American Adam, “is ultimately unchanged by his process of initiation,” and the ending of the novel, “looking westward in Springtime, bespeaks [. . .] not affirmation, but damnation [. . .] rendered in mocking, anti-romantic terms criticizing misplaced faith in the powers of spiritual renewal in shallow souls” (24). The novel is divided into four parts, corresponding to the four seasons. Excluding the first three chapters and the last chapter, which are expository in nature, the story is structured in four groups of seven chapters each. The last chapter of each seven-chapter group ends in a supposed “resolution” to Ware’s most recent conflict (25). At the end of Part One, Reverend Ware has met the trio of Father Forbes, Dr. Ledsmar, and Celia Madden and has assumed an attitude of superiority over his wife and congregation. Throughout Part Two, Ware’s contempt for the unillumined grows, along with his suspicions about an illicit affair between his wife and Levi Gorringe. A temporary resolution to Ware’s conflicts is presented in the counsel of Sister Soulsby to be a “good fraud” (31). Part Three traces Ware’s rapid degeneration and alienation from his new, intellectual friends. In Part Four, encouraged by Celia Madden’s kiss, Ware turns his back on the Methodist world in favor of the civilized world represented by the trio. Stein observes, Ware’s “flouting of the conventions of both worlds will literally drive him from both into the western forests for a new start and new dreams” (33). In Chapter 31, rejected and forlorn, Ware turns to Sister Soulsby for consolation, but “Theron’s despair, unfortunately, is not symptomatic of any attempt to face the consequences of his actions in a mature manner” (35). In the final chapter, spring has returned with a new cycle of fresh starts for Theron Ware. Stein concludes, “Presumably Theron will rush blithely onward, an American Adam of the Gilded Age, so unsubstantial that nothing can touch him.” The damnation Ware suffers, according to Stein, is “the most insidious kind not only for him but [also] for his society” because he and others like him are unaware of their damnation (36).

Strother, Garland. “The Control of Distance in Theron Ware.” Frederic Herald 3.2 (1969): 4.

Strother’s note is a structural analysis of Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware “involving the manipulation of Theron’s name” as a “distancing factor [. . .] between the narrator and Theron and, hence, between the reader and Theron.” When reporting from within the mind of Ware, Frederic’s narrator usually uses the character’s first name. Other times, when the narrator relates events from outside Ware’s mind, the references to the title character tend to be more formal—Theron Ware, “the Rev. Theron Ware,” and “the Rev. Mr. Ware”—and should alert readers to distance themselves from Ware (4).

Strother, Garland. “Shifts in Point of View in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Frederic Herald 3.1 (1969): 2.

Strother opens his note by refuting Everett Carter’s assertion that The Damnation of Theron Ware is “told strictly from the minister’s point of view.” In his own structural analysis of the novel, Strother states that “[o]n at least three occasions, Frederic significantly shifts the point of view away from Theron to another character.” The first shift occurs in Chapter 21 when Dr. Ledsmar renames his lizard “‘the Rev. Mr. Ware.’” The second shift occurs in Chapter 25 when Levi Gorringe says that Ware is “‘so much meaner than any other man,’” and the third shift occurs in Chapter 26 when Father Forbes tells his housekeeper that he is not home should Ware call again. “The function of the shifts in point of view is in each case to indicate Theron’s loss of esteem in the eyes of another character. By shifting the point of view from Theron to the other character,” Strother argues, “Frederic dramatizes clearly this loss of esteem and foreshadows Theron’s eventual damnation” (2).

Vanderbeets, Richard. “The Ending of The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 36 (1964): 358-59.

Vanderbeets’ textual analysis of Frederic’s novel and working notes challenges earlier criticism labeling Frederic a “comic realist” (358). The ending of The Damnation of Theron Ware, Vanderbeets argues in his article, is not tragic: Theron Ware relocates to Seattle for a career in real estate and dreams of becoming a Senator. However, Frederic’s working notes read, “Soulsby & wife at deathbed—their words finish book.” Vanderbeets contends that since this note immediately follows references to Ware, it must refer to his deathbed. Furthermore, if Frederic intended to kill off his main character in some earlier version of the novel, then the ending “reveals an inconsistency incompatible with the picture of ‘comic realist’” (359).