Carrington, Jr., George C. “Harold Frederic’s Clear Farcical Vision: The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 19.3 (1987): 3-26.

Donaldson, Scott. “The Seduction of Theron Ware.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 29 (1975): 441-52.

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

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

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

Myers, Robert M. “Antimodern Protest in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 26.3 (1994): 52-64.

Oehlschlaeger, Fritz. “Passion, Authority, and Faith in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literature 58.2 (1986): 238-55.

Raleigh, John Henry. “The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literature 30 (1958): 210-27.

Raleigh, John Henry. “The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Time, Place, and Idea: Essays on the Novel. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1968. 75-95.

Raleigh, John Henry. Introduction. The Damnation of Theron Ware. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960. vii-xxvi.

Zimmermann, David H. “Clay Feet, Modernism, and Fundamental Option in Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware.” The American Benedictine Review 45.1 (1994): 33-44.

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Carrington, Jr., George C. “Harold Frederic’s Clear Farcical Vision: The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 19.3 (1987): 3-26.

Carrington’s genre analysis of Frederic’s novel opens with the claim that “Frederic’s America is farcical; it is a world in which behavior and events are basically determined by the need [. . .] for personal stability and security” (3). Thus, Carrington argues in this article, in Frederic’s interpretation of Howellsian realism, nearly all the characters in this farcical novel are knaves: “selfish aggressors” who manipulate “obtuse victims,” the fools (9). Theron Ware is unique in that his character is both knave and fool: the “fool-as-knave” tries to be a manipulator, but is hopelessly foolish, and the “knave-as-fool” blunders about seemingly helpless, provokes others to help him, and emerges relatively unharmed, ready to repeat the cycle (3). Although Carrington examines a number of devices standard to farce, he identifies hoaxing and acting as central to the development of the novel. Most of the hoaxing occurs in Ware’s mind: he deceives himself more effectively than he deceives any of the other characters. The external hoaxing takes on the form of acting—characters playing a role for the purpose of “self-maintenance” or personal stability (7). Seeing the arrival of Theron Ware in Octavius as a potential threat to their stability, most of the other characters in the novel take immediate and aggressive action toward Ware in order to maintain their positions. Of these, Sister Soulsby is deemed “the most perfect knave in the book”: she is deceptive, manipulative, and ruthless (18). Carrington concludes that the question of Theron Ware’s illumination or damnation is irrelevant because, in the farcical world of the novel, nothing significant has changed; and, in the end, it is the reader—not the characters—who is illumined through Frederic’s “‘clear human vision’ of comedy” (24).

Donaldson, Scott. “The Seduction of Theron Ware.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 29 (1975): 441-52.

Donaldson’s article is a psychological analysis of the causes of Theron Ware’s downfall. While Donaldson acknowledges that most critics point to the trio of Father Forbes, Dr. Ledsmar, and Celia Madden as the force behind Ware’s destruction, he asserts “the true villain of the piece” is Sister Soulsby, “who plays Mephistopheles” to Ware’s “Faust” (441-42). Donaldson points to characteristics of Sister Soulsby—her “deceptive appearance, commanding manner, and duplicitous methods of operation”—to support his judgment (442). Sister Soulsby is a master confidence artist who employs performance, flattery, and scripture quoted out-of-context to further her scheming manipulation of both Theron Ware and his congregation. After Sister Soulsby absolves Ware of any guilt for his participation in her scheme to cheat Levi Gorringe at the trustees’ meeting, he embraces her philosophy of pragmatism and vows to emulate her example; however, Donaldson concludes, “Theron Ware simply is not cut out for the role of deceiver” (451).

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).

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).

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).

Myers, Robert M. “Antimodern Protest in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 26.3 (1994): 52-64.

Myers combines biographical and cultural criticism in his article to examine Frederic’s portrayal of nineteenth-century America, particularly the country’s attitude toward religion. According to Myers, many earlier critics of Frederic’s works “tended to see Frederic as an objective critic standing outside of his culture”; he, however, detects in The Damnation of Theron Ware the author’s concern for the effect of “overcivilization and fragmentation of modernism” on American cultural institutions (52). Frederic undertook extensive research on Methodism, Catholicism, and higher Biblical criticism in order to be as accurate as possible in his portrayal of a minister and a priest. Myers notes that Frederic’s sources on comparative religion “map a decline in traditional faith” resulting in “a profound ambivalence about the psychological and social effects of faithlessness.” Frederic’s own views on religion “altered between contempt for religious superstition and a recognition of the social value of religion”(54). In the 1890s, tensions between liberal Methodists, who “adopted the modern optimistic belief in the inevitability of progress,” and conservative Methodists, who protested the “modernizing trends of the liberals,” were dividing the church. Reverend Ware’s attempt to bring “modern ideas” to the Methodists of Octavius is thwarted by “a strong conservative faction” (56). Partly in reaction to his frustration with primitive Methodism, Ware embraces Celia Madden’s aesthetic paganism. He is also exposed to Father Forbes’ Catholicism, described by Myers as “a useful social institution” (59), and Sister Soulsby’s pragmatism, “based on social utility rather than theology.” Myers observes, “Father Forbes, Doctor Ledsmar, Celia, and Sister Soulsby all contribute to Theron’s destruction by consistently overestimating his ability to assimilate a modern view of religion.” Catholicism can tolerate a Father Forbes in its midst because the “corporate ethic of the Catholic Church de-emphasizes the significance of the individual priest” (60). Reverend Ware does not have that luxury in Methodism: “if the minister be corrupt his ministry will be corrupt also.” Myers concludes, “Forbes’ vision of a national church, focused on the needs of the consumers rather than doctrinal disputes with other religions, parallels simultaneous developments in American business. [. . .] The pragmatic approach to religion that emerges from Theron Ware points to a church strikingly similar to the modern corporation, an institution that took shape in the late nineteenth century” (61).

Oehlschlaeger, Fritz. “Passion, Authority, and Faith in The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literature 58.2 (1986): 238-55.

Oehlschlaeger’s article combines reader response, feminist, and psychological criticism in an analysis of authority in Frederic’s novel. According to Oehlschlaeger, Frederic “systematically discredits every authority figure in the novel while simultaneously revealing Theron’s own search for authority.” He argues that what Frederic’s novel presents “is not an innocent’s fall into corrupt sexuality but a critique of the way corrupt authority poisons sexuality,” a claim demonstrated in Theron Ware’s relationships with his wife Alice Ware and Celia Madden (239). Theron Ware becomes “progressively effeminized” by the novel’s “proscription of female sexuality by male authority” (244). All of the novel’s authority figures—the Methodist trustees; Father Forbes; Dr. Ledsmar; Sister Soulsby, perhaps the most complex authority figure; the Catholic Church; and even Jeremiah Madden, “the book’s most dignified figure”—are discredited by their words or actions (254). Oehlschlaeger acknowledges that critics have seen Sister Soulsby “either as a Satanic figure or as a voice for Frederic’s own supposed pragmatism” (246); however, he disagrees with both views. First, Sister Soulsby is neither all good nor all bad, and her pragmatism is “inadequate to deal with the highly irrational world that Frederic depicts,” which undercuts her validity as an authority figure (247). Second, Oehlschlaeger does not agree with critics who have pointed to Sister Soulsby’s pragmatism as an indication of Frederic’s personal views. In Oehlschlaeger’s opinion, Frederic’s views are evident in his respect for “certain religious values” represented by the venerable church elders and the Christian idea of repentance (253).

Raleigh, John Henry. “The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literature 30 (1958): 210-27.

Raleigh’s analysis of The Damnation of Theron Ware situates Frederic’s writing within a cultural context. In his article, Raleigh argues that the novel reflects American history and culture on three levels: (1) its representation of nineteenth-century America, (2) its representation of the nineteenth-century American and “his relationship to Europe,” and (3) its “metaphorical statement about the essential polarities of all human existence” (213). On the first level, Raleigh describes Theron Ware as an anachronism: “an Emersonian, a Romantic, a lover of nature” (215). Ware’s “lingering intuitionalism” and “reliance upon feelings” are challenged by Celia Madden’s aestheticism and Dr. Ledsmar’s Darwinism (214). On the second level, Frederic’s novel “shows Irish Catholicism conquering American Protestantism,” an unusual perspective in the nineteenth century. In theme, the novel resembles Henry James’ Roderick Hudson; in the character of Sister Soulsby, Frederic has captured the essence of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn. On the third level, Raleigh asserts that the “highest and strongest” (223) attitudes in the novel belong to Father Forbes, “the voice of history, of tragedy, of loneliness, [. . .] of the mysteries that surround and encompass us,” and to Sister Soulsby, “the spokesman for the here-and-now, for life as a comedy, for the efficacy of common sense” (226). “As psychological surrogates,” Raleigh proposes, “Father Forbes is the ‘father,’ while Sister Soulsby is the ‘mother.’” He concludes that “the two forces represented by Father Forbes and Sister Soulsby are not antithetical but complementary.” Both are “right,” and neither subscribes to “Absolute Truths” (227).

Raleigh, John Henry. “The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Time, Place, and Idea: Essays on the Novel. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1968. 75-95.

Raleigh’s chapter is a reprint of his article entitled “The Damnation of Theron Ware” that appeared in American Literature 30 (1958): 210-27.

Raleigh, John Henry. Introduction. The Damnation of Theron Ware. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960. vii-xxvi.

Raleigh’s introduction is a reprint of his article entitled “The Damnation of Theron Ware” that appeared in American Literature 30 (1958): 210-27.

Zimmermann, David H. “Clay Feet, Modernism, and Fundamental Option in Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware.” The American Benedictine Review 45.1 (1994): 33-44.

Zimmermann’s thematic and psychological approach to The Damnation of Theron Ware focuses upon Frederic’s “careful study of Methodism and Catholicism.” Zimmermann argues in his article that the novel “records an important shift in religious thought within modern Christianity” (34). “[T]he theologies of Forbes and Soulsby,” notes Zimmermann, “include many tenets adopted by twentieth-century Christian theologians” (35). Father Forbes tells Reverend Ware, “The Church is always compromising” (37). This perspective reflects Forbes’ “positivist view of history that forms the basis of his theologies and biblical interpretations” (38); however, “[o]nce Forbes has altered Theron’s understanding of history, he has altered Theron’s understanding of religion [. . . without providing] him with any basis on which to begin reconstructing his understanding of the world” (39). Zimmermann suggests that, within the context of modern theology, Sister Soulsby has undergone a conversion because she and Soulsby have “both soured on living by fakes” (42). Sister Soulsby’s theology embraces a belief in “humanity’s essential goodness,” and she “provides Theron with the forgiveness and direction necessary to begin the redemptive process” (42-43). Zimmermann asserts that, unlike many critics who blame Father Forbes and Sister Soulsby for Ware’s damnation, he does not find fault with either of them. In fact, he does not consider Ware damned. According to Zimmermann, “damnation occurs only after death,” when the option of free choice can no longer be exercised. Thus, “Sister Soulsby is correct when she points out that the sheep and the goats will not be separated until judgment day” (44). Theron Ware’s future, in light of Zimmermann’s interpretation of Sister Soulsby’s and Father Forbes’ theologies, remains ambiguous.