Genthe, Charles V. “The Damnation of Theron Ware
and Elmer Gantry.” Research Studies 32
(1964): 334-43.
Hirsh, John C. “The Frederic Papers, The McGlynn Affair,
and The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American
Literary Realism 17.1 (1984): 12-23.
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.
Suderman, Elmer F. “The Damnation of Theron Ware
as a Criticism of American Religious Thought.” Huntington
Library Quarterly 33 (1969): 61-75.
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.
Genthe, Charles V. “The Damnation of Theron Ware
and Elmer Gantry.” Research Studies 32
(1964): 334-43.
Genthe’s article is a structural analysis of Frederic’s The
Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) and Sinclair Lewis’
Elmer Gantry (1927) that considers “striking similarities”
in “certain characters, materials, and techniques”
(334), suggesting that Lewis must have known Frederic’s
novel. Celia Madden and Sharon Falconer, although “vastly
different in background and occupation,” “epitomize
beauty and savoir faire to Ware and Gantry, and the bower
seduction
scenes are markedly similar” (335). Ministers Theron Ware
and Frank Shallard, a minor character in Elmer Gantry,
share similar “background[s],” “environments,”
and “influences,” specifically “Darwinism,
the Higher Criticism, and the social gospel” (337). Genthe
notes that the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species
(1859) and Descent of Man (1871) “constituted
a separation point between an old order of thought and a new”
(338). Higher Criticism, in the minds of some clergymen, threatened
to do away with God; and the social gospel, “a movement
within the churches to help the common person in his struggle
for a material existence,” “helped to level the old
barriers between the secular and sacred” (339). For Theron
Ware, these influences are embodied in the characters of Dr.
Ledsmar,
Father Forbes, and Celia Madden. For Frank Shallard, they are
all combined in the single character of Dr. Bruno Zechlin,
Professor
of Hebrew at Mizpah Baptist Seminary. “[I]t is a tribute
to American realism that Lewis and Frederic created these two
characters and their plot situations with such verisimilitude,”
writes Genthe. The similarity could be attributed to “the
fact that both authors saw the same basic forces in American
religious
patterns,” or Lewis may have used Frederic’s novel
for source material (343). Genthe opts for the second possibility,
that Lewis borrowed from Frederic.
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.
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).
Suderman, Elmer F. “The Damnation of Theron Ware
as a Criticism of American Religious Thought.” Huntington
Library Quarterly 33 (1969): 61-75.
Suderman’s article combines psychological and genre criticism
in an examination of The Damnation of Theron Ware and
the conventions of the sentimental religious novel of the late
nineteenth century. According to Suderman, Frederic’s decidedly
non-sentimental novel “modifies the stereotype” and
“brings it to life” (66). The young (Protestant)
woman in the sentimental novel is recast as the sensual, red-headed,
Irish-Catholic beauty Celia Madden. The young skeptic in the
sentimental novel who is saved by his love for the young woman
and her God
is the Methodist minister Theron Ware. In The Damnation of
Theron Ware, Celia Madden is the skeptic and Reverend Ware
represents the already-converted young man. Rather than a conversion
to Christianity, Ware experiences a counter-conversion to Madden’s
religion of beauty and “absolute freedom from moral bugbears”
(68-69). In one situation after another, Frederic subverts sentimental
conventions: Ware converts in the space of a page as opposed
to
a few chapters; instead of giving up smoking, Ware accepts a
cigarette from Madden; at the point in the novel where the young
woman would
typically pray for her skeptical young man, Madden offers Ware
a drink of Benedictine; the convert’s faith in an afterlife
is substituted for Ware’s faith in a life of luxury aboard
a yacht. Suderman observes that Frederic “has transformed
a sterile conventional plot into a convincing, realistic
story”
(71). Whereas the sentimental religious novel generally ended
on an uplifting note, at the end of Chapter 31, Ware, feeling
rejected and alone, questions the very existence of God. In true
Theron Ware-fashion, however, he “does not live with his
more realistic and somber knowledge very long. [. . .] Theron,
after two conversions—three if you count the drunken orgy—returns
to his routine life unchanged” (74).
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.
