Auchincloss, Louis. “Harold Frederic.” The Man Behind the Book: Literary Profiles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. 114-23.

Briggs, Austin, Jr. “The Damnation of Theron Ware.” The Novels of Harold Frederic. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1969. 97-139.

Campbell, Donna M. “Frederic, Norris, and the Fear of Effeminacy.” Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1997. 75-108.

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

Carter, Everett. Introduction. The Damnation of Theron Ware. By Harold Frederic. 1896. Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1960. vii-xxiv.

Davies, Horton. “Harold Frederic.” A Mirror of the Ministry in Modern Novels. New York: Oxford UP, 1959. 71-78.

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

Graham, Don. “‘A Degenerate Methodist’: A New Review of The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 9 (1976): 280-84.

Heddendorf, David. “Pragmatists and Plots: Pierre and The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Studies in the Novel 22.3 (1990): 271-81.

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.

Jolliff, William. “The Damnation of Bryan Dalyrimple—and Theron Ware: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Debt to Harold Frederic.” Studies in Short Fiction 35.1 (1998): 85-90.

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

Krause, Sydney J. “Harold Frederic and the Failure Motif.” Studies in American Fiction 15.1 (1987): 55-69.

Lackey, Lionel. “Redemption and The Damnation of Theron Ware.” South Atlantic Review 55 (1990): 81-91.

LeClair, Thomas. “The Ascendant Eye: A Reading of The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Studies in American Fiction 3 (1975): 95-102.

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

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

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.

Rees, John. “‘Dead Men’s Bones, Dead Men’s Beliefs’: Ideas of Antiquity in Upstate New York and Theron Ware.” American Studies 16.2 (1975): 77-87.

Suderman, Elmer F. “The Damnation of Theron Ware as a Criticism of American Religious Thought.” Huntington Library Quarterly 33 (1969): 61-75.

Wilkie, Brian. “Morality and Its Alternatives: The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Value and Vision in American Literature: Literary Essays in Honor of Ray Lewis White. Ed. Joseph Candido. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1999. 64-82.

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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Auchincloss, Louis. “Harold Frederic.” The Man Behind the Book: Literary Profiles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.114-23.

Auchincloss’ chapter entitled "Harold Frederic" is a psychological analysis that reflects Frederic’s multifarious thinking and the cultural milieu in which he was writing Seth’s Brother’s Wife and The Damnation of Theron Ware. For example, the portrayal of Father Forbes and the Catholic Church reflects Frederic’s views of priests and Catholicism. The “crux” of the novel lies in Theron Ware’s recognition of a “turning point in his career,” “the sensation of having been invited to become a citizen of [. . . the] world” of intellect, culture, and grace to which Father Forbes, Celia Madden, and Dr. Ledsmar belong (119-20). Sister Soulsby is “a tough, realistic but kindly woman who has been through the toughest mills of life and emerged as a noisy but effective church fund raiser” (120). Celia Madden is little more than a separate banking account, while Levi Gorringe is the voice of the reader in his speech condemning Theron Ware as “a man who’s so much meaner than any other man” (121). Auchincloss describes The Damnation of Theron Ware as a book, unlike Frederic’s other novels, in which the author “addresses himself to the bewilderment and ultimate absurdity of a semi-educated American would-be idealist struggling in the arid culture of a northern New York State small town towards the end of the nineteenth century” (116-17). He concludes that Theron Ware has learned nothing and continues to delude himself with fantasies about using “his gift as a preacher” to become a Senator by the time he is forty (121).

Briggs, Austin, Jr. “The Damnation of Theron Ware.” The Novels of Harold Frederic. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1969. 97-139.

Briggs’ Chapter 5, The Damnation of Theron Ware, examines the themes of damnation and illumination with respect to the title character. Briggs notes that both Everett Carter and John Henry Raleigh argue that Ware is “reformed” at novel’s end: Carter writes of a fall “‘from innocence into knowledge,’” and Raleigh perceives a “‘wiser, if sadder’” Ware, who relocates to Seattle (108). According to Briggs, however, Ware is neither damned nor reformed in the course of his tenure in Octavius; in fact, he remains “pretty much the same old person” (113). Ware’s attitude, as reflected in his reminiscences about his former congregation in Tyre, reveals him to be an ambitious social climber and snob who dreams of “‘ultimate success and distinction’” (120). In light of Ware’s attitude, and other revelations regarding his character in the early pages of the novel, “one wonders,” writes Briggs, “how The Damnation can ever have been taken to be a novel about the transformation of a good man into a bad man” (117). The influence of Dr. Ledsmar, Father Forbes, and Celia Madden often has been judged as the cause of Ware’s fall; however, Briggs questions such judgments. Instead, he suggests that Ware’s fall is not a single event but rather a series of falls in which each new fall is followed by “a new illumination” (121). The fact that Ware fails to learn anything from his “illuminations,” Briggs concludes, suggests that Frederic viewed Ware as a “comic, rather than tragic” figure who is essentially unchanged at novel’s end (139).

Campbell, Donna M. “Frederic, Norris, and the Fear of Effeminacy.” Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1997. 75-108.

Campbell combines feminist theory and genre criticism to analyze Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware. The opening paragraphs of the chapter address the ever-widening split between what James Lane Allen describes as the “Masculine” and “Feminine” principles in literature. Campbell argues that, alarmed at the growing “feminine ethic in literature,” naturalists embraced brutish masculinity as an “antidote” to feminine civilization (75). Campbell identifies “three different courses of thematic development [that] emerged in naturalistic fiction: the triumph of the brute, leading to the degeneration of the individual; the balance of the two opposing forces, leading to the perfect amalgamation of sensibility and ‘red-blooded’ vigor; and an excess of civilization, leading, ironically enough, to a degeneration similar to—and in some cases identical with—that which the emergence of the brute signals” (77). Campbell believes the title character in The Damnation of Theron Ware succumbs to this third possibility, becoming “a brute in taste and outlook” (79). Tracing “Frederic’s exploration of realism through his character’s progress from the conventions of sentimental and local color fiction to the harsh realities of naturalism” (80), Campbell notes that, as a minister, Theron Ware is a “hybrid female” (81). Subverting the “opposition between male authority and female community common in local color” fiction, Frederic instead focuses on the similarities between the roles of ministers and women (80-81). Powerless, Ware’s only options, according to the conventions of sentimental fiction, are to capitulate, threaten, or dissemble, and his only defenses are fainting, illness, and weeping—all feminine responses. Ware’s attempt at illumination results in degeneration when he begins “to see himself as a victim of impersonal forces [. . . which lead him] into a self-delusional justification of the naturalistic brute within” (91).

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).

Carter, Everett. Introduction. The Damnation of Theron Ware. By Harold Frederic. 1896. Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1960. vii-xxiv.

Carter’s oft-cited introduction opens with a biographical survey of Frederic’s life before it moves on to a cultural and a moral examination of the trio of Father Forbes, Dr. Ledsmar, and Celia Madden as “seducers of innocence” (xxi). Carter claims that Theron Ware falls from innocence into knowledge, “a fall into the religious and scientific knowledge” and “the dark knowledge of the flesh” (xxi). Father Forbes is responsible for Ware’s religious crisis, while Dr. Ledsmar—a Darwinian atheist—introduces Ware to the writings of Renan. According to Carter, Celia Madden’s role in Theron Ware’s damnation is “evil” (x). The critic’s bibliography is a good source for contemporaneous reception of the novel: most of the citations are reviews or articles from the 1890s.

Davies, Horton. “Harold Frederic.” A Mirror of the Ministry in Modern Novels.” New York: Oxford UP, 1959. 71-78.

Davies’ chapter entitled "Harold Frederic," although largely a summary of The Damnation of Theron Ware, is also a character study and a cultural critique of religion and science, examining particularly the “conflict between the old faith and the new knowledge.” Comparing Frederic’s novel to Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s Robert Elsmere, Davies states that Theron Ware’s “lapse,” unlike Robert Elsmere’s, “was moral not theological” (71). Further, “Frederic’s novel gives a much more sympathetic account of the older generation in religion” than is found in the novels of his contemporaries Mrs. Humphrey Ward and William Hale White; it also presents a “sophisticated treatment of the role of the Catholic enclave in a predominantly Protestant America” (72). Davies’ reading of the “genuine Soulsbys” (78) is quite favorable: “The Soulsbys prove in the end [. . .] to be the best friends of Ware and his wife” (76). Davies concludes, “This novel, then, is not so much a study of the agonizing problem of correlating traditional faith with the new scientific and historical knowledge; it is chiefly a study of the disintegration of a minister through succumbing to vanity, in the form of intellectual ambition” (78).

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).

Graham, Don. “‘A Degenerate Methodist’: A New Review of The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literary Realism 9 (1976): 280-84.

Graham’s bibliographical article identifies and reprints an 1896 review of The Damnation of Theron Ware previously unlisted in Frederic bibliographies. The unidentified reviewer labels the book “an important novel” (281) and proceeds to summarize the plot, concluding that “we suspect the probabilities of such unconscious degeneration; it seems impossible that the conditions postulated should precipitate so involuntary a downfall. It seems so useless the game these various characters play against the unfortunate minister; his disillusion is so gratuitous, so merciless” (284).

Heddendorf, David. “Pragmatists and Plots: Pierre and The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Studies in the Novel 22.3 (1990): 271-81.

Heddendorf’s article is a psychological study of Pierre Glendinning, in Herman Melville’s Pierre, and Theron Ware, in Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware, that focuses on the downfall of the two protagonists. According to Heddendorf, Glendinning and Ware seem incapable of comprehending the “prescription for practical results” recommended by their advisors, Plinlimmon and Sister Soulsby. The “rightness or wrongness” of the pragmatic figures of Plinlimmon and Sister Soulsby is not at issue, argues Heddendorf; rather “the relationship between philosophy and narrative is the point of these encounters [. . .] and the simple fact that neither Pierre nor Theron understands what his would-be counselor is talking about” (272). For Pierre Glendinning, it is a pamphlet by Plinlimmon that describes the “irrelevance of an absolute time standard to the requirement of everyday life” that he cannot understand because he is “repressing an understanding of his present extreme circumstances” (273). As readers, Heddendorf asserts, we can see that the pamphlet holds the pragmatic solution to Glendinning’s problems. For Theron Ware, Sister Soulsby’s declaration that she and her husband are “good frauds” is misleading; Ware assumes that he too is to be a “good fraud.” Unfortunately for Ware, he is not a very good fraud and manages to alienate family, friends, and community because he fails to understand Sister Soulsby’s advice. Heddendorf concludes, “In Pierre and The Damnation of Theron Ware, the narratives of belief, abandonment and new belief lead less happily to a view of human beings as not licensed but condemned to believe” (280).

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).

Jolliff, William. “The Damnation of Bryan Dalyrimple—and Theron Ware: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Debt to Harold Frederic.” Studies in Short Fiction 35.1 (1998): 85-90.

Jolliff combines thematic criticism and character analysis in his note arguing that F. Scott Fitzgerald was influenced by Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware when he wrote “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong.” Jolliff establishes that Fitzgerald knew and admired Frederic’s novel. He states that “Bryan Dalyrimple’s story shares many similarities with Theron Ware’s both in theme and detail” and suggests that Dalyrimple was the prototype of Jay Gatsby (87). “[T]ypically adamic,” both Ware and Dalyrimple initially believe that hard work will lead to success, discover that “‘common sense’ is a code word that sometimes stands for the sacrifice of moral conviction,” and eventually surrender their “traditional ideas of good and evil” in favor of the common sense that will help them to obtain their worldly desires (87-88). As Ware and Dalyrimple abandon their moral codes, each finds that he has become better at his “legitimate work” (88). In addition, both rely upon their rhetorical skills as the key to their future success in politics. Noting that Dalyrimple’s “amoral mentor” and boss is named “Theron G. Macy” (89), Jolliff concludes, Ware and Dalyrimple “present us with examples of what sometimes happens when the American Adam comes of age: a thorough disillusionment resulting not in self-knowledge but in moral degeneracy. [. . .] For if Fitzgerald was the voice of a generation, surely Harold Frederic had prophesied its coming” (89-90).

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.

Krause, Sydney J. “Harold Frederic and the Failure Motif.” Studies in American Fiction 15.1 (1987): 55-69.

Krause’s cultural and psychological approach to Frederic’s novel juxtaposes the American myth of success with American novelists’ fascination with failure. Published during the period when “Horatio Alger stories were still at the ‘zenith of their fame’” (57), Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware “represents that counter-phenomenon in the American tradition wherein knowledge not only fails to set someone free, it actually enslaves him to a false notion of the freed Self” (56). A key element in Theron Ware’s failure, according to Krause's article, is “his inability to accept a negative image of himself for wrongs done” (59). Sympathetic to Ware’s motives for wanting “to cultivat[e] his mind till it should blossom like a garden,” Krause acknowledges “Frederic’s strategy of ambiguity,” wherein Ware’s desire for “personal enrichment” is hindered by his complete lack of self knowledge (61). Krause argues that Celia Madden’s musical seduction of Ware “becomes such a blatantly erotic performance as to constitute a rape of his senses” (62). For those “characters who fall socially and thereafter rehabilitate themselves, [ . . . Frederic] provides moral redemption” or, if necessary, a graceful death. However, those characters “who fall morally and fail to acknowledge it,” such as Ware, must live with their ignominy (63). Krause concludes that Theron Ware’s “failure is fundamental and national; it is his persisting in the American illusion that there is no final failure, that success only awaits a new beginning elsewhere” (64).

Lackey, Lionel. “Redemption and The Damnation of Theron Ware.” South Atlantic Review 55 (1990): 81-91.

Lackey’s biographical and psychological study examines Frederic’s portrayal, and possible redemption, of Theron Ware. Lackey’s article is a sympathetic reading of Ware is influenced by his opinion that Frederic never achieved total honesty in his own life; thus “the author neither expected nor achieved total honesty in his characters” (81). Frederic’s practices regarding money, friendships, and extra-marital relationships, for example, are reflected in Ware’s desire for financial freedom, cultured friends, and a liaison with Celia Madden. Because Ware lacks “the financial access to culturally enlightened circles that would have afforded him the expertise and discretion to enter into moral ambiguities gracefully and knowingly—on Forbes’ and Celia’s own level,” they judge him a bore (85). Sister Soulsby consoles Theron Ware after his rejection by Celia Madden and Father Forbes. Some critics see this consolation as “a prelude to renewed vanity, delusion, and failure” (86), but Lackey prefers to believe “there is ground for hope that Theron may after all have learned something valuable from his mistakes [. . .]. Having lost his life, Theron may yet save it” (87). Lackey speculates that Frederic may have intended the ending to be ambiguous in order to pave the way for another book, perhaps “The Redemption of Theron Ware.” In any case, Lackey chooses “to place the best construction on the various ambivalences Frederic positions in the concluding chapters” (88).

LeClair, Thomas. “The Ascendant Eye: A Reading of The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Studies in American Fiction 3 (1975): 95-102.

LeClair’s psychological analysis of The Damnation of Theron Ware explores “the complex relationship between being seen and seeing, between the person as object of perception and the person as perceiver of self and others” (95). In his article, LeClair asserts that Theron Ware’s visibility as a small-town minister invites other characters to form superficial perceptions about his character, perceptions that ultimately contribute to Ware’s “loss of self” (96). Levi Gorringe, Celia Madden, and Sister Soulsby are each wrong in their initial impressions of “Theron’s superiority and potential for transformation” (97), but Theron Ware willingly embraces their characterizations, preferring the illusion of being seen to the reality of seeing. LeClair extends his argument to include the “recurring imagery of eyes and sight” and of “light, darkness, and elevation” (96). He concludes that “Theron abandons whatever was genuine in him, accepts the identity others provide, and eventually becomes a synthetic person, the makeshift creation of Sister Soulsby, [. . .who] advocates picking an illusion, knowing that it is an illusion, and then using it to survive in a time of confusion” (101-02).

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).

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).

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.

Rees, John. “‘Dead Men’s Bones, Dead Men’s Beliefs’: Ideas of Antiquity in Upstate New York and Theron Ware.” American Studies 16.2 (1975): 77-87.

Rees’ biographical and psychological approach to the last of Frederic’s New York State novels leads him to speculate in this article that a “special regional consciousness” in areas like “religion, history, [. . . and] legend” contributes to the “psychological interest” of The Damnation of Theron Ware (78). Father Forbes claims that the “idea that humanity progresses” is “utterly baseless and empty.” Theron Ware confesses to Sister Soulsby, “It oppresses me, and yet it fascinates me—this idea that the dead men have known more than we know, done more than we do; that there is nothing new anywhere” (79). Rees contends that Frederic believed the past is constantly imposing itself on the present and that “beneath the rising American republic lay an empire of the dead” (83). Beliefs, for example, about pre-Columbian America—including the theory that “the Indians were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel” and the Mound-builders were a “physically and mentally superior race”—promoted a sense of “religious antiquarianism” in residents of upstate New York, the regional consciousness that permeates Frederic’s novel (82-85).

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).

Wilkie, Brian. “Morality and Its Alternatives: The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Value and Vision in American Literature: Literary Essays in Honor of Ray Lewis White. Ed. Joseph Candido. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1999. 64-82.

Wilkie approaches his chapter on Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware from a moral and psychological perspective. His main purpose is to explore “the competing claims of morality and of a radically antinomian personal freedom” (66) that result in contradictions or a “confounding of affects” in the novel (69). For example, Wilkie describes Sister Soulsby as unscrupulous; however, he does not consider her self-absorbed or devious in her personal relationships. In fact, she seems to exhibit genuine concern for the Wares. Likewise, Celia Madden is both captivating and comic, and Father Forbes is both devoted to and dismissive of Catholicism. Dr. Ledsmar and Celia Madden seem to be the antithesis of one another, but they are united in their rejection of Theron Ware. Sister Soulsby, a pragmatist, and Celia Madden, an idealist, “both register an affinity to Chopin’s music.” According to Wilkie, “This method, of creating polarities (as they seem at first) that later dissolve into unities or (more often) fragment kaleidoscopically, is the heart of Frederic’s novelistic strategy in Theron Ware” (71). The death of MacEvoy “epitomizes the double vision of values—aesthetic and moral—that, perhaps more than any other of the novel’s confounding of affects, gives Theron Ware its disturbing resonance as philosophical speculation” (74): Jeremiah Madden, “the most sympathetically portrayed character in the entire novel,” is ultimately responsible for MacEvoy’s death, and the beauty of the last rites and of Celia Madden’s attire overshadows the somber images of MacEvoy’s deathbed (73). Wilkie suggests “that the recurrent strategy by which the novel’s affects cancel one another out are variants, presented indirectly, of its exploration of the antinomian theme” (77). Theron Ware’s attraction toward Celia Madden and Father Forbes may be commendable, but his actions toward them seem contemptible. Wilkie argues that “Frederic has rendered, with almost unique success, and primarily through his double-takes on matters involving values, the perennial problem that emerges when antinomian spiritual energizing clashes head-on with morality, when two perfectly valid senses of good collide” (77-78). Furthermore, Frederic avoids “definitive judgment[s]” with respect to the morality of his characters (78), while at the same time his novel demonstrates the “utter incompatibility” of the pursuit of both morality and beauty and freedom (80).

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.