"The Monks of Thelema"
The Monks of Thelema is a novel from 1878 by two British authors I hadn't heard of before, Walter Besant and James Rice. I came across it while visiting my parents: my dad collects antique books and has them scattered all over the house. The title caught my eye, so I decided to borrow it. When I discovered that the title had a reference to something in Gargantua, I decided to read it right after the Rabelais books.
First off, "Thelema" is the name of a monastery that a drunk, brawling monk founds at the end of Gargantua. Unlike other monasteries, Thelema has only one rule: Fay ce que vouldras in the Middle French, or "Do as thou wilt". The abbey has extensive libraries and athletic facilities; it's co-ed, and only young, beautiful, single, upper-class people will be admitted; they'll wear lots of fancy outfits; and they can leave the order at any time, especially if they want to get married.
The Monks of Thelema, as both the title and the first chapter suggest, is ostensibly about some aristocratic Victorian British kids attempting to make a "real" Abbey of Thelema.
Unfortunately, this topic evidently proved too dull for the authors, so they put it in the background, and made the real story be about how one of the "monks" of Thelema, the richest guy of them all, whose house they're all using as their "abbey", has decided that he should use his Oxford education to better the lives of the farmers and laborers who work his lands. He wants to teach them about Art, and Culture, and Political Economy, and many other worthy things, so he sets up a library, an art gallery, a coop store, a village Parliament, etc. And so as to give them an example to prove that a peasant can lead his usual life and yet also enjoy the Higher Culture, the young squire decides to move into a cottage, make his own meals on a tiny, fixed income, and do farmwork.
But the peasants prove resistant to all innovation: the people running his coop store rob him blind, no one goes to the library or the art gallery, the blokes just get drunk at the village Parliament, etc. The idealistic squire despairs of ever converting his peasantry to his plans, and decides, as a last resort, to marry a peasant girl, so as to have someone who can help him "enter the minds" of the peasants and gain their trust. He ends up picking a girl who's pretty but extremely flighty and dull-witted, and just wants the squire for his money.
Meanwhile, his true, proper, aristocratic childhood sweetheart waits mournfully in the wings for her Romeo to come to his senses. He comes to regret the engagement, but feels bound to go through with it; but some of his friends come to rescue by convincing the peasant girl to elope with her childhood sweetheart, and so now the squire's honorably off the hook, and can finally abandon his utopian plans and get married to his rich sweetie. And, like a Gilbert & Sullivan chorus, all the Monks and Sisters of Thelema pair off at the end, get married, and dissolve the Monastery.
The authors had a conservative bent that was, I'm sure, not uncommon for the time, but jars with modern attitudes. Where to begin?
First off, there's plenty of "But women hardly know their own minds, the darling little flutterbudgets" stuff, by the truckload. You have to expect that coming in, though.
Then, there are the occasional racist remarks which are just plain shocking, and which I'd rather not repeat. Fortunately, since the novel took place entirely in England, these were bound to be rare.
Finally, there was the problem of the class tensions. A Marxist would have a field day analyzing this book. The authors clearly think the squire is a fool for trying his utopian schemes on his peasants; doesn't he know better than to upset the status quo? And what a shame that he would throw himself away on a mere peasant girl!
This last one gets them into some trouble, because they had a romantic subplot (is there any other kind?) involving two lovers, both of the gentry, who couldn't get married because the boy wasn't rich enough for the prospective mother-in-law's tastes. And, see, we are supposed to empathize with his plight -- "How dare the girl's mother put money first!" -- but we're not supposed to approve of the idealistic squire's engagement -- "How dare he not put money first!"
I think the authors realized this contradiction, because later they seemed at pains to explain, over and over again, that the squire didn't actually love his fiancée, he just wanted to marry her for a kind of ideological goal; whereas the boy with only £700 a year really does love his sweetheart, and she him.
We're left in no doubt, though, that the squire's opinions about leveling society are complete hogwash. Clearly, the various strata of British society are part of the divine order, and should be left alone. Oddly, however, a minor character who's all artsy-fartsy and talks about how he's "above the vulgar herd" is also portrayed unsympathetically. And when Thelema is briefly focused on, it's only to show us that these good-natured rich kids with their monastery are really quite silly: they hold lectures no one attends, print newspapers no reads, etc., etc.
I suppose we could reconcile all this by saying that the rich kids have defied the natural order by going into this Abbey and forgetting all discipline; and the artsy-fartsy guy has gotten to far above his station in life by thinking himself of supreme intelligence; so the moral after all is, "Stay in your assigned places."
But if that's true, it means we're left with a story in which we're meant to disapprove of almost all of the major characters. And yet, it's clearly also meant to be a light-hearted and comedic. Not terribly surprising that this book is so obscure. (I was amazed to find that Wikipedia does have a stub entry for it.)
First off, "Thelema" is the name of a monastery that a drunk, brawling monk founds at the end of Gargantua. Unlike other monasteries, Thelema has only one rule: Fay ce que vouldras in the Middle French, or "Do as thou wilt". The abbey has extensive libraries and athletic facilities; it's co-ed, and only young, beautiful, single, upper-class people will be admitted; they'll wear lots of fancy outfits; and they can leave the order at any time, especially if they want to get married.
The Monks of Thelema, as both the title and the first chapter suggest, is ostensibly about some aristocratic Victorian British kids attempting to make a "real" Abbey of Thelema.
Unfortunately, this topic evidently proved too dull for the authors, so they put it in the background, and made the real story be about how one of the "monks" of Thelema, the richest guy of them all, whose house they're all using as their "abbey", has decided that he should use his Oxford education to better the lives of the farmers and laborers who work his lands. He wants to teach them about Art, and Culture, and Political Economy, and many other worthy things, so he sets up a library, an art gallery, a coop store, a village Parliament, etc. And so as to give them an example to prove that a peasant can lead his usual life and yet also enjoy the Higher Culture, the young squire decides to move into a cottage, make his own meals on a tiny, fixed income, and do farmwork.
But the peasants prove resistant to all innovation: the people running his coop store rob him blind, no one goes to the library or the art gallery, the blokes just get drunk at the village Parliament, etc. The idealistic squire despairs of ever converting his peasantry to his plans, and decides, as a last resort, to marry a peasant girl, so as to have someone who can help him "enter the minds" of the peasants and gain their trust. He ends up picking a girl who's pretty but extremely flighty and dull-witted, and just wants the squire for his money.
Meanwhile, his true, proper, aristocratic childhood sweetheart waits mournfully in the wings for her Romeo to come to his senses. He comes to regret the engagement, but feels bound to go through with it; but some of his friends come to rescue by convincing the peasant girl to elope with her childhood sweetheart, and so now the squire's honorably off the hook, and can finally abandon his utopian plans and get married to his rich sweetie. And, like a Gilbert & Sullivan chorus, all the Monks and Sisters of Thelema pair off at the end, get married, and dissolve the Monastery.
The authors had a conservative bent that was, I'm sure, not uncommon for the time, but jars with modern attitudes. Where to begin?
First off, there's plenty of "But women hardly know their own minds, the darling little flutterbudgets" stuff, by the truckload. You have to expect that coming in, though.
Then, there are the occasional racist remarks which are just plain shocking, and which I'd rather not repeat. Fortunately, since the novel took place entirely in England, these were bound to be rare.
Finally, there was the problem of the class tensions. A Marxist would have a field day analyzing this book. The authors clearly think the squire is a fool for trying his utopian schemes on his peasants; doesn't he know better than to upset the status quo? And what a shame that he would throw himself away on a mere peasant girl!
This last one gets them into some trouble, because they had a romantic subplot (is there any other kind?) involving two lovers, both of the gentry, who couldn't get married because the boy wasn't rich enough for the prospective mother-in-law's tastes. And, see, we are supposed to empathize with his plight -- "How dare the girl's mother put money first!" -- but we're not supposed to approve of the idealistic squire's engagement -- "How dare he not put money first!"
I think the authors realized this contradiction, because later they seemed at pains to explain, over and over again, that the squire didn't actually love his fiancée, he just wanted to marry her for a kind of ideological goal; whereas the boy with only £700 a year really does love his sweetheart, and she him.
We're left in no doubt, though, that the squire's opinions about leveling society are complete hogwash. Clearly, the various strata of British society are part of the divine order, and should be left alone. Oddly, however, a minor character who's all artsy-fartsy and talks about how he's "above the vulgar herd" is also portrayed unsympathetically. And when Thelema is briefly focused on, it's only to show us that these good-natured rich kids with their monastery are really quite silly: they hold lectures no one attends, print newspapers no reads, etc., etc.
I suppose we could reconcile all this by saying that the rich kids have defied the natural order by going into this Abbey and forgetting all discipline; and the artsy-fartsy guy has gotten to far above his station in life by thinking himself of supreme intelligence; so the moral after all is, "Stay in your assigned places."
But if that's true, it means we're left with a story in which we're meant to disapprove of almost all of the major characters. And yet, it's clearly also meant to be a light-hearted and comedic. Not terribly surprising that this book is so obscure. (I was amazed to find that Wikipedia does have a stub entry for it.)