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Matthew ArnoldStanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
Matthew ArnoldFiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1855A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Biographical Context
“Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” shares its theme of existentialist angst with several of Matthew Arnold’s other works, including “Dover Beach” (1867) to “Obermann once More” (1867). Arnold’s preoccupation with his own joylessness and loss of faith came up often in his correspondence and in his critical works. Responding to a colleague’s favorable review of his poem “The Scholar Gipsy,” Arnold wrote his poems lacked “something to animate and ennoble” them (Arnold, Matthew. Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough. 30 Nov. 1853. The Letters of Matthew Arnold, Letter V1P281D1). Arnold often stated that his poetry was bereft of the genuine joy of the works of William Wordsworth, his literary hero.
His habit of comparing himself with earlier Romantic poets, like Byron and Shelly, is also seen in “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.” For Arnold, the Romantic poets possessed a conviction and passion he could not find in himself. In “Stanzas,” the speaker’s separation from the devotion of the monks reenacts the poet’s personal sense of listlessness. Arnold’s pessimism had more to do with his constant self-scrutiny than his talents as a poet; a sensitive and scholarly man, he admitted to his own tendency towards “melancholy” (ibid.). These feelings of self-doubt are especially strong in “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” a poem composed early in Arnold’s writing career, at a time when he felt most unsure of his place in the world. Arnold based the poem on a real-life visit to the Grande Chartreuse monastery with his newly wedded wife, Frances Wightman. Frances’s father, a successful judge, had only permitted the two to be married after Arnold secured a steady job as a school inspector. Consequently, Arnold was self-conscious about his lack of social status.
Arnold’s ambivalent attitude towards religion in “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” can be attributed to the clash between various aspects of his experience and education, as well as a dilemma particular to his time. The eldest son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School, Matthew shared his father’s liberal and secular values, but was also influenced by the cleric Reverend John Buckland, his uncle. Significantly, Matthew was transferred from his father’s progressive school to the strict institute run by Buckland for a short while. Furthermore, though Thomas Arnold was Protestant, his children sought different religious paths: One of Matthew’s younger brothers, William, became an evangelical Christian. Though Matthew himself was not Catholic, he admired the aestheticism and grandeur of the Catholic tradition. After all, he attended Oxford at the time when an influential local scholar, John Henry Newman (eventually known as Cardinal Newman), converted to Catholicism. He would later be canonized. Newman was a religious conservative; Arnold admired him greatly. For the rest of his life, Oxford would represent a living spiritual tradition for Arnold.
Thus, as an intellectual with a probing, questioning mind, Arnold rejected the dogmatic and ritualized aspects of religion. Yet, as an aesthete and seeker of truth, he felt drawn to the symbolism and richness of religious culture. He eventually resolved this conflict between religion and modernity by arguing that poetry (and by extension, art) would replace religion in the modern age, as poetry is available “to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us,” as he writes in his essay “The Study of Poetry” (see Further Literary Sources).
Cultural Context
The period known as the “Victorian age” in England began around 1820 and ended around 1914. This period of literary and intellectual revival roughly corresponded with the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). It was an age of unprecedented stability and economic growth; the power of Britain’s rapidly expanding colonial empire peaked during this time, and paradigm-shifting ideas followed. In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, expounding on the idea of evolution already being discussed in scientific circles. Darwin’s theories upended the idea of creationism, or the doctrine that God had created the world in seven days. The angst generated by Darwin’s ideas may seem strange to contemporary readers, who are often trained to read religious lore as symbolic and metaphorical. However, for many believers at the time, the stories of the Bible still represented literal truth.
Until the early nineteenth century, science and religion were seen as harmonious forces. Science was, in fact, known as “natural philosophy” (or “natural history”) and scientists, including Darwin, were known as “naturalists.” The semantic shift from “naturalist” to “scientist” occurred in the Victorian era. Though anxiety about science interfering with the natural order continued to be a major theme in art and literature—as Mary Shelley explored in her breakout novel, Frankenstein (1818)—by the latter half of the nineteenth century, enthusiasm for mechanical progress overshadowed the debate. The Victorian age witnessed unprecedented transformations of beliefs about nature, science, religion, and the self. (That is not to say that all individuals felt science and religion were opposed to each other; many clerics in the Victorian age were also scientists, and could accommodate scientific inquiry and religious beliefs in a single narrative.)
As Britain’s industrial and colonial empire expanded, there was an increased focus on scientific and mechanical progress. Shipping technology made great strides, with iron steamboats already crossing the Atlantic by 1840. (Steam engine technology was a great boon for Britain’s international trade, as ships run by steam-powered engines were not reliant on sails and fickle winds.) Arnold features these scientific innovations in “Stanzas”; he may reveal awareness of the principles of the water cycle in his description of the rising fog (Lines 13-16), for example. The poem is rich in this sort of imagery derived from scientific processes, reflecting Arnold’s erudition and the Victorian preoccupation with machinery and natural phenomenon. Thus, the mountains are eroded to show “limestone scars” (Line 14), and the cloistered monks are compared to plants stunted by absence of sunlight and fresh air (Lines 206-9). The increased focus on the developing science of psychology in the Victorian age is reflected in “Stanzas” too, where the poet establishes the self as an object of inquiry. Allusions to these sorts of scientific processes highlight the speaker’s difficulty in reconciling faith and modernity.
These seismic changes in humanity’s understanding of the universe meant Victorian society was under constant flux. The stressors of a changing world drove many to seek some sense of stability; thus, the Victorians were also, paradoxically, preoccupied with hierarchy, social status, and propriety. Arnold’s anxiety about his place in the world must be understood in this context. In “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” he often speaks of being caught between past and present, paralyzed by an inaction that typified his generation. The Victorians had not yet learned how to process their new-found knowledge.
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