The Northmen of
Scandinavia had two qualities that Jewett thought
especially significant. That they were courageously
adventurous she attributes to the environment within which
they developed their culture, a geography that required
them to master seafaring and drew them into raiding and
warfare as well as exploring and trading. Their
appreciation of ceremonious order remains mysterious in
origin, but she identifies this trait as the foundation
for their development of domestic and fine arts and of
their drive to find the best ways of doing things.
This characteristic also is behind their early development
of a sophisticated literary and historical tradition that
gave unity to their culture. These qualities led to
their founding colonies, such as in North America,
Normandy and Sicily. Their military prowess enabled
them to take and keep Normandy, and their cultural
confidence and flexibility enabled them to merge with the
cultures into which they inserted themselves, for example,
when over two generations, the Danish-speaking Northmen
became French-speaking Normans. Though the Northmen
merge with the French enough to adopt their language,
still they bring into Normandy what Jewett believes must
have been a superior culture that values and fosters
intelligence, learning, energy, and the willingness to
govern.
As Jewett presents these ideas in her
opening chapter, she notes that the peoples the Normans
came to dominate and transform in France and England were
of the same background with the Normans themselves, but
that their recent historical experience had made them
different:
The countries to the southward were tamed and
spiritless, and bound down by church influence and
superstition until they had lost the energy and even the
intellectual power of their ancestors five centuries
back. The Roman Empire had helped to change the
Englishmen and many of the Frenchmen of that time into a
population of slaves and laborers, with no property in
the soil, nothing to fight for but their own lives. (10)
At the time of the Norman conquest of England, the tribal
backgrounds of both the English and the Normans were
Germanic, and yet, Jewett says,
... the second invasion of Northmen by the
roundabout way of Normandy, seems as marked a change as
the succession of the Celts to the Britons, or the
Saxons to the Danes. The Normans had so distinctly made
a great gain in ideas and civilization, that they were
as much foreigners as any Europeans could have been to
the Anglo-Saxons of that eleventh century, and their
coming had a permanent effect, besides a most compelling
power. (355)
While Jewett emphasizes the positive qualities that
Northmen brought to Normandy, she makes a point of keeping
before the reader their darker side. For example,
she speculates that their failure to establish a permanent
presence in North America resulted from their preference
for raiding and warfare over agriculture (18-9).
To become Normans, Northmen needed to
settle in a landscape that would allow the development of
agriculture, one that provided access to resources beyond
subsistence. Jewett suggests that Viking women may
have been responsible in part for the choice to establish
a colony in Normandy, that they wanted a more secure and
comfortable material life, to reduce the risks of loss of
their men in raiding and to improve domestic life
(22-3). In Normandy, the Northmen became Normans:
... they gradually changed into Frenchmen
themselves, different from other Frenchmen only in being
more spirited, vigorous, and alert. They inspired every
new growth of the religion, language, or manners, with
their own splendid vitality. They were like plants that
have grown in dry, thin soil, transplanted to a richer
spot of ground, and sending out fresh shoots in the
doubled moisture and sunshine. And presently we shall
find the Northman becoming the Norman of history. As the
Northman, almost the first thing we admire about him is
his character, his glorious energy; as the Norman, we
see that energy turned into better channels, and
bringing a new element into the progress of
civilization. (23-4)
The first major step in the
transformation of Northmen into Normans was moving to
Normandy, where geography worked upon them, reducing the
pressure to deploy violence to provide necessities and
gain comforts and allowing for the growth of domestic
arts, learning, technology, and the fine arts. The
next major step in this transformation was adopting
Christianity, beginning with the conversion of Rolf the
Ganger:
It was all a great step upward, and Rolf's
clear eyes saw that. If he were not a Christian he could
not be the equal of the lords of France. He was not a
mere adventurer any longer, the leader of a band of
pirates; other ambitions had come to him since he had
been governor of his territory. The pagan fanaticism and
superstition of his companions were more than half
extinguished already; the old myths of the Northern gods
had not flourished in this new soil. At last, after much
discussion and bargaining about the land that should be
given, Rolf gave his promise once for all, and now we
may begin to call him fairly the Duke of Normandy and
his people the Normans; the old days of the Northmen in
France had come to an end. For a good many years the
neighboring provinces called the new dukedom "the
pirate's land" and "the Northman's land," but the great
Norman race was in actual existence now, and from this
beginning under Rolf, the tall Norwegian sea-king, has
come one of the greatest forces and powers of the
civilized world. (43-4)
Rolf's conversion seems opportunistic in the main, and yet
its effect ultimately is transformative. Once he
becomes a Christian ruler, he determines the course of his
descendants and his subjects toward an increasingly
Christian and, in Jewett's eyes, more civilized future.
After the Northmen were firmly
established in Normandy and had made Christianity their
official religion, the gradual merging of Danes and the
French could proceed. She sees in Duke William
Longsword a will to merge the two cultures rather than to
assert Danish superiority and dominance (63). This
illustrates her view of the Norman "character" as
self-confidently flexible. The Normans exhibited an
understanding that asserting Norman historical identity
could be achieved by advancing civilized living more than
by maintaining a distinct Danish identity. They
could willingly surrender key components of identity, such
as religion and language, in exchange for a more peaceful
politics and a richer culture. Jewett also makes
clear that Normans easily intermarried with their
non-Norman neighbors, showing little interest in
maintaining what we would call a separate gene pool.
Jewett's account of the two centuries
of development between Rolf and William the Conqueror
repeatedly takes note of failures and weaknesses of the
Normans, but she focuses on strengths and successes, on
what she sees as their contributions to the progress of
civilization. Both weakness and strength appear in
Norman expansion, particularly into Sicily, as recounted
in Chapter 7. On one hand, venturing out of Normandy
and establishing new colonies seems a natural development
of an energetic and dynamic people. Jewett sees a
similar inevitability in contemporary English
colonialism. Though she clearly admires the Norman
and British qualities that drive them to seek the new and
to dominate, she also sees that this process is oppressive
to those invaded. Still, though Italians resisted
and suffered in the Norman conquest of Sicily, in the long
run, they benefited, and by the time of the third Norman
duke, Italians and Normans had formed a unity
(131-3). What largely redeems the depredations of
the Normans is their gradual refinement as a people.
She says of their merging with the Italians of
Sicily:
The spirit of adventure, of conquest, of
government, of chivalry, and personal ambition shines in
every page of it, and as time goes on we watch with joy
a partial fading out of the worse characteristics of
cruelty and avarice and trickery, of vanity and jealous
revenge. ... The south of Italy and the Sicilian
kingdom of [Duke] Roger were under a wiser and more
tolerant rule than any government of their day, and
Greeks, Normans, and Italians lived together in harmony
and peace that was elsewhere unknown. (143-4)
A key to Norman success was "tolerant rule," which enabled
differing peoples to live and work side by side.
Normans and Saxons become
the English
Jewett devotes roughly half of her book
to the life of William the Conqueror. Her account
closely follows her main sources, but she continues to
develop her thesis that the Normans have bequeathed to
England and America a spirit that should be
embraced. Her account of William emphasizes both his
weaknesses and his strengths. She finds him far less
than perfectly moral:
That he did not do some bad things must not
make us call him good, for a good man is one who does do
good things. But his strict fashion of life kept his
head clearer and his hands stronger, and made him
wide-awake when other men were stupid, and so again and
again he was able to seize an advantage and possess
himself of the key to success. (151)
William's successes led eventually to his conquest of
England, which Jewett judges as clearly immoral and as
devastating for many in the violence and destructiveness
of the process (287). As she tells this story, she
gives particular attention to the merging of the Normans
with the Saxons, the process that formed the character of
the contemporary English and Americans:
There were certain hindrances to civilization,
and lacks of a fitting progress and true growth. Let us
see what these things were, and how the greater
refinement of the Normans, their superior gifts and
graces, must come into play a little later. There was
some deep meaning in the fusion of the two peoples, and
more than one reason why they could form a greater
nation together than either Normans or Englishmen could
alone. (185)
Once the conquest is complete, Jewett notes, the Normans
as Normans begin to disappear from history:
William was about forty years old when the
battle of Hastings was fought and won; Normandy, too,
was in her best vigor and full development of strength.
The years of decadence must soon begin for both; the
time was not far distant when the story of Normandy
ends, and it is only in the history of France and of
England that the familiar Norman characteristics can be
traced. Foremost in vitalizing force and power of
centralization and individuality, while so much of
Europe was unsettled and misdirected toward petty ends,
this duchy of Rolf the Ganger seems, in later years,
like a wild-flower that has scattered its seed to every
wind, and plants for unceasing harvests, but must die
itself in the first frost of outward assailment and
inward weakness. (312-3)
William was not especially successful as king of England,
and his reign often was brutal and destructive, but still,
he did much to prepare the ground for the flowering of
England. She describes this process of merging Saxon
and Norman as like refining metal:
Yet, as had often happened before in this
growing nation's lifetime, a sure process of
amalgamation was going on, and though the fire of
discontent was burning hot, the gold that was England's
and the gold that was Normandy's were being melted
together and growing into a greater treasure than either
had been alone. We can best understand the individuality
and vital force of the Norman people by seeing the
difference their coming to England has made in the
English character. We cannot remind ourselves of this
too often. The Norman of the Conqueror's day was already
a man of the world. The hindering conditions of English
life were localism and lack of unity. We can see almost
a tribal aspect in the jealousies of the earldoms, the
lack of sympathy or brotherhood between the different
quarters of the island. William's earls were only set
over single shires, and the growth of independence was
rendered impossible; and his greatest benefaction to his
new domain was a thoroughly organized system of law. As
we linger over the accounts of his reign, harsh and
cruel and unlovable as he appears, it is rather the
cruelty of the surgeon than of a torturer or of a
cut-throat. The presence of the Normans among the
nations of the earth must have seemed particularly
irritating and inflammatory, but we can understand, now
that so many centuries have smoothed away the scars they
left, that the stimulus of their energy and their hot
ambition helped the rest of the world to take many steps
forward. (318-9)
When Jewett considers the progress William and his wife
gained during their rule, she emphasizes both the gains
and the losses of this process:
There is nothing more striking than the
traditional slander and prejudice which history
preserves from age to age. Seen by clearer light, many
reported injustices are explained away. If there was in
England then, any thing like the present difficulty of
influencing public opinion to quick foresight and new
decisions, the Conqueror and Baldwin of Flanders'
daughter had any thing but an easy path to tread.
Selfish they both may have been, and bigoted and even
cruel, but they represented a better degree of social
refinement and education and enlightenment. Progress was
really what the English of that day bewailed and set
their faces against, though they did not know it.
William and Matilda had to insist upon the putting aside
of worn-out opinions, and on coming to England had made
the strange discovery that they must either take a long
step backward or force their subjects forward. They were
not conscious reformers; they were not infallibly wise
missionaries of new truth, who tried actually to give
these belated souls a wider outlook upon life, but let
us stop to recognize the fact that no task is more
thankless than his who is trying to go in advance of his
time. ... Nothing has been so resented and
assailed as the thorough survey of England, and the
record of its lands and resources in the Domesday Book.
Yet nothing was so necessary for any sort of good
government and steady oversight of the nation's affairs.
We only wonder now that it was not made sooner. The
machinery of government was of necessity much ruder
then. No doubt William's tyranny swept its course to and
fro like some Juggernaut car regardless of its victims,
yet for England a unified and concentrated force of
government was the one thing to be insisted upon....
Yet the future right direction and
prosperity of England was poor consolation to the aching
hearts of the women of that time, or the landless lords
who had to stand by and see new masters of the soil take
their places. (327-8)
The merging of Normans and Saxons after the conquest is
slow and painful, especially for the Saxons. While
the Norman urges toward effective government and cultural
improvement win out in the long run, the process entails
much suffering, and depends for its success, in part, upon
William's ruthless willingness to use force to gain his
ends.
The modern English qualities that
Jewett admires arise from the merging of Norman and
Saxon. This aspect of her book has proven to be
controversial in Jewett criticism, as shown in "
The Reception of
The Story of the Normans." Jewett's
critics early formed a consensus that this book reveals
her theory of race. Her theory is said to be based
upon the idea that Normans and Saxons are different races,
in the sense that 21st century readers understand the term
"race." That is, critics assert that Jewett
understands Normans and Saxons to be distinguished not
only by nationality and culture, but also by "blood," by
what we would call their genetic heritage. Critics
further assert that Jewett sees Normans as racially
superior to Saxons and that she advocates for Nordicism,
the continuing dominance of Normans in modern Europe and
America. Nordicism actually enters American
discourse after Jewett's death; it is a 20th-century form
of Nativism that argues for the racial purification of the
United States by excluding non-Nordic immigrants.
The purpose of this exclusion is to maintain the political
and cultural dominance in America of a Northern European
race and, thereby, to insure the continuation of the
democratic institutions that only these peoples can
foster. I elaborate in "
Jewett and Nordicism" how
this is an anachronistic reading of
The Story of the
Normans.
Though Jewett refers to Normans and
Saxons as races, it would require a highly selective
reading to show that she thinks of them as divided by more
than their recent histories. She says that
Anglo-Saxons and Normans became foreigners to each other
over a mere 500 years of their history. She points
out that even during that period of separate development,
they were in continuous contact, including
intermarriage. She notes that in the Eleventh
Century both the British and the Normans were highly mixed
peoples, and she reports the strong influence of Danes on
both peoples. While it is true that Jewett finds
more to admire in the Normans than in the Saxons at the
time of their violent merging in 1066, she insists that
the Saxons brought much of value to this union, and,
therefore, that "There was some deep meaning in the fusion
of the two peoples, and more than one reason why they
could form a greater nation together than either Normans
or Englishmen could alone" (185).
As illustrated above, Jewett saw the
Normans as
culturally superior in some ways to the
peoples they conquered and with which they then merged:
It has also been the fashion to
ignore the influence of five hundred years' contact
between Roman civilization and the Saxon inhabitants of
Great Britain. Surely great influences have been brought
to bear upon the Anglo-Saxon race. That the making of
England was more significant to the world and more
valuable than any manifestation of Norman ability, is in
one way true, but let us never forget that much that has
been best in English national life has come from the
Norman elements of it rather than the Saxon. England the
colonizer, England the country of intellectual and
social progress, England the fosterer of ideas and
chivalrous humanity, is Norman England, and the Saxon
influence has oftener held her back in dogged
satisfaction and stubbornness than urged her forward to
higher levels. The power of holding back is necessary to
the stability of a kingdom, but not so necessary as the
"Glory of going on and still to be -- -- --
-- " (356-7)
The Normans' historical experience, energy and
intelligence enabled them to achieve military
superiority. Their self-confident cultural
flexibility enabled them to transform themselves and those
they merged with in positive ways. Jewett also
emphasized Norman weaknesses that, to some extent, were
remedied as they merged with the French and then the
Saxons. Like the Normans, the Saxons, too, had both
strengths and weaknesses. In her discussion of the
period after the death of William, she says of Saxon
England:
As a nation, they surely responded readily to
the Norman stimulus, but the Normans had never found so
good a chance to work out their own ideas of life and
achievement as on English soil in the first hundred
years after the Conquest. In many respects the Saxon
race possesses greater and more reliable qualities than
any other race; stability, perseverance,
self-government, industry are all theirs. Yet the
Normans excelled them in their genius for great
enterprises and their love of fitness and elegance in
social life and in the arts. Indeed we cannot do better
than to repeat here what has been quoted once already.
"Without them England would have been mechanical, not
artistic; brave, not chivalrous; the home of learning,
not of thought." (356)
Here Jewett elevates Saxons above all other peoples in
their time, including the Normans, in the positive traits
she names: stability, perseverance, self-government,
industry. This made them an ideal people for
responding "readily to the Norman stimulus," presumably
because their strengths were at least partial remedies for
Norman weaknesses. In this passage Jewett again
emphasizes that England becomes not so much a Norman
nation as a merging of two heritages into a new entity
that contains these two identities in creative
tension. She commends to her readers a similar
merging of attitudes and values, a combination of traits
that foster democracy and social order, an energetic
openness to change and appreciation of the best, tempered
by industry, steadiness and self-restraint.
Jewett presents a number of different
metaphors to describe the merging process, and these
introduce some confusion into how she thinks about this
blending. When she reflects upon the immediate
consequences of the Conquest, she describes the Normans as
"a tributary stream that came to swell the mighty channel
of the English race and history" (245). This
metaphor envisions the unifying process as natural and
inevitable, but it implies an idea Jewett opposes
later. This comparison interprets the Conquest as do
the professional historians she consulted, notably
Palgrave and Freeman, who conclude that the Normans were a
decisive influence that altered England for the better
without converting its peoples into Normans.
This metaphor resonates with an earlier comparison of
Normans to a hare and Saxons to a tortoise. She says
that the hare would win some races against the tortoise,
but in the longer run of history, "the tortoise was going
to be somehow made over new, and keep a steady course in
the right path, and learn speed, and get to be better than
the old tortoise" (243-4).
Not surprisingly, Jewett develops other
metaphors that resist her sources and more adequately
express her view of Norman importance. For example,
when speaking of the benefits of William's conquest,
Jewett says:
Yet, as had often happened before in this
growing nation's lifetime, a sure process of
amalgamation was going on, and though the fire of
discontent was burning hot, the gold that was England's
and the gold that was Normandy's were being melted
together and growing into a greater treasure than either
had been alone. We can best understand the individuality
and vital force of the Norman people by seeing the
difference their coming to England has made in the
English character. (318-9)
In this comparison, the two peoples seem to contribute
equally to the formation of a modern English
character. Human technology and labor extract the
most valued traits of a new, unified English character
from the raw ore of two different, preceding
ethnicities. Near the end, Jewett presents another
metaphor that favors the Normans even more. Speaking
of modern England, she says:
But whether the Norman spirit leads her to be
self-confident or headstrong and wilful, or the Saxon
spirit holds her back into slowness and dulness, and
lack of proper perception in emergencies or epochs of
necessary change, still she follows the right direction
and leads the way. It is the Norman graft upon the
sturdy old Saxon tree that has borne best fruit among
the nations…. (365)
Saxon virtues become the root stock, crucial and
life-giving, but the branches and fruits of the nation are
Norman. The metaphor of the graft emphasizes, more
than the metallurgic comparison, the organic merging of
the two peoples, but recognizes the role of human art in
the grafting process. Jewett suggests that the
fruits of greatness come from the Norman branch on the
Saxon root. But she also implies, again, a national
unity, an organic whole. Both spirits are present,
and in this case, she emphasizes the weaknesses each
brings to the composite of modern England. The
Norman spirit pushes the nation toward being headstrong,
willful, and, presumably, over-confident, while the Saxon
spirit restrains, leading to failures to understand when
action is necessary and to act decisively. The
strengths that both have contributed to the English
character, however, lead England over all in the right
direction.
What is meant by "the right direction"
may be problematic. Jewett's critics have tended to
read such passages as an unqualified endorsement of
British civilization, not merely of Shakespeare and modern
inventions, but also of the abuses and crimes of Britain,
such as in Ireland and in colonies such as India. It
would seem clear in the passage above that Jewett
recognizes British tendencies to be headstrong, willful,
slow, dull, and unwilling to change when doing so is
clearly an advantage. Her endorsement of British
behavior is not unqualified. Whether she endorses
any particular policy or action of the Victorian
government is not really apparent in
The Story of the
Normans. One would have to look elsewhere for
relevant evidence.
Also problematic in Jewett's view of
the merging of Normans and Saxons into a new English
people is the nature of the Norman presence after
1066. In the final sentence of the book, Jewett
says: "To-day the Northman, the Norman, and the
Englishman, and a young nation on this western shore of
the Atlantic are all kindred who, possessing a rich
inheritance, should own the closest of kindred ties"
(366). What is the nature of that kinship, of the
"rich inheritance" these peoples share? Does Jewett
imply that the essence of young America is its genetic
descent from Northmen? Must one literally be of
Norman descent in order to be a true American? Is
this statement definitive evidence that Jewett was, if not
actually a Nordicist, at least a precursor? These
questions are pointed by the fact that Jewett clearly
believes that the Normans as a physically existing people
are no more. While there still are Scandinavians, of
course, the people who were the Normans of Normandy, who
colonized Sicily and invaded England, no longer have a
national existence. She uses the metaphor of a wild
flower that dies itself, but scatters its seeds abroad to
describe the fate of the Normans as a people (313).
While she clearly understands that the Normans gradually
disappear from history after 1066, their story becoming
the history of England and France, she also repeats the
idea that Normans maintain some sort of presence even in
the 19th Century. Perhaps this idea is most clearly
expressed in her penultimate paragraph, much of which has
been quoted above:
Here, at the beginning of the Norman
absorption into England, I shall end my story of the
founding and growth of the Norman people. The mingling
of their brighter, fiercer, more enthusiastic, and
visionary nature with the stolid, dogged, prudent, and
resolute Anglo-Saxons belongs more properly to the
history of England. Indeed, the difficulty would lie in
not knowing where to stop, for one may tell the two
races apart even now, after centuries of association and
affiliation. There are Saxon landholders, and farmers,
and statesmen in England yet -- unconquered,
unpersuaded, and un-Normanized. But the effect on
civilization of the welding of the two great natures
cannot be told fairly in this or any other book -- we
are too close to it and we ourselves make too intimate a
part of it to judge impartially. If we are of English
descent we are pretty sure to be members of one party or
the other. Saxon yet or Norman yet, and even the
confusion of the two forces renders us not more able to
judge of either, but less so. We must sometimes look at
England as a later Normandy; and yet, none the less, as
the great leader and personified power that she is and
has been these many hundred years, drawing her strength
from the best of the Northern races, and presenting the
world with great men and women as typical of these races
and as grandly endowed to stand for the representatives
of their time in days to come, as the men and women of
Greece were typical, and live yet in our literature and
song. (364-5)
Here as in several of the other passages quoted above,
Jewett speaks of two "races" that have not fully merged by
the 19th Century. However, she also uses terms such
as "party" and "force" to describe their persistence into
her time, as she has often used "spirit" in previously
quoted passages. In a letter to Annie Fields when
she was researching, Jewett speaks of observing
contemporary Normans and Saxons among her friends and
acquaintances in South Berwick as if they were political
parties (
Fields,
Letter 7). Here, she recognizes English
citizens who are "un-Normanized," who have resisted the
Norman inheritance down to the present day. It would
seem clear, therefore, that she understands "Normanism" as
a set of transferable attitudes and ideas, such that a
Saxon or anyone else can become a Norman in spirit.
These attitudes and ideas constitute the "seed that has
flourished in a richer soil," a "rich inheritance," that
can be shared by everyone, whether they are of Norman
descent, or of British descent, or of
any descent
in England or North America. The fortunate citizens
of these nations, Jewett believes,
all are Normans
in sharing the gifts Norman culture has bequeathed to the
present, and they should embrace these gifts, accept their
Norman inheritance.
Jewett's Theory of History
The Story of the Normans
has been for some of her critics a touchstone for
understanding her theory of history. As is
apparent in "The Reception of
The Story of the
Normans," those who draw upon this book to
understand her world view tend to conclude that she
accepted contemporary Darwinist ideas of
progress. She is said to believe that human
history consists of a struggle between races in which
the fittest survive and dominate, with the result that
humanity improves over time. For example,
Patrick
Gleason says: "War, for Jewett, refines the
stock and strengthens the most advantageous of racial
characteristics." While it is true that Jewett
is optimistic about human progress, the grounds of
that optimism are in her liberal Christianity rather
than in a materialistic or scientific theory of
progress.
Jewett does describe history as a
"natural war of races." In the opening chapter
she summarizes the received, though disputed, late
Victorian view of the human prehistory of Europe,
characterizing the people displaced by the Celts and
Teutons:
There is very little known of these
earlier dwellers in the east and north of Europe,
except that they were short of stature and
dark-skinned, that they were cave dwellers, and, in
successive stages of development, used stone and
bronze and iron tools and weapons. Many relics of
their home-life and of their warfare have been
discovered and preserved in museums, and there are
evidences of the descent of a small proportion of
modern Europeans from that remote ancestry. The
Basques of the north of Spain speak a different
language and wear a different look from any of the
surrounding people, and even in Great Britain there
are some survivors of an older race of humanity,
which the fairer-haired Celts of Southern Europe and
Teutons of Northern Europe have never been able in
the great natural war of races to wholly exterminate
and supplant. (2-3)
Notable in this passage is her observation that shifts
in dominance do not necessarily eventuate in
extermination of the dominated. In noting this
idea, she follows one of her main sources,
Augustin
Thierry, who argues that conquered "races"
typically do not disappear, but continue over long
periods of time to persist and resist the dominant
forces in their culture. He sees modern European
nations as consisting of greater diversity than may
appear superficially as a result of the mixture of
cultures and peoples they have absorbed in the course
of reaching their modern formations
(xvii-xxiii).
Jewett's concept of a war of races
is not Darwinist, however, but Christian. She
says of the Conqueror's reign: "In criticising and
resenting such a reign as William the Norman's over
England, we must avoid a danger of not seeing the hand
of God in it, and the evidences of an overruling
Providence, which works in and through the works of
men and sees the end of things from the beginning as
men cannot" (331). Repeatedly, Jewett reminds
readers of "the slow processes by which God in nature
and humanity evolves the best that is possible for the
present" (364). She emphasizes a dual
perspective, how events appear to those who experience
them and how they appear from centuries later, the
latter
approximating a divine perspective from
"the end of things." Norman aspirations along with
their folly and brutality contribute finally to the
progress of England toward greatness. By
greatness, she does not mean that either moral or
social perfection is achieved in the nineteenth
century; "the best that is possible for the present"
is not a utopia, but rather what humanity as a whole
has been able to manage so far. To her mind,
contemporary England and America are morally better
societies than most that have come before, and "this
whole world is nearer every year to the highest level
any fortunate part of it has ever gained"
(256). Jewett's liberal Christian view of
the divinely directed moral progress of all humanity
contrasts with turn-of-the-century scientific racists,
who present evolution as pointed toward the
development of a superior race, with characteristics
unattainable by the inferior races.
Given Jewett's belief in divinely
directed historical progress, she would naturally
favor agents of positive change such as the Normans
over resisters such as the Saxons. Her belief
also makes understandable her seemingly callous view
of war, expressed in a passage that has drawn ridicule
and scorn from reviewers and critics:
War is the conflict between
ideas that are going to live and ideas that have
passed their maturity and are going to die. Men
possess themselves of a new truth, a clearer
perception of the affairs of humanity; progress
itself is made possible with its larger share of
freedom for the individual or for nations only by a
relentless overthrowing of outgrown opinions. It is
only by new combinations of races, new assertions of
the old unconquerable forces, that the spiritual
kingdom gains or rather shows its power. When men
claim that humanity can only move round in a circle,
… it is well to take a closer look, to see how by
combination, by stimulus of example, and power of
spiritual forces and God's great purposes, this
whole world is nearer every year to the highest
level any fortunate part of it has ever gained. Wars
may appear to delay, but in due time they surely
raise whole nations of men to higher levels, whether
by preparing for new growths or by mixing the new
and old…. And no war was ever fought that was not an
evidence that one element in it had outgrown the
other and was bound to get itself manifested and
better understood. The first effect of war is
incidental and temporary; the secondary effect makes
a link in the grand chain of the spiritual education
and development of the world. (255-6)
Jewett spoke with pride of her ideas about war in a
letter to Annie Fields, presumably, in part, because
she believed she had achieved a Christian historian's
perspective ( [
1885 or 1886]).
Though some have seen this passage as glorifying war,
that would seem far from Jewett's meaning. As
she says a few chapters later, "the future right
direction and prosperity of England was poor
consolation to the aching hearts of the women of that
time, or the landless lords who had to stand by and
see new masters of the soil take their places"
(328). A close analysis of the passage is
revealing.
Defining war as a conflict
between ideas, she begins by shifting perspective away
from the usual definitions involving contests for
political power, territory and resources. She
does not deny these motives, but asserts that behind
these is another level, a transcendental struggle in
which "the spiritual kingdom ... shows its
power." A divine purpose at this level is to
achieve clarity, to make possible the full possession
of a new truth. The value of that truth is that
it makes possible a "larger share of freedom for the
individual or for nations." Jewett believes that
God wants humanity to achieve greater individual and
communal freedom and that, through His Providence, He
makes use even of war for this purpose. She sees
God as far from desiring to create a pure race, but
rather to mix races and their ideas. She
believes that studying history confirms this view
rather than the notion that there is no progress, that
history is essentially cyclical. God's purpose
is to advance human possibility and to move all of
humanity toward the achievements attained by those
who, at any one time, seem in advance of the
others. While it is true that in the time of
war, it appears that humanity has regressed, this
perspective is limited, and what one sees is
"incidental and temporary." From the Divine
perspective, which gradually becomes at least
partially available to humanity over long stretches of
time, even wars make "links in a grand chain."
Humanity gradually becomes able to see how God has
brought goodness out of the depths of human folly and
suffering.
Jewett believes that God
insures that the overall results of human aspiration
-- within the context of freedom to choose foolishly,
selfishly, arrogantly, etc. -- will be progress toward
"the best that is possible." The war of races
may -- in any particular time and place -- express one
group's sense of racial superiority and entitlement,
and it too often entails brutality and suffering, but
what is really important, from God's point of view, is
that a better way is determined "to get itself
manifested and better understood," and through this
painful process humanity struggles to realize God's
will.
A decade after
The Story
of the Normans, Jewett continued to hold to her
confidence in divinely directed progress.
Reflecting on the 1898 war in Cuba, she writes from
France to her friend Sara Norton:
I hope now, more than ever, for
some better news of the war.... I think I can see
better and better every day that it was a war which
could not be hindered, after all. Spain has shown
herself perfectly incompetent to maintain any sort
of civilization in Cuba, and things are like some
sultry summer days, when there is nothing for it but
to let a thunder-shower do its best and worst, and
drown the new hay, and put everything out of gear
while it lasts. The condition is larger than petty
politics or mercenary hopes, or naval desires for
promotion, or any of those things to which at one
time or another I have indignantly "laid it." I feel
more than ever that such a war is to be laid at the
door of progress, and not at any backward steps
toward what we had begun to feel was out of date,
the liking for a fight. I think that it is all
nonsense to talk about bad feeling here in France,
as it is certainly in England; for however people
deplore the war in general and pity Spain, they
generally end by saying that it was the only way out
-- that we had to make war, and then we all say that
it must be short! If we could drown a few newspapers
from time to time, it would keep up our drooping
hearts and make us willing to bear the hearing of
foolish details, and even painful details. It seems
like a question of surgery, this cure of Cuba -- we
must not mind the things that disgust and frighten
us, if only the surgery is in good hands. (10
June 1898, letter 86)
What seems inevitable in the present, however foolish
it appears and however much suffering results, must,
she believes, reveal the hand of God "at the door of
progress." In that sense, returning to the
metaphor of the surgeon she applied to William the
Conqueror, the operation surely is in good
hands. However, when she says "if only," she
more likely refers to her uncertainty that the
perpetrators of such apparent folly could constitute
"good hands."
Jewett's understanding of war
as providential clarifies what she means by
characterizing human history as "the great natural war
of races." Among her sources, Thierry, in
particular, shares her view that the mixing and
sorting of peoples within emerging nations, though
progressive, often is ugly: Progressive recombination
of nations, ethnicities, and races may be achieved by
armed conflict or by more peaceful interactions, but
it always will be costly. Sir Francis Palgrave
shares Jewett's view of the role of Providence in
fostering progress: "All mutations, all
developments, all cor[r]elations, all operations of
forces, all result from the Creator's enduring
ordinances" (
The History of Normandy and of
England, Volume 2: The three first dukes of Normandy,
London: J. W. Parker, 1857, 775-7. See also
497. See "
Jewett's Sources").
In
The Story of the
Normans, Jewett presents an argument that, on
the whole, coincides with the contemporary historians
who were her sources, though at one point, she dares
to disagree with Edward A. Freeman about the relative
importance of the Normans to the formation of the
modern British character (355). Wild and savage,
but energetic and uniquely flexible Northmen settled
in Normandy and were transformed into the
French-speaking Normans who developed one of the
richest and most vibrant cultures in the western world
in the 11th Century. The Normans conquered
England and transformed themselves again, by merging
with the Saxons, into the English, leading in the 19th
Century to the richest and most vibrant cultures
Jewett sees in her western world, including England,
North America, and, though she says little of this
here, France also. Jewett varies from some of
her sources in her view that the story of the Normans
reveals the activity of Divine Providence in drawing
humanity toward greater freedom, but these ideas do
appear in some of her sources, notably in Thierry and
in Sir Francis Palgrave.