Be Ware of Corruption

After finishing Harold Frederic’s “The Damnation of Theron Ware” (quoted rather than italicized due to my ignorance of underlining on Blogger), I have to say that I was glad to see Theron rejected by Celia, Forbes and the rest of this new and strange culture that he had come to admire. I wouldn’t have felt this way earlier in the book, but his abysmal, paranoia-fueled mistreatment of his wife, and his sudden distaste for his own life (which, of course, he has made for himself) warranted this let-down. However, assessing the overall authorial intent of this work is somewhat complex and multifaceted based on the way the novel ended. One reading is that the stagnant ways of “Primitive Methodism” and other insular communities of worship create a closed-minded, bigoted and backward thinking population, as is the case with Octavius. Contrasting this with the new and comparatively progressive, adaptive lifestyles that the Irish residents share enhances this social dissonance, highlighted by the fact that “The church is always compromising” as Forbes explains, evolving to be accommodating and inclusive, which is a stark contrast against the ideals of the local Methodists (231).

In the end, it is clear that Ware is a spineless character who, in his efforts to stand for something, instead falls flat. Let’s look at the strikes against him:

1). He is unfaithful to his wife, a character he professes from the beginning to be a good wife whom he has been happy with up the point of meeting Celia.
2). He displays despicable amounts of jealousy and distrust toward his wife and her supposed infidelity, which is blatantly hypocritical in light of his own infidelity.
3). He abuses funds of his church to sneak off to New York, all the while “committing adultery in his heart” with no apparent shame in doing so.
4) He complains of his mistakes that have led him to become a clergyman, and despite this and his other numerous faults, he continues in the profession, only leaving when he has become heinously corrupt as a man of the church and as a man in general. And the list of his decline as a person continue to accumulate…

After all this, his statement that he may end up being “a full-blown senator” is especially telling; he is certainly corrupt enough to fit in well with the political world (326).

Examining where Ware started from within this novel and then contrasting it with where he ends up, I had wishfully thought that Ware would fall out of religion and become a more virtuous person because of it, but it turns out that his damnation was complete. Because of his corruption, he now has no place in the town of Octavius. On the other hand, Celia and the educated catholic community saw him as “unsophisticated and delightfully fresh and natural,” which condescends upon his inadequacies that he also perceives, and which in reality should be insulting (305). However, his corruption from this simple small-town minister to the role of a despicable adulterer leaves him absolutely nowhere to go, save for far away from the mess that he has brought himself to.

Looking at where Ware ended up, his journey parallels a fall from Paradise; here he is in a quiet little town, and the “illumination” and knowledge of new and broader ways to think end up corrupting him, and he falls from grace and is cast out of the society, or garden, if you will.