“Dauntless Faith”: Contemplative Sublimity and Social Action in Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck's Aesthetics

Abstract

For though I walk through valley of shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. --Psalm 23:4 (KJV) Valour in women is so sublime. --Joanna Baillie, Preface to Metrical Legends (xxix) In her Theory on Classification of Beauty and Deformity and Principles of Beauty as Manifested in Nature, Art, and Human Character, nineteenth-century abolitionist and aesthetic theorist Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck presents social consciousness as sublime. She does so through her category of the contemplative first outlined in her Theory (1815) and then illustrated in her Principles (1859) as a step in-between Edmund Burke's mutually exclusive categories of sublime terror and beautiful love. Through intermediary category of contemplative sublime, Schimmelpenninck offers a corrective to Burkean dualism. Schimmelpenninck's nuanced definition of sublimity, moving from a primary stage of bracing terror to a secondary stage of peaceful contemplation enables movement through terror into prayer and active love. This movement leads to her eventual definition of courageous struggle for social justice as sublime, contrary to Edmund Burke's focus on self-preservation. Expanding upon conservative Anglicanism of man she refers to as that modern writer of eminence, Burke (Theory 5), Schimmelpenninck, a Quaker turned Methodist turned Moravian, theorizes generative dissenting sublimity first outlined by poets like Joanna Baillie. Baillie's praise of a dissenting woman's sublimely dauntless faith (Lady Griseld Baillie 1.847) is echoed by Schimmelpenninck's admiration for Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. Within Schimmelpenninck's aesthetics, as in Baillie's poetry, awed terror is only an initial stage en route to social action. Schimmelpenninck's presentation of women's capacity for sublime fortitude and social action synthesizes diverse depictions of communal consciousness arising out of terrifying situations found within dissenting women's poetry. In Introductory Address to her Theory, Schimmelpenninck foregrounds importance of her female literary predecessors. Proposing a pragmatic aesthetics, she claims that, Whilst so many of her own sex are employing bright talents to most exalted and noble purposes; whilst some, reverend in piety yet more than in years, still maintain with pen that most holy cause they have exemplified in a long life, rich in good works ... whilst a genius, such as but once before astonished England (and then, like hers, was long unappreciated), holds up a faithful mirror to wayward heart of man, reflecting progress of each incipient passion, author of following work is ashamed to mention utility of a theory which, even if true, and if, as she believes, applicable to art, can yet serve no higher purpose than to furnish with innocent relaxation very few hours which a conscientious Christian ought to afford to mere pursuits of taste. (v, my italics) Traces of Schimmelpenninck's strict Quaker upbringing cause her to worry over potential self-indulgence of aesthetics, and she defers to models of art with a didactic purpose. The female tragic genius she admires remains unnamed, but she is clearly pointing to Joanna Baillie's 1798 Plays on Passions, which delineate progress of higher passions in human breast, each play exhibiting a particular passion (Baillie, Introductory Discourse 93). Baillie's texts had pragmatic purpose of teaching moral strength, not only by instructing readers to anticipate and check solipsistic passions but also by admonishing them to struggle for justice through exertion of compassionate social virtues. In recent years, critical attention has focused more intensely on Baillie, emphasizing her contribution to eighteenth-century drama over her sublime poetics, yet no critic has linked her writing to aesthetic theory of Schimmelpenninck. …