Passion, Authority, and Faith in The Damnation of Theron Ware

Abstract

CRITICS of Harold Frederic have frequently noted the relationship between The Damnation of Theron Ware and The Scarlet Letter.' But what has not been explored is how well the romantic revisionist reading of Hawthorne developed by Nina Baym and others can be used to illuminate Frederic's novel.2 For Baym The Scarlet Letter is less a drama of sin and redemption than the story of conflict between the passional self and social authority. A similar point can be made about The Damnation of Theron Ware. For Frederic sexual passion is not an evil, something into which one falls, as is assumed in those interpretations which suggest that Ware's temptation by Celia Madden parallels his loss of faith through exposure to the new science of Dr. Ledsmar and the Higher Criticism of Father Forbes.3 Instead, Frederic presents sexuality, especially female sexuality, as something proscribed by society, by a male authority which fears it. The novel traces several consequences attendant upon this proscription: the blight on the Wares' marriage, which begins when the Methodist trustees insist that Alice no longer wear those roses in her cap on Sundays; the somewhat disordered sexuality of Celia Madden, teased and hated for her red hair; and the effeminization, regression, and adolescent