Horse Sense: Servants and Servanthood in Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park"

This is an abridged, adited version of an article originally published in Persuasions Online, Vol 44, No, 1, Winter 2023, titled "What the Coachman Said: Servants and Servanthood in Mansfield Park."

- By Tom Phillips 

Jane Austen 

“‘It is a pleasure to see a lady with such a heart for riding! . . . I never see one sit a horse better’” Thus begins a singular speech in the Jane Austen canon, spoken by a serving-man, invoking fear and trembling, body and spirit.  Addressed to Fanny Price early in Mansfield Park, it foreshadows a tale of upheaval in England, the British empire, and the world.

The Pauline Prophecy: Jewish-Christian Relations in Bernard Malamud’s A NEW LIFE

-- By Tom Phillips

Originally published in
ANQ: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SHORT ARTICLES, NOTES, AND REVIEWS 1/18/2020

A New Life, Bernard Malamud’s 1961 epic of a down-and-out New Yorker in the Pacific Northwest, is unique among his novels. The story takes place far from the urban Jewish milieu that was the author’s usual setting, and not coincidentally, it is the only work in which he fully develops a critique of American culture. Malamud studiously avoids mentioning religion until very late in the book, and then only obliquely. However a close reading, beginning with the significance of the main characters’ names, suggests an inter-religious dynamic.

Relations between Judaism and Christianity, Jews and Christians, and Jewish and gentile cultures are front and center in much of Malamud’s fiction – notably in The Assistant, the 1957 novel that immediately precedes A New Life. In A New Life these themes are concealed, or implied – probably because it was written while the author was sojourning in gentile territory, where his values came into sharp conflict with those of the dominant culture. A New Life can be read as a satire on American Philistia from a Jewish point of view, but in the end it goes beyond satire. The coupling of Seymour Levin with Pauline Josephson, the wife of his boss and enemy, and their absconding with her children, suggests a prophecy of a new age in which Jew and gentile combine in a generational assault on American values.

In short, the Sixties.

India Ink #3: Merry Christians

-- by Tom Phillips

Syrian cross in lotus

In a "A Passage to India," E.M. Forster describes a Hindu festival re-enacting the birth of Lord Krishna.  This includes a game in which the nobles of the state slide pats of butter down their noses, only to have them stolen and eaten by each other.  "By sacrificing good taste," he writes, Hindu worship "has achieved what Christianity has shirked: the inclusion of merriment."

Forster never mentions Indian Christianity, but here in the south Indian state of Kerala it is a prominent faith. Tradition holds that the Apostle Thomas sailed to Kerala in 51 CE and converted Hindus to the Way.  And to this day, many of these Christians have kept up their Hindu customs.

 This was the procession after Sunday's feast day  at St. Joseph's Syrian Catholic Church in Allapuzha -- even more colorful and noisy than the local Hindu festival.

Those umbrellas are not a sign or symbol, they're just for beauty and fun. Hindu tradition is full of these, and so is its Christian offshoot in India.

Praise God and pass the butter!

-- Copyright 2019 by Tom Phillips

Believing in Truth

-- By Tom Phillips 

Rudy Giuliani: "Truth isn't truth"

It’s happening more and more these days – people say things that just a few years ago would have been considered insane.  At a recent party, a young female stranger – a graduate student – asked me, “What do you think about the post-truth moment?”  My flustered answer: “I’m against it.” 

On the street and even in church, on hearing that I used to write for CBS News, people have cheerfully piped up: “Oh, fake news!”  Absolutely not, I tell them.  I never knowingly wrote a word of fake news.  Oh, they reply, but you’re retired.  How about the people writing now?   

I am a member of two establishments -- the press and the church -- that depend for their existence on the idea of truth.  Both are under siege by a new wave of old politics that values visions over facts, slogans over reason, personality over truthfulness.  The press is in danger of being discredited, the church of being co-opted.  And so far, the press is holding up better, more resistant and resilient.