Calvinism, Enthusiasm, and Suicide: The Regulation of Subjectivity in the Romantic Period
- Calvinism, Enthusiasm, and Suicide:The Regulation of Subjectivity in the Romantic Period
Since the Renaissance period, Calvinism has been linked to suicide in the popular imaginary, even though it has always been unequivocal in condemning the act. This commonly held belief pronounces Calvinism as enthusiastic in Romantic-era terminology, or linked with religious madness, since suicide was almost always deemed to be caused by insanity by the turn of the nineteenth century (Marsh 93). Yet, recent historical research demonstrates the inaccuracy of the popular notion that Calvinists kill themselves more frequently than do members of the rest of the population. Thus, we must inquire into why this false belief has persisted for so long. It may not reflect a factual truth, but it endures because it clearly serves an ideological purpose. But what does this link signify? What cultural ideal does it serve, create, perpetuate? The literary world of the long nineteenth century provides important insight into the ideological function performed by the belief in suicidal Calvinism, which it helped to popularize. In what follows, I outline the historical contours of this myth, detail recent historians' study of it, and contribute to this investigation by examining two famous instances of Calvinistic suicide in the literary world: James Hogg's 1824 Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and critical commentary upon William Cowper's biography. Through a close reading of another literary artifact from the period, Samuel Johnson's influential definition of "enthusiasm," I demonstrate that the common belief in Calvinistic suicide reflects a broad cultural interest in regulating subjectivity.
I. The Regulation of Private Experience: Johnson's Enthusiasm and Rules for Reading
At the same time that Enlightenment science advanced its goal of total observation into the mental realm through the new field of psychology,1 Calvinism, a highly individualistic faith, became identified with insanity. I suggest that Calvinism's emphasis on private communication with God, [End Page 79] which could not be regulated by external sources or experts, challenged the broad social movement towards total transparency and shared experience that was established principally by Enlightenment science and deployed throughout the religious, literary, and psychological realms. By linking Calvinism with insanity, Romantic-era culture divested it of legitimacy and labelled its form of subjectivity insignificant.
The fear of unregulated, private experience is essential to Johnson's definition of enthusiasm, or religious insanity, which suggests that the concept functioned in part as an early means of enforcing ideological strictures regarding individuals' beliefs. Johnson's definition appears in his hugely influential text, A Dictionary of the English Language, the first "major English dictionary," according to Walter Jackson Bate (241). Focusing on the potential for the misinterpretation of God's word, the definition emphasizes the isolated nature of enthusiastic communication with the divine. Moreover, by seeking to distinguish real, acceptable forms of faith from false, insane approaches to God, Johnson's definition reveals its regulatory function. Citing John Locke as his source, Johnson defines enthusiasm as "A vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour or communication. Enthusiasm is founded neither on reason nor divine revelation, but rises from the conceits of a warmed or overweening brain" ("enthusiasm"). Johnsonian enthusiasm is the individual's private conviction that he or she fully understands God's word. Thus, the word enthusiasm represents a crisis of reading: it denotes unchecked interpretative hubris. Johnson also asserts that enthusiasm is "vain" and rises from the "conceits" of madness, both words suggesting excessive personal pride and mistakenness as integrally linked concepts. Understood in accordance with the "private" nature of enthusiasm, such "vain" "conceits" appear to be wrong precisely because of their interior, isolated nature. Although Johnson's definition attempts to establish popular notions of properly constituted faith mostly through negative means—by saying what faith is not ("vain," "private," "[un]reasonable")—the positive features of properly constituted faith are clear. This definition of enthusiasm implies that properly constituted belief is not private and that it is rightly subject to the judgment of others. Like the uncanny, what lies hidden—the subjective motions of faith—must come to light, must be externalized and put...
