Book review: Marcus Warwick, Atheist
This review is also published on the WMAM Blogspace.
This is quite a short review, although the book it concerns is complex and quite long. However, I do not wish to give too much away that can be experienced first-hand. Especially if you are a Wammer and Adrian is kind enough to lend you his copy (when I eventually return it!).
Marcus Warwick is a late-Victorian melodrama about the eponymous atheist lawyer and his fiercely-intelligent theist friend (and later wife), Hilda.
That sentence should tell you all you need to know about the outcome of the book. I hope that the following statement is not a spoiler, given when the book was written: Marcus Warwick does not remain an atheist. Shocked?
In the beginning, Marcus Warwick returns to his hometown after some years training as a lawyer. Marcus’ family is quite influential; his father ran a school in the area, preaching atheism, and now his sister is married to a local aristocrat. Marcus’ return causes quite a stir, because not only does he agree to give a series of talks to the townsfolk about his theories of justice, but his reputation as an atheist and death-penalty abolitionist precede him. At one point we see how he successfully defends a murderer in order to have the charge reduced from first- to second-degree homicide. Don’t judge him too harshly; Marcus is trying to spare the murderer the noose.
A friendship soon blossoms with the young daughter of one of his father’s friends. It soon becomes clear that Hilda, while very intelligent and gifted at philosophical discourse, is a determined theist, who has trouble with the idea that a loving God would send people to Hell. She agrees to contribute to Marcus’ philosophical periodical, which acts as a staging ground for their back-and-forth about the nature and existence of God.
Anyway, a lot goes on between their meeting and their inevitable coming together. Years, and many troubles, stand between Hilda and Marcus. When they finally are married, Marcus comes to think that he is cursed; his family suffers a number of misfortunes. It is here that superstition gets the best of Mr Warwick, because he comes to think that his family’s suffering is the result of God’s judgement upon him (I won’t tell you what for). Eventually he decides to stop resisting and recant his atheistic ways, to the delight of Hilda.
This, of course, is not surprising. What is surprising is that the conversion need not have happened. I fully expected Marcus’ epiphany to come as the result of some sort of miracle, unexplained by the author. In fact, all of the things that constitute Marcus’ ‘punishment’ could easily be explained by science, and as coincidence (what defines the Victorian era if not ill children?). Indeed, when Marcus converts and his son suddenly snaps out of his mental illness, the author makes a point of saying that the doctors believed that a recent fall and resultant blow to the head had caused the ‘miracle’. That sounds like a medical explanation to me! What sort of atheist is Marcus Warwick, to see a line of coincidences as divine intervention, and a medically explained reversal of fortunes as a sign that All Is Well? Atheist he may have been, but he was no sceptic. It seems as though up until that point, life had given him no reason to see God in the world. That’s de facto atheism, or atheism taken on faith. Not healthy.
Do read this book if you stumble upon a copy. It is a well-told story, with parts that are genuinely funny, or sad, and especially thought-provoking.
