Susan M. Griffin's Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge University Press, 2004) offers a pioneering analysis of the ubiquitous yet understudied role of anti-Catholic themes in British and American literature from the 1830s to the turn of the twentieth century. Griffin argues that anti-Catholic rhetoric in fiction served as a versatile tool for cultural critique, allowing Protestant authors to define national, gender, and normative identities in opposition to a constructed "Other": Roman Catholicism. Using a transatlantic archive of canonical works and forgotten or minor texts, the book traces the evolution of anti-Catholic tropes from polemical religious attacks to more secular psychological explorations. This article synthesizes Griffin's main arguments, chapter structure, and contributions, highlighting its significance for literary, cultural, and religious studies. Through detailed examinations of gender anxieties, nationalist discourses, and imperial ideologies, Griffin reveals how fiction distilled anti-Catholic sentiment into "truths" that reinforced Protestant hegemony.
🏛️ Introduction: Anti-Catholicism as a Cultural Foundation
In the nineteenth century, anti-Catholicism was not just a religious prejudice but a structuring element of Anglo-American cultural identity. As waves of Catholic immigration, particularly from Ireland due to the Great Famine, challenged Protestant dominance in Britain and the United States, literature became a battleground for the articulation of national and moral norms. Susan M. Griffin, a professor at the University of Louisville specializing in nineteenth-century literature, unravels this dynamic in her monograph Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Published as part of the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture series, the book spans 284 pages and draws on an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
Griffin's central thesis posits that anti-Catholic fiction provided Victorians with a set of political, cultural, and literary tropes through which they defined themselves as Protestant - and therefore, "normative" or the rational standard of society. She extends the work of historians like Linda Colley (in Britons) and Benedict Anderson (in Imagined Communities) by emphasizing the transatlantic nature of this phenomenon, where anti-Catholicism helped forge "imagined communities" amidst threats of diversity, secularization, and imperial expansion. Gender plays a fundamental role in her analysis: fears about vulnerable Protestant femininity and castrated or effeminate masculinity recur as motifs, reflecting broader anxieties about family, obedience, and authority.
The book is structured chronologically and thematically, beginning with mid-century polemics and culminating in late-century canonical novels where anti-Catholic elements are sublimated into psychological depth. Griffin examines a diverse range of authors, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Kingsley, Henry James, Charlotte Brontë, and lesser-known figures like Rebecca Reed and Frances Trollope. By excavating this "neglected body" of fiction, Griffin demonstrates how anti-Catholic discourse evolved from explicit nativism to subtle cultural critique, persisting even as overt theological anti-Catholicism waned.
🔍 Synthesis and Analysis of the Chapters
Griffin's analysis is organized into six main chapters, bookended by an introduction and a concluding section titled "Reliquaries." Each chapter focuses on specific tropes, historical contexts, and literary examples, illustrating the flexibility of anti-Catholic rhetoric.
🏃♀️ Chapter 1: Awful Disclosures: The Tale of the Escaped Nun
This opening chapter delves into one of the most enduring anti-Catholic tropes: the escaped nun narrative, which originated in the United States during the 1830s amid nativist fears. Griffin traces its genealogy from Rebecca Reed's Six Months in a Convent (1835) to later works like Lizzie Harper's Maria Monk’s Daughter (1874). It is worth noting that these works are in direct dialogue with the famous and controversial Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836), a bestseller that claimed to expose convent horrors. Such tales depicted convents as prisons of sexual and spiritual slavery, serving as cautionary stories about the dangers of Catholicism to Protestant womanhood.
Griffin interprets these narratives as a variant of the "fallen woman" story, but inverted: the nun's escape warns of the seductive dangers of Catholicism rather than a traditional moral fall. Linked to historical events like the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown (1834) and the rise of the Know-Nothing Party (an American nativist political movement), these fictions addressed national anxieties about immigration and religious diversity. Gender fears are central - Protestant women are portrayed as vulnerable to Catholic entrapment, symbolizing broader threats to the Protestant family and nation. Griffin highlights how these tales reinforced nativist ideologies by positioning Protestantism as the guardian of female purity and autonomy.
👨🏫 Chapter 2: The Dead Father and the Rule of Religion: The Oxford Movement
Shifting to Britain, Chapter 2 examines anti-Catholic responses to the Oxford Movement (also known as Tractarianism), which sought to revive Catholic elements within Anglicanism. Griffin analyzes novels like William Sewell's Hawkstone (1845) and Frances Trollope's Father Eustace (1847), where Catholicism is portrayed as a threat to Victorian masculinity.
The "dead father" trope represents the loss of patriarchal authority under Catholic influence, with Jesuit priests depicted as manipulative figures who undermine Protestant male resolve. Griffin connects this to cultural fears of effeminacy and blind obedience, exacerbated by the "Papal Aggression" of 1850, when the Catholic hierarchy was restored in England by Pope Pius IX. Through a psychoanalytic lens, she explores how these fictions critiqued the Oxford Movement's emphasis on ritual and celibacy, framing it as a regression to "popery" that endangered British national identity and masculine vigor.
🇺🇸 Chapter 3: The Foreign Father and the Sons of the Sires: Nativist Novels of the 1850s
Returning to the American context, this chapter applies a psychoanalytic framework to nativist novels of the 1850s, focusing on the relationships between authoritarian "foreign fathers" (Catholic priests) and obedient sons. Griffin argues that these works, often linked to the Know-Nothing movement, used anti-Catholicism to assert patriarchal lineage and national purity.
Examples include lesser-known texts that portray Catholic influence as disrupting the "sons of the sires" - a reference to the Protestant founding fathers of the U.S. The foreign priest symbolizes an invasive otherness, threatening American republicanism. Griffin links this to immigration waves and the sectional tensions leading to the Civil War, showing how fiction constructed Catholicism as antithetical to democratic values. The gender dynamic persists, with the sons' obedience mirroring fears of castration and loss of independence.
👑 Chapter 4: Mariolatry, Imperial Motherhood, and Masculinity
Chapter 4 broadens the scope to imperial contexts, examining "Mariolatry" (veneration of Mary) as a trope that critiques Catholic femininity and its implications for British masculinity. Griffin critiques the empire's use of Orientalist imagery, such as the Indian "Thug" cult, to draw parallels with Catholic "idolatry."
Works by authors like Charles Kingsley (known for his "Muscular Christianity") are analyzed, where Catholic motherhood is depicted as excessive and imperialistic, contrasting with Protestant restraint. This chapter highlights imperial gender anxieties: Catholic "Mariolatry" threatens to feminize British men, undermining colonial authority. Griffin connects this to Victorian debates over gender roles, showing how anti-Catholic fiction reinforced patriarchal and imperial norms by casting Catholic maternal figures as "the Other."
⚖️ Chapter 5: Under Which Lord? Ritualism, Marriage, and the Law
Focusing on the Ritualist controversy in the Anglican Church during the 1860s and 1870s, Chapter 5 explores how anti-Catholic fiction intertwined religion, marriage, and legal authority. Ritualism, seen as "Romanizing" tendencies, is depicted in novels as subversive to Protestant marriage and family law.
Griffin discusses works like Charlotte Brontë's Villette (though more obliquely than earlier polemics), where Catholic rituals challenge Protestant autonomy. The question "Under which lord?" encapsulates conflicts between divine (Catholic) and secular/civil (Protestant) authority, particularly in marital obedience. This chapter underscores the legal dimensions of anti-Catholicism, linking it to Victorian reforms in marriage and divorce laws, and reveals persistent fears of Catholic infiltration into private domestic spheres.
🖋️ Chapter 6: Black Robes, White Veils, and Foregone Conclusions: Disraeli, Howells, and James
In the final chapter, Griffin turns to canonical late-nineteenth-century authors - Benjamin Disraeli, William Dean Howells, and Henry James - to show the secularization of anti-Catholic tropes. In James's The American (1877), for example, Catholic elements add psychological depth rather than polemical force.
"Black robes" (priests) and "white veils" (nuns) become symbols of a romantic "Otherness," recycled for literary and aesthetic complexity. Griffin argues that by the end of the century, anti-Catholicism had dispersed into broader cultural discourses, correlating with the decline of overt prejudice but persisting in secular forms. This evolution reflects the shifting of Protestant identities amidst modernization and the rise of literary modernism.
🏺 Reliquaries: Concluding Reflections
The concluding section, "Reliquaries," serves as a metaphorical repository of anti-Catholic artifacts, summarizing how these tropes have persisted as cultural relics. Griffin reiterates the book's transatlantic focus and calls for further study of anti-Catholicism's legacy in shaping modernity.
🗣️ Critical Reception and Significance
Reviews of Griffin's work praise its meticulous research and innovative transatlantic approach. Daniel Wong, in an article for Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (2005), commends its comprehensive scope and gender insights but notes a missed opportunity to explore theological depths beyond historicism. Other critics, such as those in Victorian Studies and the Victorians Institute Journal, highlight its contributions to understanding Victorian religion and nationalism, describing the work as "insightful" and "convincingly argued."
Griffin's monograph is essential for scholars of Victorian literature, American studies, and religious history. It illuminates how fiction not only reflected but actively shaped anti-Catholic sentiment, offering insights into contemporary identity politics. By recovering forgotten texts, it enriches our understanding of how Protestants constructed normalcy against a Catholic foil.
🏁 Conclusion
Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction masterfully reveals the ideological work of literature in the Victorian era. Griffin's analysis demonstrates the adaptability of anti-Catholic tropes across genres, nations, and genders, ultimately showing their role in sustaining Protestant domination. This comprehensive summary underscores the book's enduring relevance, inviting further interdisciplinary exploration of religion's mark on modern fiction and how the construction of the national "self" often depends on the demonization of a religious "other."
📚 Bibliographical References
ANDERSON, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1983.
COLLEY, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.
GRIFFIN, Susan M. Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
WONG, Daniel. "Review of Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction". Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2005.
In the nineteenth century, anti-Catholicism was not just a religious prejudice but a structuring element of Anglo-American cultural identity. As waves of Catholic immigration, particularly from Ireland due to the Great Famine, challenged Protestant dominance in Britain and the United States, literature became a battleground for the articulation of national and moral norms. Susan M. Griffin, a professor at the University of Louisville specializing in nineteenth-century literature, unravels this dynamic in her monograph Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Published as part of the Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture series, the book spans 284 pages and draws on an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
Griffin's central thesis posits that anti-Catholic fiction provided Victorians with a set of political, cultural, and literary tropes through which they defined themselves as Protestant - and therefore, "normative" or the rational standard of society. She extends the work of historians like Linda Colley (in Britons) and Benedict Anderson (in Imagined Communities) by emphasizing the transatlantic nature of this phenomenon, where anti-Catholicism helped forge "imagined communities" amidst threats of diversity, secularization, and imperial expansion. Gender plays a fundamental role in her analysis: fears about vulnerable Protestant femininity and castrated or effeminate masculinity recur as motifs, reflecting broader anxieties about family, obedience, and authority.
The book is structured chronologically and thematically, beginning with mid-century polemics and culminating in late-century canonical novels where anti-Catholic elements are sublimated into psychological depth. Griffin examines a diverse range of authors, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Kingsley, Henry James, Charlotte Brontë, and lesser-known figures like Rebecca Reed and Frances Trollope. By excavating this "neglected body" of fiction, Griffin demonstrates how anti-Catholic discourse evolved from explicit nativism to subtle cultural critique, persisting even as overt theological anti-Catholicism waned.
🔍 Synthesis and Analysis of the Chapters
Griffin's analysis is organized into six main chapters, bookended by an introduction and a concluding section titled "Reliquaries." Each chapter focuses on specific tropes, historical contexts, and literary examples, illustrating the flexibility of anti-Catholic rhetoric.
🏃♀️ Chapter 1: Awful Disclosures: The Tale of the Escaped Nun
This opening chapter delves into one of the most enduring anti-Catholic tropes: the escaped nun narrative, which originated in the United States during the 1830s amid nativist fears. Griffin traces its genealogy from Rebecca Reed's Six Months in a Convent (1835) to later works like Lizzie Harper's Maria Monk’s Daughter (1874). It is worth noting that these works are in direct dialogue with the famous and controversial Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836), a bestseller that claimed to expose convent horrors. Such tales depicted convents as prisons of sexual and spiritual slavery, serving as cautionary stories about the dangers of Catholicism to Protestant womanhood.
Griffin interprets these narratives as a variant of the "fallen woman" story, but inverted: the nun's escape warns of the seductive dangers of Catholicism rather than a traditional moral fall. Linked to historical events like the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown (1834) and the rise of the Know-Nothing Party (an American nativist political movement), these fictions addressed national anxieties about immigration and religious diversity. Gender fears are central - Protestant women are portrayed as vulnerable to Catholic entrapment, symbolizing broader threats to the Protestant family and nation. Griffin highlights how these tales reinforced nativist ideologies by positioning Protestantism as the guardian of female purity and autonomy.
👨🏫 Chapter 2: The Dead Father and the Rule of Religion: The Oxford Movement
Shifting to Britain, Chapter 2 examines anti-Catholic responses to the Oxford Movement (also known as Tractarianism), which sought to revive Catholic elements within Anglicanism. Griffin analyzes novels like William Sewell's Hawkstone (1845) and Frances Trollope's Father Eustace (1847), where Catholicism is portrayed as a threat to Victorian masculinity.
The "dead father" trope represents the loss of patriarchal authority under Catholic influence, with Jesuit priests depicted as manipulative figures who undermine Protestant male resolve. Griffin connects this to cultural fears of effeminacy and blind obedience, exacerbated by the "Papal Aggression" of 1850, when the Catholic hierarchy was restored in England by Pope Pius IX. Through a psychoanalytic lens, she explores how these fictions critiqued the Oxford Movement's emphasis on ritual and celibacy, framing it as a regression to "popery" that endangered British national identity and masculine vigor.
🇺🇸 Chapter 3: The Foreign Father and the Sons of the Sires: Nativist Novels of the 1850s
Returning to the American context, this chapter applies a psychoanalytic framework to nativist novels of the 1850s, focusing on the relationships between authoritarian "foreign fathers" (Catholic priests) and obedient sons. Griffin argues that these works, often linked to the Know-Nothing movement, used anti-Catholicism to assert patriarchal lineage and national purity.
Examples include lesser-known texts that portray Catholic influence as disrupting the "sons of the sires" - a reference to the Protestant founding fathers of the U.S. The foreign priest symbolizes an invasive otherness, threatening American republicanism. Griffin links this to immigration waves and the sectional tensions leading to the Civil War, showing how fiction constructed Catholicism as antithetical to democratic values. The gender dynamic persists, with the sons' obedience mirroring fears of castration and loss of independence.
👑 Chapter 4: Mariolatry, Imperial Motherhood, and Masculinity
Chapter 4 broadens the scope to imperial contexts, examining "Mariolatry" (veneration of Mary) as a trope that critiques Catholic femininity and its implications for British masculinity. Griffin critiques the empire's use of Orientalist imagery, such as the Indian "Thug" cult, to draw parallels with Catholic "idolatry."
Works by authors like Charles Kingsley (known for his "Muscular Christianity") are analyzed, where Catholic motherhood is depicted as excessive and imperialistic, contrasting with Protestant restraint. This chapter highlights imperial gender anxieties: Catholic "Mariolatry" threatens to feminize British men, undermining colonial authority. Griffin connects this to Victorian debates over gender roles, showing how anti-Catholic fiction reinforced patriarchal and imperial norms by casting Catholic maternal figures as "the Other."
⚖️ Chapter 5: Under Which Lord? Ritualism, Marriage, and the Law
Focusing on the Ritualist controversy in the Anglican Church during the 1860s and 1870s, Chapter 5 explores how anti-Catholic fiction intertwined religion, marriage, and legal authority. Ritualism, seen as "Romanizing" tendencies, is depicted in novels as subversive to Protestant marriage and family law.
Griffin discusses works like Charlotte Brontë's Villette (though more obliquely than earlier polemics), where Catholic rituals challenge Protestant autonomy. The question "Under which lord?" encapsulates conflicts between divine (Catholic) and secular/civil (Protestant) authority, particularly in marital obedience. This chapter underscores the legal dimensions of anti-Catholicism, linking it to Victorian reforms in marriage and divorce laws, and reveals persistent fears of Catholic infiltration into private domestic spheres.
🖋️ Chapter 6: Black Robes, White Veils, and Foregone Conclusions: Disraeli, Howells, and James
In the final chapter, Griffin turns to canonical late-nineteenth-century authors - Benjamin Disraeli, William Dean Howells, and Henry James - to show the secularization of anti-Catholic tropes. In James's The American (1877), for example, Catholic elements add psychological depth rather than polemical force.
"Black robes" (priests) and "white veils" (nuns) become symbols of a romantic "Otherness," recycled for literary and aesthetic complexity. Griffin argues that by the end of the century, anti-Catholicism had dispersed into broader cultural discourses, correlating with the decline of overt prejudice but persisting in secular forms. This evolution reflects the shifting of Protestant identities amidst modernization and the rise of literary modernism.
🏺 Reliquaries: Concluding Reflections
The concluding section, "Reliquaries," serves as a metaphorical repository of anti-Catholic artifacts, summarizing how these tropes have persisted as cultural relics. Griffin reiterates the book's transatlantic focus and calls for further study of anti-Catholicism's legacy in shaping modernity.
🗣️ Critical Reception and Significance
Reviews of Griffin's work praise its meticulous research and innovative transatlantic approach. Daniel Wong, in an article for Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (2005), commends its comprehensive scope and gender insights but notes a missed opportunity to explore theological depths beyond historicism. Other critics, such as those in Victorian Studies and the Victorians Institute Journal, highlight its contributions to understanding Victorian religion and nationalism, describing the work as "insightful" and "convincingly argued."
Griffin's monograph is essential for scholars of Victorian literature, American studies, and religious history. It illuminates how fiction not only reflected but actively shaped anti-Catholic sentiment, offering insights into contemporary identity politics. By recovering forgotten texts, it enriches our understanding of how Protestants constructed normalcy against a Catholic foil.
🏁 Conclusion
Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction masterfully reveals the ideological work of literature in the Victorian era. Griffin's analysis demonstrates the adaptability of anti-Catholic tropes across genres, nations, and genders, ultimately showing their role in sustaining Protestant domination. This comprehensive summary underscores the book's enduring relevance, inviting further interdisciplinary exploration of religion's mark on modern fiction and how the construction of the national "self" often depends on the demonization of a religious "other."
📚 Bibliographical References
ANDERSON, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1983.
COLLEY, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.
GRIFFIN, Susan M. Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
WONG, Daniel. "Review of Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction". Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2005.