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"JOSSELIN, THE FAMILY LIFE OF RALPH" (ALAN MACFARLANE).
Term Paper ID:20879
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Essay Subject:
Critical review of biography of 17th Cent. British clergyman as sociohistorical document.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Critical review of biography of 17th Cent. British clergyman as sociohistorical document.
Paper Introduction:
The purpose of this research is to examine The Family Life of Ralph Josselin, by Alan Macfarlane. The plan of the research will be to set forth an analysis of the subject matter of the book, and then to discuss its strengths, weaknesses, and limitations, as well as its status as a microhistorical document.
What has to be realized about The Family Life of Ralph Josselin is that it represents a scholar's "take" on an individuals life, as revealed through that individuals record of his own life. In other words, what we are looking at in this book is not the direct evidence of a diary but an interpretation of that diary that dwells on what appears to be most significant about it as a historical document. Knowing that the interpretation is going to be paramount, we find it an uncomplicated task to see the value of the book as a slice of
Text of the Paper:
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Macfarlane describes the work as an essay in historicalanthropology, which is an indication of the interpretative quality of thework and that it will focus less on grand historical events as the core ofhistory than on the people who either experienced such events indirectly orwho, involved as they are in their individuated experience of daily life asmore or less typical members of their culture,may--perhaps like the vast majority of the culture, despite the volumeswritten by professional historians focusing on great events--have beenentirely divorced from the supposedly grand scale of experience. The Family Life of Ralph Josselin: A Seventeenth-Century Clergyman. One of the chief causes for his constant state of watchfulness andworry, was that the world of phenomena was seen as purposeful andcomprehensible; a long enough search would discover the source of almostevery event. only then will it appear how far their authors wereunrepresentative" (8). As well,Macfarlane repeatedly cautions against interpreting the society of Josselinby contemporary standards. As Macfarlane notes, "Mourning was not to be toointense, or the memory of individuals to be retained too long." 'For Godwould have us forget the dead.' Sorrow must be 'moderated', we must notgrieve 'as others which have no hope' (167). The Family Life of Ralph Josselin is structured to place Josselin'slife in a specific sociohistorical context, and then to examine itsdetails. Macfarlane's overall method of discussing Josselin's diary is to makeconnections between supposed anthropological and sociological ideas thathave been in or out of favor in contemporary social history, and theevidence of individual experience in Josselin's case. It is thereforeimportant that they should be studied alongside all the other sources forthe period. Macfarlane puts the connection between greatand individual events in perspective. The analogue is apt not least forthe reason that contemporary worries about the nuclear family are locatedin middle-class experience; Josselin's family circle would have been arough equivalent of the period, neither gentrified nor peasant. That being so, the elaboration of a socialhistoriography must have value. He cites the apocalyptic religious doctrinesthen prevalent, which were consistent with the concept of an implacableGod, as well as dreams with political content, which were consistent withthe idea that dreams were portents of the future. One moderninterpretation of this would be that the situation was too painful toconfront, and that may be valid, although that does not engage Macfarlane.But Macfarlane does suggest that macrosocial forces may have been at moreissue and in the process challenges received theoretical wisdom aboutordinary family life in the period: In other pre-industrial societies where a low expectation of life iscombined with a low age of marriage, it is possible that a child oftenhas living grandparents. Elsewhere, Macfarlane notes thatguilt "greets us from nearly every page of the Diary, for Josselin blamedhimself for almost everything that happened, and if something as simple aschess was not at hand, an earnest introspective regard was turned on toeach thought and action" (176). Macfarlane's analysis of Josselin's entry of his dreams in the diaryis that they were used in a quasi-spiritualist context far less than forpsychological improvement. In other words, the clergyman had a personal stake in great events.He also appears to have had a serious commitment to recording hisexperience of events both large and small in a diary. Although he refers to various studies ofPuritanism, Macfarlane does not really compare Josselin's discussion ofdreams to the emerging secular intellectualism at the close of theRestoration period. The plan of the research will be to setforth an analysis of the subject matter of the book, and then to discussits strengths, weaknesses, and limitations, as well as its status as amicrohistorical document. In eithercase, however, social history has some claim on a full understanding of thehistorical process. It is not an easytask to tell how valuable Macfarlane's analysis is, however, for inevitablyhis interpretation of Josselin's entries might differ from that of anotheranalyst. After that he was moremoderate in thought and deed. It might wellbe argued, therefore, that grandparents, rather than playing a diminishingpart in family life as some sociologists have maintained, only cameinto their own long after the seventeenth century (127). Works CitedMacfarlane, Alan. In this entirely moral universe, tranquillity as an endof suffering could only be achieved if man became part of the divineharmony. Macfarlane has in hand the point that boyswere more highly valued than girls but does not develop it. Did he intend tohave a say, for history, in the significance of history then unfolding?This question eludes a specific answer, but as Macfarlane describesJosselin's economic activities, both as parson and as small farmer, as wellas his social and familial interactions, it becomes clear that the parsonhad a serious life purpose in keeping a record of his experience on onehand and his thoughts of experience on the other. Norton, 1977, [197 ]----------------------- 11 Thus Macfarlane's study will be idiosyncratic andtherefore suspect until the research design can be duplicated more or lessin the manner of duplicating biological research into rats and worms.Consider for example Macfarlane's discussion of Josselin's poignantattitude toward the death of his son Thomas, which does not occur inJosselin's discussions of the deaths of any of his daughters. More, thebook suggests the content of the social, political, and moral environment--what today we would call the popular culture or perhaps the popularpolitical culture--into which ordinary folk as well as their noblercounterparts entered. Whereupon Macfarlane deals with Josselin's presumed attitudes towarddeath, pain, weather, and the interpretation of dreams. Meanwhile, the value of such studies is that they enrichand pose provocative questions about preexisting work. Where can we find and how shall we interpret a universalsignificance in the results of Macfarlane's efforts? These political commotions formed a particularly importantbackground to Josselin's life, for his ecclesiastical living was affectedby changes in government. A fairly cogent feminist case might bemade that it is the fate of little girls to be overlooked in century aftercentury, if not by their parents, by those who are assessing the content oftheir parents' experience of life. Deprived of a land inheritance by his improvident father,Josselin entered the clergy as a way of making a living. Oncehe was established in Earls Colne, Josselin appears to have devoted a gooddeal of time to keeping that job, to going along to get along as it were,in a time of enormous societal dislocation. To be sure, as a country parson, Josselincould hardly be expected to be a prime mover of political events duringCromwell's reign and the Restoration. Another view of this is the caution that anydiarist might be typical only of himself, or typical of an entire categoryof social behavior. The universe was a moral one, full of divine purpose ofmeaning, and it was the task of the conscientious Christian to unravelthe meaning and tailor his living to the purpose. What has to be realized about The Family Life of Ralph Josselin isthat it represents a scholar's "take" on an individuals life, as revealedthrough that individuals record of his own life. Regarding death,Macfarlane infers a certain fatalism or resignation on Josselin's part,citing, however, the particular grief at the death of his son Thomasexpressed in the statement "he was my hope," which "implies a deeper dismayabout Thomas" (166). Macfarlane makes plain that Josselin, more perhaps than his fellowcommoners of seventeenth-century England, was engaged by the great eventsof the English Civil War period. The social and economic environment in which a more or less"typical" country parson of the Civil War period is described first. In this regard, Macfarlane finds significance in the fact thatJosselin recorded (or specifically failed to record) a wide range ofexperience in his diary in reference to his family and friendship tiesintrinsically, and in reference to highly personal psychologicalmeditations on religious and secular subjects. Only occasionally, inthe reference to a witchcraft trial or an apocalyptic vision, are wejolted into the recognition that his perception of the world may have beenbased on many assumptions totally alien to us. Thisis followed by an analysis of Josselin's fairly unsettled young lifeimplied in the diary, as well as the laconic diary entries that concern hisfamilial and friendship ties. Pain and pestilence were seen as signs of God's displeasure;personal and social morality were interconnected with physical eventsin a way that, though not always clear, was never in question (193-4). On the whole, all negative experience appears to have beenconsidered, among other things, an opportunity for expressions of piety.This pattern is evident in the discussion of physical pain and suffering,an unavoidable phenomenon in preindustrial society, or of inclement weatherthat destroyed crops and hence livelihood, as an aspect of evil on one handand evidence of the will of God on the other: "The primary problem forJosselin was to reconcile pain and misfortune with an immediately involvedand basically benevolent godhead" (172). Macfarlane becomes most evocative and The Family Life of Ralph-Josselin most suggestive when he uses the diary as a way of entering into abrief psychohistory of Josselin. Macfarlane cautions that his analysis ofJosselin's mental structures may not be particularly valid, and the cautionis worth noting because it is suggestive on its own: The basic structure of his thought is hardly ever directlyrevealed, yet we may approach it indirectly by piecing together attitudesto particular phenomena and guessing intuitively at the connexions.This "imaginative leap" is made both easier and harder if the reader is aproduct of 'Western' society. Macfarlane concludes that such piousimpulses also had the effect of creating a context for a highlyconservative, even repressive social and religious structure. For example, Josselin'syoung adolescence was informed by the presence of a stepmother, of whichMacfarlane says Josselin writes almost nothing. Special mention ismade of the fact that Josselin's society was preindustrial, and the readermust take account of the fact that the whole of the culture had notremotely been transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps the most important offering that Josselin has to makethrough his Diary, is that here, and in other similar diaries, is a vasttreasury of information about family life in pre-industrial Englandbelow the level of the aristocracy. but with a combined high age of marriage andhigh mortality the chances are that grandparents could not have been acommon experience in the life of growing children. Until the execution of CharlesI he was fairly active in Cromwell's cause. Macfarlane cites the more or less impersonal quality of middle-classfamily life as recorded by Josselin in a discussion of structures of familyand friendship affiliations in seventeenth-century society more generally.In this, he points out, Josselin's family ties were not unlike the morefamiliar impersonality of today's nuclear-family ties so decried as acontemporary aberration by sociologists. Is this afailure of seventeenth-century society or of research and analysis on thepart of the modern (male) analyst? Thus the principal weakness of Macfarlane's psychohistoricaldabbling is that it stands a bit alone in the emergent world of socialanthropology or historiography. The universalsignificance of Josselin's attention to dreams and apocalyptic imagery isdrawn in social terms by Macfarlane. He showed his appreciation of thesignificance of political events both in the entries in his Diary andeven in his dreams, a large proportion of which were political in content(21). Knowing that theinterpretation is going to be paramount, we find it an uncomplicated taskto see the value of the book as a slice of history and an exemplar ofmicrohistory. The gain in understanding from a sharedtradition sometimes leads to a loss of perception as to the differencesbetween Josselin's mental world and our own. What The Family Life of RalphJosselin does is place in grand-historical context the manner of experienceof common folk, and at the same time suggest that few in England couldescape the obligation of declaring for one side or the other. Although the following attempt to go beyond a conventionaldiscussion of Josselin's religious thought will inevitably produce manydistortions and oversimplifications of complex problems, it is hopedthat it will also suggest some worthwhile problems for the historian ofideas (163). Macfarlane sets the context for an examination of Josselin's diary bylooking at the apparent rationale for keeping a diary in the first place.Self-improvement and an impulse toward piety are cited by Macfarlane, buthe cautions that "if we used diaries on their own we would receive apicture of Tudor and Stuart England that was biased towards the moremethodical and the more introspective sides of life. But what he does writeindicates a particularly difficult home situation: "The omissions in thisaccount are as significant as the expressed dislike" (126-7). Finally, the extraordinarily detailed attention thatJosselin gave to the diarist enterprise is of note in itself, for surelynot every country parson of the Cromwellian era devoted extended personaltime to writing. What we must come to, then, is an acknowledgment that The Family Lifeof Ralph Josselin illustrates that until microhistory has a fairly well-developed body of work and replicated research, accompanied by anassessment of groups of microhistorical analyses as a category of history,it will be subject to the criticism that it is far too idiosyncratic to beof lasting use. Now. Whether he was representative oratypical; whether, as seems likely, there will be wide variation betweenregion and region, highland and lowland, both in the structure offamily life and in the economic and religious context within which itwas lived; these questions will only be answered after further studies(159-6 ). The attitudeof "resignation" that Macfarlane cites in general might admit of acomparative study that explores degrees of resignation for deaths of boychildren and girl children. MacFarlane saysthat he devoted some time to what today would be called a job search. New York: W.W. What isimportant about Macfarlane's analysis of these structures, as suggested bythe diary, is that the analysis itself must be preliminary and tentativefor the reason that the records are so sparse. In other words, what weare looking at in this book is not the direct evidence of a diary but aninterpretation of that diary that dwells on what appears to be mostsignificant about it as a historical document. This has the effect of enhancing thecredibility of judgments that Macfarlane makes about Josselin's motivationson one hand, and the extent to which he was typical of persons of his classand period on the other. Josselin began his diary upon his appointment to a vicarage at EarlsColne in Essex. The purpose of this research is to examine The Family Life of RalphJosselin, by Alan Macfarlane. Finally, Macfarlane explores the social andpersonal psychology of Josselin, making inferences about his "mental world"based on ruminations in the diary.
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