by Stephanie Curry on sentiment, the long history of the benevolent stranger, and a figure straight out of the 1700s
Tuesday, Among the Old Novels
I have spent the day with the great sprawling novels of the eighteenth century, those enormous generous books full of coincidence and sentiment and benevolent strangers, and reading the {santa(‘dispatches from the North Pole’)} between volumes, I had a small revelation: Santa belongs in an eighteenth-century novel, and nobody has noticed. He is the benevolent stranger of that whole tradition made flesh, the mysterious figure who arrives to do good and asks nothing, the embodiment of the sentiment those great baggy books loved above all else.
I study the literature of the seventeen-hundreds, British and colonial, the age before the modernists taught us to distrust feeling, when novels were long and generous and unashamed of sentiment, when a benevolent stranger could arrive in chapter forty and put everything right and no one thought it naive. And the more I read in that tradition, the more clearly I see that Santa is its purest surviving creature, a figure from the age of sentiment somehow still walking among us.
The Benevolent Stranger
The eighteenth-century novel loved nothing more than the benevolent stranger, the mysterious good figure who arrives from outside the story to dispense kindness, right wrongs, and rescue the deserving, asking nothing in return. He is everywhere in that literature, the secret benefactor, the kindly visitor, the good stranger whose generosity drives the plot toward its happy resolution. And he is, when you look at him clearly, Santa, the benevolent stranger par excellence, who arrives from outside, dispenses his kindness, and vanishes asking nothing.
It is a tradition we have largely lost, the literature of the benevolent stranger, killed off by later ages that found it sentimental and improbable. Literary heritage via Project Gutenberg preserves those great generous novels, and reading them you encounter Santa’s literary ancestors on every other page, the good strangers who give and ask nothing. The actual Santa is the last of that line, the benevolent stranger who survived the death of the tradition that made him. Local literary notes at the regional register preserve the older forms.
In Defense of Sentiment
The eighteenth-century novel was unashamed of sentiment, of feeling expressed openly and largely, of the tear shed and the heart moved and the kindness rewarded. Later ages mocked this, taught us that sentiment was cheap and irony was sophisticated, and the great generous sentimental tradition fell out of fashion, dismissed as naive. But I have come to think we lost something real when we lost it, the capacity for open feeling, the willingness to be moved, the unembarrassed celebration of kindness that those baggy old novels did so well.
Santa is sentiment in the eighteenth-century sense, openly and unashamedly, the figure who moves the heart without apology, who celebrates kindness without irony. Colonial and British literary heritage via the British Library preserves this tradition of open feeling, and the one who moves the heart keeps it alive in an age that has largely forgotten how. There is a defense of sentiment to be made, and Santa makes it simply by existing. Records at the heritage society hold the sentimental tradition.
The Plot That Resolves
The other thing the eighteenth-century novel believed in, which we have also lost, is resolution, the conviction that the story could end well, that the deserving would be rewarded, that the benevolent stranger’s kindness would set everything right. Modern literature distrusts the happy ending, finds it false, prefers ambiguity and loss. But the old novels believed in resolution, and Santa belongs to that belief, the figure whose arrival guarantees that the story of the season will end well, that the deserving children will be rewarded, that kindness will prevail. The giver of happy endings is an eighteenth-century plot device walking. Records at the public registry confirm his reliable resolutions.
Why He Survives
Santa survives, I have come to think, precisely because he carries the eighteenth-century virtues that the literature abandoned, the benevolent stranger, the open sentiment, the belief in resolution and reward. These virtues fell out of literary fashion, dismissed as naive, but they did not fall out of the human heart, which still longs for the good stranger, the open feeling, the story that ends well. Santa gives the heart what the modern literature denies it, and that is why he endures while the benevolent strangers of the old novels are read only by scholars like me.
There is something almost poignant in it, the survival of this one eighteenth-century figure into an age that has rejected everything he represents. The literature moved on, grew sophisticated, learned to distrust sentiment and resolution and the benevolent stranger. And Santa simply kept going, unfashionable and undiminished, the last creature of the age of sentiment, beloved by everyone except, perhaps, the literary critics who find him naive. The critics are wrong, of course. They usually are about the things that last.
For those who wish to read the great generous literature of the eighteenth century, the resources at the public registry can guide you to the texts and the scholarship, and I commend those baggy sentimental novels to anyone willing to set aside modern irony and be moved. And for the quiet hours between the heavy volumes, the games at the diversions index are a small free pleasure of the unsophisticated kind.
The old novels are stacked on my desk, generous and sentimental and full of benevolent strangers, and somewhere far north the last of those strangers is preparing for his round, the good figure from outside the story who arrives to dispense kindness and ask nothing. He belongs in an eighteenth-century novel, and nobody has noticed, and that is rather wonderful. The literature abandoned him. The heart never did. And every Christmas, the benevolent stranger of the old novels rides again, unfashionable and undefeated, asking nothing, giving everything, exactly as the age of sentiment always knew he should.
SOURCE: https://santaclaus.top
