Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) - Softcover

Gosse, Edmund

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140182764 ISBN 13: 9780140182767

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1989

Synopsis

Father and Son, a memoir first published anonymously in 1907, was Gosse's second book and is arecord of his struggle to 'fashion his inner life for himself.' The book describes Edmund's early years in an exceptionally devout Plymouth Brethren home. His mother, who died early and painfully of breast cancer, was a writer of Christian tracts. His father was an influential, though largely self-taught, invertebrate zoologist and student of marine biology who, after his wife's death, took Edmund to live in Devon. The book focuses on the relationship between a sternly religious father who rejects the new evolutionary theories of his scientific colleague Charles Darwin and the son's gradual coming of age and rejection of his father's fundamentalist religion. It was immediately acclaimed for its courage in flouting the conventions of Victorian autobiography and is still a moving account of self-discovery.

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Review

The era in which faith and reason conflicted in a profound manner seems far away, and perhaps even a bit incomprehensible, to citizens of the modern world. Most of us take for granted our right to choose the life of the mind over that of the spirit without feeling remorse. At the very least, we've learned that the two need not be mutually exclusive. But this is hard-won ease, born of a conflict that began with the Victorians. Edmund Gosse's Father and Son (1907) traces his own reckoning--as well as that of his father, the eminent British zoologist Philip Gosse--with the clash. His story is, as he declares, "The diagnosis of a dying Puritanism."

The only Puritanism that dies here, however, is the author's. His parents were Christian fundamentalists and as a result, young Edmund was denied interaction with other children as well as all variety of fictional tales. "Here was perfect purity," Gosse writes, "perfect intrepidity, perfect abnegation; yet there was also narrowness, isolation, and absence of perspective, let it boldly be admitted, an absence of humanity." Despite all of this, the child maintained his sense of humor, which adds much levity to a tale of such potentially grim proportions.

When Edmund was 8, his mother died of cancer, leaving him the care of a man in whom "sympathetic imagination ... was singularly absent." Philip Gosse held on to his faith in God above all else--so much so, in fact, that when evolutionary theory was announced to the world, he dismissed it entirely because it discounted the book of Genesis. Little by little, Edmund began to chafe against the traditions he had inherited. By the age of 11, he already saw himself "imprisoned for ever in the religious system which had caught me and would whurl my helpless spirit." At this point he believed his fate was sealed and went through the motions of piety. It is not until he goes off to boarding school, and discovers the Greeks and Romantic poetry, that he slowly chooses his own path. Eventually he comes to realize that he and his father "walked in opposite hemispheres of the soul." Their split encapsulates a particular moment in history but also embodies their destiny: "one was born to fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward." --Melanie Rehak

About the Author

Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849 – 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhood in the book Father and Son has been described as the first psychological biography.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0140182764
• ISBN 13: 9780140182767
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Abbs Peter