For me the issue of whether to accept The Man of Feeling for its sentiment was not necessarily difficult. I was ready and willing to, yet Mackenzie’s plot in itself foiled those chances for me. Initially, as I was reading the book I felt it was such a breathe of fresh air specially after the previous readings for its length as well as its content. I whole-heartedly took Harley as the sensitive noble character awwing at all his charitable deeds and emotions up until the prostitute’s story line came into play. Please, saving a prostitute why couldn’t there be someone else or anyone else where the same emotions could’ve been expressed because yes understand she had it hard but Harley shouldn’t have been in that situation to begin with. The whole situation diminished the credibility and affable feelings I had for Harley as a character as well as for Mackenzie’s message.
Here is just a random side point. The pictures on the front of book covers many of times just plain old miss the mark in representation of the book, but I felt Oxford was dead on with Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling. It was a nice change that in a way added to the book for me.
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2 comments:
I disagree with you, I felt that the scene with the prostitute enhances his credibility. He is a sensitive man who acknowledges everyone in society, and he's willing to show kindness to all. He didn't look at her as a "whore" who has fallen from grace, instead he listens to her story. By doing this, it removes the potential for hypocrisy.
Jessica your comment made me put Tom and Harley together in a way that would not have occurred to me otherwise--you are right that he shouldn't be there. Like Tom he is impulsive and doesn't think things through. He ends up where he shouldn't be, with the wrong people, doing things that look foolish. Thus we see him gambling and walking around with questionable types late at night. For many reasons stories of ruined girls had become almost ubiquitous in the fiction of this period--whatever its genre. They are there as a cautionary tale, to arouse pity, and in general to raise the emotional temperature. Your reading is more fresh so you question the scene in a way that I agree with--I am just so used to these scenes that I take them for granted. My problem is that I am always struck much more by their agenda--whether warning or pity--than by their realism--for that see Moll Flanders by Defoe. For some reason, by mid-century the prostitute had become a stock figure who always told the same sad story.
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