Thomas Carlyle

I was glad to finally get to Thomas Carlyle to have a bit of a break from analyzing and reading so much poetry. My favorite reading selection of his was “The Irish Widow” from Gospel of Mammonism. The passage has a sad and somber mood yet is still filled with Carlyle’s satire. “The Irish Widow” tells a story of a poor Irish woman and her children trying to get help from charitable establishments. She becomes sick with typhus fever and no one reaches out to help her. She claims that she is their sister, yet they still will not help her. In consequence, she dies, and seventeen others are infected with typhus and die also. It takes her dying to prove that she was just like them even though she was poor.

In Carlyle’s time, the Irish were treated very poorly and inhuman as is shown in this work. He is displaying how society looked on this poorer class as less equal and less deserving. They were treated basically like they were not human. In making this work generic and not very specific, Carlyle is able to direct his message at all of society. In the work, the woman is just known as “a poor Irish Widow.” She is never given a name. Not naming her, the widow seems more degraded and is able to represent a large group of people who have been treated in this way. In addition, she seeks help from the “Charitable Establishments” of the “City.” Again, the place of charity is not specifically named and there is no specific city. These are not the important features of the story to focus on. What Carlyle wants the reader to focus on are the happenings of the story and the message the Physician gives in the end.

When the widow dies, a Physician speaks up, again no name is given for him as well, and asks, “Would it not have been economy to help this poor Widow? She took typhus-fever, and killed seventeen of you! – Very curious.” This message is a crucial point and I believe Carlyle is speaking through the Physician. Everyone needs to stop and realize that everyone is human, sister and brother, and it is our duty as humans to help one another. If everyone did that instead of being selfish then humanity would benefit. In the case of the fallen widow, if someone would have helped her, then seventeen others may have been spared as well. The Widow makes a point by saying as she is dying, “Ye must help me! I am your sister, bone of your bone; one God made us; ye must help me!” By saying sister, I think she means sister in humanity and in God, not a biological sister that most would think. She was made human by God just as they were and therefore she has just as much right to live as they.

Carlyle makes an interesting use of the word “impossible” in the passage. It first is used in response to the Widow’s cry out for help. The people around her say, “No, impossible; thou art no sister of ours.” The Widow is forced to prove her humanity and sisterhood by passing the typhus fever onto others. Carlyle mocks their use of “impossible” by repeating it again and again in the following paragraph. He states, “Till then all things are ‘impossible,’” “even that is ‘impossible’ for you,” “It is ‘impossible!’” and “universally declared to be ‘impossible.’” He claims that until the selfish people get a soul, everything will certainly be impossible. The only things they are worried about are their “padlocks” and “money-safes.” The last sentence of the passage is a powerful sentence. He points out, “Seventeen of you lying dead will not deny such proof that she was flesh of your flesh; and perhaps some of the living may lay it to heart.” To me, the passage is left with a small amount of hope that maybe some people that are still living will learn from the experience. Hopefully they will learn that whether poor, rich, Irish, or British, everyone is merely the same with the same flesh made by God.