The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana

by Jess Nevins

 Hypatia; or, New Foes with an Old Face (1852)

copyright © Jess Nevins 2022

Hypatia; or, New Foes with an Old Face was written by Charles Kingsley and first appeared as a serial in Fraser’s Magazine (Jan. 1852-Apr 1853). Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) is not well-known today. His only book which remains regularly read is his children’s fable The Water Babies. But during his lifetime he was one of the giants of mid-century Victorian literature. Kingsley wrote children's literature, poetry, historical romances, sermons, scientific treatises, religious tracts, and literary criticism. He was also a parish priest, a prominent social reformer and political activist, a professor of history at Cambridge, tutor to the future Edward VII, and chaplain to Queen Victoria herself.

Hypatia is set in Alexandria in 415 C.E. and follows the final months of the life of Hypatia of Alexandria (370-415 C.E.), the first major female mathematician and the head of the Alexandrian Neoplatonic School. The novel begins with the visit of Philammon, a young Christian monk, to Alexandria. Although he was warned about the temptations of the big city and especially of women, he is overwhelmed by the new sensations which the city offers and is smitten by Hypatia, who is both beautiful and intelligent. Philammon begins attending her lectures and finds that her rational and contemplative philosophy compares favorably to the pettiness, violence, and fanaticism of the Christian monks of Alexandria. A group of Goths are visiting Alexandria, and the mistress of their leader, Amalric, is Pelagia, a seductive hetaira. Philammon eventually realizes that Pelagia is his long-lost sister and tries to woo her away from a life of decadence toward Christianity. Alexandria itself is riven with turmoil and conflict, not just between the rival groups of monks but also in the friction between Patriarch Cyril, the arrogant and power-hungry leader of the Alexandrian Church, and Orestes, the governor of the city. Hypatia finds that her philosophy no longer comforts her, and she begins to question the truth behind her teachings. Her former student and friend Raphael Aben-Ezra, a cynic, also begins to question the truth behind his personal philosophy. And Philammon, greatly tempted by Hypatia, wavers in his commitment to Christianity. But Aben-Ezra’s questioning leads him to convert to Christianity and Philammon eventually re-embraces Christianity, while Hypatia’s doubts lead her to despair. At the end of the novel Aben-Ezra has left Alexandria to begin a new life as a Christian with his love; Hypatia has been hacked to death by a mob of fanatical Christians, and Philammon, despondent, returns to the desert. He eventually becomes the abbot of his monastery, but his previously innocent view of Christianity is now colored by his knowledge of the limitations of celibacy. Pelagia becomes a Christian anchorite but always remembers Amalric with affection.

Hypatia has in common with Kingsley’s Westward Ho! the almost overt clash between Kingsley the Muscular Christian and Kingsley the Storyteller. The themes of Hypatia are those of the Muscular Christian: the triumph of Christianity over paganism, in the form of Neoplatonism; the sins of Jews and Catholics; and the moral superiority of Christianity. And as in Westward Ho! there is a sizable didactic element in Hypatia, not just for the purposes of touting Christianity but also to educate the reader about Neoplatonism and its flaws. Long pages of nothing but lecture and description, pages originally intended to instruct, correct, and edify, may now seem dull to the modern reader. Hypatia shares with Westward Ho! a large number of historical inaccuracies (especially Synesius, who is portrayed as Victorian parson), Christian apologia, and religious and ethnic bigotry in the form of antisemitism and anti-Catholicism. Hypatia’s portrayal of a fractious and corrupt early Church is matched by an indictment of several of Catholicism’s dictates. Kingsley’s view of the superiority of Teutonic blood is communicated clearly in his portrayal of the crude, violent, but virile and in their way pure Goths. One of Kingsley’s most passionately-held beliefs was the evils of celibacy, especially the Catholic Church’s requirement that its clergy be celibate, and one of Hypatia’s subtexts is the damage that celibacy does to those who practice it. Finally, Kingsley gives sufficient space to Hypatia’s philosophy (if only to debunk it), but slights her considerable mathematical achievements.

And yet Hypatia, like Westward Ho!, has much to recommend it. Kingsley’s style is engaging. The recreation of Alexandria is vivid and colorful, as is the cast of characters: desert monks, cynical Roman governors, fanatical Christian priests, wandering Goths looking for Asgard, and so on. At times Kingsley’s descriptions are surprisingly voluptuous, and Hypatia’s murder, though not graphically described, is still powerful. The sensuality of Hypatia was actually shocking to many Victorian readers, and Tennyson was quite upset by Kingsley’s description–graphic by Victorian standards–of Hypatia’s death.1 (Kingsley, of course, drew upon the historical record in describing Hypatia’s end).

Hypatia has interesting historical cameos, most memorably from Augustine of Hippo and Synesius of Cyrene. (Augustine in particular is fully realized by Kingsley). Kingsley’s characterization is surprisingly effective. Hypatia is skillfully brought to life, so that her fall has more than a hint of tragedy about it. She is prim, self-righteous, humorless, an orthodox Neoplatonist, disdainful of all matters of the flesh, and smart, but she is also too proud to see her own flaws, which lead to her death at the hands of the mob. Her self-doubt is realistic, and the spiritual development of Philammon and Raphael Aben-Ezra is done with a surprising (for the time) lack of histrionics. Hypatia does not have a lot of action–it isn’t that sort of historical romance–but the dialogue more than makes up for its lack. The characters’ speech has a real energy and life: many of the main characters are given apothegms and witticisms to say. (Interestingly, the Jews and non-Christians seem to get the best lines). Raphael Aben-Ezra and Orestes, the Roman governor, are amusingly cynical. Irony sparkles in their discussions, a quality noticeably absent from many contemporary historical romances. Finally, Kingsley does not ignore Christianity’s bloody beginnings, although he plays up the atrocities of the early Catholic Church for his own ideological purposes. Kingsley was deeply opposed to Catholicism, especially Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), the influential Catholic priest and apologist, and Hypatia was written largely in response to Newman’s works and public statements and beliefs.2 

Hypatia is not Kingsley’s best novel, but like Westward Ho! it is an unexpectedly involving novel, and is well worth searching out.

Recommended Edition

Print: Charles Kingsley, Hypatia, etc. London: British Library, 2011.

Online: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009775464

 

1 “It is very powerful and tragic; but I objected to the word ‘naked.’ Pelagia’s nakedness has nothing which revolts one…but I really was hurt at having Hypatia stript.” Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir, by Hallam Tennyson, qtd. in Margaret Farrand Thorp, Charles Kingsley, 1819-1875 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1937), 114.

2 Susann Dorman, “Hypatia and Callista: The Initial Skirmish Between Kingsley and Newman,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 34, no. 2 (Sept 1979): 174.