Charisma, Rationality, and Organizing the Working Class

In Eliot’s Felix Holt: The Radical, the novel’s titular character is shown again and again as unable to persuade anyone, particularly members of the working class, to agree with him. His inability to gather and organize those he addresses would, at first blush, make him a rather strange choice for a protagonist. Why would one choose to center a narrative on a character that proves consistently ineffective? While the immediate thought would be to see this choice as the novel commenting on the figure of Felix alone, it is worth considering his failures as a (middle class) commentary on the ways in which one can realistically hope to organize the working class. In Felix’s character, the novel seems to be proposing a demagogic nature for charismatic leadership, and an ineffective one for the rational leadership.

Charisma, as defined by Max Weber, is a form of authority conferred upon an individual resulting from a “devotion to the specific and exceptional sanctity, heroism of exemplar character of an individual person, and of the normative pattern or order ordained by him (46).” The charismatic leader is not one who appeals to the reasoning abilities of his/her followers, but rather cultivates a sense of personal loyalty among them. The followers’ fealty leads to an agreement with the charismatic leader, rather than agreement leading to fealty. According to Weber, charismatic leadership is based on “the conception that it is the duty of those who have been called to a charismatic mission to recognize its quality and act accordingly (49),” wherein followers are expected to see as self-evident the presence of a divine or historic force, a “charismatic mission,” in the figure of a given individual. The charismatic leader is one whose personality warrants special attention and recognition from his/her followers, a special recognition which is connected with a greater truth about the universe.

It seems exactly this kind of charismatic authority which had been exercised by Felix’s father, a patent medicine salesman, in Felix Holt. According to Felix’s mother, “my husband’s tongue ‘ud have been a fortune to anybody, and there was many a one said it was as good as a dose of physic to hear him talk (55),” attributing a great deal of power to his personality, his very speech able to bring about relief from suffering. Located in his person is a gift for healing, a gift which is apparent even to those who merely hear him talk. This gift for healing is itself seen as the result of special privilege from divine will, with Felix’s mother saying of her husband’s Cancer Cure that, “he believed it was sent to him in answer to prayer; and nobody can deny it, for he prayed most regular, and read out of the green baize Bible (55).” Felix’s father was not only graced by divine power with the ability to heal, but the divine power’s choice of him is placed beyond reproach by the evidence provided by his pious personality. The fact that he was favored with the gift of healing by a divine force was seen as self-evident in his personality.

However, the novel implicitly critiques the authority held by Felix’s father in the way in which it characterizes Mrs. Holt. Prior to hearing anything from her, Mrs. Holt’s arrival is announced to Rufus Lyons, the pastor, he states aloud that “Mistress Holt is another who darkens counsel by words without knowledge, and angers the reason of the natural man (54).” Immediately, Mrs. Holt is set up as a character whose thoughts and notions are often outside the bounds of rationality, her speech seen as not guided by reason. Over the course of her conversation with Rufus, her irrationality is connected directly with her acceptance of her late husband’s charismatic authority, with her saying of the patent medicines that “to say that they’re not good medicines, when they’ve been taken for fifty miles around by high and low, by rich and poor, and nobody speaking against ‘em but Dr. Lukyn, it seems to me it’s flying in the face of Heaven (56).” Mrs. Holt is seen here as conflating fact with popularity, reasoning that the medicines must be sound because they are being widely taken. Her adherence to charismatic authority is seen as buttressed by a kind of conformity, accepting something as correct simply because others do. Charismatic authority, such as that held by the late Mr. Holt, is thus depicted by the novel as relying on a kind of herd mentality.

In addition to this, Mrs. Holt’s conversation with Rufus exposes another part of the novel’s attitude toward charismatic authority. When telling Rufus of her concerns about Felix besmirching the name of his father’s patent medicines, she states of her work with the medicines that “there’s few women would have gone through with it; and it’s reasonable to think it’ll be made up to me; for if there is promised and purchased blessings, I should think that this trouble is purchasing ‘em (58).” For Mrs. Holt, her adherence to her husband’s charismatic authority, which led to her work with the medicines, is to be repaid by some sort of reward. She has been living since her husband’s death on the proceeds from the sale of the medicines, thus giving her a vested interest in their consumption. The validity of her husband’s authority then is of material concern to her, going along with and propagating it a means of assuring herself a comfortable living. In this way, the charismatic authority of her husband is adhered to out of self-interest.

The two forces that, for the novel, seem to support charismatic authority, conformity and self-interest, would seem to make it inseparable from another kind of social force, that being demagoguery.

Felix, for his part, resists the allure of charismatic authority, relying instead on scientific rationality. Speaking to Rufus, Felix states plainly that “‘My father was ignorant… He knew neither the complication of the human system, nor the way in which drugs counteract each other (61).” For Felix, the effectiveness of the medicines is to be judged on scientific knowledge, not by the force of personality of their charismatic salesman. And yet, this commitment to rationality over charisma appears to harm Felix when he tries to rally the workers in Sproxton, he is unable to win their approval against Mr. Johnson’s promises of the miners’ growing prosperity through expanded trade. Here, his refusal of charismatic authority leaves him with rational argument, which the novel depicts as unable to organize like demagoguery can.

Thus, one can see Eliot’s choice in choosing a character like Felix, who tries and fails to organize through appeals to rationality as a means of remarking on both the dangers and seductions of charismatic leadership, and the ineffective ways in which rationality allows for alternatives of demagoguery.