This paper will examine The Gold Thread (1860) by Norman MacLeod as a piece of literary pedagogy in a programme of Christianised Bildung. In doing so, I hope to show the extent to which the radical approach taken toward children’s spiritual capacity and moral agency in Good Words, a Christian periodical aimed at the working classes, was influenced by aspects of romanticism and the affect this had on broader religious trends in working class Scotland. The Gold Thread originally appeared as a serialized story in the pages of Good Words, an innovative periodical founded by Alexander Strahan (publisher of Alfred Lord Tennyson), edited by Norman MacLeod and featuring the literary and artistic contributions from a broad range of leading writers and artists like George MacDonald, Arthur Hughes, John Everett Millais, and many others. Written during the explosion of the genre of children’s literature in Victorian Britain, The Gold Thread is the first story written in literary form for children (Darton, 1932), a stark contrast to most children’s literature at the time which was highly moralised and sentimentalised, often focusing on the dangers of disobedience.
With his use of literary form MacLeod both illustrates and enacts his belief in the spiritual and moral capacities of children, which I suggest was influenced by romanticism, and specifically Freidrich Schiller’s vision of the education of the “beautiful soul.” MacLeod’s book The Home School (1857), on the spiritual formation of children, bears striking similarities Schiller’s instructions for the education of the “beautiful soul” in his letters to the Danish Prince. MacLeod’s approach is like Schiller’s not only in the content of his convictions concerning what entails good education, but in the form that spiritual formation should take; namely, through aesthetic and imaginative means. Schiller says the well-educated student awakes “out of sensuous slumber, recognizes himself as Man,” and comes to display a “freedom of thought” guided by “moral experience” that leads to a “manifestation of Beauty.” Schiller sees rich engagement with literature, visual art, and music as enabling this awakening and sensitizing of the “beautiful soul” to the “moral experience” that leads to a “manifestation of beauty.” MacLeod seems to adopt this vision but adapt it within a more explicitly religious framework, urging parents “not to… teach them (Children) many lessons” but to help “them be in harmony with those deeper lessons” which are present because “God imparts it.” Likewise, one of the primary means MacLeod suggests to sensitize children to “harmony… with those deeper lessons” is through aesthetic spiritual educational means, especially imaginative literature.
The Gold Thread, I suggest, was therefore intended by MacLeod to act as a tool of spiritual education through imaginative literature, and reflects his radical views on the seriousness of the spiritual lives of children. Several aspects of the novel point to this. First, The Gold Thread’s literary form and allusions to Dante’s Comedia and The Pilgrim’s Progress mark it out as a uniquely sophisticated literary work for children. The literary form pushes back against the moralistic vision of most Victorian children’s literature, suggesting that children need not be trained to obey, but to be “guided by moral experience,” which is symbolised in the allegorical “gold thread.” Second, in contrast to the children’s literature in the Victorian Era’s emphasis on children’s obedience to parents and guardians, the Gold Thread takes place in the context of the absence of Eric’s father, thus placing an emphasis on Eric (the child) as the locus of spiritual and moral decision making, a radical message for the time. Finally, the story undercuts many of the moralising tropes of Victorian literature, particularly a sort of paternalism toward the poor, depicting children instead in solidarity as mutual liberators of each other. The resistance of the “charity” trop is played out in the reciprocity of gift-giving and liberation between Eric (a Prince) and Wolf (an orphaned pig-hearder), who, throughout the story repeatedly offer each other liberation from entrapment and material help. This emphasis on the moral capacities of children culminates in the central motif of Eric and Wolf liberating one another both literally and spiritually; from the oppressors that make Wolf’s life miserable, and spiritually in their following of the “gold thread,” an allegorical symbol of conscience.
While some research has explored Good Words and MacLeod’s work in its context as a religious periodical aimed at the working classes, little research has explored how MacLeod’s work fit into and was influenced by the broader literary and philosophical trends of the time, specifically the reception of romanticism (Boere, 2023; Wolf, 1961). This paper’s reading of The Gold Thread aims to shed light on the surprising ways in which the romantic vision of bildung came to influence a broad swatch of working-class Christians in nineteenth century Scotland. I hope to show that MacLeod’s innovative use of literary form in The Gold Thread helped ignite a radical shift religious conceptions of the moral and spiritual lives of children in Victorian Britain— a shift which contributed to a social movement that culminated in the abolition of children’s labor (Benziman, 2012; Gubar, 2009; Wood, 2020).
Galia Benziman. Narratives of Child Neglect in Romantic and Victorian Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012.
Robyn Boere. Befriending the North Wind. Philadelphia: Fotress Press, 2023.
F.J Harvey Darton. Children’s Books in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1932.
Marah Gubar. Artful Dodgers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Nigel Goose and Katrina Honeyman. Childhood and Child Labour in Industrial England. Surrey: Ashgate, 2013.
Norman MacLeod. The Home School. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 1857 (edition: 2008).
The Gold Thread. Monument: Wholeheart Press, 2001 (1860).
Friedrich Von Schiller. On the Aesthetic Education of Man, trans. Reginald Snell. Mineola: Dover, 2004.
Robert Lee Wolf. The Golden Key. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.
Madeleine Wood. Parents and Children in the Mid-Victorian Novel. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020.
This paper examines The Gold Thread (1860) by Norman MacLeod as a piece of literary pedagogy in a programme of Christianised Bildung. Written during an explosion of children’s literature in Victorian Britain, The Gold Thread is the first children's book written in literary form. MacLeod's use of literary form both illustrates and enacts his convictions concerning childhood education, which, I argue, were influenced by Freidrich Schiller’s vision of the education of the “beautiful soul"; a vision starkly contrasted to the highly moralised Victorian children's literature of the time. While MacLeod's connection to broader nineteeth century literary and philosophical trends have been largely ignored, this paper explores how MacLeod's Christian adaptation of the notion of Bildung and his use of literary form helped shift religious conceptions of the moral and spiritual lives of children in Britain, contributing to a social movement that culminated in the abolition of children’s labor in Scotland.