Modern interpretations of classic books often betray an entire misunderstanding of the writer’s intentions and worldview. The writers got here from an era that was deeply Christian, even when not known to be an important believer, and plenty of modern readers don’t understand this.
Of course, most Christians are aware of the deep spiritual significance inside books comparable to JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or CS Lewis’s Narnia series, or the works of Dostoyevsky and GK Chesterton. However, there are numerous other classic books with underlying spiritual themes that may deepen and enrich our faith.
Therefore these books are great food for thought for the pondering Christian, and excellent subjects of debate for a book club. With an added bonus – there aren’t the lurid depictions of sex and violence that modern novels so often contain.
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
This Shakespeare play is often understood by modern readers to be an important ‘love’ story: two individuals who adore one another yet were unjustly kept apart because of the stupidity of their warring families.
However it’s unlikely that this was Shakespeare’s intended meaning. Looked at through the lens of a Christian understanding of affection, Romeo’s behaviour particularly is less an important example of romance, and more a warning tale of emotion-led stupidity.
This is the conclusion of Joseph Pearce, visiting Professor of Literature at Ave Maria University, in his introduction of the Ignatius Critical Edition of the play. “What Romeo calls ‘love’ is just not really love in any respect – at the least it is just not love within the deeper and deepest sense of the word,” he says of Romeo’s desire for Rosaline in the primary scene.
Romeo’s fickle transfer of his ‘love’ for Rosaline to Juliet is one example of its shallow depth. “Romeo and Juliet have no idea one another,” continues Pearce. “They don’t even know one another’s names. Romeo declares his ‘love’ before he has even spoken a single word to his beloved. How can such love be anything but superficial, a bewitchment of the attention in response to great physical beauty? This, at any rate, appears to be the query that Shakespeare … is asking.”
Pearce has just begun a more accessible series of articles on Shakespeare, starting with Romeo and Juliet, in the net magazine Aleteia.
Therefore the play is an important vehicle to debate some of the necessary questions of life: what’s love?
The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
This short novel is more modest than a number of the other recommendations, but just as misunderstood. My Collins edition (2010) describes Mr Hyde as affected by “schizophrenia”. The term was not in use on the time the novel was written, and even now it’s a controversial diagnosis, because it covers a wide range of symptoms that may look like unrelated.
Yet even through a contemporary psychiatric lens, it’s an incorrect description of Dr Jekyll. Schizophrenia is just not an illness that demonstrates two alternate personalities as he experiences. The Collins edition further states that he suffers from the “feelings of suppression that Stevenson felt in Victorian society.” As often happens, the author imports a contemporary Western understanding on the book that was unlikely to be that of the writer.
Instead, a Christian reading of the work matches more neatly: the battle between the brand new redeemed nature and the old, sinful self, as described succinctly in Romans 7 and eight. The novel was a favorite method to light up these Bible passages by the late pastor Tim Keller. For example, one passage where Mr Hyde laments his experience was quoted in his book ‘The reason for God’:
“I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how earnestly, within the last months of the last yr, I laboured to alleviate suffering; you realize that much was done for others…
“[But as] I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my lively good-will with the lazy cruelty of their neglect… on the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm got here over me, a horrid nausea and probably the most deadly shuddering… I looked down… I used to be over again Mr Hyde.”
Most committed Christians will recognise Mr Hyde’s inner drive to be good, only to be horrified by the selfish pride that comes together with that thought, and the transportation back to the sinful self. Therefore the story is best understood because the battle for the human soul, the nice and evil inside, and the war with temptation, and is a wealthy source of debate about these topics.
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
Like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, modern literary interpretations of Jane Eyre are likely to inaccurately impose modern ideas onto it. It is usually described as an important feminist work, because of the independence and struggles of the novel’s female protagonist. The assumption is that Eyre, and Brontë, disliked Victorian patriarchy just as much as today’s women do.
Not so, in response to the Ignatius Criticial Edition. “One of the best novels ever written, Jane Eyre can be some of the misunderstood masterpieces of world literature,” says the series website. “Whereas newest teaching of the text misreads or misinterprets Charlotte Brontë’s devout and profoundly ingrained Christian faith and intentions, this critical edition emphasizes the semi-autobiographical dimension of the novel, exposing feminist critiques of the work as being woefully awry and illustrating Brontë’s belief within the hard-earned, hard-learned blessings of sanctity and reverence.”
Readers of the work can reflect on questions comparable to: how should a Christian deal with suffering, with unmet desires, with heartache? How can such trials be used to develop virtue?
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
When I first watched the Hollywood adaptation of this beautiful story, I left the cinema saying: ‘That was a Christian film’! After sobbing my heart out at the various emotional scenes, in fact.
The book is just not for the faint-hearted as it is extremely long, though there are ‘abridged’ versions that miss a number of the meandering passages of the unique.
But careful readers will perceive some deep theological themes within the work beyond the more obvious, comparable to the gorgeous mercy of the priest and the next conversion of Valjean. For example, the persecuting policeman Javert represents the law – Valjean have to be punished for his sinful past. The priest and Valjean display the gospel of mercy and redemption. Thus, the strain between law and charm exists throughout the book.
The plight of the poor is one other necessary Christian theme, in addition to whether revolution – from which Hugo’s native France suffered brutally before he was born – is a suitable response. Whether watching the film or reading the book, there’s spiritual depth to be discovered on this heart-rending work.
Heather Tomlinson is a contract Christian author. Find more of her work at https://heathertomlinson.substack.com/Â or via X (twitter) @heathertomli
