The
Marxist historical perspective determines society as being materially-driven,
and it is this materialist way of life that influences both the society and
the economy. Christopher Hill’s article, “John Bunyan and
His Publics,” describes the life of writer John Bunyan and his experiences
through the times of England’s early political turmoil between the King and the
Parliament. This article represents a Marxist historical perspective because it
delves into the miseries of this exploitative society by describing the
inequalities between the classes within the society. This article also successfully represents a Marxist historical perspective in that it is written through the
perspective of a writer born a proletariat in society. It is written by a writer who endured years of
jail for his vocation, one rooted in equality.
In Hill’s article, Hill writes of Bunyan’s experiences through the
restoration period and its objective to eliminate certain freedoms through
different means. One of the main ways involved a restriction on interfering in politics, an upright ban on
lower class workers to preach and a resurrection of censorship. “One object of
the restoration was indeed to prevent common people presuming to interfere in
politics. Another object was to stop tinkers and other craftsmen preaching.”
The writer, Hill, writes of the English class society and the inequalities and
miseries involved with the implementation of the restoration. He uses the words
“common people”, “tinkers”, and “craftsmen” implying the existence of different
classes at the time and the implication of a society already in the making of
industrial capitalism. In reference to Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital, Marx writes that the division of labor
causes the workers to ultimately be identified in relation to their means of
subsistence, which is evident here. Hill also writes of Bunyan’s personal
experience of class inequality by writing of Bunyan choosing gaol, or jail, for
multiple years instead of giving up his “God-given vocation,” an act forced
upon by the gentry. In The German
Ideology, Marx states that consciousness is a social product, and would
argue that it is Bunyan’s “consciousness” that leads him to his decision and
this consciousness would exist so as long as he exists. Hill admires Bunyan’s
toughness for enduring such misery and puts the proletariat hero on a pedestal
for his allegiance to living with dignity and honor.
This existence of English capitalist society affected Bunyan early
in his life, starting from his father, who is described by Hill in the
beginning of the text. Hill describes Bunyan and his father as “…illiterate,
and he himself had little formal education.” Hill describes Bunyan’s
upbringings in the proletariat class and sets the tone of the article by
choosing a point of view from the very beginning. This class struggle would
influence Bunyan’s later works like his parable of Dives and Lazarus. Hill
sides with the proletariat and almost condemns the upper gentry class by
stating that “God’s own are most commonly of the poorer sort…” It was these
types of writings that were censored in the times of the restoration period in England. Simply by the fact that he was a
“have-not” in society his writings were unable to publish, which ultimately caused him to
put out his publications illegally.
To conclude, Hill’s article represents a Marxist historical perspective because
it sheds light into the misery of the capitalist society by displaying
different experiences of injustice that John Bunyan lived through in a world of
class. Bunyan’s writings were heavily class-conscious and because of these
writings he underwent several injustices within the class system. This is again seen in the censorship and the restrictions on the common man’s voice within the government. Hill
successfully represents this historical perspective and writes for a virtue
that all societies should ultimately strive for, some damn equality.
Christopher
Hill, “John Bunyan and His Publics,” History
Today 38/10 (1988): 13-19.
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