Caleb Williams and the Smithian Spectator: Reading the ‘Reasonable Demand'

Abstract

William Godwin’s Caleb Williams brings together the discourse of impartial spectatorship with the impassioned language of sentiment, revealing just how intimate the ties can be between demands for convincing narratives and the cultural championing of sympathy. The essay argues that Godwin’s novel problematizes Adam Smith’s claim in The Theory of Moral Sentiments for the centrality of the question, “What has befallen you?” to any discussion of sympathy. Caleb’s and Falkland’s competitive claims both to impartiality and spontaneous benevolence gently veil the coercive aspects of the call to sympathize. The essay draws upon Frances Ferguson’s compelling account of the late-eighteenth-century stress upon the power of the “displayed value” of action. Actions counted in a new way, Ferguson argues, when individuals could see the relative value of their actions within the framework of an artificial grouping. Such new systems of ranking provided individuals access to hitherto unavailable forms of recognition. They also help explain Caleb’s obsession with occupying a higher station in Falkland’s eyes. More generally, the essay examines the romantic era’s troubled privileging of the supposedly liberating aspects of not only disclosing one’s own inner life, but also laying claim to knowing another’s.