*Sniff Sniff*

    I agree with the majority of the posts about The Man of Feeling. I found it quite boring, a couldn’t believe how often Harley cried! I would never cry at many of the things he did  –call me insensitive– and I don’t believe many others in the class would either. I found it hard to believe that it stated in the Monthly Review: “the Reader, who weeps not over some of the scenes it describes, has no sensibility of mind.” WTF? I guess I have no sensibility of mind — shame on me. I guess it was 1771 when this review was written, so maybe these issues would have made me bawl my eyes out at a more relevant time.

    However, Mackenzie was not attempting to show Harley as this cry baby I interpreted. Harley’s sensibilty was intended to be respectable and virtuous. Some have commented on his innocence as naivete, but Gerard Barker reveals that “Harley’s innocence evokes our respect rather than our contempt because we associate it with his idealism and benevolence.” This is something else I believe we interpret differently in the modern day. My perception of Harley as a cry baby influence my notion that he was indeed naive and overly trusting.

   To read the novel with a modern-day attitude will surely cause the reader to assume conclusions that were not intended by Mackenzie. A fact that is the same with many of the narratives we have read previously in the course: if we did not read within their context, they would appear absurd to us as students of the twenty-first century. Thus, once I thought of Harley within the novel’s context it was much more accessible to me. However, I still did not shed a tear.

Anon, The Monthly Review, XLV (1771), 149

Barker, Gerard. Henry Mackenzie. Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 38.

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