Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance · Chapter
II: M'Kay explained
The narrator describes his friendship with M'Kay, a man tormented by the misery of London and driven to reform the world.
What happens
The narrator describes his friendship with M'Kay, a man tormented by the misery of London and driven to reform the world. M'Kay's earnestness leads him to attempt a religious mission in Drury Lane, despite the narrator's skepticism about the power of preaching without belief in the supernatural. The chapter also portrays M'Kay's strained domestic life with his devoted but intellectually dependent wife, and includes a vivid depiction of a gloomy Sunday in London.
Themes in this chapter
Social Class and Inequality
The chapter contrasts the refined pursuits of the educated classes with the 'eternal darkness and crime' of the urban poor, emphasizing the vast gulf between them.
Faith and Doubt
M'Kay's desire to revive religious inspiration clashes with the narrator's skepticism about the power of preaching without supernatural belief.
Suffering and Resilience
The chapter depicts the suffering of the poor in London's slums and the struggle to find meaning or redemption in such conditions.
Characters to notice
- Mark Rutherford
The narrator and friend of M'Kay; he sympathizes with M'Kay's aims but questions the efficacy of his methods.
- Mrs. M'Kay
M'Kay's wife, a devoted but intellectually dependent woman whose echoing of her husband's opinions irritates him.
- Mrs. Taylor
A woman visited by M'Kay and the narrator; her home is described as a den of misery and degradation.
Key passages
“What a farce, he would cry, is all this poetry, philosophy, art, and culture, when millions of wretched mortals are doomed to the eternal darkness and crime of the city!”
M'Kay exclaimed that all the refined pursuits of the educated classes are meaningless when so many people live in misery and crime.
M'Kay's frustration with the indifference of the cultured elite to urban poverty.
“I admitted to him that if he could believe in hellfire, or if he could proclaim the Second Advent, as Paul did to the Thessalonians, and get people to believe, he might change their manners, but otherwise he could do nothing but resort to a much slower process.”
The narrator told M'Kay that only a belief in supernatural punishment or the Second Coming could quickly reform people; otherwise, only gradual education and science would work.
The narrator's skepticism about M'Kay's religious approach to social reform.
“The preaching of Jesus would have been powerless here; in fact, no known stimulus, nothing ever held up before men to stir the soul to activity, can do anything in the back streets of great cities so long as they are the cesspools which they are now.”
Even the teachings of Jesus would have no effect in such degraded urban slums; no inspiration can work until the physical conditions are improved.
The narrator's despair about the possibility of moral or spiritual reform in the worst parts of London.