The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane · Chapter
IX: A Strain on the Cable explained
Zachariah Coleman, having fled to Manchester with his wife, struggles with poverty, unemployment, and a failing marriage.
What happens
Zachariah Coleman, having fled to Manchester with his wife, struggles with poverty, unemployment, and a failing marriage. He wrestles with his Puritan faith, finding solace in the Book of Job and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, while his wife grows increasingly bitter and hysterical. After a fortnight, with only five shillings left, he attends a dramatic Methodist chapel service, but his domestic and economic crises deepen.
Themes in this chapter
Suffering and Resilience
Zachariah endures poverty, marital strife, and spiritual doubt, finding resilience through Puritan theology and the example of Job.
Religion and Hypocrisy
Zachariah's faith is tested; his wife's religious profession contrasts with her behavior, and the Methodist service is depicted as emotionally manipulative.
Love and Marriage
The chapter reveals the deep incompatibility and strain in Zachariah and Mrs. Zachariah's marriage, with no mutual understanding or support.
Characters to notice
- Zachariah Coleman
Struggles with faith, poverty, and a strained marriage in Manchester; seeks work and solace in religion.
- Mrs. Zachariah
Grows hysterical and bitter under misfortune, blaming Zachariah for their plight.
- Mr. Bradshaw
Referenced as the preacher of a sermon on the Red Sea passage that Zachariah recalls.
Key passages
“He admitted the unquestionable right of the Almighty to damn three parts of creation to eternal hell if so He willed; why not, then, one sinner like Zachariah Coleman to a weary pilgrimage for thirty or forty years?”
Zachariah reasoned that if God could condemn most of humanity to hell, it was no great injustice to give him a long, difficult life.
Reflects Zachariah's internal struggle with predestination and personal suffering.
“His wife was one of those women who under misfortune show all that is worst in them, as many women in misfortune show all that is best.”
Unlike some women who rise to the occasion in hardship, Mrs. Zachariah revealed her worst qualities.
Highlights the contrast between Zachariah's resilience and his wife's bitterness.
“He remembered that quagmire in the immortal Progress into which, if even a good man falls, he can find no bottom; he remembered that gloom so profound 'that ofttimes, when he lifted up his foot to set forward, he knew not where or upon what he should set it next'”
He recalled the terrifying swamp in Pilgrim's Progress where even a good man loses all footing and direction.
Zachariah draws comfort from Bunyan's allegory of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.