Sartor Resartus Thomas Carlyle's Sartor

Sartor Resartus Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus can be read in many ways; the book simultaneously functions as an outlet for Thomas' Transcendental ideas, a gentle parody of German intellectualism, and a commentary on the nature of writing.

However, the most important facet of Sartor Resartus is not its literary contributions, but rather its spiritual and existential contribution, because over the course of the novel's curious narrative, Carlyle manages to paint the picture of a spirituality or philosophy of life that is not limited by any single structure or "fashion," but rather on human beings' own ability to create their own meaning.

By examining the novel in detail, and in particular the fictional Diogenes Teufelsdrockh's "Philosophy of Clothes," one is able to see how Carlyle uses Sartor Resartus in order to suggest the possibility of a more expansive, liberating spirituality in lieu of the more restrictive interpretations offered by the prevailing authorities.

Sartor Resartus is an undeniably curious book, in that its narrative is fragmented and disjointed, the incomplete ideas of an imaginary German philosopher, delivered to the reader through the critical voice of an English editor, whose own input ends up becoming a central part of the novel's humor.

However, the core argument of the novel's position regarding spirituality, and ultimately life in general, is not hard to grasp, if only because it is framed in such an ostensibly silly way; that is to say, Teufelsdrockh's work is dedicated to demonstrating how "in all his modes, and habilatory endeavours, an Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built" (Carlyle 34).

In other words, Teufelsdrockh argues that all meaning and identity can be traced back to clothes, which find their origin not in survival or practicality, but rather in ornamentation (Carlyle 37).

The idea that clothes first evolved for strict ornamentation rather than survival or comfort may not comport with archeologists' and anthropologists' views of cultural development, but whether or not Teufelsdrockh's declaration that "the first purpose of clothes […] was not warmth or decency, but ornament," is actually true matters little to the argument of the larger text due to the fact that clothes, or more accurately, fashion, is simply a tangible, metonymic representation of meaning in general (Carlyle 37).

Carlyle hints at as much in subsequent chapters, when Teufelsdrockh argues that "perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold-mantled Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and his Self are not one and indivisible; that he is naked, without vestments" (Carlyle 55). The statement that someone is naked without clothes may seem a useless tautology at first, until one attempts to understand what Carlyle is actually saying.

If clothes are really just a symbol for all human meaning, then Carlyle's point is that the meaning created by humans, the meaning that orders their social structures, politics, and even religions, is as arbitrary as clothing, and has as much relation to the essential person as clothes do to the body.

Thus, when Teufelsdrockh says that "Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me more, is founded upon Cloth," because clothing is simply the most direct way for broadcasting the more detailed social strata and meanings that humans have developed (Carlyle 59).

It is worth noting that Carlyle makes this point not with his English editor, but rather with the eccentric Teufelsdrockh, and one may look at the editor's somewhat indignant response in order to better understand Carlyle's meaning; if one reads the novel as a long treatise, then the editor's disagreements with Teufelsdrockh may be read as an example of a studious essayist including predicted counter-arguments such that they might be refuted more quickly.

In the chapter immediately following Teufelsdrockh's declaration regarding the nakedness of humanity in the absence of its created meaning, the editor remarks that he "was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got not only a Sans-cullotist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract?" (Carlyle 56). By placing the (possibly) revolutionary commentary on meaning in the mouth of the German philosopher, Carlyle makes his point without making his English editor say anything that might be considered too critical of the existing power structure.

At the same time, the arguments that the editor makes in favor of clothes, or at least as clothes as something essential or meaningful independent of human meaning, ultimately serve to reinforce Teufelsdrockh's case, because the arguments are almost exclusively appeals to emotion.

For example, the editor defensively asks Teufelsdrockh "what hadst thou been without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls" when he was a baby, or if he has truly "never rejoiced in [clothes] as in a warm moveable house, a body round thy body, wherein that strange Thee of thine sat snug, defying all variations of climate?" (Carlyle 57).

The editor does not want to accept the truth of Teufelsdrockh's proposition, and so responds by attempting to force Teufelsdrockh to view his clothes not as an extension of human meaning, but rather as something essential that gives him meaning by contextualizing his body and marking the passage of time as differently-aged people wear different kinds of clothes.

Ultimately, however, the editor himself reveals his own "revolutionary" desire, when he lists things he would rather omit such as "kings wrestling naked on the green" and being dissected so that the truth of their equal kinship with everyone else is revealed through their viscera (Carlyle 62). Even then, however, these revolutionary ideas are still provided via Teufelsdrockh, as he is the "speculative radical" (Carlyle 62).

Thus far one could say that Teufelsdrockh (and by extension Carlyle) has only a provided a kind of social commentary, and not truly a spiritual one, and this is indeed true for the first two books of the novel. However, in the third book Teufelsdrockh turns his attention more directly to matters of spirituality and the church (although he has mentioned it previously).

It is here, in the final sections of the novel, that Carlyle makes a link between his social criticism regarding the formation of social meaning and the larger existential questions of spirituality. The section opens with Teufelsdrockh's account of George Fox, "the first of the Quakers," making "himself a suit of Leather" and in doing so demonstrating the venality and shallowness of the reigning clergy (Carlyle 202).

Teufelsdrockh's account of Fox's work is crucial to understanding how Carlyle's social commentary becomes a spiritual one, because Fox's decision to make his clothing, against the advice of "the Clergy of the neighborhood, […] blind leaders of the blind," is essentially the physical act of breaking with established dogma and attempting to creating one's own meaning, even in the realm of religion (Carlyle 203).

Teufelsdrockh argues that Fox's "Leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine," and though he does not go so far as to argue that god and religion are themselves as arbitrary as clothing, his praise of Fox shows that he views all but the most central beliefs as human-generated meaning, empty symbols whose power comes not from anything essential or divine but rather from whatever power society has deigned to give them (Carlyle 204).

While this was and still is a somewhat incendiary proclamation, considering the sheer size of religious institutions.