Matthew Arnold’s Sweetness and Light
Jamie Daugherty

            After the first reading, Matthew Arnold’s Sweetness and Light seems noble and enlightened. In this work, Arnold defines high culture as a means for perfecting the human soul and achieving peace and harmony in society. Yet upon closer examination, the reader discovers Arnold’s self-contradiction, arrogance, and prejudice.

In describing his vision of a utopian society, Arnold claims that higher education will make people more open-minded and civilized. He thinks people should be able to discuss ideas without animosity. Yet he prescribes a very specific curriculum, based on ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, which everyone must adhere to. He apparently feels that peace can only be achieved if everyone has the same background and opinions – his. He implies that he is the enlightened one, the best person to decide what is relevant for all. He advocates freedom of opportunity, not freedom of choice. As he explains it: “culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.” How can this be considered freedom? Arnold seems to contradict his opinions on organized religion as a force that stifles the soul and closes minds rather than opening them. Would not such organized education have the same effect?

Arnold also explains that culture is driven by a desire to do good, and aims to achieve a universal humanity. Yet he conveniently forgets to mention the masses of industrial workers who need help the most. In one passage, he is outraged that some of his contemporaries measure England’s greatness in coal production, rather than spiritual and intellectual development. He evidently has no opinions about the mine workers, many of them small children, whose grueling work produces this coal. Here is a perfect opportunity for Arnold to demonstrate culture’s desire to do good, to urge his readers to fight to end the suffering of their countrymen. He ignores it.

An even more infuriating example is when he quotes Epictetus: “It is a sign of… a nature not finely tempered… to make… a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about drinking… ” How pompous and heartless of him to warn against the dangers of overexertion and overeating, while thousands of people just miles away from him perform back-breaking labor, go to bed hungry, and drink filthy water!

Clearly, Matthew Arnold did not have these people in mind when he developed his theories on sweetness and light. This is made obvious by the fact that he advocates higher education, but does not explain how the poor and working-class citizens’ education will be paid for. He meant cultured learning for wealthy people such as himself, the only English citizens who had sufficient leisure time to devote to reading and discussing books on liberty and human rights. In this sense, Arnold is no less a hypocrite than the American forefathers who called for the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” while their country was being built by the hands of slaves toiling on land stolen from Native Americans.

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