Although Victorian psychology has been the subject of much recent scholarship, Elizabeth Gaskell's work has not been considered in relation to nineteenth-century theories of mind. In this thesis, I argue that Gaskell's final novel, Wives and Daughters, deals with associationism, an early branch of psychology that played a key role in public debates over cognition that took place throughout the century. Gaskell was exposed to associationism through her Unitarian faith, and Unitarian educators in particular articulated associationist principles in their writings about cognitive development. Gaskell was preoccupied with a similar model of learning throughout her fiction, and I read Wives and Daughters as a novel that redefines education in associationist terms, presenting the protagonist Molly Gibson's education not as a matter of formal schooling but as a matter of experiential and psychological growth.

This thesis explores the American liberal Protestant religious influences on Oscar Hammerstein II, and investigates how they are manifested in his musical plays written with Richard Rodgers in the period 1943-1959. Identifying these influences, which stem from Hammerstein's Protestant maternal family and from his attendance during his youth at the prominent Universalist church, The Church of the Divine Paternity, enable a widening of the theological engagement with popular culture to include the neglected realm of musical theatre. Having identified the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play as a particularly powerful popular art form that explores the existential questions faced by human beings, I investigate the previously unexplored Unitarian and Universalist influences on Oscar Hammerstein II, refuting claims that he was part of the Jewish theatrical community on Broadway. Tracing these influences in Hammerstein's lyrics and libretti shows his response to these fundamental questions as human beings seek to create meaning and build identity in relation to that which is ‘other'. Within Hammerstein's personal philosophy I distinguish, the relationship between human beings and God, and the ethical relationships between human beings in community. I begin by exploring the Unitarian moral philosophy and belief in the fatherhood of God found in Carousel, The Sound of Music and Cinderella, and engaging with the Universalist depiction of the restoration period of the soul found in Carousel. Having revealed Hammerstein's liberal Protestant understanding of this relationship, I turn to his social and political activism connecting it to a social gospel understanding of the brotherhood of man and assertion of human unity. Engaging with his ‘American' musicals – Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Sound of Music - and his ‘Asian' musicals – South Pacific, The King and I, and Flower Drum Song - separately, I question the theological implications of his late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century understanding of human unity have with regard to diversity. Throughout each of his musicals evidence is adduced of an unwavering belief in the progress of humankind onward and upward, as he reveals a significant liberal Protestant understanding of the nature of humanity, the brotherhood of man, and the possibility for human development and change.

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Existing criticism that addresses the concept of Englishness in Elizabeth Gaskell’s writing is sparse and confined to a small part of her oeuvre, and, furthermore, has, in the main, placed Englishness (and England) in Gaskell’s fiction either within a Derridian paradigm of endless signifiers or in the realm of metaphor. I place Gaskell’s Englishness within its socio-historical milieu, and argue that, for Gaskell, England is primarily literal, her green and pleasant land, and that, in her writing, she envisages a slowly evolving and flatter English social system incorporating a wider selection of the English population than was the norm in the mid-nineteenth century. She wrestles with the place of the ‘other’ within English society. Indeed, as a female and as a Unitarian, Gaskell is herself ‘other,’ outside of hegemonic Englishness, and her outsider status had a marked influence on her Englishness. I argue that there are ambiguities in Gaskell’s vision for a more egalitarian Englishness. Her Englishness is couched in middle-class terms, in which, for Gaskell, the entry requirement into the ‘in group’ of Englishness (by, for example, the working classes) is middle-class acculturation, and she presents both the benefits and limitations of her liberal, middle-class perspective. Contemporary topics that inform Gaskell’s fiction include industrial change, economic liberalism, colonial expansion, political reform, and scientific debate, each of which brought issues of nationhood and identity into focus. Gaskell’s primary vehicle for producing Englishness in this historical context was through short stories and novels, although her essays and letters are also significant. I focus on four key areas which provide entry points into her constructions of Englishness: race, empire, imperial trade (especially tea, opium, and cotton), and gender/masculinity.

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