VII. The Prison

Essay 1: Nietzsche and Hogarth’s Rake: A Paralytic Decadence

By Andrew Wright '22

The problem of decadence is identified in countless examples in various field and is further understood from an assortment of perspectives. In Wiiliam Hogarth’s series of work titled A Rake’s Progress, the main subject - Tom Rakewell - appears undeniably plagued by some formof decadence. While some may broadly claim that Tom was simply corrupted by money and hisnefarious desires, a closer examination of the character reveals something far more fascinating. In reality, the series displays decadence as an inescapable plague, ultimately depicted in plate VII as the state of paralyzing stagnation which inevitably consumes the decadent individual.Hogarth depicts this perspective of decadence by portraying The Rake as obviously stunned andbenumbed to his own downfall.

William Hogarth was born in London at the turn of the 18th century. Throughout the period of Hogarth’s life, unprecedented changes took place across the European continent. Fromeconomic development to ideological revolution, all aspects of Western culture would bereshaped forever. The work of Hogarth was largely influenced by the character of Britain’s shifting culture and the individuals who personified it.

The eight paintings that compose Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress were completed between1732 and 1734. The painting were subsequently engraved and then published as prints in 1735. The series depicts the life and eventual decline of Tom Rakewell after acquiring the wealth of his late father. As his father was merely a middle-class financier, Tom’s desires and behavior afterinheriting his money indeed warranted a far more sizeable fortune. Over the course of the series,Hogarth displays the deterioration of Tom as The Rake - seeking to “play the aristocrat,”foolishly attempting to multiply his wealth, and ultimately costing himself everything. (Paulson 20)

In the seventh plate of Hogarth’s series, Tom Rakewell finds himself jailed in Fleet Prison, a notorious debtor’s prison located in London. The Prison depicts a clamorous spectacle,consistent with most of the previous six plates in the series. Strikingly, however, Tom appears unusually peculiar in this scene - possessing a sort of paralyzed expression. The stupified appearance of the The Rake in plate VII plainly illustrates a particular element of his decadentfall: stagnation.

The view of decadence as a form of stagnation that is present throughout A Rake’s Progress and particulalry in The Prison print wouldn’t be popularly conceived until over a century after Hogarth published the series. During the latter half of the 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proposed a groundbreaking perspective of decadence, positingthe problem as one of paralytic submission and inescapable idleness.

Nietzsche originated an unparallaled view of human instinct and observed itsresponsibility in affirming and appreciating the experience of life. In this way, individuals satisfy their “will to power,” the principal driving force for all of mankind - the action of “life itself.”(BGE 16) Despite this, humans have long sought to abandon instinct and deny themselves oftheir own power. (TI 12)

Throughout the last several thousands years, Nietzsche observes the triumph of the “slaverevolt” - a fatal conquering of human thinking. This so-called revolt requires the adoption of a“slave morality,” necessarily submitting the individual to a standing of inferiority and weakness. Transcending above this individual are man’s own self-constructed “idols,” varying ideals existing in a realm of objective reality. (EH 218) In this way, humanity stands to “fight the instincts,” described by Nietzsche as “the formula for decadence. (TI 17)

In exploring the plates of A Rake’s Progress that preface The Prison, Tom Rakewell appears to have always exhibited the view of decadence which Nietzsche identifies. Immediately upon inheriting his father’s fortune, Tom renounced his true identity and became tirelessly devoted to the act of the aristocrat. Ronald Paulson describes The Rake’s journey as a “closing off of awareness - or the replacement of rebirth - with mere mimicry, imitation, and masking.” (Paulson 21) In this way, Rakewell stands to wholly reject his natural drives in pursual of animagined superior lifestyle.

Hogarth’s The Prison reveals the The Rake’s absurdly rational attempts to alleviate thefinancial crisis he’s attempted. Positioned to his left, for example, sits a bitter letter from John Rich, harshly rejecting a play that Tom had wrote to secure the funds to repay his debt. (Bindman69) Other elements of the platte, such as the set of wings in the top-left corner, the alchemist atwork in the background, and the telescope positioned in the window, serve to display thedebtors’ relentless efforts to escape their situations. These extraneous endeavors only furtherenrage the helpless debtors and facilitate the plague of decadence that now devours their lives.As Nietzsche observes, “it is a self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists to thinkthat they can escape from décadence merely by making war against it.” (TI 16)

William Hogarth’s portrayal of Tom Rakewell in The Prison presents a striking shift fromthe characters appearance in the preceding six plates. In the plattes leading up to The Prison,Tom Rakewell doesn’t necessarily resemble a typical “stagnant” character. In fact, Tom seems tobe constantly in pursuit of something - whether an effort to raise more wealth in platte V, orwasting it all away gambling in platte VI - he is certainly not unresponsive. Despite this, Tom’svarious actions and reactions in the rest of the plattes only further indicate his decadent state of stagnation. The Rake merely continued his decadent impersonation of the aristocrat andundoubtedly failed to achieve any real solution to his financial problem. In Huddleston’s view,“The extreme measures chosen by the decadent to combat his decadence are often not aneffective remedy, but rather one of decadence’s most telling symptoms.” (Huddleston 79)Evidently, Tom is incapable of acting or reacting independently from his precursing decadence.

Opposed to the obscured perspective of stagnation found in the other plattes of A Rake’s Progress, The Prison provides an explicit portrayal of The Rake’s stagnant condition. Despite thechaotic scene unfolding around him, Tom remains fixed to his seat, eyes cast in a desolate gaze,seemingly unable to respond. The positioning of Tom’s hands further contribute to the apparentfeelings of incapacity and helplessness.

The Rake’s personal attitude at the time of platte VII is better understood through afurther exploration of Nietzsche’s perspective of decadence. In On the Geneology of Morality, Nietzsche expounds his perspective of stagnation in connection to debt, guilt, and punishment.(GM 275) As Nietzsche explains, guilt was originally conceived as unrelated to any moralobligations. Instead, guilt simply indicated the presence of a debt - and punishment was nothingmore than a means for the creditor to acquire the debt he was owed. The relationship betweendebt, guilt, and punishment would eventually assume an entirely new meaning as the slave revoltspread across human thought. As humans began to subscribe to objective realities and ideals, thedebtor - in failing to uphold a “righteous” deal - now committed a multitutde of grievances. (GM279) Guilt thus arises within the debtor towards not only the creditor, but towards themselves forabandoning their morality, as well as a guilt towards God for their penance.

In his book titled Nietzsche and Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze adds to Nietzsche’s view ofguilt and debt, writing: "It is no longer a matter of discharge from debt, but of a deepening of debt. It is no longer a matter of a suffering through which debt is paid, but of a suffering through which one is shackled to it, through which one becomes a debtor forever.” (Deleuze 141) Alltold, the matter of debt as it is presently conceived by humanity produces a particularlydevastating form of stagnant decadence. In this way, Tom Rakewell’s obviously paralyticappearance is a clear result of the inescapable downward spiral of decadence that he hasentrenched himself in.T

he poem located at the bottom of The Prison engraving provides compelling insight intothe message that Hogarth sought to express in this platte. The first half of the poem describes theexperience of the “happy” and “self-approving” man. (Platte VII) This man, according to Hogarth, “can review scenes of past virtues that shine through The Gloom of Age & cast a ray togild the evening of his day.” (Plate VII) This passage reads similarly to Nietzsche’s idea of the master morality that once existed before mankind’s succumb to decadence. In the latter half of the engraving’s poem, an account of the “guilty wretch” is provided. (Plate VII) The poem reads:“No pleasures meet his conscious mind ... But broken faith & wrested truth. Talents idle & unused.” (Plate VII) Here, the ill-fated and incapacitated character of decadence according toNietzsche’s perspective is again viewed as particularly harmful to the “guilty” individual who exists as both physically and metaphorically “confined.” (Plate VII)

By examining The Prison under the lens of Nietzsche’s perspective of decadence asstagnation, Tom Rakewell emerges as the near epitome of this form of decadence. Moreover,Hogarth’s Rake appears throughout the entire series of A Rake’s Progress as having fallen victim to a stagnant decadence, resulting from his abandonment of all that affirmed and appreciated his life.

Works Cited

Bindman, David. Hogarth. David Bindman, 1981.

Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson, Columbia UniversityPress, 1986.

Hogarth, William. A Rake’s Progress Platte VII The Prison (engraving). 1734

Huddleston, Andrew. Nietzsche on the Decadence and Floursihing of Culture. Oxford UniversityPress, 2019.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Beyond Good and Evil / On the Genealogy of Morality. Translatedby Adrian Del Caro, Stanford University Press, 2014.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo. Translated by WalterKaufmann and RJ Hollingdale, Vintage, 1989.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols. Translated by Richard Polt, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

Paulson, Ronald. Hogarth Volume II: High Art and Low: 1732-1750. Ronald Paulson, 1992.