The Citizen of the World

Although sometimes described as a novel, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World (1760) is united by a very slight plot. A collection of letters written by Lien Chi Altangi, a fictional Chinese visitor to London, the letters were originally published individually in the daily journal The Public Ledger as a series than ran between January 1760 and August 1761. There are 119 letters, some 700 pages, in all; in them, Goldsmith uses his fictitious author to deliver witty and frequently damning criticism of contemporary British culture. In the process, he incidentally also reveals a lot about contemporary British conceptions of Chinese culture and the state of British trade relations with China. Because Goldsmith's work is so capacious, this review will take one letter, letter 18, as exemplary of Goldsmith's general approach throughout the series.

In letter 18, “The Story of a Chinese Matron,” Lien Chi, writing to his friend back in China, recounts his experience of the courtship and marriage habits of the British and Dutch, comparing them first against one another, and then against South Eastern Asian habits. He does the latter by way of the story of Choang and Hansi, two Korean lovers renowned for the intensity of their romance.

On every side, Goldsmith's descriptions are sarcastic and ironic. He begins the letter by describing how “The English love their wives with much passion, the Hollanders with much prudence.” According to Lien Chi, the English marry for “violent love” and expect the same in return; this, although intense at first, only lasts a short time, before frequently turning into its reverse. He explains, “The English marry in order to have one happy month in their lives; they seem incapable of looking beyond that period.” The Dutch, on the other hand, treat love with “indifference” and “frugally husband out their pleasures” over the course of a lifetime so that they never experience either the highs or lows of romantic English marriage. In this comparison, Goldsmith mocks both English impetuosity and, more gently, Dutch restraint at the same time.



Lien Chi uses the comparison, written to a Chinese correspondent, to segue into the story of Choang, a philosopher, and his wife, Hansi. “The inhabitants of the country around saw, and envied their felicity.” Lien Chi describes how they were constantly in each other's presence, and more than a little affectionate: “Their mouths were forever joined.” But one day, while Choang is out among the tombs of a local cemetery, he stumbles upon a beautiful young widow, dressed all in white (the Korean color of mourning), who is curiously engaged in fanning a wet tombstone. Choang approaches the woman to ask why she is fanning the tombstone, and she relates how her recently late husband bade her before his death not to remarry until the ground over his tomb was dry. She is in tears – not over her loss, but because she fears it may take as many as four days of fanning before she dries his tomb enough to marry again.

Choang, disturbed by the widow's lack of fidelity, invites her back to his home, hoping that his wife can talk sense to her – and to pose her situation as a test to his wife. He expresses to his wife that seeing such an unfaithful widow makes him uneasy; he fears that Hansi might act the same way if she outlives him. Hansi is infuriated by the suggestion; so outraged is she that she throws the widow out of their home, although it's a stormy night, because she cannot bear to be under the same roof as such a virtueless woman. After the widow leaves, Choang is incidentally visited by a former disciple of his. While at dinner, Choang and Hansi are again affectionate; but Choang has an “apoplectic fit,” and falls dead on the spot. Hansi is inconsolable until she reads his will. Within three days, she is in good spirits and engaged to her dead husband's former disciple.

Hansi and the disciple plan a lavish wedding, dressing in their best finery. However, on the day of the wedding, the disciple, too, suffers a strange fit. Hansi is told that the only cure for his condition is “the heart of a man lately dead.” Hansi rushes to Choang's coffin, and with a few great blows of an ax, opens it, intending to remove his heart to save her new beloved. To her surprise, Choang revives, wondering at his surroundings. Hansi runs off in shock, as Choang stumbles into his former home, now set with celebratory decorations. Discovering what is happening, he runs to find Hansi, to ask her if she has indeed betrayed him. When he finds her, she lies dead, having stabbed herself in shame.



Choang bears the loss with philosophic equanimity. He places his dead wife in the coffin where he had lately been interred, and “unwilling that so many nuptial preparations should be expended in vain,” marries the white-clad widow the same night. Lien Chi goes on to end the letter: “As they both were apprised of the foibles of each other beforehand, they knew how to excuse them after marriage. They lived together for many years in great tranquility, and not expecting rapture, made a shift to find contentment.”

With letter 18 of The Citizen of the World, Goldsmith uses satire of three different nations to arrive at a universal truth about the fleeting nature of human passion, and the unfortunate universality of inconstancy. His final couple, Choang and the white-clad widow, by marrying without any dissimulation or expectation of eternal romance, is instead able to find lasting contentment. This letter is a great example of Goldsmith's method: by simulating the voice of an educated foreigner, he safely distances himself from his own sharp satire of Western culture, couching his personal observations of human nature in the presumed wisdom of the East.