A Christian Reading of Charlotte’s Web
A fantastic, non-Christian writer sheds light on Christian truth—perhaps against his will.
“I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.’” —Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
In spite of wrongheaded beliefs, an artist who does not adulterate his work with political messages can still produce quality art (although it is debatable whether it can be first-rate without his soul being rightly ordered toward God). Bruce Springsteen is one such artist who comes to mind. In spite of his insufferable political grandstanding and shilling for the Democratic party, his music is both original and profoundly conservative.
God so ordered the universe that anyone who reveals truth reveals something about Him who is the author of all. And artists who are unbelievers can unwittingly give testimony to an order that is not of their making, giving glory to God without even realizing it, perhaps even against their wishes.
Art that is compelling and beautiful is so because it touches the universal. Modern art is unappealing precisely because it is the idiosyncratic expression of the radical individualist (and possibly also agitprop). It is merely the particular without the universal. Truly great art is at once a deeply personal, individual creation and an expression of the universal. It unites the two.
Art, therefore, can have nothing to do with politics. Art operates on a different plane of cognition than the rational intellect. The great Italian philosopher of aesthetics Benedetto Croce said that art conveys truth no less than rational discourse, but it does so through a different faculty, namely the imagination. (Although an atheist, Croce saw clearly the role of the imagination in knowing truth, and he drew heavily on his Italian Catholic predecessor, Giambattista Vico.)
This is why Ayn Rand novels (sorry to offend any Rand fans out there) do not work. Their heavily didactic elements are like millstones around the neck of imagination. We must suspend our intuitive, imaginative participation in the work in order to engage in philosophical reasoning about Rand’s libertarianism.
Recently, I read Charlotte’s Web with my children and I was so taken by the book that I had to write something about it. The author E. B. White is not, at least to my knowledge, a Christian or any kind of believer. White even opined in one essay that religious faith is not necessary for a democratic society. In this White is no different from many artists and philosophers who enjoy the fruits of a civilization that exists thanks to the Christian faith that they so easily dismiss.
This makes Charlotte’s Web all the more interesting, for I found it to contain a strong Christian undercurrent. It seems to me clearly the product of a Christian civilization, and I do not think that it could have been written in any other context.
If you haven’t read it, do. I even got my husband to listen to it on an 11-hour flight for work—hey with 22 hours in the sky, why not listen to Charlotte’s Web, right?!
If nothing else, this book can help you to teach your middle-schooler or high-schooler great writing. The author, in fact, is the “White” of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, who gives such sage advice as:
“Avoid the use of qualifiers: Rather, very, little, pretty—these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words.”
and
“Do not affect a breezy manner. The volume of writing is enormous, these days, [just imagine if White knew about Substack!] and much of it has a sort of windiness about it, almost as though the author were in a state of euphoria. ‘Spontaneous me,’ sang Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribblers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius.”
This is the kind of curmudgeonly advice that just speaks to my melancholic soul.
In Charlotte’s Web White, of course, writes in a clear, direct, and concrete manner—which is so refreshing in the literary sea of abstraction and etherealness that we now find ourselves in. The feel of the farm, the personalities of the children, the change of the seasons, and the daily life of the animals is painted vividly and yet concisely. Small details open a window into the souls of the creatures.
When we first meet Charlotte, she greets the lonely and eager Wilbur:
“Salutations!”
“Salu-what?” he cried.
“Salutations!” repeated the voice.
“What are they, and where are you?” screamed Wilbur. “Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?”
“Salutations are greetings,” said the voice. “When I say ‘salutations,’ it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning. Actually, it’s a silly expression, and I am surprised that I used it at all.”
Charlottes tells Wilbur to look up and she waves at him.
Charlotte’s presence up in her web is almost spiritual. She loves Wilbur, who loves her in kind, but she cannot show her maternal affection for Wilbur with physical touch. She is a “thin voice” up high who offers Wilbur friendship, sage advice, and ultimately his salvation—physical and spiritual.
Shortly after meeting Charlotte, Wilbur learns from the old sheep that he is being fattened up for the slaughter. Wilbur is shocked. The old sheep explains that they’re going to turn him into “smoked bacon and ham.”
“There’s a regular conspiracy around here to kill you at Christmastime,” the sheep says. “Everybody is in the plot . . . I’m an old sheep and I see the same thing, same old business, year after year. Arable arrives with his.22, shoots the . . .” Wilbur becomes hysterical, cutting off the sheep.
“Be quiet, Wilbur!” Charlotte says. We begin to see what Charlotte’s loyalty to Wilbur means.
Wilbur asks her if the sheep is telling the truth. Rather than sugar-coat things, Charlotte tells Wilbur that the sheep knows what he is talking about. Running and screaming that he doesn’t want to die, Wilbur is stopped by Charlotte who declares,
“‘You shall not die.’
‘What? Really?’ cried Wilbur. ‘Who’s going to save me?’
‘I am,’ said Charlotte.”
She has no plan yet, but she tells Wilbur, “You must try to build yourself up.” Eat your food (“every bit of it, except you must leave just enough for Templeton” [—in charity!]), sleep well, gain weight, and stop worrying, she says. She is the opposite of the modern coddlers who are doing such a disservice to our young folk. She neither denies the reality of the slaughter nor does it paralyze her.
Charlotte relies on an intuition that our salvation is to be found in putting one foot in front of the other and acting with dignity, whatever that may mean in one’s particular circumstances. From this foundation, she worked out her plan for Wilbur, which we all know.
Charlotte says she will play a trick on Zuckerman, for if she can fool a bug (many get caught in her web), she can fool a man, she says. “People are not as smart as bugs.”
The first declaration from her web read, SOME PIG!
And suddenly, the Zuckermans and everybody else viewed Wilbur differently.
Soon after she writes TERRIFIC and then RADIANT.
There is an interesting interplay between Charlotte’s words about Wilbur, the farmers’ and the town’s reaction to the words about Wilbur, and who Wilbur actually is.
I thought of Rousseau’s disdain for “artificial” manners and decorum that hide what he believes is our “true selves.” We ought to do away with salutations (no pun intended!) that distinguish one person from another. Sir, madam, your honor, etc. are mere flourishes that hide the fact that we are, at bottom, all equals. Or, so goes the Rousseauean, romantic, and Marxist argument.
On the other side, the great counter-revolutionary Edmund Burke argues that these social graces, for example, which distinguish us according to age, rank, and station in life are not unnecessary trappings of civilization but are themselves part of the fabric of civilization.
As we treat the stranger in the grocery store or the overly talkative neighbor with courtesy, even when we aren’t feeling particularly friendly, we are somehow better disposed toward the person and often end up feeling happier or friendlier than we did before. For Burke, these small courtesies, although sometimes forced, are important pillars of the fragile social edifice.
Which brings me back to Charlotte’s web. Her kind words about Wilbur do, in a sense of course, play a trick on Mr. Zuckerman. But at the same time, they give Wilbur something to live up to, which allows him to meet expectations—if only so far as a pig can be “radiant” or “terrific.”
And thus, the way in which we view others can have a profound effect on them, on ourselves, and on society. The simple greeting, “sir” or “madam,” “Mr.” or “Mrs.” is one way. As for us mothers, trying to appear radiant, even if it just means throwing on some moisturizer and concealer (and getting out of those pajamas—the struggle is real), can make us feel better as it makes us perhaps act a bit more human and less frumpzilla-ey.
We’ve all heard those stories of the teacher who believes in the child whom others see as a “failure,” and this one person’s faith and loyalty to the child making all the difference.
Charlotte’s faith in Wilbur and her treatment of him as a worthy pig, combined with Wilbur’s own effort, ends up saving him.
Wilbur conforms himself to the expectations that Charlotte sets, he trusts in her, and he loves her as a child loves a parent or beloved mentor. This dynamic reflects the relationship we are to have with Christ, whose first directive for those seeking salvation is “repent”—“metanoia” in Greek: change one’s mind or thinking. Is this not similar to what Charlotte told Wilbur when she ordered him to “stop the hysterics” and to live well and as a good pig ought to live? (My husband now loves to quote this to our child who happens to be a bit prone to hysterics at the mention of morning chores).
Finally, after devoting much of her short life to Wilbur’s salvation, at her twilight, Charlotte reveals to Wilbur her “magnum opus.” It is an egg sac containing 514 little eggs. “This egg sac is my great work—the finest thing I have ever made,’” Charlotte explains to Wilbur.
That Charlotte should have spent her little time on this earth in humble service to another and then give of herself in one last act of self-giving is nothing if not Christian saintliness. That the author White had Charlotte say that this act of procreation is her finest work, above her seemingly miraculous webs, reveals a certain religious sensibility.
In the end, Wilbur mirrors Charlotte’s selflessness. “I would gladly give my life for you—I really would,” Wilbur says. “I’m sure you would,” Charlotte responds.
It is therefore fitting that Charlotte’s final word in her web about Wilbur should be “humble.” Charlotte explained to Wilbur that humble can mean either “not proud” or “near the ground”—and both describe him, Charlotte told Wilbur. But it also describes Charlotte, who never sought glory and never begrudged Wilbur the honor that her incredible webs brought him.
Wilbur tells Charlotte that he does not deserve everything she’s done for him. “I’ve never done anything for you,” Wilbur says. “‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.’”
Their friendship is a tremendous thing and one that models the Aristotelian ideal for friendship: it is “the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.”
At the end, we see that Wilbur received the unmerited grace of Charlotte’s friendship, which in turn transformed him. Wilbur is able to give back to Charlotte by bringing her egg sac to the barn, where he gets to enjoy the friendship of her children and grandchildren, but “none of the new spiders ever quite took [Charlotte’s] place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both.”
[This article is dedicated to my true friend and good writer—you know who you are—of whom it was once said by a cab driver, “you don’t see friends like that anymore.”]
Fantastic post, Emily! "Charlotte's Web" impresses me every single time I read it; it is an absolute masterpiece.
Direct, simple, clear prose that convey deep truths. Another great post, a delight to read. Not surprising that you and Mr. White share similar sensibilities and talents.