Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Kingdom of Matthias, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Patriarchy, Family, and Society
Religion, Perfectionism, and Insanity
Race, Prejudice, and Resilience
Rural Life and Urban Culture
Desire, Relationships, and Sexual Freedom
Summary
Analysis
Like Elijah Pierson, Robert Matthews goes to New York from the countryside as a young man in search of work, and he finds himself turning increasingly to faith to cope with the transition. Unlike Elijah, Robert is not successful in business. Instead, he erratically pursues various denominations of Christianity. During this time, he starts physically abusing his wife and children. Soon after, everybody in his life abandons him. Robert wanders around the city in search of work, and he eventually winds up in Elijah’s home on Fourth Street.
The book began by introducing a character named “Matthias.” Now, the authors revisit Matthias’s life story. Matthias’s real name is Robert Matthews. Like Elijah, Robert Matthews grows up in a rural environment, struggles to adapt to urban life, fails to find a home in mainstream religion, and ends up driving people away from him. This suggests that, like Elijah’s, Matthews’s extreme religious devotion has a disastrous effect on his and his family’s lives.
Themes
Robert Matthews is born in 1788. He grows up on a country farm in a village called Coila, in New York State. His Scottish immigrant family practices a strict form of Calvinism. They harshly oppose pro-reform sects of Scottish Calvinism, and they reject most recreational activities beyond fasting, prayer, and reading the Bible. When he’s around 12 years old, Robert attends his community’s most important gathering: an annual event called the Lord’s Supper. During the event, the ministers publicly shame each person in the community who has failed to comply with the congregation’s religious standards.
Similar to Elijah Pierson’s childhood, Matthews grows up in a close-knit Calvinist community. Scottish Presbyterians placed great importance on the sacrament called the Lord’s Supper, or communion. If a person was believed to be practicing immorality with no intention of repenting, that person would be barred from the Lord’s Supper observance. The authors hint that these practices fueled Matthews’s later extremism.
Themes
Ministers reprimand people for activities like public swearing, wearing dirty clothes, and attending sermons given by people who aren’t in their community. It’s difficult for anybody to sway too far from the community’s strict religious rules without being punished. Although the community’s religious leader, Reverend Mr. Beveridge, creates a stressful, punishing atmosphere in his community, he favors Robert as a boy and even blesses him.
The book portrays the community as strict and authoritarian, gaining compliance more through fear and shame than through genuine belief. It also suggests that Robert’s religious upbringing was psychologically damaging and prepared him to abuse others likewise.
Themes
In contrast to Elijah Pierson’s childhood church (where rich townsfolk pay more to sit at the front), Robert Matthews’s church seats rich and poor people together. However, similar to Elijah Pierson’s community, Matthews’s community emphasizes fatherly authority. Each household’s father runs the family, leads prayers, and must be obeyed. Men run all religious and social events, while women and children stay largely silent. Sometimes, the townsfolk claim to have visions and direct interactions with God, though ministers tend to under-record cases involving women and children. Despite this, Robert believes he has several visions throughout his childhood. He grows up believing that he’ll experience many hardships but will ultimately become the master of his own household.
Matthews’s upbringing was marked by male authority in church and at home; he expected to exercise the same authority one day. Though such Calvinist communities generally downplayed the role of supernatural experiences like visions, they weren’t unheard of; in this respect, Matthews’s church, and his own visionary experiences, reflect the individualist streak of America’s Second Great Awakening.
Themes
Get the entire Kingdom of Matthias LitChart as a printable PDF.
Matthews’s parents die when he’s about seven, and he grows up working for a neighbor as a farm laborer. As a teenager, he grows ill and anxious. An elderly member of Robert’s church takes Robert in and teaches him carpentry for a couple years. In 1808, Matthews abruptly leaves town and heads for New York City. He settles into a tenement in the impoverished Lower East Side neighborhood with the Wright family (also from Coila), and he begins diligently attending church. Robert keeps getting fired from carpentry jobs because he has a habit of angrily chastising his colleagues for “sinful” behavior such as drinking.
As with Elijah’s childhood community, Matthews’s congregation displays a strong community spirit: they take in orphans like Matthews and look after them, rather than leaving them to fend for themselves. Matthews also struggles to adapt to city life which is far less religious and more individualistic than he’s used to. People don’t react well to being publicly shamed in the city: they’re used to doing what they want, rather than what their community wants. Matthews’s inability to embrace such individualistic urban values isolates him from others.
Themes
In 1811, Matthews has an outburst and beats his sister-in-law, and the Wrights send him back home to Coila. Robert’s community set him up with a home, a store, and some land, and Robert becomes a shopkeeper. He occasionally travels to New York to pick up wholesale supplies for his store. During these trips, he courts one of the Wright family’s daughters, Margaret Wright. They marry in 1813 and have a son a year later in Coila. Since Matthews is an orphan and has no father figure of his own to obey, he become the head of his own household (and a respected member of his community) at the young age of 26.
Matthews’s violent outburst suggests that his inability to adapt to city life triggers dysfunctional anger, which he takes out on those more vulnerable. Despite his struggles, his rural community displays its community spirit once more, re-establishing him as a business owner and head of his own household. Matthews goes from being poor, isolated, and unemployed in the city, to being well off, supported, and powerful in his rural community. According to the book, Matthews comes to favor rural life because it gives him what he thinks men deserve in society: power, authority, and success.
Themes
Matthews’s business fares well at first, until an overambitious plan to expand his store sends him (and several others in his community who invested in his business) into bankruptcy. Having lost his good reputation, Matthews moves his family back to Manhattan and pursues work as a carpenter. After a few years, Matthews starts his own carpentry business, but his family is plagued by illness while living in cramped, unsanitary quarters. His two young sons die, and then he falls ill himself. He has to move his family to a cheaper, more cramped tenement. Matthews begins having headaches and violent outbursts. He also begins having confused episodes, lashing out, and beating Margaret and their children.
Matthews struggles to adapt to urban life, where there’s less built-in support than he enjoyed in his rural upbringing. This appears to make him feel powerless, and he copes by lashing out at his family. This suggests that when men struggle to fulfill the expectations placed on them by a patriarchal society, it’s sometimes their dependents who suffer most.
Themes
Around this time, Matthews stumbles across an African Methodist church. His Calvinist faith is strongly anti-racist, and he’s used to participating in multiracial congregations, so he joins. At this church, people have dramatic experiences where they feel directly touched and saved by the Holy Spirit. Calvinists usually reject such behavior, but Matthews is deeply moved by it, and he thinks he’s witnessing pure faith. Matthews begins believing that he’s a Hebrew prophet. Matthews is inspired by a newspaper editor and politician named Mordecai Manuel Noah, who claims to be the Jewish messiah. Margaret thinks that Matthews is going insane.
Like Elijah, Matthews copes with an unfamiliar urban culture by seeking refuge in a church. Interestingly, though, this church is much different from his Scottish Calvinist upbringing. Much bigger than the racial difference is the Methodist emphasis on immediate encounters with the Holy Spirit (which, for Calvinists, is ordinarily experienced through the church’s preaching and sacraments). Like Elijah’s, Matthews’s naturally intense devotion is taken in some disturbing directions in this new environment.
Themes
Matthews moves his family back to upstate New York, where they float around different towns, largely relying on charity from relatives. Margaret wants to leave Matthews, but her community convinces her not to. Around the same time, Noah starts dressing in a king costume, and he tries to build a vessel (which he calls Noah’s Ark) that he wants to sail to Manhattan, filled with “creepy” things. The project fails, and Noah returns to a career in politics, but Matthews keeps talking about it. Margaret dutifully (but miserably) follows Matthews to Albany as he searches for work. Albany is evolving into a thriving commercial and political city, filled with a mix of working-class people and affluent merchants.
The similarities between Elijah’s and Matthews’s difficult transitions to urban life imply that their stories are not isolated incidents: it’s probable that many young men struggled to adapt when shifting from close-knit, religious, rural communities to anonymous, culturally diverse big city life. Matthews’s life in Albany reinforces this idea: other men, like Noah, also display odd behavior (like dressing in a king costume) to reclaim something they lost when transitioning from rural life (where they had a predictable role to fill in their communities) to urban life (where they have no obvious role). Margaret suffers tremendously in her marriage, but her patriarchal (male-privileging) values make her feel that she should continue to obey Matthias. This underscores how damaging patriarchal values can be to the people they marginalize, like women.
Themes
Matthews joins Albany’s North Dutch church, which is less harsh and fiery than the Calvinist church of his upbringing. The Reverend is Charles Finney, and his sermons focus on being loving and helping the poor. Moved by these ideas, Matthews strives to be more loving, and his violent outbursts decrease for a while. But when the whole family contracts smallpox and their youngest son dies, Matthews reacts by repeatedly beating Margaret with a whip. Matthews believes that Margaret is possessed by an evil spirit that made the family sick, and that he needs to whip the spirit out of her.
When Matthews encounters Charles Finney’s preaching (which emphasizes social change over supernatural experiences), his anger and fringe ideas are subdued for a while. Although Matthews attempts to embrace this approach to religion, he struggles to feel empowered by it, lapsing back into his violent and abusive behavior when life is hard. This suggests that Finney’s approach doesn’t resolve Matthews’s sense of alienation from broader society.
Themes
Around this time, a minister named Edward Norris Kirk is ejected from his Presbyterian church by politicians who think his sermons are too intense. He moves to Albany, becomes an avid Finneyite, and begins preaching from North Dutch Church, until he founds Albany’s Fourth Presbyterian Church. Matthews is drawn to Kirk’s sermons. Kirk delivers lengthy evangelical sermons (sometimes lasting all day long and well into the night). He preaches that the Calvinist focus on obeying the patriarchal social order restricts people’s freedom. Kirk, instead, sees women as the family’s spiritual core. Many women are drawn to his sermons.
Like Finney, Kirk adhered to Second Great Awakening ideals of revival—that is, personal and social religious renewal. Because revivalism emphasized the individual’s choice to follow God, it deemphasized the authority of churches and, to an extent, even fathers. Accordingly, Kirk and similar preachers created room for mothers—instead of fathers—to become the domestic anchors of family life. This weakened the patriarchal tone of American Protestantism.
Themes
Matthews begins attending Kirk’s sermons, and he starts believing that he must make people accept religion in their hearts (and not out of obedience or fear). He begins hounding other carpenters about their drinking and swearing, and he loses most of his work. The family begins to starve, but Margaret is too afraid to complain in case Matthews beats her again. Although Matthews thinks that he’s being a good evangelical, he’s actually doing the opposite: he glorifies himself, he can’t find steady work to empower his family, and he beats his wife and children. Kirk’s followers notice this, and they reject Matthews’s efforts to become more involved with their church.
Kirk’s evangelical values clearly conflict with the more patriarchal religious values that Matthews grew up with. Though Matthews tries to be a good evangelical by encouraging others to convert, he defaults to shaming others’ behavior instead of using loving persuasion. This indicates that he doesn’t successfully adapt to emerging evangelical ideals. Matthews’s inability to adapt once again leads to abusive behavior and isolation from others.
Themes
This rejection humiliates Matthews, who thinks he’s being mistreated because he’s poor. He stops shaving and starts believing that he has visions from God about starting his own religion. Margaret grows increasingly worried about how to feed their children. One day, Matthews runs into the town hall, yelling at everyone that they’re sinners. Then he tries to lock Margaret in their home and forcibly baptize her. She resists, telling Matthews that her Finneyite church would not condone such behavior.
Matthews is unable to see that his inability to change his values (which center on making his family obey him out of fear) isolates him from others around him. He’s so resistant to change that he even starts to blame others, accusing them of mistreating him when they reject him. He not only abuses Margaret but imagines starting a new religion where he’ll be free from pressure to adapt to others’ ideals and can freely impose his own.
Themes
The next day, Matthews goes to Finney’s church. He wants to teach the congregation about the “true” path. The congregation mostly just ignores him. Matthews refuses to leave, and he starts preaching to the congregation. They silently filter out while he’s talking, and the last person just turns off the lights, leaving Matthews in the dark. Matthews believes that this is a sign from God that a great flood is coming. He runs home and tries to get his family to flee, but Margaret refuses. Then, Matthews runs away with three of their sons. Margaret’s church community spread word of an insane man who’s kidnapped his children, and two days later, they find Matthews. The community rescues the children, confines Matthews inside a poor-house for insane people, and collects money to help Margaret.
Matthews’s inability to see the faults in his own behavior (primarily his inability to grow, change, and adapt to society’s evolving values) causes him to believe that he’s in the right, and everybody else is in the wrong. In fact, when others reject him, he interprets this not merely as disagreement, but catastrophe. Matthews’s stubborn belief in his status as a prophet causes extremely dysfunctional behavior, driving him to delusions (like believing that God talks to him) and criminal behavior (like kidnapping his sons). This suggests that Matthews’s religious zeal negatively affects his mental health, as well as his ability to function in family life and within society.
Themes
Two weeks later, Matthews is released and returns home. A forgiving Margaret welcomes him back. She hopes that Matthews has changed, but he soon lapses back into abusive behavior. Margaret consults a lawyer and learns that she has no legal grounds to divorce Matthews. She does learn, however, that Matthews can be imprisoned for two months for beating her. After Matthews and Margaret have a bad fight, the police arrest Matthews, but they don’t charge him, citing lack of evidence. Margaret has to start begging in order to feed her family.
Margaret’s struggles to free herself from an abusive marriage expose how oppressed women are in American society: she has no legal grounds to escape her situation or distance herself from her violent husband. Margaret’s situation suggests that although American society is shifting away from a patriarchal (male-privileging) model in family and domestic life, it still marginalizes women in institutional contexts like the legal system and law enforcement.
Themes
Matthews begins thinking that rich people and preachy women are sinful. He believes that ministers like Kirk are evil because they encourage women to stop obeying men. He also starts believing that he resembles a biblical figure named “Matthias,” who’s supposed to cleanse the church of people who betray Christ. In 1831, Matthews abandons his family and travels to Rochester—the center of the Finneyite evangelical movement—to announce himself as “Matthias, Prophet of the God of the Jews.”
Matthews is so resentful about losing the power and authority that he assumed he would have as an adult man that he begins targeting others who are gaining power and influence in society, namely women (who are gaining greater status in evangelicalism) and upwardly mobile urban people (who increasingly influence public life in the way that rural father-figures used to). As before, Matthews’s resentment towards such people shows that his inability to embrace evolving social values drives his dysfunctional behavior. He relies increasingly on his religious fervor to validate himself and feel more important, causing him to start believing that he’s a prophet whose job is to restore the traditional (male-privileging) social order.
Themes
Two of Matthews’s brothers also settled in Rochester in the early 1800s. One brother, called John (or J. L. D. Mathies) is a painter who abandoned Calvinism and also dislikes evangelicals. He paints portraits of mystics and Native American warriors. He ends up becoming a landlord in Rochester to support his art. The other brother, James, was a poet and heavy drinker who died some years ago. James disliked overly religious people as well. Matthews arrives in Rochester and briefly reunites with John, but they have an argument, and Matthews leaves Rochester within two weeks of arriving.
Matthews’s strained relationship with his brothers shows that his obsession with religion damages his relationships with everyone around him: even his biological family members reject him for being too religiously extreme. This reinforces the idea that Matthews’s religious commitments—like Elijah’s—continue to isolate rather than empower him.
Themes
Matthews wanders around New York for several months, before returning to Albany, boasting about having converted thousands of people to his new religion. Upon arriving, he seeks out Margaret, but she refuses to take him back unless he finds work, so he leaves for good. Matthews continues wandering and eventually winds up in New York in 1832, as an unkempt man with a wild beard and a bad temper. He seeks out Margaret’s family, but they reject him for abandoning Margaret. Matthews angrily leaves their house, calling them all sinners. He ends up roaming the streets and preaching by day, and sleeping in a boarding house near the Battery at night.
Matthews’s religious views continue to derail his life: he starts having delusions about being a powerful prophet, fails to reconnect with his wife and children, and he winds up homeless. Despite the fact that his own behavior causes these problems in his life, Matthews is convinced that other people’s sinful behavior is ruining his life. He’s unable to accept the changing society around him, so he reacts by assuming society is marginalizing him.
Themes
Another lodger in the boarding house, named William Leete Stone, recalls Matthias saying that he’s been chosen as a vessel for God’s word, and that his wild, crazy beard is very important to his mission. Stone believes that Matthias is a fraud who’s started to believe his own lies. Matthias even tells another boarder that he’s over 1,800 years old. Matthews decides he wants to publish his ideas, so he seeks out an anti-evangelical newspaper man named Gilbert Vale. Vale refuses, believing that Matthews is a lunatic. Eventually, Matthews hears about strange religious activities going on at Bowery Hill, so he makes his way there and knocks on Elijah Pierson’s door on May 5, 1832.
Stone and Vale’s encounters with Matthews underscore that his religious views are both bizarre and extreme. Throughout the book, others remain unclear over whether Matthews is just a power-hungry fraud who intentionally peddles strange religious ideas to manipulate others into helping him reclaim his lost patriarchal authority, or whether he’s actually mentally traumatized and really believes in his religious vision. Stone and Vale’s reflections draw out this ambiguity. Meanwhile, the book draws Matthews’s and Elijah’s threads of the story together.
Themes
