Description
Book SynopsisBy including novels written from a range of political perspectives, Vanden Bossche discovers patterns in Victorian thinking that are easily recognized in today's assumptions about social hierarchy.
Trade ReviewChris R. Vanden Bossche explores the subject of reform as the dominant ideal in English progressive politics... his work does offer some illuminating insights into this particular trait of Victorian self-representation. Times Literary Supplement Students of 19th-century history, literature, and political science will find fresh insights here. Choice Thoughtful... persuasive... The key contribution of the book is the way Vanden Bossche highlights curious and subtle rhetorical tricks whereby writers of the Whig and Tory side seek to align the interests of the working class with their own. -- John Plotz Journal of British Studies A welcome and timely boost to scholarship in the relationship between literature and politics in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. -- Simon Rennie Review of English Studies
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
1. Social Agency: The Franchise, Class Discourse, and National Narratives
Part I: Making Physical Force Moral: The Dilemma of Chartism, 1838–1842
2. Social Agency in the Chartist and Parliamentary Press
3. Egalitarian Chivalry and Popular Agency in Wat Tyler
4. Unconsummated Marriage and the "Uncommitted" Gunpowder Plot in Guy Fawkes
5. Class Alliance and Self-Culture in Barnaby Rudge
Part II: "The land! The land! The land!": Land Ownership as Political Reform, 1842–1848
6. Agricultural Reform, Young England's Allotments, and the Chartist Land Plan
7. The Landed Estate, Finely Graded Hierarchy, and the Member of Parliament in Coningsby and Sybil
8. Agricultural Improvement and the Squirearchy in Hillingdon Hall
9. The Land Plan, Class Dichotomy, and Working-Class Agency inSunshine and Shadow
Part III: The Social Turn: From Chartism to Cooperation and Trade Unionism, 1848–1855
10. Christian Socialism and Cooperative Association
11. Clergy and Working-Class Cooperation in Yeast and Alton Locke
12. Reforming Trade Unionism in Mary Barton and North and South
Coda: Rethinking Reform in the Era of the Second Reform Act, 1860–1867
Notes
Works Cited
Index
