“THERE IS SOMETHING IN ALL THIS VERY LIKE DEMOCRACY”:
CULTURES OF POLITICAL DISCUSSION IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
By
Inna Yevgenievna Volkova

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
English
2012

ABSTRACT
“THERE IS SOMETHING IN ALL THIS VERY LIKE DEMOCRACY”:
CULTURES OF POLITICAL DISCUSSION IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
By
Inna Yevgenievna Volkova
I examine a strain of Victorian novels that I call “novels of discussion” and their
imaginings of various models of political discussion in the public sphere. In their aspiration for
the liberal ideals of a “free and equal discussion (15),” to use John Stuart Mill’s phrase, these
novels articulate a variety of such blueprints that compete with and build on one another.
Analyzing the potentialities and internal contradictions of these models, I intervene in three areas
of scholarly interest: Victorian liberalism, the form of the novel, and public sphere theory.
I focus on Victorian liberalism’s investments in the formal organization of political
discussion in the public sphere and suggest that the changeability and free play among discussion
models lie at the heart of liberalism’s project, calling for on an ongoing revision of how to
discuss ideas and exchange opinions. I argue that Victorian liberal culture had high stakes in
conceiving of the individual’s agency in terms of an active discursive presence in the public
arena and a collaborative pursuit of “truth” through face-to-face discussion. I seek to show the
limitations of a commonly held view among Victorianists that nineteenth-century liberalism
privileged privatized interiority and individuated reflection and conceived of social agency
through the processes of inward cognition. In contrast, I show that novels often cultivated the
argumentative energy and the intersubjective collaboration in discussion as a means to grapple
with socio-economic and cultural issues. While I refrain from reading novels as instruments of
disciplinary power, I also do not view them as texts that simply propagate a “free and equal
discussion.” Rather, my close-readings reveal how the novels showcase the progressive

potentialities of various discussion models, while also exploring these models’ dangers,
impracticability, ambivalences, and internal tensions. In an attempt to strive for social justice and
inclusion, the novels gesture specifically to face-to-face discussion as a process that facilitates a
sincere exchange of opinions, ensures equality based on mutual respect and recognition, and so
lays the foundation of democratic sociality.
As an artifact of print culture that created a mediated relationship with its anonymous
faceless readership, the novel becomes a seemingly paradoxical site of advocating for a face-toface unmediated political discussion. I do not view this phenomenon as Victorians’ nostalgia for
the golden age before print. Rather, novelistic representation of face-to-face discussion was a
way for Victorian novelists to bring it into full relief. They often self-consciously contrasted
face-to-face discussion with the very medium through which it was represented.
The project is arranged chronologically, spanning the late 1820’s to the Edwardian period
of the early twentieth century. The chapters focus on Harriet Martineau’s tales of political
economy, Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil, Charles Reade’s Put Yourself in His Place, Walter
Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men, George Gissing’s Demos, and Robert Tressell’s The
Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. While these novels at one time enjoyed widespread
popularity, they are no longer staples of Victorian literature today. However, these novels’ past
popularity suggests that their preoccupation with political discussion reflects crucial facets of
Victorian culture. Similar preoccupations, perhaps in less explicit ways, surface in more
canonical authors such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and others. In what
Walter Bagehot called the “age of discussion,” the novels operated as an experimental ground for
Victorians’ ideals, hopes, and competing views about the public sphere.

Copyright by
INNA YEVGENIEVNA VOLKOVA
2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………1
CHAPTER 1
ON “PLAIN SPEAKING” IN HARRIET MARTINEAU’S
ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY…………………………………………….31
CHAPTER 2
A “DUTY TO ENTER ALL SOCIETIES”: DISCUSSION
AMONG STRANGERS IN BENJAMIN DISRAELI’S SYBIL…………………………….77
CHAPTER 3
THE LIMITS OF SYMPATHETIC KNOWLEDGE IN
CHARLES READE’S PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE AND
WALTER BESANT’S ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN…………………..........117
CHAPTER 4
GEORGE GISSING’S DEMOS: PUBLIC DISCOURSE AND
THE “MANY-HEADED MONSTER” OF SOCIALISM………………………………….160
CHAPTER 5
“ARGYFYING ABOUT POLITICS”: SOCIALISM AT LUNCH IN
ROBERT TRESSELL’S THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPISTS……………203
CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………..247
WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………….257

v

INTRODUCTION

“Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a question of the
reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds
sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an
approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a
struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners” (J. S. Mill
“On Liberty” 54).
“There may be some method yet unknown by which the interests of all
may be reconciled; if so, by union we must discover it. But if, indeed,
interests must continue to be opposed, if bread must be fought for, and the
discord of men must for ever be contrasted with the harmony of nature, let
the battle be as fair as circumstances will allow” (Harriet Martineau
“Manchester Strike” 168)
“It is easy to see why the common discussion of common actions or
common interests should become the root of change and progress” (Walter
Bagehot Physics and Politics 141).
[I]f we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that
are in line with our own, [. . .] we will become more polarized and set in
our ways. [. . . ] But if we choose to actively seek out information
that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to

1

understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.
(Barack Obama Michigan Graduation Speech 2010)
In William Morris’s News from Nowhere, the time-traveler William Guest discovers a
future society transformed by a Socialist Revolution. His guide Hammond explains that in their
society there are no politics or “serious difference of opinion” (269) because all questions in a
community are decided through discussion at meetings, or Motes:
Well, at the next ordinary meeting of the neighbours [. . .] a neighbor proposes the
change, and of course, if everybody agrees, there is an end of discussion, except
about details. [. . .] if a few of the neighbors disagree to it, [. . .] they don’t count
heads that time, but off the formal discussion to the next Mote; and meantime
arguments pro and con are flying about, and some get printed, so that everybody
knows what is going on; and when the Mote comes together again there is a
regular discussion and at last a vote by show of hands. If the division is a close
one, the question is again put off for further discussion; if the division is a wide
one, the minority are asked if they will yield to the more general opinion, which
they often, nay, most commonly do. (271)
In response to this, Guest asks: “But do you know [. . .] that there is something in all this very
like democracy; and I thought that democracy was considered to be in a moribund condition
many, many years ago” (272). “Many, many years ago,” of course, takes us from this futuristic
utopia back into the Victorian era whose democratic discussion practices Morris laments as
“moribund.” Like many Victorians, Morris believes in the importance of public discussion on
political and socio-economic questions of his time and is eager to think of practices and ideals
that would nurture political discussion from its “moribund” state into a bright democratic future.

2

By means of political discussion Victorians negotiated between interests and perspectives
to arrive if not at consensus, at least at a compromise in a society that was fast changing under
the pressures of modernity. Walter Bagehot in Physics and Politics referred to the nineteenth
century as the “age of discussion.” With the gradual extension of franchise, the growth of the
urban working classes, and the new communicative dynamics brought about by the rise of mass
society, there emerged in Victorian imagination new and contesting perspectives on how
political discussion should be organized. The tension between the traditional paternalistic modes
of social relations and forces of democratization generated a range of new blueprints for the
public sphere. The ideals of liberal discussion of the eighteenth-century coffee-houses and
periodicals retained their appeal for Victorians but were revised to conceptualize a public sphere
whose boundaries were redefined by the new arrivals on the scene: the working classes, women,
and colonial subjects. The urgency of political discussion as a basis for social cohesion was
accounted for by the unprecedented changes in the notions of community. Raymond Williams
remarks on the nineteenth century: “this is the period in which what it means to live in a
community is more uncertain, more critical, more disturbing as a question put both to societies
and to persons than ever before in history” (The English Novel 12). Victorian anxieties and
hopes about old forms of sociality disappearing and new forms emerging translated into a keen
interest in models of discussion that could potentially transform and improve communal
networks.
In this dissertation I concentrate on a strain of nineteenth-century novels that I term
“novels of discussion.” With this term, I bring into focus a subcategory of novels that, being
preoccupied with discursive practices in the public sphere, promoted certain ways of discussion
to effect social change as they grappled with social, political, and economic issues of the time.

3

To be sure, the genre of the novel in general heavily relies on dialogues among characters. As
novelistic devices, discussions are essential to the formal organization of the novel and to its
content because dialogues are important vehicles for the unfolding of the plot. However, what
differentiates a “novel of discussion” from a novel that utilizes dialogues among characters as
generic narrative devices is the former’s view of discussion as a vehicle of political change and
the former’s acute interest in experimenting with modes of discussion to achieve such
democratic ideals as justice, inclusion, and freedom. In other words, novels of discussion treated
of discussion not as a conventional organizing device, but as a practice that acquired new
political potentialities along with newly formed anxieties during the Victorian period. What
unites these novels is this view of discussion, although formally they may dedicate various
amounts of narrative space to depicting discussions per se. That said, I explore the ways in which
the shared conceptual preoccupation with discussion inevitably puts pressure on the novelistic
form. The challenges to the novelistic form posed by discussion range from Martineau’s control
over her character’s dialogues that thwarts the development of her illustrations into novelistic
prose to Robert Tressell’s attempt, several decade later, to envision an ongoing open-ended
political discussion that causes his lengthy novel to struggle with the limitations imposed by the
novelistic form and to represent something that is by definition unrepresentable in the finite form
of a novel. Thus, novels of discussion foreground questions of face-to-face versus mediated
interactions in the public sphere, of the political implications of novelistic devices and the
novelistic form, and by doing so, shed a new light on the study of the novel in general as all of
these questions are germane to the entire genre.
While it is not my intent to view discussion models as mere products of their historical
contexts, it is my view that to a large degree these models were responding to the social and

4

economic conditions of the Victorian era. The 1832 and 1867 Reform Bills expanded the voting
pool on such a scale and so rapidly that it triggered anxiety among many, including cultural
critics like Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold. Anxieties about the riotous crowds, the strikers
and the newly minted voters called for certain modes of discussion that would produce a social
equilibrium. And for some, the harmonizing forces of political economy were just such a
remedy. Mid-Victorian novels grappled with the ways to reform an economically polarized
society. Their aspirations to bring different classes of people and opposing voices together into a
shared forum crystallized into a project of what Pam Morris calls “imagining inclusive society.”
However, each novel articulated its own model of discussion and added it to the competing arena
of models that all wanted to address the shared social problem. Late-Victorian era influenced the
form of political discussion due to the new dynamics of mass society. Mary Poovey describes the
consolidation of the social domain in the early-Victorian period that produced an image of the
British population as an aggregate of “similar, self-regulating individuals” (Making the Social
Body 22). According to Poovey, the emergence of the social domain and its disaggregation from
and inter-dependence with other domains (social, economic, political, psychological, etc.)
prepared the ground for the rise of mass culture. The advent of mass culture and mass politics
transformed the public sphere into an arena dominated by the representational register of images
where charismatic politicians emerged in a new status as celebrities to circulate their ideas and
1

images for mass consumption. As an alternative to a capitalist society of mass consumption,
socialist ideas began to command influence at the end of the Victorian era. Along with the
socialist critique of social conditions, some novels, as I will show, revised the old Victorian
1

William Ewart Gladstone, leader of the Liberal party (1868-1875) and four times British Prime
Minister, is a representative figure of the emergent image-dominated mass politics. That he
successfully capitalized on the visual power of images is evidenced by the fact that “plates, trays,
mugs, and other consumer goods sported his visage” (Hadley 292).
5

frameworks and offered new possibilities for discussion. While acknowledging connections
between the social contexts and the discussion models, I think it is important to interpret these
competing models as getting to the heart of the project of liberalism and to examine the ongoing
“free play” among discursive alternatives that it prescribed.
I focus on face-to-face discussions as sites of agency in response to a recent Victorianist
approach of placing an individual’s privatized self-reflection at the center of the liberal culture.
Elaine Hadley’s work is an instance of this prevailing attention to “a distinct region of privacy,
the private realm of liberal cognition” (46-47) where agency is anchored in the free play of ideas.
This understanding of liberalism as an ideology of privatized and individuated reflection has
been linked to the genre of the novel. It has become commonplace to think of novels as a genre
that cultivated readers’ interiority and mobilized modes of private imagination, private
identification, and inward reflection. Nancy Armstrong’s influential argument that the project of
the novel was “to produce an individual” (3), a reproducible model of a subject, has centered
scholarly approaches to the novel around the link between the novel and inner complexities and
forms of subjecthood. The link between the novel genre and privatized subjectivity can be
further supported by the fact that the act of novel-reading itself was predicated on individualized
privacy. Michael Warner, for instance, has contrasted the “active participation of citizens” (173)
presupposed by the “republican print discourse” (170) and a “liberal-national imaginary” (Letters
of the Republic 170) which was produced through novels and which substituted active
citizenship for imaginary participation in the public sphere. To be sure, the rise of the novel in
the nineteenth century modified the relationship between an individual and the public sphere and
revised the notion of participatory agency within it. However, I argue that novels were very
invested in promoting “active participation of citizens,” as Warner puts it, through offering

6

various models of face-to-face political discussion. Without downplaying the fact that novels
encouraged their readers to cultivate private subjectivity, I argue that novels were just as
preoccupied with mechanisms of “active” participation in the public sphere, i.e. discussion.
To be sure, one can argue that these two projects are intimately connected to one another
in a sense that the novels tended the private realm of cognition as a basis for face-to-face
interaction and active participation. In my view, however, novels of discussion focus on
intersubjective agency precisely because they harbor anxieties about the fact that individuated
cognition tragically lacks the social aspect and does not necessarily translate into an inclusive
deliberative community. They warn against the hubris of the privatized cognition to consider all
points of view, including the opponents’, and pass judgments without a social dialogue. They
critique the insulating tendencies of privatized cognition that entails a threatening form of
detachment that does not take the others’ needs, interests, and opinions seriously enough. Instead
of a democracy that seeks the “truth” through the aggregate of individual opinions, novels of
discussion offered an alternative democracy based on collective deliberation. They saw face-toface discussion as a means to this end, even though they promoted it, paradoxically, through the
power of novelistic imagination and by means of the print medium rather than unmediated
agency. If even the notion of unmediated discussion can only be introduced through mediation,
it raises the question of whether “unmediated” agency is at all possible in the public sphere. My
dissertation sidesteps this question and substitutes it with another line of inquiry. My goal here is
not to prove whether face-to-face discussion is always already mediated. I think a more germane
question is to inquire why the notion of face-to-face discussion (regardless of whether it was
indeed “unmediated”) had some political appeal within the public sphere and was defined against
the modern mediated public sphere. In my chapters I trace the meanings that novels attributed to

7

this notion, what it signified as a mode of interaction in the public sphere, and what it was
defined against.
My dissertation examines the novelistic imaginings of political discussion and traces
evolving elements of discussion models, along with Victorian optimism and anxieties about
them. All the novels that I focus on share a striking interest in a face-to-face dialogue and its
everyday language as crucial for negotiating between conflicting interests of class. I read such
discussion scenes not only as a symbolic encounter between the rich and the poor classes, but as
an embodied everyday encounter among human beings. While George Lukács’s valorization of
realist characters as representing “social trends and historical forces” (The Historical Novel 33)
does much for defining the project of the nineteenth-century novel, I want to carve out room for
the novel’s valuation of face-to-face discussion as a context for intersubjective understanding.
Dialogues in the novels not only point beyond themselves, to large social and cultural classes and
“historical forces,” but also present us with a local community of individuals whose discussion is
of a piece with the democratic culture of a Greek polis. Novels turn to the ideal of unmediated
discussion inasmuch as they share anxieties about the advent of the world of strangers and
anonymous publics, the most obvious one being these novels’ readership. In this very embodied
context they locate a possibility of mutual understanding, transcending power relations, making
decisions in the interest of all, and as such a possibility of a new just society. What these works
also share is an effort to link together the descriptive and prescriptive modes: not only to sketch
out what discussion should look like, but to realize this blueprint in the social context. This
challenge informs all novels of discussion because their imaginative power to construct a public
sphere beyond a given reality depends on their meticulous documenting of the disheartening
communicative distortions that make ideal communication ever more appealing. I have aimed to

8

trace the novels’ changing perceptions of the existing public sphere and blueprints for a new one
in order to complicate the existing historical and theoretical linear accounts of the dissolution of
rational-critical debate and the rise of class politics and mass society in the course of the
nineteenth century. I hope to show that the novels tell a non-linear and more nuanced story of the
Victorian imaginings of political discussion. My project interprets the Victorian public sphere as
not only a sphere where one discursive paradigm succeeds the other, but also as a bursting arena
where alternative paradigms intersect, complement, and contest one another. As we register the
patterns that underpinned the Victorian public sphere, we can uncover the general workings of
public spheres across historical ages and cultures.
My examination of Victorian discussion models draws on a number of political theorists
and Victorian scholars who have illuminated important mechanisms operating within the public
sphere. In my study of the Victorian era, I argue against Jürgen Habermas whose historical
account of the bourgeois public sphere views the nineteenth century as a period of decline of the
“ideal” public discussion that flourished in the late-eighteenth-century coffee-houses. At the
same time, I have found that novelists shared some ideals about discussion that are akin to
Habermas’ communicative rationality. A good example of this would be Harriet Martineau’s
preoccupation with “plain speaking” that she believed could reconcile conflicting economic
interests. In order to describe how the novels devised to negotiate conflicts of power, I turn to
Michel Foucault’s insights into the dynamics of power which can be “exercised only over free
subjects, and only insofar as they are ‘free’” (“The Subject and Power”). After all, while
Martineau’s “plain speaking” may be a model of bracketing private interests out of discussion, it
is inevitably acting as a power in pursuit of certain interests in the public sphere. I turn to
Mikhail Bakhtin as I examine how novels integrated dialogic and monologic forms of discourse

9

into their vision of a democratic public sphere that promotes social change. Bakhtin’s insights
into the polyphonic nature of the novel and the dialogic nature of understanding among
individuals help me develop my argument about how the novel form itself intersects with the
plot-driven project of devising models of discussion in the public sphere.
Recent works by Victorian literary scholars have illuminated important aspects of
Victorian ideals and sensibilities that shaped Victorian imaginings of discussion in the public
sphere. Lauren Goodlad has shown the ways in which Michel Foucault’s term “pastorship” aptly
describes Victorian liberalism that negotiates between the contradictory elements of governance
and individual freedom. The notion of “pastorship” underlies my analysis of the selected authors
as they are caught, in varying degrees, between promoting equal inter-class dialogue and
engrafting middle-class views onto the lower-class minds. Amanda Anderson has shown the
centrality of the “ideal of critical distance” (4) and the cultivation of detachment to Victorian
culture. As I build on her ideas, I trace a genealogy of a “stranger” from Disraeli’s Sybil, to
Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men and Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
and think about the stranger as precisely the figure that artfully, at times theatrically, manipulates
with modes and degrees of detachment. My analysis of sympathy in discussion scenes is
informed by the recent work of Carolyn Betensky. Betensky explains how the social problem
novels, in cultivating bourgeois sympathy for the poor, constructed a bourgeois consciousness in
which feeling became an end in itself and a kind of moral justification for the dominant class.
While I agree with Betensky on how sympathy operates and to what end it is employed in the
novels, I am also interested in examining alternatives to sympathetic “solutions.” Finally, Pam
Morris has provided me with a useful framework of two major coordinates in the Victorian age:
first, an 1840’s shift toward inclusiveness in the public sphere (in other words, “imagining

10

inclusive society,” as the study’s title suggests) and, second, a rejection of this ideal in the 1860’s
that led to a “permanent division of the public sphere into the popular sphere and a sphere of
cultural distinction” (17).
The above accounts are germane to understanding the kinds of discursive practices the
novels promoted and how they organized the mechanisms of discussion. I am exploring how and
why novels configured the elements of sympathy, rational debate, liberal individualism,
abstraction and embodiedness, spaces, perspectives, and rhetorical tactics into blueprints that
were continuously revised by succeeding and co-existing alternatives. Rather than tracing the
evolution of a particular Victorian cultural ideal such as detachment, rational discussion,
sympathy, or aspirations for inclusion, I suggest a different approach to the Victorian public
sphere. The chapters that follow show that Victorian notions of political discussion did not
support one single discursive ideal but rather competed with one another in pursuit of yet better
alternative models. For Victorians, a democratic public sphere could not be expressed in any one
of these models more fully than in others; it is the ongoing competition among these diverse
models as a whole that spurred emancipatory discussion. As soon as one model seemed to claim
supremacy, authors contemplated yet better alternatives. These novels encouraged active
participation and immersion in political discussion among their readers, yet also encouraged
them to view any discursive model at a critical distance. Novels taught their readers to carry out
political discussion as well as critically reflect on and revise its own premises. After the boom of
eighteenth-century periodicals, the Victorian novel became a contested arena for negotiating not
only the issues of the day but the form of discussion in the public sphere itself. Following the
pattern of Catherine Gallagher’s inquiry into the interrelation between the tensions of the
condition-of-England social discourses and the “formal paradoxes in the industrial novels”

11

(Industrial xv), I interrogate how novels of discussion incorporated the concerns about the public
sphere into both their thematic content and their narrative form. I take this line of inquiry further
by refusing to reduce the project of the novels of discussion to a mere reflection or re-working of
social tensions that resonate with the novels’ “formal paradoxes.” Rather, I argue for a function
of these novels not only to thematize certain social tensions, but to promote critical reflection on
the existing and alternative ways to discuss these social tensions in the first place.
I use the term “cultures of discussion” to supplement the term “sympathy” that prevails in
Victorian studies, especially in the studies of social-problem novels. The notion of sympathy
merely cannot account for the entire variety of techniques configured in the novels as models for
solving economic and political tensions. That said, sympathy does have a place within Victorian
cultures of discussion and is an important agent within the Victorian novels. Middle-class
sympathy for the poor is not only an object of representation in Victorian social problem novels,
but a sensibility that shares its fundamental structures with the realist narrative itself. According
to D. Rae Greiner, sympathy, which operates through metonymical alignment of self and other
without ever fusing them, “is built into the structure of (and not merely thematized by) realism”
(418). The work of sympathy and that of realist narrative are predicated on the same mechanisms
because metonymy being “the dominant trope of narrative” (Jakobson in Greiner 420) also
underpins the notion of sympathy as an act of calibrating “one’s adjacency to or distance from
others” (421). Sympathy is central to social problem novels in yet another way: Victorian
sympathy is implicated in the hierarchical relations of power between the dominant and the
dominated classes. Social problem novels employ sympathy in a contradictory gesture of both
eliminating and reinforcing the class hierarchy. In her work Feeling for the Poor, Carolyn
Betensky argues that the act of reading by the middle classes about their own sympathetic

12

feelings was a kind of social action, an end in itself, and in a way an attempt to re-validate the
class hierarchies, i. e., the dominant position of the feeling bourgeois. The novels, she writes,
unfolded the project of “the promotion of bourgeois feeling as a response to the suffering of the
poor and working classes” (2). Victorian sympathy operates with a conservative social agenda
because the middle classes redeem themselves by merely sympathizing with the poor whereas
the status quo remains unchallenged. As sympathy becomes complicit with the power relations
of domination, it increasingly loses its potential to be a basis for a democratic society or even a
catalyst of social change. I suggest that novels often turn to the promotion of political discussion
that goes beyond the limits of sympathy to envision new ways of negotiating contentious aspects
of socio-economic justice. Instead of objectifying spectatorship and subject-centered affective
response that often underlie sympathy, discussion mobilizes new practices and puts sympathy in
the service of intersubjective recognition and reciprocal discursive exchange.
Nevertheless, sympathy between classes ties in with many novels’ ideas about social
improvement and progress: if only the rich and the poor could learn to sympathize with one
another, class antagonism would cease and social relations would be ameliorated. Many
Victorian authors shared in the belief that sympathy is a fundamental principle of sociality. In
this respect, they echoed the eighteenth-century accounts of sympathy by David Hume and
Adam Smith. Hume and Smith describe the sympathetic relationship between subjects somewhat
differently. In Hume’s universe, passions run free and uncontrolled and sympathy does not
recognize any boundaries between the self and the other: “The passions are so contagious, that
they pass with the greatest facility from one person to another, and produce correspondent
movements in all human breasts” (A Treatise of Human Nature; Book III “Of Morals” 605). In
contrast, Smith constructs his notion of sympathy based on the indelible distance and difference

13

between the self and the other. The “spectator’s” sympathy for the “sufferer,” in Smith, is always
an approximation of one’s feelings to the feelings of the other: “That imaginary change of
situation, upon which their sympathy is founded, is but momentary” (The Theory of Moral
Sentiments 21). Smith concludes, “what they [the spectators] feel, will, indeed, always be, in
some respects, different from what he [the sufferer] feels” (22). In opposition to Hume’s freeranging passion that fuses hearts together, Smith claims that sympathy arises only from the right
dosage of the sight of the other’s passion: “If the passion is too high, or if it is too low, he cannot
enter into it” (27). Social problem novels borrowed from both Hume’s and Smith’s insights. One
can see Smith’s notion of sympathetic distancing at work when the novels cultivated middleclass sympathy at the same time as they reaffirmed a safe distance from the working-class social
other. Smith’s insights also crop up in the novels’ careful calibration of sympathetic feeling.
Novelistic representations of working-class sufferings seem to reveal a mastery with which
Victorian writers engineered the “perfect” pitch of the passion that would be most agreeable to
cultivate a sympathetic middle-class spectator/reader. Thinking about sympathy along Hume’s
lines as a contagious passion, the novels anticipated a kind of spontaneous spread of sympathetic
attitudes (among the middle classes) to ameliorate the condition of the poor. On the other hand, it
was Hume’s notion of the contagious feelings that filled the novels with anxiety about the
political sentiments brewing among the working classes and, if uncontrolled, threatening to
undercut the middle-class notion of progress.
Despite the novels’ progressive aspirations to create a more sympathetic society,
Victorian sympathy is inextricable from the class structure in which it operates and which it
perpetuates. Sympathy is organized by hierarchical relations that include a sympathetic middleclass observer and a lower-class object of sympathy. Scholars like Betensky and Audrey Jaffe

14

have concentrated on the figure of the sympathetic middle-class spectator and reader to suggest
that sympathetic feeling is in fact a feeling that does not reach out to the sufferer but first of all
shapes and cultivates the subjectivity of the sympathizer. The sympathetic feeling is ultimately a
feeling about one’s own self. Betensky argues that through the promotion of sympathy for the
poor social problem novels shaped, first of all, the “bourgeois social conscience” (2). Similarly,
Audrey Jaffe points to the hierarchal dynamics of sympathy when she suggests that Victorian
sympathy is “inextricable from the middle-class subject’s status as spectator and from the social
figures to whose visible presence the Victorian middle-classes felt it necessary to formulate a
response”(8). Sympathy, for Jaffe, “takes shape as a constellation of images in which a threat to
individual identity is both imagined and, theoretically, overcome, with the spectator’s identity
emerging as an effect of the sympathetic encounter itself” (11). Because the spectator feels sorry
for his imaginary self in the other’s position at the same time as he contemplates how the other
would view him, the spectator, Jaffe suggests that “the result is the transformation of sympathy
with the other into sympathy with the self—a self already figured as representation” (4). Jaffe
goes on to point out the power structures within sympathy by stating that scenes of sympathy
perform “the construction of subjectivity in a hierarchal but increasingly mobile society in which
the middle-class self exists in a perpetually vexed relationship with the figures of social
difference that surround it” (11). Current scholarship sheds light on the subject-centered rather
than inter-subjective mechanisms of sympathy. Although sympathy was often offered as a
solution to class polarization in the public sphere, its own hierarchical structures failed to
reconsider the public sphere on more democratic terms. Ironically, the work of sympathy in
Victorian social problem novels is a response to injustice insofar as it is also a means by which

15

social inequality seeks to naturalize itself. Rather than questioning social stratification, Victorian
sympathy becomes complicit with it.
But aside from questioning whether democratic potentialities are inherent or alien to
sympathy, it is important to note that sympathy was losing its ground as a force in the public
sphere because it became more frequently cast as “a woman’s issue” (Jaffe 17) and confined to
the private sphere. As Rachel Ablow writes, “in the context of the nineteenth-century turn to
institutional solutions to social problems, sympathy was increasingly identified with the private
sphere” (3). If sympathy forecloses on its agency to mediate and reconcile social and political
crises, it can no longer be considered a viable large-scale instrument of social improvement. I
suggest that the novels responded to this process not so much by registering the political
bankruptcy of sympathetic sensibilities, but rather by supplementing sympathy with alternative
ways to organize discussion in the public sphere. I am interested in exploring the new
mechanisms of social mediation that cannot be reduced either to government measures,
sympathetic fellow-feeling, or the ideal of rational-critical debate that carried over from the
golden age of periodicals in the eighteenth century. To be sure, the models of discussion that I
examine in the following chapters rely on all of these forces that shape the public sphere, from
Harriet Martineau’s faith in a rational dialogue and vertical inter-class sympathy in Walter
Besant, to Benjamin Disraeli’s statesmanship role that is inextricable from his fiction. However,
I argue that the novelists’ attempts to (re)configure and critique these elements gave rise to a
vibrant and competitive conversation about what political discussion should look like in the
public sphere. I hope to complicate the linear accounts of the dissolution of rational-critical
debate, the privatization and feminization of sympathy, and the growth of bureaucratic measures
of control with what, in my opinion, is a messier and non-linear trajectory of the re-invention of

16

discursive norms and practices across the novels. Being a major agent in the nineteenth-century
public sphere and commanding influence on public opinion over controversial issues, the novel
was also a tool for a reflexive examination of public discussion itself.
All of the novels in the following chapters construct scenes of face-to-face political
discussion to grapple with the fundamental question of the relationship between the self and the
other. The novels address this question on a continuum of scale: from the (potentially embodied)
level of individual characters engaged in everyday discussion to the abstract universal norms of a
just democratic society. If sympathy necessarily frames the relationship between self and other as
a relationship of objectification of the other and of privileging the sympathetic spectator, it
seems to me that Victorian novels of discussion were exploring ways to redefine this relationship
on more equal terms of recognition, respect, and inclusion. Calibrating the forces of inclusion
and distancing from the other, these novels engage in the same theoretical conversation that
Jürgen Habermas focuses on as he describes the contemporary democratic public sphere: “The
“inclusion of the other” means [. . .] that the boundaries of the community are open for all, also
and most especially for those who are strangers to one another and want to remain strangers”
(Inclusion of the Other xxxvi). The novels of discussion, I suggest, revise the homogeneous and
monologic community of the past and envision dynamic discursive practices to usher in a new
polyphonic inclusive democratic forum.
My reading of novels is anchored in a conviction that they do not merely illustrate or
complement theory, but invent and experiment with new approaches to theoretical questions. In
the novels, scenes of political discussion are configured in a way that represents an
interconnection between, on the one hand, the economic, historical, and political forces that
shape the views of the participants and their habitus, to use Pierre Bourdieu’s term, and, on the

17

other hand, the individual agency that is capable of reaffirming, subverting, and modifying these
external structures. For instance, in Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil, the aristocratic protagonist
Charles Egremont “disappoints” his family’s expectations of his political career only to find his
own way to communicate with the People and articulate a new vision of the union between the
Crown and the People in opposition to the Whig regime. His personal transformation in the novel
marks a break from the high society of false aristocracy whose established ways are intrigue and
gossip. In thinking about the ways in which change can be conceived of and articulated in
discussion, the novels illuminate the entanglement of subjective agency and objective conditions.
For Victorian writers, these two components of social change could only be thought of together.
The novels’ preoccupation with subjective experience and individual agency, on the one
hand, and objectively comprehensible social structures, on the other hand, amounts to these
narratives’ attempt to combine subjectivist and objectivist approaches to social reality. As
Amanda Claybaugh argues, a desire to combine the subjectivist and objectivist approaches is
characteristic of realism: “For the nineteenth-century realists, it seems, the objective and the
subjective view were two parts of the same project” (The Novel of Purpose 40). Realism, then,
lends itself very well to Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology that aims to combine a subjectivist
and objectivist methodology. Loïc Wacquant explains that Bourdieu tries to overcome “the
seemingly irresolvable antagonism between subjectivist and objectivist modes of knowledge, the
separation of the analysis of the symbolic from that of materiality” (Waquant in An Invitation to
Reflexive Sociology 3). I use Bourdieu’s insights to argue that the novels tried to imagine a
discussion forum where it would be possible to pursue objective understanding of issues, yet to
take into account individuals’ subjective experiences and perspectives. In this endeavor, novels

18

were well too aware of the pitfalls of an objectivist formula of creating depersonalized universal
models of society and of a subjectivist approach that results in a relativity of worldviews.
Notions of objectivity and subjectivity are central to the ways in which the novels think
about political discussion. Discussion scenes aspire to gain understanding of issues in a more
objective light that would eliminate private biases for the sake of a common good; however, the
novels also imply that oftentimes mutual understanding is deeply rooted in subjective, or rather
inter-subjective, relationships with the other. Novels like Walter Besant’s All Sorts and
Conditions of Men and Charles Reade’s Put Yourself in His Place aspire to anchor objectivity in
subjective perspectives that would be mobile and exchangeable. Some works strive for
objectivity by upholding a universal ideal (such as Martineau’s “plain speaking”), and others
refuse the very notion of an ideal and offer a set of practices that would lead to social change
(e.g., Tressell’s “argyfying about politics”). Yet others, like Gissing, suggest that political
movements, even if driven by a unified ideal, are bound to fragment into sub-streams
spearheaded by leaders who have their own style and subjective perception of the ideal. All in
all, each novel’s configurations of objectivity and subjectivity in political discussion underlie a
shared project of envisioning how discursive practices can catalyze social change and anticipate
a new kind of public for a society that is still to come.
The novels’ inquiries into the objective and subjective elements of political discussion
touch on a somewhat related question of linking everyday (subjective) experiences to universal
(and conceivably objective) norms. While current political theory grapples with this problem of
linking everyday experiences with universal procedures and norms of justice, I suggest that
examining the genre of the novel sheds new light on negotiating between these two levels.
Victorian novels in general, and social problem novels in particular, represented unprecedented

19

injustices on economic, cultural, and political planes and by doing so explored ways of
connecting everyday sufferings with abstract principles of justice. These linkages between the
particular and the general happen in the scenes of spontaneous everyday face-to-face discussion
as when, for instance, in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, the workers’ conversation about
old Jack Linden’s loss of his job leads to a general critique of the capitalist marketplace and the
“Battle of Life” for employment. By seamlessly connecting the everyday with the universal,
novelistic imagination circumvents some theoretical impasses with the facility that is unique to
its genre.
My study of discussion models in the novels is motivated by the following questions.
Why and how did the novel flourish as an artifact of mass print and cultivate an anonymous
readership, while at the same time acknowledge a face-to-face dialogue as a kind of political
remedy for modern society? Paradoxically, the novel as a printed text promoted mediated models
of political discussion only to undermine its own medium with a message in support of face-toface discussion. My second question is to what extent did these models open up new critical
possibilities of political discussion and to what extent did they reveal their own contradictions or
complicity with the status quo? And finally, if Victorians’ imaginings of political discussion did
not form a linear trajectory but were instead an uneven and contested project, is there a
democratic element in this plurality? Does this ongoing revision and instability of the form of
discussion suggest something essential about Victorian liberalism? Being part and parcel of
Victorian print culture, novels surprisingly find promise and political agency in face-to-face
discussion. But it seems that the novels’ self-conscious zeroing in on this ideal registers it as a
part of the past, however appealing, and not of the future. Despite this, the novels seem not to
represent this ideal nostalgically, but to employ it as a device to bring about social change and

20

reform in the future. These seemingly self-undermining gestures, firstly, of favoring face-to-face
discussion on behalf of a print artifact and, secondly, of appropriating an ideal of the past into the
affirmative future-oriented mode of the “novels with a purpose” make discussion scenes rich and
intriguing. But what seems like a paradox is rather an invitation to a deeper understanding of the
project carried on by the novels of discussion. It seems that face-to-face discussion can be
represented and crystallized into a model only once it becomes somewhat removed from readily
available modern possibilities. Hence, it is not paradoxical but rather intuitive for the novel as an
artifact of print to conceive of the notion of face-to-face discussion and to advocate for its
transformative power up against the pressures of increasingly mediated and alienating
environments.
My study does not compare one discussion model to another in an attempt to find the best
or most emancipatory one. Rather, the heterogeneity of the discussion models and the ways they
challenge, complement, and build on each other creates the critical possibilities that no single
model by itself can create. As I will show, each model should be understood as a part of a
complex network of inter-dependent novelistic imaginings. Only then can we see how novels
collectively strove to cultivate critical engagement with the mechanisms of discussion. This
project of careful calibration of critical distance insured that these models would not become an
unquestioned custom or an abstraction detached from lived experience. Critical detachment also
instilled a liberating awareness that there were always valid and feasible alternatives to any
discursive practice. Perhaps for Victorians, a path toward a truly emancipated and fair discussion
lay not in the either/or choice between Harriet Martineau’s “plain speaking,” Walter Besant’s
“masquerading,” or Robert Tressell’s “argyfying about politics,” but in a guarantee of an
ongoing competition among these discursive patterns. Such attitudes are very much a piece of

21

what David Wayne Thomas calls “many-sidedness” in Victorian aesthetic and liberal culture (x).
Just as many Victorian novelists called upon viewing a political-economic issue from “both
sides,” so, too, did they put value on viewing and reviewing models of discussion themselves
from various perspectives. However, the critical possibilities are located not only in the models
themselves or in the competing variety of models, but in the often complex and ambivalent
unfolding of these models in the novels. The chapters that follow aim neither to raise suspicion
that models of discussion seek to exercise control behind the veneer of appealing ideals, nor to
fully embrace and celebrate such discursive blueprints. Novels are too polyphonic and
ambivalent to be read in a Foucauldian manner as vehicles of discipline and too contradictory
and multi-layered to be read sympathetically, “with the grain” (12), as Brigid Lowe advocates. It
is by looking at the often complex ways in which these models “work” in the novels that we can
put their critical edge in full view.
Representations of face-to-face everyday discussion operate not without ambivalences.
While in certain scenes the everyday and unmediated dialogue becomes the domain of discursive
spontaneity, authenticity, and purity, in other instances it nurtures manipulative play and
pervasive spread of oppressive ideology. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, for instance,
showcases discussions at lunch during which the workers re-circulate the oppressive notion of
“common sense” and reiterate political falsehoods that they glean uncritically from newspapers.
On the other hand, Tressell seems to seek out seeds of emancipation in the very same everyday
conversations of half-literate workers. In his novel, the foul-play that Mugsborough City Council
members devise during their meeting represents face-to-face discussion as a context where
conspiracy can thrive. In TRTP, one also finds face-to-face dialogues wrought with barriers and
gaps in understanding, such as many of Owen’s encounters with the workers who are not

22

sympathetic with his socialist views. However, many other novels feature face-to-face discussion
as a medium conducive to emancipation as, for example, the moment of an idyllic understanding
between Charles Egremont and Gerard in Disraeli’s Sybil. The novels in question recognize faceto-face everyday discussion as a means to political emancipation, although they are wary of
idealizing it blindly and sense that it can also harbor anti-democratic tendencies towards the
other party. Arguably, the novels of discussion are aware of the complexity of the everyday, and
their concerns echo more recent understandings of the everyday as simultaneously a space of
2

repression and evasion (Lefebvre) and of potential emancipation through communicative
practice (Habermas).

3

Novels of discussion display a wide range of attitudes to the progressive discursive
practices they represent: offering us ready-to-use ideal models, aestheticizing discussions and
linking the harmony of their form to the validity of their content, relegating discussions to the
chaotic and vulgar realm of ambition and self-interest, and finally, sidestepping the notion of an
ideal altogether and proposing an on-going and evolving practice instead. Harriet Martineau
proposes to her readers to practice “plain speaking” as an ideal to implement in daily practice.
For Walter Besant, politics and aesthetics go hand in hand when his characters talk “prettily”
about the cultural and economic issues in the East End. For Benjamin Disraeli, too, the aesthetics
of discussion blend seamlessly with the politics as the mysterious and beautiful image of
medieval England, and Sybil as its embodiment, becomes an organizing center for political
discussions among strangers. George Gissing’s Demos, on the other hand, dismisses the entire
2

See Lefebvre, Henri. Everyday Life in the Modern World. Trans. Sacha Rabinovitch. London:
Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1971.
3
See Habermas, Jürgen. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Trans. Christian
Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Intro Thomas McCarthy. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The MIT Press, 1990.
23

discussion forum in the public sphere under the premise that pure political ideals necessarily
become corrupted and fractured in the practical realm. Robert Tressell, in turn, offers a selfreflexive on-going practice of “argyfying about politics” in lieu of a lofty ideal. This variety of
attitudes towards political discussion illustrates the high degree of Victorians’ interest in their
discursive models/practices and in cultivating ways of thinking about them.
In my examination of the cultures of discussion, I focus on the genre of the novel for
several reasons. Above all, the novel was one of the predominant genres in the Victorian literary
landscape. As such, novelistic representations of and attitudes toward political discussion carried
significant weight in the public sphere. Since the novels I examine largely belong to popular
fiction, they provide good evidence as to what ideas resonated with the Victorian common
reader. Secondly, novels present an intriguing case in regard to cultures of discussion because of
their narrative intent, despite the often overriding opinion of the author, to embrace the
polyphony of viewpoints in society. But even those novels that can be characterized as one-sided
and propagandist seem to put an honest effort into representing as fully as possible the opinions
of the “other” side. Novels thrive on dialogic openness. Periodicals, on the other hand,
oftentimes picked sides in the fractured social and political sphere to embrace the party spirit
rather than attempt to represent societal heterogeneity. Thirdly, novels think about discussion
differently from other genres as they depict its spontaneous nature that cannot be reduced to a
formula or procedure. The paradoxical tension between a celebration of spontaneity and the
predetermination that comes with the scripting of discussion in the novel indicates how the
novelistic representational ambitions pushed against the limitations of the genre. Also, it is my
view that through this paradox the novels grappled with an uneasy dilemma between spontaneity

24

(liberating, yet conducive to anarchy) and regimented procedures (universally applicable, yet
depersonalizing and restraining).
Novels offer a more multifaceted view on political discussion than yet another genre
besides periodicals: debating societies whose discursive practices are documented in their
proceedings and theorized in their manuals. My survey of nineteenth-century debating societies’
materials at the British Library led me to conclude that novels of discussion and debating
societies’ gravitated towards divergent rhetorical philosophies. If the novels relished in the
richness of nuances, spontaneity, and complexity of discussion and defied formal protocols,
debating societies’ manuals and proceedings aimed to regulate and format discussions to make
them manageable and comprehensible in the larger bureaucratic political machine. In fact, many
4

debating societies used parliamentary procedure for their template. In this spirit, debating
5

societies would impose limits on their membership, censorship of “unparliamentary language,”

4

6

As stated in one manual’s preface, “There was a twofold object before the minds of the authors
in preparing this little volume. They desired to collate into a more accessible form the principal
facts and features of existing parliamentary procedures, and at the same time to present their
work in such style as would make it of assistance not only to Members, or those aspiring to be
Members, of Parliament, but to the very large section of the community interested in debating
societies, at whose meetings there is always a disposition to adhere more or less to parliamentary
practice. The training of young men for public life, which is a direct object of many of these
institutions, would be more complete if strict adherence to the model could be generally
encouraged” (7). See Freeman, Wm. Marshall and J. Carson Abbott. The A. B. C. of
Parliamentary Procedure. A Handbook for Use in Public Debate. London: Butterworth and Co.,
1906.
Parliamentary procedure thoroughly informed views on discussion as evident, for example, in a
short-lived periodical in the 1850’s titled The British Controversialist, and Self-Educator:
Established for the Impartial and Deliberate Discussion of Important Questions in Religion,
Philosophy, History, Politics, Social Economy, Etc., and as a Magazine of Self-culture. It
published “affirmative” and “negative” articles relating to issues of the day.
5
See, for example, rules on page 3 in Tyneside Parliamentary Debating Society, Newcastle-onTyne. List of Members. Constitution and Rules. Session 1891-92. Tyne Printing Works Co.,
Newcastle-on-Tyne.
25

7

8

restrictions on the range of topics, and time limitations, in an effort to mold discussion into a
parliament-like formula. Like no other genre, novels showcase the richness and spontaneity of
everyday discussion, but also bring to light the complexities and contradictions of the proposed
ideals and uncover the inevitable flaws and dangers of these models, however appealing.
My chapters are organized chronologically and examine Harriet Martineau’s tales on
political economy (1827-1833), Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil; or, The Two Nations (1845),
Charles Reade’s Put Yourself in His Place (1870) and Walter Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions
of Men (1882), George Gissing’s Demos (1886), and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists (1916). The first chapter traces the evolution of Martineau’s vision of political
discussion from one-sided didactic dialogues in “The Rioters” and “The Turn-Out” to a more
equal and de-centered discussion in “A Manchester Strike.” Her work demonstrates a tension
between middle-class pastorship of the lower classes and a more democratic model. I argue that
her commitment to the principles of political economy and her ideal of “plain speaking” are
interdependent. The tales propagate discussion because it can keep the workers away from
strikes by substituting words for violence. But no less importantly, Martineau wants to show that
rational discussion will inevitably prove the principles of political economy to be true. Although
the tales always insure that laissez faire arguments come out as truths in the end, Martineau does

6

See, for example, a list of “unparliamentary” terms in Gray, Geo G. Hand-book of Procedure of
the House of Commons. With Suggestions and Precedents for the Use of Parliamentary Debating
Societies. London: Horace Cox, 1896.
7
See listings of topics, for example, in Our Magazine. Subjects for Thought and Discussion in
Social and Political Clubs, Co-operative Reading Rooms, Class Rooms, Discussion Meetings,
Lecture Halls, Mutual Improvement and Debating Societies, Polytechnic Institutes, &c. London:
Cooperative Printing Society, No. 1 January 1891. See also Gibson, Laurence M. Handbook for
the Literary and Debating Societies. London, 1898.
8
See, for example, in Rules of the Union Debating Society. Printed by Abdool Hukeem at
Muzhurool-Ajauyeb Press, Calcutta, 1871.
26

want to test the validity of these ideas against other viewpoints in discussion scenes. Thus the
tales are anchored in two “economies”: political economy that guides the relationship between
men and capital and the “economy” of “plain speaking” that organizes the public sphere.
My second chapter examines Benjamin Disraeli’s techniques of consensus-building in
Sybil. I argue that Disraeli creates an elusive pastoral image of pre-Reformation England which
lacks diachronic depth but precisely because of it generates consensus among the aristocracy and
the People in the present. A shared image of pastoral England creates a common ground among
conversing strangers in Sybil. Through such a vision of discussion Disraeli exposes the
limitations and points to the alternatives of the rationalistic culture of competing arguments.
Disraeli suggests that it is precisely the condition of strangehood that allows for freedom in
discussion and an abstraction from social attributes of class. While face-to-face conversation is
crucial in Sybil, it does not aim to overcome strangehood but rather preserve it as a condition for
productive discussion.
In my next chapter, I focus on how Walter Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men and
Charles Reade’s Put Yourself in His Place imagine political discussion through the liberal
fantasy of perspective-taking. The two novels are quite optimistic about the principle of putting
oneself in another’s place as a means to resolve social conflicts. These under-read novels raise
questions of transparency and ultimate exchangeability of perspectives in the public sphere.
Preoccupation with perspective-taking in these novels reveals Victorians’ concerns with
objectivity as well as social equality/hierarchy. In Besant’s novel it is the upper-class
protagonists that have the privilege to assume the perspectives of a cabinet-maker and a dressmaker in the East End and hence lay claims to a more many-sided or objective vision of the
social problem. While Put Yourself in His Place suggests that perspective-taking is possible and

27

can be universal, All Sorts and Conditions of Men treats the other party’s perspective as never
fully accessible and exchangeable. As such, Besant’s novel moves away from the optimistic
Victorian fantasy of transparent perspectives and articulates an alternative vision of the other as
not fully accessible—a vision that actually opens new possibilities for inclusiveness and
tolerance in our own modern condition.
Early-Victorian optimism about discussion gives way to late-Victorian anxiety about mob
threat and the impossibility of a pure and simple (unmediated) face-to-face political discussion
that would uphold democracy and ensure consensus. The fourth chapter discusses George
Gissing’s Demos, A Story of English Socialism as a novel representative of this change. In the
novel, the socialisms of working-class Richard Mutimer, the gentlemanly Westlake, the radical
Roodhouse, and “demos” itself expose the myth of a unified people’s movement. Gissing
juxtaposes the aesthetic sensibility of the aristocrat Hubert Eldon to the whirlpool of practical
politics, the embodiment of the battle of life. Instead of “plain speaking,” the novel is fraught
with political fragmentation, antagonism, and newspaper wars. In Demos, society no longer
figures as a potentially inclusive democratic forum, but as a potpourri of discordant claims and
interests. Gissing’s novel registers a disillusionment in the ideals of political discussion from the
1830’s and 1840’s fiction.
My final chapter examines an Edwardian novel by Robert Tressell that depicts the lives
of construction workers in Mugsborough (based on Hastings, Sussex). The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists, Being the Story of Twelve Months in Hell, Told by One of the Damned, and
Written down by Robert Tressell abounds in scenes of “argyfying about politics” during the
workers’ lunch breaks. Although this novel features a socialist Owen who promotes his ideas
among the workers, a unanimous consensus is always deferred. Tressell represents discussion as

28

a spontaneous and heterogeneous forum where positive progress comes from the fact that
consensus is never fully reached. Unlike Gissing who is disillusioned with fragmentation of
ideas, Tressell acknowledges heterogeneity as something that propels discussion forward. I
suggest that this novel transforms the Victorian notion of agreement as a static end result
(serving more aesthetic rather than pragmatic purposes) into a more politically viable notion of
agreement as an evolving work-in-progress.
My project articulates a direct (if complicated) relationship between the democratic ideal
of face-to-face political discussion, novels’ advantages and inadequacies in representing the
latter, and the evolving Victorian imaginings of the public sphere. Political discussion figures
differently across the novels that I gather under the heading “novels of discussion”: in some of
them, the art of discussion is a rather prominent theme while in others it fares more as a
background to unravel social problems of the day and as a means to solve them. However, what
unites all of these works is their commitment to reshape social, economic, and political world
through discussion. The novels challenged, revised, and modified the ideals of liberal discussion
in the public sphere as well as envisioned forgotten but no less intriguing alternatives. Focusing
on a few moments in the history of the novels of discussion, I conclude that over the course of
the nineteenth century the questions of what claims can be made in the public sphere and who
can make them were accompanied by another equally important question: what should
discussion in the public sphere look like? Fiction articulated competing models of political
discussion as it responded to the evolving politico-economic contexts over the course of the
Victorian era. The novels created descriptive and prescriptive blueprints of political discussion in
ways more complicated and insightful than what contemporary and current theory has offered.
Once we recognize our own contemporary concerns behind discussion scenes in Victorian

29

novels, our theorizing of the democratic public sphere could move onwards with the same
passion that Victorians fostered.

30

CHAPTER 1
ON “PLAIN SPEAKING” IN HARRIET MARTINEAU’S ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL
ECONOMY

In her essay “On the Duty of Studying Political Economy,” first published in the Monthly
Repository in 1832, Harriet Martineau announced that a universal knowledge of science is a
matter of democratic progress:
It is evident that they [people] cannot even be sure of choosing their
representatives better till they are clear as to what is requisite in their member,
and can judge whether he possesses the requisites. The people, then, must become
practically acquainted with the principles of political economy, before they can
expect their interests properly taken care of by the government. (275)
Convinced about the urgent need of a comprehensible manual of political economy for all
classes, Martineau published her Illustrations of Political Economy in 1832-1834. Although she
never laid claim to originality (since she considered herself only a popularizer of such political
thinkers as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and James Mill), Martineau’s writing
was innovative both in respect to content and form. The series of tales transformed the high
theory of political economy into relatable scenes from daily life that were supplemented with a
summary of principles in the conclusion of each tale. This enlivening approach of illustrating
abstract principles with fictional stories would, Martineau believed, make her message accessible
for many, especially the working classes. Intertwining fiction and non-fiction, Martineau crafted
her project so that “Political Economy could be understood by all” (“Preface” xvi)—a message

31

that was intended within and beyond national bounds. The publication of the series indeed met
with large numbers of readers, and the financial and literary success of Illustrations made
Martineau a well-off, independent woman writer. There is, however, a tension at the heart of her
works: meant to popularize the science of political economy among a mass audience,
Martineau’s tales revolve around face-to-face discussion. Her works pit the ideal of unmediated
political discussion against the mediated fictional representation of her tales.
Martineau illustrates principles of political economy by featuring characters engaged in
everyday face-to-face dialogues. These scenes are part and parcel of Martineau’s pioneering
attempt to create a narrative, not a treatise, about political economy. Couching theoretical
principles in lively scenes of everyday life was an enterprise whose advantages Martineau
attempted to capitalize on and whose “traps” she meant to avoid. She claims in the “Preface” that
she considers narrative to be the best form in which to teach political economy and insists on the
difference between her use of narrative and the “use of narrative as a trap to catch idle readers”
employed in “works that pretend to be stories, and turn out to be catechisms of some kind of
knowledge which we had much rather become acquainted with in its undisguised form”
(“Preface” xiii). In other words, her story-telling is somehow essential, not peripheral, in
explicating the moral science of men and wealth. Although she confesses that her writing process
would begin with “making the Summary of Principles” (Autobiography I, 194) and only then
move to scenes, conversations, and characters, the fictional elements in her tales seem to
“absorb” theory and facts rather than the other way around. It is the making of a fictional tale on
the third day of her composition that she calls the “severest” toil when she would write down
“not only the action of the personages and the features of the scene, but all the political economy
which it was their business to convey, whether by exemplification or conversation,—so as to

32

absorb all the materials provided” (Autobiography I, 195). Writing the “descriptions,” the
“narrative,” and “the argumentative or expository conversations” (Autobiography I, 195) was for
her equally enjoyable and important for putting the tales together. To have characters arguing
about, explaining, or reasoning out together a principle of political economy added some kind of
social value to the principle itself in comparison to an authoritative statement in the “Summary.”
In fact, Martineau was a strong believer in argumentation, and her Illustrations provide plenty of
proof for this. Her narrative captures precisely this process of dialogic argumentation rather than
simply offering the readers ready-made principles. It is the narrative form, too, that forestalls
destructive, riotous action: the conversations conducted in the tales keep the working-class
characters out of trouble and facilitate their progress from the discursive economy of talking
together to the political economy of working together. Then, for Martineau, political discussions
(and narrative in general) are not only means to illustrate some theoretical principles, but they
are a precondition of a properly functioning political economy in the first place.
Contemporary with the 1832 Reform Act, Martineau’s Illustrations reflect her support of
reform and her optimism about coming together and reasoning on political and economic issues.
There is another tension, however, that organizes her work: on the one hand, an egalitarian
aspiration for an inter-subjective dialogue based on the force of reason, and on the other, a
patronizing stance of didactic moralizing. Martineau’s Illustrations and other industrial stories
maneuver between these two gestures. And she seems to package two in one quite seamlessly.
Her work is representative of the overall sentiments experienced by the post-Reform Bill society:
a patronizing gesture toward the poor along with a more egalitarian attitude. I will reconsider
Martineau’s didactic moralizing in her role of “governess to the nation,” in Shelagh Hunter’s
words, and attempt to show how her commitment to a democratic communicative ethic does not

33

entirely fold into the authoritative, monologic structures of moralizing. I will show, however,
that while Martineau’s works are committed to the ideal of a pluralistic culture of discussion, the
pedagogic purposes of her stories truncate this ideal by conferring the privilege of the “better”
9

argument only upon the narrator.
Martineau’s moralizing message to the lower classes exemplifies a central feature of
nineteenth-century techniques of political power, which Lauren Goodlad in her account of
Victorian liberalism describes as pastorship. Borrowing from and simultaneously revising this
Foucauldian term given the specificity of the English context, Goodlad characterizes pastorship
as a “hallowed but contradictory concept of the social bond” (25). Namely, pastorship takes the
form of a “reciprocal relation between morally equal actors”—a moral equality that both
transcended and solidified economic inequality (Goodlad 25). But for Martineau, pastorship
takes a different form. Her discussion scenes do not consolidate economic inequality under the
pacifying guise of moral equality. In her dialogues, moral equality is not something assumed
from the start, but rather something acquired in the process of reasoning together. As far as
economic inequality, Martineau believed in the identity of interests between workers and
employers and thus sidestepped the question of economic (in)equality altogether in her optimistic
vision of a society where universal happiness was guaranteed by the laws of political economy.
The method and style of the Illustrations spawned a wide range of contemporary
responses. As the New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal remarked, “[f]ew writers have
been rewarded with more praise and profit, few loaded with more censure and calumny” (41. 162
137). Reviewers were eager to comment on the awkward meshing of fiction and non-fiction,
realistic portrayal and theory, instruction and imagination, unnatural dialogues and flat
9

See Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. 54.
34

characters. Periodicals expressed reservations as to her intention to popularize theory through
fictions: “although in her descriptions she may be allowed to ‘exhaust worlds’, she must not
‘imagine new’” (Gentleman’s Magazine 343). The Dublin University Magazine debunked her
popularizing method: “notwithstanding her success, we remain fully persuaded that political
economy is not a science capable of being taught by tales. [. . .] political economy is not
distinguished from every other science by a capability of being illustrated by fictitious
narratives” (558). In the same vein, another reviewer explained that Martineau’s tales fall short
of their educational purpose due to the limitations of the genre:
They have been read as amusing tales, constructed with ingenuity and feeling;
but, as illustrations of political economy, their only end has been to give to those
who look no farther the information contained in the lucid summaries at the close
of the volumes; while those who really desire to obtain an adequate insight into
this yet infant subject are but the more imperatively convinced that such
knowledge is only to be gained by serious and sedulous reading of the best
authors. (New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal 41.162 148)
The Monthly Magazine, or, British Register was also skeptical about Martineau’s innovation and
addressed it from the perspective of her audience: “It may be all very well [. . .] to insinuate
principles of political economy into a tale which shall have popular requisites to recommend it;
by these means [. . .] the philosophical authoress may contrive (not to kill, we trust, but) to bring
down “two birds with one stone [sic]; and, while she secures the political economist, to bag at
the same time the novel-reading spinster; but the effect of her labours is another question” (470).
In the age of specialized literary production as well as specialized audiences, Martineau was a
muddling transgressor of genres and naively optimistic in her desire to address “all.”

35

The press stoked criticism about her blend of fiction and theoretical doctrines. The
argument went that Martineau’s fiction could only cloud the “lucid” principles of political
economy, while understanding of political economy was believed to be gained through
intellectual exertion over tracts, not tales. Yet, Martineau was convinced that her work could not
have taken any other form. When she reflected on her own writing, she admitted that form is
organically linked to the “thought.” She explains this connection in a “Preface” to her collection
of miscellanies by saying that each piece “presents the thought with which my mind was
engrossed at the time; and, in each case, the thought fashioned for itself the form in which it
should appear” (Miscellanies iii). Then, her “thought” also determines the form of Illustrations,
where both the fictional story and the “lucid” summary of principles are essential to the form.
Furthermore, Martineau held against any recommendations to modify the form of Illustrations
very adamantly. She writes that her publisher Charles Fox once met with James Mill “who had
assured him that my method of exemplification,—(the grand principle of the whole scheme)
could not possibly succeed; and Mr. Fox now required of me to change my plan entirely, and
issue my Political Economy in a didactic form! Of course, I refused” (Autobiography I 169). If
the form of Illustrations is something other than “a didactic form” advised by Mill, it suggests
that the tales perform if not a function completely different from didactic instruction, then not
entirely contained by the term. Deborah Logan defines Martineau’s Illustrations as “didactic
fiction designed both to entertain and instruct” (“Introduction,” Illustrations 26). If so, Martineau
envisions the process of instruction through some alternative to a “didactic form,” and her
insistence on a combination of fiction and non-fiction seems to open for her this possibility.
Fictional conversations are the sites of exchange of ideas and arguments. Once the characters
master the dynamics of a discursive exchange (by learning to listen to the other’s opinions,

36

articulate their own, and find common ground), they would more readily understand their roles,
this time, in the economic exchange of labor and goods.
Reviews perceived Martineau’s popularizing project as a work in which the fictional
elements were largely compromised by theoretical-scientific overload, but this same “flaw”
enhanced the expediency of Martineau’s moralizing strategy which shaped her narrative and her
relationship with the readers. She was often condemned as an author of downright bad fiction.
The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal criticized Martineau’s failure to create realistic
characters noting that “the peculiar nature of the subjects chosen by the [. . .] author has
contributed greatly to contract the sphere of her inquiry into the diversities of mankind: for the
most part her characters are divided into two great genera—the one character is prudent, honest,
and enlightened—the other is reckless, embruted, and criminal” (148). The review continues
with a sharp criticism of what Martineau calls her “argumentative or expository conversations”:
her dialogue offends verisimilitude—she writes more simply when she narrates,
than when she causes her labourers and her fishermen to speak in their own
persons. It is easy to see her benevolent and wise purpose in making the poor
themselves speculate on truths, rather than be lectured by others into instruction.
[. . .] All this is very sensible; but to fiction in its most sensible shape we must
still apply the rules of fiction; and we cannot help feeling that however oracular
the doctrine, the footman is not the fitting Pythius to promulgate it. (149)
While the New Monthly Magazine recognized Martineau’s emphasis on dialogic deliberation as a
means to discover the truths of political economy, the Literary Examiner saw the tales as a
monologic discourse of prepackaged truths: “We wish every workman in the Island had this tract
in his hand, for its clear and agreeable lessons would soon be fixed in his head” (164). Similarly,

37

the Metropolitan Magazine saw her work as a drill of “all the morals those tales have essayed to
inculcate” (106). The Literary Gazette used the same diction praising “the simple yet great
truths” Martineau’s tales “inculcate” (473).
At the same time, Martineau’s commitment to an equal deliberation could not neatly fit
into the overall moralizing frame. Shelagh Hunter offers a more nuanced understanding of
Martineau’s moralism than the notion voiced by many reviewers of mere “inculcation” or
“fixing” of ideas in the heads of the readers. “Martineau’s conception of a ‘Moralist’,” Hunter
writes, “was of a writer who could enlist the reader in the process of his own educated change”
(56). Martineau wants to initiate an independent agency of her readers, even if inspired by her
moralizing prescriptions. Taking off from Hunter’s observation, I will show that throughout her
tales Martineau’s complex position as an author implies simultaneously reciprocal, dialogic, and
equal terms with her readers and an elevated platform of a moralist.
Rather than imposing abstract principles with condescension, Martineau oftentimes
assumed a more equal footing with her audience. It was a must for Martineau to know the
workers’ lives from the inside, yet she was never quite confident in her knowledge. The working
10

masses were the part of her audience that she was most concerned with.

The multitude was her

addressee and at the same time the source of factual information for her tales. In a 1832 letter to
William Tait (the editor of Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine that gave Martineau’s work favorable
reviews), Martineau referred to herself as “the annalist of the Poor” (Sanders 38). For instance,
Martineau wrote “A Manchester Strike” with the help of the “bundle of documents” received
from the Manchester operatives who “were eager to interest me in their controversies about
10

Ian Haywood in his book The Revolution in Popular Literature remarks that the cost of
Martineau’s Illustrations accounted for a “predominantly middle-class readership” (125). At the
same time, I want to emphasize that looking for effective ways to address a working class
audience constituted for Martineau a most urgent matter.
38

Machinery and Wages” (Autobiography I 215). She was happy to find rapport with the
Manchester operatives, especially when they regarded the tale to have been written by one who
had “‘spent all her life in a cotton-mill’” (216): “I considered it a compliment, when I found I
was supposed to have been relating my own experience” (Autobiography I 217). However, later
in life, she is more anxious about the relationship with her audience. In 1849, she writes in a
letter about the urge “to use the power attributed to me of enlightening the restless and
malcontent among the people” (Sanders 116). Yet, she admits to her own helplessness a couple
lines below: “But I don’t in the least know how to reach these people” (Sanders 116). This
timidity and respect for the little-known social other adds some nuances to Martineau’s
moralizing. Instead of condescending with her enlightened authority to the masses, she modifies
this route. For her depicting characters who converse on an equal footing with one another
becomes as important as the authoritative ethos of “lucid” summaries at the end of the tales. In
her tales, the principles of political economy are not imposed from the start, but arrived at in the
process of a mutual deliberation and only then instituted as guiding rules. Martineau’s approach
is a turning point in conceptualizing the public sphere insofar as it points to a more democratized
and multi-vocal culture of discussion.
Martineau’s tales occupy an ambivalent position in relation to the masculine realm of
political economy and the didactic monologic methods of conveying it to the public. Embracing
the dominant masculine stance, Martineau simultaneously introduces elements that unsettle these
norms. Critics have defined Martineau’s tales as didactic literature. Elaine Freedgood calls
Martineau’s tales “an impossible and inefficacious generic hybrid: realist myth” (36). Referring
to Illustrations “didactic novellas”(383), Eleanor Courtemanche notes a contradiction between
their function as “illustrations” (in which stories of human experience illustrate “an abstract

39

law”) and their claims to realism (in which “abstract law” is “inadequate” to account for “lived
experience”) (384). However, Martineau’s didacticism does not belittle her subversive and
democratic sensibilities. For instance, Caroline Roberts finds the strengths of Martineau’s tales in
that they subvert the obscure “dominant discourse” “of upper-class men” (15) by employing
“feminine” writing techniques such as narrative (15-16). Roberts’ comment about Martineau’s
use of narrative instead of abstract argument is important because it opens up a new mode of
participating in the public sphere. Martineau is progressive not only in her own choice to narrate
tales, but also in her choice to have her characters narrate their lived experiences to others who
may occupy different social positions. She hints that story-telling is no only as valuable in the
public sphere as argument is, but that narrating one’s lived experiences from different social
positions can move public discussion forward in ways that the long-privileged mode of argument
cannot.
A reconsideration of the prevalence of “argument” in the public arena and recognition of
other modes of political expression, like narrative, is a project that, Iris Marion Young claims,
will make the public sphere more democratic and inclusive. Young’s theoretical work on
democracy exposes the structures of domination and exclusion behind such central concepts for
discussion in the public sphere as “argument” and “common good”—the very concepts that
resonate with Victorian rhetorical ideals of John Stuart Mill, Walter Bagehot, and in many ways
Martineau herself. Young suggests that discussion about the “common good” often conceals a
privileged social group that marginalizes others. Appeals to “common good” imply that
participants should share the same uniform premises—a condition that is hard to ensure in a
multicultural society with social differences. Like “common good,” “argument,” too, carries
exclusionary connotations in the public sphere. Alternative modes of political claim-making,

40

e.g., street protests, emotionally charged speeches, or testimonial narratives, do not get
recognized because they fall outside of the normative rational dispassionate argument. Relying
only on “argument” produces a problematic model where competing arguments on behalf of selfinterested groups do not create and value a bigger picture of society that we all share, after all.
Young refuses to see democratic discussion as either centered on the “common good” that is
blind to social difference or comprised of “arguments” on behalf of private interests that are
blind to a society shared with others. Young proposes an “alternative to either private interest
competition or difference-bracketing public discussion of the common good. This third way
consists in a process of public discussion and decision-making which includes and affirms the
particular social group positions relevant to issues. It does so in order to draw on the situated
knowledge of the people located in different group positions as resources for enlarging the
understanding of everyone and moving them beyond their own parochial interests” (109). With
Young’s redefinition of the public sphere comes a new need to reconsider the accepted modes of
political expression.
Young notes that in order to gain a comprehensive point of view on an issue, participants
may have to start out from not having many views or experiences in common, yet willing to
orient toward common ground. And here, it is not arguments, but sharing each other’s narratives
that builds the foundation for future dialogue. As Young explains, “narrative” serves an integral
part in a democratic process: “narratives can supply steps in arguments, but they can also serve
to explain meanings and experiences when groups do not share premises sufficiently to proceed
with an argument” (7). She challenges the exclusive status of argument in discussion and writes:
“sometimes forms of communication other than argument can speak across our differences to
promote understanding” (72). In light of Young’s theory, Martineau’s use of narrative serves not

41

only the purpose of illustrating, but also imagining a more versatile public sphere that includes a
variety of modes of argumentation and promotes understanding through narrative. Martineau
intuits this political potential of narrative mode in the public sphere as we encounter in her tales
not only theoretical argument, but also characters who narrate their lives. Face-to-face discussion
scenes seem to be conducive to a wider range of discursive modes than the disembodied reason
of theoretical tracts.
Martineau’s interest in political economy begins with two industrial tales that precede the
11

Illustrations by a few years.

“The Rioters; or, A Tale of Bad Times” and “The Turn-out; or,

Patience the Best Policy” were written in the late 1820’s, while the Illustrations came out in
installments during 1832 and1833. As if to imply that her writerly instincts were always in tune
with society’s emergent needs, Martineau makes a point that this interest came to her before she
even found a term for it: “I had not the remotest idea that I was meditating writing on Political
Economy, the very name of which was either unknown to me, or conveyed no meaning”
(Autobiography I 135). Reading the Globe newspaper, as she wrote in her autobiography, would
get her interested in the “subject of Machine-breaking” (I 135). The dire conditions of cotton
weavers, croppers, and framework-knitters fomented the rebellious sentiments in the industrial
districts of England (Thompson 521-522). The first half of the nineteenth century is punctuated
with social upheavals from Luddism (1811-1817) and the Peterloo massacre of 1819 to the
unrest around 1830-1832 and the Chartist movement (1836-1848). E. P. Thompson describes this
period as the time of unyielding political activity of the working classes (even though a quartercentury span of the Combination Laws forced most of this activity underground): “From 1817
until Chartist times, the central working-class tradition was that which exploited every means of
11

Ian Haywood aptly calls the two tales “rehearsals” for a tale “A Manchester Strike” from
Martineau’s Illustrations.
42

agitation and protest short of active insurrectionary preparation” (670). The aggravating social
polarization resulted in a chain of working-class protests. Martineau’s discursive solution to this
problem is already articulated in her first industrial tale “The Rioters.” If only the principles of
political economy could be delivered to the working classes in an accessible manner and
eventually become understood by all, the vicissitudes of economics would be tolerated better by
all classes.
Critics have noted that while in “The Rioters” the dialogic interactions between
characters seem poorly integrated and heavily lopsided as to which party has more sense and
thus the didactic force in the dialogue, the later tale features what Linda Peterson calls “a more
equal” dialogue.

12

“The Turn-out” focuses “on disputation not action” (Haywood 125). Even

though both tales are saturated with the moralizing tone of the narrator, the subtle evolution of
Martineau’s dialogue is important. Martineau’s gradual evolution of representation of political
discussion from asymmetrical moralistic lecturing to a more reciprocal rational dialogue traces
her evolving views on a larger debate in the public sphere.
I will examine “The Rioters,” “The Turn-out,” and “A Manchester Strike” from
Illustrations—a tale dealing with similar aspects of political economy—in order to trace
Martineau’s evolving vision of communicative process. “The Rioters” is a first-person narration
12

Peterson characterizes Martineau’s major technique in “The Rioters” as “a didactic dialogue”
(424). In “The Turn-out,” as Peterson explains, the dialogue is “more equal” (428) “between Mr.
Wallace, a mill-owner, and Henry Gilbert, a spokesman for the workers” (428). This “more
equal” dynamic of conversation lies in the fact that “though Mr. Wallace’s reasoning wins out, it
is only after Henry Gilbert fully expresses his frustration and grief” (428). Claudia Oražem’s
reading of the two tales outlines the same trajectory. In “The Rioters,” the dialogues between
Brett, one of the working class, changes his opinions on the riot under the relentless, didactic
explanations of the middle-class narrator. “Brett,” Oražem writes, “is clearly driven by emotions
and his arguments are determined by the extreme poverty” (79), while the narrator “reasons
strictly logically” (79). In “The Turn-out,” according to Oražem, the conversations are “much
better integrated into the narrative” (84), but the development of the dialogue is predetermined as
“the narrator consistently sides with the manufacturer’s position” (85).
43

where the narrator is a middle-class Londoner who comes for a “commercial business” (17) visit
to Manchester and unexpectedly finds the town caught up in social unrest and loom-breaking.
Meanwhile, the narrator meets an impoverished local Mary Brett with a child in her hands and
compassionately arranges a night’s lodging for her at her neighbor’s. Before long, the narrator
witnesses a riotous mob and their scuffle with soldiers. The narrator engages in discussions with
Mary Brett and her husband regarding machinery, employment, the cost of rioting, and the
necessity of individuals to obey the laws in return for government’s protection. Convinced by the
narrator’s arguments, Brett is no longer tempted by “bad people” “to riot” (100). By the same
token, the narrator himself undergoes a change as a result of these discussions: “I had learned
how to be thankful for daily bread” (24). He places an order for stockings with Mary Brett,
which gives her means for sustenance, while his little daughter Mary makes her “sacrifice” by
directing her potential birthday-party expenses to provide “potatoes, soup, and bread” (97-98) for
seven poor families. Brett’s sons—John and George—are taken to jail and put to trial for
violence during the riot. Both of them luckily happen to escape punishment by death and, to the
narrator’s and Brett’s joy, deeply repent their unlawful acts. The narrator closes the story with a
moralizing message against “unlawful violence” (122) that corrupts the “minds” (122) of the
community and impedes everybody’s wellbeing. The narrator remains hopeful that a better
understanding of economic questions by the working poor would help soothe the riotous spirit
and sway the people from the influence of the “mischievous leaders of the mob” (121).
What is striking about this tale is just how unbalanced all the dialogues are. The
narrator’s opinions on the authority of law and the self-destructive nature of rioting do not even
get a fair polemical battle with some alternative points of view from the workers. Instead, the
narrator continuously dispels the ignorance and fallible logic (if any) when he leads long

44

discussions with the Bretts. Brett is a working-class character with whom the narrator converses
the most and whom he most surely and irrevocably persuades into non-violence. Even Brett’s
sons’ future is uncertain as they need to stay immune from the bad influence of other criminals
while in prison. The sons were not as lucky as the father to be exposed to timely discussions with
the narrator that would have opened their eyes to the futility of violence. After the narrator’s
compelling exposition against machinery-breaking, Mrs. Brett regrets the belated arrival of this
instruction: “I wish my boys had heard all this before they got into such mischief” (42). The
Bretts are little more than passive receptacles of the narrator’s arguments, and their discussions
are far from a reciprocal exchange of ideas. Brett’s infrequent counter-arguments are easily
relegated to the status of ignorance, misinformation, or a claim that fails a test by logic.
Enjoying his moral and intellectual supremacy, the narrator treats these conversations as
a meticulous work of persuasion on his part. Even though he is often overcome by strong
emotions and compassion, his main agency lies not in looking for solutions through sympathy,
but rather through argumentation, explanation, and correction of misinformed opinions.
Sympathy only prepares the ground for the narrator’s communicative agency. The story is,
indeed, punctuated with moments of elevated feeling. When the narrator sees Mary Brett’s face
“pinched by cold and misery”(7), he “could not help stopping to speak to her” (7). The sight of
Mary Brett’s dwelling and her own “destitute state” (10), the narrator confesses, “deeply moved
my compassion” (10). When he sees Brett’s sons get into a scuffle with a soldier, he is once
again overtaken by feeling: “I really could not help wishing they might [escape from the soldier],
so strong was the compassion excited by their famished and miserable appearance. I felt for the
moment that their poverty almost excused their violence” (16). This “almost” is a remaining slim
barrier that separates the narrator’s perspective from that of the violent workers. Martineau’s

45

intent, however, is not to break down this barrier. While compassion for the workers’ destitution
is crucial for her, nothing can be an excuse for violence. Rather than letting sympathy loose in
justifying violence, the tale intends to channel sympathies and reasoning into cultivating nonviolent workers. Later, the narrator is at times overwhelmed with sympathy, but it never goes as
far as to justify violence. After the two youths are arrested, we get another indication of an
emotional outburst: “I could bear no more” (16). In the end, when the narrator and Brett come to
visit Brett’s two sons in prison, the narrator reaches another emotional peak: “I drew back
instantly, but not till the agony of their farewell had struck on my very heart” (121). The narrator
does not so much propagate an image of himself as the eighteenth-century man of feeling, but
rather as the nineteenth-century sympathetic, yet pragmatic and articulate social reformer.
His agency in the dialogues is not that of overpowering dominance, but rather a
sophisticated tactic of timely and firm interventions into the other’s thinking, which gives an
effect of less direct persuasion, yet insures complete control of discussion. When it comes to
discussion, the narrator avoids the formula “the more the better” as he realizes that argument and
persuasion should be applied in different contexts with discretion and tact. His careful
assessment of the situation is indeed impressive. He seems to know exactly the right time to
moralize (or rationalize) and when to put it off; he manages to prevail in every discussion in the
story and what seems to have begun as a dialogue soon assumes the format of a lecture with
insignificant intermissions; he never loses hold of actively managing his conversations by
projecting the outcomes of his speeches and making notes of the individual transformations he
observes. These tactics begin from the very scene where the narrator meets Mary Brett and helps
the distressed woman find food and comfort for the night at her neighbor’s. He knows that his
words would not find resonance with a mind overtaken by emotions:

46

I thought it useless to argue with, and cruel to reprove, one suffering so bitterly
from want; and I therefore let her words pass without observation for the present;
determining, however, to reason with her, and to correct her erroneous notions of
the cruelty of the masters in employing machinery, at a more favorable time,
when the exasperation of mind which her destitute condition excited, should have
subsided. (11)
The narrator conflates here two modes of reasoning: reasoning with Mary Brett and corrective
reasoning over Mary Brett’s erroneous notions. Ironically, the narrator as much as Mary Brett
has preconceived notions about political economy that he brings into discussion. However, his
initial knowledge of the “correct” notions counts as the power of reasoning in the tale’s
framework. Had there been a narrator less confident in his own rightness and more willing to
bring the workers’ argument to the necessary level of articulateness, the dynamics of the
conversation would have been quite different.
As a stranger in Manchester, the narrator speaks very little in the beginning (mostly
asking questions to get more information about the people and the situation). Mary Brett goes
into quite detailed descriptions of herself, her home, and her family, and the narrator merely
interposes a question or two. But when the narrator gets an opportunity to express his opinions to
Brett, and when it comes down to explanations of political economy, the roles are reversed.
During these conversations (formally, dialogues, but for the most part, monologues), the narrator
prevails, and the characters respond or object only occasionally. The beginning of the narrator’s
conversation with Brett is rather forced, not mutually desired. The narrator promises to bring
Brett food, saying “and then I dare say you will hear what I think about rioting” (20). That same
evening, the narrator diligently stops by again and notices that after dinner “the immediate fear

47

of starvation was removed” (26). The narrator snatches the opportunity: “I thought this would be
a favorable time for some conversation on the subject of rioting” (26). Indeed, reasoning with a
well-fed Brett seems like an opportune moment for the narrator. Because Brett’s immediate
needs are met, there seems to emerge a sense of equality. Now the narrator and Brett can
converse as peers and be detached from such factors as the physical pain of hunger.
This moment of initial equality does not flourish into a democratic deliberation but still
demonstrates Martineau’s drawing on the hierarchical moralizing modes of discussion. First,
from a purely quantitative perspective, Brett does not get to utter as many words as the narrator
does, which already formally creates an asymmetrical exchange. Second, the narrator takes the
lead in the conversation to a point where he begins to fashion Brett’s potential responses for him:
“Very well: we will suppose all the machinery abolished [. . .] so you are quite
contented, and think all the mischief is over [. . .]. After a while, however, your
employer’s agents write him word that he is undersold in the markets [. . .]. You
say you won’t work for lower prices [. . .]. But if all [manufacturers] are
undersold, who undersells them? Why, the foreign manufacturers. ‘The foreign
manufacturers!’ you exclaim; ‘why, we used to manufacture better than they’. Ay,
they used to do so; but now they have made great improvements in their
machinery [. . .]. ‘O, if that be all,’ you say, ‘their prosperity won’t last long: they
will overstock the markets [. . .]. At length, however, you have the satisfaction of
hearing that trade is very bad abroad; and you say, ‘I knew ‘twould be so; I said
they would overstock the market.” [. . .] you hope your turn is coming at last. But
no: [. . .] your trade is gone for ever.” (38)

48

This leads to Brett’s ultimate surrender to the narrator’s impeccable argument for machinery:
“you seem to understand this matter better than I do” (39). Brett is put in a passive position to be
“struck” (34) by or to acknowledge the superiority of the narrator’s reasoning. Even though the
narrator has taken care to clear the discussion from such physiological factors as Brett’s hunger,
their exchange is clearly hierarchical. On the one hand, the narrator seems to appeal to Brett
under a certain liberal premise that every opinion deserves to be heard; but on the other hand, the
situation seems to be a case of gaining one’s compliance after one is put in “tolerable comfort”
(26) and provided with the immediate basic needs (i.e., tonight’s dinner). The outcome is a
dogmatic imposition of a certain viewpoint espoused by Martineau.

13

Her moralizing tale cannot

enact a scenario where there could be disagreements about political economy itself (such as if
two political economists, e.g., M’Culloch and Smith, were to argue about the validity of
distinction between productive and unproductive labor). Martineau fashions her often heavyhanded dogmatism as a mutual understanding around the irrefutable laws of political economy—
a kind of good-natured consensus, just like the laws of political economy that harmonize the
economic world. It seems that behind the moralizing Martineau, there is also the democratic
Martineau who wants her argument to win fairly in an equal dialogue.
The narrative showcases the effectiveness of face-to-face dialogues over futile attempts
to reason with a potentially violent crowd. The narrator refrains from interacting with a crowd
only to witness another man play out this scenario. When faced with “a dark mass” of rioters
(45), he keeps his distance and only observes Mr. Melville’s (the magistrate’s) address to the
mob that dramatically spirals out of control. The magistrate is the narrator’s less successful foil
13

Claudia Oražem gives a detailed account about Martineau’s specific economic position and
her adherence to Adam Smith’s tenets (e.g., on the distinction between productive and
unproductive labor), despite J. R. M’Culloch’s objections (113-115). At the same time,
Martineau is a complete supporter of David Ricardo’s theory of rent (108).
49

when it comes to a dialogue with the poor. His “loud and clear” (51) voice seems to capture the
attention of the rioters as he tries to offer them his arguments, similar to the narrator’s efforts
with Brett. However, the magistrate’s message to them about “how earnestly your masters wish
to relieve your wants” (51) gets antagonistic cries in response until the situation reaches a
climax: “But he might as well have spoken to the raging sea; not a syllable could be heard, and
brickbats flew in all directions” (52). As reasoning with a violent mob is shown to be a failed
enterprise, the story seems to consistently turn its focus onto scenes of face-to-face dialogues—
the ones between the narrator and the Bretts. These discussions go longer and get farther because
they manage to channel mass violence into individual agency. Unlike the magistrate’s
conversation with the hungry and infuriated mob, the narrator’s conversations with the Bretts
take place outside of social factors (e.g., Brett’s anger is taken care of when he converses with
the narrator and his dwelling is in much better shape than in the past). But it does not mean that
the narrator and the Bretts converse with one another in a completely abstract sphere of politicaleconomic theory. All of them still embody a strong sense of class, vocation, family role etc., and
not to a degree that forecloses a dialogue, but to a degree that poses surmountable challenges in
their debates. Their discussions move freely between the everyday experience of the Bretts’ life
and the abstract principles of political economy. The discursive practice Martineau showcases
through these discussion scenes links effectively the abstract rules and the lived experience of the
characters.
Against the magistrate’s failures, the narrator’s instruction of the Bretts displays an
effective rhetorical model. The narrator dominates the dynamics of the dialogue and carefully
monitors his persuasive agency. He initiates discussions, sets out goals for them, expresses his
intentions, and remarks on the effects on others from his conversations. What he ultimately

50

pursues seems to be an enlarged understanding among the working-people about the effects of
their ignorant actions: “I perceived how much ignorance and error prevailed among the poor, and
into what fatal violence they had been led for want of understanding what injury they were doing
to their masters and themselves by their frantic proceedings” (26). In other words, the narrator
ingratiates himself into someone who can fix just that—the want of understanding. The narrator
readily sums up what exactly Brett, and his sort, should understand: “But I think, now, he has
heard enough to convince him, at any rate, that such affairs as these [rioting] should not be
decided on in a hurry; and that it is not so certain as some people think, that machinery could do
nothing but harm. Haven’t you Brett?” (42). We never learn Brett’s answer, but we know that the
silence in the text is fraught with optimism. At the same time, Brett does not have an analogous
“summary” of what he wants the narrator to take away from the discussion. This further
aggravates the asymmetry.
Martineau celebrates the pragmatism of the narrator by showing the amount of practical
planning and effort that goes into seemingly spontaneous day to day conversations. We come
across a passage in which the narrator analyzes his own progress and holds himself accountable
for the Bretts’ transformation:
Here I left him [Brett]. I hoped that what I had been saying would produce some
good effect, though I had not entered upon the most important considerations
which I could have urged. I determined that I would not lose sight of this family
till I had quite cured them of all inclination towards their own destruction. I had
cleared the way by showing that nothing was to be gained in the way of trade by
present violences; and I meant to point out, at a future time, the crime, and its
dreadful and deserved consequences. (44)

51

From the particular case of the Bretts to the large numbers of the working poor, the narrator
believes that it is through discussion and better economic literacy that society can regain its lost
wellbeing. The narrator reflects: “This social order will, I trust, be restored: and the first step
towards its restoration must be to convince the people that they are working their lasting ruin by
their present violence” (57). The work of “convincing” reveals Martineau’s tension between
didacticism and an equal dialogue. While there is a hierarchy between the one who convinces
and the one who is being convinced, the success itself largely depends upon getting feedback
from the interlocutor. “The shout of destruction or despair” (57) should be replaced by
“convincing” dialogues modeled by the narrator. Martineau almost tries too hard to ensure that
the narrator’s opinion comes on top of anything that Brett has to say. Just as she creates a
predictable universe ruled by the laws of political economy, so does she create predictable
dialogues that give her a sense of comfort. The consensus that ensues gives further comfort that a
reasonable argument can find its way into the minds of everybody.
The narrator’s work of “convincing” entails not only the abilities to argue, but also to
listen. We see in him an attentive listener as he overhears a conversation between Hannah Brett’s
grandfather and a woman: “It was my object just now to learn as much of the situation and
prospects of the poor as possible, and I determined to lose no opportunity of conversing with
them that came in my way” (70). Instead of moralizing, the narrator learns some useful
information, namely that the two youths he had seen taken to prison from the riot were the young
Bretts. Through the story, he maneuvers between two modes: the one of an instructive
interlocutor, and the other of a quiet observer. This dual agency represents Martineau’s own
aspirations: on the one hand, to collect facts about the life of the “workies,” and on the other, to
conduct an instructive dialogue with them. A few pages later, we see the narrator silently

52

stepping to the background again—this time to be a tactful teacher. After his speech on the
advantages of laws and the obligations of citizens to submit to them, the narrator falls into
silence only to better observe how his message sinks into Brett’s mind: “Mr. Brett pondered
upon what I had said. I left him to his own thoughts for a few moments, and then continued”
(94). This moment is Brett’s rebirth into a liberal individual. Brett’s transformation is complete
when the narrator hears from Mary that her husband no longer joins the rioters. The narrator tells
Mary that he has conscientiously made every effort to talk Brett out of violence: “I did all I could
to prevent it” (100). The narrator suppresses Brett’s inclinations for riot by means of the
illuminating power of face-to-face reasoning. At this interpersonal level, Martineau begins to see
larger social and economic solutions.
But if for her an interpersonal culture of political discussion is the key to transforming
society as a whole, her choice to convey this message through an impersonal medium of a massprinted tale remains puzzling. Arguably, Martineau (while still believing in the power of face-toface encounters) already looks nostalgically at this ideal and complies with the communicative
technologies of the emergent mass society. This nostalgic look backwards to the face-to-face
ideal of democracy, yet an acceptance of a medium that is opposite of this ideal creates a kind of
uneven development within literary production. Her tale, promoting a face-to-face political
discussion, may well have served as the latter’s main impediment. The increasingly
individualized and private practice of reading fiction in the nineteenth century would isolate
workers from one another as well as workers from the middle classes. Then, the effect of
Martineau’s tales would be not only channeling the workers’ violent action into a discursive
action, but ultimately foreclosing on the possibility of any collective action.

53

However, as Haywood shows with the example of the Chartists’ Northern Star, the high
costs of the publication actually fostered “collective reading habits” (143) since individual
purchases were outside the realm of a worker’s possibilities well into the 1840’s. Besides,
Martineau’s political economy tales had much better chances of making their way to the shelves
14

of Mechanics’ Institutes’ libraries than less useful fiction.

Reading at the libraries also suggests

that the workers’ encounters with her tales had a more collective character than private reading
later in the century. This leads one to conclude that the medium of a printed tale neither entirely
inhibited the face-to-face political discussion among the actual workers, nor effectively promoted
it. Along with other authors I discuss in subsequent chapters, Martineau found herself caught
between nostalgia for idyllic democratic ideals and the advent of new mediated networks of
communication. Hence, her solution sounds somewhat paradoxical: the promotion of unmediated
discussion through the printed medium of works of fiction.
Already in “The Rioters” we can see a tension that runs through Martineau’s later works.
In the tale, monologic moralizing jars against a more equal, dialogic method of discussion. The
narrator’s moralizing tone finds its justification in that he should impart knowledge upon the
ignorant. Martineau’s dialogues are propelled forward by the knowledge of one of the parties
15

over the other. However, besides the knowledge/ignorance axis,

14

Martineau introduces in her

See Richard Altick’s The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading
Public, 1800-1900 (197).
15
Greg Myers in his article “Science for Women and Children: The Dialogue of Popular
Science in Nineteenth Century” describes a tradition of didactic literature for children written by
popularizers of scientific knowledge. This body of literature includes works by Mary
Wollstonecraft, Jane Marcet, Richard and Maria Edgeworth, and John Ruskin among others.
While scientific knowledge had to be transformed and perhaps simplified in order to educate
females and children, Martineau’s popularizing project also shares a lot of textual techniques
with this tradition, in my opinion, insofar as she searched for ways to deliver the knowledge of
political economy to the working classes (similarly excluded from scientific knowledge as
54

tale something else: the culture of argumentation. The narrator does not simply know more than
Brett does, but can make a stronger case for his ideas. Their conversations turn into mutual
efforts to trace one another’s arguments and agree on whatever argument stands the test of
reason. The tongue-tied Brett finds out that the narrator’s arguments fare better than his own.
Martineau wants to stage an exchange of opinions that would result in a mutual agreement
around the better argument. Yet, the artificiality of Martineau’s dialogues lies in the fact that the
narrator’s arguments are always in a position too secure and unchallenged by anything that Brett
is ever capable of articulating. Martineau’s culture of argumentation is significantly
compromised when we can predict the “better” argument from the start. Outside of the laws of
political economy, the characters in her tales have no chances of constructing a successful
argument. While Martineau’s aspirations for a better argument reflect her progressive
sentiments, the fact that the best argument always aligns with her agenda short-circuits the very
process of democratic argumentation that the story endeavors to illustrate. She seems to be
invested both in the stability and predictability of the “best” argument as well as in a free and
equal discussion—two opposing elements that are hard to conjoin.
The tension between Martineau’s desire to instill her (i.e. correct) ideas in the minds of
others and her commitment to fair argumentation translates into her representations of face-toface encounters. For her, interpersonal conversations (and not, e.g., addresses to the mob) are the
locus where mutual understanding is sure to come about. Martineau fashions consensus as a

women and children). Myers discusses two forms of dialogues—didactic and Platonic. The first
“dialectical, exploratory” model (as in Robert Boyle’s The Sceptical Chymist (1661)) represents
“opposing views on a scientific or philosophical issue” (174), while the second didactic model
represents “ignorance and knowledge: the learner who knows nothing, and the teacher who
knows everything” (174). In my opinion, although “The Rioters” is for the most part a series of
didactic dialogues, she is already bringing in some changes into this model with her incipient
desire to contrast opposing viewpoints to reveal the best argument in the course of a discussion.
55

mutual agreement, not imposed from above but arrived at through explanation and
understanding. The face-to-face encounters between the narrator and the Bretts seem to be
successful instances of how a reasonable thought engenders consensus among all. The Bretts
even wish they would have heard it sooner. But the text seems to work against itself because in
spite of the fact that Martineau intuits political potential in face-to-face dialogues, they are
surprisingly devoid of interpersonal dynamics and read more like a disembodied, faceless voice
of political economy interrupted by minor utterances from the Bretts’. It was clearly a challenge
for Martineau to integrate her theoretical dogmas into the face-to-face everyday conversations.
For her, the understanding of political economy begins at the interpersonal level, when the
narrator can directly address Brett, and not in the abstract discourse of theory. We are left
imagining what kind of face-to-face encounter Martineau means to represent through her
dialogues since to some degree it was beyond the capabilities of the genre to represent.
All in all, a gesture toward democratic argumentation that we may recognize in the story
is humbled by the asymmetry and predetermination in the dialogues. The discussion scenes are
not testing grounds for Martineau’s ideas, but rather safe havens for them. Having said this, I
think there is a danger of oversimplification in seeing Martineau’s communicative ethics only as
a quasi-dialogical didacticism. We can see this, if we further trace Martineau’s ideas on the
practices of political discussion in “The Turn-Out” (1829), “A Manchester Strike,” but no less
importantly in “Essays on the Art of Thinking” (1829).
“The Turn-out; or, Patience the Best Policy” develops a more complex network of
negotiations and arguments than “The Rioters,” and if it was not for lack of the “Summary of
Principles” at the end, the tale would easily pass for one of Martineau’s later tales of political
economy. Preoccupied with the question of wages, the tale depicts a Yorkshire town where slack

56

trade has caused a decline in the spinners’ wages and hence their discontent. The brothers Henry
and James Gilbert find themselves on opposing sides of the turn-out issue. Henry becomes the
leader of the turn-out and firmly believes in the rightness of the action, whereas James wants to
make up his judgment only after carefully listening to the arguments from his brother Henry and
his employer Mr. Wallace (since “there is a great deal to be said on both sides” (105)). A desire
for “fair discussion” (78) and “fair argument” (98) seems to be shared by everyone in the story,
and the need to determine the right course of action for the operatives becomes ever more
pressing when the turn-out funds dwindle away as fast as the winter approaches. During the
decisive meeting at the Mill-Field, Henry’s exciting slogan to “BE FIRM” (120) is superseded
by Wallace’s explanation of the economic causes and effects in the spinning trade and the force
of his argument for returning to work. James drives the moral of the tale home by summing it up:
“any thing is better than a TURN-OUT” (128).
This time, Martineau does not simply put the truths of political economy into the master’s
mouth, letting the workers absorb them like a sponge. Rather, the workers (Henry, James, and
the “plain” man (77) who opposes Henry’s speeches, among others) are more actively engaged
in discussing the matters. Martineau makes the operatives more articulate compared to the Bretts
in “The Rioters” and in doing so attempts to set the stage for the very fair argumentation that she
espouses. Besides, if in “The Rioters” the crux of the narrative is the dialogue between the
narrator and the Bretts, in “The Turn-out” political discussion is more decentralized and
multifaceted in a sense that we see a whole range of arguments being pitted against each other by
characters of varying convictions and those who still have to make up their own judgment. For
example, on his fund-raising travel to Leicester, Henry Gilbert tries the force of his arguments

57

against his accidental carriage companion,

16

a hosier from Derby, and later witnesses the state of

depravity of his unemployed cousin George. But at home, too, Henry faces opposition from “a
plain man, who could only state plain facts in the plainest way” (120) and whose counterarguments always curtail the effect of Henry’s exciting speeches. When his opinions are
challenged, Henry reverts back to his position and holds on to it even at the expense of a fair
discussion: “like most other people, he suffered his judgment to be biased by his interests, and
not only recurred to his old opinions, but half determined that he would avoid argument in future,
for fear he should again be troubled with doubts” (98). While Henry is adamant in his opinions,
James Gilbert weighs out the arguments on both sides, listening to his brother’s appeals for
workers’ rights and also heeding to Mr. Wallace’s explanations of wages, trade, and supply of
labor. Thus, the story portrays a whole network of inter-related as well as parallel political
discussions that seek out the best argument between the “two sides.” When the characters in the
tale get together to reason with each other face-to-face, Martineau drives the story to a happy
ending where any difference of opinion is resolved by “fair argument.”
While in “The Rioters” the didactic dialogue revolves primarily around the
knowledge/ignorance axis, and the conversations in “The Turn-out” tone down the heavy-handed
didacticism, in the Illustrations Martineau reflects further on her ideal of a fair dialogue. In “A
Manchester Strike,” unlike in “The Rioters,” the lines between knowledge and ignorance no
longer neatly follow the class lines. If in “The Rioters,” the middle-class narrator represents

16

Given Martineau’s interest equally in the content of her fictional conversations and their
setting, the scene of Henry’s encountering a stranger in a carriage is quite peculiar.
Transportation becomes not only a space of closer mixing between classes or a space of a
temporary suspension of one’s class position, but also a space where a sense of a nation
(consisting of strangers who are now becoming increasingly connected) comes to the fore. The
dynamics of a conversation between strangers seem to be appealing to Martineau as she portrays
Henry and the Derby hosier engaged in a mutually stimulating dialogue.
58

knowledge and the working-class Bretts represent ignorance, in this other tale about Manchester
the middle-class Wentworth and the working-class Allen are the ones who talk sense as opposed
to the rest whose politics are self-destructive and illiterate from the perspective of political
economy. While didacticism still supports the overall framework of the tale, Martineau seems to
be much more interested in the process of negotiation rather than indoctrination. In this regard,
her shift from a first-person narration in “The Rioters” to a third-person narration in “The Turnout” and “A Manchester Strike” is symptomatic of her desire to take a detached stance on
opposing views without privileging one middle-class perspective over others as it happens in
“The Rioters.”
In the various discussion scenes of “A Manchester Strike,” Martineau wants to imagine
possibilities either for consensus or polemics that would separate reasonable points from
nonsense. But the expected consensus between Wentworth and Allen does not usher in a new
happy world. The narrative dramatizes a sharp contrast between its “sanguine” tone, Martineau’s
optimistic belief in the harmonizing forces of political economy, on one hand, and the grim
reality of Allen’s social condition, on the other (Gallagher 61). While a big part of her optimism
comes from her conviction that the economic interests of masters and men are identical, another
part of this optimism has to do with her conviction that an honest reciprocal dialogue can turn
things around. A kind of “plain speaking” (189), as Allen once puts it, becomes for Martineau an
important element that is an important supplement to her political-economic principles. While
we already see glimpses of “plain speaking” demonstrated by a “plain” man in “The Rioters,” it
becomes more prominent in “A Manchester Strike.” The ideal of “plain speaking” emerges in “A
Manchester Strike” as something that is not wholly reduced to the economic principles, yet
something that is a means to implementing her politico-economic world. Although her

59

“Summary of Principles Illustrated in This Volume” does not touch upon “plain speaking,” I
suggest that in the tale itself Martineau becomes an advocate of a practice of “plain speaking”
that could take place between such worthy agents as Allen and Wentworth—but which ironically
forecloses on this ideal in the end.
Tension floats in the Manchester air when the Trade Union’s members decide to produce
a petition to the masters for a public meeting in order to demand equalization of wages. A
popularity-hungry Union leader Clack is the mastermind of the preparations for the strike. The
Spread-Eagle, a local pub, becomes a place of debates and a headquarters from which Clack
wants to coordinate the actions of the Union members. If for Clack a strike is a matter of revenge
against the masters, Allen looks at it as a necessary evil “in defence of the rights of the workingman” (145). The deputies from the Union (Clack, Taylor, and Gibson) decide to collect
employers’ signatures on their petition but have little luck collecting them, except for Mr.
Wentworth’s. In addition to his signature, however, Wentworth gives the deputies an expository
talk about the interdependence of wages and the supply of labor. Allen is elected by the
operatives to become the Chair of their Committee thanks to his abilities to “express himself
with moderation in speech, and with ease on paper” (165). The negotiations between the masters
and the operatives, however, result in “no progress made” (170). Meanwhile, Allen’s daughter
Martha, sick from cotton dust at the factory, witnesses the beginning of a strike. While Allen
solicits support of the strike from outside regions, he also becomes frustrated with the “illnatured tittle-tattle” (181) that the Committee breeds as well as Clack’s jealousy of his position.
There follows another failure to achieve a compromise, when Allen’s “tete-a-tete” conversation
with the cowardly Mr. Rowe falls through.

60

The tale proceeds to feature Mr. Wentworth’s speeches to the workers on the detriment of
a strike, on the preventive check to make the economic crises less damaging to their families, and
on the connection between the supply of labor and the rate of wages. Like Allen, Wentworth
enjoys respect from the workers. Meanwhile, Allen’s family’s destitution forces Allen to sell
Martha’s bird Billy. The turn-out runs out of funding, and a decision is reached: the masters will
pay the medium wages, while the workers promise “their peaceable adherence to the Union”
(112). But Allen is a “marked man in Manchester” (211) now with no chance of obtaining work.
Wentworth explains to Allen that he cannot offer him employment because he is not employing
as many people as he used to. Allen—“the leader of an unsuccessful strike” (215)—ends up
working as a street-sweeper. Martineau concludes with a compelling question that further
underlines the discrepancy between the tale’s grim content and her optimistic tone:

17

“When will

masters and men work cheerfully together for their common good, respect instead of proscribing
each other, and be equally proud to have such men as Wentworth and William Allen of their
fellowship?” (215). Thus Wentworth and Allen—who would be ideal candidates to model a
dialogue of reconciliation between the employers and the operatives—can hardly celebrate the
laws of political economy together.
The scenes of political discussion in A Manchester Strike (whether it is Clack instigating
the Union members for a strike, Allen pressing against Mr. Rowe’s cowardliness, or Mr.
Wentworth explaining the intricacies of the free market to the Union delegates) represent a
synthesis of abstract laws and an embodied face-to-face encounter. On the one hand, Martineau’s
characters represent generic types—such as a self-interested employer (Rowe), an employer with
a sound knowledge of political economy (Wentworth), an operative who defends the workers’
17

See Catherine Gallagher The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction: Social Discourse and
Narrative Form, 1832-1867 (51-61).
61

rights, but also understands the mechanisms of the market (Allen), or a populist instigator
(Clack). No wonder her characters seemed “flat” to a lot of her contemporary reviewers. But in
Martineau’s Illustrations the inner psychological depths do not matter when characters are little
more than effects of the workings of abstract laws. In a note to A Manchester Strike, she writes:
“The author hopes that as she has no acquaintance with any one firm, master, or workman in
Manchester, she will be spared the imputation of personality. Her personages are all
abstractions” (139). Martineau defines her characters as “abstractions” perhaps to better employ
them in demonstrating abstract laws. Her disclaimer in part excuses her fiction from the
aspiration of realism for character development and in part elevates the characters’ discussions to
a sphere of abstract principles. But while her characters are disembodied generalities, the tale
puts a peculiar emphasis on the embodied intimacy of a face-to-face dialogue.
Indeed, the abstract laws of political economy rely on the level of everyday face-to-face
dialogue. It is Allen’s “moderation in speech” and “ease on paper” (165) and Wentworth’s
“argumentative manner of speaking” (199)—practical skills of everyday practice rather than
abstract laws—that earn them public (and Martineau’s) respect. Martineau arranges a “tete-atete” meeting between Allen and Mr. Rowe to give them a chance, although slim, of mutual
understanding. For Martineau, the dynamics of face-to-face political discussions in the everyday
context seem to be a necessary medium where her abstract laws are articulated, circulated,
explained, and understood. For Martineau as a popularizer of economic theory, everyday
discussion becomes extremely important because understanding (the light-bulb moment)
happens only through everyday speech. In and of itself, everyday speech does not guarantee
understanding and consensus. In fact, all the characters in the tale have access to everyday
speech (except for Elliott who chooses to withdraw from communication with the Union

62

deputies), but only Wentworth and Allen can come really close to initiating these moments of
understanding with others. Their communicative abilities are closely related to the integrity of
their character. And yet, none of the tale’s conversations are transformative, and in the end the
Manchester world is as socially polarized and economically hostile as ever. Against this grim
backdrop, Martineau still does not give up hope capturing the possibilities of the everyday
political discussion through her narrative. Martineau thus intuits the same link between narrative
and the everyday as the one theorized by Michel de Certeau who writes, “ ‘stories’ provide the
decorative container of a narrativity for everyday practices” ( The Practice of Everyday Life 70).
William Allen’s arguments are those of moderation and common interests. Throughout
discussions with the operatives and the mill-owners, he seems to share the perspective of both
the workers who want to defend their living conditions and the mill-owners who have to take the
necessary measures triggered by the laws of the market. In Allen’s words, “both parties are so
necessary to each other” (145)—a belief that Martineau held fast to. His statements produce an
instant harmonization and elicit unanimous agreement. For example, at the Spread-Eagle pub,
Allen responds to Clack’s spiteful speeches with an argument that while any strike is an evil, it is
reasonable to defend workers’ rights, not take revenge. This logic instantly unites the people
around as “[s]o many agreed in this opinion” (145). Allen seems to be able to articulate those
ideas that people are already in tune with, even though they have not managed to articulate them
first. In other words, Allen speaks their minds. The “debaters” (147), as Martineau calls them,
automatically lean towards Allen’s reasoning, when given a choice between Allen’s moderation
and Clack’s retaliatory discourse.
Clack is a different kind of popular leader. Whatever Clack undertakes in his campaign
against the masters seems caricatured and ranges from a lack of thorough reasoning to selfish

63

hubris and thirst for popularity. Martineau paints a humorous image of Clack’s presiding in the
Union Committee at the Spread-Eagle pub and feeling “big with importance” (149): “Having a
very high opinion of his own powers of persuasion, and being confident of his knowledge of law,
he wanted to be everywhere at once, and to guide all the movements of the people he employed”
(149). In spite of Clack’s important post in the Union, his antagonistic attitudes and warinstigating moves are restrained by a few with more sound opinions. For Clack, an obvious way
out of the crisis is a war against the masters, rather than tedious negotiations between masters
and operatives: “he would have proclaimed war against the masters at once, and the turn-out
would have begun on the Monday morning: but there were a few soberer folks than himself
engaged in the consultation [. . .]” (152). When three Union deputies, including self-appointed
Clack, appeal to Mr. Rowe to sign their petition for a public meeting, Clack’s confrontational
tone is counterbalanced by Gibson’s peaceful propositions:
“[. . .] there is more than one kind of peace. The masters have called it peace
when they had all their own way, and their men were cowed by the law and dared
not openly resist. The men call it peace when the two parties have confidence in
each other, and make a cordial agreement, and keep to it. This is what we want at
the present time.”
So said Gibson, whose turn it was to be spokesman; but Clack could not help
putting in his word.
“And if either party refuses peace, you know, sir, the next thing is war.”
“O, no war!” said Mr. Rowe. “A cordial agreement, as you say, is the right thing.
(154)

64

Here the workers are interested not so much in political economy, but in an ethical notion of
“peace.” By “peace” Gibson seems to imply not so much a kind of economic equilibrium, but an
ethical stance of mutual recognition. In this dialogue, Martineau contrasts the logic of “war” to
that of “a cordial agreement” to show just how volatile could be the tip of the scale without
commitment to a fair argument.
But while the dialogue can turn just as easily into antagonistic polemics as into a mutual
agreement, even a bigger problem arises when the very possibility for negotiation is stymied.
The three Union deputies fail to get signatures for a public meeting, except for Mr. Wentworth’s.
This blank and soiled petition (contemptuously thrown by Mr. Elliott into the mud) speaks
louder than words about the obstructed dialogue between the masters and the workers. As
Gibson believes, “the soiled paper would tell part of their story better than they could tell it
themselves” (156). The blankness of the sheet epitomizes not only economic, but most
obviously communicative crisis between the two classes. The lonely signature by Wentworth
shows up on paper as an outcome of a respectful discussion between him and the deputies.
Wentworth’s welcome of the deputies is different from that given by Rowe, Mortimer, and
Elliott in significant ways. Rowe is set on his “escape” (154) hoping that he can avoid being
noticed by the deputies; Mortimer shows clear signs of inhospitality judging by “[h]ow coolly he
looked over the letter he took from his clerk” (155); and Elliott’s interaction with them is
similarly scarce of face-to-face dialogue as he first “glanced his eye over it [the petition] as well
as the restlessness of his horse would permit” (156) and then “pranced down the street without
bestowing another look or word upon them” (156). Wentworth’s reception, in turn, suggests
hospitality and consideration: “He looked steadily at them from under his shaggy eyebrows
while they explained their business, and then took the petition to look over” (157). This moment

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of face-to-face encounter ensures an amicable, collaborative tone for the discussion between
Wentworth and the three deputies.
Martineau assembles Wentworth’s communicative qualities in such a way as to
emphasize what it really takes to have a productive discussion. She contrasts what can be called
his speech defect to his lucid arguments so as to show that well-articulated ideas do not
necessarily have to be coated in well-articulated sounds. Moreover, the one who is willing to
listen will somehow understand Wentworth. Wentworth is described as
not much given to talk, and when he did speak, causing some surprise and
weariness to strangers by the drawling twang of his speech. Those who knew him
well, however, had rather hear his voice than any music; [. . .]. There was, to be
sure, no need for so many words from him as from other people, for he practiced a
great variety of inarticulate sounds, the meaning of which was well understood by
those accustomed to converse with him, and deserved all the purposes of a reply.
(157)
Wentworth has the ability to be understood and to speak sense even in spite of his speech that
may seem at first as “murmurings and cluttering” (157). The mechanics of language cannot be in
the way of Wentworth’s ability of plain speaking. The ideal of plain speaking begins to surface
in the tale as a kind of medium that always leads to mutual understanding, resolution, and
agreement. By raising a question as to what counts as a comprehensible argument, Martineau
suggests that even Wentworth’s inarticulate sounds should have a place in the public sphere.
Martineau’s meticulous attention to Wentworth’s voice seems to turn him into a voice only, thus
taking away an aspect of his face-to-face interaction with his interlocutors. Wentworth’s lecture
on political economy to the three deputies heightens this duality: on the one hand, we know that

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this is a face-to-face encounter, but on the other, Wentworth’s voice becomes a pure logical
argument, a voice only, rather than an embodied person. This paradox seems to lie at the core of
how Martineau’s fiction blends abstract theory and everyday lived experience.
Arguably, for Wentworth, what matters besides the principles of political economy is the
economy of face-to-face recognition. Part of the crisis, according to Wentworth, lies in that the
masters and the men “have not learned to look steadily in honest faces” (164). Wentworth does
not take up Clack’s methodology of revenge and “war.” Instead, Wentworth’s politics of
considering “the interests of all” (164) align more readily with Allen’s convictions about the two
classes being “necessary” (145) for one another. Wentworth’s “argumentative manner of
speaking” is represented in the tale as perhaps the most promising political tactic. During a
public meeting with the men, Wentworth’s mode of reasoning quickly gains respect. The
workers value Wentworth’s fresh views more than their own working-class leadership:
Some of them had become a little tired of the weekly meetings at which their
orators had said the same things over and over again, and were pleased to be
reasoned with by one whom they esteemed, and to obtain, by these means, a
better insight into their affairs than was given them by leaders who were all of one
party. (199)
Martineau entertains here a possibility for an inclusive democratic discussion. She places value
on the expediency of one’s argument regardless of one’s social attributes. What she is after is a
standard of impartial argumentation that lies beyond party spirit. This universal standard of
“plain speaking” seems to ruffle the social hierarchy because it can be obtained by anyone from
the working-class Allen to the middle-class Wentworth.

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Both Wentworth and Allen perform the role of “peacemakers” (174) coming from the
two opposing sides. The similarities in their reasoning imply Martineau’s conviction that from
any social position one can agree with a reasonable argument. But antagonism prevails between
the classes, and with “no chance of coming to any agreement” (174), the Manchester strike
commences. It soon becomes apparent for Allen (as the leader of the strike) that the strike in and
of itself breeds sentiments that perpetuate conflict rather than search for a reconciliation. The
epicenter of such ill talk is the Union Committee itself: “He knew enough of such Committees to
believe that ill-natured tittle-tattle was particularly apt to find its way into them, and that quarrels
between masters and men were often kept up by these means long after they would naturally
have died out” (181). He feels indignant about the narrow-mindedness of the party spirit that
reigns among the workers:
[. . .] it vexed him to the heart to hear evil motives assigned for every proposition
which did not please the people. He often said to himself that it must be a very
different thing to sit in a committee of gentlemen where opinions are treated as
opinions, (i.e., as having no moral qualities, and to be accepted or rejected
according to their expediency,) and in a committee of persons who expose their
deficiencies of education by calling all unkind or foolish who differ from
themselves” (181).
Martineau creates an idealized picture of a gentlemen’s circle where ideas are purified from their
social context and treated in a disinterested and unbiased manner by the measure of
“expediency.” The workers’ “gossip,” “misrepresentations and scornful sayings” (181) about the
masters undermine the standard of plain speaking that Allen adheres to and a steady look in the
face that Wentworth believes in. Through Allen’s indignation, Martineau seems to express her

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own feelings about the factors that are incompatible with plain speaking. Interestingly, for her, it
is such rigid social markers as “gentlemen” and “education” that can assure this allegedly
universal model of discussion. The problem here is that “gentlemen” like Mr. Rowe fall short of
this ideal, whereas the working-class character Allen can fully comprehend and acknowledge the
“committee of gentlemen” as an ideal.
In fact, the contrast between Allen and Rowe appears stark in the chapter “A Teté-aTeté.” Allen puts forth his way of plain speaking against Rowe’s equivocations:
“Just tell me plainly,” said Allen, “since you seem to like plain speaking: will you
yourself make a concession about raising the wages to a middle point, if we yield
some of our demands of equal importance?”
“Why, you see,” replied Rowe, edging his chair closer, and filling Allen’s glass,
“I don’t want to come forward the first in this kind of thing.” (189)
The promising title of the chapter turns out to be a complete frustration of Martineau’s hopes for
face-to-face open dialogue because Allen and Rowe do not share the same commitment to plain
speaking. In the tale, the dividing line between those like Allen who insist on openness and those
like Rowe who are embroiled in self-interested artifice or those like Clack who see war as the
only expedient seems to be just as crucial as the economic line dividing Manchester into masters
and men.
One of Allen’s strongest appeals for an open dialogue takes place during his address to
the Union upon his recent election to lead the strike. His integrity manifests itself in that “His
address was in natural accordance with the feelings which had just passed through his mind”
(165). While Allen speaks openly and wins agreement from the workers, what is interesting
about his address is that he offers two alternatives as to how political communication may

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unfold. For him, a “battle” and an agreement between masters and men are the two options
between which he feels incompetent to make a choice. Allen speaks as follows:
There may be some method yet unknown by which the interests of all may be
reconciled; if so, by union we must discover it. But if, indeed, interests must
continue to be opposed, if bread must be fought for, and the discord of men must
for ever be contrasted with the harmony of nature, let the battle be as fair as
circumstances will allow. (168)
Allen, who can speak in such a way that most of the listeners would agree with his reasoning and
who acts as a peacemaker by uniting everybody’s interests, seems to be surprisingly vague about
achieving a harmonious agreement between men. Perhaps his indecisiveness as to which path to
take leads him to his pitiable state in the end. He fails due to his lack of persistence in
discovering this “method yet unknown.”
The end of the story depicts a drab reality of Allen’s street-sweeping job and leaves some
wish that “masters and men work cheerfully together for their common good” (215). This wish,
however, is precisely what Martineau fails to illustrate through her narrative. Strikingly
unsatisfactory and hopeless is the last conversation between Allen and Wentworth. Although
Allen understands that Wentworth cannot give him a job, there is something amiss about this
agreement and harmony. The world of Manchester seems to be as polarized as before, and the
unrelenting laws of political economy make the moments of “plain speaking” bitter-sweet. In
spite of such a grim conclusion in “A Manchester Strike,” Martineau keeps coming back to
“plain speaking” in other tales. For example, a thematically similar tale “The Loom and the
Lugger” (which addresses the problems of contraband French silk and free trade among
countries) features a more optimistic scene of “plain speaking” in the conclusion. Mr. Culver, a

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local silk manufacturer, and M. Gaubion, a French silk-manufacturer who settles in England,
arrive at an amicable agreement that the laws of free trade and fair competition are beneficial to
all sides. Importantly, this is not a melodramatic scene of sympathetic feeling or a tearful
embrace between the two. What is at work here is rather a kind of impetus towards a democratic
process of argumentation that results in a mutual consensus. “Plain speaking” remains the source
of Martineau’s optimism. Audaciously skipping the gap between the problematic reality and the
laws of political economy, Martineau’s text suggests a sure hope that mutual happiness in a free
trade world would be possible in the future if only people availed themselves of the power of
“plain speaking.” If so, it would be more accurate to say that Martineau popularizes the economy
of “plain speaking” that should come before and lay ground for political economy. If the latter
could be summed up in tracts and pamphlets, it is the former that insists more urgently on the
form of a narrative.
Martineau’s nonfiction essays add more nuances to the culture of argumentation that she
fleshes out in her fiction. She sets a high standard for discussion when she writes, “we should
argue accurately or not at all” (Miscellanies 64). While Martineau is a believer in arguing
“accurately,” she is conscious of the difficulties that language as a medium of communication
entails. At one point, for instance, she notes:
Language is far from being a perfect mode of communication. We have more
ideas than words, and the same word, therefore, must often express more ideas
than one; and a proposition which may be perfectly true when the word bears one
sense, may be false if the meaning be changed. Artful reasoners take advantage of
this imperfection of language to mislead the unwary; and careless reasoners are
themselves led astray by it. (Miscellanies 84)

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Language is a double-edged sword that can either open up an avenue for understanding or
become an instrument of manipulation. She keeps coaching us in plain speaking: “If conducting
an argument in conversation, it is absolutely necessary to ascertain that both disputants
understand the meaning of the terms employed by each. It is irritating and humbling to the mind
to ascertain, on arriving at some false conclusion, that the truth has been missed through the
imperfection of the instrument [language] employed to obtain it; but few misfortunes are more
common, as the experience of every young logician can attest” (109). Without artifice and with
due awareness of the nature of the medium, Martineau’s speakers strive to become “reasoners”
empowered by “plain speaking.” It is the personal integrity of characters like William Allen, Mr.
Wentworth, or M. Gaubion and Mr. Culver that ensures that language be employed for mutual
understanding, and hence common good. As Dallas Liddle convincingly shows, Martineau’s
beliefs about writing evolved over time as she was exploring different writing genres.

18

If so, her

Miscellanies seem to recap well her beliefs about discussion, which she adhered to in the
previous decade while composing her first tales on political economy and Illustrations.
Just as the laws of political economy constitute, for Martineau, a harmonious universe, so
do the laws of “Conversation” create their own economy. Her tales integrate the two economies
together and create a matrix where the economy of “the production and distribution of the
necessaries and comforts of life” (“Preface”) is invigorated by the economy of production and
distribution of conversations among men. The similarities between Martineau’s thinking about

18

Liddle’s analysis of Martineau’s Autobiography (1855) demonstrates that it should be read not
as her best attempt at documenting the facts of her life, but as an attempt to fashion herself and
her ideals about writing that she shared at the time of its composition. Liddle shows that by
implying her “intellectual liberty and public obedience, her innocence of all premeditation,
manipulativeness, and careerism,” Martineau in fact adhered to the ideals of mid-Victorian
journalism (The Dynamics of Genre 56).
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the circulation of material goods (political economy) and the circulation of “intellectual wealth”
are striking:
Some of the best advantages of this and of all the other methods of improvement
which we have suggested may be secured by Conversation, if well conducted. Not
only may truth be gradually drawn out by argument, and substantiated by a
laborious application of facts, but by means of the intellectual excitements and
moral influences which are brought into play by conversation, the circulation of
intellectual wealth is indefinitely accelerated, the reasoning power receives a new
impulse, the suggestions of the imagination become more lively, and its
illustrations more appropriate. (111)
It is important that in this universe of “intellectual wealth” every individual is a creative and
critical participant. Martineau does not commend passive recipients of knowledge, and in doing
so puts in question the authoritarian mode of didacticism. She writes, “If we passively adopt the
opinions we meet in books, or remember the facts they relate without any endeavor to reflect
upon them, or to judge of their relation to other facts, we might almost as well not read at all. We
may gain knowledge, such as it is; but, at the same time, that knowledge will impede instead of
strengthening the operations of our intellects, and the load of facts will lie like a heavy weight,
under which the motions of the reasoning power will become more and more feeble, till at length
they stop [. . .]” (98). She must have envisioned that her own works, like the Illustrations, ought
to be received in this way. Rather than spoon-feeding political economy-“lite” to passive
consumers of reading matter, Martineau extrapolates a practice of critical dialogue from her tales
to her larger readership, perhaps opening up the very principles of political economy for
discussion. Therefore, one should be careful in qualifying her fiction as didactic. It seems that

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her goal was not so much to impose her own opinion on her audience but rather to resonate as an
“impulse” for “the reasoning power” that would effect social change in the British society.
Did Martineau herself achieve the ideals which she so passionately adhered to in her
writing? A proponent of arguing “accurately or not at all,” Martineau paradoxically crafted her
philosophy on contradictory tenets, such as her Utilitarian belief in the greatest happiness for the
greatest numbers, on one hand, and laissez faire individualism, on the other. She perhaps failed
to subject some of her own opinions to the full extent of a rigorous argument. Her biographer
Valerie Kossew Pichanick characterizes the inconsistencies in Martineau’s philosophy as
follows: “If she had ever permitted herself to carry all her arguments to their inevitable
conclusions then she would have been forced to admit the contradictions in her philosophy, but
Martineau did not permit her conflicting opinions to disturb each other; and her contradictions
and discrepancies notwithstanding, there was, paradoxically enough, a basic consistency in her
philosophy” (198). Martineau revised her ideas during her lifetime

19

and gravitated towards the

ideas that she could find more reasonable ground for, as was the case with her evolution from
Unitarianism to positivism. But paradoxically, she could be quite stubborn in believing in
something that defied rational evidence, such as was her belief in healing by mesmerism even
after her abdominal tumor came back. No argument could have a forced power over her if it went
against her convictions. It is a fact, after all, that this strong-headed woman would “sometimes
put down her ear trumpet when the discussion began to move in an unwelcome direction” (Greg
cited in Pichanick 241). But this does not make Martineau less of a spokeswoman for “plain
speaking.” Rather, the opposite. It is because Martineau put forth the ideal that she herself would

19

Valerie Pichanick describes the evolution of Martineau’s views: “Her early fundamentalism
gave way to necessarianism, her Unitarianism surrendered to positivism, and even her laissez
fairism was eventually subject to substantial qualification” (241).
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oftentimes discard or fall short of that makes her own argument for “plain speaking,” if not
always logical, compelling.
As a popularizer of political economy, Martineau synthesized her ideas into something
distinct from the original theory. The preoccupation with human behavior and self-interested
action, which prevails in the work of Adam Smith, evolves into the preoccupation with
discussion as an alternative to violent action in Martineau’s tales. Unlike Smith who builds his
theory of self-interest as a given of human behavior, she employs the powers of conversation to
transform individuals’ behavior and to foreground her economic principles on the discursive
practice. It is the narrative form specifically that allows her to illustrate the everyday practice of
face-to-face political discussion and show the connection between the economy of words and
political economy. Shifting from first to third person narration, from moralizing lectures to more
equal dialogues, and from a central conversation that runs throughout the story to a network of
discussions, Martineau elaborates on a culture of political discussion guided by fair argument
and plain speaking. Her intentions to imagine an equal and fair dialogue, however, in some ways
work against the hierarchical moralizing frame of all her tales and her project to popularize a set
of unquestionable principles. She carefully calibrates the space for discussion and disagreement
in her tales only to contrive a magical point at which discussion stops and neatly flows into a
summary of principles (predetermined by Martineau from the start). What seems to emerge as a
result is an awkward blueprint for a public sphere predicated upon deliberation geared towards
consensus. With the summary of principles always already awaiting in the end, her tales are
unable to represent either an ongoing or freely evolving discussion. Martineau seems somewhat
anxious about too much discussion which may destabilize her political-economic system.
However instrumental the conversations are for building consensus around the principles of

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political economy, Martineau also comes close to realizing how subversive unregulated
discussion could be for her principles. That she is an advocate of laissez-faire does not prevent
Martineau from creating a planned economy of arguments. In contradiction to her attempts to
create a free and fair competition of arguments, she narrates a static universe ruled by
unquestionable laws and immune from the vicissitudes of discussion.

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CHAPTER 2
A “DUTY TO ENTER ALL SOCIETIES”: DISCUSSION AMONG STRANGERS IN
BENJAMIN DISRAELI’S SYBIL

If Harriet Martineau utilizes her tales to popularize the principles of political economy,
Benjamin Disraeli upholds his novel Sybil as a kind of manifesto of the Young England program.
But if Martineau’s principles can be clearly summarized, Disraeli chooses a different approach to
convey his politics, one that does not rely on precise formulations. Instead, the Young England
program is communicated to his readers through a series of images that give expression to his
ideal of a pre-Reformation England, yet resist mechanical definitions. This chapter examines
how Disraeli mobilizes the communicative potential of images and symbols in Sybil and
elaborates a culture of political discussion centered on the kinds of understanding that can be
derived from metaphorical, not rationalistic procedural thinking. To this end, Disraeli activates
certain qualities that he recognizes about fiction prose to create a distinct kind of political novel.
I begin with arguing that Disraeli turns to the genre of the novel because he sees its traits, such as
imaginativeness, metaphoricity, and vagueness, to be optimal vehicles for his own political
thinking. I proceed to examine how he employs the image in fiction. Specifically, I discuss his
notion of history in Sybil and show that it operates as a compact image that becomes a part of his
political vision. Similarly, the space of the Marney Abbey metaphorically stands for Disraeli’s
idealized England, and the absence of Charles Egremont’s speech in the House, essentially the
Young England manifesto, operates as an empty, yet ever appealing symbol for Disraeli’s
movement. I also suggest that Disraeli’s culture of discussion centers not merely on a string of

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images, but on discussion among strangers that these images create a shared space for. In my
attempt to recover Disraeli from a stigma of a crafty manipulator and a mastermind of false
consciousness, I suggest that his views on political discussion expose the pitfalls of excessive
rationalism, like that of political economists, and point to new ways of understanding and the
possibilities of arriving at consensus that are perhaps unachievable through the means of
rational-critical debate.
Just as Harriet Martineau’s economy of “plain speaking” in her tales comes in full view
when considered alongside her political economy, so does Benjamin Disraeli’s vision of a public
sphere in his novels find itself in a complex relationship with his politics outside of fiction. I call
this relationship complex because reviewers and scholars have passed judgment on Disraeli-thenovelist and Disraeli-the-politician in quite divergent ways. Some contend that fiction was an
organic stepping stone for developing his political ideas. Michael Flavin, for example, argues:
“Disraeli’s novels are the site on which he produced and developed the ideas which informed his
political creed” (1). Similarly, others call Disraeli’s Young England trilogy “a testing ground for
his political and moral philosophy” (Schwarz “Disraeli’s Romanticism” 64). Thom Braun,
however, views this relationship between Disraeli’s fiction and politics as more problematic.
Although Disraeli’s “artistic integrity often had a healthy independence of his political views,”
Braun notes that “it is also true that much of his writing was political, in that it was so often
unashamedly manipulative in the way it interpreted life” (Disraeli the Novelist 146). An
acclaimed originator of the genre of a “political novel,” Disraeli at the same time would not be
immune to criticism that “[t]he two elements, the novelistic and the political, never fuse” (Escott
Fraser’s Magazine 9.52 1874, 525). Considering the relationship between Disraeli’s fiction and
political philosophy either as a straightforward connection or a troubling combination seems to

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be a simplified approach. Rather, I suggest that, for Disraeli, there is something endemic to
fiction that resonates directly with the innermost mechanisms of his political thinking. To
examine Disraeli’s novel writing with this premise will not tell us, of course, what is so distinct
about the genre of the novel per se, but it would be extremely suggestive if we want to know
what Disraeli himself wanted to see in this genre. Thus, Disraeli takes recourse to writing novels
not only to reach a wide audience, but also because he recruits the genre of fiction to serve as a
vital medium for the enactment of his political vision.
Disraeli’s contemporary reviewers and current critics have pointed to the vagueness of
his political vision and hence the impotence of his novels in relation to the realm of practical
politics. To be sure, Disraeli earned this reputation not unjustly. His aphoristic political
statements impressed in the public mind vivid images of the nation, history, and religion, rather
than constructed long chains of logical causalities. Leslie Stephen commented on Disraeli’s
creed that “[t]o grasp its precise meaning, or to determine the precise amount of earnestness with
which it is set forth, is of course hopeless. Its essence is to be mysterious, and half the preacher’s
delight is in tantalizing his disciples” (Fortnightly 432), adding that “Disraeli had something to
say, and [. . .] unluckily that something was a mere nothing” (440). Another critic observed that
in Coningsby, for example, the path of regeneration of England “is not quite cleared up”
(Examiner 307). Scholars have carried this trend on. Daniel Schwarz underscores the vague,
impractical endings of the Young England novels where it is not clear just “how such necessary
political changes as the revival of a strong monarchy and of an independent responsible
aristocracy will take place” (Disraeli’s Fiction 102). Others similarly pointed to his novels’
“fervour, enthusiasm, faith, impracticability and, above all, vagueness” (Braun Disraeli the
Novelist 92), his lack of “inclination, and perhaps capacity, for the elaboration of systematic

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argument”

20

(Richmond and Smith “Introduction” 14), and his novels being “incoherent about

the work to be done” (Colón 50).
What has been considered as a flaw of his novels or lack of “capacity” to argue clearly is,
in fact, an integral principle of Disraeli’s political design and consensus-building. Rather than
founding his vision of a public sphere on dry rationalism and “systematic argument,” Disraeli
communicates his ideas in images thus suggesting a public sphere where the common
denominator is not the best argument, but a shared image created through words. This is why the
genre of the novel is uniquely accommodating of his politics. In opposition to the commonplace
perception of Disraeli’s fiction, I develop an alternative interpretation, which is not just more
sympathetic or flattering, but is more insightful about what Disraeli actually brings into the
contested arena of Victorian cultures of political discussion. The novels do not cloud his political
ideas, but instead mobilize the agency of a unifying image. Articulating his political vision
through images, Disraeli capitalizes on their constructive vagueness. His images bring about
cohesion and expose the limits of excessive polemical rationalism, which falls short of
expanding and sustaining consensus over differences of opinion.
The fact that the Young England manifesto appeared in the form of fiction stems from
implicit connections between Disraeli’s political philosophy, the genre, and the kind of
circulation and consumption this genre entailed. The author’s choice was a deliberate one: “It
was not originally the intention of the writer to adopt the form of fiction as the instrument to
scatter his suggestions, but, after reflection, he resolved to avail himself of a method which, in

20

Smith maintains his argument in his book on Disraeli’s life, commenting that the
proclamations of future change in Coningsby and Sybil were “more uncertain than they sounded”
(66) whereas Tancred offers even a more emblematic example of vagueness by dwindling into
“lack of conclusion” (89). See Smith, Paul. Disraeli: A Brief Life. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996.
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the temper of the times, offered the best chance of influencing opinion” (“Preface to the Fifth
Edition” vii-viii). Although coming from a perspective different from Disraeli’s, even his
harshest critics agreed on the fact that the novel was his only option as far as his attempt to
revamp flagging Toryism: “Toryism, as Mr. Disraeli conceives it, is not an historical, or a
scientific, but an historic-romantic policy. [. . .] It has no principles, no laws, no rules, no
organization. How then is it to be recommended except in the non-scientific form of the novel? It
is a mere question of sentiment, of loyalty, of fanaticism. [. . .] Views vast and perplexed,
indefinable to one’s-self, inexplicable to others, find themselves on all sides imprisoned by any
fixed order” (“The Repentance” North British Review 489). As much as the reviewer
disparagingly discards Disraeli’s politics alongside its “non-scientific” form of expression, so
does he point to what fiction becomes under Disraeli’s pen. The novel for Disraeli is not an
encyclopedia of empirical knowledge or an exercise in inductive reasoning, but instead a mode
for an altogether different kind of insight. Ironically, the novel here is construed as a medium
that conveys the “indefinable,” the “inexplicable,” the incommunicable. Because the review
locates Disraeli’s politics outside of the public sphere predicated on rational-critical debate, his
claims are labeled essentially incommunicable and incomprehensible. If only “historical” or
“scientific” politics fall within the limits of what is communicable, Disraeli’s vision falls short of
this standard. Disraeli, though, seems to have a different standard in mind when representing in
his novels something that could not be expressed in terms of rational-critical debate. Besides
highlighting the perceived flaws of Disraeli’s politics, this critique, conversely, conveys the
problems Disraeli had with rationalism.
Because, for Disraeli, novels offer an optimal medium of communicating something that
is incomprehensible within “scientific” forms, he concentrates on their imaginative qualities. The

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political novel as a form provided for him a stronghold against rampant rationalism. As Disraeli
famously remarks, “Imagination governs Mankind” (“The Mutilated Diary” 447). His politics,
too, were governed by imagination. Disraeli’s flight of fancy and the analytical spirit of the age
lay on the opposite ends of the scales. Yet, in defining Disraeli’s power of imagination in
opposition to rationalism, some critics believed in cooperation between the two modes of
thought:
Mr. Disraeli is not a man of argument, but of wit; his fancy is more powerful than
his reason; he is only half a philosopher, having the imagination that is an element
of that character, but wanting the corrective presence of causality [. . .] that is
essential to its perfection. Hence it is that he seldom reaches more than half a
truth. His imagination suggests new and large views of things, but he is unable to
track them backward, and define their limits and their sources; or onward, and
pursue them to their consequences. He must be content to leave his duty to others
having less of the creative faculty he enjoys, and more of the reasoning faculty he
wants; and content he ought to be even to point the way to an end which all must
anxiously desire, although to others must be committed of practically conducting
society to the goal he has indicated. (“Sybil, or the Two Nations” The Critic 56)
While in the popular view Disraeli comes across as a man of one quality (imagination) and
therefore only “half” the truth, his stance already goes a long way in short-circuiting
rationalism’s complacency that continues to be on the rise throughout the century. The
reviewer’s effort to tell Disraeli his place (“content he ought to be”) among his more analytical
contemporaries is one such manifestation of rationalism’s preeminence. His propensity for
vagueness is recalibrated here into a question of scale and perspective: he commands “large

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views of things,” from where the minutiae are indistinguishable. It is not surprising, then, that a
man of fancy rather than of reason would express his political vision through fiction. If analytic
reasoning and “causality” is to be sacrificed for the sake of a new insight, this is precisely what
Disraeli capitalized on in the trilogy. To be sure, Sybil is far from being an irrational collage of
images; it has a plot-driven form, a sense of progression and unfolding and nicely fits into the
common critical notion of the novel genre. However, I maintain that Disraeli mobilizes some
qualities of the medium he is working with and downshifts others, including the novel’s
preoccupation with causal or empirical thinking. The reviewer notes that his imaginativeness
precludes him to think “backward” and “onward,” that is diachronically. This is important
because in Sybil the narrator posits himself as a historian of sorts relating to us two centuries
obfuscated by the Whig mystifications. As I will show, his sense of historical unfolding indeed
wants a diachronical dimension. As a result, Disraeli’s sense of history becomes flattened-out,
all present at the same time, and so more akin to an image. If so, Disraeli’s gesture of “point[ing]
the way to an end” paradoxically lacks any depth and trajectory, but becomes a gesture towards a
flat image.
In Disraeli’s fiction, a systematic argument yields to, or rather takes the shape of, an
image. Where the sequence of events seems out of joint, the display of images unfolds brilliantly.
I understand Disraeli’s images quite broadly and admit to their heterogeneity, but what interests
me here is that, despite their differences, they all share Disraeli’s non-rationalist way of
expressing and communicating his political ideas. Whether it is the mysterious and captivating
appearance of the “new” “better mind of England” (Coningsby xxix), a nebulous image of the
two “nations” of the rich and the poor followed by the heavenly “female form” of Sybil in “the
vacant and star-lit arch” (Sybil 97), or Egremont’s speech in the House that remains ever a

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mysterious absence in the text, images carry more weight for Disraeli than meticulous chains of
arguments and counter-arguments or even cut-and-dry inventories of facts would. Although he
did glean facts from Blue Books and commissioners’ reports for Sybil, the novel itself is a
complicated blend of his imaginative crafting of political reality and conducting of empirical
observation. As William Monypenny and George Buckle write, “Disraeli had the speculative, a
priori mind which finds pleasure in the exercise of fitting facts to theories; but in the region of
politics and history this type of mind, as long as it is active, flexible, and receptive, is, if not
more likely to arrive at truth, more likely to be illuminating than the other laborious type, often
overpraised, which clings timidly to detail, and shrinks from independent and imaginative flight”
(vol. I 694). Disraeli’s “imaginative flight” and use of image in lieu of argument is not so much
a manipulative tactic of a politician, but rather an alternative way of understanding and crafting
the sphere of political discussion. Although Disraeli had an idiosyncratic style in discussion, he
was an avid advocate of discussion as such. In his speeches he refers to “the spirit of discussion”
as “the principle upon which our society at present depends” (Selected Speeches, v. 2, 13). I want
to recover the culture of discussion in Disraeli’s fiction, specifically Sybil, which has been
dismissed with suspicion or read only as manipulative. To see in Disraeli not a manipulator, but
an advocate of an alternative culture of discussion that offered a viable critique to the dominant
rationalist strain leads to a significant reconsideration of the Victorian public sphere. Besides
reproducing the commonplace accounts of it as a contested ground among various identity
groups, such as workers, women, and other “outsiders,” I hope to bring to light the contested
history of the models organizing the public sphere as such. While some models gained
preeminence and others vanished or survived in part or with modifications, novels of discussion,
of which Sybil is a prominent example, give us glimpses into this turbulent history.

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In addition to using images to foreground or operate within political discussion, the novel
is invested in imagining a specific kind of participant in these discussions. A most intriguing
feature in Disraeli’s trilogy, most vividly Sybil, is that he stages most crucial and revelatory
discussions among strangers. The dynamics of such encounters oftentimes carry a trail of
mystery and romantic fantasy. But what may at first seem fantasy-like in such scenes does not
diminish the extent to which they explore the practical implication of strangehood on the national
and cosmopolitan arenas. Despite his own anti-cosmopolitan political agenda and veneration of
race, Disraeli seems to foreground the advantages of the condition of strangehood among
participants in a dialogue. A face-to-face discursive community of strangers, alluded to in these
two novels, allows Disraeli to negotiate between the embodiedness, intimacy, proximity of a
stranger and the stranger’s ability to bracket social and political attributes and aspire for the
universal truth that would be shared by all in England and beyond. In such scenes, for instance,
an aristocrat acknowledges the views and opinions of one of the People. Their face-to-face
conversation suggests the ethical importance of an interpersonal recognition between human
beings. They remain strangers and know little of one another. Even the clothes they are wearing
are so indeterminate that it suspends their class position. This kind of abstraction from social and
cultural identifiers allows for a certain freedom of exchange as they aspire for the truth about
England’s history and its present condition.
Sybil reflects on the political possibilities of a discursive community of strangers, in
which discussion is predicated on the shared condition of strangehood that neither folds into a
totalizing community of neighbors, nor fractures because of estrangement and
incomprehensibility. In many ways anticipating modern developments of the public sphere, Sybil
aspires to an ideal relationship among strangers where differences of opinion are submerged, yet

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not necessarily eliminated, by the shared image of England à la Tory Democracy. Disraeli’s
Sybil inquires into a new possibility for agency found between a suffocating consensus, on one
hand, and radical estrangement that forecloses a dialogue, on the other. Sybil’s preoccupation
with strangehood also offers a commentary on the novel as a printed medium that implies an
audience where “strangehood is the necessary medium of commonality” (Warner Publics and
Counterpublics 75). While Warner describes strangehood as a necessary condition of modernity,
in Disraeli strangehood comes across as a desirable condition that brings the advantages that
cannot be achieved otherwise. Finally, Disraeli himself enacts the role of a stranger on two
levels: by fashioning his own elusive image to his novels’ readers and by coping with the stigma
of a stranger throughout his entire political career. All in all, I argue that Sybil imagines a model
of discussion in the public sphere that is predicated on consensus-building among strangers by
means of a shared image; this notion provides a critique of the prevalent rationalistic model by
introducing the image as a key agent in consensus-building. At the same time, the novel explores
the condition of strangehood on multiple levels and by doing so gives us insights into
understanding modern condition as such.
To begin my analysis of how Sybil imagines a discussion among strangers and how
images facilitate a fantasy of consensus, it is important to mention Coleridge’s influence on
Disraeli. Critics have linked Disraeli’s politics to Coleridgean symbol. Mary Poovey
characterizes Disraeli’s politics as “noncontestatory, disinterested, and capable of subsuming
opposing positions” (515) and calls them “another version of what Coleridge called the symbol”
(“Disraeli” 515). However, for other critics, it is not a symbol, but an image that seems to be
crucial for understanding Disraeli’s thought. For instance, Paul Smith comments that in his
aspiration to influence people’s “imaginations in a manner that called for the artistic

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orchestration of images rather than the logical exposition of arguments,” Disraeli pursued “a
politics of public relations” of sorts (Disraeli 75). Thus, while exhibiting a pronounced
connection to the Romantic worldview, Disraeli also anticipates in many ways the future
developments of mass democracy and populism. However, the critics’ evocation of both
“symbol” and “image” in describing Disraeli’s work requires further investigation because a
symbol and an image entail different kinds of agency in the context of a public sphere.
While symbol implies a way of understanding that cannot be achieved, for instance,
through reasoning, an image evokes oftentimes manipulation of our feelings, thoughts, and
desires.

21

Then, the question becomes whether Disraeli’s work can be best characterized in terms

of symbols (which intimate a way of understanding) or in terms of images (which at times shortcircuit reflection and draw us closer to mass politics). I argue that in Sybil Disraeli straddles the
line between the two. While promising an organic community based on the sharing of a symbol
21

Coleridge valorizes symbol as a way of understanding: “[. . .] our being is nobler than its
senses, and the man of genius devotes himself to produce by all other means, whether a
statesman, a poet, a painter, a statuary, or a man of science, this same sort of a something which
the mind can know but which it cannot understand, of which understanding can be no more than
the symbol and is only excellent as being the symbol” (Works 8, I, 197). In his famous passage
on the glorification of a symbol over an allegory in The Statesman’s Manual, Coleridge writes
that a symbol “is characterized by a translucence of the Special in the Individual or of the
General in the Especial or of the Universal in the General. Above all by the translucence of the
Eternal through and in the Temporal” (30). A symbol “partakes of the Reality which it renders
intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that Unity, of
which it is the representative” (30). A symbol has a much more meaningful representative
function, for Coleridge, than an image that is but an abstraction from a concrete object which is
perceived through senses21. Unlike an image, a symbol mediates between specificity and
universality, temporality and a-temporality. Moreover, Coleridge suggests that an image may
short-circuit the powers of the human mind and activate animalistic behavior:
“But a moment’s steady self-reflection will shew us, that in the simple determination that ‘Black
is not White’ –or, ‘that two straight lines cannot include a space’—all the powers are implied,
that distinguish Man from Animals—first, the power of reflection—2d. of comparison—3d. and
therefore of suspension of the mind—4th. Therefore of a controlling will, and the power of
acting from notions, instead of mere images exciting appetites; from motives, and not from mere
dark instincts” (Works 4, I, 160). “Mere images” arouse our “appetites” and in doing so render
such faculties as “reflection” unnecessary.
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as the truth (e.g., the idyllic England), Disraeli’s images also foreshadow the populist
mechanisms of consensus. Images in the novel, then, interestingly operate both on the level of
pointing to some kind of transcendental truth and serving quite down-to-earth pragmatic goals of
furthering the Young England program. I suggest that this hybrid quality of Disraeli’s images
positions him neither as a mere manipulator of images, nor as a disinterested voice of truth. What
Disraeli shows us through his use of images is that they are always already implicated in some
practical agenda, but their power can be viewed as something other than merely manufacturing
false consciousness. Rather, his use of images in discussion scenes offers perhaps the only
feasible way to establish consensus among different social interests. Thus, I use the term “image”
in order to highlight its pragmatism (hence the difference from the Coleridgean symbol), but at
the same time to recover a constructive (not necessarily manipulative) agency of “image” (an
agency quite different from just “exciting appetites,” as it is in Coleridge) in Disraeli’s fiction.
As a second part of the Young England trilogy, Sybil intends to portray “the condition of
the people of this country” and provide “some picture of the moral and physical condition of that
people” (“General Preface” viii-ix). The people, for Disraeli, are a foundation for the
development of what he calls “the new and [. . .] better mind of England” (“To Henry Hope.”
“Preface to the Fifth Edition” vi). The novel portrays its protagonist Charles Egremont whose
“emancipated intellect and expanding intelligence” (60) allow him to become a mouthpiece of
reform. In a passionate address to Sybil, Egremont delivers essentially an abridged version of the
Young England program:
The mind of England is the mind ever of the rising race. Trust me it is with the
People. And not the less so, because this feeling is one of which even in a great
degree it is unconscious. [. . .] you will witness a development of the new mind of

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England, which will make up by its rapid progress for its retarded action. [. . .] I
know, however hindered by circumstance for the moment, those principles must
bear their fruit. It will be a produce hostile to the oligarchical system. The future
principle of English politics will not be a leveling principle; not a principle
adverse to privileges, but favourable to their extension. It will seek to ensure
equality, not by leveling the Few but by elevating the Many. (354)
The “mind of England” in this passage reveals its political purchase because it figures here as an
appealing, yet vaguely outlined image. It is quite beside Egremont’s point to expound to Sybil
what the “mind of England” means exactly or whom it includes. More, an inquiry into a clear-cut
definition of the “mind of England” would rather diminish than enhance Egremont’s teleological
worldview. It is precisely in this romanticized form, painted by broad strokes, that the “mind of
England” can muster differentiated viewpoints under its umbrella. The image of the “mind of
England” is not an empty signifier, however, but a notion around which Disraeli is able to gather
different characters of different persuasions that are all somehow genuinely invested in it. It
means something to Egremont as well as it does to Sybil or Gerard. But this image does not stand
alone. Its linkage to another image, the “People” creates a kind of weaving of ideas as images,
which differentiates Disraeli’s political discourse from Martineau’s rational principles. The term
“People” here calibrates its meaning as an image between a connotation of inclusiveness and yet
a more restrictive sense it acquires in Disraeli’s vision. Elsewhere, Disraeli lambastes a term “the
people” as “sheer nonsense” (“The Spirit of Whiggism” 23). Unlike a “nation,” “the people” for
him is not “a political term,” but one of “natural history” (23). However, Egremont elevates “the
People” (hence the capitalization) precisely to the level of the political. His address to Sybil

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bristles with multivalent images that form intriguing linkages among themselves and draw their
vitality from their somewhat loose meanings.
In order to reach for the future so vividly imagined by Egremont, a transition from
people’s unconscious feelings to a conscious realization and deliberate action is needed. The new
mind of England can become conscious of itself and of England’s new future only when it
becomes conscious of the country’s “true” history. The moment of coming to consciousness is
also expressed as the moment of waking up of the true Tory spirit that for now, according to
Disraeli, “sleepeth” (330). It is suggested, too, that “an age of inquiry and agitated spirit like the
present” (64) will catalyze this impulse. In order to imagine a future, Sybil is preoccupied with
uncovering the real (or rather constructing an) image of the past.

22

The narrative persistently

oscillates between two tasks: pointing to the future revival and crafting an image of the true
history in lieu of “a complete mystification” (40). This true past, the novel suggests, lies just
beneath a veneer of falsehood that started from the period of reformation. But even with this
sense of layering of history, it does not work in the text as a complex unfolding. The true history
remains a depthless image at a distance that merely has to be uncovered.
Despite centuries-long mystification, this history is demystified in one chapter. His
project to cover a span of English history from the early sixteenth century to the early Victorian
era seems rather compact for its ambition. In part, what makes such brevity possible is Disraeli’s
specific vision of history as a succession of singular individuals. Bolingbroke, Lord Shelburne,
Pitt the Younger, and the reclaimed Major Wildman lend themselves as milestones of Disraeli’s
history. The nation, “the English people” (46), or “the multitude” (45) similarly take the shape of
22

Peter Jupp argues that a construction of England’s past was an essential part of how Disraeli
saw his political intervention: “One of the principal ways in which Disraeli fashioned an identity
and a role for himself in public life was by constructing a particular interpretation of the past and
giving it repeated publicity through a stead stream of writings” (131).
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one individual-like historical agent when, for instance, the narrator announces that “Whiggism
was putrescent in the nostrils of the nation” (38). Since the “People” become a conscious agent
in his account and not passive masses kept in check by ideology, this suggests that Disraeli
configures his politics, including his use of the image of the “People,” on emancipatory terms.
Just like the “People,” the notion of history itself takes on qualities of an image. What seems to
be a recovery of true history from the history written in the spirit of “Whiggism” is problematic
in Disraeli’s delivery. The chapter in question by no means intends to supplant this true history.
At best, Disraeli points to this alternative history in hypothetical terms: “If the history of England
be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage, and both qualities are equally
requisite for the undertaking, the world would be more astonished than when reading the Roman
annals by Niebuhr” (39-40). But if Disraeli by no means pretends to attempt this “undertaking”
in one chapter of the novel, he also seems to suggest that true history itself would always remain
in the hypothetical realm. Such a seemingly self-defeating gesture in his text actually prepares us
to embrace the idea that history, if at all, can only come into political presence in the form of an
image. Disraeli is not so much after accomplishing this “astonishing” narrative of bare history as
he is after preserving the affect of this notion. It is a desire for something that matters more than
the actual possibility of recovering it. If so, an image of true history accommodates both this
desire for truth and gives some concreteness to the history that is impossible to write.
Although Disraeli cherishes this possibility of writing the true history, he admits that an
entirely clear, comprehensive, and demystified history is always beyond reach. There is a curious
moment in Chapter 3 (Book I), where he suggests that history will perhaps never be free from a
trail of mystery, nor will it ever be given sufficient discursive space. His account of Lord
Shelburne who was Prime Minister during the reign of George the Third foregrounds the two

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points: “Why Lord Shelburne on that occasion was set aside, will perhaps always remain a
mysterious passage of our political history, nor have we space on the present occasion to attempt
to penetrate its motives” (43). As opposed to his intolerance for mystification, Disraeli is
somewhat fascinated with the idea that some historical reasons and motives will remain a
mystery. Just as mysterious as Shelburne’s discharge is the England that existed before the twocentury Whig regime. Moreover, Disraeli’s awareness of insufficient textual “space” suggests
that he crafts the present historical excursus into a shape predetermined by this limitation. As a
result, he performs a kind of flattening out of history into a veneer of mystification while
featuring the idyllic image of pre-Reformation England as a charmingly mysterious, if flat,
image—an image whose mysterious halo itself comes dangerously close to mystification. A flat,
surface-thin image becomes a conveniently portable device for Disraeli’s politics.
As much as Disraeli’s version of history aims to subvert historical mystification, it
remains dependent upon it. This mystified and distorted history is the only given, and thus even
Disraeli’s recovery of history inevitably has to take its origin from this mystification. When
Disraeli describes this mystified version of history, he seems much more interested in
mystification as such than in elaborating what lies under its veneer: “Generally speaking, all the
great events have been distorted, most of the important causes concealed, some of the principal
characters never appear, and all who figure are so misunderstood and misrepresented, that the
result is a complete mystification” (40). Thus, all Disraeli has to work with is mystification. The
image of England that comes before this point in history remains surprisingly underdeveloped
and unattended. This is as if to imply that, for him, history begins at the very moment it gets
distorted. Disraeli’s main battle is to expose the distortions of what came after this idyllic
moment of England’s past. For his project, the image of England removed by a few centuries

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does not need to be finessed with microscopic details. Its very efficacy lies in its vagueness and
its distance. In other words, his image of England is to be perceived only at a certain scale. It is
as if to say that a view from a distance is what gives a sense of reality to this image. While, on
the one hand, his historical excursus gestures towards some static image of the past (seemingly
on solid historical footing), on the other, it entertains quite a different view on history. In Sybil
history becomes a process of “perpetual displacement” (207), as Catherine Gallagher suggests,
“a realm without origins or stable values” (207). While Disraeli’s aim in this novel is “more
carefully to distinguish between facts and phrases, realities and phantoms” (“General Preface”
vi), his idyllic England is a distant point on the historical horizon where historical reality and
myth converge.
The image of Disraeli’s England glimmers not only through his compact historical
narrative, but also through the crucial architectural and pastoral site in the novel. Abbey Marney,
with its materiality of stone and landscape, complements the immaterial, imaginative aspect of
the idyllic past. As Rosemarie Bodenheimer suggests, the Abbey conveys “the mythic,
ahistorical quality in Disraeli’s vision of an ideal society” (174). The image of medieval England
acquires more relief as the Abbey’s spatial and temporal (or rather, atemporal because it is above
historical unfolding) dimensions combine. The ancient monastery dramatizes the contrast
between the past as a “mythical” age of communal wellbeing and hospitality, on the one hand,
and the devastating effects of modern history, on the other. An aristocratic protagonist, Charles
Egremont, ruminating on his walk about the hard times for the poor, is deeply touched by “the
grateful vision of some monastic remains” (86). These “moss-grown and mouldering memorials”
(86) lend themselves as a stage for political discussion when Egremont encounters two strangers

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(Gerard and Morley) under the shade of an old yew—a silent thread between past, present, and
future.
Thus the Abbey being a suggestive setting for a conversation between Egremont, Gerard,
and Morley, raises the novel’s central historical and political questions. The conversation seems
to flourish not despite but precisely because Egremont and the two men remain strangers to one
another. They converse face-to-face and “in a tone of respect” (94) about the history of the abbey
and the role the monastics played as the original land-owners. The text gives us a detailed
description of the faces and demeanor of the strangers, but suspends their class position:
The first was of lofty stature, and though dressed with simplicity, had nothing
sordid in his appearance. His garments gave no clue of his position in life [. . .]. [.
. .] he showed a frank and manly countenance. His complexion might in youth
have been ruddy, but time and time’s attendants, thought and passion, had paled it
[. . .].” (89)
Gerard’s presence in the conversation is furnished neither with the knowledge of his name nor
his social status, but simply through his “frank and manly countenance.” This way of being
intimately present to the other, yet enjoying the freedom of abstraction from one’s class and
personal identity, carries an emancipating agency throughout Sybil. In other words, the novel
treats the condition of being a stranger not as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a means to
overcome obstacles, which all amount to the central problem of the novel—the estrangement
between the rich and the poor.
If Gerard subverts the hierarchical discursive conventions by bracketing his class status,
Morley employs yet another kind of liberating tactic—by suspending his physical presence in
discussion, he enters into it through a more abstract, disembodied medium—his voice. Morley

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joins in “unobserved” (94) as “a voice which proceeded neither from Egremont nor the stranger”
(94). A face-to-face encounter is juxtaposed here with a more indirect one, a voice that (although
still has concrete personal characteristics) articulates abstract ideas rather than embodied and
class-determined experiences. Through a description of his voice, we learn about Morley’s
prominent, but perhaps too abstract and therefore unfeeling ethos: “It was a still voice that
uttered these words, yet one of a peculiar character; one of those voices that instantly arrest
attention: gentle, and yet solemn, earnest yet unimpassioned” (94). His excessive intellectualism
is further evident in his face, which is “slightly marked with the small pox” and is “redeemed
from absolute ugliness by a highly-intellectual brow, and large dark eyes that indicated deep
sensibility and great quickness of apprehension” (95). Morley’s revelatory diagnosis of England
about the existence of “THE RICH AND THE POOR” as two estranged nations “between whom
there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts,
and feelings, as if they were dwellers of different zones, or inhabitants of different planets” (96)
seems to result from a kind of synergy produced, ironically, by this discussion among strangers.
Against the idyllic landscape and symbolic significance of Abbey Marney, Disraeli configures a
practice of discussion among strangers where the suspension of certain social identifiers and
names opens up new possibilities.
The outcome gained in this process is not so much a uniformity of opinion, but rather a
sense of deeper understanding of the condition of England. The visual, and hence semantic
emphasis on “the rich and the poor” transforms it into an insight that everybody embraces. This
insight does not seem to operate as consensus derived from a reasoning procedure or, in other
words, the prevalence of the best argument over others. Instead, the insight about the “rich and
the poor” is shared by all and so forms a non-restrictive alliance among the strangers, but still

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allows for room to accommodate the differences of perspective on this point. It seems that the
mechanism at work in this scene can be further elucidated by Niklas Luhmann’s account of
modernity and its practices. Luhmann defines the “politics of understanding” as superseding
those of “authority” and as a process that operates beyond the traditional notion of consensus:
Something seems to have taken the place of authority that could be termed the
politics of understanding. Understandings are negotiated provisos that can be
relied upon for a given time. They do not imply consensus, nor do they represent
reasonable or even correct solutions to problems. They fix the reference points
that are removed from the argument for further controversies, in which coalitions
and oppositions can form anew. (69)
“The rich and the poor” statement exemplifies said “politics of understanding” because it serves
as a kind of “reference point” around which some coalition can be formed, but it does not imply
a monolithic consensus, nor offers solutions. While it provides some closure to the discussion, it
simultaneously opens new avenues for negotiation. What this scene is alluding to is an effort to
capitalize on unifying and agonistic dynamics of discussion at the same time. This mechanism of
discussion is propelled forward neither by an agonistic clash of arguments, nor a conformity
imposed by consensus. Disraeli preserves a subdued but tangible tension between the different
opinions around some shared, if temporary, insight into a problem. He deploys his notion of
images shared by conversing strangers to flesh out this model of a public sphere.
Despite the fact that the novel is preoccupied with the rebirth of a strong sense of one
23

nation and that Disraeli despised cosmopolitan sympathies,

23

this scene of productive

In his Crystal Palace speech, Disraeli condemns Liberal cosmopolitanism while defining the
Tory party exclusively through the national sentiment: “Gentlemen, the Tory party, unless it is a
national party, is nothing” (524). He continues: “Influenced in a great degree by the philosophy
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strangehood evokes strong cosmopolitan sensibilities. Being a stranger in this scene, with the
ability to negotiate between the abstract and the embodied, the universal and the particular, opens
up new opportunities in discussion. Abbey Marney is first of all a place open to strangers.

24

It is

a place where a wandering stranger who is welcomed here forms affinities to the local, to the
concrete place and face-to-face act of hospitality, while still exercising his detachment from any
specific place in the service of belonging to the global community. The Abbey’s hospital, besides
being the most conspicuous structure to an observer, is closely interwoven with the spirit of
hospitality that strangers would receive, irregardless of who they are:
[. . .] there, still more distinctly, because built on a greater scale and of materials
still more intended for perpetuity, the capacious hospital, a name that did not then
denote the dwelling of disease, but a place where all the rights of hospitality were
practiced; where the traveler from the proud baron to the lonely pilgrim asked the
shelter and the succour that never were denied, and at whose gate, called the
Portal of the Poor, the peasants on the Abbey lands, if in want, might appeal each
morn and night for raiment and for food. (87)
The recent history of the Abbey, however, puts an end to this ethics of hospitality to strangers,
and Disraeli laments that “the gate of the poor was to be closed for ever; and the wanderer was
no more to find a home” (87). Being a supporter of parish relief and a critic of the New Poor
and the politics of the Continent, they [“a body of public men”] endeavoured to substitute
cosmopolitan for national principles; and they baptized the new scheme of politics with the
plausible name of ‘Liberalism’” (524). Disraeli expresses his conviction that the majority of the
working class “repudiate cosmopolitan principles” and “adhere to national principles” (528).
24
Kristina Deffenbacher traces the connection between architecture and consciousness in Sybil
and argues that the novel operates from awareness that architecture determines consciousness.
Marney Abbey, then, becomes an embodiment of “the medieval social system” (3) and so
promotes the formation of a certain kind of “social character” (4). Building off Deffenbacher’s
argument, I want to uncover what kind of stranger-oriented consciousness Marney Abbey
embodies.
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25

law,

Disraeli sees face-to-face recognition between strangers as a basis of community and

public sphere. Built to last, the Abbey’s hospital becomes an embodiment of this ethic that is
preserved through centuries of spiritual decline and sustains a possibility of revival.
In the discussion between Egremont, Gerard, and Morley, there emerges the very ethic of
recognition, respect, and hospitality that the ancient Abbey embodies. The image of England’s
past, so vividly evoked by the Abbey’s structures, rather than imposing a totalizing consensus, in
fact serves as a common ground, while allowing for diverse opinions. Egremont is aware of the
purchase this background consensus yields: “‘Well, whatever difference of opinion may exist on
these points [whether the monastics were “easy landlords” (91)],’ [. . .], ‘there is one on which
there can be no controversy: the monks were great architects’” (93). Just like this shared
appreciation of the ruins, the strangers share an idyllic, albeit flat image of the monastic England.
While from this scene and from Disraeli’s historical excursus one may tease out some
outlines of this idyllic England, this image never acquires precise definition. Of course, part of it
could be historical distance, but there is another important dynamic that better explains the
vagueness of the image that lies at the heart of Disraeli’s novel. The England we are led to long
for without quite knowing what it looks like is nothing other than a result of populist techniques.
As Ernesto Laclau notes, an imprecise definition or an empty signifier is a technique of populism
(105) which allows for “the construction of a global identity out of the equivalence of a plurality
of social demands” (83). In Disraeli’s novel, this technique serves to not only construct such
unity, but also present it as if it were coming from a relative homogeneity of social demands. The
global identity under construction here is a symbiotic identity of the People and the aristocracy,
whose interests and social demands are indeed reconciled by Disraeli’s low-resolution image of
25

Paul Smith notes that Disraeli “continually lambasted the new poor law” (Disraeli: A Brief
Life 77).
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England. Yet, this is not to say that the novel’s sole purpose is to trick. Quite the opposite: this
image provides the common ground while acknowledging difference. Where possibilities for
Habermasian consensus through procedural argumentation exhaust themselves under the weight
of irreducible perspectives, Sybil’s fantasy of consensus through a shared image becomes a
viable alternative to socially polarized society. In Disraeli’s vision, the People and the
aristocracy now get united by realizing that England is their mutual interest. The circulation of
this image among the three strangers brings into the same conversation Egremont’s expanding
mind (which eventually professes an organic relationship between the aristocracy and the
people), Gerard’s Chartist mentality (i.e., mass physical action), and Morley’s dream-like
abstractions about a community of purpose.
But what does it take to be a stranger? For Disraeli, a stranger means something more
than someone who is a newcomer and whose name is unknown. It is a matter of natural gifts,
experience, and cultivation. Egremont has a predisposition for this role due to the gifts of
“pensive” countenance, “tenderness” in his brow, “sympathy” and “sweetness of his voice in
speaking” (58). Next, his experiences abroad expand his mind. Losing Lady Arabella to his
established elder brother, Egremont flees England to open himself up to travel and as a corollary
to partake of cosmopolitan worldview. A year and a half of travel marks a profound change in
Egremont: [. . .] he was not in an inapt humour to observe, to enquire, and to reflect. The new
objects that surrounded him excited his intelligence; he met, which indeed is the principal
advantage of travel, remarkable men, whose conversation opened his mind [. . .] (60). While his
conversations with “remarkable” strangers are mentioned in passing, from the preceding
Coningsby, which features discussions between its eponymous hero and a most remarkable
Sidonia, one may infer the stimulating nature of such conversations. On his return in 1837,

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Egremont is a different kind of an aristocrat who breaks away from his old “life of saloons” (61):
“Egremont re-entered the world [. . .]. But there was this difference in his existence, before and
since his travels: he was now conscious he wanted an object; and was ever musing over action,
though as yet ignorant how to act” (60-61). The novel suggests that although Egremont acquires
the kind of agency as a stranger abroad, the same cosmopolitan attitudes are applicable and
actually desirable at home, especially in a time when the country is not one nation, but two.
Hence, still professing local, national affinities, Egremont mobilizes a cosmopolitan frame for
discussion among strangers.
Besides Egremont, Aubrey St. Lys is another character who aspires to mediate between
estranged “nations.” It is St. Lys’s “duty to enter all societies,” which necessitates his travel “to
Mowbray Castle, as well as to the squalid courts and cellars of the town” (189). If St. Lys
employs his calling as a pastor, Egremont gains access to the people by means of an assumed
occupation of a “reporter” (173) and a fictitious name of Mr. Franklin—both attributes
sustaining him as a stranger. As the two of them visit a destitute dwelling of Philip Warner, a
handloom weaver, they run into Sybil who similarly enters various “societies” and expresses her
sympathy with the people, i.e. the Warners, through face-to-face charity. But if Sybil’s agency is
conveyed through feminized sympathy in the domestic sphere, Egremont’s sympathetic feeling is
combined with a desire for public, political action: “his sympathies had become more lively and
more extended; [. . .] a masculine impulse had been given to his mind; [. . .] he was inclined to
view public questions in a tone very different to that in which he had surveyed them a few weeks
back, when on the hustings of his borough” (170). When on the hustings, Egremont successfully
snatches a seat in Parliament even though “the condition of the people was a subject of which he
knew nothing” (74). He is transformed from an alienated, complacent stranger to a sympathetic

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stranger driven by a desire to know the people, which transcends inter-subjective barriers. This
powerful effect produced by a sympathetic stranger even causes the indignant and jealous
Morley to regret a spontaneous act of opening oneself up to the other: “ ‘We have all of us
opened ourselves too unreservedly before this aristocrat’ ” (303).
The novel brings Egremont’s agency into contrast with Morley’s interventionist and
ultimately unsuccessful model of strangehood. Gerard impugns Stephen Morley for a lack of
knowledge of the people that was once characteristic of Egremont: “ ‘Stephen is prejudiced,’ [. .
.] ‘He is a visionary, indulging in impossible dreams, and if possible, little desirable. He knows
nothing of the feeling of the country or the character of his countrymen. [. . .]” (358). Morley’s
“high-flying philosophy” (173), in Gerard’s words, about what people are and what they need
accounts for his estrangement from them and a consequent stalemate in discussion at the Rising
Sun. When a group of miners gather at the pub after a working-day, their leader Master Nixon
begins a discussion of the injustice of the tommy system and the oppression from Diggs, a
tommy-shop manager. In contrast to the Abbey, the pub, due to its class specificity and us/them
mentality, precludes possibilities for productive discussion. In addition, an editor of the
Mowbray Phalanx, Morley proves incapable of a face-to-face argument, without the medium of
his newspaper. On overhearing the conversation, Morley intervenes only to be brushed off as a
“stranger”:
‘But why do not you state your grievances to the landlords and lessees,’ said the
stranger.
‘I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir,’ said Master Nixon, following up
this remark by a most enormous puff. [. . .]

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‘I take it you be a stranger in these parts, sir, or else you would know that it’s as
easy for a miner to speak to a main-master, as it is for me to pick coal with this
here clay [clay pipe]. Sir, there’s a gulf atween ‘em. (182)
When Morley proceeds to argue his “high-flying” “principle of association” (183) by suggesting
for fifty families “to live under one roof” (183), Master Nixon undercuts Morley’s pitch: “ ‘you
speak like a book’” (183). The persuasive power of Morley’s bookish abstractions crumbles
under his estrangement from the particulars of the miners’ lived experiences. Ironically, while
oblivious of the “gulf” between the miners and the masters, Morley overlooks yet another gulf—
between the people and himself. His agency is just the reverse of Egremont’s endeavor to wed
the image of Tory England to the everyday lives of the people.
On a bigger scale than Morley’s failure at the Rising Sun, the novel intimates that the
Chartist crisis and the violent action that ensues are also symptomatic of mishandled discussion.
Despite the fact that “all that the people desired was a respectful discussion of their claims”
(275), they meet with a refusal of this right by the House of Commons. The resulting Chartist
disturbances suggest that the source of violent action is rooted in a broken code of a fair
discussion: “The House after a debate which was not deemed by the people commensurate with
the importance of the occasion, decided on rejecting the prayer of the Petition, and from that
moment the part of the Convention who advocated a recourse to physical force in order to obtain
their purpose, was in the ascendant” (342). Gary Handwerk highlights a tension between the
novel’s advocacy of “discussion as a political mechanism” (328-329) and the novel’s “message
of expediency” (341), manifested in the application of force. Since the consequences of the riot
bring the novel to a happy end, Handwerk suggests that the novel “couples a rhetorical
renunciation of force with a narrative justification of its consequences” (336). While I agree with

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Handwerk that Disraeli places a particular importance on discussion, and that the agency of
discussion is undercut by a more expedient physical force, I am more skeptical about
Handwerk’s claim that what Disraeli supports is persuasion. Handwerk himself admits that the
role of persuasion in the novel is undercut by its not infrequent association with “manipulation”
(332) and the only persuasion success story is that of Egremont in relation to Sybil. Since, for
Disraeli, a public sphere based on persuasion would only be too methodical and rationalistic, he
is searching for alternative modes of communication. If persuasion never really carries much
weight in the novel, what kind of discussion does?
Disraeli is invested in imagining a public sphere predicated not so much on persuasion,
but rather on discussion among strangers that “opens up,” perhaps even “too unreservedly”
(303), yet entails respect and recognition of the other, even if that other upholds different views.
While an emblematic example of this takes place among Egremont, Gerard, and Morley at the
ruins of Marney Abbey, another instance of such productive strangehood transpires in London as
the Chartist delegates Gerard and Morley converse with Lord Valentine. Their encounter
generates respect and recognition of the other without necessarily upholding persuasion as a
raison d’etre of discussion. Again, we are in the midst of a discussion scene which thrives on the
dynamics between strangers and in which Gerard and Morley become simply “one of the
delegates” or “the other delegate” (276), to a point where the identity of a stranger becomes
indistinguishable. After the delegates express their Chartist claims to Lord Valentine and hear his
aristocratic convictions in return, Gerard advocates a respectful recognition of differences:
“‘Well, well; he has his opinions and we have ours. But he is a man; with clear, straightforward
ideas, a frank, noble, presence; and as good-looking a fellow as I ever set eyes on. [. . .]’” (279).
Arguably, these words amount to more than class-conscious etiquette. Just as he does in earlier

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descriptions of Morley’s and Gerard’s, Disraeli continues to draw connections between
physiognomy and the course of discussion. Valentine’s face-to-face interaction with the
delegates, unlike the majority of their door-to-door round of the political elite, suggests that we
may pick up on clues from one’s “frank, noble, presence.” This embodied presence is key to an
ethic of recognition, albeit recognition of difference. Moments like this when characters entertain
diverse opinions in the spirit of mutual recognition insinuate that even though Sybil imagines a
consensus around an image of Tory England, this consensus is far from totalizing and is capable
of accommodating intellectual diversity. Although the image of England can be viewed as
nationalistic and exclusive, I want to recognize in it a potentiality for inclusiveness that comes to
the fore as Disraeli infuses it with reciprocal relations among strangers.
Alongside this trajectory of a discussion among strangers where a shared image of
England serves as common ground, there continue to crop up other moments of discussion where
the intersubjective synergy never happens. Lady Marney’s attempts to initiate her son Egremont
into the art of political plotting and gossip result in his consent to run for Parliament, yet never
resonate with his larger view on politics. The secrets such as “the king is dying” (51), which she
is privy to and which lend her an advantage in her political games never become valuable
commodities for Egremont. With a hope that “confidence [. . .] will always subsist between us”
(52), Lady Marney creates a coalition with her son only to highlight the difference between her
pragmatic calculation of what steps need to be taken to get a seat in Parliament with a
spontaneous mutuality and respectful exchange of ideas about the country among Egremont and
the strangers at the Abbey ruins. Lady Marney’s management of her son’s political career in the
name of the Tories “to have our own again” (52) prompts Egremont not to submit to it, but to
search for an alternative model of a politician. Besides Lady Marney, Sir Robert Peel (or “a

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gentleman in Downing Street” (411)) employs a manipulative discursive practice. Peel’s ideal of
coming across as “‘frank and explicit’” (414) to the deputations of manufacturers, farmers, and
others seeking his help is but a performance of sincerity, which he considers to be “the right line
to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others” (414). The
shutting down of discussion in such way contrasts starkly to the opening up of the strangers’
minds at the Abbey ruins.
Lord Marney’s destructive argumentativeness and inflexibility delineates another
bankrupt avenue of discussion. In Lord Marney, Disraeli critiques an excessively proceduralist
and agonistic approach to argumentation that inhibits, rather than enhances, Lord Marney’s
understanding of the condition of the people. With a “dogmatical or argumentative” (72) manner
of speaking, Lord Marney engages in discussions not for a better understanding of some subject
in question, but for the sake of his own “passion for controversy” (72). In spite of the mediating
efforts of their mother, Lord Marney and Egremont cannot find common ground. The novel
traces a gradual “expansion” of Egremont’s mind, both his intellect and his sensibility, over
against Lord Marney’s maxim “[e]verything in this world is calculation” (98), which boils down
to the calculation of the interest of the “landed proprietary” (73) and his own self-interest. When
Egremont finds out that his elder brother would not help him pay for the expenses Egremont
incurred during the elections, Lord Marney, the man of “argument,” falls into the mold of a
selfish villain, not an exemplar of reason:
‘Well, George, [. . .] you are really the greatest humbug that ever existed.’
‘Abuse is not argument, Mr. Egremont.’
‘You are beneath abuse, as you are beneath every sentiment but one, which I most
entirely feel,’ and Egremont rose from the table. (193)

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Marney’s position founded on a fusion of self-interest and a “passion for controversy” as an end
in itself serves further to set off an alternative model of political discussion the novel pursues in
exploring the encounters among strangers.
While we recognize Disraeli’s philosophy refracted through Gerard’s, Egremont’s, St.
Lys’s, or Lord Valentine’s statements, it may seem ironic that Disraeli misses out on a major
opportunity to express his views fully through Egremont’s speech in the House. The absence of
Egremont’s speech hits on something important, given that Peel’s manipulative responses to
various deputations are full present in the text. Such narrative absence is contrasted with the
resonance his speech produces in political circles. The high society makes futile attempts to
make sense of Egremont’s speech. Mr. Egerton insists that “the whole speech was against
radicalism” (340), but adds that “no one knew exactly what he was after” (341). Another infers
that it “was the most really democratic speech that I ever heard” (341) and even ventures the
meaning of the speech to be “that if you wished for a time to retain your political power, you
could only effect your purpose by securing for the people greater social felicity” (341). Lord
Loraine is no better off puzzling over Egremont’s meaning behind “obtaining the results of the
charter without the interventions of its machinery” (341). Insofar as the meaning of Egremont’s
speech resists transparency, so does Egremont himself elude a definition in the MPs’ political
lexicon. A “radical” (340), a “whig” (340), “[n]ot a conservative certainly” (340), and
“crotchety” (340) are the labels applied to Egremont. This moment may well reflect Disraeli’s
own piqued ego from critical responses like this: “Mr. Disraeli looks but at the surface of things.
Originally a Radical, then a Whig, by and by a Conservative, and now we really cannot tell what,
he has no well-grounded principle to fall back upon” (Fraser’s Magazine 30.175 83). Perhaps to
justify himself, too, Disraeli represents the labels attached to Egremont as mindless talk.

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Egremont and his speech remain obscure to imply that the emergent ideas of the “new mind” of
England have not still found their full expression in discourse. The absence of Egremont’s
speech from the text dramatizes this deferral of precise language and stable meanings. This
textual hole is in itself a vague image of the Young England program that organizes the novel,
yet resists precise definitions or expressions.
However, the rationalistic criteria of clarity, comprehensibility, and systematic argument
are not necessarily Disraeli’s central maxims of political discussion. If so, the trail of
mysteriousness and vagueness that envelops Egremont’s speech once again indicates some
populist tendencies about his speech and the novel. I view his speech as populist in a sense that
its vagueness turns it into an “umbrella” discourse to encompass varying social interests under its
banner. The speech functions not so much as an expression of the new mind of England, but
rather a kind of emptied-out emblem of the new mind of England. Without much of specific
content (it is presented to us only through second-hand reports), the speech acquires almost
unlimited capacity to embrace society beyond factions and classes. Combined with this
mobilization of populist techniques is also the elevation of Egremont to the level of abstraction.
He is distilled to an ethereal state of a “voice” only:
Yes! there was one voice that had sounded in that proud Parliament, that free
from the slang of faction, had dared to express immortal truths: the voice of a
noble, who without being a demagogue, had upheld a popular cause; had
pronounced his conviction that the rights of labour were as sacred as those of
property; [. . .] who had declared that the social happiness of the millions should
be the first object of a statesman [. . .] (350)

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In order to get to the universal truth, Egremont sheds all sorts of particularities, from political
affiliation to his white, male, aristocratic body. But Egremont’s abstraction of universal address
fares better than Morley’s abstraction from the people because Egremont commands the entire
spectrum of communication: from speaking face-to-face to addressing an infinite public. For a
moment, Disraeli lets Egremont run away with this Habermasian abstraction only to present him
in full particularity (as much as fiction can allow) in front of Sybil who is reading his printed
speech. In other words, Egremont continuously calibrates his discourse between abstraction and
embodiment. Hence, the novel’s interest in effective political discussion maneuvers between two
levels: the abstractions that help transcend class, gender, partisan and other particularities for the
sake of common dialogue and the embodied context of face-to-face encounters that makes the
“immortal truths” come alive.
The conversations between Egremont and Sybil unfold throughout the novel against the
backdrop of romance. The holding hands, Sybil’s “streaming eyes” (336), and Egremont’s
“throbbing heart” (400) blend with arguments about the gulf between the rich and the poor. But
it is not exclusively sexual desire or sympathy on Sybil’s part that leads to her accepting of
Egremont’s Tory Democracy. To be sure, Sybil is perhaps an epitome of sympathetic agency in
the novel, but when it comes to something like a debate, she holds her ground and does not let
sympathy sway her. Thus, despite Egremont’s “effort to induce Sybil to consider his suit” (337),
and despite the emotional charge of the scene with his tears dripping on her hand, Sybil puts a
check on this overflow of feeling by affirming her opinion: “the gulf is impassable” (337). This
moment juxtaposes Sybil’s feeling to her reasoning only to show how they can harmonize later
on. Sybil reads Egremont’s speech “[w]ith a heart not without emotion; with a kindling cheek
and eyes suffused with tears” (350-351). But her transformation is due not only to this

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sentimental effect. She radically transforms her reasoning, as she refers to herself: “I who have
been wrong in all my judgments” (353). The harmonization of Egremont’s and Sybil’s thinking
and feeling indicates that for Disraeli reason is not a check on sympathetic feeling, nor is
sympathy more insightful than reason, but rather that the agency of reason and feeling are
oriented towards the same ideals. This is why Egremont wants not only to “remove” the dreamlike “convictions of [Sybil’s] mind” (333), but also to “find [. . .] an echo in [Sybil’s] breast”
(352).
Speaking “immortal truths” without being “very sure of his audience” (341), Egremont
engages with the challenges and shares the anxieties of a novelist. David Randall’s historical
account of the public sphere suggests that due to the proliferation of print culture beginning from
the Renaissance, readership “expanded toward unknowability at the very moment of printing”
(231). But in this scene, both Egremont’s oral discourse and its printed version confront the
anonymity and potential limitlessness of their audience/readership. Egremont is not “very sure of
his audience” (341) not only because he realizes that the scale of his reach goes far beyond the
intimate listener in a face-to-face discussion, but also because the public he evokes into being
(the “new mind” of England) does not yet exist. The emergent “new mind” of England, as any
other public constituted through printed discourse, “exist[s] by virtue of [its] address” (Warner
Publics and Counterpublics 73). In the novel Egremont mobilizes the embodied and the
universal planes of strangehood: a stranger who converses face-to-face and a stranger who
addresses an open-ended public of strangers in the virtual space of readership. Rather than
dismissing face-to-face oral discussion in favor of the modern public produced by the printed
word, Sybil treats the two as complementary to each other. Disraeli himself expands this stance
by embracing the print medium of the novel and still affirming the agency of inter-personal

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discussion. While the advantages of the unprecedented scale and unity of time of a public held
together by print are crucial, they cannot provide an analogue for the embodied proximity of the
other in face-to-face discussion. Disraeli’s attempt to point to the intrinsic values of both
suggests his complicated answer to the question of what kind of intersubjective relationship
constitutes a democratic community. Ironically, the fact that he tries to preserve the weight of
both models as he uses the print medium of the novel points not to a smooth suture of the two
but rather a modern ascendancy of print over unmediated discussion (a kind of uneven
development) that is impossible to rebalance.
Having discussed in this chapter the ways in which strangehood figures to mobilize new
modes of political discussion, I turn to my last point to suggest that Disraeli himself was
fascinated with the idea of being a stranger. He arguably relished the fact that his authorial
persona in his fiction could create often confusing perceptions of him as a kind of perpetual
stranger to his own readers. He performs himself as a stranger by self-fashioning through various
characters and with varying degrees of verisimilitude. Puzzled by this carnivalesque effect, we
are left wondering: To what extent and from what angle does Disraeli present himself and his
ideas through Egremont, Lord Valentine, St. Lys, Morley, or Sidonia? And are the characters in
Disraeli’s novels, after all, but kaleidoscopic images of himself? The North British Review takes
just this perspective claiming that in Disraeli’s novels “there is no character but himself, divided
into many masks, exhibiting his full face in his principal personages, and his profile and quarter
face in collateral characters of the story” (“The Repentance of the Tory Party” 497). The
Fraser’s Magazine makes even a more mocking criticism: “Egremont, we rather fancy, is meant
to be a sort of copy from the author. Mr. Disraeli delights in bringing himself into all the
tableaux which he forms, and is so blinded by the self-conceit which constitutes the prominent

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feature in his character, that he takes no pains whatever to conceal this” (31:186 1845 June, 736).
However, a quarter century later, such mockery subsides into a question: “Even [. . .] if it could
be proved that Mr. Disraeli in former days at any time, in any of his works, had written any part
of them with a sidelong look at himself in the glass, what then?” and entertains a “philosophic
interest” in Disraeli’s fictional self-portraits (Cracroft 159). Rosemarie Bodenheimer similarly
admits that some characters in Disraeli’s Sybil are “self-reflexive” and suggests that Morley is an
“image of Disraeli as a politician,” while Baptist Hatton reflects “Disraeli the novelist” (185).
Regardless of the tone of the reviewers, Victorians as well as critics today have found Disraeli’s
model of authorship quite unique. Neither an anonymous author, nor an intimate friend, Disraeli
is an ever elusive, yet intimate stranger who thrives on remaining such. Disraeli’s preoccupation
with strangehood in relation to authorship and readership reflects the modern developments print
26

culture effected in the public sphere and the constitution of public itself.

Sidonia, who is mentioned in Sybil only in passing, but carries a major role in Coningsby,
is perhaps the most memorable of Disraeli’s “masks” as he embodies everything heroic and
almost superhuman. Again, Disraeli playfully handles his authorial persona as a stranger and
never allows us to equate him with Sidonia entirely. Contemporary reviews are sure testimonials
of just how masterfully Disraeli could evade complete identification with any of his characters

26

In his account of the evolution of author (or auctoritas) and his ethos in the literary public
sphere from antiquity to the eighteenth century, David Randall suggests that print culture
transformed the relationship between author and his audience (previously visible and reachable
with a spoken word) into a relationship among strangers (linked through the medium of print):
“print culture attacked the underpinnings of ethos: as the socially disembedding transformations
of print and commerce disrupted the link between author and audience, made it a relationship of
mutually unknowns , ethos lost its persuasive power” (231). However, Randall suggests,
Montaigne’s skepticism about ethos does not destroy ethos, but becomes a new kind of ethos.
Similarly, I think, Disraeli’s experiments with presenting himself as a stranger do not undercut
his ethos, but produce a new ethos.
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and still be represented though them. Some recognized in Sidonia “Mr. Disraeli himself”
(Fraser’s 30.175 1844, 74). Some divided Disraeli equal parts between Sidonia and Coningsby:
If it be sound, Sidonia, not Coningsby, is the true portraiture of Disraeli. The one
is the author as he is, the other as he seems; the one embodies what he feels, the
other what he assumes. And, in truth, there are many involuntary indications of
this: Sidonia influences Coningsby, who represents that new generation of
English youth whom Disraeli seeks to influence. (Rambler 1 May 1854, 445)
Still others read Sidonia as “a sublimation, one-half Mr. Disraeli himself, and the other half
Rotschild” (Escott Macmillans 32.187 May 1875, 6). In any event, Sidonia’s cosmopolitan
outlook, his “penetrative intellect” (Stephen 439), and his charisma of a mysterious stranger are a
few things that reveal Disraeli’s own ideals. While on the one hand Sidonia’s resemblance to
Disraeli imparts him with a strong sense of individuality, at the same time, Sidonia strangely
resembles a bundle of abstract, impersonal principles rather than a human-like literary character
intriguing with his particularity.
Egremont as a character raises the same question of particularity and individuality, on the
one hand, and abstraction and typicality, on the other. Disraeli at times seems to make Egremont
a mouthpiece of his opinions, a literary device or mechanism of conveying his political views,
and at other times, Egremont seems to possess precisely the particularity and individuality which
make face-to-face discussion scenes meaningful at the interpersonal level. The novel unfolds so
that the Egremont who transforms into a voice to speak the “immortal truths” at the House has to
negotiate continuously with the Egremont whose intimate embodied presence stimulates a frank
discussion among the strangers at the Abbey ruins and makes Sybil accept his views. This ability
to mobilize both levels is what gives Egremont advantage over Morley’s abstractions that

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operate on large scales, treat of lifeless concepts, and are entirely divorced from the individual
lived experience. Morley, “the votary of Moral Power and the Apostle of Community” (490),
cannot find a place for himself in the conclusion of the novel. Seen in this light, Egremont’s and
Morley’s rivalry for Sybil, the daughter of the people, and a subsequent union of Egremont and
Sybil suggest that the conclusion of the novel affirms a politics that bridges the gap between the
particular and the universal—a gap no less central in this novel than the gulf between the rich
and the poor. Linking the particular and the universal is, of course, not only a question of
politics, but of the genre of the novel itself. Disraeli’s choice to write a political novel becomes
an effective move to cross-examine questions of literary form and those of political theory.
References to the Chartist disturbances and the final scenes of Hell Cats’ invasion of the
Mowbray Castle may lead one to conclude that Disraeli abandons his faith in discussion and
admits to the necessity of force to rectify historical injustices. However, the plot takes recourse
to force only when discussion is foreclosed, whether it is through the dominance of the Whig
discourse of history or the refusal of the House to give the Chartist plea due deliberation. So,
instead of figuring as a means more advantageous than discussion, violent force operates rather
as an inevitable corollary of interrupted discussion. The happy union of Sybil and Egremont that
seems to be a result of the riot and seems to justify the application of force is counter-balanced
by the fact that the casualties in this riot are the very individuals who put primary importance on
physical action rather than discussion: Morley, Gerard, and Bishop Hatton. When Disraeli ends
with a “prayer” that “a free Monarchy and a privileged and prosperous People” “can only be
brought about by the energy and devotion of our Youth” (497), his admiration for the energies of
the youth align with Egremont’s commitment to discussion, and not the violent energies of a riot.
Those who are more willing to forfeit their commitments to discussion for a short-term expedient

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of force fall out of the narrative scope by the end of Sybil. Whereas Handwerk argues that
Disraeli “mixes” his commitment to discussion with justification of force (“a Machiavellian
justification of whatever works” (341)), I think that it would be a stretch to say that force actually
“works” in Sybil. Rather than being a sure means to an end, force is represented as fraught with
vicissitudes. What is therefore unpredictable and uncontrollable seems hardly to “work” in a
practical sense, as Handwerk implies it. What the novel is certain about, though, is that force
destroys its own proponents. In Sybil, force becomes not something that “works” where
discussion fails, but something that follows when discussion is not given a chance to succeed.
Preoccupied with the condition of England as a country of two “nations,” Sybil
foregrounds a culture of discussion that promises a remedy for social polarization. Disraeli
invests the figure of a stranger with a communicative advantage and empowers his protagonist
on his journey into the “nation” of the poor. Egremont’s encounters with the People open up
minds and hearts, and the novel suggests the desirability to maintain the status of a stranger
(even if it means to go under another’s name). While predicated on respect, sympathy, and
mutual understanding, a conversation among strangers in Sybil does not produce a totalizing
consensus. At the ruins of Marney Abbey, Egremont, Gerard, and Morley gain insights into each
other’s thoughts, but still maintain plenty of room for the differences of opinions. When the
Chartist delegates Gerard and Morley converse on the subject of the Charter with Lord
Valentine, the exchange of opinions does not lead to unanimity, but surprisingly generates
respect for another’s views and a tolerant interest in those views. The novel represents these
moments of “productive” strangehood alongside dead-end avenues of discussion exemplified
through Morley, “a gentleman in Downing Street” (411), Lady Marney, Lord Marney, and other
members of high society. The novel ultimately rewards commitment to discussion, while those

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who at some point were tempted by the expediency of physical force fall victim to the very force
they intended to marshal.
To be sure, in Disraeli’s vision of Tory Democracy it is an aristocrat who has the
privilege of being a stranger. No lower-class character gains the kind of mobility and agency that
Egremont does. But even if the agency of strangehood in this novel implies a hierarchal
structure, one cannot ignore the democratizing pull it generates as well. When Egremont
converses with Gerard and Morley and chooses to remain a stranger to them, they, too, are
equally strangers to him. By bracketing social differences, the novel imagines a discussion
among strangers as a potentially unlimited forum based on equality of participants. At the same
time, a common ground among participants is created not only by bracketing the differences, but
also by foregrounding an equal parts mysterious and historical image of England. Hailing from
the past, this image produces a common ground for discussion in the present, and suggests a
blueprint for Tory Democracy in the future. Scenes of discussion that invoke this image mobilize
both argumentation and sympathetic attachments among strangers, where a significant result
becomes the expansion of one’s mind. Exposing the limitations of the rationalistic model of
discussion offered by Utilitarians and political economists, Disraeli reveals to us that consensus
is not altogether a result of rational deliberation. An image veiled in mystery is an equally
indispensable foundation of consensus and perhaps by far more feasible than a reason-based one.
Yet, along with the opportunities of this public sphere that converges on a mysterious image of
England, Sybil raises questions of its legitimacy. Does the novel come down to Disraeli simply
letting us peek into his workshop of creating false consciousness through images? To be sure,
although Sybil mobilizes the democratic potential of such public sphere, the dangers of slipping
into totalizing control and manipulation through images, nevertheless, remain all too real. Sybil

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imagines an ideal of discussion, but is also aware of its vulnerability. But Disraeli’s model of
political discussion does not collapse into the notion of false consciousness for several reasons.
First, his vision points to the limitations and vulnerability of rationalism and, therefore, questions
its ultimate supremacy. Second, Disraeli’s thinking about the “People” as a hero-like actor of
history rather than an indistinguishable multitude makes the idea of false consciousness hardly
applicable. Disraeli endows the “People” with the power to recover the “true” history and to
transform the public sphere on terms of reciprocity among strangers. And finally, I hope I have
shown that the images that organize discussions are quite porous, allowing for diversity of
opinions, and so always disruptive of the totality that false consciousness needs. While one might
argue that Disraeli’s images and discursive techniques ultimately work to preserve the traditional
hierarchies and command ideological control, I have unpacked their significant emancipatory
implications, which makes Disraeli’s fiction that much more complex and intriguing. Disraeli’s
novelistic explorations of a culture of discussion make me join Leslie Stephen’s heartfelt remark:
“May not one lament the degradation of a promising novelist into a prime minister?” (“Mr.
Disraeli’s Novels” 450).

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CHAPTER 3
THE LIMITS OF SYMPATHETIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHARLES READE’S PUT YOURSELF
IN HIS PLACE AND WALTER BESANT’S ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN

In his famous essay “On Liberty” (1859), John Stuart Mill underscores the importance of
heeding the opposing argument as a crucial element of a discursive quest for truth:
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of [arriving at the
truth]. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does
not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either
opinion. (42)
Mill goes on to lament that a great majority of “educated men” fall short of his ideal of
discussion because “they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who
think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say” (42-43). In a
similar vein, an advocate of rational discussion George Jacob Holyoake contends: “when men
think on true principles they become adherents—but only those adherents are worth having who
have thought on both sides, and discussion alone makes them do that well” (“Rudiments of
Public Speaking and Debate” 68). Mill and Holyoake express a popular Victorian sensibility,
which proposes that a successful resolution of a social issue and pursuit of social justice demand
that participants in discussion suspend their own views and get to know an opposing perspective.
In other words, putting oneself in another’s shoes emerges as a model for coping with otherwise
irreconcilable opinions. The Victorian enterprise of putting oneself in another’s shoes

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foregrounds the link between an abstract mental exercise and the physical, bodily experience. As
Mill’s and Holyoake’s statements show, the method of assuming the other’s perspective had
already occupied a place among Victorian cultures of discussion at a time when Charles Reade’s
novel Put Yourself in His Place was serialized in the Cornhill Magazine (1869-1870) and when a
little over a decade later Walter Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men came in print in 1882.
I will argue in this chapter that while both Reade’s and Besant’s novels attempt to
envision a public sphere grounded in embracing the other’s perspective, they in fact provide
opposing critiques of this model. A philanthropist Dr. Amboyne in Reade’s novel propagates his
principle “Put yourself in his place—put yourself in her place—in their place” (78), thereby
anticipating a fantasy of unlimited and egalitarian exchangeability of positions and viewpoints
among individuals. The novel features its protagonist Henry Little, a wood-carver and inventor
of tools, standing up against the savagery of the unions, and Reade asks his readers to put
ourselves in his place, as the title suggests. As the readers find themselves “Amboynable” (151)
by trying to see the unions from the perspective of Little, Reade’s novel stokes unrestrained
optimism in this tactic. Put Yourself in His Place imagines an inclusive forum in which any
position is transparent and readable by anyone who wishes to engage with it in pursuit of
consensus. The same idea of assuming the other’s perspective underpins Besant’s All Sorts and
Conditions of Men, in which a brewery heiress Angela Messenger puts herself in the place of a
dressmaker in the East End and a well-bred Harry Goslett, a sergeant’s son adopted by Lord
Jocelyn Le Breton, ventures to the East End to live a life of a cabinet-maker and reconnect with
his people. However, when Angela and Harry incognito discuss future reforms for the workers, it
is precisely the fact that they do not (and cannot) fully know each other’s perspectives that makes
the discussion that much more constructive. Their incognito status puts a check on unbounded

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exchangeability of perspectives and calls for acknowledging otherness as something irreducible
to exchange. In other words, the novel recognizes alterity as a fundamental condition of
discussion. If Dr. Amboyne’s principle lays the ground for a homogeneous public sphere where
each perspective is commensurable with another and so moves toward a common agreement,
Besant’s novel insists on reckoning with another’s perspective as otherness anchored in
heterogeneity. Reading the two novels as distinct commentaries on a prevalent Victorian tenet of
sympathetic tending to the other’s perspective, I argue that novelistic fiction was a dynamic
medium in which various models of discussion were tested out. As the two novels engage with
the spatial metaphor “put yourself in his place,” we see Victorians’ nuanced negotiations
between the abstracted mental capacity to imagine the other’s perspective and an embodied
physical movement into the other’s social location and understanding the other’s environs, from
experiencing the other’s home to literally putting oneself into the other’s shoes and clothes.
While Reade’s Put Yourself in His Place offers this tenet as a universal and limitless principle,
Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men experiments with its limits and suggests an alternative,
i.e. more modern and complex, understanding of agency and identity in the public sphere. As a
result, Reade and Besant produce two partly overlapping and partly differing discussion models.
Written in the tradition of sensation novel and melodrama, Put Yourself in His Place
dramatizes a tension between the “dirty oligarchy” of the Hillsborough union (Burns 272), as
27

Reade referred to it, and Henry Little, one of Reade’s “Resourceful Heroes.”

Reade attempted

to approach the issue of the tyranny of capital vs. the tyranny of labor “with a mind impartial and

27

Critics and biographers, such as Wayne Burns and Elton E. Smith, have referred to a
“Resourceful Hero” as a pattern recurrent in Reade’s fiction. For example, Burns sums up that
Reade “viewed life” “as a melodramatic stage on which he could play the Resourceful Hero”
(Charles Reade 269).
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open to conviction” (A Memoir 342)

28

and employed his method of collecting newspaper

clippings and writing observations in his notebooks in hopes that “either side would recognize
the judicial attitude of a writer who had as little liking for the brutality of plutocracy as for the
brutality of rattening” (A Memoir 342). But in contrast to Reade’s claim for an elevated position
of an impartial writer, the novel itself advocates a more involved process of putting oneself in
another’s place. Before we see this principle at work, we witness the union’s violence in full
when it almost costs Little his life to ignore their anonymous threats. After a premeditated bomb
explosion at the factory, Little is forced to quit his job with Mr. Cheatham and accepts Dr.
Amboyne’s gracious invitation to work for him by observing the workers’ life. Little persuades
Mr. Cheatham to grant him employment forging blades, if secretly, thanks to using Mr.
Amboyne’s powerful principle “Put yourself in his place” (78). Eventually, Henry goes to the
United States to sell his patents while leaving behind his beloved Grace Carden. Enduring a
whole chain of vicissitudes, including Henry’s miraculous rescue of Grace in the flood, the
lovers are happily reunited. The readers follow the vicissitudes of the love plot and, in addition,
are provided with a direct manual for socio-economic improvement, exemplified in Little’s
report to the Philanthropic Society on the condition of the file-cutters with suggestions as to what
should be done by masters and workers.

28

Reviewers, too, recognized Reade’s attempt at impartiality. Thus, in its critique of Reade’s
play based on the novel, Athenaeum claimed that he possesses “armed neutrality” and “enters as
a peace-maker into the fray, knocking down each of the combatants and repeating with the
utmost impartiality the process so soon as either of them attempts to get on his legs” (2223, June
4, 1870, 749). Another review stated that the story is “written in no spirit of prejudice for or
against either labor or capital, and while it has not as yet given any solution of the problem how
to adjust the interests of these two elements of industry, it has shown in vivid colors many of the
shortcomings of each” (Scientific American 21:19, 6 Nov. 1869, 291). However, as Wayne Burns
argues, Reade was prone to “myopically Baconian observations” (274) when he studied violent
activities of the unions.
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The reviewers of Put Yourself in His Place taunted Reade for the improbabilities of the
twists and turns of the plot

29

and its formulaic nature, which, nevertheless, did not diminish the

huge success of the novel. Breathtaking improbabilities are strangely intertwined with the facts
that Reade gleaned from blue books and newspapers. As a result, reviewers’ considerations of
the novel as “blue-book light literature” with “glaring improbabilities” were well warranted

30

(Arthur’s 43:2, Feb. 1875, 91). Reade’s signature blending of factual truth and pragmatism, on
the one hand, and “improbabilities” and idealizations, on the other, informs his vision of one’s
mobility among social perspectives. As one reviewer feared, the appeal of Reade’s ideal
principle could be tarnished by the improbability of its logistics: “What a good thing would it be
if those who approach the matter in dispute from two different sides could put themselves—what
a good thing would it be if they even made some decided attempt to put themselves—in one
another’s place! When work is short, and times are hard, how difficult it is to do this!” (Morris
550). Associating Reade’s principle with “understanding and sympathy,” the reviewer
concluded: “We must try to put ourselves in one another’s place” (Morris 551). While, on the
one hand, indeed, the challenges for Reade’s principle seemed to be the scarcity of economic
29

The Examiner and London Review, for instance, commented: “But Mr. Reade’s chief fault is
an effort at realism, which takes no count of absurdity. He is apparently so much in earnest with
his story that he forgets the reader may not be so much impressed, and may be inclined to laugh
at extravagances” (3254, 11 June, 1870, 373).
30
Similarly, another review commented on Reade’s blend of facts and sensational
improbabilities thus: “Mr. Reade is an inventor: society and the world do nothing for him except
to supply him with a number of facts, which he carefully disarranges, and a code of probabilities,
which he scrupulously violates” (Lippincott’s Magazine of Literature, Science and Education 6,
Sept. 1870, 338). Furthermore, Reade’s knack for sensational plots is distinct from
sensationalism in newspapers. Although there are direct connections between sensational
accounts in the newspapers and sensational plots in the novels, Dallas Liddle shows that they coexisted as competing genres, with different agendas. See more on this in Liddle, Dallas. The
Dynamics of Genre: Journalism and the Practice of Literature in Mid-Victorian Britain.
Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2009. 122-140.
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resources, another review found major challenges in one’s inability to abstract oneself from
one’s embodied characteristics: “The difficulty is that not all persons have the imaginative
strength of Dr. Amboyne or his creator; for example, when a fat middle-aged doctor sees a young
lady smile or frown, he may find it rather difficult to interpret her meaning by temporarily
changing his sex, age, position, and circumstances” (Saturday Review 29:763, 11 June, 1870,
777). While the reviews of Put Yourself in His Place raise concerns about the practical
possibility of inhabiting the other’s perspective, they uphold Dr. Amboyne’s principle as an
ideal.
Perhaps the reason for the latter is that Reade paints a few appealing discussion scenes
resolving in mutual understanding. One such discussion takes place between Henry Little and his
employer Cheatham. Reade imagines a moment of face-to-face (or “man to man”) discussion, in
which a practice of abstraction from one’s own “sex, age, position, and circumstances” and
putting oneself in another’s place is rewarded with a newfound understanding:
“Well?” said Mr. Cheetham, rather surlily.
“I am come to ask for my month, sir.”
“So I guessed. Do you really mean to exact that?”
“Why not, sir?”
‘Haven’t you heard how they [the unions] ground me down?”
“Yes, sir. But why did you give in? I was true to you, but you failed me. I’d have
shut up the works for three months, rather than be made a slave of and go from
my word.”
“Ay, ay: that’s bachelor’s talk. I’ve got a wife and children; and they make a man
a mouse.”

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“Well, sir, I forgive you; but as to my month’s wages—now all I say is—PUT
YOURSELF IN MY PLACE!”
“Well?”
“You are me. You are brought from London, under an agreement, a month’s
notice on either side. You work, and give satisfaction. You are threatened, but you
don’t run from our employer. You are blown up, and nearly killed. You lose a
fortnight, but you don’t charge for it; ‘twasn’t your employer’s fault. You come
back to him, and face the music again. You work with the sword hanging over
you. But your employer gives in, and sacks you in a minute. Oughtn’t you to have
your month? Come now, man to man, oughtn’t you?”
“I ought, and that’s the truth. I didn’t look at it that way. I saw my own side.
There—no more about it—I’ll draw the check—with a good heart.” (151)
After Little finds Cheatham “Amboynable” (151), they both work out a plan to secure
employment for Henry as a blade-forger in a deserted church. Reade capitalizes every letter in
Henry’s appeal to Cheatham to put himself in Henry’s place in order to put visual and semantic
emphasis on it. This moment embodies the novel’s fantasy that perspective-sharing can be a
universal panacea for injustices and misunderstandings of all kinds. It only takes a moment’s
good will to enter into another’s situation or viewpoint, and some kind of newly acquired clarity
of understanding will lead to an optimal perspective that everyone would agree with. Reade does
not psychologize the moment when a character steps into the novelistic space of another, but
treats stepping into another’s shoes as a simple formula where success is guaranteed with a
sincere invocation, “PUT YOURSELF IN MY PLACE!”

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“Amboynability” here gestures back to the eighteenth-century accounts of sympathy by
David Hume and Adam Smith. Smith sees sympathetic attachments as a “feasible basis of
society” (Ablow 3). Dr. Amboyne’s principle, though, cannot be reduced to Smith’s sympathy
defined as “our fellow feeling with the sufferings [. . .] of others [my emphasis]” (Smith 43).
Rachel Ablow redefines sympathy more broadly as “the experience of entering imaginatively
into another’s thoughts or feelings [my emphasis]” (8). Indeed, the dialogue above indicates not
just a transference of Little’s suffering into Cheatham’s affective sympathetic response (which
may have well happened without a dialogue), but Cheatham’s new awareness of a multiplicity of
perspectives besides his own (with a self-reproach, “I saw my own side”). If Smith’s sympathy is
a natural faculty that operates as a fellow-feeling, or feeling in common, Reade envisions
recognition of the other through difference, not commonality. Cheatham pays Harry the wages
because he realizes that Harry’s side is different from rather than similar to his own. Cheatham
discovers not so much feeling compassion with a fellow human being, as recognizing the other
through his difference in the name of justice.
This scene showcases the richness of the resources of everyday language. In Little’s
casual, even clichéd, yet pivotal phrase, “PUT YOURSELF IN MY PLACE!” there is an
element of invitation and acceptance that differ from the account of sympathy as an involuntary
transfusion of passions (Smith 11). Reade and Smith also differ on a more practical point. For
Smith, there can never be a complete identity between the spectator and the sufferer because the
“imaginary change of situation” is “but momentary” (21). For Reade, on the other hand, a plea
“You are me” is far less problematized and rather taken as a recipe for everyday action. The
everyday in the novel is a space of novelty and spontaneity. It is everyday interactions, the novel
suggests, that have the power to enrich our social perspective and become more aware of others’.

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Reade sees everyday encounters as a transformative spontaneous practice, not a monotonous
routine. A Victorian cartoon nicely illustrates his flight from the drab notion of the everyday.
Titled “Something like a novelist,” the cartoon portrays Reade’s flying on a gigantic quill over a
dark and indistinguishable mass of “Every-day Life” far below and holding a banner with
“Imagination” written on it. With the help of imagination, Reade brings to life, at least in fiction,
the everyday as an arena for inter-subjective recognition that lays the foundation for inclusivity,
justice, and respect for difference in society at large. That said, part of him, of course, is driven
by the desire to sensationalize the everyday so that his novel would reap the commercial success
and top the popularity ratings. Indeed, Reade’s concern that a meticulous rehearsal of “barren
portions of time” (Cloister and the Hearth) can bore the readers leads him to omit the monotony
and infuse the novel’s construction of the everyday with endless vicissitudes. Overall, while
Cheatham’s riveting change in his perspective (one such vicissitude) adds to the novel’s
sensationalist flavor, it nevertheless carries serious political implications.
The phrase “PUT YOURSELF IN MY PLACE!” begs for analysis with the help of what
Garrett Stewart calls narratography. In his claim to reveal the structuring of the plot from the
very material level of fiction prose, where it unfolds “syllable by syllable” (1), “word for word”
(6), “line to line” (13), Stewart grants the principal significance to the medium, the prose itself,
in his inquiry into the narrative of Victorian novels. Not only does Little’s phrase hail us back to
the title of the novel, but in this scene it is crucial in moving the plot forward. Through its
capitalization of every letter, the phrase enacts a kind of “strategic deviance” (19), or violence, in
Stewart’s terms, and breaks through the normalized conventions of text both visually and
semantically. The refreshing violence of “PUT YOURSELF IN MY PLACE!” puts a check on
the animalistic violence of the unions in the larger framework of the novel. This utterance is

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Little’s last, perhaps desperate, argument, and this is also a turning point in the dialogue. From a
timid solicitor, Little turns into a proactive agent. While Cheatham’s first “Well?” is spoken
“surlily” and so tries to block the discussion, the second “Well?” is infused with curiosity and
anticipation. Reade capitalizes his “pet doctrine” (“PUT YOURSELF IN MY PLACE!”)
“syllable by syllable,” so to speak, to place it both within the everyday discussion scene he is
portraying, but also to place it above the everyday. For him, it operates as a universal doctrine
above all. It transcends the reader’s immediate environment by the fireplace and goes beyond the
realm of fiction. Only then can Dr. Amboyne’s principle aspire for universality.
However central the principle of exchanging perspectives is in the novel, its applications
seem to be selective. The Unions’ mob mentality, anonymous threats to Henry (“the incongruous
mixture of a sanguinary menace with bad spelling” (39)), and antagonistic communications
suggest an alternative that refuses to listen to the other. Exchange of perspectives does not prove
up to the task when the parties are not equally invested in its success. Even Jobson, the Secretary
of the Edge-Tool Forgers’ Union, proves unable to mediate between Henry’s petition to join the
Union and anonymous violence against him. At times Henry himself forestalls tending to the
other’s worldview. Thus, his observation of the work conditions among dry-grinders, sawgrinders, and file-cutters arouses in him mixed emotions of “hate, contempt, and pity” (138). On
the other hand, he can get “a glimpse into the mind of Amboyne” (138) to agree with his theory
of Life, Labor, and Capital as a direction for reform. On his factory tour, Henry investigates the
dangers of workers’ labor with the concern of someone who can truly put himself in their place.
His “Report” shows a mind capable of looking at the issue from various perspectives as Henry
considers a plan of action for multiple parties: “masters,” “workmen,” and “Legislature” (527531). Inside fiction, this “Report” acquires the power beyond the “dry bones” of blue-books (v.2

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161) while the “foul play” of the unions is denounced for their violence and their misspelled
“phonetic” letters (159). Contrary to its democratic intentions, a practice of embracing the
other’s perspective often does not include the working class. The novel suggests that the sharing
of perspectives is rooted in an individual interaction and since the unionized working masses
cannot be individualized, their perspective remains a cipher in the public sphere.
After the romance plot meanders through rivalry, Henry’s alleged death, flood, and
rescue, the novel presents the readers with symbolic resolutions in a series of marriages. After
Henry acquires capital as an inventor on his trip to the United States and gets reinstated as a
nephew of Squire Raby, he finally marries Grace Carden. The upper class remains thoroughly
detached from the workmen. As someone of noble birth, Henry shows that his workman status
has never fully determined his life. His withdrawal from the investigation of the unions’ violence
and handing it over into the hands of the journalist Holdfast turns Henry into a comfortably
settled aristocrat rather than an activist for the common worker. Edith Little’s reuniting with her
old love Dr. Amboyne is a union of gentility and an improvement from her youthful elopement
with a “bricklayer” (13). Jael Dence’s common-peasant-folk background is glossed over and her
loyal service is rewarded by her marriage to Squire Raby thus promising a hopeful future for the
land interest. The ending stabilizes the social hierarchies and stakes out an upper-class world of
comfort that cannot be disturbed even by the continuing “foul play” of the unions. While Dr.
Amboyne’s principle will prevail in the next generation of Littles and Rabies who will learn “the
art of putting themselves into his place, her place, their place” (158), it remains a big question
whether “their” place could ever denote the union members or file-cutters like Silly Billy’s father
who died in a grindstone machine accident.

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Investigating the issue of union violence, Reade attempts to imagine a world that hinges
on the exchangeability of perspectives. Glimpses at a public sphere where conflicts of interest
and the struggle for subsistence are negotiated by putting oneself in another’s place resurface in
the text frequently indeed, although with varying degrees of success. While the novel’s
commitments to exchanging perspectives are explicitly articulated, what remains a question is
just how far this model ought to extend across the social fabric. Besant goes to lengths to
represent the unions’ violence only to reveal his own reluctance to understand their perspective.
Besant’s agenda to write a novel against union violence imposes limitations upon the novel’s
vision and undermines the potentially inclusive and democratic principle the novel itself
advocates. After all, if Dr. Amboyne’s principle itself reverberates as a clear and simple slogan
through the novel, what remains at the margins are the most intriguing questions of who has the
agency of exchanging perspectives and on just what social scope it can operate. Reade shares
Jürgen Habermas’s views in contemplating a public sphere organized by mutual understanding
and with language being a transparent medium that is free from ambiguity or instability of
meanings. Every perspective then can be accessed and understood.
By putting value on face-to-face discussions, Reade’s novel imparts the appeal of what
Raymond Williams calls “the knowable community” (The English Novel 16). Reade’s midVictorian novel wants to revamp “the knowable community” within and beyond his novel in
response to the increasing complexity of modern collectivities. Reade’s commitment to
transparent and direct discussion also manifested itself in his opinions on contemporary
criticism. As Mary Poovey observes, Reade resented bitterly “the ability of literary reviewers to
publish their judgments anonymously” (“Forgotten Writers” 436). Reade would label these types
as “Criticaster and the True Anonymuncule” (“Forgotten Writers” Poovey 436). For him, for a

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dialogue to be meaningful, whether in novels or periodicals, it had to comply with the tenets of a
“knowable” public sphere. In some way, too, Reade wanted to enact an exchange of perspectives
of sorts by insisting that Robert Barnes, the illustrator for this novel, would see the design for
illustrations through Reade’s eyes and denied him the freedom to “re-visualize” the authorial
design (Cooke 323).
But to return to the novel, Reade’s view of exchanging of perspectives as a solution to
conflicts of interests and his knack for sensation, to some degree, worked against each other. His
fiction often prioritizes “satisfying the contemporary craving for ‘sensation’” at the expense of
“soberly exploring a social problem” (Smith, Sheila 145). For instance, Henry keeps readers on
edge with the twists of his narrow escapes from the union violence as well as with his heroic
rescue of Grace during the flood, which arguably overshadows the controversial questions of the
unionized workforce and inter-class marriage. While Reade may be accused of favoring
sensationalism over serious study of social problems, Besant arguably offers a more complex
engagement with the concept of exchangeability of social positions and political perspectives in
the public sphere. Besant’s novel subscribes to the principle that structurally underlies, according
to Carolyn Betensky, many social problem novels, and professes the “exchangeability of
positions and of the knowingness and feeling that allow one to occupy them” (12). Besant’s
novel engages in intriguing ways with the principle of exchangeability and contributes to the
Victorian fantasy of social inclusion that Pam Morris terms “imagining inclusive society” (7).
Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions of Men revises its own investment in the sympathetic
knowledge of the other by suggesting that perhaps recognizing the other’s perspective as never
fully exchangeable or translatable can forge a more inclusive and pluralistic public sphere.

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The notion of putting oneself in the place of the other is the operative mechanism of
sympathy. However, the sympathizer’s assumption that the other’s perspective is transparent and
accessible seems to be of a piece with the mechanisms of social domination. As scholars have
shown, Victorian sympathy is implicated in the hierarchical relations of power between the
dominant and the dominated classes. In her work Feeling for the Poor, Carolyn Betensky claims
that the act of reading by the middle classes about their own sympathetic feelings was a kind of
social action, an end in itself, and an attempt to re-validate the class hierarchies, i. e., the
dominant position of the feeling bourgeois. Victorian sympathy operates with a conservative
social agenda because the middle classes redeem themselves by sympathizing with the poor
whereas the status quo remains unchallenged. As sympathy becomes complicit with the power
relations of domination, it increasingly loses its potential to be a catalyst of democratic change.
Victorian sympathy is inextricable from the class structure in which it operates and which
it reproduces. Sympathetic relations are hierarchical and include a sympathetic middle-class
observer and a lower-class object of sympathy. This relationship is not entirely fixed, which
produces the middle-class anxieties that some day the object of sympathy may get into position
of power. Audrey Jaffe points out that sympathy in society is inextricable from anxieties about
power relations and states that scenes of sympathy perform “the construction of subjectivity in a
hierarchal but increasingly mobile society in which the middle-class self exists in a perpetually
vexed relationship with the figures of social difference that surround it” (11). Both Angela and
Harry set out to seek sympathetic knowledge about the East End poor, but their paternalistic
sympathy and desire to assume the working-class perspective further consolidate the class
hierarchy. The novel illuminates the subject-centered rather than inter-subjective mechanisms of
sympathy and suggests that, ironically, the work of sympathy in Victorian social problem novels

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is a response to injustice insofar as it is also a means by which social inequality seeks to
naturalize itself.
Besides eliciting sympathetic curiosity about the poor, Besant’s All Sorts and Conditions
of Men reveals its paternalistic undertones through its civilizing project. As one of his “studies of
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the East End and of the people” (Autobiography 209),

the novel is motivated by his mission to

civilize the working-classes of the East End by introducing them to culture and leisure. Besant
was one of a few Victorians to walk the streets of the East End and to study the lives of its slum
dwellers. A variety of publications about the poor, such as Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and
the London Poor (1861-1862), Charles B. P. Bosanquet’s Handy-Book for Visitors of the Poor in
London (1874), John Thompson’s Street Life in London (1877-1878), and Charles Booth’s Life
and Labour of the People in London (1891-18903) testify to an increasing interest in the East
End residents for social reformers, investigative journalists, charitable ladies, as well as general
public. In fact, as Seth Koven shows, by the 1880’s and 1890’s East End contained quite a few
institutions that were “the epicenters of fashionable slumming” (7) that exerted a continuous
draw of the middle-class slum tourists. Koven cogently illustrates how Victorians’ charitable
intentions were complicated by “voyeuristic curiosity” (9) and the tantalizing pleasure of class,
gender, and sexual transgression. That said, while the novel’s commitment to social reform can
be put in a productive tension with the voyeuristic pleasures that perhaps drove Besant down the
East End streets, I think that the reformist notion of reaching out to the poor itself is no less
problematic.
The novel unfolds simultaneously the reformist and emancipatory agenda to recognize
the social other as an equal, on the one hand, and thoroughly paternalistic attitudes to better the
31

Besides this fictional novel, Besant also published essays in the spirit of journalistic
investigation, e.g., a series titled East London.
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lives of the poor through middle-class culture, on the other. Critics have interpreted this twopronged gesture as the ultimate failure of the novel and critiqued its project of “colonizing the
poor into middle-class values” (De Vine 24) or showed how the novel’s implicit reinforcement
of “social stratification” “invalidates the narrative’s manifest democratic program” (Neetens
143). Indeed, social hierarchies are evidenced in the unequal mobility between class positions:
only the middle-class Angela Messenger and Harry Gosslett have the privilege to place
themselves in the shoes of the working class. As the two protagonists venture out into the East
End as a kind of participant-observer, the agency they exert towards the working classes is not a
hospitable acceptance of the other, but the engrafting of one’s culture onto the other. That said, I
bring a more nuanced understanding of the novel’s fashioning of its “democratic program,” or
more specifically, democratic discussion. Moving away from the “colonizing” impulse of
assuming the perspective of the others, the narrative revises this model to intimate the idea that
perhaps a view of the other as somewhat unknowable, not fully accessible, and not quite
definable, is more liberating and thus better constitutes a democratic project. As such, while the
novel on many levels is committed to taking the other’s perspective on terms of certainty and
clarity, discussions between disguised Harry and Angela oddly work against this commitment,
and the novel’s fascination with the unknowable other produces a countervailing stance. The
novel’s preoccupation with questions of access to the other’s perspective and with cultivating
sympathetic knowledge about the other allow us to see the text’s hidden anxieties about its own
propagation of bringing Culture to the masses. The fear that the other’s perspective may never be
fully accessible to understanding puts an ultimate check on the middle-class desire to infuse the
lower classes with the “proper” culture and so make the lower classes similar to themselves.

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The opening of the novel speaks to Besant’s faith in the possibility and desirability for his
upper middle-class protagonists to truly understand the people of the East End by placing
themselves in the East End’s ways of living. Independently of one another, Angela and Harry
acquire this mobility to exchange their perspective by merely assuming working-class
professions and quitting their West End residences. While Harry desires to “prove the
brotherhood of humanity” (23) by “going back to my own people” (22), Angela becomes “one of
the people” (14) with a similar idea to “feel myself a part of this striving, eager, anxious
humanity, on whose labours I live in comfort” (14). Almost too easily combining in these words
the democratic gesture of common humanity with an awareness of social stratification, Angela
becomes a key agent of change in the East End. Her introduction of culture and entertainment
into the lives of her seamstresses and Harry’s conception of the Palace of Delight represent
Besant’s own views on ameliorating the East End. All Sorts and Conditions of Men was a
product of “a great deal of time walking about the mean monotony of the East End of London”
(Autobiography 243) in an effort to uncover “the romance that lies beneath its monotony”
(Autobiography 243). Just like Angela, who, discontent with the abstract theories of political
economy, wants to know the people of the East End, Besant foregrounds the need to know the
human side of the East End rather than consider it statistically, politically, or economically.
Writing his essays, he wants to produce “a document altogether human” (“One of Two Millions”
32

225).

While himself only a wandering observer of the East End, Besant chooses for

protagonists to see “the romance” of Stepney Green not via a detached perspective of a flâneur,
but via an immediate and embodied perspective of living in the skin of the East End artisans.

32

In these East London sketches, Besant depicts the lives of characters based on real people, but
generic in nature. Thus, his essay follows the life of a girl Liz whose conditions and challenges
are typical of many others in the East End.
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The question of how seriously Besant considered an imperative to embrace the other’s
perspective as a way of community-building leads to the question of genre overall. Equal parts
reality and fantasy, the novel fashions itself as a manual for social improvement and a fairytale.
Straddling the line between a tale of “romance,” a social problem novel, and something like
“Utopian extravaganza” (Melville 304), Besant’s novel has a complicated relationship with
realism. From his walks in the East End, Besant realized that “one of the things very much
wanted in this great place was a centre of organized recreation, orderly amusement, and
intellectual and artistic culture” (Autobiography 243). But when this vision of reform was
couched in the form of the novel, it seemed to have lost its realist claim. Under the influence of
“certain friendly advisers,” Besant writes in the “Preface,” he adds a subtitle “An Impossible
Story.” Yet, he admits that he has “never been able to understand why it is impossible” (4).
Contemporary reviews similarly characterized Besant’s work as “[i]mpossibility tempered by the
ordinary”: “the closer Mr. Besant approaches ‘actuality’, the nearer he comes to the smoky and
squalid life of the East End, the more he introduces an effective kind of prosaic fantasy. [. . .] As
the local environment [. . .] is invariably described with much minuteness; as the description is
firmly touched, and gives, as a rule, a sense of reality, the impossibilities of the plot and action
become the more odd and fascinating” (Saturday Review 59:1534, 385). Besant was criticized
for his “quality that stamps everything he touches with unreality,” including his “schemes of
improvement” (The Critic 268, 1889, 76). The reviews recognized the fracture between reality
and imagination that organized the novel, but the question was whether this weakened the
novel’s purchase or enhanced its potential for social change. Besant’s fantastic realism is a
counterpart of sorts to Reade’s sensationalism. They both view social problems through a prism
of exciting fantasy. Yet, Besant employs the fantastic in a slightly different way. Unlike Reade,

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he is less after sensational and sales-oriented twists of the plot, than after blending the dire social
reality with the fantasy of a better one to come. Besant’s novel catalyzes social change in yet
another way: as a medium intended for leisurely consumption, his novel cannot make a better
argument for the culture of recreation in the East End but merely promote its own consumption.
However fantastic or utopian it may have been labeled, the novel brought about real
change. A fictional utopia turned reality when Besant’s idea of the Palace of Delight inspired a
real People’s Palace in East End which opened on the Mile End Road in 1887. The Literary
World, for instance, considered the real and the unreal in Besant’s work not at odds with one
another, but as linked into a relationship of a real problem and a solution that has to be imagined
before it becomes a reality: “Besant has done more than point out a disease; he has suggested a
remedy. His dream of The Palace of Delight—pronounced by many to be impossible—has been
realized [. . .]” (2 Mar. 1889, 20.5; 75-76). Unfortunately for Besant, the People’s Palace failed
to become a full-fledged embodiment of the Palace of Delight because “the original idea of a
palace of recreation was mixed up with a place of education” (Autobiography 244). His novel
gave expression to something urgent, new, and yet unknown, which made it simultaneously a
“text-book” (244) for the future and cast it perpetually in a utopian light. As a model of
discursive agency at the heart of this novel, embracing the other’s perspective, too, acquires both
pragmatic and idealistic connotations. His model of discussion aspires for some empirical
realism, but at the same time is thoroughly brimming with his optimistic, utopian desire to gather
“all sorts and conditions of men” under the common denominator of humanity.
The notion of a public sphere that derives from “the brotherhood of humanity” (23) and
that construes everyone’s perspective to be visible and understandable by anyone else serves as a
kind of conceptual tool for Besant to begin to approach the unknown East End. He takes recourse

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to the two-nations trope of the 1840’s to represent the cultural, economic, and geographical gulf
between the middle-class public and the “hive of working bees” (“One of Two Millions” 225), as
he called East London. “Nobody goes east [. . .]; no one is curious about the way of life in the
east” (29), the narrator laments as we first peek into Mrs. Bormalack’s boarding-house and
encounter its tenants. Angela’s and Harry’s crusades suggest that it is imperative for the middleclass public to get to know “the east.” Of course, besides humanitarian impulses, the novel adds
into the mix the middle-class anxieties about the uneducated, disenfranchised, and potentially
violent workers. Therefore, to know them and their “way of life” by stepping into their shoes is a
means to dispel these anxieties. One can recognize here not only middle-class aspirations for
safety, but also Besant’s democratic intentions for the inhabitants of the East End. His advocacy
for a genuine curiosity about them seems to shape a democratic attitude of acceptance.
However, this impulse of acceptance fades away when the novel departs from the original
curiosity to know the “way of life in the east” and begins to mobilize the tactics of introducing
specifically middle-class ways of life, leisure, and culture in the East End. On meeting his
kinsfolk in the East End, Harry’s curiosity is superseded by a feeling of being “bored and
disgusted” (43) with his cousins who seem to him “a pair of sulky, ill-bred young men” (43). In
his initial attempts, Harry cannot understand his cousins, let alone acknowledge their ways of
life: “Conversation was difficult between two rather jealous workmen and a brother artisan who
greatly resembled the typical Swell” (43). Harry’s fluctuation from “curiosity” to “disgust” is
symptomatic of the challenge to accept the other’s ways of life. Harry employs his ability to
assume another’s perspective with the intent not to recognize another’s culture and way of life,
but to disseminate his notion of Culture to those who do not possess it yet. His zeal to engraft his
ideas of culture and leisure upon the East End inhabitants living “monotonous lives” in

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“monotonous houses” (44) reveals far more colonizing implications than his original curiosity
about the East End “romance” might suggest. As the plot unfolds, Harry’s agency can be
described not so much in terms of reciprocal curiosity and recognition as in terms of infusing the
Culture and the Leisure into those who possess neither one.
Such tactics of cultural dissemination in All Sorts and Conditions of Men display familiar
undertones of Matthew Arnold’s influential thinking. Arnold’s notion of culture as “pursuit of
perfection” (81) and his ambition to diffuse “sweetness and light” (79) to the “raw and unkindled
masses of humanity” (79) echo in Harry Goslett’s language: “every man’s mind is worth
cultivating as soon as you find out the things best fitted to grow in it” (43). Along with the
egalitarian idea of bringing culture to the masses, however, the narrator hurries to qualify the
previous statement by adding through the indirect discourse : “But some minds will only grow
turnips, while others produce the finest strawberries” (43). By doing so, he conveniently posits
himself as a friend of the East End multitude and a proponent of middle-class cultural authority.
For sure, the ideas about social improvements in the East End, as it turns out, flourish in the most
cultivated mind—Harry’s. Yet, there is also a glimmer of hope for some like “rough and
uncultivated” (255) Dick Coppin who can one day become a working-class representative in the
House if he continues to “go on reading; go on speaking; go on debating” (315) and “learn all
that there is to learn” (315) to become “a practical man with knowledge” (315). Besant projects
his ideas of culture onto a linear scale from “turnips” at the bottom to “strawberries” at the top.
Culture, then, operates through the language of presence, absence, and augmentation and
becomes homogeneous and monolithic. This notion of culture inflects the novel’s interest in the
other’s perspective accordingly: a promise of mutual cultural exchange is debunked by a
strategic delivery of culture to the “unkindled masses.”

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However, middle-class complacency about their ability to access and to know the
perspective of common folk is destabilized through discussion scenes between Angela and Harry
in their working-class disguises. While Angela thinks that she has a definite knowledge of the
identity and class status of the cabinet-maker conversing with her, she oftentimes finds herself
uncertain of who Harry truly is and what he truly thinks. Similarly, Harry is intrigued by
Angela’s ambiguous persona as a dressmaker as she frequently shifts her discussions from
lamenting the monotony of a dressmaker’s existence to figuring out the grand scale reform in the
East End that only Miss Messenger’s inheritance money can sponsor. This uncertainty creates a
communicative situation where participants exchange ideas not because they can fully access and
comprehend the other’s perspective, but precisely because this perspective is mutable and
deferred. This sense of uncertainty is mutual: “Angela, with her own guilty secret, was
suspicious that perhaps this young man [Harry] might also have his” (69). Importantly, the
uncertainty about one another’s perspective is productive as it serves to empower Angela and
Harry to express ideas that they would not otherwise. This performative situation throws a
different light on Victorian imaginings of discussion in the public sphere: it questions the
commonplace notions of stable identities, publics, and viewpoints and features a discussion
forum where identities and perspectives are more complex, multifaceted, and never fully
knowable. As a result, the novel is organized around two fantasies of discussion that ultimately
work against each other. Angela’s and Harry’s immersion into working-class roles illustrates the
fantasy of one’s perspective as something entirely accessible and stable, while their incognito
discussions debunk this fantasy and conceive of perspectives in the public sphere as always
multivalent and not entirely intelligible.

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Discussions between Angela and Harry suggest that cultivated minds develop a natural
attraction despite their working-class appearances. Such stratification, i.e. distinguishing Angela
and Harry from the rest in the East End, reinforces the cultural authority of the middle classes. At
the same time, however, the slippages that permeate all of their discussions allow Besant to
experiment with this cultural hierarchy. In fact, he interestingly reconciles the endorsement of
cultural authority with his faith in “common humanity.” Angela’s first meeting with Harry
showcases her as someone akin to a cultural snob:
What could there be, she asked, in common between herself and this workman?
Then she wondered, remembering that so far she had found nothing in her own
that was not also in his. Could it be that two years of Newnham had elevated her
mentally no higher than the level of a cabinet-maker? (65)
The fact that Angela intuits “Culture” in Harry and is drawn to him and not many others in the
East End subverts her original intention to integrate among the people. Angela’s impulse toward
Harry despite his appearance presents it as natural that upper classes mix with their educated
peers. What on the outside looks like discussions between a dressmaker and a cabinet-maker,
then, reinforces the exclusivity of the middle-class. Angela’s and Harry’s discussions about the
working classes are curiously exclusive of the working classes themselves. And yet, Angela’s
cultural complacency is mitigated by a more democratic gesture to find something “in common”
with this, or any other workman, for that matter. The notion of “common humanity” becomes
here complicit with the middle class desire to impart middle-class ideas of culture unto the
working class by recognizing something “in common” with them.
Angela’s and Harry’s agency among the working people strongly invites reading these
scenes in the vein of the middle-class’ ambivalent project of maintaining middle-class authority,

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on the one hand, and identifying commonality between classes, on the other. The working
classes share common humanity with the upper classes, but the only thing the former lack is
culture. In order to impart culture upon the social other, the middle-classes have to assume the
other’s perspective is knowable, stable, and transparent. However, I argue that Angela’s and
Harry’s discussions do not affirm, but subvert this assumption. Instead of being able to read the
other, to locate the other’s perspective, and to treat the other’s identity as a fixed thing, Angela
and Harry succeed in their discussions precisely because this ability is foreclosed upon. Angela
and Harry have to communicate with the other who is never clearly defined and to refashion their
own identities and arguments so as to remain undiscovered by their interlocutor.
We have seen how a model of perspective-sharing where positions are viewed as
comparable and accessible by others lends itself to the middle-classes’ colonizing superiority and
cultural homogeneity. If so, I am interested in examining what kind of cultural and political
alternative emerges from the model of embracing the other’s perspective based on the potential
inscrutability and non-fixedness of the other. I will tease out the democratic tendencies of such
an alternative. The very notion of obscurity generates the notion of the other in ways radically
different from the other in a public sphere based on transparency and unbound exchangeability.
The middle-class project of cultivating the masses cannot recognize anything but its own notion
of culture and creates a monologic public sphere. Conversely, the other that is not transparent
and never fully known disrupts this homogeneity creating a diversified and decentered public
sphere. Emmanuel Levinas posits our “Desire for Others” (30) as an alternative to Ego-centric
philosophy: “The visitation [of the Other] is the upset of the very egoism of the Ego that upholds
that conversion. The face disorients the intentionality that sights it” (33). Arguably, the
disorientation that Levinas refers to is akin to the disorientation when Angela is confronted by

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someone who does not neatly fall into her system of cultural hierarchy. Because she can classify
him as neither upper nor lower class, she is left with the only option to respond to Harry in an
ever changing communicative situation and thus come to terms with the elusive and inscrutable
nature of the Other.
Angela’s and Harry’s maneuverings in discussion caused by shifts in perspective
generate a mind-opening experience for both parties. Discussion creates a desire for intersubjective rather than egocentric encounter. Although Levinas is not so much concerned with
discussion, he views a desire for the Other as destabilizing of the Ego: “In Desire the Ego goes
out to Others in a way that compromises the sovereign identification of the Ego with oneself”
(29). Angela’s and Harry’s awareness of the Other’s presence and interest in what the other party
has to say destabilizes the “Ego.” The awareness of the Other further informs the situation as
they deal with otherness not only in their interlocutor, but also more privately, in their own
identity. Angela has to embrace being a dressmaker as her own identity. Harry, too, has to filter
what experiences and opinions he communicates to Angela to embrace the otherness of a
cabinet-maker within himself. What I call here “otherness” can be viewed as tricks and lies and
so interpreted as a taboo in Victorian morality, but, ironically, this “otherness” has an effect
conducive to political discussion. The workings of otherness in the novel open up new views on
the social problems.
As disguise introduces layers of otherness into the dialogue, it makes Angela’s and
Harry’s discussions more multi-faceted and more oriented to the other’s difference and the
other’s experience. These dynamics play out from one of the first moments of their acquaintance.
As the dress-maker and the cabinet-maker walk the streets of Stepney Green, their dialogue
dramatizes the challenges and rewards of reaching to relate to the other’s experience:

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‘Do you know the West End?’ Angela asked her companion when they were
gazing together upon an unlovely avenue of small houses which formed a street.
She was thinking how monotonous must be the daily life in these dreary streets.
‘Yes, I know the West End. What is it you regret in your comparison?’
Angela hesitated.
‘There are no carriages here,’ said the workman; ‘no footmen in powder or
coachmen in wigs; there are no ladies on horseback, no great squares with big
houses, no clubs, no opera-house, no picture-galleries. All the rest of life is here.’
‘But these things make life,’ said the heiress. ‘Without society and art, what is
life?’
‘Perhaps these people find other pleasures; perhaps the monotony gets relieved by
hope, and anxiety, and love, and death, and such things.’ The young man forgot
how the weight of this monotony had fallen upon his own brain: he remembered,
now, that his companion would probably have to face this dreariness all her life,
and he tried in a kindly spirit to divert her mind from the thought of it. ‘You
forget that each life is individual, and has its own separate interests; and these are
apart from the conditions which surround it. [. . .]’ (66)
Recurring shifts between “Angela” and an “heiress” and a “workman” and a “young man”
suggest just how each utterance is determined by speakers whose identities fluctuate in the
course of the conversation. Harry’s “I know the West End” is in line with his upper class status,
yet it has an entirely different resonance with Angela who perceives him as a “workman.”
Promptly, however, Harry gives a description of the West End only as an outsider, as a
“workman” would know it. The list of objects and people creates a picture that any outside

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observer would see. Then, Harry-aristocrat, again, contemplates how a worker would “perhaps”
survive the East End monotony as he brackets his own first-hand experience of everyday
drudgery. Similarly, when Angela claims that “society and art” make life, she imparts this from
an upper class perspective, but at the same time she does not fail to act as if Harry were
addressing a poor dressmaker.
Highlighting the incongruities between an utterance and one’s perception and
interpretation of it, the scene reveals that language is far from a transparent and linear medium of
communication. Additionally, language is presented here as an embedded indicator of class when
Angela interrogates Harry: “ ‘Men of your class [. . .] do not as a rule talk like you’ ” (69).
Besides their mutual desire to understand the other’s class, they also perceive an individual as an
individual and not simply as a building block of class-consciousness. Harry sees life as
“individual” filled with “its own separate interests.” This view suggests that in order to
understand the other class, one has to step into the shoes of another individual of that class rather
than make assumptions about class as a whole. Inter-subjective exchange wields more political
effect than contemplating abstractions of “class.” Their dialogue replaces a rigid category of
“class” with a more general notion of otherness in the public sphere. Angela’s and Harry’s
experimentation with multiple meanings of otherness and their attachments to more than one
identity outline our own (post)modern sense of the flexible, ambivalent, and multi-faceted nature
of a discussion forum in the public sphere. The novel attempts to reflect on the inconsistencies of
identities and rhetorical positions that lie at the heart of the public sphere evolving under the
forces of modernity and its increasingly complex discursive forums. This conception of the
public sphere precludes a simplistic model of exchanging perspectives and urges us to reconsider

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our relationship with the other on new terms that account for complexity and ambiguity of
participants in political discussion.
A sense of multifaceted identity imparts new freedoms in discourse and an ability to
conceptualize change: Angela’s and Harry’s discussions generate a shared vision of reform.
Awkward moments of juggling between viewpoints such as when “Angela hesitated” (66), when
“She remembered that she was a dressmaker” (67), or guarded “her own guilty secret” (69)
become the fractures in discussion that open new possibilities for self-fashioning. As this allows
one to hear the opinions that one would not hear otherwise, Angela is willing to take recourse to
such an extreme mode of self-fashioning as an estrangement from herself. Only when she refers
to Miss Messenger (herself) in third person can she elicit Harry’s thoughts on how her money
could be put to use:
‘Suppose, for instance, this young lady, this Miss Messenger, who owns all this
property, were to use it for the benefit of the people, how would she begin, do you
suppose?’
‘Most likely [. . .] she would give away quantities of blankets, bread and beef in
the winter, which would pauperize the people. [. . .] What you could do, by
yourself, if you pleased, among the working girls of the place, would be, I
suppose, worth ten times what she could do with all her giving. [. . .]’
‘Her money! Yes, I see. Yet she herself—’ She paused. (69)
Harry explains his plans for reform in the East End by directing his speech to the “absent” Miss
Messenger: “Now, if this young heiress wanted to do any good, she would build a Palace of
Pleasure here” (70). While there is something genuine and sincere about the fact that Angela and
Harry discuss social problems face-to-face, the genuine articulation of ideas also comes from an

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indirect address to someone who is not a part of the discussion. The face, then, denotes
simultaneously an immediate openness and an element of elusive masking and impenetrability.
This creates a notion of the other as open to communication, yet always preserving something
about one’s identity and viewpoint that is incommunicable to the other.
While it is hard for Angela and Harry to gauge one another’s class status, their gender is
clear and infuses their “long” (75) discussions with romance. By the same token, gender
determines the differences in their agency. Angela as a woman is allowed to be progressive
enough to want social change, but not to a point of militant feminism. As she thinks to herself, “
‘We women are weak creatures,’ [. . .] ‘We long to be up and doing, but we cannot carve out our
work for ourselves. A man must be with us to suggest or direct it. [. . .]’ ” (71). She comes across
as a receptacle of Harry’s ideas that he “put in her head” (71) as well as a source of capital to
implement them. But however strong a point Besant wants to make of the fact that “these ideas
were certainly his, not hers” (75), their discussions are more than just Harry’s instructions to
Angela. In fact, Angela’s role is more than a listening ear. It is her manipulation with the
different aspects of herself and the switching between herself and her alter ego and finally
speaking of herself in third person that provoke Harry to respond and articulate his thoughts on
the Palace of Delight. After all, Angela’s role is far more proactive than Besant’s traditional
assumptions of femininity

33

and her remarks about herself as a passive female interlocutor might

suggest.

33

My reference of Besant’s traditional mindset on the women’s question needs more
explanation. Besant’s opinions on women are an odd mix of traditionalism and progressive
thinking as, for instance, in his 1894 interview where he states: “I am against woman’s suffrage.
That, however, is an opinion which may be modified by the changes which what I might call
their emancipation will effect” (Parker 5). Besant’s representation of Angela as a receptacle of
Harry’s ideas is reechoed in this interview when he claims: “Women are not creative; they do not
bring ideas into the world. [. . .] They take ideas from men and develop them, and in the end they
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As I have showed, Angela’s and Harry’s discussions open up what seems like an
unrestricted exchange of opinions because of the ways they mobilize their disguise. However,
disguise lends itself not only to facilitate, but also hamper discussion. At times, it is only when
the disguise of the other and one’s own is “forgotten” that an open face-to-face discussion takes
place. As Angela and Harry talk about the monotony of existence of the multitude, we see that
talking “freely” becomes possible through not engaging but rather overcoming disguise:
‘We cannot help ourselves.’ This time it was the Cabinet-maker who spoke to the
Dressmaker. [Previously the narrator refers to them as “Angela” and “Harry”].
We belong to the crowd, and we must live with the crowd. You can’t make much
glory out of a mercenary lathe, nor out of a dressmaker’s shop, can you, Miss
Kennedy?’
It was by such reminders, one to the other, that conversations of the most
delightful kind, full of speculations and comparisons were generally brought up
short. When Angela remembered that she was talking to an artisan, she froze.
When Harry reflected that it was a dressmaker to whom he was communicating
bits of his inner soul, he checked himself. When, which happened every day, they
forgot their disguises for a while, they talked quite freely, and very prettily
communicated all sorts of thoughts, fancies, and opinions to each other; [. . .].
(86)

are finer than what the men conceived. But they invent nothing” (Parker 5). Earl A. Knies sums
up Besant’s relation to feminism as a tension: “Besant clearly would have preferred that women
remain at home, but no one argued more strongly for fairness when they could not or would not
stay there” (229). Viewed in this context, Angela’s agency in discussions with Harry exemplifies
the tension between a patriarchal perspective on women and a feminist one that runs deep in
Besant’s novels, essays, and interviews.
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Awareness of disguise here grinds the discussion to a halt. They can talk “freely” as long as they
forget about each other’s disguise. In various scenes then, disguise functions alternately as a
catalyst and an impediment. At times the characters embrace their disguised identities, and at
times they try to bracket them in an attempt to reach out to the other. But in both scenarios the
other remains somewhat unknown, obfuscated, and mutable. This further suggests that the
figuration of the other in the novel inquires just to what extent and to what end one can
understand the other and place him/herself in another’s place. We see the novel’s attempt at a
new conception of identity and discourse in the public sphere, which entails a revision of
attitudes and tactics in discussion.
An introduction of an ambivalent and unreadable Other in discussions inflects Harry’s
and Angela’s role as participants-observers among the East End poor. The notion of a
participant-observer collapses in this case because its function as an “insider-outsider” is no
longer sustained by a clear distinction between the middle-class subject and the lower-class
object of observation. In fact, these two participants-observers do not observe their intended
objects but rather observe one another in a self-reflexive way. While Angela’s and Harry’s
discussions seem to suggest that their “knowledge” about the perspective of the poor is but a
middle-class fantasy, this curious positioning of participants-observers face-to-face also shows
how the novel interrogates the sociological practice of the participant-observer. This moment of
self-reflexivity (when a participant-observer observes his/her counterpart and is unable to “read”
the latter) infuses this practice with a new self-awareness and revises its assumptions about the
participant-observer’s relationship with the Other. To put it differently, a failure of a participantobserver to read the Other is presented not as a failure at all, but as a call for self-reflexivity and
for perceiving the Other on new terms. Although this new kind of relating to the Other takes

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place only in discussions between Angela and Harry, it has a potential to transgress the class
boundaries because the nature of class itself is unsettled in these discussions.
Besides acting as participants-observers, Harry and Angela also represent a variation of
sorts on Disraeli’s figure of a stranger. The fact that they are strangers to one another, like in
Disraeli’s novel, enables the participants in discussion not only to abstract themselves from
certain social and cultural markers, but also to stand in their truth and speak their minds
unimpeded by conventions that would dominate in other contexts. The estrangement from one’s
social class entails a productive distancing from the social problem of ameliorating the East End
that they discuss. Additionally, the fact that Harry and Angela do not simply abstract themselves
from their class, but speak in disguise as another class signifies their attempt to view the people
as not only an object of discussion, but a possible speaking subject. Embodying such a lowerclass speaking subject, Harry speaks his ideas freely to Angela because she chooses to distance
herself from the capital and power she possesses. Despite the similarities, Besant revises the
notion of a stranger in some ways that makes it different from Disraeli’s. If in Sybil, strangers
discuss the condition of England and move towards a consensus to restore a union of the classes,
i.e., the aristocracy and the People, Besant’s strangers seem to unsettle the notion of class itself
and replace the notion of consensus with a more tentative and contingent moment that only
points towards consensus because the other’s perspective is always mutable and never fully
accessible.
While the scenes of Angela’s and Harry’s discussions about social change are
aestheticized and represented as “pretty,” those discussion modes that are ethically questionable
or unsuccessful fall short of Besant’s aesthetic approval. For instance, vulture-like Mr. Bunker
offers Angela his assistance with setting up her business by appreciating his “talk” time with

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others as a commodity: “ ‘I charge’, he said, ‘as arranged for beforehand. Time for talking,
arranging, and house-hunting, half-a-crown an hour. That won’t break you. And you won’t talk
too much, knowing you have to pay for it. [. . .]’ ” (54). His commercialized mentality treats the
time spent on “talking” as an expense to be reimbursed and a nuisance to be restricted to a
minimum. This communicative efficiency that Bunker prides himself on to Angela creates a
jarring contrast if compared to Angela’s and Harry’s “long” talks (75), where time spent in
discussion is anything but a commodity. Furthermore, because Angela and Harry get carried
away by imagination in their discussions, time ceases to be measurable or quantifiable and thus
further resists Bunker-like, ugly commodification. Angela withdraws from talking to Bunker.
While her disguise adds more insights into her conversations with Harry, in talking business with
Bunker she is “afraid” of exposure because “her own ignorance [and thus her true identity]
would be exposed if she talked” (54). Bunker’s “reporting progress” (72) on his search to find
Angela a place to set up her workshop adds up to the bill for his services and inevitably frames
discussion as a business transaction. Along with his dishonest ways of appropriating Harry’s
property, as the novel reveals to us later, Bunker lacks integrity in discussion, too. Not only does
he follow the sole criterion of economic profit of one at the expense of the others, but he also
does not engage in entertaining anyone else’s viewpoint but his.
Another instance when discursive reciprocity is forestalled is a moment when Harry
raises a question of religion with, ironically, a real dressmaker Rebekah Hermitage. As Harry
delivers his vision of a Palace of Delight and makes a case for “the necessity of pleasure, the
desirableness of pleasure, the beauty of pleasure” (109), Rebekah does not respond to his
enthusiasm. For her, the Palace of Delight stands but a faint chance of improving the conditions
of the people in the face of a larger problem which she sees in that “half the people never go to

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church” (109). Harry remarks to the stubbornly religious dressmaker that the Palace will give a
start to all improvement, including religious spirit, because “religion is a plant that flourishes
best where life is happiest” (109). To continue with his logic, Harry wants to explain to her the
link between the happy (and wealthy) people and their religious feelings. But what follows takes
a disastrous route of misunderstanding, so different from what we see in his discussions with
Angela:
‘[. . .] Who are the most religious people in the world, Miss Hermitage?’
‘They are the worshippers in Red Man’s Lane, and they are called the SeventhDay Independents.’ (109)
After this unexpectedly “wrong” answer, the discussion stops. The narrator accentuates
Rebekah’s ignorance and poverty as reasons for her failure to articulate the answer expected
from her by Harry: “The worst of the Socratic method of argument is that, when the wrong
answer is given, the whole thing comes to grief. Now, Harry wanted her to say that the people
who go most to church are the wealthy classes. Rebekah did not say so, because she knew
nothing of the wealthy classes; and in her own circle of sectarian enthusiasts nobody had any
money at all” (109). Where Angela’s playful otherness prompted Harry to articulate his ideas in
a more insightful way, Rebekah mobilizes a different aspect of the other. Rebekah’s otherness
does not come from her complex identity: she is a real, not a disguised dressmaker. Her
otherness is not a catalyst for discussion, but a roadblock in Harry’s logic. This impenetrable
other disrupts the discussion completely. In Harry’s encounter with this working-class girl, the
differences in thinking and experience are too large to promote understanding. The scene falls
into a patronizing model as an expedient to traverse this difference. Besant’s ideas of common
humanity break down in the face of such drastic differences: his vision of putting oneself in

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another’s shoes requires some pre-existing basis for commonality, which is tragically absent in
this scene. As outsiders like the religiously fanatical and working-class Rebekah disrupt the
delicate imaginary of the inclusion of the other, it further casts this model as a specifically
middle-class fantasy of inclusion. The working girls like Rebekah have a chance of inclusion, but
only through Angela’s middle-class pastorship as “Those who conversed with her became
infected with her culture” (163).
The political rhetoric at the Advanced Club serves as another problematic strain of
discussion. While Dick Coppin, or Dick the Radical, can arouse his working-class audience at
the Club, the Club is a sham place of discussion, where the predictability of speakers and
listeners and lack of genuine thought replicates the monotony of the East End. Dick’s process of
preparing and delivering his political speeches is described in the novel through the imagery of
factory labor, which ironically serves not to validate, but to mock his discourse. Harry tells
Angela that “Dick is forging his speech for tonight” (151). The monotony of his speeches is
intimated by the fact that Dick exerts himself in front of an audience “almost every Sunday
evening” (151) while the speeches themselves seem more like mechanical ramblings “on the
House of Lords, or the Church, or the Country Bumpkin’s Suffrage, or the Cape question, or
Protection, or the Nihilists, or Ireland, or America, or something” (151). In order for his speech
to be “red-hot” (151), we are told that Dick “spends the afternoon sticking it into the furnace, so
to speak” (151). And just as the manufacturing process evoked here roughens one up, so do
Dick’s “red-hot, scorching” speeches produce a similar effect on the audience who “have had so
many sham grievances told in red-hot words that they have become callous, and don’t know of
any real ones” (151). The club thus proves unfit for the emergence of the culture of discussion in
stark contrast to the coffee-houses in Habermas’s account of the bourgeois public sphere.

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Instead, it is shown as a “sham” place where “eloquence” serves but to rouse sham enthusiasm.
The humdrum circular argumentation in the Club exemplifies the kind of discussion that fails to
conceptualize social change. As Harry explains to Angela: “the British workman has got a vague
idea that things go better for him under the Liberals. When the Liberals come in, [. . .], and when,
like their predecessors, they have made the usual mess, confidence is shaken. Then he allows the
Conservatives [. . .] back again [. . .]. As if it matters which side is in to the British workman!”
(151). Thus, described through the imagery of manufacturing production, Dick Coppin’s
discursive production ironically discredits his working-class voice and presents the club as a
place of sham performance and rhetoric trapped in a false dichotomy of party politics.
Dick Coppin, however, is a working-class character with enough “common sense” (184)
to undergo a personal transformation with the help of Angela’s pro-culture and pro-leisure
instruction. As a part of this conversion, Dick has to realize that he is in the wrong. Since the
novel conflates the middle-class project of cultivation and the “vague denunciations and cheap
rhetoric” (185) of the working class, Dick has to abandon his old ways. Dick’s ability for what is
called “common sense” makes his conversion possible at all. With “common sense” exclusively
on the side of the middle-classes, the discussion between Dick and Angela does not even imply a
need for thinking on both sides. In its place, an uncompromising clash of opinions seeks to weed
out the “wrong” side. Although Angela creates her enigmatic persona by stepping into the shoes
of an ordinary dressmaker, she does not in the least entertain a way to see politics from Dick’s
perspective or to take an insider’s look at the “cheap rhetoric of his class” (185). By the same
token, Angela’s enigma (“Who was this dressmaker who spoke about directing him?” (186))
becomes a vehicle for her uncompromising persuasion.

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Dick’s overtly political jargon and fixation on institutions gives way under Angela’s
deliberately not so much “political,” but “practical” (185) approach and a personal concern for
the people. Upon arrival with Harry to the Dressmakers’ Association, Dick introduces himself as
a “Republican” (185) and announces that he is “for root-and-branch Reform” (185) only to
suggest the superficial nature of such political language that would perhaps find acclamation at
the Advanced Club, but not with Angela. In fact, his way of talking politics is further debunked
as the dialogue promptly turns into Angela’s “queen-like” expostulations (185) on the
improvement of the people punctuated by Dick’s telling silences. Such moments (“He made no
reply”; “He stared again”; “He was silent [. . .]”; “He was too much astonished at the whole
conversation to make any coherent reply” (185-187)) indicate Dick’s “cold doubt about himself”
(186). If Dick’s silences are carefully put into words by the narrator, Angela’s talking is partly
absent from the text. Her explanation of the Dressmakers’ Association is edited out of the scene
and replaced with a one-line blank. Dick’s silences that are present and Angela’s talking that is
absent make an interesting choice to portray a dialogue of persuasion. The effect of this editing is
that we see Dick’s doubtful silence more prominently than Angela’s arguments and explanations.
It matters more to us that he has nothing to respond with rather than what exactly Angela has to
say to him. These moments of silence on Dick’s part portray him “humbled but pensive” (189),
and even if still perhaps set in his ways, already aware of being in the “wrong” and ever more
receptive to Angela’s experiment in the girls’ improvement.
Besides fading in light of Angela’s practicality, Dick’s “forging” of his “red-hot”
speeches for the excitable audience fades in comparison with Harry’s liberal self-restraint and
the ability to cultivate ideas in his own mind before offering them to others. Harry’s reflective

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process presents him as an exemplar of Victorian self-discipline and reserve that in the end
produces the “finest strawberries”:
The great secret about waiting is that while a man waits he thinks, and if he thinks
in solitude and thinks long enough, letting words lie in his brain and listening to
ideas which come upon him, sometimes singly and slowly, sometimes in crowds
like the fancies of a wakeful night, there presents itself an idea at last which seizes
upon him and holds him captive, and works itself out in his brain while he
mechanically goes on with the work, the rest, the toil, and the pleasure of his daily
life. (253)
Importantly, the everyday serves as background for cultivating some of the finest ideas.
Refraining from the excess of excitement that reigns at the Advanced Club, Harry’s practice as
described above implies that sometimes political discussion can be premature. It is only a selfdisciplined subject that can intuit the moment when his ideas are ripe for the public. And yet,
with all the obvious glorification of self-controlling agency in the passage above, Harry’s being
“captive” of his idea seems a bit subversive of liberal individuality. In fact, Dick’s “forging”
seems to imply more agency than Harry’s “captive” state of mind. In an attempt to define a
model discursive practice, Besant’s novel oscillates between exposing the excess in Dick’s
“forging” of his “red-hot” speeches and Harry’s restraint that dangerously borders on the
captivity of the mind that perhaps in a more subtle way threatens his liberal agency. However,
Harry eventually speaks at the Club and thus reclaims the latter.
Harry’s speech to the people at the Advanced Club serves to demonstrate that a wellthought-through argument weighs more than Dick’s moving, yet misguided speech. Harry
blames the people’s “cursed ignorance” (260) that does not let them realize that “Yours—

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yours—yours is the Power” (263). In response to the customary rhetoric of the Club, he calls for
a new language of political discussion: “Leave the humbug of Radicalism and Liberalism and
Toryism” (263). Dick Coppin’s subsequent transformation from an eloquent orator at the Club to
a leader of the people and their future representative in the House of Commons embodies the
empowerment of the people that Harry articulates. As the ex-Chartist advises Dick to “go on
reading; go on speaking; go on debating” (315), he is confident that Dick will one day become a
“working man’s candidate; one of ourselves” (315). Only after exchanging his former “red-hot”
eloquence for a new life of self-cultivation can Dick Coppin enter into the public sphere favored
by the novel. With his biting critique of Dick’s radicalism as a false cure of people’s “cursed
ignorance,” Harry lays ground for Dick’s transformation not by means of seeing through Dick’s
eyes, but by means of eradicating the mistaken notions in Dick’s “red-hot” rhetoric. The Club
eventually becomes a competitive arena where a “collision of adverse opinions” (59), to borrow
John Stuart Mill’s words, unfolds in an effort to produce the “clearer perception and livelier
impression of truth, produced by its collision with error” (21).
Besides its investment in a reciprocal relationship with the other, the novel is no less
preoccupied with eliminating the “wrong” opinions which ought to remain outside of the
discussion forum altogether, i.e. outside of the scope where embracing the other’s perspective
would be desirable. This intolerance for a “wrong” opinion and the urgency to eliminate it (even
if it happens to be one’s own opinion) informs the entire conversation between Dick and Angela
at the Association dance and music night. The success of Dick’s conversion is due to Angela’s
persuasion as well as his own realization that he is in the wrong. The same logic of eliminating
wrong opinions is at work when Harry points to the fallacies he hears at the Advanced Club. As
Dick puts it, Harry “gets up after the speech, and says so and so is wrong. Yet they like him—

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because he isn’t afraid to say what he thinks” (187). Harry, unlike Dick Coppin, does not play on
the workers’ excitability and emotionality and does not aspire to “move” them (253). Instead,
Harry prefers to “set a man right as to facts” (253) and meditate on his ideas before he feels it
time to articulate them in public. A need for shedding wrong opinions resurfaces in other
instances, too. Rebekah’s erroneous beliefs account for narrow-mindedness and preclude
exchanges of perspectives between her and Harry; her perspective is outside the scope where
common ground is achievable. That certain voices are not even suitable to be heard raises a
question of the extent to which this model is oriented toward inclusiveness. It would be fair to
state that the discussion forum in Besant’s novel is simultaneously inclusive and exclusive.
While it generates commonality and understanding by extending between divergent points of
view, at the same time it needs some preexisting common ground in order to take place. The
tension that runs through the novel can be formulated as follows: while the text aspires for
acceptance of the other, it nevertheless takes comfort in tending a common ground formed by
middle-class ideas of culture and reform. It is not until Dick learns to pronounce the “House”
instead of the “ ‘Ouse” (318) that he can speak on behalf of the people.
With the newly opened Palace of Delight crowning the end of the novel and with the
“new refinement” (361) observed among Angela’s protégées, the narrative sets in motion the
grand-scale reform largely on middle-class terms. The discovery of uncle Bunker’s
embezzlement fraud makes Harry a “rich man with houses and money in the funds” (386) and
hence an appropriate match for Angela Messenger. Since Harry does not know that Angela the
dressmaker and the heiress Miss Messenger are the same person until the last minute at the altar,
he passes the test of “sweet and disinterested love” (416). It is his readiness for “[a] life of
work—with Angela” (413), “only a dressmaker” (412), that makes Harry worthy of this

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marriage. Through Angela’s and Harry’s marriage, Besant affirms the middle-class cultural
authority and the project of social improvement through the union of ideas (Harry) and capital
(Angela). Reflecting Besant’s confusingly progressive and traditional views on feminism,
Angela gladly resigns public agency and passes it to Harry. Her speech that announces the Palace
of Delight to be the “property of the people” (432) is her only public address because, as Besant
explains with nostalgia, she “belongs to that rapidly diminishing body of women who prefer to
let the men do all the public speaking” (431). Reaffirming the public sphere on class and gender
boundaries, the novel seems to contradict its egalitarian message that “all sorts and conditions of
men are pretty much alike” (179). Ironically, the appeal for a common humanity serves as a
device not to foreground equality, but to reinforce cultural, economic, and gender hierarchies.
To read All Sorts and Conditions of Men as a text thoroughly infused with the middleclass complacent and patronizing gesture means that the novel falls short of a more democratic
ideal that it elaborates in a variety of scenes. While my examination of the workings of
sympathetic knowledge in this novel corroborates this strain of Besant’s criticism, I have aimed
to show that the novel simultaneously affirms the culturally colonizing project of the middle
classes and pointing to its limitations suggests an alternative to it. From the first pages of the
novel, when Harry and Angela assume working-class roles, exchange of perspectives is based on
the idea that it is possible to step into the working-class shoes because any perspective is
accessible, comprehensible, transparent, and interchangeable with any other. In other words, all
sorts and conditions of men are alike; it is only that some have education and leisure and others
do not. This kind of thinking makes all perspectives and social positions potentially
interchangeable since one can bracket such characteristics as, for instance, “culture” to access a
worldview of someone without “culture.” This unifying view of a discussion forum follows

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Besant’s belief in common humanity, but seems to be suspiciously incapable of diversity and
recognition of otherness. This kind of perspective-sharing converts all otherness into sameness
and eliminates difference. Instead of its democratic potential, perspective-sharing could be
considered as nothing else but the middle-class desire to convert the lower classes into middleclass trusted attendants. That the socially privileged Harry and Angela can step into the place of
the working classes of the East End and spread the middle-class idea of Culture suggests that the
fantasy of the exchange of perspectives may very well conceal the conservative tyranny of this
enterprise.
But Harry and Angela’s discussions in disguise foster a different attitude toward the other
and challenge the notion that the other’s position is always transparent and ought to be
assimilated. Their political discussions thrive on the recognition of difference and seeing the
other as a multi-faceted, mutable, unfixed, and partly unknown participant. Moments when Harry
and Angela find themselves uncertain about the identity and class of their interlocutor are the
liberating moments that put a check on the middle-class complacency. Indeed, how can the
middle classes impose their authority if “masquerading” creates a non-transparent other? A
project of cultural authority would have to assume that the middle classes “know” what the lower
classes think, feel, need, and want. The novel in part debunks the project of middle classes
“knowing” the working classes because the Harry and Angela never truly reach out to the “real”
working classes. As these scenes suggest, the middle classes should negotiate with the working
classes not through their similarity, but through embracing their otherness. The novel gestures
toward new mechanisms of relating to the other in the public sphere. Harry and Angela imagine
social change and achieve mutual understanding never fully knowing, yet embracing, responding
to, and opening up to the other’s perspective. Besant’s novel, then, intriguingly remains

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committed to the middle-class cultural authority, yet works against itself by sketching out a
subversive discussion model.
A practice of exchanging perspectives persists among Victorian cultures of discussion in
an effort to stitch together a society ridden by cultural, social, and economic divides. For some,
like Charles Reade, stepping into the other’s place allows for a different look at things and so
naturally resolves conflicts of interests or opinions. Dr. Amboyne’s maxim in Reade’s Put
Yourself in His Place serves as a universal mantra that can apply to and resolve any conflict of
opinions. But in the work of Walter Besant the benevolent maxim of Dr. Amboyne loses an
optimistic flair and instead betrays more pragmatic goals of the middle-class project. Besant’s
novel seems intriguing in its insights into understanding the other on more complex terms and
capitalizing on rather than glossing over difference and ambiguity about the other. This emergent
alternative vision of the public sphere seems to be no less important than the cultural import of
the Palace of Delight in understanding Besant’s vision of social change.

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CHAPTER 4
GEORGE GISSING’S DEMOS: PUBLIC DISCOURSE AND THE “MANY-HEADED
MONSTER” OF SOCIALISM

When in 1888 Edith Sichel wrote an article in Murray’s Magazine about George
Gissing’s pessimistic outlook on the working classes, she stated that Gissing was one of the
writers whose attention was now turned to “that many-headed monster Demos” (506). Although
nowhere does Gissing’s novel Demos contain such a colorful metaphor to describe the masses of
New Wanley, Sichel’s phrase is clearly suggested by the tone of the novel. The article in
Murray’s puts Gissing’s social “pessimism” side by side with Walter Besant’s philanthropic
“optimism.” Indeed, the kind of view of the lower classes suggested by the phrase would be at
odds with Besant’s rosy vision of social solutions. As a truly late-Victorian novelist, Gissing
casts doubt on mid-Victorian eagerness to point to social evils and offer ready solutions.
Representing a “new style of realism” (DeVine 41), Gissing’s Demos does not share Besant’s
optimism and hence is not the mainstream Victorian novel embedded in a specifically middleclass vision of social reform. In All Sorts and Conditions of Men, East-Enders merge into one
homogeneous entity that craves middle-class Culture and aspires for the values of liberal
discussion. Demos, on the other hand, dismisses such social homogeneity as a comforting
fantasy. Gissing’s case study of socialism(s) suggests that a social landscape is best represented
as a fragmented sphere of political causes, methodologies, and publics. In doing so, Demos
marks a shift in Victorian conceptions of the public sphere and reformulates the means and the
ends of political discussion therein. Sichel’s image of “that many-headed monster of Demos”

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serves well to capture the way in which the novel straddles the line between, on the one hand,
representing the working classes somewhat as a kind of totality and, on the other hand, providing
insight into its fragmented nature.
I will focus on the novel’s preoccupation with the question of agency in the public sphere
as it imagines two main alternatives: large-scale political movement vs. individual pursuit of art.
Gissing is in the end skeptical about both. Any idea, however benevolent, would gain resonance
in the public sphere only to dissolve under the centrifugal forces of selfish ambitions, plural
interpretations, or even mutations into its very opposite (as is the case with Richard Mutimer’s
“Democratic Capitalism” (416)). The kinds of socialisms that we see in Demos—from
Westlake’s intellectualism and Mutimer’s moderate agitation to Daniel Dabbs’ zeal for
“stamping and shouting”(35), Roodhouse’s violent revolutionism and even a Russian variety
with a “nihilistic” flair—point to the limits of a unified social action or an impossibility to
articulate a political argument by large multitudes. Such diversity and incommensurability of
political ideas and movements makes a shared discussion forum unfeasible. The illusory voice of
the people inevitably splinters into many styles and agendas. As such, the practical aspect of
participating in the public sphere entails a loss of pristine political notions, an impossibility of a
shared dialogue, and an inability to exert a concerted collective action. As if by a law of entropy,
collective action loses its momentum before it even begins.
Another alternative is embodied in the aristocrat Hubert Eldon’s individualistic pursuit of
art, which includes preserving Wanley in its pre-industrial, pastoral condition. While the desire
for the pastoral beauty in Wanley invokes pastoralism in Disraeli’s Sybil, it is different from
Disraeli’s politically charged image of England. In Demos, pastoralism signifies a withdrawal
from politics. That socio-political and the aesthetic planes do not intersect in the novel is evident

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from Eldon’s rhetorical question, “What has a hungry Demos to do with the beautiful?” (77).
While individual pursuit of art dangerously withdraws Hubert from social concerns in the public
sphere, Mutimer’s political agitation for a mass movement is compromised even more. Although
Gissing wrote Demos “from a very Conservative point of view” (Letters vol. 2, 363) and Eldon’s
eco-preservation and taste for the beautiful are presented favorably, Gissing does not imply that
Eldon’s aesthetic Conservatism is a solution to late-Victorian social anxieties. Demos does not
seek a solution or prescribe a mode of agency in the public sphere, but rather posits the two
alternatives as a dilemma. However, pushing to the limits the travesty of political discussion, on
the one hand, and the ultimate withdrawal from the world of politics, on the other, the novel
implies new hopes of the possibilities of discussion in the public sphere that lie outside these
futile alternatives.
In Demos Gissing illuminates the structures of social movements and the nature of the
public claims that they make. With the English Socialism as a case study, the novel seems to be
preoccupied with a question of homo- and heterogeneity within a social movement in the public
sphere. What may at first seem as an insignificant slippage between the singular form of the
English Socialism in the title has the plural form of “many kinds o’ Socialism,” or Socialisms, in
the actual narrative, shows that for Gissing this question is central. The cliques and the offshoots
within the socialist movement in the novel become more visible when the socialist ideas, as
Gissing tells us, hit the ground of practical politics and when the narrative perspective zooms in
on individual leaders and their divergent “styles” of socialism. What is interesting is that the
question that Demos poses about the dynamics within the Socialist movement also carries
broader insights into the proliferating movements and reform campaigns that were distinctive of
the Victorian period. Scholars like Amanda Claybaugh, for instance, describe the social

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movements of this period as simultaneously heterogeneous and homogeneous because behind the
overwhelming multiplicity of campaigns they trace a common liberal project of reform.
Claybaugh describes the diverse political landscape mentioning “a number of reform
movements, including temperance and the abolition of slavery, the campaigns for women’s and
working-class suffrage, and also efforts to equalize marriage laws, to restructure poorhouses, and
to establish utopian communities and schools” (The Novel of Purpose 21). She insists, however,
along with Victorian reformers themselves, on an underlying unity of purpose that allows her to
group these seemingly disparate social movements together:
This list is long and heterogeneous, to be sure, but it does not begin to exhaust the
array of nineteenth-century reforms, which also included Magdalene houses and
fallen women and settlement houses for immigrants and the poor, the campaign
against naval flogging, the campaign for animal welfare, reform of asylums and
prisons, sanitation reform, rational dress reform, vegetarianism, mesmerism,
phrenology, and water cures. Surprisingly, this heterogeneous array was seen by
contemporary reformers as coherent. There were some conflicts among these
reforms, as well as within them, but for the most part they were understood to be
part of a single project. (The Novel of Purpose 21)
While Claybaugh registers homogeneity of purpose behind the heterogeneous movements, I
think that Gissing wants to show that homogeneity and heterogeneity are all continuously present
in social movements at whatever scale they are examined. If for Claybaugh it is important to
claim the overall unity of the project to which all of the reform campaigns belong after all,
Gissing is more skeptical that this all-encompassing unity of purpose exists in practical politics.

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For him, it is more productive to think of Socialism(s) as an always present potentiality for
consolidation, on the one hand, and fragmentation, on the other.
Besides Gissing’s interest in the dynamics of the public sphere movements, Demos
betrays Gissing’s ambivalent view on the working classes entering the late-Victorian public
sphere. Scholars have commented on his mixed attitudes of sympathy with the suffering poor
and disdain for their violence and vulgarity evident in his social problem novels (Lelchuk 358;
Grylls xi; Selig 34; Delany 379; Maltz 56). The irony of his position as a half-starved intellectual
is that while his diet of “tinned beef [. . .] & potatoes” (Letters, vol. 2, 358) may have induced
him to feel with the poor, he stayed detached from the tumultuous crowd during Hyde Park and
Trafalgar Square Riots. At the Socialist meeting at Kelmscott House in 1885, Gissing was rather
amused by the sound of an unrefined speech by a socialist candidate for Hampstead: “I heard
him ranting in the street on Sunday morning; —the roughest type of working man, &—ye
Gods!—breathing maledictions! He described the H. of Commons as a ‘decrippled
institootion!’” (Letters, vol. 2, 371). With the characteristic mix of sympathy and repulsion
Gissing features the protagonist in Demos Richard Mutimer.
Demos puzzled contemporary reviewers in that it did not subscribe to any popular
philanthropic projects of social reformers. In contrast to them, Gissing, while inevitably drawn to
the fate of the poor, provides no solution to improve their condition and goes as far as to suggest
that the lower classes, except for some worthy few, are ultimately a savage assembly incapable
of raising above their condition either culturally or economically. Almost in one voice, reviewers
called the novel “pessimistic” (Sichel 507; “Mr. George Gissing” 489; Dolman 258; qtd. in
Wells 192). While in Demos he never prescribes a solution, he makes a point that Socialism is
clearly not a solution. As Sichel remarked on Demos: “It is written to prove the errors of

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Socialism and the impracticability of equality” (511). Indeed, the novel implies that fast and
ready solutions may in the end be more detrimental than lack of immediate action. What seems
like the novel’s “pessimism” is in fact a cautious attitude towards reform which stems from a
paralyzing awareness that it is impossible to come up with an optimal solution. In this, Gissing
responds critically to promising, yet problematic “solutions” such as Besant’s hand-on reformist
approach epitomized in the Palace of Delight or Reade’s easy fix of putting oneself in another’s
place.
The novel Demos traces Richard Mutimer’s life from the time when he unexpectedly
inherits the estate of Wanley and his socialist plan to turn “New” Wanley into mines and ironworks to secure comfortable conditions for the workers and to direct profits for further socialist
propaganda. Scenes of socialist meetings, however, demystify the allegedly unified movement.
We see a satire on political discussion in caricatures like Daniel Dabbs (“the proletarian pure and
simple” (34)), a Conservative workman (a “self-contradiction” in terms (61)), Mr. Cullen with
his self-destructive rhetoric at “a point of fury” (62), Mr. Cowes in the glory of his grammatical
incompetence, or an anonymous arraigner of the People who collapses in the excitement of his
speech and is carried off to a coffee-shop nearby. Several cliques of partisans are formed and
before long Socialism in New Wanley is a maelstrom of competing leaders and ideas. To
substantiate his newly elevated status, Richard rejects his working-class lover Emma Vine and
marries Adela who is a “lady.” In the meantime, a miraculous find of the old Mutimer’s lost will
which bequeaths the property to the aristocrat Hubert Eldon precipitates a makeover of New
Wanley back to its pre-industrial condition. Richard’s failed investment scheme with the
unionists’ money enrages the mob and accounts for his violent death. Demos shows its true face
of violence and unreason, but at the same time does a sort of cruel justice to Richard who lost

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sight of his socialist ideals and embraced career self-interest and the money-making spirit of
capitalism. In the meantime, Hubert’s aristocratic mindset and his love of art and nature are fully
rewarded not only with the possession of Wanley which belonged to Mutimer, but a marriage to
the true love of his life Adela.
Although characters in Demos represent different social classes, the plot is not
preoccupied with establishing a dialogue between them as would be commonplace in earlier
Victorian novels such as Hard Times, Shirley, Mary Barton, Sybil, All Sorts and Conditions of
Men and others. From the words of Daniel Dabbs, we learn that the conflict between Richard and
his employers is merely “a case of incompatible temperaments” (34). Negotiations between
Richard and his employers that may have taken place are outside the novel’s investments.
Interactions between Richard and Hubert concern the logistics of the Eldons’ moving out of the
estate. The novel in fact lacks any politically significant confrontations between Richard and his
aristocratic counterpart. A similar theme of incompatibility is reinforced when Hubert states:
“[I]t is impossible for me to pretend sympathy with Mr. Mutimer’s views” (337-338). The novel
represents the employers, the aristocracy, and the workers as disjointed worlds that interact with
one another only tangentially. A sense of social fragmentation that is conveyed here parts ways
with earlier aspirations of a realist novel to encompass a social totality, as Georg Lukács
understands it. The novel’s zeroing in on the working class, rather than imagining social classes
as participants in the shared public sphere, is a consequence of this fragmentation that becomes
increasingly felt late in the century. Fredric Jameson suggests that Gissing’s naturalist narratives
no longer represent, as in Dickens, a social totality, but showcase “a new classification of
narrative material according to specialization, or the division of labor” (190). The “crisis of
social totality” that Gissing’s novels grapple with is the result of “reification” and “social

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fragmentation.” Against the backdrop of the lost social totality, what Demos can accomplish is to
represent the world of the workers as a kind of totality in itself. According to Fredric Jameson,
“Gissing’s conception of a novel about ‘the people’ is a form of high naturalist specialization
that seeks to pass itself off as a map of social totality” (190). In Demos, political discussion is
predicated on a class-based community and, rather than traversing class divides, it reaffirms
them. But the phenomenon of fragmentation about which Gissing’s narrative raises questions, I
argue, goes beyond Jameson’s class-based view of social fragmentation. I suggest that Gissing
hardly conceives of the working classes as a “totality” but instead foregrounds the fragmentation
within the working-class public sphere that unfolds through the break-up of socialism into
numerous offshoots. What becomes of primary interest for Gissing here is the kind of
fragmentation that affects any political idea once it enters the realm of praxis.
Gissing heeds precisely to this practical realm of politics to tease out the elements of
affect, disorder, fragmentation, and spatial dynamics that fall outside of the abstract ideal of a
rational debate. Discussion scenes among the workers bristle with excessive temperaments and
meaningless circulation of buzzwords like “exploitation” and “capitalist” (62-63). As a spatial
center of discussion, an agitation platform ironically demonstrates anything but coherence of
ideas as the speakers replace one another falling victims to their own political “enthusiasm.” The
presence of a Chairman and a semblance of an agenda evoke a parallel between this scene and
the ways discussion was practiced in the wide-spread debating societies. At first glance, in
portraying these non-sequitur speeches, chaotic proceedings, and emotional excess, Gissing
seems to condemn the workers’ way to talk politics and to gesture favorably to the liberal culture
of discussion. Victorian mutual improvement and debating societies were the foremost
organizations whose goal was to spread the practice of liberal discussion. Their agendas fit

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neatly into the grand scheme of gradual social improvement and promotion of self-enlightenment
by means of “the full development of the moral and intellectual faculties of mankind,” which
also entails the “improvement of the working classes” (Report of the Proceedings 1843 9). In
this sense, the Union meeting at Commonwealth Hall is an antithesis of what one would expect
34

at a debating society’s meeting: a standardized list of questions for discussion,
35

length and order of speeches,

and follow-up voting.

regulation of

36

While it is true that the novel works to show the contrast between the workers’ meetings
and, by implication, a more refined model of political discussion, it would be inaccurate to
conclude that through scenes like the Union meeting at Commonwealth Hall Gissing tries to
reaffirm the values of liberal discussion. Gissing is disillusioned with Positivism and a positivist
idea of gradual social improvement by the time he writes Demos. If so, then the scene in question
rather casts skepticism on the ideals of liberal discussion. The implication of this scene is that the
theory of clear argumentation, ordered speeches, and selfless “intellectual gladiatorship” (The
Debater’s Handbook iii) is removed from the real workings of the public sphere and as such is
inadequate in understanding it. Moreover, the question that arises from this scene is whether a
highly regimented, standardized, and “temperament”-free discussion with result-oriented
34

Our Magazine and The British Controversialist, and Self-Educator supplied such lists of
questions for discussion in every issue. The questions were broken up into sections such as
Social economy, Political Science, History, and General Literature. Similar lists appeared in
Laurence Gibson’s Handbook for the Literary and Debating Societies, Samuel Neil’s The Young
Debater, Frederic Rowton’s The Debater and others.
35
“[N]o Member shall be allowed to speak more than twice on any subject and only for a period
not exceeding 20 minutes on the first occasion and 10 minutes on the second” (3). From Rules of
the Union Debating Society. Printed by Abdool Hukeem at Muzhurool-Ajauyeb Press, Calcutta,
1871.
36
See, for instance the rules in Tyneside Parliamentary Debating Society, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
List of Members. Constituion and Rules. Session 1891-92. Tyne Printing Works Co., Newcastleon-Tyne. 1892.
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attitudes (like consensus or voting on an issue) ought to be an ideal for discursive exchanges in
the first place. The Socialist Leaguers debunk this ideal by reveling in “uproar” (59), not heeding
to “punctuality” (60), walking out on the assembly, giving vent to anger and mockery, and
zigzagging from the original subject of Land to harangues about exploitation and capitalists,
from the arraignment of the people to the reasons for drinking among the workers. Rather than
yearning for some ideal speech situation, Gissing investigates the dynamics of mass politics
when Mutimer with a “vigour of popular oratory” (61) in front of a crowd “began to believe
what he was saying” (61) or when Mr. Cullen “makes a point and pauses to observe the effect
upon his hearers” (63). Gissing presents disorder, disjointedness, and spontaneity as phenomena
endemic to mass politics rather than hindrances to get rid of in aspiring for a higher ideal. For
him, there is no ideal. He calls for coming to terms with the whirlpool of political discussion as it
is. Gissing enacts a proto-sociological experiment through his fiction to show not a reformer’s,
but a detached observer’s view on the tumultuous and heterogeneous arena of mass politics.
Richard Mutimer plays a central role in many scenes of political discussion and agitation.
Critics such as Adrian Poole, Christine DeVine, Diana Maltz, and Raimund Schäffner have
discussed connections between Richard’s lack of creative imagination, Gissing’s view of the
people, and his veneration of art. Richard’s deficiency manifests itself through his utilitarian
library and his scorn of children’s fairy-tales. Through Richard’s representative character,
Gissing hints at the deficiency in imagination among the working classes that short-circuits their
political agency. The narrator tells us: “The fatal defect in working people is absence of
imagination” (136). As their representative, Richard fully embodies this deficiency. That “you
could not imagine [his eyes] softening to . . . thoughtful dreaming” (33) suggests that Richard
falls short of being a political romantic. Richard’s library, including volumes of Malthus and

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Owens, is wanting in other aspects: “English literature was to him a sealed volume” (42). What
has been overlooked is that Richard is in fact a dreamer of a kind: “he believed himself about to
become a popular hero; already in imagination he stood on platforms before vast assemblies, and
heard his own voice denouncing capitalism with force which nothing could resist” (36). It is not
so much lack of imagination that Gissing denounces in Mutimer, as the dangerous powers of
imagination that feeds on all-consuming political ambition. So different from the political
imagination of Mrs. Westlake whose “eyes ‘dreamed against a distant goal’” (57), Richard’s
fantasy dictates a more pragmatic goal—“a party of his own” (415). Richard becomes an
unconscious agent of what Gissing terms “the tests of schism” (225) which probes the vitality of
any idea that traverses from the speculative realm into the practical realm of the public sphere.
Gissing draws a sharp divide between the ideal and the social realm, in which schism
looms large: “Movements which appeal to the reason and virtue of humanity, and are
consequently doomed to remain long in the speculative stage, prove their vitality by enduring the
tests of schism” (225). Does Gissing really mean that there are “poor” political ideas that fail the
“test of schism” and “good” ones that do not? Is this test really an indicator of the “vitality” of an
idea (225)? Demos problematizes the notion of uniformity of any political movement by
focusing on the heterogeneity of elements that compose it from its very inception. Even before
the “test of schism” looms heavily over the Union, even when Socialism seems still to be in a
“speculative stage” (225) before taking action, the scene of a socialist meeting at Commonwealth
Hall conveys a sense of variety among styles, priorities, and understandings of Socialism.
Between Richard’s bookcase with “extreme” (42) and outdated works, the Unionists’ physical
and emotional energy at Commonwealth Hall, and the spirit of cultural privilege in Mr.
Westlake’s study, it is hard indeed to suppose that there is a point of perfect uniformity in the

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origin of Socialism, or any other idea for that matter. It is not a “test,” but rather a “condition” of
schism that seems to characterize for Gissing any political idea that enters the public sphere. It is
this paralyzing awareness of what happens with ideas for the good of humanity when they enter
the world of human error and political turmoil that feeds into Gissing’s overall disbelief in and
negation of social reform. Ironically, it is the human factor itself that hinders the betterment of
mankind. Demos suggests that the public sphere does not fit a tidy positivist blueprint of the
application of reason to social affairs. Rather, the public sphere ought to be conceptualized as a
mass forum, with all the complexities of individual and mass psychology and behavior patterns.
And we need to come to terms with it.
In Demos, potential for fragmentation permeates the movement from a microscopic level.
It begins with such at first glance personal, but in fact socially determined, markers as one’s
voice and tone. Another meeting at Commonwealth Hall witnesses Westlake’s opening speech
followed by Mutimer’s. The differences in speech delivery between Mutimer and Westlake
quickly acquire political connotations: “his [Mutimer’s] hard voice contrasted painfully with the
other’s cultured tones” (236). The harshness of Mutimer’s voice does not only mark him as one
of the working classes, but also becomes a signifier for a specific strain of Socialists, who would
follow him as their leader. On the other hand, Westlake’s “cultured tones” give an expression to
Socialism of a different kind, with overtones of Matthew Arnold’s Culture and William Morris’
integration of art into life. Socialism comes across as an amalgamation of different strains and
leaders. Westlake, Mutimer, Roodhouse, and Dabbs are all types of a certain kind of a
sympathizer with socialist ideas. Westlake represents “the cultured and leading elements” (226)
of the movement; Daniel Dabbs is “the proletarian pure and simple” (34); Richard possesses “the
best qualities his class can show” (33); and Roodhouse moves toward his Socialism with “Blood

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and iron!” (226). The strains of Socialism and their vivid representatives have never been
homogeneous in the first place, but their subdued differences come to the fore when, indeed, as
Gissing notes, Socialism graduates from its “speculative stage” to the level of practical action.
The plurality of the offshoots of socialism demonstrates not only the de-centering effects
of practical participation in the public sphere, but also the new and more complex structure of
political dialogue. Describing the dynamics of modern politics, Nancy Fraser states: “Current
conflicts exceed its template of a simple dualism of commensurable alternatives, as present-day
claims for justice routinely run up against counterclaims whose underlying ontological
assumptions they do not share” (3).The novel seems to dramatize a similar departure from
traditional discursive templates. Demos departs from viewing conflicts in a two-sided frame,
which was prevalent among the social problem novels of the 1840’s. These earlier novels tend to
lay out any social tension in such a way as to present it in the form of two sides or two possible
alternatives. Such a line of thinking demands either picking the right side or reconciling the two
sides. For instance, in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, this logic is at work when Stephen
Blackpool explains to Bounderby his understanding of the conflict between masters and men:
“Agreeing fur to mak one side unnat’rally awlus and for ever right, and toother side unnat’rally
awlus and for ever wrong , will never, never do ‘t” (181). Although Dickens was “a major point
of reference” for Gissing, Gissing’s work is by no means a part of Dickens’ novelistic worldview
(Goode 15). The way of describing social problems in terms of two sides that works for Hard
Times fails to represent social problems in Demos. Elizabeth Gaskell treats the tension between
masters and men in North and South in a similar “either or” manner: are the interests of masters
and men identical or not? Are masters and men dependent upon or opposed to each other? Are
the poor worthy or unworthy of sympathy and help? For her, like for Dickens, solutions come

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under the banner of humanizing the world of economic relations. This can be achieved by
“enabl[ing] both master and man to look upon each other with far more charity and sympathy”
(420). Disraeli seeks reconciliation between the People and the Aristocracy in the idyllic image
of pre-Reformation England. Unlike its thematic predecessors, Demos, firstly, abandons the
framework of prescribing solutions and, secondly, suggests that the old ways of thinking about
political discussion are inadequate to describe the modern processes in the public sphere.
Political discussion that was represented as a streamlined opposition of opinions,
demands, or alternatives in early-Victorian novels would be too reductionist in regards to the
social landscape that Demos seeks to describe. To be sure, Demos is an anti-socialist and a prostatus-quo novel. However, it does not simply ask a question about whether socialism is good or
bad. The question that the novel seems to be more preoccupied with is just how to describe a
public sphere where claims can no longer be neatly placed on two opposite scales because they
are made from entirely different platforms and sets of ideas. Roodhouse makes claims for
violence because for him “the principles of assassination” are “the sole working principles”
(226). Mutimer’s claim for socialism is anchored in appropriating the capitalist mechanisms of
exploitation and using them in the interests of the workers. He would use the capitalist wagesystem to make profit and spend it on socialist propaganda. He would also be eager to capitalize
on an investment venture to benefit from such a great capitalist “discovery” as compound
interest. In other words, socialists should do “as the capitalists do” (413). As such, Mutimer’s
claims for socialism are supported on a strong capitalist footing. Westlake’s cultured socialism
comes surprisingly close to Hubert Eldon’s aristocratic conservatism and love of art. As a result,
these claims for socialism do not constitute a coherent platform but operate independently and
even in competition with each other as incommensurate claims. Furthermore, the very opposition

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between socialism and capitalism becomes problematic. The early-Victorian fantasy of a uniform
political dialogue across social layers transforms into a late-Victorian realization of the public
sphere as a plurality of competing publics and incommensurate claims.
The splintering of socialism unfolds against the backdrop of a geographic diversity of
public spaces, where leaders deliver speeches on their socialist sentiments. The variety of venues
and the styles of discourse they shape reinforces the notion of a natural heterogeneity within the
movement. Richard is well aware that the significance of space may contribute or take away
from his public success as he “experienced some vexation that his lecture was not to be at
Commonwealth Hall, where the gathering would doubtless have been much larger” (59). The
spaces for political discussion mentioned in Demos range a gamut between the prime location at
Commonwealth Hall to more peripheral “regular places of assembly” and the space in the street
for “open-air lecturing.” The members of the Socialist League in Islington, where Richard gives
his lecture meet in “a room behind a coffee-shop, ordinarily for festive purposes.” The lectureroom itself is marked as a working-class venue: “The atmosphere was tobaccoey , and the
coffee-shop itself, through which the visitors had to make their way, suggested to the nostrils that
bloaters are the working-man’s chosen delicacy at Sunday tea.” The lecture-room and the
adjacent coffee-shop become legitimate spaces for a socialist discussion as they exude the smell
of class. A late-Victorian coffee-shop in Demos creates a contrast to what more than a century
earlier used to be an arena of enlightened political discussion. As one observer commented in
1863, “With the opening of the eighteenth century the coffee-houses . . . ceased by degrees to be
the arena of political discussion, and became merely centers of re-union, devoted to refreshment,
recreations, and conversation” (“London Coffee-Houses” 186). However, a coffee-shop as a
space of sobriety and circulation of the press fares far better than a pub. The article goes on to

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say, “There is all the difference in the world between going into a public-house to booze, smoke,
quarrel, and waste one’s substance, and entering a coffee-house to keep sober and gather
information from the teachings of the press” (188). The space of the lecture-room staves off the
destructive crowd power of demos, but it also shows just how far are the dynamics of a political
movement from a rational debate at a coffee-house that suggests a normative ideal for Habermas.
As the schism within the movement unfolds, the spatial geography of public meetings
demonstrates the struggle of different leaders for their “sovereignty” (226) on the platform.
Roodhouse begins to recruit his followers by calling for violence “in fiery eloquence of open-air
meetings.” The open space of Roodhouse’s addresses seems to be conducive to shaping an
ignitable revolutionary mob in accordance with his design. Clerkenwell Green, among other
places, becomes a territory of Roodhouse’s socialist agitation. The differences between ideas on
socialism curiously take on a spatial dimension as they become territorial wars. For Roodhouse,
Mutimer, and Westlake, where to speak matters as much as what to say. In Demos, leaders and
their publics get involved, along with the politics of schism, in the politics of space:
At the original head-quarters of the Union addresses were promised from two
leading men, Comrades Westlake and Mutimer. Comrade Roodhouse would in
the morning address an assembly on Clerkenwell Green; in the evening his voice
would summon adherents to the meeting place at Hoxton which had been the
scene of our friend Richard’s earliest triumphs. With few exceptions the Socialists
of that region had gone over to the new man [Roodhouse] and the new paper
[Tocsin]. (227)
Each representing a certain strain of Socialism, Roodhouse, Mutimer, and Westlake compete for
public spaces and for the audience. Roodhouse stretches the limits of his bodily presence,

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striving for omnipresence of his political persona by speaking at a few places in a day. On the
other hand, Westlake and Mutimer compete even more with one another as the public space is
limited and shared between the two of them. Unlike the dynamics of the public sphere of print
where the audiences are potentially unlimited and the virtual “space” of the forum is potentially
expandable, the competition for the face-to-face audience and for limited physical spaces
(platforms, halls, streets, etc.) turns into a politics of displacing and ousting of the other. As a
result of these campaigns, socialism that could be relatively unified in its “speculative stage”
fails to withstand the realities of political egos, feuds for public spaces, and the vagaries of
migrating publics.
Print and face-to-face modes of discussion become as crucial in structuring the dynamics
within a public space as material elements such as the platform, rows of benches, an adjacent
coffee-shop, or even the smell of “bloaters.” Newspapers and flyers circulated by the competing
socialist factions introduce the dynamics different from the Unionists’ practice of face-to-face
meetings. In Demos, face-to-face meetings and printed propaganda are shown in close proximity
to one another. They share the same physical space: “A table just within the door of the lectureroom exposed for sale some sundry Socialist publications, the latest issue of the ‘Fiery Cross’ in
particular” (59). The scale of Mutimer’s ambition makes him seek alternatives to an intimate
one-on-one dialogue where truth emerges from the collision of opinions. To be sure, it flatters
him to be doused in “thunderous cheering” (60) and stamping on the boards with “Hear, hear!”
(65) at the union meetings, but his innermost dreams hail the age of mass politics: “No longer
would his voice be lost in petty lecture-halls, answered only by the applause of a handful of
mechanics. Ere many months had passed, crowds should throng to hear him; his gospel would be
trumpeted over the land” (49). Thinking in terms of addressing the masses Mutimer pushes the

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possibilities of unmediated communication to the limit because the anonymity of the crowd
breaks down the fragile intimacy of a face-to-face dialogue. Mutimer turns naturally to the press
as an alternative. The press becomes Mutimer’s new platform, from which he addresses a
virtually limitless and anonymous audience in a homogeneous timeframe constituted by the print
discourse. His pamphlet “My Work at New Wanley,” albeit a failed venture, shows that Mutimer
is very much in tune with the changing notions of what counts as public presence in the local as
well as national politics.
The circulating print culture represented in Demos through multiplying newspapers
registers the internal dynamics of the movement where the spirit of competition and
fragmentation prevails. As Roodhouse implies, there has to be a “new paper” for “the new man.”
The Fiery Cross, where Westlake and Mutimer voice their opinions, and the Tocsin,
Roodhouse’s paper, oppose one another more than critique capitalism per se. Their competing
claims for the right kind of socialism do not in the end have an emancipatory effect. Here John
Stuart Mill’s notion of a clash of opinions that would separate truth from heresy does not apply.
For Gissing, the factional media war in the socialist press in Demos by no means leads to social
improvement, but if anything, steers the political discussion astray. The novel suggests that
selfish desires to have a party and a newspaper of one’s own are so essential to the practical
world of politics and yet so tightly interwoven with more idealistic dreams of social justice that
to think of a public sphere without one or the other would be a conceptual failure.
Competition and egotism in the political sphere become a vivid demonstration of what
Gissing denounces in more general terms as “the battle of life” (94). Roodhouse and Mutimer
(ironically, both “Comrades”) fully embrace these forces, which, for Gissing, are intrinsically
evil. Captive of his own political egotism, Roodhouse capitalizes on the first opportunity to

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satirize Mutimer’s New Wanley project with an article in the Tocsin titled “The Bursting of a
Soap Bubble.” As Roodhouse launches a print attack on Mutimer, Socialism as an idea is muted
by the pervasive struggle for political survival of the fittest which does not discard name-calling.
“The brute who gets the uttermost farthing out of the toil of his wage-slaves is more a friend to
us and our cause,” writes Roodhouse, “than any namby-pamby Socialist [Mutimer], such as the
late Dukeling of New Wanley. Socialist indeed! But enough. We have probably heard the last of
this parvenu and his loudly trumpeted schemes. No true friend of the Revolution can be grieved”
(353). The linking of Mutimer’s opinions to the sound of a “trumpet” implies an impressive
scope of his political broadcast, but ultimately undercuts his opinions as vulgar meaningless
noise that for all their power lack thoughtfulness. A saturation of the public sphere with
“trumpeted” opinions like Mutimer’s indicates one of the aspects of Gissing’s critique. After
Roodhouse’s attack, the agonistic spirit bolsters Mutimer’s ambitions for a comeback, even if
ever more disastrous. The kind of public discourse that emerges on the pages of Tocsin is far
from the emancipatory spirit of democracy predicated on “depersonalization” (Warner Letters of
the Republic 43). In his pursuit of power, Roodhouse employs not self-negation, but selfaffirmation. For him, it is the dog-eat-dog principle that underpins the political, and his Tocsin
becomes a key vehicle for bringing this principle home.
The selfishness and antagonism that play out in the political “battle of life” in Demos
point to Gissing’s profound preoccupation with the forces of egotism that organize not only
political life, but life as such. In “The Hope of Pessimism,” an essay that precedes Demos by
only a few years, Gissing follows in Schopenhauer’s footsteps to denounce “Agnostic
Optimism” (Gissing’s term for Positivism (Letters vol. 2 223)) as a philosophy which stems
directly from egotism. In Gissing’s words, the essay was “nothing more nor less than an attack

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on Positivism” (Letters vol. 2 103). Gissing’s critique of egotism in “The Hope of Pessimism”
illuminates his revulsion from the ways in which egotism comes to the fore in scenes of political
discussion in Demos, both face-to-face and mediated through print. Explicating Schopenhauer,
Gissing equates life-affirming optimism with egotism: “optimism directly encourages the
affirmation of the will to live, consequently cannot but encourage egotism” (Coustillas 91).
Optimism is in essence “the instinct by virtue of which every living thing clings to life with the
utmost energy of its nature, and finds the goal of being in the propagation of its kind.” To
destroy this ingrained egotistic optimism, one must be guided by “self-forgetfulness,” “severest
asceticism,” and compassion with others. In other words, to destroy an optimist in oneself, one
must become a pessimist. Hence, the hope of pessimism for Gissing. Only “the optimism of the
artist” (Coustillas 95) remains untainted with egotism since “[i]n the mood of artistic
contemplation the will is destroyed” and “self is eliminated.”
Mutimer lives out the battle of life philosophy in the political, economic, and personal
sense and stands for a paragon of egotism in the novel. A Quarterly Review article called him
“an ambitious egotist” (“Art. I” 405). In the political world, he is blinded by delusions of
grandeur and does not conceive of socialism as anything other than a party of his own. His sense
of superiority over the rest of the Comrades is aggravated by his seeming success at the platform:
“His head was thrown a little back; he viewed the benches from beneath his eyelids. True, the
pose maintained itself but for a moment. I mention it because it was something new in Richard”
(60). His leadership at times gravitates towards what seems to be not posturing, but sincerity. At
one point “he began to believe what he was saying, and to say it with the right vigour of popular
oratory” (61). In his directness of address, Mutimer represents what Pam Morris calls “the code
of sincerity” as a new phenomenon in popular leadership that emerges in the 1860’s (9-10).

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Leadership through sincerity does not counteract, but rather lends itself to Mutimer’s egotism
and becomes a technique to promote the cult of “King Mutimer” (404). Economically, Mutimer
embraces capitalist individualism, self-interest, and money-making spirit. The unexpected
finding of the will that bequeaths old Mutimer’s wealth to Hubert makes Richard forget honor in
a desperate attempt to prevent a reversal of his fortune. He couches his greed in the arguments
for common good such as, “It isn’t for myself, it’s for the cause, for the good of my fellowmen”
and “The end is too important” (318). His readiness to be a hypocrite with himself further
divulges his “manipulative sincerity” (21), to use Morris’s phrase, as a leader of the people.
Finally, Mutimer’s betrayal of his fiancée Emma Vine and his marriage to Adela, a “lady” and so
a better match for his new status, proves self-interest to be a prevailing guide for his personal
life. Not being “capable of love in the highest sense” (134) and lacking compassion for those he
tramples on his way, Mutimer succeeds in the battle of life only to pay a deadly price for his
fleeting success.
The double knot of personal agendas and incommensurable claims about socialist reform
work havoc among those who in one way or another call themselves socialists. However, this
sums up only one aspect of why the novel’s preoccupation with the workings of political
discussion in the public sphere results in Gissing’s deep skepticism about its possibilities.
Another aspect that seems to contribute to Gissing’s disillusioned view of the public sphere is the
inevitable slippage between the term socialism and the phenomena around it. The term socialism
proves to be rather malleable, and so the very process of labeling one’s position, deciding one’s
identification, and maintaining affiliations in the public sphere becomes problematic. In the
novel, two sets of problems layer upon one another: on the one hand, the socialists break up their
idea into many socialisms, and on the other hand, those who would not normally be called

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socialists partake in socialist ideas and so expand and destabilize the notion of socialism.
Interestingly, Gissing’s subtitle “A Story of English Socialism” does not reflect these nuances
and even seems to treat of socialism as one concrete thing where the name correlates with the
substance. Notwithstanding, the plot divulges the complexity of meanings when one notes
Mutimer’s and Roodhouse’s varieties of socialism on the platform or when one observes just
how aggressively socialism lends its name to other phenomena and stretches beyond itself in
hopes to claim the whole social arena.
As Mutimer’s wife, Adela undergoes a radical change and acquires a worldview that
hinges entirely on her husband’s creed. In a conversation with Letty, Adela’s brother’s bride,
Adela exposes a very fine line between, on the one hand, endowing socialism with a universal
human desire for common good and, on the other hand, entrapping herself in the narrowmindedness and conceptual violence of socialism’s claim for universality. Rather than
recognizing the good there is in Socialism, Adela recognizes Socialism in everything that is
good. If the approach has a potential to enrich discussion in the public sphere, the second line of
thinking is a recipe for ideological tyranny in the public sphere. Following this logic, Angela
insists on Socialism as the only valid voice that can be heard in the public sphere:
‘Yes, I am a Socialist,’ said Adela firmly. ‘I am sure anyone will be who thinks
about it, and really understands the need for Socialism. Does the word still sound
a little dreadful to you? I remember so well when it did to me. It was only because
I knew nothing about it.’
‘I don’t think I have that excuse,’ said the other. ‘Alfred is constantly explaining.
But, Adela—’[. . .] ‘I was going to say—I’m sure you won’t be offended. But
you still go to church?’

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‘Oh yes, I go to church. You mustn’t think that everything Alfred insists upon
belongs to Socialism. I believe that all Christians ought to be Socialists; I think it
is part of our religion, if only we carry it out faithfully.’
‘But does Mr. Wyvern think so?’
‘Yes, he does; he does indeed. I talk with Mr. Wyvern frequently, and I never
knew, before he showed me, how necessary it is for a Christian to be a Socialist.’
‘You surprise me, Adela. Yet he doesn’t confess himself a Socialist.’
‘Indeed, he does. When did you hear Mr. Wyvern preach a sermon without
insisting on justice and unselfishness and love for our neighbor? If we try to be
just and unselfish, and to love our neighbor as ourself, we help the cause of
Socialism. Mr. Wyvern doesn’t deal with politics—it is not necessary he should.
That is for men like my husband, who give their lives to the practical work. [. . .]
(252)
The anxiety about the name of socialism (“Does the word still sound a little dreadful to you?”)
and about Wyvern calling or not calling himself a “Socialist” in addition to a consistent effort to
grasp the meaning behind the name (e.g., Adela’s reference to her past ignorance of the meaning
of socialism when she “knew nothing about it” or Letty’s mention that Alfred keeps “explaining”
the meaning of socialism) is symptomatic of the slippage that haunts Socialism in the practical
public sphere. Taking advantage of this unsettling looseness between name and meaning, Angela
gains more conceptual territory for Socialism. Socialism, in Adela’s presentation, views all other
ideas as derivative from itself and does not recognize anything as a viable alternative to it.
Angela’s newly acquired activism and intransigence about her socialist beliefs expose her
as someone who shuts down a face-to-face political discussion without giving it a chance to

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become an intersubjective exchange of opinions. Angela’s involvement with the “practical work”
for the cause is interestingly linked to her more aggressive style of argumentation:
Letty was awed by the exceeding change which showed itself not only in Adela’s
ways of thought, but in her very voice and manner of speaking. The tone was so
authoritative, so free from the diffidence which had formerly kept Adela from
asserting strongly even her cherished faiths. She felt, too, that with the maiden
hesitancy something else had gone, at all events in a great degree; something that
it troubled her to miss; namely, that winning persuasiveness which had been one
of the characteristics that made Adela so entirely lovable. At present Mrs.
Mutimer scarcely sought to persuade; she uttered her beliefs as indubitable. A
competent observer might now and then have surmised that she felt it needful to
remind herself of the creed she had accepted. (252-253)
Adela’s change from the “maiden hesitancy” to the masculine assertiveness is troublesome for
while giving Angela an impulse to act for the cause, it deprives her of being sensitive of others.
The increased vehemence of her convictions eats away the integrity of her character.
For Gissing, there is something amiss, therefore, in the idea of practical political action.
He always seems to be skeptical about the practical world of politics which loses the appeal of
the ideas in a “speculative stage.” Paradoxically, too, political action seems to be at odds with
sincerity. Although Angela grounds her political determination in her “indubitable” views, she
ironically has “to remind herself of the creed she had accepted.” If political activism, as the novel
here demonstrates, has to be complacent about its own certainty and if authoritative rhetoric
comes at a cost of sincerity, the choice between plunging into the political tumult and
withdrawing from it into speculative inaction is never an easy one in Gissing. This dilemma

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reflects Gissing’s complicated view of the working classes: he wrote literature that is filled with
concern for their condition and yet remained intolerant to any attempts at activism on their part.
His personal choice was to channel his social rage into artistic withdrawal: “I can get savage
over social iniquities, but even then my rage at once takes the direction of planning revenge in
artistic work” (Letters v.2, 223-224). This is why Angela’s temporary political zeal is
represented as a self-assured delusion. Wyvern exposes the zealous proletarian Socialists for
their lack of sincerity and concludes that they “do not believe what they say, and therefore they
are so violent in saying it” (386). There is something equally unsettling for Gissing in respect to
these political zealots’ assertiveness and Adela’s authoritative tone. Demos imagines political
agency as something that can be gained only through the loss of sincerity and intolerance for
others’ claims for truth. For Gissing, the very nature of the public sphere praxis in an
increasingly mass society can bring about nothing but a tumultuous mass of “trumpeted”
opinions. He refuses to believe that a cultivation of human powers of abstraction can wed
successfully the vortex of practical politics and the theoretical purity of ideas.
While Gissing views political movements as inherently composed of incompatible
elements and always on a trajectory of further fragmentation, what is also concerning to him
about the public sphere is that alliances that form at times can be more threatening and
perplexing than factions. Above all, Demos sends a warning message about the most
unpredictable, volatile, yet powerful and all-consuming political alliance: the unity of a crowd.
The variety of socialisms articulated in discussion come to nothing in the face of an enraged
“many-headed monster Demos,” to borrow Edith Sichel’s expression. The conclusion of the
novel focuses on portraying the violence of the mob. Headed by Redgrave, a riot attacks New
Wanley manor causing destruction and claiming Mrs. Eldon’s life. Gissing contrasts the enraged

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multitude starkly against liberal conceptions of Reason and the Individual. The voice of Reason
is alien to the multitude as they announce their presence at the Manor with “a terrific yell, a
savage cry of many voices” (378). Later, Demos unleashes its violence just when it becomes
clear that Demos cannot participate in rational discussion: “Demos was roused, was tired of
listening to mere articulate speech; it was time for a good wild-beast roar, for a taste of
bloodshed. Scarcely a face in all the mob but distorted itself to express as much savagery as can
be got out of the human countenance” (453). Demos is a monstrous amalgam, “a tempest of
savage faces” (452), “faces of rude intelligence, faces of fathomless stupidity, faces degraded
into something less than human” (445). As their leader, Mutimer sees in front of him a collective
with changing moods and passions that cannot be parsed out into rational individuals. The manyheaded monster does not have a face to speak to: “One moment their eyes would be fixed upon
him, filmy, unintelligent, then they would look at one another with a leer of cunning, or at best a
doubtful grin” (416). Capable of exploding into violence at any moment, this savage unity of
people in a given time and place showcases a unity that is strangely anchored in no specific
political ideas. In the public sphere where political ideas entail fragmentation of movements and
where people get united into a violent mob around no specific ideas at all, what is left is
Gissing’s longing for the “speculative stage” of ideas.
In this irredeemable, for Gissing, public sphere, Demos figures as a monstrous quasicharacter of sorts. A “tempest of savage faces” (452) gives this collective character of Demos a
“face” that no one, not even Mutimer, being one of them, is able to address. The multitude of
subhuman faces takes the shape of one massive moving body: “The great crowd swayed this way
and that” (452). The misrule that sets in when the unleashed Demos rises in anger against
Mutimer gives expression to the battle of life in its crudest form (the selfish force that Gissing

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denounced): “Demos was having his way; civilization was blotted out, and club law proclaimed”
(454). Mutimer realizes just how uncompromising the battle of life is when he finds he has fallen
out of favor with the crowd and is about to fall into their midst: “If he fell into the hands of the
mob he was done for; Mutimer knew that, and was ready to fight for his life” (454). Demos is a
quasi-character not only because the sprawling multitude is represented here as one monstrous
organism, but also because this organism, unlike a typical novel character, is deprived of
consciousness. “They did not know what they were doing” (379), murmurs Mrs. Eldon as she is
dying from the hands of the raving Demos. Demos cannot be conscious of what it does because,
for Gissing, taking action and being conscious of one’s action in the political realm are mutually
exclusive. With more consciousness comes, paradoxically, a withdrawal from action. And
conversely, agency is gained through a suspension of consciousness and self-reflection. The
novel represents Demos as the epitome of pure action and by doing so gives insights into the
rising mass politics that reshapes the playing field in the public sphere. The tragic relationship
between Mutimer and Demos foregrounds the vicious cycle of mass politics: Mutimer’s ability
to produce an enlightened body of followers is just as impractical as the crowd’s ability to select
an enlightened leader.
The destructive agency of Demos becomes more accentuated as the novel takes on a
rather selective approach representing it. The focus is placed on the effects of the action whereas
the actors themselves remain almost invisible in the background. The Demos in the novel is
never quite fully present in a sense that we do not so much see the description of the masses or
their perspective on events as register their presence through savage yells or the effects of their
actions. The narrator assumes a detached stance in narrating to us the story of the roused Demos.
The agents of the raid on the New Wanley manor remain in the dark, literally and figuratively,

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while Hubert is exposed to the actions of this semi-invisible Demos: “The windows behind his
back were broken and a couple of heavy missiles thundered near him upon the floor—stones
they proved to be” (378). As a quasi-character, Demos never really comes in full presence to the
reader, but his presence is sketched out through a series of effects such as the “yell and the
shower of stones” (378) followed again by the “furious voices and the stone-volley” (378). This
focus on the crowd’s noise and destruction without a detailed depiction of the agents themselves
parallels the way in which late-Victorian society experienced anxiety about the masses. The
novel intimates that the threat emanating from the angry Demos is overwhelmingly felt through
some obvious signs, but Demos itself remains treacherously invisible and unknown. Demos, with
violence as its only readily available mode of action, channels this violence both at whom it
perceives to be its class enemies and at its own leaders, like Mutimer, and so it finds itself at an
impasse.
The novel does not propose a philanthropic scheme of improvement, but instead poses
cautiously as an alternative Hubert Eldon’s aesthetic retreat from political agitation and violence.
Mutimer’s scheme to transform Wanley into “an industrial settlement” (56) to provide goodpaying jobs for the workers is challenged by Eldon’s claim “I prefer nature” (71). Associated
with the forces of progress and unbridled industrialization, socialism impinges on the beautiful
and puts at risk the ecological wellbeing of the land. Eldon finds in Mutimer an antagonist
professing a creed utterly irreconcilable with his own: “no movement can be tolerated which
begins with devastating the earth’s surface” (339). For him, the notion of class always entails
ecological and aesthetic implications. In a conversation with his mother, he portrays the working
class as complicit in the evils brought about by industrialization, indifferent to the beautiful, and
headed on the course of ecological devastation:

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‘[. . .] Shall I tell you how I felt talking with him [Mutimer]? I seemed to be
holding a dialogue with the twentieth century [. . .].’ ‘The man was openly
exultant; he stood for Demos grasping the scepter. I am glad, mother, that you
leave Wanley before the air is poisoned.’
‘Mr. Mutimer does not see that side of the question?’
‘Not he! Do you imagine the twentieth century will leave one green spot on the
earth’s surface?’
‘My dear, it will always be necessary to grow grass and corn.’
‘By no means; depend upon it. Such things will be cultivated by chemical
processes. There will not be one inch left to nature; the very oceans will somehow
be tamed, the snow-mountains will be leveled. And with nature will perish art.
What has a hungry Demos to do with the beautiful?’ (77)
Eldon puts the blame on Demos for the trampling advance of progress and the apocalyptic
picture of the devastated planet. In his view, Demos is not a mass of people enfeebled by poverty
and working conditions, and so philanthropy is not seen as a solution. Demos comes across as a
dangerous multitude hungry for political power and a presence in the public sphere as much as
for their daily bread. In response to this dangerous political newcomer in the public sphere,
Eldon sees a solution not in a reactionary political agency, but in a quiet aesthetic and
speculative retreat into his own corner of the world, Wanley, which conveniently is restored to
him after Mutimer’s short-run industrial reform.
This is not to say, however, that the novel entirely renounces political agency. Vicar
Wyvern anticipates a future change in society, but in ways other than the Socialist activists do.
Wyvern is committed to change, and although he does not know exactly how to bring it about, he

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makes no mistake about the erroneous schemes of change: “Changes will come about, but not of
these men’s making or devising” (386). In response to Mutimer’s fervent reformism, he proposes
not political indifference, but rather caution against ill-thought-through reform: “To see is a
much easier thing than to originate a sound scheme. I am far from prepared with any plan of
social reconstruction” (142). Like Gissing himself, Wyvern hardly believes in “solutions,” the
more so in such easy ones as Mutimer’s. In the society torn by class and political antagonisms,
Wyvern above all advocates for tolerance: “My old zeal lingers in the form of tolerance. I can
enter into the mind of a furious proletarian as easily as into the feeling which [Eldon]
represent[s]” (382). His toleration to perspectives so opposed as Mutimer’s and Eldon’s suggests
a way to reforming society on the principles of “sympathy and humanity” (385). Wyvern is Dr.
Amboyne’s fellow spirit, but Reade’s enthusiasm about the universal principle of putting oneself
in the other’s place is seriously diminished in Gissing. While Gissing’s novel gestures favorably
towards it, the vicar comes across not as much as a reformer of political turmoil, but someone
who withdraws from it.
Wyvern’s voice is ultimately that of dreamy and conservative nostalgia. The vicar
anticipates a future change to rectify present social injustices by longing for the irretrievable
“good old order” (385) of the past. His desire for change is outweighed by his status-quo
political sympathies. Wyvern’s philosophy of happiness does not recognize the class system as
the source of human suffering. Indeed, there is no need to change the class system because, as
Wyvern thinks, “happiness is very evenly distributed among all classes and conditions” (383).
This idea of equal distribution of happiness is echoed in Adela’s words when she responds to
Mutimer’s proletarian politics with: “I certainly think you value too little the means of happiness
that we all have within our reach, rich and poor alike” (99). All in all, Wyvern expresses

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Gissing’s mix of conservative sensibilities, intolerance to violence, and a paradoxical concern for
and denunciation of Demos.
Wyvern’s principle of putting oneself in the other’s place yields to a more prevalent
message in the novel of staying in one’s own place and minding one’s own class. For Gissing,
class is one of the factors that wreak havoc in the public sphere, but an elimination of classes is
an even more grotesque alternative. His characters are preoccupied with positioning themselves
in relation to class as they range from Mutimer who sees in his marriage to Adela a union of
classes to Eldon who maintains his aristocratic distance from the people. The novel’s prevalent
perception of class difference as something that is “a chapter of social history” (202) goes to
show that, as DeVine argues, “Gissing sees the class system as man-made” (22). Being someone
painfully situated between a lower class income and an educated background, Gissing was
acutely aware of his outsider position in relation to the class system. A class-differentiated
society inflicted suffering on some, but at the same time produced the cultural refinement that he
valued. Suspicious of philanthropic reforms that sought to bring education to the masses, Gissing
was apprehensive of this way of intervening into class structures. Wyvern expresses Gissing’s
anti-progressive sentiment about the possibilities of universal education in reorganizing a classbased society by stating that the results of universal education
‘[. . .] affect all classes, and all for the worse. I said that I used to have a very
bleeding of the heart for the half-clothed and quarter-fed hangers-on to
civilization; I think far less of them now than of another class in appearance much
better off. It is a class created by the mania of education, and it consists of those
unhappy men and women whom unspeakable cruelty endows with intellectual
needs whilst refusing them the sustenance they are taught to crave. Another

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generation, and this class will be terribly extended, its existence blighting the
whole social state. Every one of these poor creatures has a right to curse the work
of those who clamour progress, and pose as benefactors of their race.’ (384-385)
Rather than a mechanism of social mobility, education for Gissing seems to be a disastrous
intervention among classes. He sends a warning of sorts that the implications of universal
education for the public sphere are dangerously miscalculated by philanthropists. Being illaccommodated within the class society, Gissing provides a valuable critique of the society he
represents. He dramatizes Mutimer’s ambivalent attitude to class that lies in his desire to climb
up the class ladder, on the one hand, and his naïve socialist thinking to unite all classes, on the
other. Demos engages with the problematics of class not by looking for solution in emancipating
certain classes or uniting them all into one, but by delving into the question about a balance
between economic and cultural needs. Whatever reforms or movements pose the question of
class in other terms, they are omitting, as a result, this crucial aspect in which class can be
understood and which Gissing had to live out personally.
Gissing was always self-conscious about the disparity between his cultural level and his
income. This translated into the ways he thought of himself as an author writing about the
working classes. While his background made him an outsider and provided him with a distance
from the working classes, his perspective undermined the middle-class ideology embraced by
many social problem novels that turned workers into objects of reform. When Edith Sichel stated
that Gissing “writes from a back-ally reeking with putrid vapours” (515) in comparison to Besant
who writes from a cozy study, his response evinces just how anxiously Gissing reflects on his
class position:

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I have been led to wonder, in an amused way, whether at that time you really did
suspect that I might be a denizen of the slums?—Why, so I have been; I have
lived in extraordinary places, & gone through dire straits. But the German’s

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suggestion is, of course, that I was probably taken for a self-educated artisan.
Pooh! I am half ashamed of writing about this at all; & should be wholly so if you
imagined that I write in a spirit of pique. It is nothing but a point of speculative
interest. If you said, “Well, yes; I rather thought of you as washing your grimy
hands & sitting down savagely to pen descriptions of the things about you”;—be
sure that I should have no feeling but pleasure in your frankness.
Let me see; no one of my books was actually written in a slum; [. . .] (Letters, vol.
4, 126)
In this passage, Gissing is at pains trying to make sense of himself, albeit under the cover of
“speculative interest.” One can see a great deal of uneasiness about his class position as these
lines are filled with compulsion to differentiate himself, not without irony, from the class he
depicts. His insistence that he is not a “self-educated artisan,” not a “denizen of the slums,” that
his hands are not grimy, and that his novels were not “written in a slum” suggests that he was
prone to think of his class identity through the negative definitions of what he was not. Lack of
definitive status provided Gissing with unique insights into class, but the anxiety that came along
with this unclassed “freedom” caused Gissing to obsess over and hold on to the very class
structure that made him an outsider.

37

Gissing refers to his friend Eduard Bertz. After reading Sichel’s review of Gissing, Bertz
expressed that Sichel “evidently think[s] of the author [Gissing] as belonging to the social class
he depicts” (Letters, vol.4, 126).
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Demos is obsessed with class. Affiliation with a class or aspiration to join a higher class
determines the existence of many characters. Class is so ingrained in Mutimer, Adela, Eldon,
Westlake, Daniel Dabbs, and the narrator that a negation of class differences seems, at best, a
naïve idea and, at the worst, disastrous premise. Mutimer’s symbolic marriage to Adela as “the
union of classes—of the wage-earning with the bourgeois” (137) ends in a tragic breakdown of
Mutimer’s misconceptions about class. This plot development reaffirms that class distinctions
stem from irreducible differences determined from the moment of birth: “He was not of her
class, not of her world; only by violent wrenching of the laws of nature had they come together.
She had spent years in trying to convince herself that there were no such distinctions, that only
an unworthy prejudice parted class from class. One moment of true insight was worth more than
all her theorising on abstract principles. To be her equal this man must be born again, of other
parents, in other conditions of life” (350). Skeptical about the early Victorian desire to bridge the
gulf between the rich and the poor, the novel shows that the inequity of material “conditions of
life” determines access to the cultural world and in the end accounts for “natural” and indeed
irreversible distinctions between classes. If many Victorian novels provided a critique of social
polarization through the variations of a theme of marriage between the rich and the poor, Gissing
exposes the naivety of this literary device and so makes his critique of the class system even
more incisive. He shows how the gulf between classes is unbridgeable due to “natural” classbased differences of character, but at the same times critiques these “natural” differences to show
that they result from the imposed inequality of material “conditions of life.” Gissing’s worldview
exhibits an ambivalent relationship between his condemnation of material injustices and his
elitist conviction about “natural” class differences.

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To the extent that Mutimer’s ideal of “the union of classes” results in his own failed
marriage, so does his ironic obsession with jumping on the other side of the class divide expose a
contradiction with this ideal. Mutimer’s awkward and futile attempts at acquiring the class
markers of a bourgeois serve to emphasize the insurmountable distinctions in birth and
upbringing. Like Gissing, Mutimer is very conscious about his class and takes care to
demonstrate his distinction from the workers as the narrator notes that Mutimer’s “hand which
rested on the table was no longer that of a daily-grimed mechanic” (68). The narrator mocks
Mutimer’s relentless aspiration to pass for a bourgeois, and the more Mutimer tries to show that
culture and manners are easily acquired attributes of class, the more he fails in his attempts,
which only reaffirms the innateness of class differences. At dinner with the Walthams, Mutimer
cultural deficiency comes to the fore as he tries to master the good manners he observes at table
even though “there were numerous minor points of convention on which he was not so clear”
(89). Scenes of his courtship of Adela as well as his political public speaking reinforce cultural
boundaries between classes. With plans “to have a ‘lady’ for his wife” (138), Mutimer is hardpressed to master the polite discourse: “Not only did he aim at polite modes of speech altogether
foreign to his lips, but his own voice sounded strange to him in its forced suppression” (99). In
the political arena, Mutimer’s “hard voice” loses its political purchase compared to Westlake’s
“cultured tones” (236). Mutimer makes sure to maintain prestige in Adela’s eyes and so berates
his sister Alice for her poor spelling because “Won’t do, you know, to make mistakes if you
write to Adela” (201). Adela, in turn, while being a “lady” to the Mutimers, struggles with
writing to Eldon and interpreting the cultured language of his verses: “Hubert’s verses she found
difficult to understand; their spirit, the very vocabulary, was strange to her. Only on a second
reading did she attain a glimmering of their significance” (181). Adela, however, unlike

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Mutimer, seems to overcome the cultural and class differences more “naturally.” Featuring
Adela’s failed marriage to Mutimer and her subsequent marriage to Eldon, the novel is
intriguingly ambivalent as to whether class differences are essential or superficial.
The novel traces class differences back to the influence of the environment and the role
of heredity, in a strikingly Darwinian fashion. Adela’s refined nature seems to be the result of the
social forces at work and the pinnacle of human evolution. Conversely, Alice represents crude
evolutionary material. Registering the workings of social evolution on both girls, Mutimer notes
the biological aspects of class distinctions and so raises a question of where a man-made social
hierarchy and human nature intersect:
Adela and Alice sat over against each other; their contrasted appearances were a
chapter of social history. Mark the difference between Adela’s gently closed lips,
every muscle under control; and Alice’s, which could never quite close without
forming a saucy pout or a self-conscious primness. Contrast the foreheads; on the
one hand that tenderly shadowed curve of brow, on the other the surface which
always seemed to catch too much of the light, which moved irregularly with the
arches above the eyes. The grave modesty of one face, the now petulant, now
abashed, now vacant expression of the other. (202)
A shift from a third-person narration to an imperative mood in the beginning of the passage
draws the readers in to compare the two female faces that Mutimer is studying. The narrator
invites the readers to see behind Adela’s and Alice’s personal features something larger than
individual uniqueness: the forces of social history that are reflected in the faces of many girls like
Adela or girls like Alice. In Mutimer’s observation, one’s class and one’s nature are tightly
linked to the point that it becomes impossible to disentangle natural dispositions and social

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inequity in the construction of class. Alice’s “natural” crudeness and Adela’s “natural”
refinement seem to be to an equal extent the consequences as well as the reasons of social and
cultural polarization. Gissing finds himself simultaneously critiquing class society and being
invested in its distinctions. This mix of sentiments softens his critique, on the one hand, yet on
the other, complicates what may be called merely his “very Conservative point of view” on the
working classes in Demos (Letters vol. 2, 363).
The novel essentializes class distinctions also by presenting Mutimer as someone with
“the best qualities his class can show” (33). Mutimer’s qualities that come across here as classbound not only give shape to the category of class in the present, but also provide a historical
perspective as we learn how Radical and Conservative traits struggle for prevalence through
generations in Mutimer’s genealogy. Mutimer’s interest in socialist propaganda, on the one hand,
and his ingrained capitalistic grip, on the other, seem to be determined not only by the forces of
“social history,” but also by his contrasted inheritance. His grandfather Henry and great uncle
Richard are both recognizable in their offspring. Henry, “by nature a political enthusiast” and an
“uncompromising Radical of formidable powers” (27), pursues his “career of popular agitation”
(27) in the Chartist movement only to meet a pathetic end by leading one of the 1840’s riots. In
contrast, due to his “native conservatism” (27), Richard accumulated wealth and held in high
esteem such class markers as “birth, hereditary station, recognized gentility” (28). Richard’s
convictions lead him to see a harmony between one’s natural attributes and one’s class. Social
mobility, then, is not a matter of reordering social structures, but an exercise of characterbuilding and letting one’s nature find one a place on a social ladder. In this vein, he contemplates
his brother’s working-class family and in making his will is guided by conservative ideas of
class: “if such [the working class] were to rise at all, it must be by their own efforts and in

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consequence of their native merits” (29). Therefore, his great nephew’s sudden inheritance of
Wanley and his less than noble desire to hold on to it even after old Mutimer’s lost will is
recovered ensues in a reaffirmation of class boundaries. The generations of the Mutimers in
different ways drive home the same idea: class is predetermined both by nature and environment.
With “the best qualities his class can show” (33), Mutimer becomes not a self-made man
climbing the social ladder like his great uncle, but someone whose nature does not let him rise
above the Demos.
As much as the novel intends to keep the Demos in its place, it nevertheless does not
leave the class system unquestioned. Mrs. Eldon’s question to her son betrays an anxiety about
the emptying out of class distinctions:
[. . .] ‘what is this class distinction upon which we pride ourselves? What does it
mean, if not that our opportunities lead us to see truths to which the eyes of the
poor and ignorant are blind? Is there nothing in it, after all—in our pride of birth
and station? That is what people are saying nowadays: you yourself have jested to
me about our privileges. [. . .] I know no longer what to believe. Oh, Hubert!’ (21)
The advent of the new age casts aside the distinctions and privileges of the old one. Mrs. Eldon’s
disillusionment leads her neither to stick blindly to nor to disavow the right to privilege. Rather,
the right to distinction seems to validate itself only if it is questioned by its owner over and over.
The novel duly rewards Hubert Eldon who while affirming his aristocratic privilege, puts it up
for critique by “jesting” about it. Similar to how philanthropists approached the question of
poverty by dividing the poor into those worthy and unworthy of sympathy and assistance,
Gissing’s novel poses a question of the worthy and unworthy rich. To dramatize the disconnect
between having privilege and being worthy of it, the novel represents Mutimer as “more a

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gentleman than a great many whose right to the name was never contested” (141). Thus, the
novel insists on class distinctions by representing the Demos as a blind violent force that is
incapable of being led by its own leaders, yet it never ceases to question the artificiality of the
class system. Delving into the complexity of the notion of class and its role in the public sphere,
Gissing’s novel thinks about class as something that is artificially imposed to the extent,
however, that it becomes natural.
Gissing’s ambivalence about class can be traced further through a comparison between
Richard Mutimer and Jim Mutimer, the main character of a short story that Gissing devised in
the summer of 1884, the same time as when he was thinking about Demos (Coustillas 241).
Despite the similarities of the name, Richard Mutimer and Jim Mutimer evoke quite contrary
perspectives on the working classes. In “Mutimer’s Choice,” Jim is a noble and incredibly
strong-willed working-class character who is the victim of a work accident: he is injured by a
block that gives way due to a broken chain. In the meantime, the work-injury drama is unfolding
against a personal drama. His wife, who had chosen to marry Jim over Bill Snowdon, seems to
have second thoughts about her decision. After the work accident, Jim faces a choice between
having his legs amputated or dying. In his decision about life or death, Jim’s noble heart intuits a
way to resolve this love triangle. In a “strangely resolute” (Coustillas 253) manner Jim refuses to
have his legs amputated and on his deathbed makes Bill promise that he would take care of his
wife when Jim dies. In “Mutimer’s Choice,” Gissing turns our attention to an individual
worker’s suffering and the unjust system of exploitation that puts profits over one’s safety or
even life. In Demos, by contrast, Gissing presents us with what happens when workers begin to
think of themselves as a class and form the blind and raging “many-headed” monster of Demos.

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As foils to one another, the two namesakes put in full relief Gissing’s ambivalent view of the
working classes.
Class mentality permeates Gissing’s novel so that the idea of creating a common
discussion forum by bracketing class differences is no longer feasible. Lack of politically
meaningful discussion between Hubert Eldon and Richard Mutimer or between Richard and his
employers suggests that in fact the public sphere does not exist as a unified world of discursive
exchange, but rather consists of loosely related worlds circumscribed by economic function.
Class becomes not something to be abstracted from in discussion, but the sole premise of
organizing discussion. Hubert expresses his revulsion at the emergent public sphere and longs for
a face-to-face interaction as an alternative to class: “To the individual poor man or woman I
would give my last penny. It is when they rise against me as a class that I become pitiless” (382).
In a face-to-face discussion, Hubert is willing to embrace perhaps some class-determined
character traits and opinions or “natural” dispositions of the other, but he insists on bracketing
the more externalized and collective notion of the working-class multitude. His diction of “rising
against [. . .] as a class” presupposes an opposition of classes, and hence an antagonistic public
sphere. As such, in Demos, a public sphere predicated on class operates as a fragmented arena
filled with opposing interests that cannot be drawn together into a common forum for negotiating
a consensus. While Hubert gestures to a face-to-face interaction which induces sympathy and a
sentiment of common humanity rather than class, his ideal can no longer stand strong in the lateVictorian context and appears in Hubert’s reflection only in hypothetical and idyllic terms.
Hubert’s longing for a sociality based on face-to-face encounter is of a piece with Wyvern’s
nostalgia for the “good old order” (385): both are skeptical of the changes brought about by

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modernity, such as the waning of the local rural community, the rise of the urban anonymous
masses, and the spread of print culture.
Having undergone an awakening of sorts, Adela seems to be the character that sees most
clearly an avenue for agency that does not fall into nostalgic reminiscence or aspire for power
over the masses from a popular platform. Her female agency lies not in winning political battles
or propagating reform, but rather in staying truthful to a strikingly local and allegedly apolitical
ideal of community-building:
[. . .] there is a work in the cause of humanity other than that which goes on so
clamorously in lecture-halls and at street corners, other than that which is silently
performed by faithful hearts and hands in dens of misery and amid the horrors of
the lazar-house; the work of those whose soul is taken captive of loveliness, who
pursue the spiritual ideal apart from the world’s tumult, and, ever ready to
minister in gentle offices, know that they serve best when nearest home. (470)
Adela helps Emma Vine by providing her with employment in the East End and by doing so
shows just what the men’s world of political “tumult” where leaders like Mutimer and
Roodhouse compete for crowd popularity is incapable of. In Adela’s personalized agency,
Gissing represents the hope of reform, but not in a philanthropic sense of the word. She remains
untainted by “the world’s tumult,” yet her ideals do not remain in the “speculative stage” (225),
but go far in the everyday world.
Demos is a novel that in many ways exposes the naivety of optimistic imaginings of a
liberal public sphere that hinges on a rational, detached individual capable of generating
independent opinions and exchanging them with others in a common discussion forum. Gissing
is not interested in presenting how such participatory agency and discursive practices can be

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cultivated in Demos, nor does he believe that this framework can be neatly superimposed on the
actual dynamics within the public sphere. The “story of English Socialism” is ultimately a story
about any idea that enters the tumultuous world of politics: its unity and cohesion are but
ephemeral and it moves from detached speculation into the realm of action only to disintegrate
into disparate interests. For Gissing, the public sphere bears no resemblance to a common
discussion forum where social differences are bracketed in the name of disinterestedness and
objectivity. In fact, the novel expresses profound skepticism about such an ideal put into practice
by showing just how much universal claims for the cause of humanity and common good are
embedded in the very economic and cultural factors that need to be bracketed in order to make
claims of this kind. The “cause of humanity” can only retain its universality and purity in the
“speculative stage” and not amidst factional antagonisms of practical politics. However, if
Demos dispels the fantasy of a unified idea in the realm of practical politics, it also reflects on
the dangers of the unified mob that ironically is anchored in no ideas, but shared rage. Gissing
refuses to represent demos as a mass that can be cultivated into rational individuals. Although
sincerely concerned with alleviating the fate of the working classes, Gissing writes a novel that
finds a problem precisely in class politics.
Where does Demos leave us if the public sphere is a space of fragmentation,
disillusionment, and corruption? Gissing does not propose a recipe against social evils like
philanthropists do. And unlike them, he does not welcome the forces of progress with hope and
optimism. He defines our modern condition in terms of learning to accept the inevitability of
progress and to see in it as much a cure from social evils as their source. To rein in the forces of
progress and the rise of mass politics in the public sphere, the novel offers an individual ecoaesthetic withdrawal as an alternative. In alignment with this stance, Demos casts a nostalgic

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look back at a local face-to-face community where an individual encounter goes further than a
political argument directed at a crowd of strangers. But Gissing does not flesh out what this kind
of sociality would look like and how it would withstand the pressures of modernity in the long
run. As a result, Adela remains for us a semi-idealized heroine who gains a true vision of acting
in the cause of humanity. Perhaps this alternative agency remains only a speculative blueprint
because Gissing is well aware that once it enters into the tumultuous world of political action, it
is bound to be corrupted with power structures and downgrade from a pure ideal into a political
scheme.

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CHAPTER 5
“ARGYFYING ABOUT POLITICS”: SOCIALISM AT LUNCH IN ROBERT TRESSELL’S
THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPISTS

This study in some ways comes full circle beginning with Harriet Martineau’s tales of
political economy and concluding with Robert Tressell’s socialist working-class novel. In both
instances the authors undertake a project to popularize theoretical principles and bring them
closer to everyday understanding by employing the power of parables, metaphors, and examples.
Both Martineau and Tressell hinge their projects on face-to-face political discussions that in the
long run would transform local communities and rebuild the world from the ground up. But here
similarities stop. While for Martineau rational dialogue inevitably culminates in the approbation
of a laissez-faire worldview, for Tressell it is the Socialists that come out winners out of any
open debate due to the “accuracy of their reasonings and the correctness of their conclusions”
(496). Claiming open and fair discussion to be on their side, Martineau validates laissez-faire
capitalism whereas Tressell uses discussion among workers as a weapon to demolish the tyranny
of the capitalist “System” altogether. Martineau’s utopia turns into a dystopian nightmare in
Tressell. I am using these two authors as the beginning and ending coordinates for my study not
to cast discussion as an easily malleable mechanism in the hands of authors pursuing their
political agendas and seeking to validate their views by putting them through the test of
discussion scenes. The question that motivates this study is not so much what views become
validated through discussion but rather how various authors imagined the discursive process of
fair validation and how this vision of discussion evolved. What I have been examining is the

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evolution of views on how this dialogue should unfold. And in this regard, the differences
between Tressell’s and Martineau’s work present an intriguing shift.
Despite the similarities between Tressell’s and Martineau’s “popularization” projects,
Tressell suggests that political discussion is always an unfinished process and reflects on the
dialogic nature of discussion beyond the possibilities generated in Martineau’s tales. If
Martineau writes tales that converge on her laissez-faire tenets and seem to usher in a static
universe of economic harmony, Tressell (despite writing a work of socialist propaganda)
curiously refuses such a definitive and fixed closure in his public sphere. The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists (TRTP) is very aware of the transformative potentialities of political discussions;
however, the novel does not culminate in Owen’s definitive conversion of the house-painters into
socialists. Many have readily overlooked Tressell’s valuation of discussion and have criticized
his discussion scenes for bogging down the progression of the novel, considering them
superfluous to the novel’s intent. The Daily Sketch deemed the novel “[f]ormless and without a
connected story” and concluded that it “can hardly be called a novel” (qtd. in Harker 80). Jessie
Pope, TRTP’s first and merciless editor who pared off two-thirds of the original manuscript,
thought she was making the novel fit for the market place as she decided to “cut out most of the
political discussions” and to “retain much of the matter referring to Socialism” (qtd. in Harker
88). I suggest that political discussions that occur at the lunch hour among the house-painters
employed to renovate the buildings for Rushton & Co. are important to our understanding of
Tressell’s vision of the public sphere. They are key to understanding the ways in which Tressell
critiques the self-reproducing capitalist spirit of Mugsborough and anticipates the advent of
socialism. It is unwarranted to view the discussion scenes as fillers that bog down the plot,
although, admittedly, they are quite lengthy. I argue that through unfolding the workers’

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discussions, Tressell demonstrates his commitment to the practice of an ongoing, open-ended,
and truly dialogic practice. He creates a novel so fraught with discussion scenes that it struggles
to come to an end or, in other words, to become a completed novel. Ultimately, this narrative
tension revises the novel form itself.
In this chapter, I engage with Pierre Bourdieu’s work on discourse to illuminate how the
discussion scenes in TRTP simultaneously reinforce tacit conformity with existing norms and
provide opportunities for breaking them. My analysis is informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of
the universe of discourse and of the “undiscussed” as well as his account of the possibilities for
the expansion of the field of debate that creates potential for critique. I also use Bourdieu’s ideas
to examine the novel’s careful discrimination between real and superficial heterogeneity of ideas.
TRTP exposes the construction of a sanctioned field of diverse opinions and develops a critique
from the outside of this contained oppressive “diversity.” Tressell works through the notion of
critique in terms of, above all, negotiating distance: can the workers themselves begin to question
what is “undiscussed,” or is it only through the agency of outsiders like Owen, Barrington, or
Tressell himself that words can be found and arguments expressed to challenge the self-evidence
of the “undiscussed.” Tressell’s vision of critique becomes more nuanced once we further
unpack Owen’s significance in the novel: as a socialist and an outsider, Owen has the critical
insight into the pervasive domination of capitalism over the workers’ lives that they are unable to
recognize; and even so, Tressell shows that Owen’s monologic lecturing fails to deliver and
disseminate his critical insights. In TRTP, critique is something that requires a stance of an
outsider, but, interestingly, critique can only gain momentum if it is cultivated through dialogue
between “outsiders” and ignorant “insiders.”

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I will explore what I think Tressell sees as two dead-end extremes of political discussion:
on the one hand, monologic critique that alienates itself from its addressees, and on the other
hand, a potentially democratic arena that risks losing its critical possibilities by shrinking into an
enclave of sanctioned opinions and so getting incorporated into the “System.” This issue informs
the novel’s self-reflexive gesture. On the level of its own structure, the novel aspires to avoid the
pitfalls of Owen’s monologues, to embrace democratic inclusiveness and heterogeneity, yet
retain its critical distancing from unquestioned and “undiscussed” reality. In representing
discussion that is always unfinished, the novel provides a guarantee against systemic tyranny.
But following this logic, the novel comes in direct conflict with its status as propaganda that
ought to drive its message home. Because TRTP has been understood primarily in terms of
socialist propaganda, I think that the novel’s investments in a democratic political discussion
have remained under-examined. In many ways, TRTP’s vision of the public sphere speaks to our
own moment that is informed by challenges of inclusion, diversity, universal norms, and
democratic justice. By imagining political discursive practice as unfinished, evolving, and selfreflexive, TRTP conceptualizes an ongoing inclusive forum with a broadening horizon of
discussed issues and an ability to revise collectively the norms that organize discussion itself.
In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu theorizes how the subjective dispositions of
social agents and the objective structures of the social world interact, constitute, and reinforce
one another. He also shows that sets of objective theoretical models that describe the world do
not fully account for various practices of social agents, and as such, practices are not neat
reflections of the objective models. Because the objectivist approach to the social world is
limiting, Bourdieu seeks to find middle ground between objectivism and subjectivism and
articulates a need for a theory of practice that is at the core of his project of reflexive sociology.

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His inquiry pursues the question of how social agents acquire and act on certain dispositions
towards the world, adhere to certain ways of living in it, and understand the social relations
within it. In his treatment of the public sphere, Bourdieu fleshes out a discursive system that
comprises two fields: the universe of discourse and the universe of the undiscussed. The first
field is a space of competing discourses where orthodox opinions tend to affirm the existing
social power relations and where heterodox opinions express the alternatives. The “universe of
discourse” is circumscribed by the “universe of the undiscussed.” The latter field comprises
beliefs and dispositions about society and its workings that are taken for granted, without
discussion, as self-evident. The “undiscussed,” or doxa, Bourdieu, explains, can only be defined
negatively, i.e. as something that lies outside of the field of debated opinions. Although the
world appears to us self-evident when our doxa is aligned with the social structures, at certain
moments this collusive harmony may be disrupted. Crises strip the veil of naturalness from the
social structure and at such moments the “undiscussed” can fall into the field of active
discussion, thus expanding the area of the universe of discourse and compromising the field of
doxa. As Bourdieu writes, a crisis may, but not necessarily does, present an opportunity for
change: “Crisis is a necessary condition of a questioning of doxa but is not in itself a sufficient
condition for the production of a critical discourse” (169). Tressell’s novel unravels the question
of how, if at all possible, human beings, whose perceptions of “normal” class relations smoothly
fold into the outside objective class structures, can produce critical discourse of their own
condition, can turn their apathy into incisive questions, and put the “undiscussed” itself in the
spotlight of discussion.
The workers’ discussions reveal their impoverished lives punctuated with persistent
economic crises. But a crisis creates conditions for change. According to Bourdieu, a crisis

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causes a misalignment between one’s subjective dispositions and the objective social structures
and so may generate a possibility for critique. The economic troubles alone, however, are shown
to trigger critical thinking only among very few, while to intensify the blind selfish battle for
survival among the majority. The vagaries of the employment market in the building industry of
Mugsborough place the characters in a position where they barely make their ends meet: paying
off their debts when employed and making new debts when out of employment. Against the
backdrop of the chronic economic crisis, we find out that the workers are very much involved in
what one of them, Jack Linden, calls “argyfying about politics” (19). However, the discussion
among these “Liberal” or “Tory” sympathizers reveals that these political labels constitute rather
superficial distinctions and that the passions these debates arouse fall short of emancipatory
politics or social critique. For Tressell, the political life the characters imagine themselves to be a
part of is just that—an illusion: “Some of them were under the delusion that they were
Conservatives: similarly, others imagined themselves to be Liberals. As a matter of fact, most of
them were nothing” (20). This remark corroborates what can be called Tressell’s elitist belief
that the workers cannot emancipate themselves, without outside help and guidance. The more
they imagine themselves to be a part of the established political world, the more it becomes
apparent that in actuality they belong to the apolitical underworld.
The opening scene with the workers’ political discussion at lunch hour in the “Cave”—a
building they are renovating for Mr. Sweater—hints at the reasons why their discussion cannot
be emancipatory. As the Nation’s review observed: “The novel is notable, indeed, for its
exposure of the working-man’s thick-headedness, foggy-mindedness, and servility” (146). Their
“coarse language and unbalanced discussions” (Spectator June 6, 1914; 962) represent a
circumscribed and preformatted field of opinions where exchanges are unlikely to initiate a

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change because the dialogues focus on weak alternatives and superficial choices that, ironically,
trigger vehement altercations. Linden expresses his pessimistic and apathetic attitude to
discussion: “argyfying about politics generally ends up with a bloody row an’ does no good to
nobody” (19). To avoid the escalation of violence, the workers settle for an apathetic denial of
discussion: “Most of them were averse from arguing or disputing about politics” (19). Tressell
portrays the workers at a dead-end because of, on the one hand, their unconscious rehearsal of
superficial party-colored arguments formulated and imposed on them through the press, and on
the other hand, the strength of their convictions that is conversely proportionate to the validity of
their claims. There is no room left for John Stuart Mill’s collision of adverse opinions in an
environment where the notion of discussion is emptied out: “If two or three men of similar
opinions happened to be together they might discuss such things in a friendly and superficial
way, but in a mixed company it was better left alone” (19). The workers get trapped in a vicious
cycle of political illiteracy and apathy that become the reason for their failure to emancipate
themselves.
From the outset, the novel invites us to examine the workers’ discussion about the causes
of poverty as already limited in scope and devoid of rationality and hence transformative
potential. Their blind reliance on the press instead of a self-motivated study of issues adds up to
what Marian Walls calls their “unquestioning belief in accepted norms, of inevitability, of things
that ‘just are’” (168). This apathy par excellence shuts down alternative discourses. Easton’s
question about the “fissical policy” and free trade sparks a discussion of the causes of poverty
among the workmen. This talk, however, carries but little weight since “none of them really
understood the subject: not one of them had ever devoted fifteen consecutive minutes to the
earnest investigation of it” (21). Crass who blames “the bloody foreigner” for the poverty at

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home gets into an argument with Harlow who is of a Liberal persuasion and seems sympathetic
with free trade. Meanwhile, Slyme chimes in to claim that the real causes of poverty are drinking
and early marriages, Harlow blames women in the workforce, and Crass adds the problem of
machinery as an explanation of poverty. The socialist Owen intervenes in this medley of
opinions to explain how the condition of poverty is an intrinsic element of capitalism. However,
his socialist views and explanations of the real causes of poverty are taken as insanity, something
that goes against “common sense.” Owen never finishes his explanation, gets interrupted
frequently, and does not seem at times very willing to make his point across to the body of
derisive and strong-headed workers. As an outsider, Owen is able to gain insight into their
condition, but with that he runs up again a communicative barrier to deliver his points to the
callous-minded audience.
Owen gestures toward a new culturally important position that strives for a critical insight
from within. Despite the fact that he is one of the workers, he simultaneously views their
condition from the outside: “They were the enemy. Those who not only quietly submitted like so
many cattle to the existing state of things, but defended it, and opposed and ridiculed any
suggestion to alter it” (46). Owen’s attitude to his fellow-mates is a mixed package of
condescension, sarcasm, and at the same time an understanding of the conditions that made the
workers apathetic and even averse to alternative ways of perceiving the world around them.
Owen’s mixed attitude toward the workers is echoed in the narrator’s oscillation between
criticism and understanding of them. At times, the narrator scolds the apathetic workers because
“not one of them had ever troubled to enquire whether it would not be possible to order things
differently” (218), but at other moments we detect the narrator reaching out to the workers to
understand how their mindsets were shaped by the system: “In their infancy they had been taught

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to distrust their own intelligence and to leave ‘thinking’ to their ‘pastors’ and masters and to their
‘betters’ generally” (299). As Raymond Williams describes it, their consciousness “is resistant to
sustained serious talk” (“Memorial Lecture” 78). The narrator and Owen continuously negotiate
their insider/outsider position to capitalize on its advantages of relating to the others and
providing a critical insight. Such maneuvering seems to promise possibilities for social change.
Owen’s is a new kind of vantage point that was not conceptualized so prominently before TRTP
and other working-class socialist novels. The figure of Owen who belongs to the environment
and yet never loses hold of a critical distancing from it has come to replace the traditional literary
figures of a middle-class consciousness. Blending outsider and insider positions, Owen is distinct
from a sympathetic observer, e.g., Margaret Hale in North and South, or from somewhat
awkwardly sculpted hybrid characters who are an embodiment of bourgeois consciousness in a
working-class disguise, e.g. Angela and Harry in All Sorts and Conditions of Men, or from a
seemingly class-less sympathetic stranger like Charles Egremont in Sybil. Owen, as an
insider/outsider, offers a new position of resistance that similar socialist-minded characters in
TRTP cannot offer. Unlike the undercover middle-class Barrington, Owen is more smoothly
integrated into the working life, and his agency to change it comes more organically from his
everyday labor in the “Cave.”
But Owen’s position, however advantageous in concept, at times suffers from limitations
and challenges in practice. His presence in the novel amounts to that of a somewhat arrogant
lecturer who faces confrontation and aggression from the audience and whose alienation
escalates the more he falls back on his habitual monologic didacticism. Owen’s political and
intellectual distance from the workers is accentuated by the linguistic difference. His lectures
stand out from the surrounding “rough and ready dialogues” (The Academy May 23, 1914; 656)

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not only by means of his socialist convictions but by means of his superior command of English.
In “The Oblong” chapter, Owen’s lecture on the true causes of poverty reveals the tension
between his critical insights that have the potential to empower the workers yet at the same time
alienate him from them. Owen’s explanation that people should be able to secure for themselves
the “benefits of civilization” (28) that they produced elicits respect as much as aggravates
misunderstanding: “Some of them began to wonder whether Owen was not sane after all. He
certainly must be a clever sort of chap to be able to talk like this. It sounded almost like
something out of a book, and most of them could not understand one half of it” (29). What gives
Owen the advantage of a critical distance is also what obfuscates his message as he is “unable to
penetrate the language of the workers” (Walls 156). Admittedly, Owen has to take recourse to
his monologic rhetoric and a kind of rhetorical violence to make the workers hear his message as
he wonders: “How was he to put it to them so that they would have to understand it whether they
wished it or not” (287). On the other hand, the workers fail to understand Owen’s language. For
instance, when Owen sees the cause of poverty in that the wages are not equivalent to the work
that the workers perform, he is ridiculed as a speaker ignorant of his audience: “Wotcher mean,
quiverlent?” cried Crass. “Why the ‘ell don’t yer talk plain English with out draggin’ in a lot of
long words wot nobody can’t understand?” (297). Tressell’s ironic treatment of this
communicative barrier illuminates that “normal” language and “normal” state of affairs are
constructed and not at all politically innocent categories.
Barrington is an outsider of a different kind though he and Owen share a lot in common
in terms of their ability to explain to the workers the working of the “System” and what
socialism is. Little is known about Barrington except for vague rumors: “Some said that he was a
toff in disguise; others that he had rich relations who were ashamed of him because he was a

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Socialist, and who allowed him so much a week so long as he kept away from them and did not
use his real name” (568). Like Owen, Barrington, too, delivers speeches and faces mockery,
apathy, and aggression on the part of his audience. Barrington’s “great oration” is interrupted
many times despite Philpot’s efforts as chairperson to keep “horder.” His socio-economic
distance from the workers is represented through linguistic difference that elicits workers’
comments like “‘I believe you must ‘ave swollered a bloody dictionary’” (508). But at other
times, Barrington slips from the role of a socialist agitator into the role of an unobtrusive
undercover observer who may or may not derive some voyeuristic pleasures from breaking out
of his middle-class shell and slumming in the lowest social strata of Mugsborough. For him,
most of the workers’ discussions become a spectacle and an object of observation, not an arena
to participate in: Barrington looks at them from afar, with his “manner of reserve, seldom
speaking unless addressed” (461). Barrington corroborates the novel’s idea that socialism is a
middle-class invention that the social betters want to bring down to the poor because “socialism
[. . .] does not arise organically from within the working class” (57), as Swingewood puts it. But
in addition, Barrington’s figure also reveals just how complicated is the line between his socialist
agitation and a more ethically questionable late-Victorian trend of “fashionable slumming”
(Koven 7). His otherness and distancing from the living conditions and ways of thinking of the
workers is a part of Tressell’s navigating the question of whether social change comes from the
outside, from within, or yet a third, more flexible and multi-valent position.
Owen’s and Barrington’s dilemma in regards to their outsider position in many ways
evokes Tressell’s own negotiations of his position in relation to the English working-class. As an
Irish-born illegitimate son of the Anglo-Irish Protestant middle-class father employed as an
inspector for the Royal Irish Constabulary and an Irish Catholic mother, as someone who

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emigrated from Ireland to South Africa and experienced the far reaches of the British Empire,
who chose to live the life of a single parent caring for his daughter, and finally, a socialist by
conviction, Tressell is an outsider on multiple levels. Raymond Williams commented on
Tressell’s ambivalent insider/outsider position by pointing to the fact that Tressell worked on the
novel at the same time as he was also “a worker fully engaged in his own work” (“Memorial
Lecture” 76)), but that he stood out from the rest by being “a very literate man” “capable of
sustained reading” (78). Tressell’s position within and outside the laboring class is complex since
he was a self-made working man and consistently chose to remain so. After the financial support
for his family changed due to his father’s death, Tressell’s opportunity to enter a professional
world slipped away: “He was now a working-man without having been nurtured as one” (Ball 6).
But Tressell was by no means an aspirant for the middle-class prestige, and according to Fred
Ball’s biographical account of Tressell, “He himself said that he turned down offers of
foremanship because [. . .] he didn’t want to become deeply involved in ‘business’ nor to have to
act as spy upon the men” (117). By blending his critical insights as an outsider and the
immediacy of living in “hell” as one of “them,” Tressell mobilizes the advantages of both
perspectives and shapes them into a comprehensive insight for change. His outsider status helps
Tressell conceive of a new critical position that so far has been attempted but not attained in
fiction. With his character Owen, Tressell achieves something that Besant, wrapped in his
middle-class cocoon worldview, fails to imagine through his undercover middle-class characters
who fashionably indulge in slumming.
Tressell’s ambivalent insider/outsider position has elicited a variety of responses among
critics, with some celebrating the long-awaited working-class novel written by one of the
workers and others incriminating Tressell with a patronizing, condescending, if sympathetic,

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attitude towards the workers. Tressell seems to be simultaneously with the workers and looking
at them from a distance. This negotiation of distance says a lot about Tressell’s preoccupation
with the question of whether or not the working classes can effect socialist change through their
own awareness and self-directed agency. Tressell is a controversial case as he seems to believe in
the working-class agency from within, yet infuses his faith in the workers with elitist overtones.
Some have argued that “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is the first English novel
to depict the lives of the poor in a manner that is, not merely sympathetic, but empathetic”
(Mayne 75). Others, conversely, have questioned Tressell’s empathy with the working classes
and, highlighting his frustration with the apathetic masses, have argued that his political stance
can best be termed “elitist socialism” (Young 286). James D. Young, therefore, in his reading of
the novel, juxtaposes Tressell’s politics against Marxist notions of the working class: “Robert
Tressell’s explicit rejection of the classical Marxist argument that the emancipation of the
working class could only be accomplished by the working class themselves permeates his
socialist concepts and colors his portrayal of the English working class” (292). Alan
Swingewood goes a step further by suggesting that, for Tressell, the workers can become agents
of social change only if socialist ideas are injected into them from the outside:
[. . .] if The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is to be defined as a proletarian
novel, it is obviously not of its depiction of a socialist or even potentially socialist
working class but rather by virtue of its implication that a socialist consciousness
has to be brought to the proletariat from outside by radical middle-class
intellectuals (that is, the figure of Barrington). For Tressell, socialism in either its
intellectual or its organizational expression does not arise organically from within
the working class. (56-57)

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For Tressell, the real obstacle to socialism is not so much the dominant position of employers
within the system but what seems like an intrinsically apathetic essence of the working class who
are unable to rise to critique their oppressors and their own compliance with their oppressors.
Tressell frequently peppers his language with ironic undertones as he launches his
criticism of the capitalist system in ironic and paradoxical phrases such as, for instance, Owen’s
statement “Money is the principal cause of poverty” (166). Still, the major irony concerns the
workers. The ironic motif that runs through the novel is that socialist ideas and ideas of political
emancipation have to be delivered to the workers by their social betters. But only focusing on
this irony, however prevalent in the novel, would simplify Tressell’s complex coming to terms
with the working class. I would argue that there is always Tressell-the-insider who is
preoccupied with long discussions in TRTP not merely to show that the workers must be
instructed in socialist ideas, but also because he intuits that ideas can come organically from
these long discussions, albeit not instantly and not without a hearty swearing. After all, the
hopeful future seems to depend just as much on the middle-class Barrington, who may or may
not return, as it does on the workers engaged in “argyfying about politics” among themselves.
Therefore, to characterize Tressell as either an “empathetic” insider or an “elitist” outsider does
not present the whole picture of how Tressell views social change and its agents.
But, for Tressell, the question of social change does not boil down only to a balancing act
between insider’s and outsider’s insights. His novel seems to suggest that social change is
maintained through an ongoing discussion. Tressell’s commitment to this kind of democratic
discursive practice comes in contradiction with the novel’s genre. Indeed, despite its status as
socialist propaganda, the novel is very preoccupied with the workers’ discussions (where
socialist ideas do not necessarily triumph) to a point that it is unable to arrive at a closure, and

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even the closure remains open-ended as if to suggest that more “argyfying about politics” is
going to take place. In other words, besides putting a value on socialism, TRTP implies that
discussion has value in and of itself and perhaps the most valued one is an open-ended
discussion. It is, indeed, rather curious that in the course of this chronicle of the workers’ life and
their political discussions, Owen does not convert any of them, not a single one, into socialism
entirely. As Jack Mitchell writes, Tressell “does not allow himself the luxury of ‘converting’
someone in the book,” although, he adds, “in the clinical conditions of Owen’s lecture a certain
amount of progress is made with the more class-conscious workers such as Philpot, Harlow, and
Easton” (119). Although Owen’s lectures may not persuade and convert directly, they surely
galvanize the discussions. If Owen comes short of being a socialist leader who commands the
minds of his newly minted followers, he is most valuable as a character because his lectures
catalyze ongoing discussion.
With antagonism, competition, and lack of openness, the novel’s discussion scenes
illustrate what Habermas would define as distorted communicative practice. Ironically, however,
these very features make the workers’ political discussions ongoing, and in this regard they hold
out hope for a potential emergence of a democratic public sphere:
‘You’re always sayin’ that everything’s all wrong,” complained Harlow, “but why
the ‘ell don’t you tell us ‘ow they’re goin’ to be put right?”
“It doesn’t seem to me as if any of you really wish to know. I believe that even if
it were proved that it could be done, most of you would be sorry and would do all
you could to prevent it.”

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“’E don’t know ‘isself,” sneered Crass. “Accordin’ to ‘im, Tariff Reform ain’t no
bloody good—Free Trade ain’t no bloody good, and everybody else is wrong! But
when you arst ‘im what ought to be done—‘e’s flummoxed.”
Crass did not feel very satisfied with the result if this machinery argument, but he
consoled himself with the reflection that he would be able to flatten out his
opponent [Owen] on another subject. (108)
The arena of “argyfying about politics” in this scene exposes several drawbacks both on Owen’s
side and on the side of the other workers. Owen receives fair criticism for not having an open
and truly inclusive discussion of his ideas. On the other hand, Crass suffers a fiasco in this
discussion due to his militaristic approach to “flatten out his opponent.” But Harlow’s role in this
scene is no less significant: Harlow reproaches Owen for shunning a reasonable discussion with
the workers, thus forcing Owen to abandon his arrogance. Owen’s elitist intellectualism is pitted
against a more collectivist (and thus perhaps truly socialist) pattern of discussion.
Like Owen, then, Crass is just as instrumental in maintaining discussions day in and day
out. Crass employs his pugnacious spirit to its fullest: “Crass himself had no liking for such
discussions, but he was so confident of being able to ‘flatten out’ Owen with the cutting from the
Obscurer that he had several times tried to lead the conversation into the desired channel, but so
far without success” (148). As Crass contemplates retaliation, he perceives their discussions as
ongoing, as always ready to continue “next time”: “‘I’ve got a pill ready for ‘im, though, next
time ‘e starts yappin’ “(103). When the cutting is finally read aloud and Crass anticipates his
triumphant blow on socialism, Owen “flattens out” Crass by interpreting the article as, in fact, an
argument not against socialism, but against Christian hypocrisy. However pugilistic his
intentions are, Crass ironically presents more occasions for Owen to elaborate this socialist ideas.

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Crass also becomes Owen’s associate in a sense that their debates disrupt the stifling
apathy of the majority. Owen and Crass along with others engage themselves in a discursive
process by which ideas are examined dialogically. Marion Walls suggests that these discussions
resemble a debating game or a kind of Socratic dialogue where “one person defended a thesis
against another who tried to get him to agree to statements that contradicted the thesis” (166).
Walls suggests that for Tressell this process of “rational argument culminating in coherent
knowledge” leads to a triumph of socialist ideas (166). However, the novel leaves more room for
discussion outside the text and ends with an anticipation of this triumph, but not with the triumph
itself. Tressell’s choice to leave his narrative conceptually unfinished goes to the heart of
realism, defined by Tony Davies as “not really a literary form or genre or movement or tradition
at all but a contested space, the scene of an unfinished argument” (135 qtd. in Fox 64). The
“argument” in TRTP remains unfinished because the novel thinks differently about the situations
that arouse arguments in the first place. As Wim Neetens notes, the novel’s innovation is in that
it represents “places where economic interest, political power and personal accident intersect to
produce conflicts that cannot be resolved within the existing parameters” (86). Taking Neetens’
point further, I suggest that Tressell’s novel does not only rethink the representation of conflicts,
but implies something important about the novel of discussion as a genre. Specifically, while
novels “discuss” various conflicts and imagine discursive solutions, more often than not novels
point to a temporal slippage between the plane of political conflicts and the plane of discursive
parameters. Thus, some deep-seated conflicts can be ameliorated by the new language of
resolution while some established discursive frameworks may gloss over some emerging
conflicts. For instance, Martineau believes in “plain speaking” as a new language that can
mediate existing tensions, while Disraeli exposes the “false” and outdated rhetoric of the Whigs

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that covers up the real political sympathies of the People. TRTP, too, shows how the
philanthropic discourse of helping the poor is ineffectual and also conducive to silencing the
workers’ claims for justice. TRTP is aware of the uneven workings of the language that either
anticipates or lags behind the changing social tensions that it tries to negotiate. Tressell’s realism
dictates that discussion about social conflicts must abandon the framework of fixed resolutions
and reinvent itself as an ongoing process with ever-evolving “arguments” and parameters of
discussion.
Besides this new conceptual framework in TRTP, the novel is invested in self-reflexivity.
The novel is highly aware of its explicit political agenda and of its own status as propaganda.
Peter Miles writes: “What distinguishes The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists from other
novels of socialist propaganda is the extent to which it recognizes its own status as propaganda
and offers itself for use as much as contemplation” (6). I agree with Miles that the novel clearly
reflects on its own status as a novel of social realism, and in more ways than one. Besides
reflecting on its practical use, which Miles mentions, the novel also reflects on its distinctly
novelistic capabilities to be a device for propaganda. The novel constantly interrogates its own
status as a tool of persuasion by incorporating a whole range of competing media, such as
newspaper clippings, Owen’s charcoal drawings, flyers, posters, workers’ songs, and even
Rushton & Co.’s time-sheet. Self-reflexivity makes TRTP “good” propaganda (i.e., mobilizing
its strengths more critically) as well as “bad” propaganda (i.e., unable to confine open-ended
discussion in order to affirm its message). To be sure, TRTP did its work as popular propaganda,
and its parts such as the “Money Trick” were often staged as mini-plays. The novel has made a

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direct political impact and accounted for the 1945 election victory of the British Labor Party.

38

At the same time, its self-reflexivity diffuses its propaganda impulse and channels the novel to
put more value on an ongoing discussion rather than blunt persuasion.
The novel’s valuation of the workers’ discussions, regardless of the outcomes, suggests
that what is at stake for Tressell in them is uncovering the democratic potential of this practice.
Tressell’s focus on the workers talking about politics among themselves marked a shift in the
development of social problem novels. As Jack Mitchell sums up this change: “They are now in
dialogue with themselves only” (Mitchell in Klaus 69). The roughness and unconventionality of
the workers’ speech seems to be a potential source of emancipation: “Tressell’s workers’ talk [. .
.] is a speech which is unruly aggressive and discontented. It is a speech which despises rather
than is unaware of the rules and regulations about language set up by the powers that be, a
speech that moves according to its own laws and cuts itself out its own path. Its distinctive
rhythm is an aggressive discontented one. In this the swear-words play an important part”
(Mitchell 185). The unruliness of their speech, on the one hand, creates a need for someone like
Owen or Barrington whose literate and self-controlled discourse can guide them, but on the other
hand, represents a will that can be the only effective way of resistance and self-emancipation.
Their resistance to conventions goes beyond linguistic difference. The format of the lunch-hour
discussions defies the principles of efficiency (or “scamping”), pervasive control, and
monotonous regularity—the features that are intrinsic to capitalist production process and on
which Rushton & Co. depend for staying in business. The workers’ spontaneous everyday

38

In his introduction to a later edition of TRTP, Alan Sillitoe recollects: “I read an abridged
edition of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists when I was nineteen and with the Air Force in
Malaya. It was given to me by a wireless operator from Glasgow, who said: ‘You ought to read
this. Among other things it is the book that won the ’45 election for Labour’” (qtd in F. C. Ball
One of the Damned 186).
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discussions that flare up as suddenly as they die out and that seem to masterfully evade Hunter’s
all-seeing spying eye are already, if only formally, pre-political signs of resistance.
The lunch-hour is a temporal pocket outside the “System,” yet is incorporated into it.
After Crass’s “[p]rolonged blast upon a whistle” (14) the space of the kitchen in the “Cave” turns
into an assembly of the workers and for a moment becomes a space of discussion and a space
outside of capitalist production. Tressell plays with this idea and even allows himself to treat it
with irony. When Owen is about to explain to the workers how the money trick works through
robbing the workers of the products of their labor in return for unjust compensation, he jokingly
assures that their leisurely discussion about the money trick will not be interrupted by Hunter
because it entirely follows the logic of capitalism:
“Now this is the way the trick works—“
“Before you goes on with it,” interrupted Philpot, apprehensively, “don’t you
think we’d better ‘ave someone to keep watch at the gate in case a Slop comes
along? We don’t want to get runned in, you know.”
“I don’t think there’s any need for that,” replied Owen, “there’s only one slop
who’d interfere with us for playing this game, and that’s Police Constable
Socialism.” (227)
Of course, Owen’s intentions are not to reproduce the money trick but to raise the workers’
awareness of the foul play. By setting up a discussion about the money trick at the symbolic
heart of capitalist exploitation, i.e. the “Cave,” Owen implies that capitalism can be blind to
potentially subversive activities. The “System,” then, however pervasive it is and however
masterfully it incorporates potential resistance, is never fully invincible to being deconstructed
from within.

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“Argyfying about politics” is a subversive and spontaneous element within capitalism
that originates in everyday activities. Each discussion seems to start out casually and as if out of
nowhere: “At first there was no attempt at conversation and nothing was heard but the sounds of
eating and drinking” (14). Thematically, political conversations that ensue are unruly and rough
like the speech of the workers. In one scene, for instance, engrossed in discussing the causes of
poverty, they wander from “fissical policy” and drinking to the evils brought about by machinery
and women in the workforce. There is no format or prerequisite to be a part of this discussion—
Sawkins has just been awakened by the “shouting” (21), a “murmur of approval” (19) counts as
participation, Easton brings in evidence from the newspaper, even though “reading was hard
work for him” (23), and Barrington “who took no part in the conversation, still sat silently
smoking” (25). The scenes of discussion are opposed to the scenes of silent work as is evident in
Rushton’s instruction to Crass: “Any man who is slow or lazy, or any man that you notice talking
more than is necessary during working hours, you must report him to Mr. Hunter” (427). The act
of speaking then constructs itself as an act of resistance to work and carves out a discursive space
outside of capitalist exploitation.
A sense of freedom comes from the spontaneity of discussions, the workers’ defiance of
regimented rules, and an apparent absence of a definite purpose of such dialogues. The objective
at lunch-hour is not achieving a consensus, nor is it perpetual fighting about politics. If anything,
the goal is to fill up with one’s dinner and tea from a condensed milk tin can. But intermingled
with routine snacking are dynamic discussion scenes that evoke the readers’ interest due to their
richness and Bakhtinian polyphony. While lunch breaks are strictly regulated by the capitalist
system, they nonetheless present possibilities of subverting this order. Tressell does not hold out
a communicative ideal (either of rational-critical debate or of agonistic public sphere). Rather, he

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wants us to witness an everyday practice that he believes in the end is the only mechanism to
change the world the painters live in. To be sure, Tressell as an author constructs his
representation of the everyday spontaneity he wants to celebrate, which raises a question of
whether or not analogous political discussions would take place outside the novel, in a “real-life”
environment. Brian Mayne comments on the constructedness of the spontaneous everyday
context in the novel: “There is nothing mean or petty or incidental in the novel and the writer is
careful to make the scenes in which that extended discussions and ‘lectures’ on socialism and
capitalism occur appear to be credible and even inevitable” (82). However constructed the notion
of spontaneity may appear in the novel, its representation conveys a certain meaning. Tressell
celebrates a spontaneous environment that nurtures emancipatory discussion and suggests that
spontaneity and emancipation are woven into the very fabric of everyday conversation.
The novel does not seek an ideal for which “argyfying about politics” should aspire, but
instead is preoccupied with finding radical possibilities in the practice of everyday exchanges
among the workers. There is something about the everydayness as a context for these discussions
that suggests the vibrancy of this practice that goes beyond prescription, categorization, or
formalization. The workers’ arguments flare up and die out taking unpredictable turns and
shifting to new topics; some anxiously read excerpts from newspapers to support their claims,
others doze quietly off still with a chance to wake up from someone’s loud statement; some are
decent readers, while others take pains to read out loud a newspaper passage; some are quite
articulate, while others prefer to communicate with a murmur of approval or disproval; some
claim to have political identities, like a Liberal or a Tory; while others, like Owen, resent how
arbitrarily these labels are appropriated. Everyday discussions constitute for Tressell hidden
resources of political awakening. Tressell has aimed “to write a readable story full of human

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interest and based on the happenings of everyday life”(12) and in doing so perhaps to explore
how the resources of everyday exchanges among fellow-workers can bring about a more
democratic public sphere than the one constituted only by lectures of a socialist agitator.
His socialist sympathies aside, Tressell assigns democratic value to heterogeneity of
ideas. Owen’s lectures do not transform the group of workers into a homogeneous group of
socialists, but his speeches do facilitate an ongoing debate. The everyday discussions do not
produce winners or losers in the “Cave.” These conversations simply are not oriented toward a
closure as there is always something left unresolved and unfinished, which in itself aligns with a
democratic process. In the “Cave” Owen will always be only one of many voices, one of many
contenders for “truth.” The novel seems to favor this polyphonic public sphere more than to
privilege exclusively Owen’s ideas over others’. Tressell conceives of the truth as a horizon that
cannot be captured from a single perspective, even Owen’s. That said, Owen’s socialist voice
gradually enters the public sphere in TRTP and earns its central place through competition amidst
a heterogeneous public.
Rather than seeing discussion that moves toward a magic point of resolution or, in other
words, the triumph of the best argument, Tressell focuses on such elements of discussion as
spontaneity, unpredictability, and the ongoing pursuit of an always moving horizon of
discussion. He seems to be more interested in the frustrations of the participants as the eternal
engine of discussion rather than idealizing a consensus that would put all tensions as ease. If in
Martineau, liberal discussion is arranged in a neat and aesthetically pleasing form that coincides
with the narrative form itself (i.e., the dialogues end in consensus between parties, and the
winning opinion is summarized again in the appendix to the story), in Tressell one detects an
impulse to emphasize the non-ideal and messy dynamics of discussion that the narrative is often

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inadequate to represent. Discussion about socialism does not end with the end of TRTP, but
rather frees itself of the narrative limitations of time and space and bursts into the world outside.
As Ian Birchall states, the resolution of TRTP can take place only outside the novel (55 qtd. in
Harker 256).
All in all, the novel showcases those features of discursive practice that previous
rhetorical aesthetics, such as Martineau’s, meant to suppress. For instance, the workers’
discussion of the effects of machinery on employment is representative of a discursive process
that unfolds in a new conceptual framework. That discussion always sparks spontaneously, and
is perceived as such, becomes clear from Harlow’s remark to Crass and Owen as the two diverge
on the subject of old Jack Linden’s sacking: “ ‘Oh, for Gord’s sake don’t start no more
arguments [. . .]. We ‘ad enough of that last week. [. . .]’” (105). At a later time, when Crass is
eager to “flatten out” Owen, a period of quiet precludes him from doing just that and ignites his
willingness for an open debate ever more: “Crass had been waiting for a suitable opportunity to
produce the newspaper cutting which it will be remembers he showed to Easton on Monday
morning, but he had waited in vain, for there had been scarcely any ‘political’ talk at meal-times
all the week, and it was now Thursday” (148). “Argyfying about politics” seems to be sporadic
in its occurrences, however, with a guarantee that it will go on. In this case, like in many others,
an everyday occurrence, i.e., the sacking of Jack Linden, serves as a tipping point of sorts that,
once reached, unleashes the discussion about political questions on a much larger scale:
machinery and unemployment in general. It is perhaps not despite but rather because of the
spontaneity that these discussions link up so easily the particular to the general, an unfortunate
incident to a vicious law of capitalism. The unexpected new ways of thinking come out of these

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connections when the mates’ animosity and derision are replaced, if temporarily, with a silent
moment of understanding Owen’s argument.
“Political” talk becomes an organic part of the workers’ existence and is mixed in with
rather trivial topics, like fleas. The flea talks, like “argyfying about politics,” start out with a
trigger: “Harlow mentioned that he had found traces of bugs in one of the bedrooms upstairs and
this called forth a number of anecdotes of those vermin and of houses infested by them” (148).
This discussion scene about flea infestation of houses may perhaps evoke for someone like Owen
capitalism’s pervasive infestation of human minds. The scene below bristles with the
spontaneous energy of discussion and gives insight into Tressell’s observations of the public
sphere:
There were several other of these narratives, four or five men talking at the top of
their voices at the same time, each one telling a different story. At first each storyteller addressed himself to the company generally, but after a while, finding it
impossible to make himself heard, he would select some particular individual who
seemed disposed to listen and tell him the story. It sometimes happened that in the
middle of the tale the man to whom it was being told would remember a
somewhat similar adventure of his own, which he would immediately proceed to
relate without waiting for the other to finish, and each of them was generally so
interested in the gruesome details of his own story that he was unconscious of the
fact that the other was telling one at all. In a contest of this kind the victory
usually went to the man with the loudest voice, but sometimes a man who had a
weak voice, scored by repeating the same tale several times until someone heard
it. (149)

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Here Tressell is interested in mastering the power of persuasion, finding an ear that is “disposed
to listen,” and getting through to someone who is wrapped up in one’s own story and so is
oblivious of the other’s speech. While Tressell admits that the public sphere works by the rules
of the “Battle of Life,” he reserves the final victory not for Hunters, but for Owens. To be sure,
Hunter can usurp power as the “man with the loudest voice” and yell at old Jack Linden for slow
work: “Hunter shouted so loud that his voice filled all the house” (41). However, while Hunter’s
voice can reach the ears of the workers in the “Cave,” it is Owen’s steady voice that can
transform their minds “by repeating the same tale several times.” As Owen puts it to Crass, “I
have no doubt I have to say it about five hundred times more before you understand what it
means” (285).
Owen’s persistence in rehearsing his argument does not achieve an ultimate conversion
of his workmates, but what it does is disrupts their usual mindset. Tressell captures the minute
changes in the ways the workers think and participate in dialogues with Owen. To that end, the
novel represents not only how their derisive or aggressive remarks about Owen shift occasionally
to an open dialogue, but also how the silences speak volumes of their changing mindset. The
work of silence and its changing meanings are prominent during Owen’s lecture “The Oblong.”
Silence conveys its shifting connotations even before the lecture as we witness a silent scene of
the philanthropists laboring in the “Cave.” Silence sets in because of their fear of surveillance:
“The hands worked in silence, for they were in no mood for talking, and not only that, but they
were afraid that Hunter or Rushton or Crass might be watching them from behind some bush or
tree, or through some of the windows” (276). Silence turns the workers into productive
automatons that do not waste time on idle talk. It also serves as self-defense in a place where a
careless word can cost employment. As the workers’ suspicion of being watched turns into a

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permanent paranoia, they undertake the most resistant way left to avoid surveillance: to withdraw
from discussion altogether until the lunch hour when surveillance seems to loosen its grip.
During the lecture, silences become important factors that shape discussion and mark its
turning points. For instance, Owen gets accused of being silent and not explaining his argument
in full. As Crass remarks: “’E knows all about wot’s the cause of poverty, but ‘e won’t tell
nobody. ‘E’s been goin’ to tell us wot it is for a long time past, but it don’t seem to come orf”
(279). Owen’s communication with his mates always seems to defer some final point, or
clarification, and because of this it functions as a kind of performative silence that promises the
answers but never reveals them fully. Barrington is also someone whose image is associated with
silence as he attends Owen’s lecture “as usual, silently smoking, apparently oblivious of his
surroundings” (281). His silence is that of an under-cover observer and denotes his distancing
from the workers. But the workers’ experience of silences is a much more dynamic and evolving
process through which Tressell marks tipping points in discussion that can initiate understanding
and dialogic interaction.
Silences that punctuate Owen’s lecture mark the moments when the logic of the workers’
objections breaks down or when they themselves realize the falseness of their counterarguments. Owen manipulates their silences to make them self-aware of their shortcomings:
“I never said anything about ‘sharing out all the money’ [. . .]. Can any of you tell
me the name of someone who proposes to do so?”
No one answered [. . .]. (281)
A similar lack of response follows after another of Owen’s direct questions: “[. . .] you believe in
Christianity: why don’t you do the things that he said?” (283). But when he sketches out a
rectangle to begin to explain to them the relationship between the “Loafer class” (295) and the

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workers, Owen encounters perhaps a most disheartening silence among his audience: “An
absolute, disconcerting silence reigned. His embarrassment and nervousness increased. He knew
that they were unwilling to hear or talk or think about such subjects as the cause of poverty at
all” (287). But in the course of the lecture, the meaning of silences changes from shutting off
Owen’s arguments to engaging with him in polemics: “For a few moments silence prevailed,
each man’s mind being busy trying to think of some objection to the lecturer’s arguments” (294).
Owen encounters yet another silence after explaining the role of money in robbing “the workers
of the greater part of the fruits of their toil” (297). Although there is no evidence of their
cooperative engagement in discussion, the workers no longer try to derive or attack Owen:
“Owen ceased speaking and silence once more ensued. No one gave any sign of understanding,
or of agreeing or of disagreeing with what he had said. Their attitude was strictly neutral” (297).
And finally, an “oppressive silence” (299) sets in to mark a small minority’s effort, however
feeble and fleeting, to engage with Owen’s ideas: “Several men had risen from their seats and
were attentively studying the diagrams Owen had drawn on the wall; and nearly all the others
were making the same mental effort—they were trying to think of something to say in defense of
those who robbed them of the fruits of their soil” (300). If Owen cannot break through the
oppressors’ discourse that the workers learn and acknowledge as common sense, it is in the
silences where he locates potential for change. The silences carve out room for alternatives to the
oppressors’ monologic “common sense” and Owen’s own didactic monologues.
As a part of discovering the potentialities of dialogic discourse, the novel is invested in a
face-to-face practice of “argyfying about politics” as opposed to the mediated discussion on the
pages of the Mugsborough press. Face-to-face discussion comes off as more authentic and
capable of resisting corruption and hidden agendas of the local media tycoons. The public sphere

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of print where the oppressors’ opinions monopolize public debate becomes an analogue to the
Battle of Life waged on the socio-economic plane. Sweater and Grinder have an iron grip on the
media in Mugsborough: “The editors were a sort of marionettes who danced as Sweater and
Grinder pulled the strings” (333). Three press organs shape the local public opinion and offer
themselves as the only authoritative channels of information. Ironically, they also become a
measuring stick for an “enlightened” reading public. Crass claims to be a part of the informed
citizenry when he says: “I reads the Ananias every week, and I generally takes the Daily
Chloroform, or the Hobscurer, so I ought to know summat about it” (23). The irony of Crass’s
insight into political matters is, of course, conveyed through his language that reveals otherwise.
As Raymond Williams points out, Tressell uses the literate and the illiterate registers of speech
as “a kind of counterpoint between people who have got some sense and people who haven’t”
(“Memorial Lecture” 81). With such telling titles for the newspapers, Tressell suggests that
political discussion mediated through the double bind of press and capital obfuscates the
distinctions between sense and sham, poisons the readers’ critical abilities to think, and deals in
lies.
The anonymous public sphere of the printed word is, for Tressell, not a guarantor of
disinteredness, objectivity, or freedom, but the heart of corruption. When the Town Council
realizes that the Electric Light Works cannot compete with the Gasworks and that they cannot
usurp the Gasworks’ profits, it concocts a scheme that the Town should purchase the almostbankrupt Electric Light Works to minimize the damage to the monopolists. The bandits rely on
the anonymity in the press to execute the scheme and back up their foul play with public opinion.
In the hands of Didlum, anonymity in the press becomes not a prerequisite of transparency and
democratic discussion, but a veneer for a phantom public that does not exist:

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“[. . .] We could arrange to ‘ave a lot of letters sent ‘To the Editor of the
Obscurer’ and ‘To the Editor of the Ananias’ and ‘To the Editor of the Weekly
Chloroform’ in favour of the scheme.”
“Yes, that’s a very good idear,” said Grinder. “For that matter that editors could
write them to themselves and sign them ‘Progress’, ‘Ratepayer’, ‘Advance
Mugsborough’, and sich-like.” (333)
The novel mistrusts the printed world of the media as it flourishes without a real connection with
its readership and manufactures publics according to the designs and needs of the media tycoons
at a given moment.
The media become a self-referential and self-contained system that, instead of
transmitting the public voices, becomes alienated from them. As the editors’ self-addressed
letters symbolize, the Mugsborough newspapers close in on themselves in an anti-democratic
cycle. The press holds up a skewed mirror to the public and sells the image of a fabricated
citizenry to reproduce a world where representations and perceptions are divorced from their
referents, yet are the ones that matter. An engineered image of the public is not merely a
removed abstraction or a simplified emblem of the public, but a falsification by the powers that
be. For that matter, it lacks the authenticity of a face-to-face dialogue among the workers where
the public emerges through a shared discussion of diverse opinions. So different from the
republic of letters described by Michael Warner in his account of the eighteenth-century
American public sphere, the Mugsborough press is an early twentieth-century caricature of the
print world where capitalism and the printed word converge into a monopoly. The collusion
between the printed word and capital, the alliance between the machinery of perception and the

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system of economic production becomes, for Tressell, even more oppressive than a strictly
economic Battle of Life.
In other words, TRTP dramatizes the turn-of-the-century crisis of community and seeks
to tease out potential for reinvention. Jeremy Hawthorn interprets the novel as a progressive
rethinking of what local community means and how it operates: “in the face of the Leavisite
demand that a novel should reject technologic-Benthamism and the mechanical principle in
favour of the organic community and life, here was a novel that suggested that the local
communities of England were full of corruption and suffering and were in dire need not of a
return to the unequal communities of the past but of a movement forward to a reorganized
community or commonwealth of the future that would establish a real fellowship for the very
first time” (Revisiting, “Preface” xiv). Tressell and Owen begin this reorganization from starting
a lending library in the local community. Similar to how Tressell “started a penny-a-week
lending library for his workmates, using his own books” (Mitchell Robert Tressell 11), Owen
uses his start-up library to rebuild a community, albeit with modest success:
Owen [. . .] spent a lot on what he called ‘The Cause’. Every week he bought
some penny or twopenny pamphlets or some leaflets about Socialism, which he
lent or gave to his mates; and in this way and by means of much talk he succeeded
in converting a few to his party. Philpot, Harlow and a few others used to listen
with interest, and some of them even paid for the pamphlets they obtained from
Owen, and after reading them themselves, passed them on to others, and also
occasionally ‘got up’ arguments on their own accounts. Others were simply
indifferent [. . .]. But the majority were bitterly hostile; not to Owen, but to
Socialism. (460-461)

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Fraught with challenges, Owen’s book-lending practice creates a shared network of people who
are connected to one another face-to-face as well as through the medium of pamphlets.
Regardless of their varying responses, be it indifference, disagreement, or acceptance, they all
become a community united through this book-lending process. To be sure, Owen, like Grinder
or Sweater, has his agenda disseminating Socialist literature. But the monopolists’ press and
Owen’s lending-library construct two differing types of communities. In the former case, the
reading public can at best be united by a falsified image of themselves concocted on the pages of
the Obscurer or the Weekly Chloroform where public opinion imposes itself on the readers. In
the latter case, communal networks arise from a tangible reading public that constitutes itself
through differing responses to the texts they share and so produces a more dynamic public
opinion. Tressell does not imply that the press can only be a corrupt mechanism of communitybuilding, nor that face-to-face exchanges are always authentic. However, the novel insists that
face-to-face discussions can be a starting point for reinventing a new community of active
citizens against the more systematic and embedded manipulation in the press.
The novel’s preoccupation with the questions of community affects its formal
organization. The reader’s attention is distributed among many characters and does not focus on
one hero whose innermost thoughts and feelings the reader would be let in on. As such, it is a
discursive community that becomes Tressell’s main focus of attention and mechanism for
effecting social change. Perhaps, for this same reason, Owen’s teachings are shown as ultimately
not very effective. It takes a community, not an individual, to make a change. According to
Mitchell, “Tressell replaced the old plot-in-length with a new-type plot-in-breadth” (“Early
Harvest” 71). As he explains, offering a panoramic view of the working classes works better to
“indicate the universal and systematic nature of capitalist exploitation” (71). I would add that

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another reason for Tressell’s “plot-in-breadth” is his attempt to show that only through
rebuilding small and large scale communities is it possible to subvert the individualistic Battle of
Life. Literary form then amplifies his politics.
The discussion scenes at the “Cave” represent the dynamics at two levels: a local
community and the nation. The image of the “Cave” is “so rich in concentrated typicality” that it
always symbolizes something bigger than itself, that is, “ ‘state of the nation’ as a whole”
(Mitchell “Early Harvest” 74). The “Cave” becomes a multi-level symbol that suggests that the
state of the local matters accounts for the state of the nation as a whole. As such, the novel
anticipates that changes throughout local communities will entail a national change. At the same
time, it does not mean that Tressell somehow implies that face-to-face discussion can work at a
national level. To be sure, the scenes of face-to-face discussions at a local level may in fact
represent more mediated and indirect models of a national public sphere. What works within a
local community may not work for the nation, but the workings within a local community
definitely affect the nation. For Tressell, face-to-face discussion structures local communities,
but in the end underpins the workings of a national forum. Face-to-face discussion becomes a
source of micro-change in local communities that would eventually affect the whole. TRTP
envisions a national Socialist movement beginning with local victories, such as a conversion of
Harlow and Philpot and a new kind of reading public galvanized by the face-to-face practice of
Owen’s lending library.
So, if Tressell refuses to idealize any specific model of discussion, we can glean some
features of the kind of communicative process he wants to cultivate. I have so far emphasized the
spontaneity of everyday discussion and freedom from formal restrictions and exclusions that
create certain discursive possibilities in the “Cave.” But there is not a single recipe like

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Martineau’s “plain speaking” that is idealized in TRTP. In contrast to Martineau’s tales, TRTP is
self-aware of the problems associated with putting forth an ideal of discussion. For instance, the
novel attributes all the strengths of perfect reasoning to the socialists, but on the other hand, the
novel is also concerned with their unnecessarily excessive zeal to assert the ideal. The passage
below raises concerns about an aggressive promulgation of an ideal as it remarks on the
socialists’ “insanity.” On the surface, the Socialists are “insane” for overestimating the rational
capacities of the workers, but if viewed from a different angle, the socialists are dangerously
“insane” due to being wrapped up in their ideal of reasoning and perceiving it as universal:
Those who were opposed to them always failed to refute their arguments, and
feared, and nearly always refused, to meet them in fair fight—in open debate—
preferring to use the cowardly and despicable weapons of slander and
misrepresentation. The fact that these Socialists never encountered their
opponents except to defeat them, was a powerful testimony to the accuracy of
their reasonings and the correctness of their conclusions—and yet they were
undoubtedly mad. One might converse with them for an indefinite time on the
three divisions of their subject without eliciting any proofs of insanity, but
directly one enquired what means they proposed to employ in order to bring about
the adoption of their plan, t hey replied that they hoped to do so by reasoning with
the others! (496)
The socialists’ mode of discussion, in fact, is so effective that it undermines itself by foreclosing
on a continuous discussion with others. Once all their opponents are smitten by their reasoning,
the socialists are left alone on the discussion field.

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The socialists repeat Owen’s mistake in that they create a monologic model of a public
sphere. Their claim for truth comes across as monopolistic as Sweater’s and Grinder’s grip on
the press. But perhaps even more troubling is the socialists’ conviction that their notion of
discussion is applicable to anybody and warrants to be a universal standard. In discussion, they
aim to eliminate their opponents and affirm the supremacy of their claims. As such, the socialists
understand an “open debate” as a means to squelch, not cultivate, a relationship with the
opponent. Tressell’s excessively vehement approbation of their methods suggests that he treats
them with slight irony and critiques the limitation of their rhetorical strategy. This limitation lies
in their inability to see that perhaps an opponent’s position is not something that one always
wants to defeat, but to maintain, encourage, and make some effort to hear. For Tressell, the
socialists’ impeccable reasoning does not outweigh his respect for diversity of opinions and
modes of argumentation. Tressell does want to paint them a little “mad” for their smug belief in
the supremacy of their reasoning and their opinions.
The socialist reasoning thus finds itself in an impasse. The socialists’ confidence in the
power of their argument leaves them suspiciously isolated from any alternative voices to a point
where they cannot even demonstrate their own voice in an open debate but find themselves
thinking about their own ideas to themselves and conceptualizing the public as “us” v. “them.” In
contrast, the workers’ amateur, inarticulate ramblings about politics seem to provide just what
the socialists’ overbearing logic wants, namely an inexhaustible source of alternatives,
spontaneity, and a sense of togetherness even across ideological differences. Tressell’s
sympathies seem to lie, paradoxically, not exclusively with the socialists’ arguments that force
everyone else into silence, but also with the more vibrant and unpredictable workers in “The
Cave.” Tressell is curiously attached to this space of spontaneous discussion and in a way wants

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to protect it from the homogenizing influence of socialist propaganda. The workers’
conversations create this democratic potential by balancing between two extremes—the violence
of totalizing consensus and the incommensurability of antagonistic viewpoints—either one of
which would put an end to an ongoing “argyfying.”
A vivid scene where the workers create a proto-democratic inclusive forum by sharing
their differences in opinion unfolds during Barrington’s “Great Oration” towards the end of the
novel. It is a hopeful moment that brings the differences together rather than foists the “correct”
definition of Socialism, which Tressell as an author had plenty of opportunity to do. This scene
becomes a source of optimism because it defers the “authoritative” definition of Socialism,
which could be uttered by Owen or Barrington, and instead showcases an attempt at a selfenlightening public, not top-down indoctrination. And although we do not yet see a democratic
process of reconciling these various opinions, just bringing them together and thus putting them
in perspective with other opinions anticipates an emergence of a new kind of public discussion in
the “Cave”:
“I’ve ‘eard a ’ell of a lot about this ‘ere Socialism,” remarked the man behind the
moat, “but up to now I’ve never met nobody wot could tell you plainly exactly
wot it is.”
“Yes; that’s what I should like to know too,” said Easton.
“Socialism means, ‘What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine’s me own,’” observed
Bundy, and during the laughter that greeted this definition Slyme was heard to say
that Socialism meant Materialism, Atheism and Free Love, and if it were ever to
come about it would degrade men and women to the level of brute beasts. Harlow
said Socialism was a beautiful ideal, which he for one would be very glad to see

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realized, but he was afraid it was altogether too good to be practical, because
human nature is too mean and selfish. Sawkins said that Socialism was a lot of
bloody rot, and Crass expressed the opinion—which he had culled from the
delectable columns of the Obscurer—that it meant robbing the industrious for the
benefit of the idle and thriftless.” (505)
In their attempt to define socialism, they become united not only among themselves, but also
with Barrington at the pulpit. It is important, too, that no concise definition of Socialism is
worked out in the end. To be sure, Barrington touches on aspects of a socialist society, such as
making the workers the rightful owners of the things they produce, an establishment of “State
factories” and “labour saving machinery” (517) to make work pleasant and minimal, an opening
of a “pleasure house” (519)—a echo of Walter Besant’s People’s Palace, and the triumph of “the
COOPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH of the future” (522). But even he does not provide a
concise definition of Socialism and defaults to negative definitions: “It is not a wild dream of
Superhuman Unselfishness” (512). Socialism operates as an anticipated concept that is universal
and shared as long as it engages everybody in defining it.
This new sense of a debating community in Tressell seems to be strikingly contemporary
as it reechoes Judith Butler’s reflections on universality. Tressell is working through the same
questions of the public sphere as Butler is. In Excitable Speech, Butler revises the notion of
consent to suggest a more dynamic and ongoing process in the public sphere:
The ideal of consent, however, makes sense only to the degree that the terms in
question submit to a consensually established meaning. [. . .] But are we, whoever
“we” are, the kind of community in which such meanings could be established
once and for all? Is there not a permanent diversity within the semantic field that

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constitutes an irreversible situation for political theorizing? Who stands above the
interpretive fray in a position to “assign” the same utterances the same meanings?
And why is it that the threat posed by such an authority is deemed less serious
than the one posed by equivocal interpretation left unconstrained? (87)
Butler advocates a “continuing revision and elaboration of historical standards of universality
proper to the future movement of democracy itself” (90) and redefines the universal as “a
postulated and open-ended ideal” (90). She suggests a new way to think about the universal:
“The anticipated universality, for which we have no ready concept, is one whose articulations
will only follow, if they do, from a contestation of universality at its already imagined borders”
(91). Tressell anticipates Butler’s ideas as he conceives of the discussion about Socialism as an
ongoing process and locates the definition of Socialism at an always anticipated point in the
future. The above scene in TRTP brings together contesting definitions to circumscribe the
notion of Socialism, but never to fix its meaning permanently. This scene further confirms how
Tressell’s thinking about Socialism shapes a public sphere similar to the one that Butler captures
through her terms of the “anticipated universality” and an “open-ended ideal.”
In this new model of a public sphere, open-endedness and fluidity galvanize the
discussion. It is not only the ideal that remains open-ended, but individuals’ worldviews are also
subject to change. It is significant that shortly after the moment of the emergence of something
like an inclusive democratic forum, we also witness Harlow’s acceptance of socialist ideas as a
testament to his changing worldview:
“I may say that when I came to this firm I was a Liberal, but through listenin’ to
several lectures by Professor Owen and attendin’ the meetings on the hill at
Windley and reading the books and pamphlets I bought there and from Owen, I

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came to the conclusion some time ago that it’s a mug’s game for us to vote for
capitalists whether they calls theirselves Liberals or Tories. [. . .]” (541)
Harlow’s conversion into Socialism (this is as close as he gets to being a socialist in the novel) is
not a finalized product, but a work, or rather thought, in progress. Harlow is not going to be a
copy of Owen’s or Barrington’s views, but he is working out his own worldview in which
Socialism has a place. As much as his conversion into Socialism is dynamic and open-ended, so
is his own definition of what Socialism is. For him, as to a large extent for Barrington and Owen,
Socialism articulates itself through negative definitions: it is not the Liberal-Tory political game
and it is better than the capitalist reality of the Battle of Life. All in all, then, Tressell hinges his
model of a new public sphere on an open-ended ideal and extends this open-endedness to the
thought-processes of the discussants. This open-ended model allows him not to fetishize one
final concept of political discussion but to focus instead on the ongoing and evolving practice of
discussion that always moves to a deferred ideal.
What Tressell suggests by refusing any definitions of an ideal discussion is that he
recognized the inadequacy of any ideal and instead moves towards a cultivation of practices. A
prominent instance of the novel’s rejection of fetishizing any discussion model is a scene with
the planning of the Beano. According to Jack Mitchell, this discussion scene “is obviously a
mockery of the workers’ pedantic interest in the formal trappings of democratic procedure in
contrast to their ignorance and complete lack of interest in its real content,” but it is also “an
indirect satire on the interminable and petty wrangling of the House of Commons itself” (Robert
Tressell 94). I would add to these observations that Tressell does not only critique the
Parliamentary procedure as such, but cautions against a blind investment in any ideal procedure
for its own sake that by definition cannot ever truly guarantee meaningful democratic practice.

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Through this scene, Tressell evokes sentiments similar to Carlyle’s famous metaphor for
Parliament as a “National Palaver” (220), but in addition reflects more broadly on the dilemma
of communicative ideals and practices. If ideals and norms are subject to corruption and tend to
degrade to “palaver” in practice, Tressell opts for a non-ideal ongoing and self-revising
communicative process as an alternative.
One recognizes the premises of the Parliamentary procedure played out in a workingclass setting only to realize how the workers’ obsession with this ideal impoverishes their actual
discussion practices. From the beginning, the image of the chairman opening the meeting
embodies the “National Palaver” as chairman Payne “in a lengthy speech, explained the object of
the meeting” and “took the trouble to explain several times, going over the same ground and
repeating the same words over and over again, whilst the audience waited in a deathlike and
miserable silence for him to leave off” (407). The more the discussants labor through such a
trivial topic as to whether to hold the Beano and which bars to include on the itinerary, the more
they obsess over the rules and procedures of a public meeting. The formulaic process is
punctuated with putting forth and seconding the motions, endorsing the remarks, abiding by the
“decision of the majority” (408) as well as occasional minor outbursts of arguments and the
pounding of the chairman’s mallet. Tressell’s satire reaches its pinnacle when a man with a
“harsh, metallic voice” (411) gives a “long rambling lecture about the rules of order and the
conduct of public meetings” (411) to a rowdy body of men already absurdly obsessed with
playing Parliament. In contrast to such trivial discussion aggravated by excessive proceduralism,
Tressell envisions an alternative: a meaningful, spontaneous, democratic discussion that is
unburdened from bureaucratic mechanisms, fetishized ideals, and heavy-handed monologs.

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Tressell’s interest in exploring the alternatives to monologic thinking ties in with his
overall style of socialism. As I mentioned before, his socialism has been characterized as “elitist”
and his often condescending attitude towards the workers and frustrations with them suggest that
Tressell’s preferred way of communication would be a didactic monologue that would instill
socialist ideas in their heads. However, as scenes discussed above show, Tressell is interested in
focusing more on incipient dialogic interactions than on engineering political conversion into
socialism by the power of monologic propaganda. His socialism, therefore, too, reveals a tension
between the monologic discourses of the oppressive “common sense” or of propaganda and the
democratic, polyphonic, dialogic sphere of the workers’ political discussion. I argue that TRTP
ultimately rejects the logic of propaganda to favor a more democratic model of a public sphere.
The novel places this model of dialogic discussion as the ultimate value, even if it delays the
advent of socialism or even puts socialism itself into question. To examine socialism itself
dialogically, Tressell goes as far as to contemplate disillusionment in socialism as much as
commitment to it. To counterpoise its favor of socialism, the novel also makes room for a voice
of disillusionment from a renegade: “When I devoted my life [. . .] to the service of my fellow
workmen; when I sought to teach them how to break their chains; [. . .] I did not want them to
give me money. I did it for love. And they paid me with hatred and injury. But since I have been
helping their masters to rob them, they have treated me with respect” (585). Overall, the novel
remains hopeful about the workers and socialism, but it also remains committed to dialogic
discussion to a point that it finds itself polemicizing with its own overall political message.
Tressell implies that only the novel that has incorporated voices of disillusionment has a right to
promote socialism.

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While Tressell sees socialism as an end, for him no means other than a democratic
political discussion would justify this end. The narrative promotes dialogic interactions at the
level of characters as well as the level of the text and its readership. Dave Harker characterizes
TRTP as intrinsically dialogical:
[. . .] the narrative voice leaves open whether we should identify with the
vacillations of Owen’s ‘inner speech’, his reported utterance and Mugsborough
workers’ differing reactions, or with his activity. It also mimicks the hopes,
thoughts, anxieties, frustrations and, yes, fantasies, like the exploding Rev.
Belcher, which pass through socialist activists’ heads, especially during a hard
argument, and above all during political downturns. What could be more realistic
than that? So RTP is a dialogue with us, its readers, about faith in the working
class as an agency of socialist transformation and, therefore, about the possibility
of hope. (252)
In this statement, Harker connects the dialogic nature of the novel to two things: realism and
hope. Indeed, an ongoing dialogue seems to perform a function analogous to that of enduring
hope and optimism. Embracing the pluralistic dialogic world, the novel ultimately creates a
larger dialogue: between the representation of a given reality and a hopeful anticipation of a new
reality to come. For Tressell, this dialogue will always remain open.
Tressell models dialogic discussion by performing it at the level of the authorial voice
that is in direct dialogue with the reader. Stepping aside from the midst of the novel’s events and
characters, the narrator trains the reader to read TRTP not by consuming the story passively and
indulgently, but by having a dialogue with each character in the story, the author, the system, and
with oneself:

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If you, had been one of the hands, would you have slogged? Or would you have
preferred to starve and see your family starve? If you had been in Crass’s place,
would you have resigned rather than do such dirty work? If you had had Hunter’s
berth, would you have given it up and voluntarily reduced yourself to the level of
the hands? If you had been Rushton, would you rather have become bankrupt than
treat your ‘hands’ and your customers in the same way as your competitors
treated theirs? It may be that, so placed, you—being the noble-minded paragon
that you are—would behave unselfishly. But no one has any right to expect you to
sacrifice yourself for the benefit of other people, who would only call you a fool
for your pains.
[. . .] The more aggressive, cunning, unfeeling and selfish you are the better it will
be for you. As long as this “Battle of Life” System endures, we have no right to
blame other people for doing the same things that we are ourselves compelled to
do. Blame the system. (217-218)
The reader is constantly ousted from his/her possibly passive readerly seclusion and provoked
into a perpetual questioning and polemics. This moment interestingly makes the reader an object
of the author’s persuasion, but no less so a subject capable of disagreeing and engaging in
polemics. Tressell expects more of the reader and challenges him into active reading, which
further illustrates the overall open-endedness and dialogic nature of TRTP.
However open-ended is Tressell’s conclusion about socialism, the novel prepares the
ground for a slow change. The dynamics within the workers’ group do change and some of its
members seem to make informed choices about their political sympathies. Thus, after a lecture
on capitalists given by Barrington at one of the lunch breaks and titled “The Great Secret, or

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How to Live Without Work” does result in one converter—Harlow: “I came to the conclusion
some time ago that it’s a mug’s game for us to vote for capitalists whether they call theirselves
Liberals or Tories” (541). The Liberals and the Tories are shown throughout the novel as false
alternatives, and their bickering at the election campaigns just meaningless noise of status quo
politics. Harlow is not the only character whose views are affected. Tressell makes it a point that
if the socialists are not yet capable of converting the masses, they can spark up a discussion
among the few. For example, after a van with socialists and their propaganda literature left, “for
a long time after the meeting was over little groups remained on the field excitedly discussing the
speeches or the leaflets” (467). Tressell seems to end on a modestly optimistic note by believing
that change does come from the masses, even if painfully slow. Presented with a scene of
Mugsborough squalor and ruins under the capitalist system, we get a vague sense that “from
these ruins was surely growing the glorious fabric of the Co-operative Commonwealth” (630). It
seems that everyday “argyfying about politics” among Owenses, Harlows, Crasses, and Eastons
leaves Tressell hopeful of the imminent joy that mankind is “awaking from the long night of
bondage and mourning and arising from the dust wherein they had lain prone so long” (630).

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CONCLUSION

I have examined a strain of novels that demonstrate a significant preoccupation in the
Victorian era with the form(s) of political discussion in the public sphere. All the pursuits of
Victorian liberalism such as individual freedom from authoritative power and custom, selfdevelopment, and social reform are predicated on “free and equal discussion,” to use John Stuart
Mill’s phrase (15). Despite his belief in discussion, Mill refrains from giving a definitive set of
principles that ought to guide it. In his rather general formulation of discussion, individuals ought
to seek out the truth from the “collision of adverse opinions” (59). My project has traced
persistent attempts by Victorian novels to further define the principles and form of political
discussion. This preoccupation suggests that an ongoing revision of the discussion forum with a
special attention to its formal aspects lies at the very heart of liberalism’s project. In this regard,
Elaine Hadley’s observation about mid-Victorian liberalism is applicable to the nature of
liberalism in general in that it “outlines how one ought to think but not precisely what to think”
(10).
While Hadley’s attention to the form of Victorian thinking is crucial to my project, I have
attempted to complement and revise her interpretation of liberal agency as confined to privatized
reflection—a scholarly framework that prevails in Victorian studies. Hadley claims that, “[i]n
mid-Victorian liberalism, the domain of political thought was by necessity a private, individuated
one” (47). In contrast to her account of the liberalization of individuality, I have argued for a way
to view Victorian liberalism other than as an ideology of private, individuated reflection. To this

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end, I have examined a never fading preoccupation among what I call “novels of discussion”
with the political valence of face-to-face discussion.
My interest in the dynamics of face-to-face discussion as a context where abstract ideas
intertwine with embodied sentiments and experiences intersects with Hadley’s interests in
liberalism’s calibration between abstraction and embodiment. Examining the Victorian
imaginings of liberal individuality, Hadley has shown that the project of living liberalism is
fraught with tensions as she examined “the more nuanced relations between a liberal subject’s
body and mind, the subject’s universalist yearnings and individualist tendencies, and the
subject’s interests and disinterests” (13). Hadley uses the term “abstract embodiment” to describe
how these binary categories combined in various instantiations of liberal individuality. Her
insight into the challenge of living liberalism through the balancing of abstraction and
embodiment has informed my work. The novelistic scenes of face-to-face discussion that are at
the center of my project are playing with layers of abstract ideas and embodied experiences, and
so provide an instance of “abstract embodiment,” to use Hadley’s term.
In my chapters I have focused on teasing out the articulations of various discussion
models that suggest a curious tension: while liberal dispositions for discussion were shared by all
of them, there was not such a ready consensus about what exactly discussion should look like
and what ideal it should measure up to. This diversity of opinions about discussion implies
liberalism’s continuous self-reflexive gesture. As a gradualist program of social reform and as a
recipe for the pursuit of perfection and liberty, the liberalism of such figures as J. S. Mill and
Matthew Arnold acknowledges its own ideals as unrealizable and even dangerous if suddenly
realized in a society that is not “prepared” for them. Rather, liberalism is more invested in the
continuous pursuit of its ideals and the promotion of “progress towards perfection” (Arnold 174);

248

always getting there, but never being there. With this disposition for an ongoing progress
towards an ideal, the novels represented discursive practices that were continuously striving for
an ideal model, yet along with that, they brought to the surface their internal contradictions.
Scholars of Victorian liberalism have foregrounded both its political potentialities and
internal tensions and contradictions. Lauren Goodlad has shown liberalism’s negotiations
between liberty and government, and Elaine Hadley has revealed liberalism’s problematic
linking of abstraction and embodiment. Pam Morris has traced yet another contradiction within
liberalism (i.e. its inclusive and exclusive tendencies) as the mid-Victorian project of “imagining
inclusive society” evolves into late-Victorian fractured sphere of the “popular realm” and the
“realm of distinction” (28). Their frameworks have been valuable for my own inquiry in
examining the tensions and ambivalences within discussion models. I have suggested that the
competition of various models produced the kind of liberating tendency that was on liberalism’s
agenda. At the same time, however, every one of these models demonstrated its own
monopolistic ambitions to arrange the entire public sphere according to itself and so to foreclose
on the pluralistic vision of its arrangements. Furthermore, by engaging in the process of
discussion about discussion, Victorian novels teetered on the brink of withdrawing from the
actual realm of political action where social change was to be made. Consequently, instead of
liberating momentum, this process could be viewed as a self-righteous and self-content gesture
on behalf of the middle classes who were concerned with real change through discussion, but
who also desired to hold on to the hierarchy of power. Does the variety of discussion models in
the Victorian imagination suggest that novels were the sites for articulating emancipatory
horizons or, conversely, that the novels exerted disciplinary control by attempting to prescribe
modes of discussion? Rather than accusing the novels of their complicity with the power

249

structures or celebrating their emancipatory agency, I have aimed to describe how Victorians
themselves, through trial and error, searched for the ideal of “free and equal discussion” by
balancing the problematics of power and freedom, abstraction and embodiment, inclusion and
exclusion.
Through my close-readings, I have traced the ongoing pursuit of perfection in the realm
of political discussion. These models aimed to prove their validity and their revisionary take on
their predecessors by negotiating and fine-tuning the fundamental elements that shape the
political forum and determine its discursive dynamics. For instance, certain modes of face-toface reasoning (be they political economy or Tory Democracy) drew lines to distinguish
themselves from demagoguery at the electoral platform or the political gossip and intrigues of
high society. Certain modes of discussion among strangers affirmed themselves as efficacious
alternatives to the tyranny of the unionized mass of strangers and their anonymous public threats.
Tactics of live discussion claimed to produce a more lucid understanding of various social
perspectives than reaching out to the social other through the lens of statistical knowledge. And
yet other modes of abstraction from the lived experiences (in search of the “new mind” of
England in Disraeli) or abstraction from exploitation (in Tressell) produced progressive social
critiques in contract to “negative” forms of abstraction from the lives of the People that gave rise
to disastrous political leaders such as Stephen Morley.
While each of the works I analyze articulates a distinct vision of political discussion,
these novels also incorporate and revise some recurring themes and discursive mechanisms. For
instance, the treatment of a “stranger” or a participant-observer becomes one of the novelistic
motifs as Harriet Martineau sends her middle-class outsider to investigate the happenings of a
Manchester strike, as Benjamin Disraeli makes Charles Egremont a mysterious stranger to

250

connect with the People, as Walter Besant unravels a civilizing mission of the East End by
middle-class inquisitive strangers, as George Gissing condemns demos as a dangerous and
unenlightened stranger, and finally as Robert Tressell endows the socialist Owen with the
insights of an outsider and experiences of an insider. The theme of a stranger that is so prevalent
in the novels of discussion tapped, for Victorians, into a larger question of cultural, social,
economic, and racial inclusion. However, at stake was not merely the scope of the public sphere
and the degree of its inclusiveness, but also the means and media by which political discussion in
the public sphere would unfold and the kinds of discursive norms and practices that would hail a
more democratic society. The discussion models competed with one another and so not one of
them could assume an unquestioned status of common sense or exercise the tyranny of its
procedures since it would be continuously revised by alternatives. Therefore, I locate the
liberating potential not in any given model, but in the very fact of their variety and competition.
The self-reflexivity of the culture of discussion that I want to highlight here always dictated the
need to revise the realizations and definitions of its main concepts.
Attempts to envision such models of democratic discussion through fiction generated a
democratic forum where these models competed for preeminence. Many models are in tune with
popular Victorian sensibilities of clear reasoning, mutual understanding, and fair discussion, and
yet they differ in structuring discursive spaces and defining the public sphere participants. To be
sure, many of the models articulated on the pages of the novels may be suspicious from the
perspective of ideological control. Martineau’s “plain speaking,” Disraeli’s “New England” or
Reade’s principle “put yourself in his place” might be rather ambivalent notions promising, on
the one hand, a more fair society, but on the other hand, working as devices of totalitarian
control. What I am interested in here is not this ambivalence. Rather, I am interested in

251

foregrounding a claim that the vibrant competition among these models (and not one specific
model by itself) ensured an emancipatory effect and a critical perspective. All of these models
ultimately constituted a democratic forum, both debating political issues of the time and
redefining the framework of discussion norms per se.
Models of discussion responded, challenged, and built on one another, and by doing so
they realized Victorian desire for a many-sided and evolving view of discussion. Martineau
places her notion of political discussion in a framework of a rational dialogue and gives her
vision an international flair as she believes in the harmonizing power of free-trade as a kind of
economic enlightenment worldwide.

Disraeli reacts to this rationalistic approach and exposes

the limits of rationalistic thinking by illustrating that political sympathies are best mobilized
through the mystical power of a unifying image of England. What is not yet prominent in
Martineau as much as in Disraeli is a new way of understanding the modern public sphere as a
world of strangers bound to cultivate relationships with one another and share at least the space
of discussion. Reade, in turn, offers an alternative to Disraeli’s world of strangers; his world is an
inclusive society predicated on unlimited exchangeability of perspectives that can potentially
eliminate the very condition of being a stranger. Although Besant builds on Reade’s principles of
the exchange of perspectives, he views strangehood as ultimately productive, not inhibitive for
understanding and sympathy in the public sphere. Gissing abandons the terms of sympathy and
understanding to underscore the chaotic, violent, and fragmented nature of the public sphere and
of the social movements driven by the ideas distorted in the practical world of politics. Tressell
revisits and revises the notion of a stranger as a pivotal agent for critique of the existing
conditions under capitalism and reshapes discussion into an ongoing evolving and self-guiding
process. My intent has been to capture the changing views on political discussion and to show

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that Victorians’ most important contribution was not any single discussion model, but a drive for
an ongoing and pluralistic dialogue about the norms of discussion. We should recognize
Victorians’ attempts at ensuring that no particular model becomes ingrained as common sense
and lends itself as a device of unquestioned exercise of power and exclusion.
I have also shown that these novels reaffirm the political potential of face-to-face
discussion as a kind of reaction against the increasingly mediated and alienating environments of
the nineteenth-century public sphere. This characteristically modern problem is especially
evident in the instance of the novels that, despite their own print materiality and mediation
between faceless and anonymous readership, affirm the ideal of the face-to-face discussion as a
context of understanding, sincerity, sympathy, and democratic justice. I have tried to show that
rather than being nostalgic, this gesture is affirmative and its power derives from the very fact
that discussion scenes contrast against the medium through which they are articulated and
promoted. Victorian novels have shown us that in the modern world the appeal of face-to-face
political discussion does not diminish, but intensifies with the increasing spread of highly
mediated environments and that, ironically, in-person discussion continues to gain cultural
capital as the seat of humanity, morality, transparency, and integrity in the modern political
public sphere. The continuous introduction of new communication modes and environments
inevitably seems to imply that something very integral to discussion is taken away. Novels
wanted to reaffirm this elusive, yet pivotal purchase of face-to-face encounters against the
encroachments of new mediated environments, including novels themselves.
The novels that I focus on are perhaps not the most familiar and well-read texts among
Victorianists and literary scholars. But since all of these texts were widely read in the Victorian
period, I think that the trends they evince shaped Victorian sensibilities in a significant way, and

253

if preoccupation with discussion is evident even in these “minor” novels, I hope to show to what
extent the problematics of discussion were omnipresent. From outlining the models of discussion
in these under-read texts, I am certain that connections to more commonly examined novels can
be drawn. For instance, in Dickens’ Hard Times Stephen Blackpool urges for a new revised
discussion model as he calls the distorted discussion between the rich and the poor a “muddle”
and rallies Mill’s idea that every opinion has some portion of truth by saying: “Agreeing fur to
mak one side unnat’rally awlus and for ever right, and toother side unnat’rally awlus and for ever
wrong, will never, never do ‘t” (181). Elizabeth Gaskell, in North and South, has her protagonist,
the industrialist Mr. Thornton hint at a new possibility in discussion: “My only wish is to have
the opportunity of cultivating some intercourse with the hands beyond the mere “cash nexus”
(431). Across major and minor Victorian novels, the notion of political and socio-economic
progress was tied with the project of reconfiguring political discussion on new terms and in a
new form.
My project has traced the history of discussion models and argued the importance of
these models to our understanding of Victorian liberalism. Liberalism, then, does not merely
concern itself with the form of discussion (how to discuss), because it never thinks about this
form as static in the first place. Because cultivating a self-developing individual is at the center
of its philosophy, liberalism itself engages mechanisms of ongoing self-revision. Liberalism
always has high stakes in discussion, yet not in any single way of how to discuss. By arguing
this, I do not want to empty out the notion of liberalism and suggest that its premises are
essentially indefinable because they are always in flux. What my study suggests, however, is that
in its pursuit of progress, the critical revision of the status quo, and the promotion of social
reform, the principles of Victorian liberalism of how to carry out discussion are always open to

254

redefinition. And the possibility of one model being challenged by another is what allows for a
progressive evolution and a pluralistic culture to emerge in the public sphere. In fact, the novels
were so preoccupied with the form(s) in their pursuit of “free and equal discussion” that this
preoccupation tested the discursive limits of their own genre.
This project is by no means exhaustive in thinking about the implications of the ongoing
competition and interdependence of discussion models for Victorian liberalism. What remain
intriguing are the ambivalences about Victorians’ notions of political discussion that seem at
times progressive and open-ended and at times suspiciously prescriptive, closed-in, and
exclusive along the class lines. Such an intense, yet ambivalent preoccupation with the forms of
discussion invites us to think more about the paradoxes of freedom as conceived by liberalism.
Where are the lines between the form that structures a democratic society, non-essential
formalities of discussion, concealed control through discussion, and finally the fetish-like
formalization of discussion? On the one hand, the built-in changeability of these models prevents
excessive rigidity of procedures and ushers in a free exchange of opinions, yet on the other hand,
the desire to formalize discussion dangerously prescribes not only the general form of discussion,
but what counts as an opinion or a participant therein.
My inquiry has been motivated by the question of where liberalism allocates its priorities,
whether it is in cooperative deliberation or individual reflection. Interestingly, Victorian
liberalism simultaneously produced a version of individuality wrapped in the privacy of selfreflection as well as a version of an agent eager to exchange opinions in a public forum. It seems
that these opposing versions of a liberal subject and ultimately of the public sphere dramatize yet
another contradiction at the heart of liberalism: its awkward Janus-faced attempt to locate the

255

“truth” simultaneously in the poised realm of self-reflection and in the tumultuous realm of the
public forum.
Where does this inquiry into the vibrant and multi-vocal Victorian discussion about
discussion leave us? I have teased out what I see as inherently democratic traits of Victorian
notions of discursive norms and practices and suggested that this robust competition has
demonstrated, first of all, how porous, malleable and open-ended models of discussion were.
After all, Victorians did not so much seek after some pinnacle of perfection among discussion
models, but promulgated a continuous revision of the notions of inclusion, consensus,
argumentation, justice, universality, common good, and others. In that sense, too, what “face-toface” means in a discussion forum and what moral and democratic values it imparts on
discussion can be open to reconceptualization. While each individual discussion model may fall
short of an ideal of democracy, these novels created collectively a truly democratic forum for a
discussion of not only social issues but also discursive norms per se. In other words, the way
Victorians went about figuring out more egalitarian models of discussion already in itself created
what they were looking for. That said, I by no means diminish the value of these models
themselves for the theory and practice of a democratic society because they in many ways still
shape our own political moment.

256

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