As british as me : victorian practices of (dis)union in contemporary Britain

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Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Letras

AS BRITISH AS ME: VICTORIAN PRACTICES OF (DIS)UNION IN CONTEMPORARY BRITAIN

Mestrado em Estudos Ingleses e Americanos Especialização em Estudos Ingleses FRANCISCO CAMILO BARANDA

Dissertação especialmente elaborada para a obtenção do grau de Mestre, orientada pela Prof.ª Doutora Ana Cristina Ferreira Mendes

LISBOA 2023

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Acknowledgements

I feel that my first “thank you” must go to my supervisor, prof. Ana Cristina Mendes. I could not have asked for a more supportive, understanding, caring and enthusiastic supervisor. Thank you for believing in my vision, even if it seemed farfetched at first approach. Thank you for your reassuring words in times of doubt, and for being so patient when I could not find the time to dive more deeply into this study for professional reasons.

A big and warm thank you to my family, who always listened to my worries when I was spiralling and kept reassuring me that my work was valuable and worthy. Thank you for defending my interest in the Humanities and teaching when faced with the so- used argument “studying for unemployment”. Thank you for being here, and help me achieve my goals and dreams.

A special thank you to my fellow teachers and friends at Colégio Marista de Carcavelos, my workplace for the past two years. Thank you for welcoming that 22-year- old boy so dearly into your team, who was eager to start teaching English but was also very scared and trying to write a dissertation at the same time. Thank you for helping me manage my work and school life.

Thank you to FLUL, for five wonderful years. I learned a lot about English and American studies thanks to the amazing professors and interesting courses I took. Thank you for sharing your passion for literature, culture, and English with me. I adored those before, but you made it my passion as well. Thank you to my dear friends from FLUL, both during undergrad and masters, for the coffees during long breaks, for the existential crises while writing essays, and for making me feel like myself. Filipa, Patrícia, Ana, Julie, Tânia, Mariana, Rita, Ana Sofia, Hugo and Mira, thank you for being there. I am there for you as well.

Finally, a big thank you to the friends who have been there since elementary school. Catarina, Teresa, Leonor, and Marta, with whom I have been friends since we were 10 (14 years of friendship and counting!), for putting up with me every time I ranted about how I loved my degree, and for always sharing my excitement; To Inês, Rita and Joana, whom I met in high school but stayed for the long run.

To all who allowed me to share my passion with them, thank you.

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Abstract

The present dissertation aims to understand the reasons why the UK voted to leave in the EU referendum of June 23, 2016, as well as its impact on society and the future of the nation and the world. The British stand by their decision, albeit gravely divided, stating that their vote is rooted in questions of uncontrolled migration and loss of sovereignty over their own country. However, these arguments are not new to British thinking, having been formed throughout its history as a country. In this way, this dissertation uses the methods of cultural history to study the 18^th and 19^th centuries in Britain, the first period since the formation of the UK as it is known today and the peak of its history. Events such as the Act of Union of 1707, the formation of Britishness, Protestantism, the rise in class consciousness, as well as the Empire and its importance in separating the British from the

“other”. Since this study is backed up by cultural history as a method of analysis, it will benefit from the study of literary novels that, in being considered historical documents regardless of the fictionalisation of events, will provide veracity to the exposed arguments.

Keywords: Brexit, Victorian Literature, Working Class, Condition of England.

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Resumo

A presente dissertação explora de forma aprofundada o fenómeno que ficou conhecido como Brexit, o referendo de 23 de junho de 2016 onde 52% dos eleitores reiterou a vontade do Reino Unido sair da União Europeia. Este processo demorado, que iniciou com a ativação do Artigo 50.º do Tratado de Lisboa e terminou a 31 de janeiro de 2020, representa um dos mais conturbados períodos da história recente do Reino Unido, não só porque a sociedade se encontrava extremamente divida quanto ao assunto (por contraste, 48% dos eleitores manifestaram interesse em manterem-se na União), mas também porque ressuscita questões antigas que podem ser traçadas inclusive até à Idade Média.

Pode argumentar-se que o voto “sair” se deve a questões diretamente relacionadas com o “outro” que toma várias formas ao longo da história do Reino Unido. Este “outro”

pode ser o súbdito colonial do Império Britânico, subjugado à coroa pela mão da superioridade britânica e missão civilizacional; pode igualmente ser a figura católica num território maioritariamente protestante; como pode também tomar a forma do invasor europeu. Inclusive, esta figura até pode ser constituída por várias das hipóteses apresentadas, como era, por exemplo, França – uma ameaça europeia e católica. Contudo, até mesmo dentro do território britânico se podia verificar este processo de “outrização”, desde as incompatibilidades entre ingleses e escoceses, mesmo após a sua união, até mesmo antes desta, mais especificamente na Idade Média, onde existiram em simultâneo vários reinos e povos distintos. Mais recentemente, o “outro” não só toma a forma de migrantes de várias partes do extinto Império Britânico, de outras partes do mundo, mas sobretudo da Europa, especialmente os países de leste que entraram na União Europeia em 2004 (também conhecidos como grupo A8), bem como uma Europa “federalista,”

como anunciado por Margaret Thatcher, que procura reduzir a soberania britânica em favor do governo central em Bruxelas.

Deste modo, a presente dissertação estuda o período entre os séculos XIX e XXI, por várias descrições detalhadas, para salientar atitudes e padrões sociais, adotados pela sociedade contemporânea. Este estudo avalia questões de identidade, nomeadamente o conceito de britishness criado com a União de 1707 que parece ter desaparecido no século XXI, bem como o crescente número de discursos nacionalistas, quer Escoceses, quer ingleses, questionando o estado da União e os benefícios atuais da mesma, mas também

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aliado à perda do Império e, consequentemente, de um propósito maior. Estuda, igualmente, o importante papel da classe trabalhadora que, tal como no século XIX, reivindica ser ouvida e determina fortemente o resultado do referendo, e ainda o papel do multiculturalismo na sociedade britânica.

A dissertação encontra-se estruturada em duas partes, uma para cada tempo estudado, e segue a metodologia da História Cultural, pelo que os argumentos são apoiados por textos literários que funcionam como documentos históricos, apesar da sua ocasional ficcionalização de eventos. Está igualmente presente neste estudo a teoria da

“reaplicação de práticas” do filósofo Francês Michel de Certeau. Através desta teoria, faz-se a ponte entre os séculos passados e presente e argumenta-se que a sociedade britânica contemporânea, e no que lhe concerne, o Brexit, são influenciados pelo legado cultural e identitário da história britânica.

Palavras-chave: Brexit, Literatura Vitoriana, Classe trabalhadora, Estado da Nação.

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List of figures

Page

Fig. 1. David Roberts. The Inauguration of the Great Exhibition, 1852. ... 21

Fig. 2. Unknown author. Woman using a Spinning Jenny, C18 ... 25

Fig. 3. The North of England. Tom Hazeldine, 2020. ... 32

Fig. 4. The Visit to the Brickmaker’s. Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), 1853. ... 46

Fig. 5. Robert Taylor Pritchett. Colonial and Indian Exhibition: foreign visitors offering gifts to the Queen, 1886. ... 55

Fig. 6. The Heptarchy, c. 500-c.900. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2022. ... 69

Fig. 7. How the UK voted. BBC News. 2016 ... 75

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“Adieu to Old England”: Introductory note

On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. The result, 52% to 48%, gave the victory to leave and showed a society that was, now more than ever, divided and lost. Moreover, the results show how differently the home nations have voted, with Scotland and Northern Ireland choosing to stay in the union, while England and Wales opted out of it. The UK is, then, a highly divided country, and in a deep existential and identity crisis. Leavers justify their vote against the disproportionate rise in immigration to their country, both white and non-white, as well as the sense of power lost to a “federalist” Europe. They advocate "taking back control," a separatist slogan that alludes to the times when Britain was the ruler of a big empire and superior to other nations. They argue that Britain has lost its ability to be sovereign and has ceased to colonise to become colonized. Remainers believe multiculturalism is part of British history and must be celebrated. They believe that, in a globalised world, isolation is the true loss of power.

However, British divisions don’t start with “leave” or “remain.” These two voting options are backed by deeper and longer divisions that have roots in the Empire, with some being traced back to mediaeval times. The 1700s saw the formation of the union of Scotland with England and Wales and, consequently, the birth of “Britishness,” a national identity that united Scots, Welshmen, and English as one to defend the British Isles against the other. This other took various forms: for one, it could be the Catholics who lived in Britain; for another, it could be the Catholic Irish, who frequently rebelled against Britons. It could also be Christian Europe (mostly France), with whom they were constantly at war (lest one forget the Battle of Hastings in 1066, in which England started

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to be governed by the Normans). But it could also be the imperial subject, to whom Britons showed their God-given superiority. The Victorian period, or the British century, was one of many changes. On top of the already established sense of national identity and belonging, albeit not assumed in its entirety due to already existing and older identities like Scottishness and Welshness, this period saw the industrialization of society, and with it, a deeper separation of people. On the one hand, there were the idle aristocrats, and on the other, the backbone of the industrial era, the struggling working-class. In between the two, the rise of the newly established middle-class in the form of factory owners. It witnessed the growing working-class consciousness that led to events like the Chartist movement and several parliamentary reforms. It was during this time that the Empire reached its peak, and with it, the completion of Britain’s God-given mission to spread Protestantism and civilise the unknown world.

All of these can be seen, even if in different forms, after the 1800s. The 20^th and 21^st centuries saw, yet again, many changes in society. Mass immigration from non-white imperial colonies in the 1950s, Thatcherism, the return to Victorian values, and rising numbers in unemployment, the rising of the liberal university-graduated Middle-class and the almost total vanishing of the working-class, the role of the city, especially London, against smaller towns, new political directions, impending nationalism and, of course, European integration. In the pages that follow, I will argument on how Victorian ideas were used in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, as well as how they have affected the Brexit vote.

This dissertation aims to understand how the socio-economic divisions perpetuated by Victorianism remain the founding pillars of the social divisions encountered in 21^st century British society. It is, then, divided into two parts, prefaced by a note on the methodology used as well as a brief discussion on the concepts of “culture”

and “class” that permeate this study; Part I, “Victorian lives: building walls in a new

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geosocial, political, and cultural space in the 1800s,” will study the Victorian period and its main events. It theorises about the age’s complexity, industrialization, the church, empire, and the role of literature at the time. Part II, “Victorian afterlives in contemporary Britain,” builds on the last part and discusses the 20^th and 21^st centuries’ big changes and events. It looks more closely at issues like immigration from the empire and the racism that followed, questions of identity, the rise of nationalism with political parties like UKIP and BNP (especially English nationalism), Thatcherism, and the Brexit vote.

Since this dissertation aligns itself with cultural history methods, it benefits from the analysis of literary texts as core historical documents, thus explaining the past using culture. Literature is often regarded as a mirror of life, and a way for people to process the world they live in. Thus, literary texts, considering a certain degree of fictionalisation of events in the name of the plot, will help us understand and illustrate the history of Britain. Part I will analyse excerpts from Disraeli’s Sybil, Elizabeth Barret Browning’s poem “The Cry of the Children,” Gaskell’s North and South, and Kingsley’s Alton Locke, as well as essays from the empire, while Part II draws on Andrea Levy’s Small Island and Jonathan Coe’s Middle England. In addition, paintings are used in this dissertation for the same purpose. The conclusion serves as a bridge for both parts to come together (even though their union has been alluded to in Part II) and will connect through the theory of

“re-employment of practices” put forward by Michel de Certeau.

This comparative, neo-victorianist study does not aim at providing solid and definitive answers to Britain’s problems, for those will take a long time to be resolved.

Rather, it aims at beginning the discussion of why Britain has these problems in the first place, and which ways to explore in trying to mend them.

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Notes

This dissertation was written according to the 9^th edition of the MLA citation system.

Since e-books and online sources do not usually have page numbers, I refer to the chapter where the information or citation comes from when I am unable give a specific page number.

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The Craft and its Tools: a note on methodology

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This section of the dissertation aims at examining the methods and concepts used throughout my investigation into Victorian patterns in contemporary British society. First, I describe cultural history in more detail, how it is applied and its beginnings; then, I introduce Michel de Certeau, a French scholar whose investigation is dedicated to the everyday life of people and the author of the term “re-employment.” Finally, I attempt to define terms such as “culture” and “class” by borrowing views and stances from T. S.

Eliot, Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, as well as other relevant scholars.

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The Craft: Cultural History as a method

Cultural history has been, for many years, an overlooked discipline within cultural studies, but it has, in the last decades, emerged from the backroom to a somewhat definite front display. It is rather difficult to write about Cultural History since there is no “fixed”

definition; to explain it, it is best to dive into its complexities: as Peter Burke (1937-) states in What is Cultural History? (2004 [2019]),

Cultural History is not a monopoly of historians. It is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary; in other words, it starts from different places, different departments in the University (…) hence the difficulty (…) of answering the question: ‘what is Cultural History’?

(Chapter 7, section 2, paragraph 1) For instance, a primary concern for Burke is the writing of history as its own literary genre, thus finding that the cultural historian benefits from using fiction writing tools as long as it is in constant dialogue with the historical fact. There are multiple research methods within cultural history, including intuitive work, quantitative work, among others. Nevertheless, they all share the same common ground: “a concern with the symbolic and its interpretation” (Burke 3).

Considering there are multiple research methods, there are also different schools of thought; the ones that have contributed the most to Cultural History are the German and Dutch schools, the latter being an extension of the former. These schools have contributed significantly to the discipline through the works of authors such as Jacob Burckhardt (1818 – 1897) and Johan Huizinga (1872 – 1945), who have coined the idea of the historian as a painter who is working on the “portrait of the age,” similar to Burke’s

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idea of the historian as a storyteller, in works such as Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) and Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919). Huizinga explains his method of research through a simple question: “What sort of idea can we form of an age if we see no people in it? if we may only give generalised accounts, we do but make a desert and call it history.” (qtd. In Burke chpt. 7) On that account, he revealed the need to understand works by placing them in their historical context, so that it was possible for historians to analyse the entirety of a specific era in juxtaposition with the “Zeitgeist” (spirit of the age). Burckhardt and Huizinga focused on the typical and the constant, therefore rendering patterns of culture, thoughts and feelings of a given era through the medium of the arts.

Aby Warburg (1866 – 1929), on the other hand, albeit agreeing with Burckhardt and Huizinga’s methods, focused his study on what it is nowadays known as the

“Warburgian technique,” where the historian focuses on schemata, or specific gestures, mainly in painting, that illustrate specific emotions of the age. In his turn, Frederick Antal (1887 – 1954) believed that culture was a reflection of society, hence why he studied paintings having in mind the author’s or the commissioner’s perspective.

However, cultural historians did not only study art – authors such as E. P.

Thompson (1924 – 1993) and Stuart Hall (1932 – 2014) directed their attention to the people and the new media. Thompson, for instance, was a pioneer of studies in popular culture. In Making of the English Working Class (1963), the author was more concerned with the actual group he was studying than economic issues. Hence, the term “History from below” was formed, through observation of daily life and specific rituals of previously overlooked cultures (in this case, the working class and the poor).

Following the example mentioned above of Frederick Antal, cultural historians must use a wide range of authors to base their arguments on since using fewer sources

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implies a narrower idea of the time to be studied. To achieve a comprehensive and complete picture of the period, the cultural historian must resource to source criticism, or the act of questioning sources. Through this, the historian can understand said material’s background production to highlight any implicit propaganda.

De la Construction et des Pratiques: Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau (1925–1986) was a French historian, part of the third generation of the Annales group. This school of thought challenged the limits of the historiographical approach by introducing a method in which collective mentalities and society were taken into account and invited different disciplines to participate in their research. After the group tried to find new ways to write history, de Certeau made contributions to theology and history, especially with books like The Writing of History (1975) and L’invention du quotidien (1980).

The term “constructivism” is defined by the construction of reality through representation. However, scholars found that using "representation" would not suffice, since it “seems to imply that images and texts simply reflect or imitate social reality”

(Burke 77). By employing the term “constructivism,” scholars emphasise perspective. On that account, the same historical event may be constructed by different voices with different perspectives. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class, for instance, acts like an ordinary person’s perspective of the past, just like post-colonial studies act as an opposing view to that of the coloniser. Foucault, in Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), defined discourses as “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak”

(135). According to De Certeau, who studied everyday life in France during the 1970s, the Foucaultian discourse could be applied to practises such as shopping or watching television.

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Borrowing the concept of “consumerism” from sociology, de Certeau believed that ordinary people were active consumers since they chose to first interpret the object in front of them; second, they took what they wanted from that interpretation; and third, they applied it to new contexts, hence why the author coined the term “re-employment (of practices).” As a result, people construct their every day with an assortment of borrowed practices, as put forward in L’invention du Quotidien. A new perspective has been created, where the public and the way they receive a cultural object are as important as the object itself.

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The Tools: Important definitions

Culture

Stuart Hall, cultural theorist and one of the key figures of cultural studies, states that the concept of “culture” is “a site of convergent interests,” difficult to conceptually clarify (“Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” 59). Hall attempts to conceptualise the term through the analysis of Raymond Williams’s The Long Revolution (1961), providing two different ways of explaining how the term got to its current use. First, the author states that

“culture” could be related to “the sum of the available descriptions” used to reflect common experiences. This statement, in Hall’s perspective, takes “culture” from defining the greatest achievements of a society to referring to “one general social process: the giving and taking of meanings and the slow development of (…) a common culture” (59).

According to Hall, Williams believes that the process of communicating ideas is the process of community building since culture is common to everyone. Along these lines, it is also referred to how literature creates societal conventions that are valued by the community. Literature is, then, a mirror of society and one of the many vessels of culture – “To study the relations adequately we must study them actively, seeing all activities as particular and contemporary forms of human energy” (59). This first conceptualisation of culture converges with the second put forward by Hall, and the concepts of Michel de Certeau, where “culture” refers to social practices.

To Hall and Williams, “culture” is not a practice in itself, but rather a common place for all social practices, “a sum of their inter-relationships” (60). To analyse culture is to decode the relationships of social practices. First, one discovers social patterns, not in particular sections of society, but in society as a whole; then, one studies the relationships between the patterns with the goal of seeing how “these practices and

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patterns are lived and experienced as a whole, in any particular period. This is its

‘structure of feeling’” (60).

Notwithstanding its complexity, various authors have tried to define “culture.”

Williams (1921 – 1988), in Keywords (1976 [2015]), argues that “culture” is one of the most complicated words in English. There is a coherent incoherency when defining this word – many authors argue in the same direction, however, they use different sources or factors which may lead to different conclusions. An example of where arguments are incoherent is the acute debate around the conceptual separation of “culture” and “nature.”

Michael Payne, in A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory (2003), defines “culture”

as “a term of virtually limitless application” (128). He goes on to say that there are two extremes to this definition: the first one, used by American anthropologists, to name the primary data of research; and the second one, an honorific definition used to describe the finest products of civilisation (as used by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy). There is, however, a third definition put forward by Clifford Geertz, meant to sit in between the former two. The author uses a semiotics approach to refer to “culture” as “‘webs of significance’ spun by human beings.” (128). Michael Payne believes the complexity of the concept not only has to deal with its efficacy but with those who live in cultural conflict, since there may not be a recognition of the self in “another culture’s definition of the human.” (A Dictionary 128)

In Confronting Culture: Sociological Vistas (2003), Inglis and Hughson argue that culture is omnipresent – “In fact, if you begin to think about it, you will soon realise that

‘culture’ is everywhere. For example, the wide array of cultural products we are faced with in contemporary Western societies is mind-boggling” (4). To Inglis and Hughson,

“culture” can mean the highest achievements of the human race, like the plays of Shakespeare, it can refer to values of an individual, or of a society, it can be a product

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like a film or a book. Moreover, the authors explain that, in the 1950s, anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn conducted research on the various meanings of culture, where they got hold of one hundred and sixty-four definitions for the same word. Congruent with Raymond Williams’s claim, Inglis and Hughson believe “Culture” is “one of the words that describes so many aspects of human life, and yet it is one of the most slippery words we have” (4).

It is possible to trace the use of “culture” back to the Roman Empire, where it referred to the tending of crops and animals. It was also during this time that the figurative sense of the word started being used, albeit only resurging in the 16^th century. In A Noção de Cultura nas Ciências Sociais (1999), Denys Cuche writes “a evolução de uma palavra liga-se com efeito a numerosos fatores, nem todos de ordem linguística. O seu património semântico cria uma certa dependência dos seus usos contemporâneos em relação ao passado” (30). Therefore, it is important to study the processes through which the word went in order to understand its contemporary meanings. Cuche believes the best route to study the etymology of “culture” is by going back to the Middle Ages and its use in Old French. It was first borrowed from Latin, maintaining the same meaning, before evolving, in the 13^th century, to describe a piece of cultivated land. In English, the figurative sense of the word first appeared in Webber’s The Duchess of Malfi (1614), where a metaphor implies the progression from natural growth to human development. In the 18^th Century,

“culture” connoted class associations and, in the 19^th century, it was used to describe a social and intellectual movement. It is also around this time that the figurative sense of

“culture” first appears in the 1718 edition of the Dictionnaire de L'Académie Française, thus officialising its use. The 1789 edition of the Dictionnaire establishes a division between “nature” and “culture.” For Cuche, “Esta posição é fundamental entre os pensadores das Luzes que concebem a cultura como um carácter distintivo da espécie

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humana (...) a soma dos saberes acumulados e transmitidos pela humanidade” (31).

Culture is associated with the ideas of progress and reason put forward by the Enlightenment movement:

Se o movimento das Luzes nasceu em Inglaterra, foi em França que descobriu a sua língua e o seu vocabulário; conhecerá de pronto uma enorme repercussão em toda a Europa Ocidental e nomeadamente nas grandes metrópoles (...). A ideia de cultura participa do optimismo do momento, assente na confiança da perfectibilidade do ser humano. O progresso nasce da instrução, quer dizer da cultura, em crescimento constante. (Cuche 32)

In German, “Kultur”, the counterpart of “culture,” is borrowed from the French and used as a synonym for “civilization.” It first refers to the process of becoming civilized and, in a second moment, to the secular process of human development. Herder, a German philosopher, believed human development was not the same around the globe, therefore one must not speak of culture in the singular, but “cultures,” to stress the difference between civilizations and people. Not only does “cultures” refer to different nations and periods, but it can also refer to different cultural groups within a nation.

How can one describe culture? What are the limits of “nature” and “culture”? Can one say that culture is violent, more specifically “systems of symbolic violence,” as Pierre Bourdieu poses it because, in the reality of “cultures,” one might fail to recognize another? Payne argues that “to define culture is to define the human” (A Dictionary 128).

T. S. Eliot thinks “culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living” (Notes Towards the definition of Culture 27). Inglis and Hughson believe culture covers a wide range of linked ideas, values, and thinking processes. Hall argues towards

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a possible definition of “culture” representing life in a society as a whole or the study of everyday practices.

Culture has many meanings and definitions but, despite unanimous arguments proposed above, there is still debate around the subject. Inglis and Hughson propose a breakdown of the meaning of culture in six parts: 1) “Culture compromises the patterns of ideas, values and beliefs common to a particular group of people” (5); 2) The culture of one group differentiates it from other groups, each of which has its own culture:

working-class culture will be different from bourgeoisie culture since they differ in beliefs and values; 3) Culture is meaningful: how people perceive things in the world; 4) The ideas, values and beliefs of a group are embodied in symbols and artefacts; 5) Culture is learned and 6) Culture is arbitrary.

Class

The Lexico by Oxford online Dictionary defines the noun class as “(1) A set or category of things having some property or attribute in common and differentiated from others by kind, type, or quality; and (2) [mass noun] A system of ordering society whereby people are divided into sets based on perceived social or economic status” (“class”). Raymond Williams traces the etymology of the word back to the Latin classis, firstly referring exclusively to Roman times, but then expanding its use to divisions and groups (Keywords 26). The roman use of the word continued to be employed throughout the centuries, with a special emphasis on the seventeenth century where societal divisions became more common. Before the use of “class,” words such as rank and estate, and expressions like lower order(s) were in use since medieval times. However, the eighteenth century saw the Industrial Revolution, a remarkable event that brought with it the need for a

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restructuring of society, arranged by economic and political shifts. “Class,” then, seemed a better fit for a society prone to individual mobility within clearly separated groups, whereas the previous nouns denounced an obsolete society where rankings were inherited or determined at birth. Nonetheless, this process showed itself as uneven, since mentalities had to be shifted and there was confusion regarding the senses of this division – was society being rearranged to group similar people together, or to create a clear division between people?

There is, then, a need to name these new groups. Since the expression “lower classes” was already in use around the 1770s, and “middle classes” was circulating since the early eighteenth century – as illustrated by Henry Broughman in 1831: “(…) by the people, I mean the middle classes, the wealth and intelligence of the country, the glory of the British name.” – a tripartite society was in place, divided into the upper class, or those who ruled; middle class, or the employers; and lower class, or the ones who worked for the other two classes. At the same time, reform movements in Britain saw the rise and affirmation of the middle and working classes. Count de Volney’s 1795 text The Ruins, or A Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, examined groups in society and divided them into “useful class” and “privileged class.” The appeal to revolution applied perfectly to the reform period Britain was living in, as it set clear societal differences between the productive and idle classes. It is, in fact, from “useful class” that the term “working class”

came into use. It was first introduced to refer to the relations of employers with their workmen, and it was later adopted by the group’s members. Moreover, these groups were also formed based on economic factors. Marx proposed, in the third chapter of Capital (1867), a tripartite division made up of landlords, capitalists and wage-labourers, as opposed to John Stuart Mill’s term “labourers” present in The Monthly Repository (1834).

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According to Marxism, a class seen in economic terms is a category; individuals share common economic interests and act around the prosperity of those interests. To Marx, individuals form a class if they have an opposing class that is battling against their interests, therefore the individual shapes the class inasmuch as the class shapes the individual.

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Part I

Victorian lives: building walls in a new geosocial, political and cultural space in the 1800s

“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”

Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1918)

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The goal of this dissertation’s first part is to provide an understanding of the British 19^th century through assessments of some of the most significant historical occurrences of the time, such as the industrial revolution, the Great Exhibition of 1851, the First and Second Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867, Chartism, science and the Church, the Empire, and the social classes. The discussion portion builds on this theoretical section by examining the events in further detail through the lens of literature to make the case for splits within British Society.

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1. Rise, fall and in-betweens: introducing the Victorian period

Complexity defines the Victorian era. Science and engineering made great strides during the so-called “British century,” but society was more fractured and morally bankrupt than ever throughout this period. Progress and imperialism were hallmarks of Victorian society, but so were suffering and inequity. Susie Steinbach claims that the Victorian era was a time of reform regardless of the circumstances (Understanding the Victorians 4).

Thomas Carlyle, the author of Signs of the Times and a first-hand observer of this reform period, expressed alarm about the deterioration of humanity and the rise of technology in his 1829 work. In their turn, Furtado and Malafaia argue that “(...) seríamos tentados a chamar-lhe (...) acima de todas as outras, a Época Mecânica. É a Época da Maquinaria, em todo o sentido extrínseco e intrínseco da palavra. A época que, com toda a coesão do seu poder, impele ensina e pratica a grande arte de adaptar os meios aos fins” (O Pensamento Vitoriano 44).

The agricultural mechanisation and invention of the spinning Jenny marked the beginning of the nineteenth century. For Friedrich Engels, the invention of this first Mule prototype in 1764 marked the beginning of an unprecedented social transformation that would eventually become the Industrial Revolution (The Condition of the Working Class in England 17). Both the Industrial Revolution and the monopolisation of maritime trading contributed to this century’s exponential economic expansion.

Throughout the Victorian era, the British Empire, which had existed since the 16th century but was extremely influential during the 19th century, was undoubtedly at the forefront. Despite losing the American colonies in 1820, Britain achieved global control through multiple Empire sources during this century (Steinbach 66). In addition, in 1887,

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when Victoria became the first Empress of India, the monarch cemented Britain’s position as a world power, extending its influence all the way to Canada, the West Indies, and Australia. In the 19^th century, Britain thrived like no other country. Therefore, it was imperative to show the world its imperial and industrial might. This was accomplished by the staging of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the India Exhibition of 1856, and the Great Exhibition of Great Britain in 1899 (Silva and Granic 3). To quote Charlotte Brontë, “It is a lovely place – wide, unusual, new and impossible to describe,” she said in an 1851 letter to a friend. “Nothing in particular makes it magnificent; rather, it's the unique combination of everything that goes into it. Wherever you look, you'll find it there” (Sky History).

Although there were many different authors, types of stories, and literary genres in the literature of the time, the novel remained the most popular storytelling device. With a particular focus on Wordsworth and his nature writing, which served as an influence for numerous authors, Victorian literature was a direct descendant of romanticism. Following this brief time, there was an “interregnum” in literature around the 1830s (Altick 2), during which the romantic literary voice was beginning to lose ground in favour of

Fig. 1. David Roberts. The Inauguration of the Great Exhibition, 1852.

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something new. The early Victorian era, according to Altick, “is most readily located in history and portrayed as the immediate successor to the age of romanticism, whose traits it assimilated while rejecting or reacting against others” (Victorian People and Ideas 2).

During the Victorian era, there was a surge in interest in mediaeval history. For example, Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, which were published between 1814 and 1831, served as a major source of inspiration for Victorian writers who wrote not only about the age of chivalry, but also were interested in examining older models of society to re-employ them in their time. Novels and poems from the period also emphasised the contrast between the opulent regency era and the industrial times; Emma’s opulent, regency era Heartfield gave way to Alton Locke’s grimy, dark, and industrialized London slums, factories, and outdoor latrines to highlight the social issues experienced, particularly during the 1840s, a decade now most commonly known as “the hungry forties.”

Several reform legislations, notably factory acts that pushed for better working conditions in these “working-class communities” and the First Reform Bill of 1832, were introduced in politics. First Duke of Wellington and Prime Minister at the time, Arthur Wellesley, opposed this reform. This reform was made possible, however, by the continual demands for change from within the Conservative party concerning the growing affluence of the middle class. McCord and Purdue wrote of this Reform Act, “The main aim of its aristocratic creators was to rid the representative system of indefensible features, and to produce a better representation in the House of Commons of the property and intelligence of the nation” (British History 153). In order to distinguish it from the labouring class, suffrage was extended to the newly established, capital-holding class described above. This statute granted the right to property to small landowners, shopkeepers, businessmen, and farmers who “paid a yearly rental of £10 or more and some lodgers” (The Reform Act 1832 - UK Parliament). By providing the right to vote to

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the common man, the Second Reform Bill of 1867, an extension of the first and a product of the Chartist movement, doubled the electorate. (Second Great Reform Act, 1867 - UK Parliament). Despite the wealth and power of the British during the century, the Victorians encountered obstacles. In later years, there was a downturn in the economy, an increase in importation fees, constant strikes sustained by workers’ unions, and an increasingly violent “Irish question.”

This century was so wide and full of change that it is impossible to pinpoint its beginning and finish. In addition, the period was not static during its duration. It is usually believed that there were three “micro eras” within the Victorian era: the “Early Victorian period” from 1837 to 1851, the “Middle Victorian period” from 1851 to 1870, and the

“Late Victorian period” from 1870 to 1901. However, these dates are not set. Some historians believe that the Victorian era began with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, while others believe that the industrial revolution in the 18th century marked the beginning of the era. Susie Steinbach chooses 1820 because it was a “liminal year” (Understanding the Victorians 3) that included the almost complete emergence of the middle class, a massive urbanisation project, and the Queen Caroline Affair, a significant event in British history and a further instigator of the radical movement experienced in the century. Steinbach contends that the period ended with the outbreak of World War I, but other academics consider it to have ended with the death of Queen Victoria; David Altick, for his part, proposes that the period ended in the 1880s, citing literary sources to support his position.

This was a “limbo” phase that would evolve into the Edwardian era and eventually be the topic of “modernism’s onslaught” since society had begun displaying fears about the future (Hamilton 178). “The concerns of those late Victorian years were not so much the unfinished business of the past as the steadily more urgent issues of the future. (…) Later Victorian literature speaks with a quite different voice” (Victorian People and Ideas 16)

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Altick contends that the literature of the late Victorian period was preoccupied with new values and directions, therefore distinguishing itself from the majority of the period’s writings.

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2. The machines and the individual: the Industrial Revolution

Cotton was the major industry at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which began in the second part of the eighteenth century with the creation of the spinning Jenny. This allowed British society to transition from the feudal to the industrial system. With the Jenny, a single worker could weave with sixteen to eighteen spindles, allowing for increased yarn production. As time progressed, more weavers were required;

consequently, according to Engels, weekly salaries increased to four pounds. Farming weavers disappeared and were replaced by wage-earning weavers with nothing to their name. Thus, Britain witnessed the emergence of the proletariat (Engels 18).

Investing in spinning-Jennies resulted in the expansion of industries in industrial zones. By concentrating machines in a huge structure, companies could produce more yarn and generate a greater profit in less time. Later, the spinning-Jenny was improved to accommodate a greater number of raw materials. These improvements resulted in the

Fig. 2. Unknown author. Woman using a Spinning Jenny, C18

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invention of The Mule in 1785, a more advanced machine. Following this, the factory system dominated the weaving of cotton, and eventually wool and flax.

The spinning Jenny, the steam engine, and the mule introduced both positive and negative changes to industrialization. On the one hand, manufactured goods were more available because they were cheaper; commerce, capital, national riches, and the proletariat all flourished. On the other hand, the normalisation of machines resulted in the loss of employment stability and property holdings for the working class.

Cities expanded as industrialization expanded. There was an exodus from the south and the centre of the country at the turn of the century, as there was more urban employment in the north than agriculture production. This migration resulted in the establishment of the industrial triangle in the midlands, encompassing the territory between Liverpool, Newcastle, and Birmingham. The exponential growth of towns asked for an update on commodities. First, a revolution in transportation was necessary to ensure large-scale production and delivery of goods. In this matter, private initiative allowed for the bettering of roads, leading to the creation of the turnpike roads (toll roads); John Macadam built gutters on the roads, introducing the concept of water flow, and canals were built all over British territory to accommodate the idea of an internal market. The Grand Trunk canal connected West and East Britain, establishing connections with the rivers Mersley and Trent, thus covering the entire industrial area. The period between the 1760s and the 1830s and 40s saw economic growth, better housing due to better transportation of materials as well as the bettering of the British diet.

In addition to the aforementioned developments, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) introduced economic liberalism and the concept of laissez-faire into Britain’s society. This economic treaty aimed to introduce French concepts already in motion in the kingdom. The phrase is derived from the French phrase “laissez faire,

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laissez aller, laissez passer,” which translates to “let it be done, let it go, let it pass,” and contains Adam Smith’s core beliefs of economic liberalism. Smith argued that the only beneficiary of mercantilism was the producer due to its taxation. In turn, he believed that the economy should self-regulate according to the law of supply and demand. Smith developed the term “invisible hand” to describe the idea that natural laws (associated with the divine) would always restore order and balance the market without state-regulated interference. The author also urged for the division of labour, in which one individual would be responsible for only one aspect of the manufacturing process. This made production more profitable as more commodities were created, which led to a reduction in pricing and, thus, better accessibility. Despite the damage to the British economy during the “hungry forties,” the economy was strengthened in the 1850s and 1860s, making Britain the strongest economy in the world prior to its decline during the “dark ages” of late Victorian history.

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3. Fractured Britain

Victorian society was distinguished by centuries of tradition and a tight social stratification. For Altick (17), social hereditary superiority was doomed to vanish, as time progressed and presented a more fluid sort of society, where blood was not an issue as much as money. Consequently Still, the aristocracy of the Victorian era insisted on maintaining its elevated status by maintaining strong barriers between classes. “the intricate pattern of a pluralistic society divided both vertically and horizontally was obscured in an onrush of universally shared sentiment” (18-19) says Altick, who notes that Englishness transcended socioeconomic strata, uniting wealthy and poor alike during wartime and sorrow.

3.1.The Classes

The British aristocracy has been instrumental in shaping the country and nation.

Largely responsible for the flourishing of English civilization from the time of Elizabeth I to that of George II” (Altick 21) this group represented old Britain, engaged in a society of their own, preserved their blood and rights to government and liked to maintain distance from other social groups – “(…) the majority of aristocratic marriages were naturally enough at the same social level. A complex network of family relationships helped to hold together the great ‘cousinhood’ of the aristocracy” (McCord and Purdue 104). During the Victorian era, their confined social circle was threatened by the newly wealthy, i.e., the middle class of industrial capitalists who protested aristocratic idleness, which earned them the title “social parasites.”

The Bourgeoisie consisted of both the gentry and the middle-class. The gentry were those members of the aristocracy who did not contribute to the family fortune. They were referred to as gentlemen and baronets and were members of the restricted top social

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circle due to marriage and blood; they were also regarded as the model for small-town societies across the country. The middle-class is an “umbrella phrase” encompassing micro-social groups that did not qualify as upper class but were not as destitute as the lower classes (McCord and Purdue 112), thus falling inside Altick’s “grey area of social ambiguity” (26). Below the gentry, the newly established middle-class viewed the industrial revolution as an opportunity to ascend the British social ladder. In the early phases of its existence on the social landscape, it consisted of merchants and shopkeepers;

presently, it consists of industrial capitalists such as manufacturers and foreign traders.

They desired to breach class boundaries by purchasing land from ruined gentlemen of blood, thereby establishing themselves as an economically and liberally opposed force to the land-based aristocracy. Adam Smith’s laissez-faire, free trade, and reform were of interest. Engels, on the other hand, did not hold back when portraying the middle class.

Engels compared the relationship between the factory owner and worker to that between a slave trader and a slave:

In Birmingham, (…) A little boy had been passed through all grades of punishment known to the institution; first locked up in a damp, vaulted, narrow lumber-room; then in the dog-hole twice, the second time three days and three nights; (…) then the tramp-room, (…) [a] disgustingly filthy hole (…) where the official, in the course of his inspection, found two other tattered boys, shrivelled with cold, who had been spending three days there. (294)

The working-class represented most of the British people. As they were sometimes referred to, the poor, the masses, or the million were untrained or semi-skilled.

Prior to industrialization, most people lived in less-than-ideal conditions in the countryside, but they made do with the resources the land supplied since it was more important to be fed and clothed. The enclosure system aggravated this group’s

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predicament, as they struggled to put food on the table due to poor income. As a result of industrialisation, there was a migration to large cities where human resources were required. The conditions remained unjustifiable, but this group tried to overcome their struggles with factory work.

This class, especially in large cities, and their living conditions were largely responsible for the enormous Victorian social awakening. This manifested itself particularly in literary works and led to the emergence of a new fiction genre: the condition of England novel or the industrial novel. In the 1840s, the social novel dominated the literary scene, and many authors, including Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, supported it. In these accounts of Victorian adversity, the labouring poor were portrayed as uncultured, illiterate, alcoholic, and living in horrific conditions. A portion of this may have been a result of Irish immigration to Britain and the image painted of these individuals.

According to Engels, the Irish were illiterate, unclean, and unskilled, perpetuating the image of the working-class individual as drunken and negligent. Thomas Carlyle was of the same opinion, and he accused the government of misruling Ireland, hence producing a bad landscape that drove poor Irishmen to flee their nation – “We English pay, even now, the bitter smart of long centuries of injustice to our neighbour Island” (Chartism 182). Carlyle’s account depicts the Irish as savages wrapped in filth.

However, as Swift indicates, statements that the Irish live apart from the society of the host country are a fallacy, as is the argument that only poor Irishmen migrate to Britain, even though this group is the most prevalent. The impoverished Irish lived with the poor English, while the wealthy Irish resided with the wealthy English (Victorian Literature and Culture 76).

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The working-class toiled up to twelve-hour stints for minimal compensation;

they were completely under the factory owner's authority and operated in unsafe, unhygienic facilities that lacked oxygen flow and sanitation. As families struggled to satisfy their basic needs, child labour persisted, with twelve-hour shifts and maltreatment if the children performed poorly. This enclosed, harmful workplace caused physical harm to the employee. As a physician of the time recounts in Engels’ The Condition,

I never saw the peculiar bending of the lower ends of the thigh bones before I came to Leeds. At first, I thought it was rachitis (…). Thus far, I have seen about a hundred such cases, and can, most decidedly, express the opinion that they are the consequences of overwork. So far as I know they were all mill children (…)”

(Francis Sharps qtd. In Engels 162)

3.2. The North and South divide: the folklore of northernness In his 1937 work The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell describes his observations on social unfairness and industrial life in northern England. Orwell contends, “A Yorkshireman in the South will always take care to let you know that he regards you as an inferior” (104). This claim closely relates to what the author refers to as northernness, or pride in coming from the northern region. It is evident that the North-South split is at least as conceptual as it is geographical. Baker and Billige assert that conceptual arguments cannot be properly mapped, even though the geographical limitations of the division are substantial yet debatable, and that the divide cannot be completely identified.

As depicted in figure 3, the geographical and contemporary division lies in the Midlands, with most of the region connected with the North. The cause for this was the region’s changing interests. As some Midland cities became industrialised, the region’s affinity with southern values diminished. Despite this, other researchers draw the line elsewhere,

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including the Midlands more, less, or not at all, while others believe there is no divide to mention.

Sociologically speaking, Hazeldine argues that there is a notion of Northern culture, although it does not echo nationalist ideology. In reality, he contends that

“regional identities in England have been levelled out by a millennium of centralised rule”

(The Northern Question 4). Donald Horne describes “ambivalence caused by the industrial revolution” (God is an Englishman 22), wherein the North was viewed as the developing region of the country and the South as the region governed by tradition. Mark Billinge feels that between 1750 and 1830, the connection between the agrarian South and the rising North was still undergoing “crucial renegotiation” (Geographies of England 10). This process never fully concluded because, as time went, both regions grew

Fig. 3. The North of England. Tom Hazeldine, 2020.

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independently. According to Hazeldine, England was divided between older capitalist sectors in the south – commerce, finance, and agriculture – and cutting-edge industrial concerns in the north (8). Furthermore, as maritime trade advanced, the Northern economy was liberated from London’s economic monopoly. This decentralisation movement presented the Midlands and northern cities with new opportunities made available by the self-made northern businessman, a member of the industrial middle class (Orwell 106). Thus, the time witnessed the North’s liveliness, built in (scientific and cultural) development, reversed social orders, and a new political economy, in contrast to the South’s stagnation, rooted in tradition, superiority, and moral economy (10).

Asa Briggs, renowned historian, wrote that “professional historians have begun to pull apart ‘nation’, ‘economy’ and ‘society’ and to examine the nature and significance of local differentiation” (qtd. In Hazeldine 5). A. J. Hobson, an economist, builds a case for another topic of divergent viewpoints based on his reasoning. His research demonstrated that throughout the Edwardian era, the North voted Liberal or Labour and the South voted Conservative (“The general election: a sociological interpretation,” 112- 3). These voting alternatives were tightly tied to the type of society that existed in each region of the country, particularly the manners in which people earned a living and lived their lives.

In literature, however, like in folklore, the concept of the north is carried across generations and geographic regions, and thus contributes to the construction of concepts of the split. For Cazamian, “this profound con-trast was, for the future, to be an essential part of English life and a fertile theme for moral, economic, and artistic consideration”

(The Social Novel in England 226). As with folklore, the narrative of the division is passed on orally and is based solely on preconceived notions and the need to maintain one’s social place so as not to appear lower before the other.

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3.3. The Church and the challenges of science

The Church schism that resulted in the formation of the Church of England reflects a significant division in British society. Prior to the 16^th century, Britain related to the Roman Catholic Church, although Irish Christianity had an influence. Although it was unlawful for a couple who had been joined under God to divorce, King Henry VIII was adamant about his choice to divorce his wife. Pope Clement VII dismissed his request to annul his marriage to Spanish Princess Catherine of Aragon on the grounds that he was a king. This refusal prompted him to command the Archbishop of Canterbury to grant him a divorce so he could marry Anne Boleyn, his second wife. The denial of the King’s request by the Pope led to the decision to remove England/Britain from Catholic control, resulting in the establishment of a church that permitted the King's forbidden wants. The transfer of sovereignty from Rome to London paved the way for “Henry VIII’s Reform programme,” the first phase of the restoration period. Queen Mary attempted to restore the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church on English land while Thomas Cranmer's The Book of Common Prayer introduced Protestant concepts to worship rites.

However, the concept of the Church of England was not fully realised until Elizabeth I's time, with the Anglican Compromise. The Church allied itself with the throne and influenced both social and religious life, fostering and deepening the moral obligations and social consciousness of the Victorian era. In Victorian England, the Church was divided into three sections: “Low Church,” which encompassed dissenting religious groups like the Evangelicals and strict moral ways of life; “Broad Church,”

which advocated for the broad inclusivity of the Church of England, unchanged since its earliest days; and “High Church,” which referred to those who, like the Oxford Movement, aligned their religious beliefs and morals with the Roman Catholics.

Members of this group defended the Church's authority based on tradition, not liberalism.

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Despite their internal divisions, the Church remained unified during times of difficulty. During this century, the Church fought against utilitarianism and Benthamism, which advocated for "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," to quote Jeremy Bentham. Bentham established a place for theological and philosophical discussions surrounding the concept of the Church as a life-regulating institution, relying on men and women to be the moral guardians of their conduct. Moreover, this philosophical notion was associated with the radicals and chartists who represented the lower classes or the subjects the Church attempted to influence.

The expanding scientific discoveries and treatises of the 19th century presented the Church with yet another source of contention. Das Leben Jesu (1835) by David Friedrich Strauss presented an interpretation of the Bible that tended towards the scientific and reasonable, rendering it a false document on the origins of Humanity. Lord Tennyson’s “Terrible Muses,” Astronomy and Geology, were significant subjects throughout the Victorian era because they provided challenging perspectives on Humanity. The vast majority of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poetry reflects his interest in science. A. J. Meadows claims that Tennyson was more interested in science than religion, as he rejected natural theology during his time at Cambridge University (“Tennyson and 19^th century science” 114). The following verse from “In Memoriam A.

H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 124” substantiates this claim:

I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle's wing, or insect’s eye;

Nor thro' the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun:(...) (lines 4-8)

Charles Darwin, Tennyson’s Cambridge classmate, made significant contributions to the debate over the origin of mankind. People interpreted his The Origin of the Species (1859)

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in a variety of ways, including as a thesis on progress and a direct critique of the biblical notion of Man. This did not imply that Darwin’s theories were anti-Christian, nevertheless. In fact, Tennyson brought up the concept when he spoke with the researcher.

The scientist responded, “No, it does not,” to his argument that “Your hypothesis does not make against Christianity” (Meadows 115).

The young men and women of our day are fast parting from their parents and each other; the more thoughtful are wandering either towards Rome, towards sheer materialism, or towards an unchristian and unphilosophic spiritualism.

(qtd. in Greenblatt and Robson 14)

wrote Charles Kingsley of the general sense of progress and dispute that caused Victorian anxieties on many levels.

Despite the era’s general prosperity, Greenblatt and Robson conclude that, once again, disagreements lie at the heart of Victorian society (The Norton Anthology of English Literature 14).

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3.4. Chartism and class consciousness

From 1836 through 1848, the working class-led Chartist movement sought to transform British politics. Growing class consciousness, fuelled by years of neglect in several areas, including the unfair lowering of worker earnings with the implementation of the poor rates, made this movement viable. Combinations and Trade Unions that worked to initiate apprentices, create funds for times of need, among other initiatives, as well as the founding of the London Corresponding Society in 1792 that educated the working class in political matters so that they would understand the meaning of their demands, all contributed to this growing consciousness.

It immediately results from the 1832 Reform Bill’s omission of the working- class’s significant role in British society. “The People’s Charter” (1838), signed by William Lovett and Henry Hetherington, was distributed throughout the community and outlined six key demands about the situation of the working class, including the right to vote, remuneration of MPs, and equitable and proportional voting systems. The leaflet not only brought attention to pressing societal issues but also sparked discussion among the upper classes (Swift 70). But discussion did not imply backing. As a result, the first petition had no chance of persuading people who had a voice in parliament, particularly the middle class. After the first petition was rejected by parliament in 1842, causing popular anger, a second petition was issued, but it was also rejected, leading to further agitation among the populace. Due in part to penny newspapers of the era, particularly The Northern Star, edited by Feargus O’Connor, which was renowned for promoting violence above morality for the chartist cause, the movement began to be linked with reform via violence rather than with constitutional reform. The Poor Man’s Guardian,

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which sided with the working-class cause, promoted universal suffrage, and was, overall, more moderate than The Northern Star, was another significant penny paper.

Near the conclusion of the decade, Chartism began to lose support and was discredited as a reform strategy. The lack of disruption that was anticipated following the rejection of the third and final chartist petition to parliament served as proof of this.

Although Roger Swift writes that “the Irish made a key contribution to the latter phase of Chartism by adding a revolutionary cutting edge to a movement that, in essence, believed in winning political concessions from the state by constitutional rather than revolutionary means” (Victorian Literature and Culture 79), the movement’s demise in 1848 was compelled by the lack of support for it. In the years that followed, the economy flourished and new reform laws that mostly incorporated the objectives of the chartist movement were implemented in response to the accepted need for reform.