Reform Acts: Chartism, Social Agency, and the Victorian Novel, 1832–1867

The observation has been made numerous times that Chartism was primarily, busily discursive. The violence of the Newport Rising in 1839 or during the Preston Strike of 1842, for example, cannot be overlooked, but the Charter itself made its point (or its six points) on paper and three petitions mark its history. As England was the most industrialized country in the world at the time and its proletariat the most developed, Marxist theory would have a revolution starting on the streets of Manchester, but that did not happen and the absence of continental-style uprisings in Victorian England has given rise to a great deal of speculation. Though nicely put, it cannot be that Hector Berlioz's comment during the 10 April Kennington Common demonstration – ‘my poor friends, you know as much about starting a riot as the Italians about writing a symphony’ – is historically sufficient.1 Chris Vanden Bossche's Reform Acts does not take up this question of Britain's omitted revolution directly, but by examining the discursive struggle to define and delimit legitimate social agency and action, his book helps to explain Britain's slow path to social and political change. Vanden Bossche asserts that Whigs Tories, and Chartists – all of whom promised that they were best able to speak for and strengthen the entire nation – considered questions of social agency almost exclusively in relation to parliament and parliamentary reform. Since the 1990s, a number of studies have taken up similar projects on the languages of reform. In The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics, John Plotz examines the representation of crowds in popular Victorian media, seeing a ‘tussle for the right to define public speech and action’ (p. 3).2 John Belchem points out that ‘What set popular radicals apart was not the language of their programme of parliamentary reform, a mere commonplace throughout the period, but the exhilarating manner in which it was propounded’ (p. 2).3 Gareth Stedman Jones's use of the ‘linguistic turn’ in Chartist studies, followed by the work of James Vernon and James Epstein, all of whom Vanden Bossche relies upon for the foundations of his argument, centred debate on the constitutionalist languages of reform and radicalism.4 Public discourse in the first half of the nineteenth century has been shaped by a struggle between various political groups, identifying themselves with various classes, to define what counted as legitimate public speech and action. It is often forgotten that Feargus O'Connor celebrated the success of the 10 April 1848 ‘monster meeting’ at Kennington Common because it had ‘disarmed the Press of the factions’ and now the ‘Charter fills every mouth, and is the one topic which interests all classes’.5 Beyond managing expectations and creating a different narrative from the one emerging out of the mainstream press after the meeting, O'Connor was making clear the legitimacy of demonstrations, public oratory and Chartism itself. Vanden Bossche's book is a welcome addition to the study of social discourse and social agency not only because it recognizes that no discourse exists in isolation, but also because it gives centrality to the Chartist voice in the public debate, something that the mainstream press after Kennington Common was loath to do, as O'Connor's defensive rhetoric surely exemplifies. The refreshing centrality that Vanden Bossche gives to Chartist discourse generates a new way of looking at the social-problem fiction written during the time of the first Reform Bill. Vanden Bossche sees both mainstream and radical novelists taking up questions of social agency raised by the Chartist movement, in addition to showing awareness of the arguments raised by Tory and Whig reformers. Instead of a familiar sparring match between conservative, aristocratic forces and liberal, middle-class ones, we also witness the effect that the Chartist movement had on the construction of the Victorian novel, and on public and parliamentary discourse more generally as well. By adopting a tripartite model, Reform Acts moves beyond many of the books we have on ‘the industrial novel’ (which Vanden Bossche quite rightly renames ‘the political novel’). Too often, present-day commentators simply reproduce the debate over reform with which the Whigs and Tories were most comfortable. As Kevin Gilmartin argues, ‘Early nineteenth-century radicalism can be defined as a protest against the dominance of two political parties’ (p. 11).6Reform Acts reminds us of the many voices engaged in the debate over social acts and social agency, and the many more voices vying to be heard and considered. Vanden Bossche examines how the Victorians themselves envisioned social agency through parliamentary reform and how the discourses surrounding social agency were used to either license or restrict it. A book of literary criticism, Reform Acts gives special regard to the Victorian novel from the 1830s to the 1850s as having some ability to reconstitute the discourses that were emerging in parliament and the papers. For good reason, the Victorian novel (say Jane Eyre) is often seen as developing themes surrounding the struggle of the self, defining personal agency in a socially complex world, but Vanden Bossche makes clear that the concept of social agency – the actions and attempted actions of social groups – was also critical to the Victorians themselves and to the Victorian novel. He points out that, whereas parliamentary and Chartist discourses were locked into a debate over the acquisition or expansion of the franchise, the Victorian novel imagined alternative forms of social agency, a result of a dialogic impulse that combines and confuses the class-based, oppositional arguments being made on political stages. Although it would still be possible to construct a history of the nineteenth-century novel as merely responding to, absorbing and adapting to the more significant ‘historical moment’, Vanden Bossche emphasizes how the novel played a role in the emerging debate, expanding upon the definition of what could constitute social agency beyond parliamentary representation. By framing his discussion around the various ways the Victorians themselves engaged with the question of effecting social change, Vanden Bossche offers new insights into a wide range of Victorian titles. Each section of the book describes a set of novelists engaging with available political discourses to represent, evaluate and envision forms of social agency. Vanden Bossche illustrates how three historical novels – Pierce Egan's Wat Tyler, Harrison Ainsworth's Guy Fawkes and Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge – imagined social agency in light of moral and physical force Chartism. Benjamin Disraeli's Coningsby and Sybil, R. S. Surtees's Hillingdon Hall and Thomas Martin Wheeler's Sunshine and Shadow are discussed in terms of how they envision social agency relative to contemporary debates over land reform and the agency land provided. Charles Kingsley's Yeast and Alton Locke, and Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton and North and South are discussed in relation to the Christian Socialist conception of social agency, especially as concerns the discourses of cooperative association and respectful dialogue. Vanden Bossche concludes the study with a short chapter on two later Victorian novels that reflect on the struggles of the 1832 Reform Bill as they grapple with the 1867 Bill, William Howitt's The Man of the People and George Eliot's Felix Holt. Like all of the great books on Victorian political reform, such as Patrick Brantlinger's The Spirit of Reform, Reform Acts offers a rhetorical analysis of reform that takes account of discourses lying beyond the House of Commons and the legislative, suggesting the importance of the linguistic and cultural systems in which the reform movements took their shape. It has almost become the stuff of legend that Nancy Armstrong offhandedly said in the course of a lecture that ‘the Victorian novel is more historical than history, more political than politics, and more myself than I am’. Armstrong's insight is an important reminder of the centrality of Victorian fiction not only in some of our lives but in Victorian life as well. Reform Acts demonstrates this level of appreciation and knowledge of the Victorian novel, and not only the same novels that generally come up in discussions of the Condition-of-England narrative. Vanden Bossche's Reform Acts is a truly important contribution to the study of Victorian politics, culture and literature.

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