Engineering Heroes: Revising the Self-Help Narrative in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cousin Phillis

Samuel Smiles's biography The Life of George Stephenson (1857) and the popular non-fiction book it inspired, Self-Help (1859), reflect the spirit of innovation that gained strength in the 1830s when rapid developments in technological innovation corresponded with radical self-innovation: the individual became empowered to make something of himself by making something. The Life won Smiles literary recognition, but it was Self-Help, the oft-quoted 'bible' of mid-Victorian industrial values, that catapulted the author into fame: 'almost overnight, he became a leading pundit and much-consulted guru'.1 Part of the tremendous appeal of Self-Help was Smiles's prescription for good conduct, which placed success in the hands of the individual:citing examples of what other men had done, as illustrations of what each might, in a greater or less degree, do for himself; [...] upon their own diligent self-culture, self-discipline, and self-control - and, above all, on that honest and upright performance of individual duty, which is the glory of manly character.2The strong emphasis on the 'self ' ('self-culture, self-discipline, and self-control') in the success stories of engineers, inventors, artisans and other self-made-menturned- heroes contributed to the book's enormous popularity. These stories illustrated a new world of possibilities seemingly available to every man. Fiction of the 1850s capitalised on these models, especially Dinah Mulock's John Halifax, Gentleman (1856), which is often identified as the quintessential Smilesian novel.3 The accomplished self-help models, however, were also the targets of its early critics. Just as some fiction writers subscribed wholeheartedly to the self-help philosophy, others, such as Elizabeth Gaskell, challenged problematic aspects of the philosophy in ways that anticipated some of Smiles's self-revisions.In the preface to the second edition of Self-Help reissued in 1866, Smiles felt the need to address the book's criticisms, primarily to explain why the book excluded narratives ending in failure and to clarify that self-help was not a philosophy of solipsism. 'It has been objected to the book', Smiles discloses, 'that too much notice is taken in it of men who have succeeded in life by helping themselves, and too little of the multitude who have failed' (SH, p.3). Smiles grants that it was a matter of authorial choice: 'There is, indeed, no reason why Failure should not have its Plutarch, except that a record of mere failure would probably be found excessively depressing' (p.3-4). He acknowledges that 'the best of men may fail, in the best of causes', but he does not venture any possible explanations for such outcomes. Setbacks should be read rather as a test or opportunity for the individual to prove his determination: 'Failure is the best discipline of the true worker, by stimulating him to renewed efforts, evoking his best powers, carrying him onward in self-culture, self-control, and growth in knowledge and wisdom' (p.4). Smiles displays an unwillingness to consider a man in context or even admit the existence of the complex social and economic networks within which the individual acts and which undoubtedly contribute to his success or failure. Smiles's admitted practice of selection highlights the design behind the self-help narrative and locates it in the generic realm of creative illustration rather than historical realism.Though Smiles conceded to the first complaint of exclusion, he took umbrage at the suggestion that his book promoted selfishness, an error he felt to be unjust: 'the title of the book, which it is now too late to alter, has proved unfortunate, as it has led some, who have judged it merely by the title, to suppose that it consists of a eulogy of selfishness: the very opposite of what it really is, - or at least of what the author intended it to be' (p.3). Though he attributes the error to a surface reading that neglects content, careful readers will detect hints of authorial regret in that last hyphenated clause. …

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