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Reform Acts

Chartism, Social Agency, and the Victorian Novel, 1832–1867

Chris R. Vanden Bossche

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How Victorian novels imagined the idea of social agency.

Reform Acts offers a new approach to prominent questions raised in recent studies of the novel. By examining social agency from a historical rather than theoretical perspective, Chris R. Vanden Bossche investigates how particular assumptions involving agency came into being. Through readings of both canonical and noncanonical Victorian literature, he demonstrates that the Victorian tension between reform and revolution framed conceptions of agency in ways that persist in our own time.

Vanden Bossche argues that Victorian novels sought to...

How Victorian novels imagined the idea of social agency.

Reform Acts offers a new approach to prominent questions raised in recent studies of the novel. By examining social agency from a historical rather than theoretical perspective, Chris R. Vanden Bossche investigates how particular assumptions involving agency came into being. Through readings of both canonical and noncanonical Victorian literature, he demonstrates that the Victorian tension between reform and revolution framed conceptions of agency in ways that persist in our own time.

Vanden Bossche argues that Victorian novels sought to imagine new forms of social agency evolving from Chartism, the dominant working-class movement of the time. Novelists envisioned alternative forms of social agency by employing contemporary discourses from Chartism's focus on suffrage as well as the means through which it sought to obtain it, such as moral versus physical force, land reform, and the cooperative movement.

Each of the three parts of Reform Acts begins with a chapter that analyzes contemporary conversations and debates about social agency in the press and in political debate. Succeeding chapters examine how novels envision ways of effecting social change, for example, class alliance in Barnaby Rudge; landed estates as well as finely graded hierarchy and politicians in Coningsby and Sybil; and reforming trade unionism in Mary Barton and North and South. By including novels written from a range of political perspectives, Vanden Bossche discovers patterns in Victorian thinking that are easily recognized in today’s assumptions about social hierarchy.

Reviews

Reviews

Chris R. Vanden Bossche explores the subject of reform as the dominant ideal in English progressive politics... his work does offer some illuminating insights into this particular trait of Victorian self-representation.

Students of 19th-century history, literature, and political science will find fresh insights here.

Thoughtful... persuasive... The key contribution of the book is the way Vanden Bossche highlights curious and subtle rhetorical tricks whereby writers of the Whig and Tory side seek to align the interests of the working class with their own.

A welcome and timely boost to scholarship in the relationship between literature and politics in mid-nineteenth-century Britain.

At once boldly revisionist and meticulously argued, Reform Acts re-orients our approach to class politics and ideological criticism. Asking how the Victorians themselves understood the concept of agency, Vanden Bossche traces dynamic interchanges among class antagonists across multiple genres to delineate the shape of social change in the nineteenth century.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
264
ISBN
9781421412085
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Social Agency: The Franchise, Class Discourse, and National Narratives
Part I: Making Physical Force Moral: The Dilemma of Chartism, 1838–1842
2. Social Agency in the Chartist and

Acknowledgments
1. Social Agency: The Franchise, Class Discourse, and National Narratives
Part I: Making Physical Force Moral: The Dilemma of Chartism, 1838–1842
2. Social Agency in the Chartist and Parliamentary Press
3. Egalitarian Chivalry and Popular Agency in Wat Tyler
4. Unconsummated Marriage and the "Uncommitted" Gunpowder Plot in Guy Fawkes
5. Class Alliance and Self-Culture in Barnaby Rudge
Part II: "The land! The land! The land!": Land Ownership as Political Reform, 1842–1848
6. Agricultural Reform, Young England's Allotments, and the Chartist Land Plan
7. The Landed Estate, Finely Graded Hierarchy, and the Member of Parliament in Coningsby and Sybil
8. Agricultural Improvement and the Squirearchy in Hillingdon Hall
9. The Land Plan, Class Dichotomy, and Working-Class Agency inSunshine and Shadow
Part III: The Social Turn: From Chartism to Cooperation and Trade Unionism, 1848–1855
10. Christian Socialism and Cooperative Association
11. Clergy and Working-Class Cooperation in Yeast and Alton Locke
12. Reforming Trade Unionism in Mary Barton and North and South
Coda: Rethinking Reform in the Era of the Second Reform Act, 1860–1867
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Author Bio
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Chris R. Vanden Bossche

Chris R. Vanden Bossche is a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, author of Carlyle and the Search for Authority, editor of Thomas Carlyle: Historical Essays, and coeditor of Thomas Carlyle: Past and Present.