Character and community (-building) : ethics and policing in the novels of Thackeray, Gaskell, and Collins, 1840-1880

Abstract

 In the mid-nineteenth century, the shift from a traditional agrarian economy to industrial capitalism led to tension between communal and individualistic value systems. Dominant Victorian moral discourse propagated the view that long-embedded Christian values like altruism took precedence and were thus inculcated into members of society through the policing of immoral behavior. Through discussions of novels by William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins, this thesis argues that the Victorians’ lived experience belied this prevailing moral stance, and that they encouraged the opposite of altruism, that is, self-interest, as a type of individual participation in the principal movement of the day, industrial capitalism, as well as the burgeoning liberal project of the era. In this vein of liberalism and expanding individual agency, the thesis also examines the ways in which the Victorians thought about democratization and the widening of what was once a knowable community. Whereas social boundaries were once policed as a matter of course, the multitude of societal changes during the period dictated that this was no longer possible or effective. As a rank-based society transformed into a class-based one and agrarian landed wealth was eclipsed by manufacturing fortunes, how did Victorians shift their perceptions of roles traditionally associated with aristocratic values, such as that of the gentleman? How did they cope with the merging of the classes and welcome outsiders to the community? By exploring questions such as these and arguing that the Victorians were moving gradually toward inclusiveness through changes in their own individual mindsets, the thesis seeks to contribute to current strands of research in Victorian studies such as democratization and liberalism. The thesis traces an arc that begins in Chapter One with an exploration of how ambition for tangible wealth and status was and, more importantly, was not policed. In fact, such ambition was, in many cases, encouraged; an emphasis upon appearances, while supposedly viewed as superficial and superfluous in the prevalent moral consciousness, were markers of positive individual agency in an increasingly competitive world. Chapter Two then examines intangible ambitions, such as disingenuous attempts at social climbing and cross-class romance which, the thesis shows, were punished because of the unease with which the Victorians viewed the disintegration of social boundaries without the balancing effect of acquired wealth, refined manners, and influential connections. This chapter also chronicles Gaskell’s and Collins’s search for workable community-building practices as this disintegration became inevitable – the chapter locates agency not only in the rising middle classes, but also in the increasingly vocal working classes. Chapter Three carries these themes to aesthetics through a discussion of elements such as novelistic endings, changes to the form of the realist novel, and the relationship between form and contemporary views on democracy. This chapter brings the thesis to the conclusion that it is the pervasive dissemination of individual agency through the decline of moral and social policing that leads to the gradual widening of the community from knowable to inclusive.