Writing on the Luddite Riots through the lens of the "Hungry 'Forties": Social Unrest and Industrial Reform in 'Shirley' by Charlotte Bronte
‘All men, taken singly, are more or less selfish, and taken in bodies, they are intensely so. The British merchant is no exception to this rule: the mercantile classes illustrate it strikingly. These classes certainly think too exclusively of making money.’p.127
The edition of Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley that I read was the Wordsworth Classics Edition, published in 2009. While much of the novel focusses on issues of, and attitudes towards, women, one can easily connect this to comment Bronte makes on the condition of the poor. To some extent, the two groups face very similar circumstances – both are forced to depend upon others, neither has any political representation, and both middle-class women and the working-class are controlled and ultimately owned by an unfair social system. So, while one could argue that in many ways the subjects of Luddite rebellion provides a mere back-drop, or sub-plot, for a contrast between the situations of Shirley and Caroline, discussion of one is often linked to discussion of the other. The back-drop subject of social and economic upheaval in the novel is even more interesting when one considers that while the novel is set in the period 1811-1812, Bronte wrote it during the year 1848, also a time of great economic change and difficulty. On this basis, I intend to briefly discuss the effect that this period had upon the novel.
Charlotte Bronte’s novel Shirley was written and published at the end of the 1840s, a period of great social upheaval and political uncertainty. However, Bronte’s focus is not on the issues of her own day, but those facing her native Yorkshire during the Luddite Riots of 1811-1816. ‘Luddites were men who took the name of a (perhaps) mythical individual, Ned Ludd who was reputed to live in Sherwood Forest. The Luddites were trying to save their livelihoods by smashing industrial machines developed for use in the textile industries of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire. Some Luddites were active in Lancashire also. They smashed stocking-frames and cropping frames among others. There does not seem to have been any political motivation behind the Luddite riots; equally, there was no national organisation. The men merely were attacking what they saw as the reason for the decline in their livelihoods’ (Bloy 2005). In Bronte’s novel, she describes the Luddite attack on the mill of William Cartwright at Rawfolds near Huddersfield, an event involving roughly 150 attackers, of whom two were killed by the soldiers assisting Cartwright in defending the mill. A week later, there was a murder attempt on Cartwright, and a little later another manufacturer was killed. This took place in April 1812, and in June 1813, after another spate of violent machine breaking in Loughborough, six men were executed and three men transported. Following this, Luddism abated somewhat. The riots had, however, been indicative of a much wider problem within English society; while industrial advancement made more money for the owner of the businesses and made things more efficient, the workers suffered greatly. These issues of working class suffering, and the resulting resentment and discord, were not properly dealt with, and were still huge issues at the time in which Charlotte Bronte wrote her novel in 1848, the end of the decade which is known as the ‘hungry forties’.
It has been suggested that Bronte retreated to the earlier period in which her novel is set as a way of exploring the issues that were present during her own time, to avoid the embarrassment to both herself and her family that would have resulted from too harsh a criticism of the events. Chartism, a movement which got its name from the petition, or People’s Charter, which listed the aims of the movement. These were the vote for all men over 21 (since 1831, property-owning men had had voting rights), a secret ballot, becoming an MP to no longer hold a property-owning requirement, electoral districts of the same size, annual elections, and payment for MPs. It could be argued that the most important of these was the demand for universal male suffrage. It was the fear of some that the real aim of the Chartists was the start a revolution and that they were inciting rioting across the country. One such example of these riots is the well-known Preston riot of 1842. Chartism was a national movement, particularly popular in Lancashire and Yorkshire textile towns. Three times the movement urged Parliament to accept petitions, but the most famous of these petitions was the final one, in 1848, which had six million signatures (although many were later found to be faked). This petition was presented at a time when there was much for the ruling classes to fear, with Louis Philippe, France’s last king, removed from the throne early in the year, and revolutionary feeling bubbling across Europe. In 1847, Feargus O’Connor, the popular Chartist leader, had been elected to Parliament. While Chartism did not manage to achieve its aim, the fears it created for the ruling classes remained.
One thing that can be said with a degree of certainty is that the character of Mr Moore is a complex one. It struck me personally as rather odd that some fellow readers have expressed feelings of sympathy towards him, claiming that his behaviour is the result of debts and financial difficulty, and that his apparent coldness and indifference to the suffering of others is due to the system within which he exists, as opposed to any personal failing on his part. However, when one considers Robert Moore alongside his foil, Mr Yorke, this view becomes less clear-cut. Names in Shirley have a certain resonance – note Moore is ambitious, literally always wanting ‘more’, while Yorke uses the regional accent and to some extent embodies Yorkshire. While this is a fairly simplistic device, it is something worth bearing in mind when examining Moore’s character, and what his presence and actions have to say about the circumstances upon which the novel focuses. Moore’s character embodies the Victorian era’s preoccupation with advancement at any cost; early on we are told that ‘“Forward,” was the device stamped upon his soul’p.22. In this situation, the cost is people’s jobs and as a result, the food on their tables. However, Moore does not show any sympathy at all, something with is brought home quite clearly when compared to the character of Shirley, who states quite simply “I have money in hand and I really must do some good with it. The Briarfield poor are badly off; they must be helped.”p.199 In contrast, Moore ‘did not sufficiently care when the new inventions threw their old workpeople out of employ. He never asked himself where those to whom he no longer paid weekly wages found daily bread’p.22. Caroline Helstone points out to Moore that it is “As if your living cloth-dressers were all machines like your frames and shears. In your own house you seem different.”p.54 It seems as if for a long time it genuinely does not occur to Moore to consider how his laid-off workers provide for themselves, and when it is brought to his attention rather aggressively, his response is the blame the system, “you need not suppose that because the course of trade does not always run smooth, and you, and such as you, are sometimes short of work and of bread, that therefore your class are martyrs, and that the whole form of government under which you live is wrong.”p.45. He does believe that if the workers have a problem then they should “worry the Parliament men as much as you please […] but to worry the mill-owners is absurd, and I for one won’t stand for it!”p.104 Moore’s distance from his workers is made very clear with this statement, when one considers that they would not even have been able to vote at that time, so their voices were not easily heard. It is especially interesting to note this when considering that Bronte was writing during a time when political movements were demanding universal male suffrage. Indeed, it is particularly of interest that Moore seems positively bewildered by the reactions of his workers, as he genuinely does not feel that he has any personal responsibility – he is always very aware that destruction of his machines will not help the people anyway, something which strikes Moore are rather absurd, as when he tells the rebellious poor that “If I did as you wish me to do, I should be bankrupt in a month; and would my bankruptcy put bread into your hungry children’s mouths?”p.105 Moore has a certain anonymity and singularity, in the sense that for most of the novel his main concern is his machines and he fails entirely to take the advice of another person. Shirley points out to Caroline that “His mill is his lady-love, Cary! Backed by his factory and his frames, he has all the encouragement he wants and can know. It is not for love or beauty, but for ledger and broadcloth, that he is going to break a spear. Don’t be sentimental; Robert is not so.”p.256 Moore ignores the advice of both Caroline and Sykes when they tell him not to prosecute the machinery destructors, even ignoring Sykes’ fairly bleak warning that it would be “Better [to] give it up. It will excite bad feeling – make a stir – cause perhaps fatal consequences.”p.98 For some, Moore would be a Capitalist hero, defending his property without fear, telling Shirley “I received by this evening’s post a note from the Home Secretary in answer to mine. It appears they are uneasy at the state of matters here in the north; they especially condemn the supiness and pusillanimity of the mill-owners. They say, as I have always said, that inaction, under present circumstances, is criminal, and that cowardice is cruelty, since both can only encourage disorder, and lead finally to sanguinary outbreaks.”p.185 Moore’s foreignness presents a curious angle, then, for many characters take issue with him for this more than for his political beliefs or business ethics. Caroline’s uncle, Mr Helstone, has some valid reasons politically for disliking Moore, but it is the peculiar mention of his foreignness when describing his politics that shows a certain feeling of xenophobia towards Moore, with Helstone stating that they are “Those of a tradesman […] narrow, selfish and unpatriotic.”p.154 Farren, a worker facing difficult times, also takes time to consider Moore’s foreignness as a crime alongside his others, concluding ‘that the foreign mill-owner was a selfish, an unfeeling, and he thought, too, a foolish man.’p.105
As I previously mentioned, Yorke is something of a foil to Moore, in both his nationality and bearing, and also in his treatment of the workers. In the case of Yorke, ‘to his workmen he was considerate and cordial. When he dismissed them from an occupation, he would try to set them on to something else, or, if that was impossible, help them to remove with their families to a district where work might possibly be had.’p.37 Yorke also has sympathy with the rioters, understanding the desperation of their hunger, and recognising that ‘resistance was now a duty.’p.41
Bronte has much in common with other Victorian moralisers of her time when it comes to commenting on the condition of Britain’s poor. She passively argues that it is a problem with the system, but at the same time that the system cannot change as it is part of an unstoppable advancement and progress. Rather like Dickens, Bronte employs a rather ‘wet’ argument that things would improve greatly if only the rich could be nicer to the poor. Bronte also appears to make the clear distinction between those wonderful Victorian concepts of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. One could argue that characters such a such as Farren exist purely to demonstrate this notion – given adequate opportunity (such a loan) he will not squander it, for he does not drink and has no objection to hard work. Thus, Bronte suggests that for men such as he, the rich should put opportunities their way, but only if they are as inhumanly hard-working and selfless as Farren and the rest of the so-called ‘deserving poor’. Bronte’s attitude to the leaders of the rebels is really quite plain, as Moore says of them “You no more sympathise with the poor who are in distress than you sympathise with me. You incite them to outrage for bad purposes of your own; so does the individual called Noah of Tim’s. You two are restless, meddling, impudent scoundrels, whose chief motive-principle is a selfish ambition, as dangerous as it is puerile. The persons behind you are some of them honest thought misguided men; but you two I count as altogether bad.”p.103 This is yet another reflection of the times – a period in which the middle-classes and the wealthy were very wary of agitators and anybody who appeared to be ‘stirring-up trouble’ amongst the working-class. Bronte’s treatment of these agitators and their fates is almost amusing as it seems to be such an afterthought. He discover with not very much fan-fare that the ‘four ringleaders he [Moore] soon scented out and run down. He had attended their trial, heard their conviction and sentence, and seen them safely shipped prior to transportation.’p.392 Seemingly not very much sympathy for these men!
It would be impossible to read Shirley and what it has to say regarding the Luddite Riots without considering the huge effect that Chartism was having at the time the novel was written. I believe that the fears, anxieties and sympathies of the middle-classes were very similar during both periods, making Shirley a fairly good reflection of both. Apologies for such a big gap between posts, I found this to be a very difficult novel and I am also still hard at work on the Jewish Project. Once again, thanks for taking the time to read, and feel free to leave a comment, a tweet or an e-mail. All criticisms are much appreciated! Next week I should hopefully be able to post on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, so check back! Thanks,
- K
No comments:
Post a Comment