Victorian literature and the Victorian state : character and governance in a liberal society / Lauren M.E. Goodlad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goodlad, Lauren M. E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Politics and literature--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Politics and literature.

Literature and state.

History.

Great Britain.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Literature and state--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Liberalism--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Liberalism.

Social problems in literature.

State, The, in literature.

Liberalism in literature.

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Great Britain--Politics and government--1837-1901.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

xv, 298 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Summary:

Studies of Victorian governance have been profoundly influenced by Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault's groundbreaking genealogy of power in modern societies. Yet, according to Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Foucault's analysis is better suited to the history of the Continent than to that of nineteenth-century Britain, with its decentralized, voluntarist institutional culture and passionate disdain for state interference. Focusing on a wide range of Victorian writing -- from literary figures such as Charles Dickens, George Gissing, Harriet Martineau, J. S. Mill, Anthony Trollope, and H. G. Wells to prominent social reformers such as Edwin Chadwick, Thomas Chalmers, Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, and Beatrice Webb -- Goodlad shows that Foucault's later essays on liberalism and "governmentality" provide better critical tools for understanding the nineteenth-century British state.

Victorian Literature and the Victorian State delves into contemporary debates over sanitary, education, and civil rights reform, the Poor Laws, and the century-long attempt to substitute organized charity for state services. Goodlad's readings elucidate the distinctive quandary of Victorian Britain and, indeed, any modern society conceived in liberal terms: the elusive quest for a "pastoral" agency that is rational, allembracing, and effective but also anti-bureaucratic, personalized, and liberatory. In this study, impressively grounded in literary criticism, social history, and political theory, Goodlad offers a timely post-Foucauldian account of Victorian governance that speaks to the resurgent neoliberalism of our own day.

Contents:

1 Beyond the Panopticon: The Critical Challenge of a Liberal Society 1

2 Making the Working Man Like Me: Charity, the Novel, and the New Poor Law 32

3 Is There a Pastor in the House? Sanitary Reform and Governing Agency in Dickens's Midcentury Fiction 86

4 An Officer and a Gentleman: Civil Service Reform and the Early Career of Anthony Trollope 118

5 A Riddle without an Answer: Character and Education in Our Mutual Friend 159

6 Dueling Pastors, Dueling Worldviews 192

Epilogue: Social Security 238.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [245]-286) and index.

ISBN:

0801869633

OCLC:

51046851