The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction

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10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen

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The Politics of Cu stom i n Ei ghteenth- Centu ry Br itish Fic tion


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Scarlet Bowen



The Politics of Cu stom i n Ei ghteenth- Century Br itish Fic tion

THE POLITICS OF CUSTOM IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION

All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10354–2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bowen, Scarlet, 1968– The politics of custom in eighteenth-century British fiction / Scarlet Bowen. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–10354–2 (hardback) 1. English fiction—18th century—History and criticism. 2. Popular culture in literature. 3. Manners and customs in literature. I. Title. II. Title: Popular legacies. PR858.S615B66 2010 823'.5—dc22 2009052382 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company First edition: August 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.



Copyright © Scarlet Bowen, 2010.


For Luzia Etienne Bowen-Pérez





List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

1

1

Revitalizing the Moral Economy in the Wake of the South Sea Bubble: Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724)

23

2 Pamela’s “Neat Country Apparel” (1740): Ballads and Scribbling Servants in the Literary Marketplace

53

3 “The Real Soul of a Man in Her Breast”: Memoirs of Female Soldiers and Military Nationalism, 1740–1750

79

4 “Lost in a Mob of Impudent Plebeians”: Landed Gentry, British Identity, and Popular Culture in Humphry Clinker (1771)

103

5 Caleb Williams (1794): Radical Incursions into Customary Politics and Genre

135

Epilogue

163

Notes

175

Bibliography

197

Index

215



Contents




4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

“The Blacksmith lets his Iron grow cold attending to the Taylor’s News.” 1 July 1772. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University “The State Quack.” September 1762. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University “A Poor Man Loaded with Mischief. Or John Bull and His Sister Peg.” September 1762. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University “The Frenchman at Market.” 1770. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

117

123

125

126



L i st of Figu res




This project began in its earliest stages as a dissertation for the English department at the University of Texas, Austin, where I had the opportunity to work with a wonderful group of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature scholars, including Ann Cvetkovich, James Garrison, Elizabeth Hedrick, Susan Heinzelman, and Helena Woodard. I am especially appreciative of my dissertation directors Lance Bertelsen and Lisa Moore for extending their enthusiastic support, intelligence, and guidance long after I finished my graduate work; this book could not have been completed without them. At the University of Texas, Austin, I was also fortunate to be a part of a group of students who have continued over the years to inspire me with their insatiable intellectual curiosity and commitment to academic enterprises: Jennifer Bean, Sandra Soto, Ralph Rodriguez, Katie Kane, and David Alvarez. I am especially indebted to fellow graduate George Boulukos, dear friend and colleague extraordinaire who made himself available for weekly, sometimes daily, conversations about the book, and on whose self-deprecating wit and dry sense of humor I remain unabashedly dependent. My career path has been long and winding, with many enriching stops along the way. I thank colleagues for their intellectual generosity and friendship at William Paterson University—Donna Perry, Linda Hamalian, Roze Hentschell, and George Robb—as well as those at the University of Texas, El Paso—Charles Ambler, Yolanda Leyva, Gregory Ramos, Michael Topp, and Craig Wells. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, I am especially indebted to John Stevenson, Charlotte Sussman, Katherine Eggert, and Jeff Cox, who demonstrated faith in the book project when it was still in many ways inchoate; their support gave me a career-changing opportunity to flourish as a scholar. Several colleagues from the University of Colorado, Boulder, have helped to sharpen the book’s focus, arguments, and prose. Catherine Labio graciously read and commented on Chapter 1. Anna Brickhouse, Arnab Chakladar, Valerie Forman, and William West gave invaluable feedback on Chapter 3 as



Acknowledg ments

Ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts

part of the Junior Faculty Writing Group. Jill Heydt-Stevenson’s comments and insightful questions greatly enhanced Chapter 5, as did Sue Zemka’s suggestions for the epilogue. David Glimp provided new ways to think about framing the project and helped me navigate the often bewildering path to book publication. Michael Preston and Cathy Preston shared their extensive knowledge of and resources in early modern popular culture. Through the years, but particularly in the last weeks of finishing the book, I experienced levels of support that went well beyond the bounds of collegiality. For their compassion, good cheer, limitless intellectual energy and engaging conversations, I give heartfelt thanks to those already mentioned and also to Jane Garrity, Nan Goodman, Cheryl Higashida, Daniel Kim, Karen Jacobs, Janice Ho, Kelly Hurley, Richelle Munkhoff, Padma Rangaranjan, Elisabeth Sheffield, Jordan Stein, Teresa Toulouse, and William Kuskin. You all make it such a pleasure to go to work everyday. I owe a special thanks, too, to several students whose enthusiasm for eighteenth-century literature has been positively infectious: Josikate Berry, Janine Haugen, Krystal McMillen, Amanda Perez, and Sarah Jane Gray. Megan Cox provided research assistance that was amazingly efficient and thorough, and Jeanine Reinke, Peggy McKinney, and Randall Fullington as staff of the English department have helped me in innumerable ways. I have been privileged through various academic conference venues to meet a host of eighteenth-century scholars who are not only inspiring for their brilliant insights into the field, but who also are wonderful supporters of junior colleagues. For their encouragement, comments on drafts, and professional advice, I thank Katherine Binhammer, Scott Black, Jill Campbell, Tita Chico, William Christmas, Fraser Easton, Robert Markley, Melissa Mowry, Sally O’Driscoll, Ruth Perry, Hope Saska, Laura Stevens, Kristina Straub, and Kathleen Wilson. Hans Turley and Vincent Woodard passed away before this project was completed, but I’m grateful for this opportunity to express my gratitude for their intellectual gifts and to honor their memory. Much of the archival research for the book was completed before the availability of Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, and thus I am indebted to several librarians and research staff who shared their expertise at various research facilities: The Newberry Library, The Huntington Library, The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, The Lewis Walpole Library at Yale, The Yale Center for British Art, and The British Library. For funding to travel to these archives, I thank the Center for the Humanities and the Arts and the Graduate Committee on the Arts and Humanities at the University of Colorado as well as the Office of Research and 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


xii

xiii

Sponsored Projects at the University of Texas at El Paso. An article version of Chapter 3 appeared in Eighteenth-Century Life. It has been a pleasure to work with the people at Palgrave Macmillan. Thanks to Farideh Koohi-Kamali and Brigitte Shull for their interest in the project and to Lee Norton for his cheerful and efficient shepherding of the manuscript through various stages of publication. I thank my parents Sandra Blandford and Kenneth Bowen for their love and support; they bestowed a passion for learning and modeled incredible drive and resourcefulness in pursuing a university education. Amy Keltner has become a member of my family over the years. I’m grateful for her caring heart and unsurpassed friendship as well as for the generous hospitality of her husband, Jason Stallings. Bringing simultaneously a human being and book into the world is no easy feat, and certainly cannot be done without plenty of help. I thank those who gave me the gift of time and peace of heart by looking after my daughter Luzia while I wrote: Maria Flamenco, Stacie Adams, Carmen Morales, all exemplary child-care providers. I am also appreciative of the love and kindness of the Pérez side of Luzia’s family: her Amá, her abuela Emma, and tías/ tíos: Cristelia, Nick, Sonja, Thomas, Yolanda, Selia, and Lena. For over a decade, Emma Pérez inspired me with her love of the written word and with her conscientious attention to the ethics of all we say, do and write as academics. I am especially thankful for my daughter Luzia’s joyful presence. I offer this book as a tribute to her and to the daily reminder she provides of the inextricable delights in playing and learning.



Ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts




England, that nation of change and novelty. —Aphra Behn’s The Rover [F]or what recommends [Richardson’s novels] to the notice of the present age is, their novelty, and their gratifying an idle and insatiable curiousity. In a few years that novelty will wear off, and that curiousity will be equally gratified by other compositions, it may be, as trifling, but who will then have the additional charm of novelty, to recommend them. Such, Sir, must be the fate of all works which owe their success to a present capricious humor, and have no real intrinsic worth to support them. —“Critical remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa and Pamela” (5)

A

s the preceding epigraphs illustrate, the English novel made its debut in an age both irresistibly intrigued by and deeply distrustful of novelty. Periodical essays abound with both condemnatory and enthusiastic commentary on the flood of new ideas, peoples, material goods, and fashions making their entrance through Britain’s ports, public entertainments, and proliferating print markets. For better and often for worse, the novel was seen as part and parcel of this deluge of innovation, both as a new (imported) genre and as a conveyer of all that was new and surprising about the world.1 Having nothing but the “charm of novelty” to recommend it, the designation “novel” itself could often be a serious public relations liability, a phenomenon that explains why fiction writers were so reluctant to employ the term themselves.2 This book argues that many eighteenth-century British fiction writers were able to divest their works of the negative associations of novelty not just by altering the genre’s name, but also by appealing to custom—a constellation of traditional social ideals structured by the delicate balance of reciprocal obligations between patrician paternalism and plebeian deference, the insistence on moral rather than market economies, and a tradition of plebeian rebellion in defense of such 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


I ntroduction

Po l i t i c s o f C u s to m

customs. In recuperating British fiction’s evocations of customary culture, particularly as it was imaginatively located in laboring and popular culture, my intention is not to deny the genre’s imbrications in modern developments, but rather to restore a sense of the novel’s cultural, social, and temporal hybridity as eighteenth-century writers call upon values and cultural forms of the past to mitigate the future. In We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour makes the startling claim that “no one has ever been modern. Modernity has never begun. There has never been a modern world” (47). In this provocative book, Latour exposes the self-interestedness of appeals made on behalf of modernity as a radical break from the past, instead arguing for a vision of history that is recursive rather than linear: “We do have a future and a past, but the future takes the form of a circle expanding in all directions, and the past is not surpassed but revisited, repeated, surrounded, protected, recombined, reinterpreted and reshuffled” (75). While many scholars of the novel have sought primarily to delineate the novel’s inherent modernity, a new effort is afoot to reconceptualize the novel’s development more in keeping with Latour’s spiraling notion of history, evident most recently in essay collections such as Jenny Mander’s Remapping the Rise of the European Novel, in which scholars such as Andrew Hadfield declare that “it is time to release the novel from the burden of expressing modernity.”3 The “burden of modernity” has indeed occluded various influences on the British novel: classical, Continental, and global. It has also oversimplified Britain’s complex social landscape in which patrician and bourgeois values coexisted and competed— the nostalgic jovial Sir Roger de Coverley alongside the modern wry Spectator—and a promiscuous culture industry that could extol the ballad “Chevy Chase” in the same breath as Homer’s epics.4 By viewing the eighteenth-century novel through the lens of custom and customary social relations, we are able to recapture aspects of the British novel’s premodernity, particularly the ways fiction writers mobilized traditional culture and social hierarchy in order to mediate some of the challenges of modernity.5 Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary defines “custom” as a “habit” or “habitual practice,” that can over time achieve the status of an unwritten law.6 We are probably most familiar with Enlightenment rejection of custom in favor of reason or increased civil rights. Much of the period’s protofeminist writings, for example, treat custom as a “Tyrant” that needs to be destroyed, as in the case of Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies that dares women “to break the enchanted circle that Custom has plac’d us in” (10). But custom 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


2

3

also pertained to revered traditional values, social hierarchies, and practices that were threatened by innovation, commercialization, and colonization. Thus Susanna Centlivre, in the dedication of her play Love at a Venture, praises her aristocratic patron for his regard of “that generous custom, which formerly distinguish’d the English nation, from all the rest of the world, viz. hospitality” (n.p.). These revered customs comprised a rubric for understanding an organic, hierarchical society and its values that Peter Laslett famously referred to as “the world we have lost.”7 Recently, however, social and cultural historians have asserted that reports of the death of customary—or in their terms, ancien regime—culture in the eighteenth century have been greatly exaggerated.8 In Customs in Common, E. P. Thompson argues that “customary consciousness and customary usages were especially robust in the eighteenth century,” but that because of the modernizing interests of the elite, customary consciousness is much more apparent in the “culture of working people” (1). Thompson’s work has significantly reframed the ways in which we understand customary culture by showing that it could serve a progressive purpose by protecting particular privileges or common rights of the laboring or plebeian classes. Laborers rebelled “in defense of custom” in order to resist “those economic rationalizations and innovations (such as enclosure, work-discipline, unregulated ‘free’ markets in grain)” (9). This careful historicization of customary culture prompts us to take a closer look at the laboring protagonists prominent in so much eighteenth-century fiction and reevaluate whether novelists are drawn to them because they herald a new middle-class identity defined by possessive individualism, as Ian Watt and others have influentially argued, or whether fiction featured laboring characters like Moll Flanders, Pamela Andrews, Hannah Snell, Christian Davies, Humphry Clinker, and Caleb Williams, to name a few treated in this study, as repositories of customary values evoked during a period of innovation and novelty. In examining fiction’s appeal to customary culture, however, I do not wish to argue that eighteenth-century fiction simply produced imaginative renderings of a Tory politics of nostalgia. As Thompson reminds us, “so far from having the steady permanence suggested by the word ‘tradition,’ custom was a field of change and contest” (6). At the risk of being tautological, I would put it this way: invocations of custom have the strategic power to create change in the name of custom. Joseph Addison’s Spectator 447 on custom provides an illuminating example, as he explains the process of acquiring new virtues that over time become a source of ritualized pleasure; thus he uses custom generatively, invested 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Introduction


with the power “to form the man anew, and give him inclinations and capacities altogether different from those he was born with.”9 Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the interactive relationship of habitus and field in the process of social transformation is helpful in describing the paradoxically dynamic nature of custom. The notion of habitus, much like eighteenth-century notions of custom, describes people’s habituated behavior, dispositions, and perceptions derived from their upbringing and social positioning. Bourdieu sees habitus as both a “structure and a structuring structure”; that is, habitus is an inherited and internalized structure, but also it is a generative structure, in that it works to shape the social field it comes in contact with, and it is an evolving structure, in that an agent’s habitus is reconfigured over time as it responds to changes in the social field.10 Eighteenth-century novelists as politically different as Defoe and Smollett evoke customary culture as both a traditional structure endangered by modernity, such as paternalist protection of the poor being disrupted by laissez-faire economic practices, and as a “structuring structure” that tries to contain or modulate or in some instances make intelligible modern developments such as the expansion of the British empire. This book aims to reveal the ways customary culture in eighteenthcentury fiction remained a powerful and pliable explanatory rubric with which to dramatize and make sense of some of the period’s most concentrated historical shocks, from the credit-based financial revolution, to the democratization of the print market, to wars fought over global trade and empire, and even to the radical promise of increased political enfranchisement. By doing so, the novel mitigated some of the world’s “newness,” but it also disguised its own novelty. As William Warner has noted about the novels of Aphra Behn, Delariviere Manley, and Eliza Haywood, the early novel of amorous intrigue transformed the Continental romance tradition into the first formula fiction that we have come to understand as a form of mass—or media—culture.11 These early novels achieved blockbuster appeal by being able “to be, paradoxically, recurrently new” (126). Novelty demanded by the emerging mass culture audience proved both a boon and a burden for eighteenth-century novelists, particularly for British women writers. It is perhaps no coincidence that railing against men’s desire for “novelty” in their heterosexual liaisons is a constant motif in the novels of Eliza Haywood, suggesting not only her awareness of her role as a female writer of prose fiction, but also her possible resentment of such pressures to be always, recurrently “new.” Similarly, Frances Burney lamented in her diary that novels “want no recommendation for being handed about but that of being new, and 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


4

5

they frequently become established, or sunk into oblivion, before that high literary tribunal has brought them to a trial.”12 While female protagonists of novels feature prominently in this study, women-authored novels do not, an absence that bespeaks greater complexity in women writers’ perceptions of both the politics of custom and of British traditional popular culture. Novelists such as Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Frances Burney, no matter how frustrated by the pressures of novelty, are far more engaged than male writers in a critique of customary social relations, particularly as they pertain to definitions of leisure-class gender roles. Their works generally expose custom as the site of patriarchal oppression, with Haywood offering scathing critiques of forced marriages, the sexual double standard, and the status of leisured women as property. Frances Burney’s Evelina, as many scholars have noted, exploits emergent discourses of politeness and taste detached from rank rather than custom as a way to empower the marginalized eponymous heroine.13 The novel’s depiction of the infamous “foot race” as barbaric and dehumanizing to women also shows that Burney resisted treating traditional English popular recreations with an uncritical eye. Yet I would refrain from overgeneralizing from these examples about British women novelists’ attitudes toward popular culture as a whole. Jillian Heydt-Stevenson, for example, has detailed the ubiquitous allusions to popular culture in Jane Austen’s oeuvre in order to illustrate how the novelist sought ways to resist the circumscription of leisured women’s roles to a proper, domestic and decarnalized femininity.14 My most tentative of surveys highlights the multifaceted nature of British women writers’ responses to custom and traditional popular culture and indicates a fruitful direction for future research. Male fiction writers, however, as this study reveals, were much more likely than women writers to respond to anxiety over the novel’s newness by turning to an older model of popular culture: traditional rather than “mass” popular culture rooted increasingly although not exclusively in the culture of the laboring classes.15 The prose fictions examined here offer the opportunity to study how the intertextual appropriation of traditional popular culture—ballads, chapbook histories, fairground entertainments, country dances, to name a few—allowed these fiction writers to distance their works from pleasurable forms of formula fiction sought after for their “novelty.” Illustrating a way of facilitating generic valuation in the name of custom, novels by Defoe, Richardson, the anonymous authors of female soldiers’ narratives, Smollett, and Godwin to varying degrees all disguise their “mass culture” appeal by 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Introduction

6


Histories of the Novel, Social Origins, and Popular Culture The process whereby a new genre jockeys for legitimation in the cultural field, to use another formulation of Bourdieu’s, leads to multiple rather than single accounts of the genre’s rise, and thus it is not my objective to offer a grand narrative of the history of the novel, which is characterized perhaps most accurately in this period by experimentation with old forms as well as new.16 In setting forth one trajectory of the novel’s legitimation—through evocations of customary and traditional popular culture—this study does, however, seek to highlight previously overlooked aspects of and uninterrogated assumptions about the novel’s and popular culture’s history. In an iconoclastic essay, Nicholas Hudson sketches two main approaches to the history of the novel, labeling them roughly and cheekily as “Whig” and “Tory.”17 Hudson makes a valid argument that as a scholarly field we have focused on what is new and progressive about the novel often to the detriment of understanding what was essentially traditional and conservative. In terms of generic history, Ian Watt’s tripartite thesis of the rise of the novel, the middle class, and realism obscures those writers like Behn, Manley, Haywood, and Fielding that continued to be influenced by the aristocratic Continental romance tradition.18 The middle-class account of the novel also, as Hudson notes, anticipates a class formation not fully in existence until the nineteenth century and thus overlooks the ways the novel reproduces Britain’s older and concurrent, two-part class model structured, according to E. P. Thompson, by the hierarchical relationship between patricians and plebeians (565).19 This study is largely in sympathy with Hudson’s call to chart a revised history of the genre that foregrounds those texts that “resist the excesses of capitalist individualism or radical social innovation, siding instead with traditional values and conservative opinions inherited from the aristocracy” (566). Yet instead of rejecting one generic and social paradigm for another, as Hudson seems to suggest, I have found the novelists under examination here, spanning a varied political spectrum of Whig, Patriot Opposition, Tory and Radical affiliations, use conservative values and customary notions of the social order more strategically and dynamically than what Hudson’s model allows for. It is difficult to deny that credit schemes, global trade, imperial wars and 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


masquerading as disseminators of customary values imagined as inherent in Britain’s traditional popular culture.

7

increased avenues for print were wreaking havoc on the traditional patrician-plebeian order and that as a result the “middling sorts” were beginning to assert an identity separate from the upper gentry. It is also difficult to ignore that such changes were taking place in a society still very much structured by patrician paternalism and plebeian deference, principles of a moral economy, and varying types of patronage relationships. As Dror Wahrman incisively states, It would have been quite difficult, for example, for a utopian nostalgic speaker in 1820 to mobilize a broad political audience by characterizing England as a landed commonwealth, consisting only of landowners, farmers and agricultural labourers; no more than it could be presented as an industrial nation composed only of a proletariat and its bourgeois employers. And yet, between these limits of plausibility there was still considerable space for manoeuvre, considerable leeway for contemporaries to choose between divergent—even incompatible—representations of their society. . . . the choice between a “middle-class”–based or a “middle-class”–less conceptualization of society fell precisely into this space.20

Michael McKeon’s dialectical method serves us well as we study such transitions and the choices writers make in depicting them, allowing us to read the period’s novels for signs of tension and collusion between two-part and three-part paradigms of the social order. I argue that Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, for example, obviates some of its novelty and demotic energies by evoking themes and motifs from broadside ballads and by depicting a plebeian writer who knows her place in the social order and is properly deferential once her patron conforms to proper patrician behavior. Franco Moretti in a recent essay on histories and theories of the novel registers his surprise by how “limited the diffusion of bourgeois values seems to have been” in the novel’s history, and that he has begun to look at the novel “no longer as the ‘natural’ form of bourgeois modernity, but rather as that through which the pre-modern imaginary continues to pervade the capitalist world.”21 Such is certainly the case for the eighteenth-century novels in this study; instead of simply advocating the triumph of one model—middle class or aristocratic—over the other, eighteenth-century fiction writers often use the structure of the older order to explain and mitigate the new order. Another way to highlight the novel’s disruptions rather than affirmations of bourgeois modernity is to question the current scholarly tendency to view the “middling” order as defining itself only in relation to the upper gentry. On the one hand, historians like E. P. Thompson stress the 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Introduction


middling orders’ emulation of the upper gentry, resulting in the virtual disappearance of the middle class as a distinct social entity (Customs in Common 31–33). On the other hand, Margaret Hunt finds that in contrast to the emulative theory, her records from urban centers reveal “the presence of a deep ambivalence among trading people toward upper-class mores.”22 As they touted virtue and moral refinement as a way to distinguish themselves from the decadent upper classes, so the middling-sort used “genteel” behavior to elevate themselves above laboring people. Peter Earle, for example, describes two guidebooks written during the middle eighteenth century advising parents how to choose professions for their children; both guides espouse the importance of a genteel manners and demeanor. An apothecary, for example, “should have a genteel person and behaviour; for one who has naturally the clumsiness, the walk, the air, or the blunt rudeness of a plowman, can never be fit for this genteel profession.”23 Yet we should not overlook the ways in which the middling sort could also look “below” for social definition. As Lance Bertelsen reminds us, “in the breast of the greater part of the English middle class beat a heart removed only by the thinnest veneer—a generation perhaps, a modicum of schooling, a bit of luck in business—from the rough, independent, irreverent manner of the artisans and labourers.”24 The term “plebeian,” especially as Anna Clark defines the term, captures this social complexity; she uses “plebeian” as a “deliberately vague inclusion of working people in general, defined not by a relation to a mode of production but as the ‘lower orders,’ ranging from rough soldiers, laborers, and prostitutes to needlewomen, servants, artisans, and factory workers, and merging into the lower levels of what would become the middle class, that is, small masters, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and publicans.”25 She locates the division of plebeian classes into the working class and the middle class during the beginning of the nineteenth century: Until the 1820’s, the boundaries between plebeians and the middle class were often quite blurred, for plebeians often shared values and lifestyles with the slightly higher-status middling tradesmen, small shopkeepers and master artisans. As the nineteenth century progressed, however, successful tradesmen and merchants distanced themselves from their neighbors who were sinking deeper into proletarianization and poverty. (7)

Studies of the eighteenth-century novel—indeed, of the period’s literature as a whole—could benefit from these more nuanced accounts of the middling orders’ social hybridity. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


8

9

Understanding Moll Flanders, Roxana, Pamela, and fictional memoirs of Hannah Snell and Christian Davies from this perspective reveals that the middling sort could identify with plebeian or laboring identity tactically in response to particular historical pressures. Particularly in the first half of the century, economic uncertainty precipitated by the credit-based financial revolution meant that the middling orders could unpredictably experience the same poverty and unemployment as the laboring and poor populations. Defoe’s novels are especially attuned to this likelihood, as even his most enduring, most “middle class” novel creates a situation in which the hero Robinson Crusoe must acquire the skills of manual labor and various trades before he can become economically successful. His preface to Moll Flanders, as he delineates the novel’s usefulness to a variety of possible audiences, shows how the social categories of trading, laboring, and criminal classes could easily collapse. One audience is constituted by people of property who can thereby learn “by what methods innocent people are drawn in, plunder’d and robb’d, and by consequence how to avoid them”; another audience is composed of naïve servants, such as the “hair-brained wench” who while waiting for a coach leaves her belongings with Moll; and yet another broad, variegated group is “all the unfortunate creatures who are oblig’d to seek their re-establishment abroad; whether by the misery of transportation, or other disaster.”26 The inclusiveness of the latter group indicates the instability of social distinctions present in the aftermath of the South Sea Bubble, as bankrupted tradespeople and unemployed laborers often faced the same fate as convicted criminals in seeking their fortunes in the American colonies. As I will discuss further, middling identification with those “below” at least on a symbolic level was also pronounced from 1720 to 1750, as many sectors of society avidly disidentified with the corruption of Robert Walpole’s ministry as well as the purportedly foreign allegiances of the Hanoverian court. A related critical tendency in novel studies traces the aesthetic influences of the middlebrow novel “upward” toward the aristocratic and Continental traditions of romance at the expense of examining how the novel may also have been in conversation with “lowbrow” popular culture. Earlier work on popular culture’s invigorating influence on the novel by Ronald Paulson and Pat Rogers has largely been eclipsed by the interest in aristocratic influence on the novel as well as efforts to describe the teleological formation of a polite and bourgeois public sphere.27 In The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, Peter Stallybrass and Allon White influentially posit that in the eighteenth century the legitimation of new forms of public 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Introduction


assembly as well as discursive sites—what Jurgen Habermas called the “public sphere”—entailed the relentless disavowal of popular and plebeian culture, including its associations with rude crowd behavior, noise and dirt, and bodily pleasures. Spurred by a “will to refinement” (94), cultural workers sought to elevate a rational, enlightened and polite culture over a “mixed and unruly public body” (90). According to Stallybrass and White, professional authorship became entwined in this process as authors either repressed the popular in their works or used it to malign audiences and artists who refused to choose high over low culture. Yet this progress narrative, like Watt’s middle-class account of the rise of the novel, leaves out as much as it includes. The present study shows that eighteenth-century British artists’ attitudes toward the popular were not always marked by disavowal and derision, nor can they be generalized over the period as a whole. In the early eighteenthcentury contest between Ancients and Moderns, neoclassical wits tended to employ mock-heroic invocations of popular culture in order to burlesque upper-class or leisure-class entertainments; Stallybrass and White’s study best accounts for this particular period of the Ancients’ satiric use of the popular. A different valuation of popular culture emerges, however, when we examine the cultural productions of the Moderns from this era, who in the search for their own source of cultural authority apart from the classics, looked to popular forms such as the ballad. Joseph Addison in 1711 wrote one of the first critical essays on this form of traditional popular culture, depicting it as a source of positive aesthetic inspiration and a noble legacy of England’s cultural heritage. Still abiding by neoclassical tenets of “naturalness,” he praises “Children of the Wood” for being a “simple copy of nature, destitute of all the helps and ornaments of art” and castigates those “conceited wits of the age” who are unable to appreciate such virtues (Spectator 85). His two essays on the ballad “Chevy Chase” assert that the English should be as proud of this patriotic ballad as Ancient Greeks were of Homer’s epics, that the ballad writer has “not only found out an hero in his own country, but raises the reputation of it by several beautiful incidents. The English are the first who take the field, and the last who quit it” (Spectator 70). Addison’s influential essays sparked immediate satiric attacks by the Ancients, and the controversy over the artistic value of traditional popular culture extended throughout the first half of the century.28 While it is beyond the scope of this project, the resulting flurry of ballad adaptations in early eighteenth-century drama provides a rich and lively arena in which to study competing perceptions and uses of the 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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popular, with George Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731) and Robert Dodsley’s The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737), both sincere adaptations of ballads, contrasting satiric renderings by Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728) and Fielding’s Life and Death of Tom Thumb (1731). The migration of ballad stories from street to stage was so prevalent that James Ralph satirized the practice in his mocking survey of the English arts, The Touch-Stone (1728); he reports that “a late eminent ingenious author” had proposed staging “Whittington and his Cat,” “and went so far in the design, as to procure a puss or two, who could pur [sic.] tolerably in time and tune,” but the production failed because of the “inconveniences arising from the number of vermin requisite to be destroy’d, in order to keep up to the truth of the story.”29 The opposition to Robert Walpole and the Hanoverian court at midcentury also spurred celebratory and patriotic uses of British popular culture, as artists, slighted by the court’s patronage of Continental artists, sought to revive and delineate a “native” tradition of British art. As I will discuss further in Chapter 2, this cultural movement brought a series of “native genius” plebeian poets to the literary marketplace, with Stephen Duck being granted unprecedented patronage by the queen and becoming a possible candidate for the position of Poet Laureate in 1730. Visual arts were affected as well, as William Hogarth opposed the Georgian court’s predominant patronage of Continental artists and musicians; Hogarth “in his rage at aristocratic connoisseurship had urged the mass of struggling younger artists to reach down with him to the sentiments of the people finding salvation and livelihood ‘not above, but below.’”30 In 1741, Hogarth issued the second print in an intended 3-part series on representation, entitled “The Enraged Musician.” In this lively graphic print, a cultural war erupts between the highbrow, foreign violinist and the cacophonic, plebeian crowd below his window. Hogarth exuberantly portrays the music and noise of the crowd as victorious, as the confined, solitary violinist abandons his playing to cover his ears and eleven boisterous street hawkers, musicians, and laborers and other members of the plebeian classes unheedingly carry on with their work. As Sean Shesgreen has noted, Hogarth further dignifies the crowd by visually arranging three figures according to the classical Renaissance pyramid, with the female ballad seller anchoring the bottom left corner, the milkmaid elevated through size and lighting forming its apex, and the knife sharpener in the right corner completing the triangle.31 The frustrated musician, though positioned higher in the frame, has been marginalized by Hogarth’s artful design. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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“The Enraged Musician” carries out a nationalist agenda by locating British identity in its common people, their labors and music, and juxtaposing these against the impotent and imported court musician. The only other extant companion piece in this series on representation is “The Distrest Poet” (1737), which also expresses Hogarth’s imperative to locate inspiration and creativity “from below.” In this print, the hair-rending poet tries unsuccessfully to compose a poem on “riches,” while everywhere he is surrounded by signs of poverty. The discarded sword and greatcoat, on which the cat sleeps, illustrate his failed attempt to live a gentleman’s life. Unlike in “The Enraged Musician,” where high- and lowbrow cultures are designated by their vertical spatial arrangement, Hogarth’s English poet is placed visually on the same plane as the milkmaid who has entered the garret to collect her bill. His effort to mediate both high and low cultures is signified by the twisted position of his body, as the lower half of the poet’s body faces the milkmaid and the upper half turns away from her toward his poem on riches. The print subtly argues for a resolution to the poet’s distress by imbuing the laborer with positive associations, using similar visual techniques he used with the milkmaid in “The Enraged Musician.” In a scene of complete chaos, the milkmaid stands as a beacon of order and cleanliness, her stance is forthright and strong, and her easy volubility contrasts the poet’s stymied creativity. As a new form, the novel could not help but be caught up in these various contestations over the popular, and for much of the eighteenth century, the novel was considered a “low” form, not far removed from other popular types of ephemeral literature. Yet, similar to the controversy over the use of ballads as a source of aesthetic and patriotic inspiration, the novel too evoked both admiring and castigating responses for its association with the popular. The Pamela vogue, particularly the debates over Pamela’s rustic language, possesses significant parallels with debates about ballad discourse, with Fielding and Hill weighing in on both debates and even employing similar metaphors of “country apparel” or “nakedness” to connote simplicity of linguistic style. Although it necessitates a slight digression, following this intertwined debate allows us to reframe and qualify the more modern claims for Richardson’s inauguration of formal realism in his debut novel. The puff-pieces appended to Pamela, for example, echo Addison’s claims for the universal appeal of unadorned writing he found in English ballads. Jean Baptiste de Freval praises the “beautiful simplicity of style” and the “circumstances interesting to persons in common life, as well as to those in exalted stations.”32 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Reverend William Webster concurs—the novel “is written with that spirit of truth and agreeable simplicity . . . that there is no reading it without uncommon concern and emotion” (7). Anticipating highbrow critics who disdain literary productions devoid of classical allusion and technique, Webster insists the text should be printed in its “native simplicity” (8). The cult of simplicity, moreover, became a touchstone for celebrating the cultural productions of England. This rhetoric is recruited during George II’s reign to reassert English cultural superiority in relation to the work of Continental artists patronized by the English court and aristocracy. In his prefatory letter to Pamela, Webster lauds aesthetic simplicity as an English virtue. He asks Richardson not to “reduce our Sterling Substance into an empty Shadow, or rather frenchify our English solidity into Froth and Whip-syllabub. No; let us have Pamela as Pamela wrote it; in her own words, without amputation, or addition. Produce her to us in her neat Country apparel . . .” (9). The use of “apparel” as a metaphor for textual style reaches back at least to the early modern period and recurred during the eighteenth-century ballad critical revival. In Addison’s retort to Sidney on the quality of “Chevy Chase,” he writes, I must however beg leave to dissent from so great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in the judgment which he has passed as to the rude style and evil apparel of this antiquated song; for there are several parts in it where not only the thought but the language is majestick, and the numbers sonorous; at least, the apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the poets made use of in Queen Elizabeth’s time . . .” (Spectator 74)

Addison could also extol the ballad’s simple apparel to the point of disrobing it altogether; in his essay on “Children of the Wood” he writes, “those who are endowed with a true greatness or soul can . . . admire nature in her simplicity and nakedness” (Spectator 85). Two decades later, Aaron Hill made his own excursion into the ballad revival, shamelessly borrowing much of Addison’s rhetorical defenses of the ballad. In an essay from the Plain Dealer that showcases the ballad “William and Margaret,” Hill proclaims that the shape of the modern muse, is made for becoming the hoop-petticoat; but there was a charming, majestick nakedness in that nervous simplicity . . . which went to the hearts of our forefather’s. . . . But, though this venerable, undress’d nature, is seldom to be met with now . . . it was so frequent two or three hundred years ago, that



Introduction

14


Hill, notoriously, further revives the metaphor of text and dress/ undress in his defense of Pamela’s low style. He begins by asserting that “the thought is every-where exactly cloath’d by the expression: and becomes in its dress as roundly, and as close, as Pamela her countryhabit” (508). But then, as in Addison’s essays, soon Pamela’s textual apparel becomes so simple as to disappear: “When modest beauty seeks to hide itself by casting off the pride of ornament, it but displays itself without a covering: And so, becoming more distinguished, by its want of drapery, grows stronger” (508). The metaphor of dress and text was spoofed in Addison’s time as well as in Richardson’s by those writers who saw the ballad critical revival as yet another sign of the general decline of literature in a commercialized marketplace. William Wagstaffe in “A Comment on the History of Tom Thumb” satirizes Addison as “an Enterprising genius of late, that has thought fit to disclose the beauties of some pieces to the world, that might have been other wise indiscernible, and believ’d to have been trifling and insipid, for no other reason but their unpolish’d homeliness of dress” (1). Fielding was familiar enough with Wagstaffe’s pamphlet to use it as a basis for his burlesque play, The Tragedy of Tragedies or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1731). In 1740, Fielding continues Wagstaffe’s satire of the metaphor but is unable to resist its ripe opportunities for sexual punning. In the prefatory letters of Parson Tickletext in Shamela, Fielding reproduces Hill’s passionate endorsement almost word for word, having only to attribute it to the clearly sexually excited parson to expose its erotic subtext: “the thought is every where exactly cloathed by the expression; and becomes, its dress as roundly and as close as Pamela her country habit; or as she doth her no habit, when modest beauty seeks to hide itself, by casting off the pride of ornament, and displays itself without any covering.”34 This chain of sartorial and erotic signifiers shows how deeply the controversy over Pamela’s style was implicated in prior debates about whether neoclassical aesthetics extended to the native simplicity of the ballad. Eighteenth-century commentary provides numerous other examples that link the novel to cheap forms of printed popular culture. The contentious Charles Gildon, for example, disdainfully compared Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe to other chapbook and ballad protagonists: “Your Hero! Your mob hero! Your pyecorner hero! On a foot with Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Southhampton, and the London Apprentice!”35 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


their lowest class of poets, the composers of our good old ballads, have left us some of the noblest examples of the sublime.33

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Indeed, story lines and characters migrated from the ballad and chapbook market to that of the novel and back again. Michael Preston persuasively shows how Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels may have borrowed from chapbook versions of folktales, whereas Pat Rogers has traced the adaptation of both these works and Moll Flanders back into chapbook form.36 John Simons speculates that Samuel Richardson, who apprenticed to a chapbook printer, derived the name of Pamela’s torturer, Mr. Colbrond, from one of the major enemies of Guy of Warwick, one of the most widely known chapbook heroes.37 As I will illustrate in Chapter 2, Mr. B’s seduction of Pamela echoes a popular Restoration ballad plot whereby a virtuous laboring-class woman successfully resists her libertine suitor, converting his lust to love through her “saucy speech” and appeal to customary relations between upper and lower orders. The novel in addition was often seen in the eighteenth-century not as a respected representation of middling, genteel society and its polite values, but as concerned with “low” subject matter that attracted “low” readers. Frances Coventry in 1751 mockingly noted that his choice of a canine protagonist needed no defense in this life-writing age especially, where no character is thought too inconsiderable to engage the public notice, or too abandoned to be set up as a pattern of imitation. The lowest and most contemptible vagrants, parish-girls, chamber-maids, pick-pockets, and highwaymen, find historians to record their praises, and readers to wonder at their exploits. . . . Even prisons and stews are ransacked to find materials for novels and romances.38

Critics throughout the eighteenth century peppered their remarks on the novel with observations about the supposed “lowly” audiences that such novels must be attracting. Charles Gildon, again speaking of Robinson Crusoe, exclaimed, “this book seems calculated for the mob, and will not bear the eye of a rational reader” (28).39 The Flying Post in 1729 printed a couplet that suggests the class of readers most drawn to Defoe’s works: “Down in the kitchen, honest Dick and Doll/Are Studying Colonel Jack and Flanders Moll.”40 Similarly, William Hogarth’s 1747 print series depicting “Industry and Idleness” through the careers of two apprentices locates the audience for Defoe’s Moll Flanders, represented in a ballad form, not only with the servant or plebeian classes, but also with those plebeians who resist assimilation to a bourgeois work ethic. Later in the century, George Chalmers assessed Defoe’s work and found the novels for the most part a useful diversion for “the lower orders.”41 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Introduction


The authors of novels, too, were similarly nominated for Duncehood rather than looked up to for their bourgeois respectability. As Pat Rogers has noted, “No one can understand the genus classified by the satirists under the name Scribler unless it is grasped that the first great English novelist was all-but-representative of the breed.”42 Born and deceased a stone’s throw from Grub Street, an unsuccessful tradesman and a seditious journalist, both of which vocations landed him in prison, Defoe typified the lower class of writers that Pope satirized in the Dunciad (Rogers 314–316). Paula Backscheider surveys several of Defoe’s classically-trained peers who scathingly pronounced his journalistic writing to be practically unreadable: “Adversaries described his style as ‘raving,’ ‘fulsome ribaldry,’ ‘incoherent,’ ‘loose,’ ‘longwinded,’ and ungrammatical—proof that he was ‘an illiterate blunderer’ incapable of recognizing or speaking truth.”43 Even Richardson, who is most credited with salvaging the novel’s lowly reputation, is snootily remarked upon; Lady Mary Montagu writes that Richardson surely “was never admitted into higher company, and should confine his pen to amours of housemaids and the conversation at the steward’s table.”44 Of course, it is quite possible that such designations of “middlebrow” literature as “low” are the result of what Linda Zionkowski and Kathy MacDermott have variously described as a reactionary exertion of patrician control over the increase of “middling” publications.45 As MacDermott observes, one of the “problems posed to paternalism by the rise of the popular press, then . . . [was] that it . . . threatened the cultural hegemony of the gentry by inserting a middle term between (high) patrician culture and (low) folk culture” (21); critics reassert patrician hegemony by conflating middlebrow culture with low culture. But it is also equally possible that eighteenth-century critics responded to the novel in this fashion because it was influenced by popular, laboring, and underworld culture. It is certainly a reasonable hypothesis that Defoe garnered his inspiration for Moll Flanders from interviewing women convicts of Newgate.46 The search for authenticity prevalent in popular culture studies has further prevented us from critically examining these eighteenthcentury associations of the novel with popular culture. W. A. Speck has issued a standard conclusion about eighteenth-century literature’s limited capacity to portray the full social spectrum of British society: “For the most part, therefore, literature documents not the reality of life among the lower orders, but how it, and they, were perceived by those above them.”47 Frustrated with such mediated portrayals, scholars have striven to find other genres that reveal what John Richetti 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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calls “plebeian actuality.”48 Ballads and other poetic forms have risen to prominence as the site of the “popular,” either because of their connection to oral culture or because poetry has been the preferred genre for plebeian writers.49 As Jonathan Barry writes, in the search for authentic voices and literatures of the lower orders, social historians and literary critics attempt to find “contemporary sources which depend less heavily on elite mediation . . . [yet] strictly speaking, . . . if popular culture is non-literate, then there can be no genuine ‘popular literature’ of this kind.”50 No matter what the genre, print culture will never offer a “pure” representation of oral culture. Rather than lament this fact, I concur with Tim Harris that we “play to the sources’ strengths” by seeing what the sources tell us about “the interaction of elite and popular culture.”51 Doing so does not necessary “depoliticize” the study of popular culture, as Emma Griffin has recently charged, but it does provide us with a window into the multiple political uses of popular culture in the eighteenth century.52 What do the novels examined here tell us about the interaction of elite and popular culture? First, they require us to modify the teleological thesis of the novel’s and leisure classes’ increased politeness that depended upon the repudiation of laboring and popular culture.53 Such an argument not only ignores the fluid boundaries between plebeian and middling orders, but it also disallows exceptional, localized moments during the century when evocations of traditional popular culture proved deeply generative. Throughout this study, whether as a locus for an ethical response to emerging free-market capitalism, as a form of cultural opposition to the Hanoverian court, as a way to revive the authority of landed gentry, extend nationalist sentiments to the Celtic peripheries, or ameliorate the threat of radical politics, popular culture is evoked manifoldly, steadily, and positively throughout the century in novelistic representation. Eighteenth-century commentators, thus, were not so far off the mark in designating the novel’s affiliations with “mob” heroes celebrated in ballads and chapbooks; a significant number of prose fictions in this period do feature laboring culture and identity and reproduce plotlines, themes, entertainments and aesthetics found in traditional popular culture. In order to understand why fiction writers would risk this association, we need to recuperate an often overlooked, positive discourse of popular culture that evolved in contest with the more theorized and documented satiric use of the popular. In this celebratory discourse, laboring and popular culture become the locus of British customary values, and this provides the key to the legacy of the popular in eighteenth-century novels. As a dialectical opposition 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Introduction

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Chapter Overview Chapter 1 reads Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724) amid the social and economic upheavals attending the bursting of the South Sea Bubble. Unlike the more highbrow writers of his day, Defoe embraces the social hybridity resulting from the experience of “poverty of disaster” in that the blurring of plebeian, underclass and middling traits offers a strategic way to expose the hardships of betrayed mercantilist capitalist values as well as provide a model of survival in a postbubble economy. Moll’s ability to exploit her plebeian origins explains why Moll Flanders ends in financial triumph whereas Roxana ends in tragedy. Roxana, like Moll, is also hurled into financial ruin, yet she resists its opportunity to gain the social and economic hybridity she needs to survive, creating instead a perverse dependence on her maid Amy and failing to become Defoe’s ideal embodiment of a hybridized mercantilist whose financial endeavors are restrained by the principles of a moral economy and English trade protectionism. Chapters 2 and 3 take up prose adaptations of ballad storylines and illustrate the ways that traditional popular culture could be tapped to create both cultural and military nationalism in opposition to Walpole’s ministry and the Hanoverian court. In Chapter 2, I argue that Richardson’s Pamela (1740) evokes the customary values of the traditional English ballad as well as the customary social relations between plebeian writers and their aristocratic patrons to affirm a new form of literary nationalism that hinges on the demotic possibilities of the literary marketplace. I trace the novel’s multiple resonances with popular balladry, from plotlines that depict virtuous laboring women who resist then marry upper-class suitors, to the emphasis on customary values, social deference, and pride in “one’s place,” all values that win over the libertine suitor and prove the lower-class heroine deserving of social preferment. Arguing that Richardson not only created a novelistic ballad heroine, but also a plebeian ballad writer, I examine Pamela’s “scribbling” and the reception of her texts along side the emergence of published plebeian poets such as Stephen Duck and Robert Dodsley. By charting her texts’ powerful influence over elite readers depicted in the novel, we may conclude that Richardson, like many other artists of his time, particularly Hogarth, invoked the simple virtues of 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


to modernity and an antidote to the novel’s own novelty, customary culture proves a rich and indispensable resource—a bedrock of cultural authority—with which to authorize a fledgling form and ameliorate the challenges of an age of “change and novelty.”

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the popular to reform a literary marketplace thought to be dominated either by cynical Ancients or by corrupt, tasteless, and Francophile literary patrons. Chapter 3 features two anonymously authored and fictionalized memoirs of Christian Davies and Hannah Snell, cross-dressing, plebeian female soldiers, a trope which, as Dianne Dugaw shows, has a long tradition in early-modern popular balladry. While these memoirs have drawn scholarly attention primarily for their defiance of “polite” women’s gender roles, I show that the narratives achieved such popularity for the ways in which the plebeian heroines bolster the nation’s flagging military valor during Britain’s war with Spain. Frustrated with the Georgian court’s hesitation to protect its global trade and its ineptitude at managing the war, the publishers of the memoirs looked to the raucous “female masculinity” and robust sexuality of the nation’s plebeian women to model proper masculinity during wartime and to locate British patriotism in the common people rather than in effete court aristocrats. In Chapter 4, I read Humphry Clinker (1771) as a testament to the ways popular and plebeian culture could be tapped to revitalize patrician identity as it faced economic and political disempowerment in the late eighteenth century. The novel conveys this revitalization through its rich series of metaphors of the body, showing how Matthew Bramble’s return to health is facilitated by his servant, Clinker, and by Bramble’s acceptance and even emulation of the plebeian body’s open, scatological, and reproductive capacities. Metaphorically uniting the individual body and the body politic, the novel expands the influence of both insurgent and traditional plebeian cultures to the landed gentry and British Isles at large. Opposing the homogenizing and Anglocentric bias of Wilkite, Whig politicians who are catering to the newly affluent trading classes by using customs and rituals of popular culture, Smollett, a Scottish writer, wrests the popular away from this narrow mindset, embracing diverse popular cultures from Scotland, Wales and England. The novel thus provides a culturally syncretic model of British identity that sustains both regional cultural difference and a Tory vision of social hierarchy. Chapter 5 on Caleb Williams (1794) begins by describing William Godwin’s dashed hopes for the success of radical arguments from reason, history, and philosophy in the sedition trials of his friends and fellow activists, particularly that of Joseph Gerrald. Countering scholarly views of Godwin as elitist and distrustful of customary politics and plebeian participation in the public sphere, I argue that Caleb Williams reveals Godwin locating the point at which 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Introduction


radical and customary politics not only collide but also collude in order to forge a possible working-class narrative and politics. Godwin’s novel is an ideal work with which to conclude, for like Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Caleb Williams is both metafictional and metacritical, revisiting the master-servant relations of Pamela, the criminal biography of Moll Flanders, and the resistant and complicit energies of the popular culture portrayed in the female soldier narratives as well as Humphry Clinker. I argue that Godwin revisits these narratives not to work against, as many have argued, but to learn to work through customary politics and patrician-plebeian relations to achieve radical ends. The epilogue sketches evocations of customary culture in early nineteenth-century British fiction and working-class autobiography to show the transformed though persistent influence of custom during the American and French revolutions and increased middle-class political enfranchisement. Prose narratives such as Scott’s Heart of the Midlothian and Dickens’ Christmas Carol demonstrate a continued appeal to the twinned discourses of custom and popular culture in order to mobilize their associations with communality and social stability, endowing new political formations with the veneer of tradition. * * * It is a sobering statistic for scholars of the British novel to remember that from the years 1720 to 1770, the percentage of published fiction to all published books and pamphlets rose only from 1.1 percent to 4 percent.54 Studies of provincial readers likewise confirm, from an audience’s perspective, that novels made up only a fraction of all print bought and borrowed by this representative group of readers (Fergus 42 and 48). Given that novels constituted such a small segment of eighteenth-century print culture, we may indeed wonder how the novel sought to achieve distinction in the cultural field?55 Contemplating the novel’s small hold in the broad market of print, Christopher Flint proposes that scholars “study the novel’s attempts not only to operate within but also to distance itself from a communications network. . . . [T]his work should consider how fiction creates a particular mimetic domain that both reports and distorts those competing modes of imagining a self, community, nation, or world.”56 In line with this approach, critics have largely explored the novel’s relationship primarily to other “rising” print forms. Lennard Davis compellingly explains the ways that the novel, newspapers, criminal narratives and news ballads grew up together, reinforcing 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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a new belief in epistemological fact; Nancy Armstrong gives us an account of the conduct book’s and the novel’s joint construction of domestic subjectivity through which to consolidate an emerging middle-class identity; and J. Paul Hunter, designating the “imperialism” of other forms as one of the genre’s defining features, explores a host of intertextual borrowings between the novel and travel literature, guidebooks, diaries, and spiritual autobiographies.57 While these scholars hitch the novel’s rise to other “rising” and fairly new forms such as the newspaper, bourgeois conduct book, and travel memoir, this study posits that the novel could also distance itself from the novelty of these new forms by creating an intertextual weaving with traditional popular culture, through its evocation and assimilation of ephemeral though enduring cheap print forms such as the broadside, ballad and chapbook and through mimicking their cultural function as a repository of customary values.



Introduction




4

Revi tali zi ng the M oral Economy i n the Wake of the South S ea Bubble: M O L L F L A N D E R S (17 22) and R O X A N A (1724)

[My parents] once lived creditably; brought up a great family, of which I am the youngest; but had misfortunes, thro’ their doing beyond their power for two unhappy brothers, who are both dead, and whose debts they stood bound for, and so became reduced, and, by harsh creditors, (where most of the debts were not of their own contracting) turn’d out of all; and having, without success, try’d to set up a little country school, (for my father understood a little of accompts, and wrote a pretty good hand) forced to take to hard labour. —Samuel Richardson, Pamela, (455) [My father told me] that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanick part of mankind, and not embarrass’d with the pride, luxury, ambition and envy of the upper part of mankind. —Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, (6)

The novels of Daniel Defoe at first glance appear ill-qualified for a

study of customary culture in eighteenth-century fiction. Heralding the cultural debut of the “middling sort,” Defoe’s entrepreneurial protagonists, obsessed with the acquisition of material goods and 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Chapter 1


wealth, are profoundly uninterested in the social conventions of plebeian deference or patrician benevolence, ostensibly—according to Crusoe’s father—preferring to steer between a life of manual labor and aristocratic idleness by traveling the middling road of trade. In this chapter I show that while the success story of economic individualism was one defining tale the middle class liked to tell about itself, it was far from the only one, and, indeed, it is not the only story that Defoe’s early novels dramatize. From the above description of the Andrews’ precipitous economic fall, with its dizzying series of interrupted sentences, parenthetical additions, and abrupt stops, one senses the uncontrollable economic forces that render middling status a precarious one in which individuals had to learn quickly to keep creditors at bay, scrape together new skills, and change occupational course at a moment’s notice. Such unpredictability and volatility in the economy was especially evident leading up to and following the South Sea Bubble–bust of 1720, the first major stock market crash in British history, when thousands almost overnight were reduced to financial ruin. Defoe’s novels view this financial, credit-based revolution not simply as an open terrain upon which to fulfill middle-class economic destiny; rather, his fiction, particularly Moll Flanders and Roxana, reveal the necessity of the middling sort to maintain and draw upon the survival strategies of the laboring poor and the underclass, in effect conforming to an older, two-class model in which the middling class has not yet separated from the poor and plebeian classes.1 Though Crusoe’s father, for example, sets forth the middle state as the only solid rung on Britain’s dilapidated social ladder, his qualifying phrase, that it is also “the upper station of low life,” reveals a continuum of possible positions within the lower social sector, traversing the poor, plebeian, and middling orders. Defoe’s protagonists forget their laboring or plebeian origins at their own economic peril, but there is another driving force behind Defoe’s customary portrait of lower-class affiliation: the vulnerable position of poor and laboring people accentuates the need to impose moral constraints on the anarchic energies of a free-market economy. The absence of patrician paternalism in Defoe’s economic writings understandably leads many to consider him an avid promoter of unrestrained capitalist increase, but I would temper this view by noting that Defoe registers considerable anxiety both in his journalism and his novels about the hazards of a free-market economy, both resisting and reframing its incursions with the only paradigm available to him in the eighteenth century—through mercantilist principles that reveal vestiges of what we can term a customary moral economy.2 During the corrupt years of stockjobbing and early forms of shady 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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venture capitalism, when the lack of moral or ethical restraint resulted in outright but ignored criminal activity, Defoe looks to the lower orders to revive moral economic imperatives. In doing so, he echoes popular representations of elite investors as society’s “real” criminals and aligns with subversive ballad and “dying speech” criminal tracts that acknowledge the superior ethics of criminals.3 Paradoxically, through her various relationships and dealings in the criminal underworld, Moll Flanders comes to define and carry out Defoe’s most prized mercantilist tenets, particularly those advocating the use of wealth for national—not just individual—benefit. Roxana, in contrast, continues to eschew not only her own past as a (sexual) laborer, but also England’s laborers in general, as she persists in engaging in consumer practices that Defoe felt most betrayed the English economy and the nation’s workers: the consumption of foreign imports.

Perils of a Free Market For several decades, a lively and productive debate has been waged over Defoe’s economic attitudes. Was he an economic prophet, heralding, in Watt’s terms, a “restless, amoral and strenuous individualism” that would reign during industrial capitalism,4 or was he, as Novak asserts, an economic thinker whose ideas were typical of the late mercantilists of his age in emphasizing domestic production, “intrinsic value and the balance of trade”?5 When we examine Defoe’s writings leading up to after the South Sea Bubble, it becomes clear that Defoe decried many of the exploitative or predatory aspects of investment schemes that divorced intrinsic value from stable assets such as land and goods. His utopian vision of the benefits of global trade, while objectionable to our anticolonialist politics today, attempts to constrain economic gain within certain parameters. Defoe advocated for the increase of wealth for the individual as long as it also benefited the nation’s workers as well as the nation’s advantage in colonial and global markets. Given these protectionist concerns, we do better to assess Defoe’s position with the evenhandness of Daniel Statt, who concludes, Defoe emerges as a fairly typical late mercantilist thinker, neither a progressive mouthpiece for capitalism, nor a rear-guard defender of a feudal economic order. Some of his views were progressive (his preference for high wages, the stress on home trade and consumption), others were conservative (his reliance on the textile trade, his schemes for settlements on land).6



R e v i ta l i z i n g t h e M o r a l E c o n o m y


Defoe’s mercantilism fueled not only his concern to expose the dangers of unrestrained economic increase, but also, in the case of laborers, his efforts to ameliorate them. Among economic historians, Defoe has been recognized as a thinker who uniquely paid attention to the welfare of workers; he stated, “employment of the people is the great and main benefit of trade.”7 While other mercantilists wanted to keep wages low in order to increase profits on goods, Defoe advocated high wages, not for paternalist reasons, but because high wages improved the country’s overall economic health. Defoe saw high wages as a sign of economic prosperity, as an encouragement to consumption, and a way to ensure higher quality of goods.8 A year before the stock market crash, Defoe was especially attuned to labor issues, finding an outlet for his mercantilist commitment to trade protectionism during the Weavers’ Riots of 1719. Defoe was hired by The City Company of Weavers after the riots to write The Manufacturer and promote the interests of the English woolen industry against the encroachment of foreign cloth imports, namely silks, calicoes, and other lighter woolen fabrics. In the journal, Defoe reminds his audience that “the entire nation should be concerned with what he labels the cause of the ‘labouring poor.’”9 The bursting of the South Sea Bubble only exacerbated hardships on laborers and tradespeople, especially Defoe’s most prized English industry, the clothing industry. Leading up to the crash, Defoe’s journalistic essays reflect dismay over the failure of businesses and government to invest in projects that would benefit British trade and thereby British workers. Instead he saw investors straying from a mercantilist sensibility to a form of self-interested, laissez-faire economics: “they can dream of nothing but getting large estates, and setting up fine equipages.”10 As Defoe must have predicted, the inevitable collapse of the Bubble affected far more than just the frenzied stock investors and jobbers, with aftershocks extending to the lower ranks of British society: “in many cases people could not collect money owed them and therefore could not pay their creditors. Bankers, financiers, craftsmen, and laborers all suffered even if they had never invested in the South Sea Company” (Backscheider 454). Parliament was hit with a barrage of petitions asserting that the crash had devastated English manufacturing and caused widespread unemployment, particularly among those in the woolen industry. Petitioners from the County of Somerset, for example, argued that such is the decay of our trade, that our woolen manufacturers, the riches and support of the kingdom, but of this county in particular,



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Defoe was thus intimately aware of the distress resulting from the self-interested and unrestricted economic practices that reached their height during the South Sea Bubble. During these years of financial and social turmoil, the already prolific Defoe made his debut as a novelist, and thus it should come as no surprise, as Novak has noted, not only that “the effects of the South Sea Bubble remained with Defoe throughout the rest of his life” but also that “it permeates all the major fiction.”12 In Moll Flanders, Defoe highlights the quandary of the laboring poor, as they are faced, on the one hand, with an enervated moral economy, devoid of paternalist protection, and, on the other, the impossibility of independently earning a living wage in a corrupt, post-bubble economy. Moll is born into a situation that the state fails to remedy. Her mother is convicted as a thief and transported to the colonies, and Moll becomes an orphan. She notes England has no accommodations for children born to parents who must leave them, either by “poverty” or “forfeiture,” and so she is left “a poor desolate girl without friends, without cloaths, without help or helper in the world” (7). Her loss of faith in a paternalist social structure is further evinced in her “thorough aversion to going to service,” a vocation to which many laboring women were destined (9). In her desire to escape poverty by “earning [her] own bread by [her] own work” as a seamstress, the young Moll expresses the hopes of many others of her class in wanting to be free from what E. P. Thompson calls paternalism’s control “over the whole life of the laborer” and in believing in the intrinsic value of her work (Customs in Common 36). Thompson states that over the course of the eighteenth century, artisans, small employers, and laborers experienced a growing independence from the gentry. Such is the life to which the young Moll aspires when she tells her nurse that she would like to become a “gentlewoman,” her naive understanding of the local lace-mender’s social status. In this sympathetic rendering, Defoe encourages readers to identify with a laboring-class heroine who innocently reproduces the promise of an economic order unfettered by patrician control. Yet Defoe far from celebrates the transition to free-wage labor; workers are unable to exert power over the value of their labor, especially 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


are in a manner entirely laid down, and many substantial and wealthy families are reduc’d to difficulties by contributing to the support of the necessities of the numberless poor, who were wont to earn a comfortable subsistence by their labour and from the several employments of the clothing trade.”11


not poor women. Her nurse and the ladies who meet Moll know the impossibilities of women earning a living wage through work, and that independent laboring women are often forced to supplement their devalued labor with the value of their bodies. They laugh at her and play on the word “gentlewoman” to denote that the lace-mender is a “person of ill fame, and has had two or three bastards” (12). The death of Moll’s nurse and exigent circumstances force her to retreat to the security of the paternalist model; she states, “the fright of my condition had made such an impression upon me, that I did not want now to be a gentlewoman, but was very willing to be a servant, and that any kind of servant they thought fit to have me be” (15). Once she becomes a domestic servant, Moll begins to hope again that she might escape the bonds of servitude. She is given “all the advantages of education that [she] could have had, if [she] had been as much a gentlewoman as they were with whom I liv’d” (16). She also attracts the attention of two brothers who live in the house who further advance her hopes. During the seduction narrative, Defoe reveals the vulnerability of those subjected to wealthier classes who, as they did during the Bubble, use their social power and authority arbitrarily to control economic and social value. The younger brother Robin professes a free-market mentality and posits that a woman’s beauty alone could be valuable enough in the marriage market: “for beauty will steal a husband sometimes in spite of money; and when the maid chances to be handsomer than the mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a coach before her” (18). The Elder brother, while paying lip service to the possibilities of a market economy uninfluenced by social hierarchy and convention, by the end of his affair with Moll, continues to assess women according to the older, aristocratic model—women are only valued by the amount of money and social status they provide. In the midst of these discourses, Moll’s “folly” is in believing that these male-manipulated values are true depictions of her worth. She believes the Eldest brother’s lavish praise, which he at first relays to his sisters, then to Moll directly: she says repeatedly that her “vanity was elevated,” “but knowing nothing of the wickedness of the times . . . had not one thought of [her] own safety” (19). The theme of seduction by inflated promises and betrayal by manipulated worth in the novel reverberates with those discourses surrounding the speculative bubble and stock market crash. Like Moll, artisans and laborers are seen as “scorning their trade” for the lure of “get rich quick schemes” of the South Sea company.13 Writers marveled at “the capacity of stock profits to overturn rank and station 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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almost overnight. They also—with some perplexity—observe the shift to a world whose values, institutions, and stability rest upon pieces of paper with agreed-upon and manipulated worth” (Dugaw 50). Writing for Mist’s Journal, Defoe noted investors’ naïve participation in investment schemes, relaying an anecdote about a jobber who came to take five shillings “to a certain subscription, to be made some time or other, they [subscribers] did not know when; to some certain scheme or other, they did not know who; for insurance of ships, &c., they did not know how.”14 Similarly, knowing “nothing of the wickedness of the times,” Moll assumes there is stability and honesty in the Elder brother’s discourse where there was none: “the mistake lay here, that Mrs. Betty was in earnest, and the gentleman was not” (19). It is possible to entertain in this scene another meaning of “earnest” besides sincerity, that is, money laid down to bind an agreement, which the Elder brother gives Moll in the form of gold during his first seduction. Although the exchange has often been read as illustrative of Moll’s greed or as a straightforward, sex-for-money transaction,15 this reading takes the view of the Elder brother more than it does of Moll, for she says she “spent whole hours in looking upon” the gold, and that “never poor vain creature was so wrapt up with every part of the story as I was” (22); this sentence implies that she has swallowed the whole of the brother’s story—his love for her, his promises of marriage, and his inflated picture of her—all bound with gold “earnest money.”16 While many eighteenth-century ballads and pamphlets about the rampant stock mania use biting satire to castigate the folly of believing in such “puffed up” values and projecting schemes, Defoe’s novel uses the circumstances and relative powerlessness of Moll’s social situation to create sympathy for his heroine in this new, unstable economy, as well as sympathy for those affected by the crash and its ensuing financial revolution. In October 1720, Defoe claimed, “the good people have been imposed upon. . . . They have been catch’d in the snare . . . running innocently after one another like a flock of sheep, and now they are left to get out as well as they can” (qtd. in Backscheider 454). Moll’s seduction by the Elder brother is also cast in predatory metaphors: “he began with that unhappy snare to all women” (16); he knows “how to catch a woman in his net as a partridge when he went a setting” (17); he “had thus baited his hook.” All of his “snares” are stories of her value and their future together. After she has been his mistress, however, Moll comes to realize that the Elder brother actually views her as “a thing of no value” (27). Having been betrayed by these inflated assurances, Moll once more retreats to the patrician model, conducting what E. P. Thompson calls 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




a rebellion in “defense of custom.”17 She asserts that a servant can never acquire the status of a lady and resists the younger brother’s proposal on these grounds. In line with eighteenth-century politics of preferment, it is her reproduction of the traditional patrician/plebeian social structure that rewards her with social advancement through marriage. She resists Robin’s proposal by insisting on their unequal stations in life and telling his mother she would “never so far forget my obligations to you and all your house” (41). During this discussion, Moll is for the first time characterized similarly to the popular discourse surrounding female servants—Robin calls her a “jade,” who “won’t capitulate, nor yield upon any terms” (41). For this forthright plebeian stance, the mother declares, “I shall value the girl the better for it” (43). Yet Defoe punctures the myth of security of the paternalist model—it has already been corrupted by the new market economy. While the exchange of women between men historically served to consolidate leisure-class men’s power, Defoe shows this transaction to be tainted; the Elder brother “cheats” the younger by “shifting off his whore into his brother’s arms for a wife” (46). As a model already being eaten away by economic interest, Defoe reveals its inevitable decline. When Robin unexpectedly dies shortly after their marriage, it marks the impermanence of the paternalist system that rewarded Moll for asserting her proper station as a servant. Having depicted Moll’s economic fall from innocence to experience, Defoe sets the stage to show how she capitalizes on her social hybridity to negotiate a perilous world of unstable and shifting economic values.

“She Had No Need to Stoop to the Disaster of the Times” Because of his own sporadic encounters with bankruptcy, imprisonment, and poverty, Defoe himself typifies the variegated identity of the eighteenth-century middling class in that it still could unpredictably hazard the same hardships as laboring classes. As Peter Earle observes, Defoe knew “the poverty of disaster, that poverty which came as such a shock to the middle sort of people who ‘by misfortune or mismanagement or both, fall from flourishing fortunes into debt, bankruptcy, jails, distress, and all sorts of misery.’”18 Scholars who study the middling sort often focus on how this group sought either to emulate or supersede the class above them, namely the gentry; yet Defoe’s novels offer insight into how, particularly during times of distress, the middling sort may also have looked below, to the laboring classes as models of adaptability, pragmatism, and resilience. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Moll’s shrewdness results not from her having been a gentlewoman, but a laborer. Indeed, she has the pragmatism and resourcefulness of someone who has been radicalized by her experiences as a laboringclass woman. After Robin’s death she resolves never to be any man’s mistress while she can support herself. This resolution is not informed by her newly acquired bourgeois virtue, however. She states, her “pride, not [her] principle, [her] money, not [her] virtue kept her honest (48). These are not the sentiments of a leisure-class heroine. Moreover, Moll’s experience of spousal desertion and her practice of common-law marriages, separations, cohabitations, and (bigamous) remarriages locate her more within a plebeian than a middle-class culture. As Bridget Hill has documented, plebeians either couldn’t afford the legal fees or church ceremonies associated with middle and upper-class marriage and divorce or they simply resented the invasion of privacy that such protocols as “calling of the banns” perpetuated (209–210). Thus “the only solution for the vast majority of the population was to take the law into their own hand, by desertion, bigamy and wife sale” (211). Moll’s attitudes toward what is justifiable in courtship, marriage, and divorce correspond much more explicitly to that of plebeian rather than middling culture. Yet Moll’s class identity is complex, and it is this complexity that allows her to be strategic and situational about which social values she professes. Watt correctly notes that Moll does not consistently identify with other plebeian characters in the novel (114), but she does not fully identify with the middling orders, either. In her subsequent foray into the marriage market, Moll falls for a gentleman tradesman who likes to live above his means. After their marriage ends in disastrous bankruptcy, she makes fun of his “gentleman status” by imputing that all it amounted to was that he said nice things to her and treated her well, while leaving her “to rob the creditors for something to subsist on” (50). Throughout the novel, Moll may be said to pursue middle-class gentility; her means of achieving this status, however, reflect the strategies of the classes to which she was born: the laboring and underclass. Moll’s calculated stance on the myth of gentility serves her well in educating herself and other women about being duped in courtship and marriage, particularly during a time when people’s declarations of their financial worth in courtship resembled the stratagems of a stockjobber on Exchange Alley. The homologous structure of business and courtship relationships was frequently invoked in pamphlets about the South Sea Bubble. Defoe himself uses the analogy in one of his editorials, in which he describes a woman whose lack of a fortune 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




has derailed her marriage aspirations. With help from her friends, they raise enough money for her to obtain a subscription, and she makes 20,000 pounds in South Sea investments (which unfortunately is misprinted as 2,000 pounds). The woman writes that she needs the sum to be corrected so that she can acquire a husband: I design to make the best of my stock; and, if I have wherewith to buy a south-sea husband, I will have one that has money, as well as seeks money: for the men have of late put so hard upon our sex, that even those that have had no money themselves, had the impudence to talk of fortunes, and to expect wives with portions, as if our sex was bound to the drudgery of making beggars rich; and, that the market was so much against us that we must take up with anything, whether with money, or without; while every jack-pudding,—with his whole fortune dangling about his ears, in a long wig,—pretends to ask what fortune a woman has, when he vouchsafes to look at her.19

In the novel, Defoe further expands the homology of marriage and stock market by showing through Moll’s relationships how to survive and participate in an economy where those in power regularly distort the values of commodities and people. Her picaresque marital adventures allow Defoe to explore the blurred line between moral and immoral economic practices. Having eschewed bourgeois sentimentality—“this cheat called Love” (48)—marriage as Moll sees it requires being a shrewd trader on the market by buying a husband and selling herself. In her objective to purchase a husband, Moll decides not to take men on “their own recommendations” (54). She knows now that men, similar to the stockjobbers in Exchange Alley, engage in false advertising: they “made no scruple to set themselves out, and go a fortune hunting, when they really had no fortune themselves to demand it, or merit to deserve it.” While other genteel women in Moll’s neighborhood feel victimized by such behavior, feeling they have “no power to resent it,” Moll draws on her experience of being “low . . . in the world” to urge the women to resist these tactics; she tells her friend “she had no need to stoop to the disaster of the times.” Moll and the women of the neighborhood decide to teach one suitor a lesson by engaging in a little market manipulation of their own. By mobilizing the gossip mill, Moll and her friend so effectively debase the suitor’s value that no woman will have him. Through similar stratagems, they in turn elevate the friend’s value until the suitor begs her to take him back, this time providing “undeniable [documentary] evidence” of his worth (57). Moll thus schools her friends in consumer research and 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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smart investment tactics appropriate to “an age so wicked” (59). She states that women who blindly take the first offer that comes “look like people that venture their whole estates in a lottery where there is a hundred thousand blanks to one prize” (60). For Moll as well as for Defoe, shrewd investment does not have to follow the blind ambition of gambling, a reckless pastime that Defoe in other writings regularly equated with South Sea Company investments (Backscheider 454). Much like Defoe himself, Moll isn’t always, however, a positive example of business acumen. “The wickedness of the times” makes it difficult to distinguish the difference between marshalling deceptive strategies for self-protection and perpetrating financial crimes on others. In her next marital venture, Defoe illustrates the dangers of employing “bubble” tactics, used either in the marriage or investment market. Penniless, Moll relocates to the country where she is unknown and through the help of her friend and her friend’s husband, they begin to spread rumors of her having a fortune so that she can acquire a husband. Moll succeeds in her scheme to “deceive the deceiver” (61), yet she cautions that this is “one of the most dangerous steps a woman can take, and in which she runs the most hazard of being ill us’d afterwards” (67). Indeed, Defoe clearly manifests the danger of Moll’s lapse into stockjobber actions by revealing that she has unwittingly married her half brother. Both parties of this transaction are “ill us’d”: neither of them follows Moll’s earlier advice to investigate their investment before purchasing. Moll knows that her suitor possesses plantations in Virginia, but knows nothing of his family until they actually move to Virginia (and she discovers they both have the same mother). For his part, the suitor has relied on unsubstantiated rumors of Moll’s wealth, and in economic terms has committed himself to a stock whose values are grossly inflated. What results is perhaps Defoe’s strongest indictment of an uncritical engagement in bubble market relations. In South Sea lingo, the suitor has been bubbled, and Moll has become the “biter bit.”20 Their responses to the discovery of their illicit union echo people’s realization of their losses in the South Sea crash. Moll states that all her “seeming prosperity wore off and ended in misery and destruction” (71) and that “it would be the ruin of the whole family” (76). The husband, who has to sign an oath that he will not hold Moll accountable for their crime, becomes “distemper’d in his head” and tries twice to commit suicide (82), a common newspaper report during the aftermath of the Bubble.21 Reading the incest plot against the backdrop of the South Sea Bubble helps to clarify a debate about its purpose in the novel. Both Ellen Pollak and Ann Louise Kibbie have read this scene as one in 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




which Moll’s body becomes a metaphor for sexual currency that either escapes from or confirms emerging capitalism.22 Kibbie in particular sees Moll’s unwitting marriage to her brother as a protocapitalist moment in that incest harkens back to antiusury discourse that makes taboo the unnatural generation of money from itself; thus “Moll’s incest becomes the model for capitalist increase.”23 The “horror of capital” is then averted through “Moll’s reunion with Humphry, [in which] biological generation and the generation of wealth become the same in a fantasy of the naturalization of capital” (1028). Both Kibbie and Pollack agree that Defoe eventually affirms emergent capitalism and the significance of women’s symbolic and literal function of exchange in this economy; however, they do not fully explain why Defoe would counterintuitively invoke the taboo of incest in order to promote capitalism. Historicizing the incest plot as symptomatic of Bubble tactics, however, allows us to create a more nuanced distinction between the brand of capitalism Defoe advocates and the type that inspires “horror.” Contemporary discourse on the Bubble is rife with references to stockjobbers as predators of their own kind, or as cannibals. One pamphlet states, We are now like sailors in a ship at sea who, when all their provisions are spent, begin to feast upon one another, and he that is strongest may hold out to the last; but still without a fresh supply they must all perish; and thus the Nation may possibly hold out a little longer with this stock-jobbing trade, whereby we are only preying upon one another; but, since the body politick of the kingdom visibly decays every year, without timely relief it must also perish.24

Incest, like cannibalism, turns back upon what is the self, and can thus be read as Defoe’s disdain for stockjobbing, particularly as it deviates from an important mercantilist tenet: that of creating new wealth. For mercantilists, stockjobbing simply shifted wealth from one person to another rather than bringing in new wealth from abroad or creating new manufacturing.25 Thus using the metaphor of incest to convey such economic insularity would appropriately express Defoe’s disgust toward Moll and her half-brother’s engagement in marital stockjobbing. As we shall see, the incestuous relationship can only be recuperated after Moll has transformed herself into an ideal mercantilist businesswoman. Through her relationships, Moll demonstrates both shrewd and imprudent economic strategies, yet Defoe consistently promotes her 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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as a paragon of resilience and fortitude when business has gone bad. In the face of several economic and social disasters, Moll’s plebeian adaptability contrasts with the suicidal despair of her middling-sort husbands. As noted previously, her practice of common-law marriages, separations, cohabitations, and remarriages itself locates her within a plebeian culture, and it is this tradition Defoe draws on to emblematize how to navigate a precarious and corrupt economy. Moll’s plebeian attitudes toward relationships model those toward business investments which she adapts to whatever situation she’s in, learning to pursue and end them when circumstance demands it. Upon her return to England, Moll compares herself to “a bag of money . . . dropt on the highway, which is a prey to the next comer”(101), but Defoe never depicts Moll merely as an object of exchange; also a trader and investor, she uses her skills to search for opportunities to increase her stock. The last three men Moll is involved with play out various methods for Moll to increase her net value, yet sexual and reproductive labor proves to be, in the end, a highly unstable asset that depends too much on the whims of men. The Bath gentleman helps to maintain her as his mistress, but Moll soon comes to realize that this cohabitation arrangement is a short term investment: “knowing the world as I had done, and that such kind of things do not often last long, I took care to lay up as much money as I could for a wet day; making him believe it was all spent upon the extraordinary appearance of things in my lying in” (93). Here Moll basically becomes an embezzler, overstating her expenses in order to reap payments for her sexual and reproductive labor. Having increased her stock from 300 pounds to 450, Moll now seeks a longer-term investment through marriage. Defoe again sets Moll up for an investment scenario common during the South Sea Bubble, as she gambles on two prospects—the clerk and the Lancashire husband—but this time Moll is somewhat wiser, in that she keeps her “safe card” (112), the clerk, in play while she bets on the higher stakes in Lancashire. Defoe seems to convey a clear business lesson here in that Moll is duped by Jemy’s “glittering show of a great estate” which turns out to be a mirage and imbricates them in a “double fraud” (116). Jemy also illustrates the high-risk mistake many investors of the time made of going into debt in order to make a purportedly quick and high-yielding investment by presenting himself as wealthier than he is in order to entice Moll to marry him. But if Jemy’s proposal represents the seductive, “get-rich-quick” schemes that end in costly liabilities (signified in the novel by the 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




child that Moll has with him and must give up), what are we to make of the honest clerk’s proposition, which provides Moll security for many years, but concludes in bankruptcy? The clerk loses a large sum of his money from a coworker’s “failure” and then dies from grief over his loss. Defoe implies not only that too much honesty and trust in business is dangerous, but also that “to sink under trouble is to double the weight” (147–148). Perhaps the reason Defoe renders so much uncharacteristically genuine passion between Moll and Jemy is that they both possess a vital quality Defoe sees the middling sort as lacking: the “spirit and courage to have look’d [their] misfortunes in the face” (147).

“It Must Be Confess’d, Trade Is Almost Universally Founded Upon Crime” It makes sense that Defoe follows the demise of the most honest businessman in the novel with Moll’s turn to a life of property crime. For in this section, Defoe interrogates the corruption of the postbubble economy in a much more explicit manner than in the first part of the novel. Moll justifies stealing with the proverb, “Vice came in always at the door of necessity, not at the door of inclination” (101). Given the economic instability that Defoe portrays, however, one wonders who has the luxury of not answering the “door of necessity” and turning into a criminal? Certainly Moll illustrates that laboring women must answer this door, but she also shows that those in a “settled state of living” (one thinks of Defoe himself who was imprisoned for bankruptcy) are invariably reduced to poverty and vice, as well. Moll’s Lancashire husband, Jemy, for example, is bred a gentleman but “reduced to a low fortune” and turns to highway robbery. In an economy where business transactions are everywhere tinged with a hint of illicitness, Defoe creates an ironic reversal, in which he looks to the underclass in order to explore and determine the boundaries of moral or ethical business transactions. Unlike Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, which satirizes the governing class by comparing their business practices to those of celebrity thieves, Defoe takes seriously the overlap between business and crime. In his Complete English Tradesman (CET), in which Defoe acknowledges “trade is almost universally founded upon crime,” he specifically comments on the lucrative businesses driven by consumers’ vices—their desires for excessive eating, drinking, and luxury items—yet throughout the tract, he also notes the fine line separating the criminal and tradesman (2.108). Tradesmen need to know 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Nothing secures the tradesman against those men so well as his being thoroughly knowing in business, having a judgment to weigh all the delusive schemes and the fine promises of the wheedling projector, and to see which are likely to answer, or which not; to examine all his specious pretences, his calculations and figures, and see whether they are as likely to answer the end as he takes upon him to say they will. (1.37)

Defoe furthermore admits that when in economic straits, a tradesman will do anything he can to stay afloat: “how many little, mean, and even wicked things, will even the religious tradesman stoop to in his distress, to deliver himself—even such things as his very soul would abhor at another time, and for which he goes perhaps with a wounded conscience all his life after!” (1.79). But even when the businessman is not in distress, Defoe admits that tradespeople deserve some latitude in terms of honesty in order to carry out their work: But after all this is premised, there are some latitudes, like poetical licences in other cases, which a tradesman is and must be allowed, and which by the custom and usage of trade he may give himself a liberty in, which cannot be allowed in other cases to any man, no, nor to the tradesman himself out of his business—I say, he may take some liberties, but within bounds . . .” (1.226).

Defoe, however, leaves open the question, “which latitudes are customary, and which are not?” In examining the corruption leading up to the South Sea Bubble, Defoe was clearly not a purist in his understanding of the business world, yet he was appalled by the lack of “bounds” practiced in Exchange Alley. Common thieves, he declared, are at least more honest and direct than the stockjobbers, and even have some sense of moral restraint about whom they prey upon. In The Anatomy of Exchange Alley (1719), he writes that stockjobbers are “more remorseless, more void of humanity, done without necessity, and committed upon fathers, brothers, widows, orphans, and intimate friends, in all which cases Highwaymen, generally touch’d with remorse, and affected with principles of humanity and generosity, stop short and choose to prey upon strangers only.”26 In Defoe’s eyes, stockjobbing and bubble economics have created an ironic world in which thieves are more virtuous than professional financial workers. Novak has hypothesized 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


all they can about criminal activities to prevent being a victim of crime themselves:


from Defoe’s other writings that Defoe “would have liked to have seen blatant white-collar crime, which often led to the suffering of thousands, punished more severely than the action of a povertystricken robber” (Daniel Defoe 574). In Moll Flanders, Defoe thus turns to the criminal underworld to both acknowledge the inevitable component of illicit activity in business and, paradoxically, reinforce standards for it. Moll exemplifies the traits of the more-sympathetic criminal that Defoe sketches both in CET and The Anatomy of Exchange Alley. As she states repeatedly, she is driven to theft by necessity. Now in her midlife, Moll finds herself in a society where it is not possible to earn a living wage through work; she states, “gladly I would have got my bread by the help of my needle if I cou’d have got work, but that was very hard to do for one that had no manner of acquaintance in the world” (155). Nor can she, at 50, supplement or substitute her labor value with that of her body; thus petty theft becomes Moll’s survival strategy. Moreover, despite the “hardening” of her compassion, she is not without remorse and often reflects on her victim’s experience of loss: “I was impatient to hear some news of the loss; and would fain know how it was, whether they were a poor bodies goods, or a rich; perhaps, said I, it may be some poor widow like me, that had pack’d up these goods to go and sell them for a little bread . . . but my own distresses silenc’d all these reflections” (150). Finally, she adheres to some principles of loyalty within the underworld by not turning evidence against her fellow thieves or her fence, the governess. Indeed, this initial portrayal of Moll’s criminal activities conforms to the historical patterns of the poor who engaged in crime. Heather Shore’s study of crime in eighteenth-century London as an “alternative welfare strategy” of the poor shows that “prostitution, begging and vagrancy, petty theft, receiving, shoplifting and employee theft were all activities to which the poor might resort in times of increased hardship, or as a way of supplementing a limited income.”27 For example, when Moll regrets having stolen a silver tankard from a tavern, the governess assuages her guilt, saying “don’t you need it more than they do?” (156). Moll’s initial forays into crime, therefore, are understood, like the tradesman’s duplicity, as a necessary part of survival in the postbubble economy. As Jacques Sohier has noted, Moll’s skills and qualities that make her a renowned thief are also those traits Defoe valorizes in his ideal tradesman. Sohier details her specialization in certain types of “jobs,” her precise record keeping of her savings, her avoidance of high-risk activities such as counterfeiting or housebreaking, and her insistence 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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on the best price for her stolen goods.28 We could also add her period of diligent study as an apprentice and her ability to network with other criminals. Sohier sees this parallel as evidence that, for Defoe, methods of success in legal and illegal economies make no difference and that Defoe basically imposed these middle-class traits onto his plebeian heroine (10), yet this perspective ignores the irony that pervades Defoe’s fictional world after the stock market crash. Instead, Defoe exploits the overlap between the criminal and the tradesman because it is the underclass that possesses the traits that the tradesman should emulate. One could argue that all of Moll’s crimes are tributes to plebeian ingenuity that the trading class needs to wise up to; hence Defoe’s preface indicates that the crime anecdotes “stand as so many warnings to honest people to beware of them, intimating to them by what methods innocent people are drawn in, plunder’d and robb’d, and by consequence how to avoid them” (5). Defoe also ironically constructs Moll as a source of moral instruction for the leisure classes. In one of her first thefts, for example, Moll steals the gold necklace from a child and lectures about the “vanity of the mother to have her child look fine at dancing school” (152). Besides using Moll’s industriousness and critical edge to satirize and discipline those above her in social station, Defoe also depicts the underworld with its own codes of honor and decorum. Critics in their emphasis on Moll’s possessive individualism have often overlooked the extent to which Moll creates strategic alliances within her criminal network.29 While she is savvy about whom she works with, refusing to do a job with the incompetent couple who are housebreakers, Moll does form partnerships with and displays loyalty to other thieves. She calls her first tutor in pickpocketing her “comrade” (157), and visits to “condole” with her and another thief when they are imprisoned in Newgate (159). On another occasion, she steals the belongings of people whose house has caught fire, and she meets another thief embarked on the same venture; Moll tells her “I understand your trade, you may meet with purchase enough” (160). In all of her various partnerships, Moll refrains from giving evidence against her comrades, although they do not always return the favor. Even when she is finally caught, she has the opportunity to inform against her governess as well as Jemy, yet they all stick together to work out a better sentencing deal.30 In CET, Defoe echoes this underworld trait when he cautions tradesmen to protect each others’ professional reputations and work to expose any tradespeople who are maliciously giving out false characters to ruin others (1.211–212). 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




In this topsy-turvy world, it should come as no surprise that Defoe locates his mercantilist vision of economic security within the transactions of common thieves. While Defoe respectfully acknowledges the dignity of labor, the novel generally presents a pessimistic view of earning a living through labor in an emerging free-market economy. At one point Moll “at last got some quiltingwork for ladies beds, petticoats, and the like” (155); shortly thereafter she reports that her heart is heavy because she “had little work, and nothing to live on” (157), during which time her governess prompts her to steal. This valuing of the circulation of goods (exemplified here through the process of theft and fencing) over the value of labor corresponds to Defoe’s mercantilist beliefs. As Wolfram Schmidgen has succinctly stated, “Defoe is ultimately not really interested in the process of production, but believes that the circulation of goods itself is productive of wealth.”31 Hence for the first time in the novel, through theft, Moll escapes deluding projection schemes and erratic employment and is suddenly able to access and assert the intrinsic value of goods. Before she even takes them to market, Moll can miraculously determine the value of the goods she steals; for example, the gold necklace she steals from the child is worth twelve or fourteen pounds (152); she steals a diamond ring which she says was worth about three pounds, with the other ring being about nine shillings (153). The governess takes the silver tankard that Moll steals and melts it down, giving Moll “the full value in silver again” (156). This direct relation between goods and their value is certainly the most stable economy we’ve seen in the novel. Indeed, in this section, Defoe posits that the value of people and the value of people’s labor are much more unstable than the value of goods. Moll simply picks up commodities and turns them into money. Experiencing no losses, she slowly augments her stock until she brings it to a wildly impressive 700 pounds. Yet Defoe’s novel must also answer the question, “when does the business of crime become a crime of business?” Moll’s thieving transactions reflect Defoe’s mercantilist faith in the circulation and value of material goods; but Moll, unlike Defoe’s ideal tradesman, does not keep her money in circulation. Moll oversteps the boundaries of a moral economy by continuing to increase her wealth without benefitting the nation’s trade or workers; thus, as in a medieval morality play, her criminal activities become increasingly associated with mortality and the presence of the “devil”: even after she has found “quilting work for ladies beds, petticoats, and the like . . . and work’d very hard, and with this . . . began to live; . . . the diligent devil who resolv’d 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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[she] should continue in his service, continually prompted [her] to go out and take a walk, that is to say, to see if any thing would offer in the old way” (155). The more wealth that Moll stockpiles, the closer she comes to being caught and sentenced to death. The hoarding of money or credit for private interest, as Terry Mulcaire illustrates, is as a whole antithetical to Whig doctrine, allegorized in Cato’s Letters as a lustful tyrant locking up an alluring young woman in his mansion.32 Mulcaire reveals that Defoe’s editorials follow a similar analogy, comparing extravagant saving to “killing [a] hen” that would have “laid every day a golden egg.” Moll, in not putting her money to public use, is similarly obstructing her own circulation and coming closer to death in the gallows. Metaphors of “hardening” and petrification intensify in the text as she garners more money through crime, so that when she is finally caught and sentenced in Newgate, she compares herself to “the waters in the caveties, and hollows of mountains, which petrifies and turns into stone whatever they are suffer’d to drop upon . . . [thus she] degenerated into stone” (217). Obstructing the circulation of wealth affects not only Moll herself, but also those workers who would benefit from its stimulation to trade. Defoe’s mercantilist commitments explain a pattern in the novel of presenting servants, apprentices and journeymen as the archenemies of thieves. Laborers are the group that is most often responsible for apprehending criminals in the novel, and they are described as possessing the most antipathy to thieves. When Moll is by mistake detained for stealing from a mercer, the employees are the ones who treat her the worst: “some of the servants likewise us’d me saucily, and had much ado to keep their hands off of me, the master indeed was civiler to me than they”; the journeyman is “impudent and unmanly to the last degree, used me barbarously” (189). In Marxist terms, we could discuss this scenario as an example of the thief and the business owner as mutual exploiters of laborers, but under Defoe’s mercantilism, the thief merits the laborers’ ire because they use their wealth for self-gain instead of creating opportunities for employment and higher wages. Significantly, Moll is finally caught stealing by two servant women who react with excessive rage and violence: “two fiery dragons cou’d not have been more furious than they were; they tore my cloths, bully’d and roar’d as if they would have murther’d me” (213). Defoe provides another sign that Moll has crossed the line of ethical business behavior in that the female servants are presented with an integrity and selflessness almost unheard of in the novel, turning down 100 pounds to drop the case against Moll, when their annual salary is only three pounds a year. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




As evidenced by his essays defending English weavers, Defoe’s mercantilism reaches from its endorsement of higher wages and employment for laborers to a nationalist valuing of English goods, especially English textiles. In order to manifest fully Defoe’s ideal of a mercantilist business woman, Moll will have to transform into someone acts on behalf of the nation’s economic wellbeing in addition to her own. Moll’s chosen and imposed last name, “Flanders,” which refers to contraband fabric—lace from Flanders—connotes the self-interested nature of her business to this point. We get a hint of Defoe’s nationalist pride in English textiles when Moll notes that she is reluctant to shoplift from those involved in the (presumably English) cloth industry because “mercers and drapers . . . are a set of fellows that have their eyes very much about them”; she prefers instead to venture among luxury traders such as “the lace folks and the milliners” (164). This discretion serves her well throughout the novel, as several of her comrades are caught stealing some form of cloth. Her first tutor and another student, for example, are caught by a “hawks-ey’d journeyman” stealing cambrick from a linen draper (159). Working with a female partner, Moll decides to steal “a piece of very good damask in a mercers shop” and passes it off to her partner, who ends up getting caught by the mercer’s staff (172). Significantly, Moll is not brought to justice when she steals a bundle and discovers both a suit of Indian Damask and a Flanders-Lace. One wonders whether Defoe advocated the protection of British goods even among thieves. Those critics who have doubted Moll’s conversion in Newgate and who deem her success in the colonies as ironic at best or hypocritical at worst are overlooking the importance of mercantilist thought in the novel,33 for it is in Newgate that Moll begins her transformation from one who uses wealth for self-interest to one who enhances the wealth of the nation. After sinking into a “strange lethargy of soul” (218) she hears news of her former husband, Jemy, who has been taken prisoner. Rather than scheming to use this situation for her own gain and turning evidence against him, she instead “griev’d day and night” and reflects on “how many desperate wretches have I sent to the devil; the gentleman’s misfortunes I plac’d all to my own account” (219). As she transforms into someone who thinks of her obligations to others, she is “perfectly chang’d, and became another body” (220). In this respect, Defoe returns Moll to her underclass origins, as she remains loyal to her criminal network. Moll’s conversion, then, is not so much a spiritual one as a social and economic one; Defoe’s ideal tradesperson and planter, therefore, incorporates the values 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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and experience derived from Moll’s various social locations, from vulnerable laboring-class woman to underclass thief. As her emotions, senses, and thoughts begin to flow again, so does her cash. She quits hoarding her money, which stops circulation, and puts it to use for the good of herself and the nation by investing in the colonies.

New Markets in a New World Since the creation of the South Sea Company in 1712, commentators, including Defoe, objected to its unrealistic plan to generate profits through trade with Spain’s colonial markets, and advocated instead that trade with the American colonies should be Britain’s priority. Having signed his own South Sea stock away in 1719, Defoe in a Manufacturer essay contrasted the base exchange of stocks with the “more heroic” project of colonization. Glossing over the imperialist implications of both economic practices, he asserts that projects are merely bubbles, “not for enlarging our commerce, settling colonies, and spreading the dominions of our sovereign”; “instead of merchants carrying on useful commerce, we see throngs of setters and cullies sharping and cheating one another.” He laments, “why has no bold undertaker follow’d the glorious Sir Walter Raleigh up the River of Amazon, the Rio Parano, and the Great Oroonoque, where thousands of nations remain undiscover’d, and where the wealth . . . exceeds all that has ever been conquer’d or discover’d in the American world?”34 After the stock market crash, Britons turned once more to North America as a more secure region for trade and investment. In “Some Considerations on the Late Mismanagement of the South-Sea Stock,” the writer states, I believe hitherto every man is convinced, that as the colonies in America grow rich, so their trade to England increases, and enriches us; for as they grow rich, their demands are the greater for our manufacturers; and wherever a colony does not flourish, there the trade with us declines. So that really all the encouragement we can give them centers in England: their sons and daughters are sent hither, and estates are bought with their improvements abroad; and consequently as they increase in riches, so land will be the more valuable here; for few fix their station there when that is once got over, the love either in themselves or children returns for their native country.”35

Defoe echoes this defense of mercantilist colonialism more explicitly in his Complete English Tradesman, as he believes the “trade to our 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




West Indies and American colonies” allows England to export goods produced in these regions to other parts of the world and to increase its gold and silver supply, as “a great deal of money in specie, is returned hither for and in balance of our own manufactures and merchandises exported thither—on these accounts some have insisted that more real wealth is brought into Great Britain every year from those colonies, than is brought from the Spanish West Indies to old Spain” (1.322). Although Defoe as a politically paid journalist grudgingly gave his support to the South Sea Company after the crash, even buying stock in the South Sea Company for his daughter (Backscheider 457), his novels betray a greater commitment to colonization in the Americas as a way to restore the English economy. The last part of Moll Flanders maintains Defoe’s optimism about the value of tangible goods and land, the importance of trade to employment, and the potential of colonial holdings to bolster the English economy. Defoe details precisely how Moll and Jemy, having united their savings, buy English goods to barter and plant with in Virginia and Maryland; indeed, more than half of their stock remains in England as Moll purchases supplies to take on their trip. Once settled in Maryland as tobacco planters, Moll’s two estates begin to flourish, earning her 400 pounds a year, and she becomes the employer to fifty to sixty servants. As she enters retirement at the age of seventy, she and Jemy return to England, dutifully—in mercantilist terms—bringing their wealth back home to the mother country. In a sense, the final economic situation of the novel looks back to its beginnings, when Moll struggled to free herself from a paternalist model but experienced only treachery from the emerging free-market relations. Rather than capitulating to either order, Defoe has introduced a third possibility, that of reinvigorating the moral principles of mercantilist capitalism.36 Moll’s early experience as the neglected ward of Britain’s mercantilist conscience enables her to eventually transform into its ideal embodiment.

“I Did It by Amy’s Hand” 37 Scholars have often been puzzled over why Defoe imagined such different poetic justices for his criminal characters who nevertheless achieve fabulous wealth—why is Moll’s story a “comedy of capital” and Roxana’s a tragedy?38 Contrasting these tradeswomen according to Defoe’s ideals of mercantilism brings the two heroines into stark relief. First, while Moll embraces the advantages of social hybridity, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Roxana fails to turn the “poverty of disaster” into opportunity; instead she and her maid Amy maintain a master-servant relationship in which they exhibit distinct but interdependent identities, a relationship rendered perverse and archaic in Defoe’s novel. Susan, the daughter who represents the potential of integrating not only her own laboring-class and gentlewoman’s experience but also Roxana’s, is viciously murdered in order to preserve Roxana and Amy’s rigid social roles, a relationship that is doomed to extinction as Roxana is “brought so low again” (330) at the end of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, the witty, beautiful and moneyed Roxana is hurled into poverty through the incompetence and decadence of her brewer-husband. As Christopher Gabbard has noted, while Roxana mocks her husband for his failure to know his own accounts, leaving everything to clerks and bookkeepers, her lack of knowledge mirrors his, as she is “not bred to work” and must depend on her servant Amy to survive.39 While some critics have interpreted Amy’s overemployment as consonant with Defoe’s two contemporaneous tracts that denounce servants—The Complete Law of Subordination (1724) and No-body’s Business is Every-body’s Business (1725)—it is important to note that these pamphlets attack lazy and inept servants, a characterization completely antithetical to the industrious Amy.40 A more applicable context can be found in CET, in which Defoe criticized just such businessmen and their wives for their overdependence on their employees. Unlike the former antiservant texts, CET conveys a backhanded tribute to the servant classes. Defoe constructs the tradesman primarily as separate and superior to his servants, yet he cannot help but acknowledge that the servant class possesses business traits that the tradesman should inculcate. For example, Defoe dedicates a chapter to a dangerous trend he sees among businessmen who fancy themselves gentlemen and who leisurely spend their days at the coffee shops, hunting, or gambling and leave all the responsibilities of the business to apprentices and servants. He cautions that as soon as the apprentice becomes independent and sets up his own shop, “customers will all run thither” (1.147). Defoe asks, “had not the master much better have been Timothy [the apprentice] himself?” Good servants, Defoe concludes, can be more dangerous to business than bad ones: “the extravagant, idle, vagrant servant hurts himself; but the diligent servant endangers his master” (148). A similar message is conveyed in a later chapter that discusses the duties of tradesmen’s wives. He castigates those women who fancy themselves gentlewomen and “scorn to be seen in the comptinghouse, much less behind the counter” (1.287). If the husband should 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




die, the wife’s ignorance of the husband’s affairs can further devastate her family as well as the business. The woman who once prided herself on being above “this mechanic thing called a tradesman” now has to depend upon a servant or apprentice “to settle the accounts for her, and endeavour to get in the debts; in return for which she is obliged to give him his time and his freedom, let him into the trade, make him master of all the business, set him up in the world, and, it may be at last, with all her pride, lets the boy creep to bed to her” (289). While this passage is clearly aimed at making the wife feel ashamed that she now has to take her servant to be her “master,” it nevertheless reveals Defoe’s respect for the knowledge and ability of the servant class that the middling tradeswoman would do well to acquire for herself. Indeed, Defoe believed in women’s business acumen and advocated that a widow be able to carry on the business after their husband’s death: “women, when once they give themselves leave to stoop to their own circumstances, and think fit to rouze up themselves to their own relief, are not so helpless and shiftless creatures as some would make them appear in the world” (303). Yet the abandoned Roxana, similar to the widowed tradesman’s wife, rarely is “fit to rouse” herself up and instead figuratively and perhaps literally “lets the boy [or Amy] creep to bed to her.” Roxana and Amy’s relationship is one of the most intriguing and bizarre mistress-servant relationships in eighteenth-century literature, yet few scholars have attempted to thoroughly investigate its role in the novel. Terry Castle’s psychoanalytic study is a pioneering exception, as she posits that Roxana constructs Amy as a shadow self and later a surrogate mother to her and her children.41 As Roxana becomes more passive and lethargic, Amy is more active and frenetic, allowing Roxana to sink further into an infantile state and shirk her maternal responsibility to the daughter Susan. While the mother-daughter analogy has its virtues and explains Roxana’s disintegrating self through the last part of the novel, Kristina Straub’s recent historicist analysis of the role reversal between mistress and servant in terms of household management is more on target, as is Gabbard in his fascinating passing observation that Amy becomes a sort of “female husband” to Roxana (238).42 Throughout the eighteenth century, the laboring-class woman frequently becomes socially constructed as distinct from her leisured counterpart through the incorporation of masculine and homoerotic attributes and desires.43 Defoe participates in this early social construction by rendering Roxana’s power primarily as one derived from the power of spectacle, and Amy’s power as rooted in her actions and mobility. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Left on their own with five children to support, Amy is the one who knows to whom Roxana should appeal, how to pawn goods to obtain food, and how to make Roxana’s reluctant relations accept care of some of the children. When Amy brings distant relations to witness their plight, Roxana is unable to speak to them, yet such rhetorical power proves unnecessary: “the thing spoke it self; they saw me in rags and dirt, who was a little before riding my coach; thin, and looking almost like one starv’d, who was before fat and beautiful” (17). It is Amy who does the talking, who is so persuasive that Roxana admits, “I could not upon any terms have done it like her myself” (18). Despite their shared state of poverty, Roxana resists taking on the laboring-class skills and values that Amy exhibits, even those regarding extramarital sex and nonlegalized marriages. For example, Roxana hesitates to sleep with the married-but-separated landlord fearing it will make her a whore and an adulteress. Following the more lax rules of plebeian sexuality, cohabitation, and marital separation, Amy says she sees nothing wrong with the landlord wanting female company after his wife has left him, nor does she let morality get in the way of survival: “your choice is fair and plain; here you may have a handsome, charming gentleman, be rich, live pleasantly, and in plenty; or refuse him, and want a dinner, go in rags, live in tears; in short, beg and starve” (40). Roxana succumbs to these arrangements, but refuses to accept Amy’s interpretation of the nonlegal union as a “marriage” and insists on her own “whoredom”: “no, no, says Amy, no, you are not [a whore], for you are marry’d” (47). In the scene in which Roxana strips Amy and “puts her to bed” with the landlord, Roxana violently reasserts her own leisure-class value system by refusing to accept herself “as a wife” and by subjecting Amy to the same category of “whore.” While Amy had previously without any qualms offered to bed the master in lieu of her mistress, Roxana’s forcing her to have sex with her master does violate her plebeian notions that cohabitation functions as a marriage: Roxana states, “I’ll put you to-bed to him myself one night or other, if you are willing: no, madam, no, says Amy, not now he’s yours” (45). The ménage-a-trois scene thus paradoxically reinforces the distinct social roles between Roxana and Amy, as Roxana imposes genteel norms and definitions of marriage and adultery on her maid. Yet the ménage scene highlights another unusual quality of their relationship—its homoerotic charge. Defoe’s (homophobic) portrayal of Roxana and Amy’s queer desire for each other renders the perversity of their dependence on each other. Throughout the novel, Amy is characterized as having “an excess of affection” for Roxana (28), 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




leading her eventually to commit, like a jealous lover, a crime of passion as she murders Susan to protect Roxana. Roxana’s desire is most manifest during the ménage scene, a description that seems rather inaccurate as the landlord hardly figures at all. Instead it is Roxana who initiates the seduction: “when she [Amy] see [sic] I was in earnest, she let me do what I wou’d; so I fairly stript her, and then I threw her upon the bed, and thrust her in” (46). Later Roxana acknowledges that “tho’ [the landlord] had, indeed, debauch’d the wench, I knew that I was the principal occasion of it” (47). She even goes so far as to promise Amy, in rake-like fashion, that she “woul’d take care of the child and her too” (48). Yet most often it is Amy who takes care of Roxana, not the reverse. “Mr. Amy,” as one suitor jokingly calls her (187), is in constant motion throughout the text—setting up new households, selling off furniture, traveling internationally on sleuthing expeditions, mediating financial transactions, and advising Roxana. When Roxana finally dismisses Amy because of her murderous plot, Roxana can barely function: “I was, for want of Amy, destitute, I had lost my right hand; she was my steward, gather’d in my rents, I mean my interest money, and kept my accompts, and, in a word, did all my business and without her, indeed, I knew not how to go away, nor how to stay” (318). Amy has become her sole confidant, with whom she is more intimate than her own husband. The dependence on Amy reflects both Roxana’s failure to progress past her infantile state, as Castle argues, and her failure to achieve financial literacy, as Gabbard argues; but it also shows that Roxana as a businesswoman has left too much to “Amy’s hand” (228) and failed to inculcate the skills and knowledge that her servant possesses. Unlike Moll, whose experiences with labor and poverty help to shape her later success as a tradeswoman and planter, Roxana refuses to benefit from a kind of “fortunate fall,” desperately attempting to deny her own brushes with poverty and labor and to relegate laboring-class skills and resourcefulness to her maid. Roxana’s daughter Susan stands in stark contrast to Roxana in this respect. As such, she threatens the polarization of roles and worlds that Roxana and Amy have maintained. Like Roxana, Susan was born into gentility and fell into poverty, but unlike Roxana, Susan learned to work as a servant, unwittingly ending up a servant in her own mother’s household. Even as Roxana strives for upward mobility through sexual labor, Defoe reminds readers through Susan’s presence that the worlds of business and servant classes are intertwined, especially for a woman who makes her living through her body. We may interpret Roxana’s fear of acknowledging her daughter as strictly a fear of revealing her scandalous past, yet the text provides several intimations 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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that Roxana fears acknowledging her experience of poverty as well. As Susan asserts her identity as Roxana’s daughter, several characters mock her for thinking she could be related to someone so far above her in social class. Amy retorts, “[Y]ou think you are so high-born, as to be my Lady Roxana’s daughter?” (270). The Quaker also speaks to Susan about the “rudeness of claiming so near a relation of one so much above her” (306). In the Quaker’s mind, Roxana can’t be the courtesan Susan describes because that other woman is “a common woman” (307). Thus Susan threatens to shatter Roxana’s pretensions to gentility by revealing her connections to her history not only as a sexual laborer but also as a mother to a servant-class child. Such pretensions, surprisingly enough, are not held by Susan herself. When Amy tells her that unless Susan stops her inquiries, she will revoke her monetary assistance and send her back to servitude, Susan is unflappable, and is “so obstinately bent” on having Roxana affirm her identity that “she ventur’d to forfeit all she had in view” (274). Susan says, “she knew the worst of it [poverty], [and] could seek her fortune” herself (314). Susan thus embraces her social hybridity, moving flexibly and openly through the exigencies of a postbubble economy, from her leisure-class birth, to her servitude, to her ties to a newly titled mother. This quality heightens the threat that Susan poses to Roxana and Amy’s polarized mistress-servant relationship and helps to explain why Amy takes such extreme measures to eradicate her. Their dynamic plays out again, as Amy “resolv’d to take her own measures, without consulting [Roxana] anymore,” and Roxana is paralyzed with horror at the act. Their subsequent reunion and fall into a “dreadful course of calamities” wickedly confirms Defoe’s warning that “the diligent servant endangers his master.” Roxana fails as Defoe’s ideal tradeswoman not only because she in pseudo-aristocratic fashion shirks the tedious work and skills it entails, but also because she never makes the transition to extending the benefits trade and wealth beyond her own inner circle to the nation. Roxana derives her supposedly Turkish name from the crowd who exclaims it as they see her dance in a Turkish costume. From this moment, her name and identity become inextricably linked to her lavish, Eastern dress. Those unfamiliar with Defoe’s numerous writings about the threat that imported Eastern fabrics pose to Britain’s own clothing industry might be tempted to interpret Roxana’s exotic display as a celebratory depiction of the goods acquired through Britain’s global trade. Laura Brown, for example, notes how Roxana’s costume reflects the “spoils of empire” and that “at this stage of her career, she represents Defoe’s ideal merchant—venturesome, independent, rapacious, and validated 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




by her own economic success.”44 For Brown, even Roxana’s advocacy of female liberty mirrors Defoe’s belief in free trade: “At this, her most ‘feminist’ moment, Roxana is also closest to Defoe’s ideal of mercantile success; in claiming female liberty she maintains her right to control and increase her own profits” (153). Yet it’s important to recall that mercantilists believed in free trade only for the home country; otherwise, mercantilism is quite protectionist. Roxana’s financial pursuits reflect her desire to acquire and display exotic goods from other (particularly Eastern) countries, transactions Defoe disdained because it drained Britain of its gold and silver and failed to increase the market for British goods. For Defoe, criticisms of exotic female dress are typically connected to the protection of British markets and labor. Thus Roxana would not represent an ideal mercantilist, but a threat to these ideals. Roxana and Amy both repeatedly use the East Indies as a cover for the wealth they’ve acquired through prostitution.45 Though this cover story on one level legitimates their wealth, it also uses East Indies wealth to erase labor. As one form of wealth comes to stand in for the other, so the illicit products of the one will inevitably lead back to the disavowed labor of the other. In a 1720 pamphlet, “The Trade to India Consider’d,” Defoe decries the East India trade, as it exhausts the whole treasure of Europe . . . carrying every year such immense sums of money in specie out of Europe into India, that the whole body feels the want of it very sensibly. In return of which, they bring their chief manufactures and their growth, and fill these parts of the world with gaiety and trifles, and rob them a second time of the employment of their people.46

The trade to India thus amounts to nothing less than a slow economic suicide: “Europe, like a body in a warm bath, with its veins open’d, lies bleeding to death; and her bullion, which is the life and blood of her trade, flows all to India, where ‘tis amass’d into infinite heaps, for enriching the heathen world at the expence of the Christian world” (101). Defoe in particular made British women, as primary consumers of fabrics imported by the East Indies, responsible for this loss of Britain’s “life and blood.”47 When he wrote for the Manufacturer, he dedicated several issues to persuading women to give up these fabrics out of loyalty to British weavers who suffered unemployment from the East India trade. Uniting appeals to both maternal and mercantilist values, he urges the women who are wearers of 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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calicoes, to think about “how many families of mothers and children they help to starve, by gratifying their calico-fancy, at the expence of the poor, and encouraging that trade which takes the milk from the breast of the mothers, and the bread from the mouths of their children” (October 30, 1719). Roxana, whose Turkish robe is made of a “fine Persian, or India Damask,” echoes this selfish regard for her personal adornment at the expense of Britain’s larger economy and its workers. In conflating the relationships of mother-daughter with mistressservant and tradeswoman and worker, Defoe illustrates that Roxana at once shirks maternal responsibilities to her daughter and mercantilist responsibilities to English workers. The novel repeatedly stages Roxana’s denial of her child at the expense of her own economic gain. When she unexpectedly runs into Susan at the Captain’s ship, she greets Susan with a kiss, which brings a rush of memories of when Roxana “took the fatal farewell of them [her children] all, with a million tears, and a heart almost dead with grief, when Amy and the good woman took them all away” (277). Overwhelmed with her own experience of having to abandon starving children, Roxana shows she has the potential for maternal feeling, but as in so many areas of her life, she fails to act on it; instead she represses her emotions, realizing that on her concealment “depended the whole of my prosperity” (277). Roxana’s prioritizing of her prosperity over her own child reflects a similar neglect of British markets. Though she has reached a level of financial success, which as Gabbard argues, she tries to legitimate through her marriage and identity as a Dutch woman, Roxana never gives up her old penchant for imported luxuries. The moment when Susan learns that Roxana owns a Turkish costume, Roxana is dressed in a luxurious, “French damask, very rich” (284). Susan, who is able to describe the costume with such precision that even the Quaker is embarrassed by the implication, serves to debunk Roxana’s reputation as a respectable businesswoman by continuing to connect her wealth and consumption to their original sources: prostitution and the foreign imports trade. Susan’s pleas for recognition also seem to exceed that of a daughter’s wish for a mother’s acknowledgement: in a “flood of tears,” she begs the Quaker for “charity . . . for the miserable” (304); she claims she will “perish” if Roxana does not own her (308). By following this comingled thread of maternal and mercantilist responsibility, we see that Susan is the voice not only of her biological daughter, but also that of the dispossessed domestic English worker, calling Roxana—and British traders—to account. In the Manufacturer, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




Defoe calls the women consumers, “little less than murtherers, and destroyers.” He says, “Let them look on their children and represent to their imaginations the torment of a mother, when she sees her off-spring starving, and calling upon her for bread when she has none to give them.” By the end of the novel, Roxana at once is the tormented mother of a dispossessed child and by implication the haunted consumer who has murdered workers’ children. Roxana experiences visions of “the poor girl herself, she was ever before my Eyes; I saw her by-night, and by-day; she haunted my imagination” (325). This appeal to a mother’s conscience is the closest Defoe comes to evoking any sort of traditional, paternalist moral economy. In staving off what he saw as the immoral and devastating practices of an emerging free market, Defoe certainly did not advocate a nostalgic retreat to patrician authority. And yet what is intriguing about his work is that he also did not dispense entirely with customary social organization or moral economic imperatives. In an age of fiscal volatility, he viewed the fluidity between the criminal underclass, the laboring poor, and the middle state as not only inevitable but also advantageous. He also foregrounded plebeian vulnerability in order to spur the need to impose ethical constraints on the nation’s financial revolution. From our vantage point, as Britain transitioned to an economy based on credit, colonial markets, and global trade, Defoe’s use of customary culture did not so much as resist as it mitigated the unnerving shocks felt by Britain’s middling to lower orders. The same mercantilist principles used to discipline Roxana’s neglect of domestic concerns— both familial and national—serve in Moll Flanders to justify and enable colonial acquisition and dispossession of indigenous peoples. Customary culture thus haunts Defoe’s work in complex ways, both moderating and making intelligible Britain’s conversion to a modern economic state and imperial power.



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4

P A M E L A ’s “Neat Cou ntry Appa rel” (1740): Ball ads and S cr i bbling Servants in the L i terary Marketpl ace

O! late befriended isle! Had this broad blaze, With earlier beamings, bless’d our father’s days, The pilot radiance, pointing out the source, Whence public health derives its vital course, Each timely draught some healing power had shown, Ere gen’ral gangrene blacken’d, to the bone. —Aaron Hill, Introduction to Pamela, (518) [Do not] reduce our sterling substance into an empty shadow, or rather frenchify our English solidity into froth and whip-syllabub. No; let us have Pamela as Pamela wrote it; in her own words, without amputation, or addition. Produce her to us in her neat country apparel . . . . —Reverend William Webster on Pamela, (9)

W

ebster’s patriotic endorsement of Pamela for its superior English substance, simple, rustic language as well as the heroine’s desirable country purity crystallizes the novel’s blockbuster appeal during a time when many Britons felt that the arts, and British culture in general, were in a state of crisis. Robert Walpole’s “cover-up” for the high-profile schemers of the South Sea Bubble set a tone of political



Chapter 2


corruption that would persist throughout his ministry. Disgusted by Walpole’s regime and embittered by the Hanoverian court’s unapologetic patronage of foreign rather than domestic artists, British writers and painters prophesied a cultural apocalypse, rendered most memorably by Pope’s Dunciad, but also, as we see in Aaron Hill’s verses on Pamela, reflected in dozens of other literary and visual productions. Hill lauds Richardson’s novel as a “broad blaze” in a “dire period” of cultural malaise and laments that the novel did not arrive on the literary scene sooner, when it could have spread its “healing power” before the “gen’ral gangrene blacken’d, to the bone.”1 Although such patriotic claims for Pamela have often been read as a testament to Richardson’s elevation of the English realist novel over the Continental romance tradition, I view these remarks as indicative of the novel’s resonance with a broader movement, one Christine Gerrard has shown was characterized by the tenets of “cultural patriotism.”2 Artists challenged the neglect and debasement of British art in divergent ways that recall the conflict between Ancients and Moderns, with Tory-leaning Ancients showing that high culture had sunk irrevocably to the status of despicable low culture, and with dissident Whig or “Modern” writers seeking to ennoble England’s popular culture as a foil to Continental-crazed high culture. Sounding a more optimistic note than the gloomy Ancients, dissident Whig writers viewed the democratization of culture as holding out hope for England, if only they could persuade the Georgian court to fund more artistic endeavors.3 As will become increasingly clear, Richardson’s Pamela participates in the latter strategy of seeking cultural renewal in England’s common people and traditional popular culture, a movement that traversed several sectors of the English art world. One of the leading cultural patriots, Aaron Hill, for example, in his dramatic opera The Muses in Mourning hyperbolically designates universal literacy as England’s great artistic contribution: “All England writes;/ Learn’d, and unlearn’d, each sex, all ages, write!” (qtd. in Gerrard Patriot Opposition, 49). Hogarth, as discussed in the introduction, features a “distress’d poet” who needs only to turn his imagination to the forthright, voluble milkmaid to liberate his stymied creativity, and in “The Enraged Musician” the milkmaid offers a redeeming rural version of oral popular culture that contrasts the female singer of urban and print ballads.4 During this period, the British ballad itself became a widely influential vehicle for cultural patriotism; the history of eighteenth-century music illustrates that perceptions of the ballad shifted from an emphasis on its function 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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to delineate its “high” or “low” status to a pride in its origin, particularly its national, feudal origin.5 These positive evocations of the popular converge in Richardson’s first novel, as his heroine resolves to leave a house of upper-class corruption and don her “country apparel” in preparation for when “any neighbour should get me to go out to help ‘em to milk, nowand-then, as sometimes I us’d to do formerly” (45). As in Hogarth’s prints, Pamela’s sartorial connections with neat country milkmaids also associate her with rural labor and the English ballad tradition, a prominent storyline of which depicted virtuous country maids who successfully fend off the illicit advancements of wealthier men. But in Richardson’s version of Hogarth’s “Distress’d Poet,” the talkative milkmaid is invited not only to cross the threshold of the artist’s private study and sound traditional English culture, but also to pick up the pen and write. In doing so, Richardson elevates the English novel through its intertextual associations with the old English ballad, and he celebrates the democratization of print, a marked sign of which was the entrance of several plebeian writers into the literary marketplace, one—Stephen Duck—even becoming a serious contender for the position of Poet Laureate in 1730.6 In style and content, Richardson’s novel may be seen to ride the coat tails of these two artistic trends, both of which received a flurry of corresponding satiric attacks by those writers resistant—even repulsed—by the idea that England should in any way pride itself in the culture of the “unlearn’d.” Fielding’s Shamela follows this satiric lineage, countering Richardson’s rendering of rustic popular culture and laboring-class virtue by reminding the literary audience that it was the shady, opportunistic Colley Cibber who became the court’s chosen poet, not Stephen Duck, though that wishful possibility in Richardson’s novel has Fielding reaching for his derisive pen as well, as he intersperses his plebeian heroine’s letters with comic misspellings and malapropisms. Even with precedent, it was still a bold move for Richardson to depict the writings of a female servant as having the power to transform the morals and artistic tastes of England’s rural gentry, and this raises an important qualification about justifications for the democratizing of culture in the early to mid-eighteenth century: such arguments for the inclusion of nonclassically trained authors were rarely couched in straightforward egalitarianism. As Kathy MacDermott notes, the “rise of the urban popular press [took place] in the context of a culture which remained largely rural and patrician.”7 Even though the form of patronage in which a single wealthy patron sponsored a deserving writer was on the wane, this relationship still held nostalgic 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


P A M E L A ’s “ N e at C o u n t r y A p pa r e l”


sway among those who wanted to delimit the debasing effects of proliferating independent publishing houses and booksellers.8 Such “old-fashioned” forms of patronage, interestingly enough, were also the ways plebeian writers typically gained access to print. Thus the potentially leveling implications of nonelite published writing became mitigated through the customary models of patrician paternalistic benevolence and plebeian deference. By drawing out the appeals to customary culture in Pamela, we can see how Richardson likewise curtailed the radical nature of his heroine’s social ascent and the transformative power of her writing. The “virtue” she brings to the upper classes is not defined strictly as sexual virtue, but more importantly as the specific quality of knowing one’s place in the social order. Richardson in Pamela strategically drew on both the traditional English ballad and the model of patronage for plebeian writers as discursive sites where customary values still held sway in order to espouse his redemptive vision of nonelite writers in the print market, and indeed, in Britain as a whole.

Pamela’s B ALLAD H ERITAGE In a letter to Aaron Hill on the composing of Pamela, Richardson describes how his wife and a female guest eagerly came to his closet every night, asking for more pages of Pamela, and this encouraged the breakneck speed with which he finished the novel. He reflects, “I have often, censurable as I might be thought for my vanity for it, and lessening to the taste of my two female friends, had the story of Molière’s old woman in my thoughts upon the occasion.”9 As we know from Richardson’s own assertions that he “was not acquainted in the least either with the French language or writers: and that it was chance and not skill or learning, that made [him] fall into this way of scribbling” (118), we can safely surmise that he chanced upon the tale of Molière’s “old woman” not from the playwright’s French biographer, but from a well-known Spectator essay that elevates the popular ballad “Chevy Chase” to an English epic. Endeavoring to prove his point that a work “universally tasted and approved by a multitude” must have some quality to recommend it, Addison gives the example of Molière who “used to read all his comedies to an old woman who was his house-keeper, as she sate (sic) with him at her work by the chimney-corner; and could foretell the success of his play in the theatre, from the reception it met at his fire-side” (Spectator no. 70). I am interested less in Richardson’s analogy between his “female friends” and Molière’s elderly housekeeper—although this 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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comparison certainly sheds light on the heterogeneity of his imagined audience—and more intrigued by the connection between Pamela and the popular and broadside ballad tradition celebrated in the Addison essay.10 As Ruth Perry eloquently states, “ballads are a great unsung body of texts that hover on the margins of eighteenth-century literary history”; they “were a crucial cultural phenomenon in eighteenth-century society, a common experience of rich and poor, so embedded in the soundscape as not to be remarked, any more than the air people breathed.”11 Because of ballads’ unremarked ubiquity, Addison’s Spectator essays, the first critical essays on the ballad, provide important insight into early eighteenth-century perceptions and uses of the ballad. By the time Richardson’s Pamela was published in 1740, the ballad had played a lively role in the cultural politics of the early eighteenth century, serving for the Ancients as the derided low point to which all high culture had plummeted, and for the Moderns as the dignified, simple virtue of Old England in desperate need of resuscitation. Opposing the ornate style of the metaphysical wits that have “formed to themselves a wrong artificial taste,” Addison turns to the ballad to exemplify the neoclassical virtues of simplicity and naturalness.12 Part of Addison’s 1711 project was also to reconstruct the ballad as an expression of cultural patriotism on par with the great Homeric epics that made Ancient Greece the epicenter of Western civilization. Addison lauds “Chevy Chase,” for example, for representing “persons and actions which do honour to their country” (73). As Albert Friedman argues, the ballad opera, catapulted into popularity by Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728), did much to remove “some of the opprobrium that attached to the term ‘ballad’”(167). Although Gay in his mock-heroic use of the ballad probably did not intend that English audiences redirect their wild enthusiasm for Continental opera to English balladry, this reaction seems to have been precisely the case for many playgoers. The author of a 1736 essay in The Universal Spectator claims that The Beggar’s Opera turned the scale and the whole town at once altered their judgment: nothing then was thought more ridiculous than an Italian air: nothing more captivating than an old English ballad: the whole Beau Monde immediately gave over humming si caro, Carosi, and Pretty Polly say [Air XIV] was substituted in its room. (Qtd. in Friedman 167)

Although Gay is—paradoxically—credited with ennobling and further popularizing the ballad tradition, the ballad had already made 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




its entrance into the theatrical world through the “ballad play,” a play whose storyline and content was derived from popular ballads. Addison’s Rosamund (1707), Aaron Hill’s Elfrid (1710), Nicholas Rowe’s Jane Shore (1714), and (after Beggar’s Opera), George Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731), and Robert Dodsley’s The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737) were all based on ballads.13 This nostalgia for England’s past was also intertwined with artists’ personal and intellectual development, as many recalled with fondness reading ballad broadsides and chapbook histories as children. We have anecdotes from Richard Steele to James Boswell and even Richardson himself that credit ballad and chapbook “histories” with first sparking their imaginations and ideas of moral virtue.14 Richardson’s relationship to traditional popular culture reveals a complex mixture of pleasure and shame, a not uncommon attitude for writers in the period lacking classical educations. In a letter to Johannes Stinstra, Richardson recounts how in childhood, his schoolmates admired him “for having invention” and frequently requested that he tell them stories. One in particular, he remembers, “was for putting me to write a history, as he called it, on the model of Tommy Potts; I now forget what it was; only, that it was of a servant-man preferred by a fine young Lady (for his goodness) to a Lord, who was a libertine. . . . I am ashamed of these puerilities.”15 Though he claims to “forget,” Richardson’s memory of the story of “Tommy Potts” is actually quite accurate, detailing a late seventeenth-century ballad’s portrayal of a virtuous serving man who wins the hand of a noble lady by dueling an aristocratic rival.16 The vivid recollection of this chapbook, contradictorily prefaced by Richardson’s dubious claim that “I now forget what it was,” and followed by his shame at his engagement in such juvenile narratives, show how conflicted his attitudes were toward ephemeral popular culture. On the one hand, such stories sparked his boyhood imagination and garnered him his first appreciative audience; on the other hand, by then—the letter was written in 1753—the renowned author of Clarissa feels “ashamed” of his familiarity with such texts, and it is a shame that would follow him in his assessment of his most popularly influenced novel: Pamela.17 It has been well established that Richardson was acquainted with traditional popular print culture, both from childhood and as an apprentice for John Wilde, a printer who made the bulk of his living as a publisher of almanacs and chapbook histories (Eaves and Kimpel, 11–12). What has been less explored, however, beyond the coincidental use of the name “Colbrand” for Pamela’s Lincolnshire guard, the name of the arch villain in the medieval chapbook romance, Guy of Warwick, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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is the possible influence of ballads on Pamela’s content and themes. The Restoration, particularly the Glorious Revolution, produced ballads proving not only the superior virtue of male servants over libertine aristocrats—as in “Tommy Potts”—but also the superior virtue of female servants and rural laborers over libertine men. Thus when Nancy Armstrong in Desire and Domestic Fiction asks, “When in the history of writing before Pamela, we might ask ourselves, did a female, let alone a female servant, have the authority to define herself [as outside and prior to the relationships under the male’s control]?” (113)—we can, indeed, point to numerous examples from popular and ballad broadsides which extol the theme of morganatic courtship and marriage.18 “True Love Exalted” is a particularly apt example, narrating the story of a Knight from London who meets Peggy, “singing and spinning,/ at her poor old father’s door.” After offering her “treasure for pleasure,” she retorts: “do not endeavour/ The poor daughter of a weaver,/ has a heart of virtuous mould;/ That no pride can draw aside,/ to be corrupted by your Gold.” When he offers to make her a “lady” or his mistress, she also rejects him, saying “my poor degree/is still to humble thoughts confin’d.” Of course, in a pattern of social preferment that we will see repeated throughout eighteenth-century society and literature, particularly in the “plebeian poet phenomenon,”19 it is the young woman’s very emphasis on sustaining the social order that proves her worthy of advancement. The knight “for [her] humbleness will exalt [her],” and agrees to marry her. Anticipating a rather notorious theme of Richardson’s novel, the author of the ballad concludes, Now you see how she regarded, For her vertue how rewarded, Made a Lady for her parts; Rais’d to power, without Dower, Only by her own deserts.

A spate of other ballads in this vein serves as courtly satire on city or country tradesmen, and may function as a mockery of Whigs or Roundheads, depending on their publication date. “The Politick Maid of Suffolk,” (1637), “The Wanton Vinter, and the Subtile Damosel” (1683–1706), “The Westcountry Lawyer” (1690), and the “North Country Miller Outwitted” (1650–1700) also known as “The Cold and the Raw” (1688) all depict virtuous female servants or rural laborers resisting the seductions of “treasure for pleasure” 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




and successfully evading their suitors’ snares or converting their lust and ill designs into love and marriage.20 Given this multitude of representations of lower-class women’s “virtue rewarded,” Aaron Hill’s effusive praise of Richardson may not be quite so hyperbolic after all: “the comprehensiveness of his imagination must be truly prodigious!—It has stretch’d out this diminutive mere grain of a mustard-seed (a poor girl’s little, innocent story) into a resemblance of that heaven . . .” (506). As I will show, there are sufficient parallels between this thematic series of ballads and Richardson’s novel to show that Richardson may well have stretched a two-column ballad broadside into one of the century’s most successful novels. Richardson’s heroine shares a richly detailed ancestry with the heroines of popular balladry. Several scholars have noted the structuring presence of the folklore archetype Cinderella, which many of the ballads discussed above also adhere to, but the parallels extend much further than to archetype alone. Ballads often replicate or inspire storylines from medieval and early modern romances, hence their appeal to upper-class audiences.21 Their cross-class appeal to the lower orders, however, stems from the ballads’ rather pragmatic and “worldly” heroines, rooted not in the highbrow fictions of romance, but in the material and historical conditions of laboring-class women. Richardson in his depiction of a savvy female servant shares with ballad authors a penchant for celebrating laboring women’s diverse arsenal for protecting their sexual integrity. From saucy, dissembling speech, to elaborate, ingenious plots, to arguments maintaining customary social relations, the various “strategems” employed by Pamela and her ballad sisters prove to be a wellspring of controversy in the “Pamela Vogue.” Like her famous ballad-opera predecessor, Polly, audiences were torn between the two ballad character types Pamela evoked: the virtuous or the sexually permissive laboring-class woman. Anti-Pamelists roast Richardson’s novel in raucous send-ups of these laboring-class defense strategies, exploiting their underlying duplicity in order to discredit Richardson’s servant heroine and expose her as undeserving of social advancement.22 In the first third of the novel, the housekeeper Mrs. Jervis frequently marvels at Pamela’s practical insight into the minds of libertine men: “Pretty-face, where gottest thou all thy knowledge, and thy good notions, at these years?” (39). Several of Pamela’s sources of knowledge are explicitly stated—Pamela draws on a wide range of reading appropriate to her mixed social status of servant and ex-school teacher’s daughter, from the Bible to Aesop’s Fables, from Hamlet to Roman history. But other reading material she alludes to remains vague, as if 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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she were referring to popular wisdom everyone had had an opportunity to read. This unnamed reading usually supplies the insights with which Mrs. Jervis is so impressed: “Well, but, Mrs. Jervis, said I, let me ask you, if he can stoop to like such a poor Girl as I, as may be he may, for I have read of Things almost as strange, from great men to poor damsels; what can it be for?—He may condescend, may-hap, to think I may be good enough for his harlot” (41). Later in this conversation she adds, “And I have read, that many a man has been asham’d at a repulse, that never would, had they succeeded” (42). Such stores of worldly knowledge show up not just in the amatory fiction of Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood but also in the popular tradition that preceded and was published concurrently with these women writers. Supplementing gossiping networks as a medium of disseminating poor women’s advice to each other, ballads contain a host of critical insights into men’s duplicity. In one ballad, the “fair and witty” maid tells the Westcountry lawyer, “Pray save your breath and money too/ I like not your way of wooing/ There is too many such as you/ that brings the young maids to ruin.”23 In another ballad, a young chambermaid skeptically asks her suitor, a serving man, “Ah, how many maids . . . have you promised to be true to”?24 Even the double sexual standard that Pamela references—”those Things don’t disgrace men, that ruin poor women, as the world goes” (41)—is highlighted in the “The Knitter’s Jobb,” with a female spinner retorting, “young men are false, /maids must be wise/ no life like theirs is free.” In her study of early-modern street literature, Joy Wiltenburg observes a trend in English ballads that “if a female character engages in direct assertion of independence or control, her primary weapon is her tongue” (106). The ballads give ample evidence of verbal defiance as a class marker between lower- and upper-class women—one jokes that a particular young laboring-class woman could be suitable for the upper classes if only she could learn to control her unruly speech: “she is a girle/ Fit for an earle,/ Not for a churle;/ She were worth pearle,/ If she could but rule her tong” (qtd. Disorderly Women 109). While the shrewish laboring-class woman is often the occasion for misogynist satire and is usually accompanied by the male equivalent stock character—the henpecked and cuckolded husband—women’s verbal wit is also just as often portrayed positively. In “The Politic Wife,” the wife rescues her husband from a Faustian bargain with the devil, telling him “Your cattle go tend and feed;/ For a woman’s wit is far better than man’s/ If used in time of need.” Similarly, many of the besieged young women who defend themselves with witty retorts end up further charming the men who are trying to take advantage 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




of them. The Westcountry lawyer finds the spinner “so discreet and wise” that he marries her. “In True Love Exalted” the knight is won over both by the weaver’s daughter’s beauty and mind. While Pamela possesses some qualities that certainly presage her status of gentlewoman, it is her saucy speech, captured in Mr. B’s memorable epithets, that evidences her laboring-class and ballad heritage. In Richardson’s text Pamela shares this quality with other female servants; the cook is known for being “snappish and cross” (43), and “Boldface,” “Sawce-Box” and “Insolent” are the same slurs Pamela uses to attack Mrs. Jewkes. Pamela’s nonpolite language provoked some Anti-Pamelists to compare her to a military camp follower,25 and Fielding follows suit, exaggerating Pamela’s laboring heritage as well as her vulgar speech. The daughter of Orange-seller and foot soldier tells Booby to “kiss [her] A——” or “D——n you” when he asks her to forgive him.26 As a “Servant of Spirit,” she believes it is her prerogative to give “saucy answers” (319) and she and her fellow female servants often let out a “violent laugh” (317) at Booby’s expense. There does exist, of course, an equally popular ballad depiction of women’s nonvirtuous uses of verbal wit, particularly in manipulating wealthier men, yet it seems that in the ballads, the women are still somewhat celebrated in that their equivocations rarely result in recrimination.27 In contrast, Fielding and other detractors usually bring their lower-class heroines to a punitive end. Thus it is all the more remarkable that Richardson gives so many lively descriptions of servant women’s “saucy” speech, not simply to exploit it for comic or disciplinary purposes, but to portray it as necessary for Pamela’s physical protection. She says to Mrs. Jervis, “if I have been a Sawce-box, and a Bold-face, and Pert, and a Creature, as he calls me, have I not had reason?” (40). Although Pamela describes the servant women at Squire Martin’s as foreign to her in their sexual promiscuity, she admits their similar positions and the advantages of being a “boldface”: . . . what Sort of Creatures must the Womenkind be, . . . to give way to such Wickedness? Why, this it is that makes every one be thought of alike: And . . . it is grown more a Wonder that the Men are resisted, than that the Women comply. This, I suppose, makes me such a Sawcebox, and Boldface, and a Creature; and all because I won’t be a Sawce-box and Boldface indeed. (71)

In the last sentence, Pamela acknowledges not only her laboring-class heritage but also the advantages of her verbal shrewishness. A sharp tongue in a woman has many valences—it can mean that she is sexually 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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“forward,” but it can also mean that she’s standing up for herself, and it is this latter meaning that Richardson’s Pamela consciously embraces. Richardson in this passage shows an identification between Pamela and other servant women, as she acknowledges their shared plight in that they, too, are probably being coerced into sexual relations by the “Arts and Strategems these Men may devise to gain their vile Ends. . . . For you see by my sad Story . . . what Hardships poor Maidens go thro’, whose Lot is to go out to Service” (71). Another motif of the clever and virtuous ballad heroines that Pamela exhibits is her repeated recourse to the discourse of customary relations between patrician and plebeian orders. These narratives of social ascent are not representative simply of the valuing of bourgeois merit over aristocratic rank.28 “Merit” is of course valued, but we need to ascertain a more nuanced understanding of its meaning rather than imposing the usual bourgeois standards of sexual virtue and industry on the term. “Virtue” both in the ballads and I will argue in Pamela connotes a very particularized idea of merit derived from customary social relations, entailing “knowing one’s place” in the social hierarchy. The virtuous ballad heroines appeal to this discursive tradition in their refusals of their wealthy suitors, asserting pride in their place in the social spectrum. The maid of “The Westcountry Lawyer,” for example, says “I’d sooner be a ploughman’s bride, /and sit at my wheel a spinning.” Likewise the farmer’s daughter in “Love in a Barn” replies to offers of a lavish “keeping,” that “more fitter I am, I vow/ To mind my father’s dairy,/ And feed the pigs and sow.”29 These replies all conform to E. P. Thompson’s observation that prior to a full-fledged rhetoric of working-class enfranchisement, “plebeian culture is rebellious, but rebellious in defense of custom” (Customs in Common, 9). In other words, resistance does not take the form of advocating for more egalitarian relations, but rather it often calls for the reestablishment of proper paternalistic treatment of the lower orders. Pamela, too, resists Mr. B’s encroachments by invoking a sense of social propriety. She attempts again and again to insist on the proper boundaries between master and servant and argues that by his being “so free to a poor Servant,” he “lessn’s the Distance that Fortune has made between [them], by demeaning himself” (35). She strives to preserve the social hierarchy rather than transgress it, and feels justified in being defiant when Mr. B fails to do the same. When he accosts her in the summer-house, she states, “I lost all my Fear, and all Respect, and said, Yes, I do [forget who I’m talking to], Sir, too well!—Well may I forget that I am your Servant, when you forget what belongs to a Master” (35). Richardson echoes his approval of such 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




defiance when he addresses the behavior of other servants in the novel. Pamela instructs Mrs. Jewkes, for instance, that “a Person should know how to judge between Lawful and Unlawful. And even the Great, . . . tho’ at present angry when they are not obey’d, will afterwards have no ill Opinion of a Person for withstanding them in their unlawful Commands” (362). And at the very end of the novel, Richardson points out the lesson from the “double Conduct of poor John,” that “lower servants may learn . . . how to distinguish between lawful and unlawful Commands of a Superior” (410). Jocelyn Harris has convincingly shown that Pamela’s arguments are indebted to political theories of Locke and conversely that Mr. B’s rhetoric resonates with Filmer’s belief in “the submission of the people to a government’s will and force.”30 Arguments from custom and from Locke, however, need not be mutually exclusive. Since 1688, the Whiggish limitations imposed on royal authority had become part of customary notions of the English, “traditionalists and reformers” alike.31 When the kidnapped Pamela asks Mrs. Jewkes, “pray . . . how came I to be his property? What right has he in me . . . ?” (126), she echoes not only Locke, but also a distilled Lockean tenet that by 1740 had achieved the status of an English birthright. Pamela’s “virtue” is rewarded, then, as it is in the ballads, because she adheres to customary relations between the upper and lower orders. Some of the novel’s first indications that Pamela is beginning to affect Mr. B’s heart rather than just his libido are moments when she has displayed proper social deference and a pride in her own condition. She moves Mr. B to tears for the first time when Mr. Longman stumbles upon one of their altercations, and Mr. B prompts the “sawcebox” to account for his harsh treatment of her. Instead of lashing out against Mr. B, however, she kneels down and tells Mr. Longman that she’s “been a very faulty, and a very ingrateful creature to the best of Masters” (74). Her speech still covertly critiques B’s behavior, reminding him to live up to her praise of “best master,” and it reveals her pursuit of her own desires, in that she “will not stay,” but by casting her intentions as plebeian self-abnegation, she publicly maintains B’s social authority. Similarly, when B spies on Pamela enumerating and commenting on her “three bundles,” after which she hugs the “dear third parcel, the companion of my poverty, and the witness of my honesty,” he can barely contain tears of sympathy and admiration. As he afterwards tells Pamela directly, “your behaviour before honest Longman, when I used you as I did, and you could so well have vindicated yourself, has quite charm’d me. And tho’ I am not pleased with all you said yesterday 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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while I was in the closet [spying], yet you have mov’d me more to admire you than before; and I am awaken’d to see more worthiness in you than ever I saw in any lady in the world” (84). B’s response reflects eighteenth-century politics of preferment: preferment is given to those that defer to the customary practice of social deference and respect for social hierarchy. Pamela’s deployment of laboring women’s unruly language and customary values thus has a lively history in the popular imagination of the ballad tradition, but her use of dissembling and plotting are also common defense strategies that cross over from ballad to novel, igniting a host of mercenary Anti-Pamela counterplotters. Many of the “virtuous maiden” ballads merge with the “jest” or “drollery” genre, showing how the women not only talk back and insist on their virtuous poverty, but also devise rather ingenious schemes to outwit and often publically shame the illicit suitor. The woman in “The North Country Miller Outwitted” agrees to meet the miller for a tryst, but only after first covering the sheets with an inflaming blend of horse-hair and nettles. The ballad concludes with the Miller running naked around the bedroom, tearing at his flesh, the male innkeeper beating him, and the young woman having a great laugh. Other ballads effect a similar kind of charivari shaming ritual on the unwanted suitor, who sometimes is completely run off, but other times ends up being further charmed or disciplined into making a proper marriage proposal. In “Love in a Barn,” the Lord has been duped into meeting his love in the barn, where she has arranged for gypsies to give him a good thrashing. Even though his humiliation becomes “the talk of all/ the women in the town,” “but still he was well pleas’d/ with the prank which she had played,/ He said, I am resolved to wed,/ This virtuous charming maid.” Another ballad, “The Politick Maid of Suffolk,” tells the story of Nell, a servant who under promises of marriage has slept with her master. When he fires her two months before their first child is born, she concocts a plan to scare him into marrying her. He had during his courtship of her swore that “old Nick” the devil could come take him away if he ever proved “false,” so taking him at his word, she dons the sooty clothing of a chimney sweep in order to impersonate the devil and threatens her lover with death and damnation “except tomorrow by break of day/ you wed poor Nell.” The suitor is duly repentant and marries her, and even when she reveals her trick to him in front of her female friends, he laughs along with them and says, “Twas well done Nell.” The ballads thus attest to the pleasure the audience received in reading or hearing of women’s “arts” used for such virtuous purposes. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




Compared to these wildly creative plots, Pamela’s machinations are rather tame, consisting of simple lies to Mrs. Jewkes about how much paper she possesses, a secret correspondence with Mr. Williams, and a plot to escape through the backdoor of the garden. Throughout these devices, Pamela, like the ballad heroines before her, insists on the necessity of her schemes to protect her virtue: “alas” she writes to her parents, “your poor daughter will make an intriguer by-and-by; but I hope an innocent one!” (128). The novel repeatedly exonerates her for these strategies; the converted Mr. B notes, “Tho’ she is full of her pretty tricks and artifaces, to escape the snares I had laid for her, yet all is innocent, lovely, and uniformly beautiful” (300). And yet all of Pamela’s plots are foiled; she is, indeed, outplotted by Mr. B and his minions. As William Warner has noted, Mr. B deploys all the machinery available to the libertines in Haywood and Manley’s novels of amorous intrigue (Licensing Entertainment 188). While Pamela, like many ballad heroines before her, successfully resists becoming a seduced victim, her capacity to effect Mr. B’s moral transformation stems not from “plots” at all, which perhaps too closely resembled those developed in the novels of amorous intrigue for Richardson’s taste. In the various “afterlives,” to use David Brewer’s apt phrase, of Pamela’s character,32 one revision both exaggerates and redeems Pamela’s plotting for virtuous ends: the ballad chapbook “The Crafty Chambermaid” (1760–1780?) which clearly returns Pamela to the ballad genre. The “son of a Squire” has fallen in love with a “beautiful maiden” that his mother “did keep.” Recalling Pamela’s appearance in her country dress, the maid meets her master at a masquerade, in which she dresses as a “shepherdess fair” and spurs his resolve to have her. After putting him off with a familiar frank debunking of his sexual motives, she decides to “decoy” him by agreeing to receive him in her bedroom at night. Unbeknown to him, she has substituted an older, sexually experienced woman to bed him. This event results in comic mayhem, with the master trying to have his mother discipline her chambermaid’s “base” actions against him, and the mother being delighted with her maid’s ploy: “The Lady did laugh till her sides she did hold,/ for to hear the story the chambermaid told;/ She said, Sir, the maid I can’t blame for my life,/ And so if you fancy her, make her your wife” (7). The ballad adaptation illustrates beautifully that at least some readers recognized Pamela’s ballad heritage and perhaps would like to have seen Richardson draw even closer parallels between her and her resourceful ballad sisters. But Richardson’s Pamela does not want to become merely “the subject of [rural young men’s and maidens’] ballads and elegies” (173); 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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she wants to write her own narrative and thus reform the manners and morals of the gentry and—as a device of Richardson’s—the literary marketplace as a whole. In foregrounding Pamela’s identity as a writer, Richardson tapped another aspect of ballad criticism and the concurrent theorizing about “natural genius.” In an influential Spectator essay, Addison had delineated two possible types of genius, “great natural Genius’s that were never disciplined and broken by Rules of Art,” such as Homer and Pindar, and those “great Genius’s . . . that have formed themselves by Rules, and submitted their Greatness of their natural Talents to the Corrections and Restraints of Art as did Plato, Virgil, Milton, and Bacon” (no. 160). Ballad enthusiasts eager to market their ballad collections and anthologies capitalized on the designation of Homer as a natural genius by asserting that Homer was himself a “blind ballad-singer” and his “Iliads . . . were no other than several ballads” sung for a livelihood (qtd. in Friedman 148–149). In Pamela, Richardson thus follows ballad enthusiasts in delineating not just the ennobling inspiration of British popular culture but also the virtuous influence of English writers who were untainted by university education’s emphasis on classical traditions and rules. In the section that follows, I discuss how Richardson drew on discourses of literary nationalism as well as the customary relations between plebeian poets and their patrons in order to temper but still justify the democratizing possibilities of the print market.

Using the “Servant’s Entrance” to the Literary Marketplace Scholars have noted the ways in which Richardson drew on his background as a printer to develop some of the most market-savvy fiction of the eighteenth century. Recent analyses of the “Pamela Vogue” continue to reveal Richardson’s keen understanding of both the workings of Grub-street and reigning cultural debates of the day. As Keymer and Sabor write, “it is a nice paradox that Richardson courted the aging Scriblerians for endorsement of his novel, for in Pamela he unleashed the very phenomenon they most deplored, even as they drew on its energy: a market-led multiplication of lowbrow print, unregulated by traditional considerations of learning, decorum or taste.”33 Almost every spurious and parodic narrative thread to be found in the continuations and adaptations of Richardson’s novel are anticipated and played out in the novel itself (Warner 203). This perspicacity on Richardson’s part leads many scholars to portray him as an artist ahead of his time, ushering in such modern phenomena as 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




the “media event,” as Warner argues (227–230), and the speculative investment practices shared by the modern stock market and literary marketplace.34 Yet Richardson was also rather unmodern in his attempts to stabilize the proliferating meanings his novels generated or in his efforts to “domesticate,” to use Ingrassia’s term, the salacious reputation of the novel that Haywood and other women writers had engendered. This more conservative, approval-seeking aspect of Richardson’s first fictional work is what I would like to highlight. When we read Pamela as a loose allegory of professional authors in the marketplace, the picture that emerges is not one that openly embraces the new, insurgent energy of independent writers, but rather one that looks back to a rather old-fashioned model of literary patronage between a single wealthy patron and a meritorious writer. Examining the novel’s cultural politics in this way, it begins to look much less “paradoxical” that Richardson sought the endorsement of the Scriblerians and much more apparent that the well-established printer-turned-novelist attempted to allay the demotic threat of not only his own artistic debut but the novel genre itself by giving us a scribbling servant who employs the reassuring rhetoric of self-abnegation and deference modeled in the customary relations of servant and master, client and patron. Bruce Robbins has cleverly quipped that in the eighteenth century, “the bourgeois . . . crept into fiction through the servant’s entrance” (Servant’s Hand 81). This is a particularly rich metaphor that applies both to the middling-sort who like the plebeian orders were often still forced to express proper reverence in order to engage upper-class patronage, and to the novel itself, an upstart genre that came to stand in for all the debased qualities of commercialized print.35 Richardson himself often betrays a mixture of “middling” pride of independence with a desire for aristocratic benefaction. To one correspondent he boasted he had the satisfaction of being “envied . . . for the favour I stand in with near a score of very admirable women, some of them of condition.”36 Another curious self-portrait from 1748 reflects how intensely self-conscious he felt among the gentry and how deeply offended he was by their elitist disdain for his tradesman status: I will shew you a still more grotesque figure than either. A sly sinner, creeping along the very edges of the walks, getting behind benches: one hand in his bosom, the other held up to his chin, as if to keep it in its place: afraid of being seen, as a thief of detection. The people of fashion, if he happen to cross a walk (which he always does with precipitation) unsmiling their faces, as if they thought him in their way;



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Passages such as these indicate that Richardson painfully understood the rituals of patrician social dominance, as he masks his shame at being thought inferior by a middle-class resolve to “chin up,” even if it means physically propping it up with his own hand. He understood too well that for the gentry, little distinction existed between middling and plebeian sorts: at worst, they were all thieves of some kind, at best, they were dutiful and deferential servants. As we have seen, conflation between middling and plebeian writers existed in the literary sphere, as well, with elite writers lumping all together in a rowdy, despicable “mob.” Degrees of economic self-sufficiency mattered much less than the lack of education in the classics garnered through university education. In the decade leading up to the publication of Pamela, however, the emergence of what William Christmas calls the “plebeian poet phenomenon” brought positive attention to nonelite writers. The theorizing of natural genius worked in tandem with the movement toward cultural patriotism, facilitating the entrance into print of England’s “native” commoners. In this milieu, the blurred distinction between plebeian and middling writers offered an opportunity for advancement instead of ridicule, as we can see from Richardson’s work as a writer and printer. Joseph Spence, for example, groups Richardson, Stephen Duck, and Robert Dodsley as writers “who have been rais’d purely by their literary merit and good characters, from inconsiderable or no circumstances, to considerable or at least very easy ones” (qtd. in Eaves and Kimpel 192). Following Duck’s patronage by the Queen, writers with more middle-class socioeconomic status were quick to exploit the conflation of nonclassically trained authors in a bid for upper-class financial support.37 Richardson likewise in his vocation as a printer played a major role in fostering the plebeian poet phenomenon. He published the official edition of Stephen Duck’s Poems in 1736, an edition of Mary Chandler’s “A Description of Bath,” and the second edition of Mary Leapor’s posthumous Poems on Several Occasions in 1751. Indeed, it is fitting that he consulted with Stephen Duck about the sequel to Pamela (Eaves and Kimpel 143), because in his portrayal of Pamela’s educational background, the themes of her literary productions, and in the dissemination and reception of her work, Richardson not only defends the merits of plebeian/middling writers, but also argues for 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


and he as sensible of so being, stealing in and out of the bookseller’s shop, as if he had one of their glass-cases under his coat. Come and see this odd figure! You never will see him, unless I shew him to you. (qtd. in Rawson 218)


their inclusion in the literary marketplace by capitulating to a safe depiction of traditional—one might even say antiquated—modes of patronage found in the careers of plebeian writers. To begin, Pamela’s mixed social and educational heritage echoes that of several of the more prominent plebeian writers. Although Stephen Duck and Mary Collier had little to no formal schooling, poets like Dodsley and John Bancks came from families that initially were well off, though because of financial difficulties, they were forced into taking apprenticeships in the trades, as in Bancks’ case, or were compelled to enter service, as was the case of Dodsley (Christmas 96–106). We know that Pamela’s parents, too, were once better off, and like Dodsley’s father, hers was once a schoolmaster. The failure of Pamela’s father’s school results in his becoming a manual laborer, her mother a spinner, and their daughter being sent to service. The variously appreciative and ridiculing response to Pamela’s language stems from her mixed educational and social background, a quality that was also admired and spoofed in Duck’s conversational language. Joseph Spence, for example, says “his common talk is made up of the good stile, with a mixture of the rustic.”38 In the reception of laboring-poets’ writing, prejudiced elite readers made little distinction between the thresher poets like Duck and the formerly propertied writers like Dodsley. In the poem Pamela writes on leaving the Bedfordshire house, she says of herself what many said of Duck when Queen Caroline singled him out for preferment: “I from a state of low degree/ Was taken by our good lady./ Some say it better had been for me,/ I’d still been rustick Pamela” (90). In an essay from the Grub-street Journal, the author reflecting on the sorry state of patronage in the Georgian court as well as the inappropriateness of plebeians taking up the pen, similarly says “it were happier to meet with no encouragement at all, to remain at the plough, or other lawful occupation, than to be elevated above their condition, and taken out of the common means of life.”39 As was the case with Duck and other laboring-class poets, Pamela’s writing circulates in manuscript, coming to the attention of upper-class readers by chance. Mr. B’s interest in and reception of Pamela’s writing closely follows patrician attitudes toward actual plebeian writers. On first reading her letter, he is amused and patronizing, “Why, Pamela, you write a very pretty hand, and spell tolerably too. I see my good mother’s care in your learning has not been thrown away upon you” (13). As her writing comes in greater conflict with keeping his illicit behavior private, however, he becomes more dismissive about her writing, and voices a common complaint about writers whose job it is to labor: “This girl is always scribbling; I think she may be better 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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employed” (22). We can find many retorts of this nature throughout the printed reception of plebeian poets’ work. The Grub-street Journal, for example, complains “but to have the fields lie neglected, and the loom forsaken, is a melancholy prospect; and looks as if we should in time have neither bread to eat, nor cloaths to put on” (qtd. in Christmas 21). Such dismissals of plebeian writers are covertly criticized in Richardson’s novel, as he shows that Mr. B’s disdain for Pamela’s writing stems more from her capacity to expose his violations as master rather than from her neglect of her work. In the two depictions of Pamela’s writing before and after her marriage with Mr. B, Richardson gives us two different but equally positive defenses of nonelite writers, one writing without patronage, the other with patronage. When persecuted by a corrupt master, Pamela’s independent status as a writer enables her to cultivate and maintain her integrity. This form of writing is conveyed through the metaphor of gardening to figure plebeian writing, a metaphor Duck also employed in the first edition of his poems. After Pamela is abducted to Lincolnshire she creates a somewhat elaborate cover story for relaying letters to Reverend Williams and her family: she pretends to sow horsebeans when she is really “planting” her letters. By committing her letters “to the bosom of that earth,” she protects not only her writings, but also the virtue and integrity she hopes to retain through them. She hopes “my deliverance will take root, and bring forth such fruit, as may turn to my inexpressible joy, and your [Williams’] eternal reward” (125). Through the analogy of gardening and writing, plebeian writers could emphasize their “homegrown,” natural genius that was in fashion among many writers and patrons alike.40 Richardson adds an extra Oppositional valence to the metaphor by implying that under such a notoriously disreputable ministry, nonelite writers are able to retain their moral rectitude. While Pamela, however, is clearly figured as the gardener/author of her own literary productions, Stephen Duck, under the patronage of Queen Caroline, dutifully abdicates his authorial role of gardener to his patron, and he becomes yet another plant in the garden in need of cultivation. As he writes in his dedication, “Your majesty has indeed the same right to them [his writings], as you have to the fruits of a tree, which you have transplanted out of a barren soil into a fertile and beautiful garden” (iv). This sort of writerly self-effacement will appear in Pamela’s writing after her marriage to Mr. B, showing that untutored writers could also be properly deferential when patronized by a reformed elite. Pamela’s poetic productions closely resemble those of the plebeian poets, but Mr. B’s illicit desires and perverse authority in the first part 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




of the novel justify her more strident critique of the upper classes than that found in the work of patronized poets of the 1730’s. Once Pamela “rights the world her master turned upside down” (32), to quote Jocelyn Harris, Pamela’s customary ideals of the social order are restored, and the ideological content of her writing begins to mirror that found in the writing of Duck and Dodsley. Her first experiment in poetry, a “paper of verses,” follows a ballad format, a genre to which her neoclassical-aspiring counterparts typically did not stoop, but the themes and content closely parallel Dodsley’s “Servitude” and Duck’s “On Poverty.” Pamela’s poem begins with a similar address to servants that Dodsley’s poem employs: “My fellow-servants, dear, attend/ To these few lines, which I have penn’d” (89). These lines are basically borrowed from the opening of Dodsley’s poem: “Brothers in Servitude attend the song./ To you its precepts and its rules belong” (lines 1–2). Yet the ideological content of the two poems differs as do their rhetorical situations. As a writer cultivated by Swift, Pope, and aristocratic benefactors, Dodsley wishes to inculcate an honest, obedient work ethic among servants, even as he registers the occasional capricious “whims” and the sometimes false accusations of masters. Pamela, under control of the sexually harassing Mr. B, however, registers more skepticism of the corrupt commands of masters. She tells servants to do their duty to a higher authority: “God’s holy Will, be sure obey,” while for the master all they can do is “pray” (90). By comparing her poem with Duck’s “On Poverty,” we likewise can see the way Richardson infuses Pamela’s writing with greater implications of class critique when she is under the control of the unreformed Mr. B. Both Pamela and Duck extol “contented poverty” in order to distance themselves from the spiritual temptations that riches entail. As Pamela writes, “we pity should the great,/ Instead of envying their estate;/ Temptations always on ‘em wait/ Exempt from which are such as we” (91). In “On Poverty,” Duck asserts that “contented poverty’s no dismal thing”; “Free from the cares unwieldy riches bring” (Poems 27). In Duck’s phrasing, however, such lines seem to heroicize the upper classes for the greater burdens or “cares” they bear in their social position. He naturalizes poverty as “proceeding from God; therefore’s no ill” (28), and wishes for neither wealth nor poverty, but “content” resulting from “noble thoughts . . . fix’d on things above” (28). The last lines obviate differences of class in favor of transcendent piety available to anyone.41 In contrast, Pamela’s poem implies that because of all the temptations that plague the rich, true virtue can be found only among the poor: “Their riches often are a snare;/ At best, a pamper’d weighty care:/ Their servants far more 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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happy are” (91). She deflates the heroism of their greater burdens by calling it a “pamper’d weighty care,” claiming that they should be pitied rather than admired for their decadent lifestyles. As Mr. B reforms his rakish behavior and under Pamela’s influence begins to embody proper patrician nobility, the Oppositional tenor of Pamela’s discourse modulates into a praise of patrician and plebeian orders’ mutual obligations to one another. For example, in the lines of poetry Pamela recalls after reading Lady Davers’ disgust for her brother’s possible marriage, the poem reads, “The meanest slaves, or those who hedge and ditch,/ Are useful, by their sweat, to feed the Rich./ The Rich, in due return, impart their store;/ Which comfortably feeds the lab’ring poor” (259). As Pamela transitions to Mrs. B, now metaphorically a writer under the patronage of a morally reformed member of the gentry, she respectfully lauds the patrician/plebeian order, the duties of one “to feed,” the duties of the other, “to hedge and ditch.” The poetic lines resonate with the sentiments of Dodsley’s “Servitude” in endorsing the mutual obligations of masters and servants. Also like Dodsley, she asserts that she is in a useful position to restore proper relations between the two groups; her background as a servant enables her to know what is required in a good mistress: “a good servant shall in me find a kind encourager; an indifferent one be made better, by inspiring them with a laudable emulation; and a bad one, if not too bad in nature, and quite irreclaimable, reform’d by kindness” (332). Dodsley provides a similar prompt to masters and mistresses on the respectful treatment of servants: “How ought he to endeavour to mollify and alleviate the irksomeness of his servitude? And by the sweetness of his temper and mildness of his commands, make that be perform’d willingly, which would otherwise be done with reluctance?” (5). Throughout Pamela, Richardson basically repeats Dodsley’s dictum that if masters desire obedience, they ought to “take care not only to command nothing but what is just and reasonable, but also to deliver his commands with mildness and good humour” (10). Modern critics who miss the outspoken, defiant Pamela of the first half of the novel, sensing a kind of “selling out” from the married Pamela, have overlooked a central feature of her rebellion: all along she has opposed the unchecked, amoral authority of Mr. B, not the authority of the patrician order itself. Once she has effected Mr. B’s reformation, his return to the ideals of patrician behavior, she reverts to the deferential and grateful role of social inferior.42 Pamela’s “reward” for upholding customary relations between rich and poor is social preferment in the form of marriage. But the reward is not 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




without its costs; Pamela aptly expresses the burden that comes with eighteenth-century patronage: “O, Sir . . . how unequal am I to all this goodness! Every moment that passes, adds to the weight of obligations you oppress me with” (308). Betty Rizzo in her study of the patronage of plebeian poets confirms that the relationship could be creatively stifling: “confined to eternal gratitude, they [plebeian poets] were effectually muzzled, incapable of development of their own voices” (242). Yet there are no signs in Richardson’s flattering portrayal of the married Pamela that he was at all critical of the obsequious manners necessitated by the politics of patronage. As eighteenth-century biographical accounts of Stephen Duck show, such expressions of gratitude and undeservability were expected. Joseph Spence assures readers that “[h]e seems as yet not to be hurt at all by the applauses that have been giv’n him, and to have been perfectly contented with his condition before” (25). In the several encounters Pamela has with the upper gentry after her marriage, it is only after she has sufficiently shown respect for their social position that they claim she “adorns any station in life” (287) and that she “surpass[es] us all” (491). Such humility extends to the patronized writer’s literary productions as well, which are not valued for their own sake but now for the benefit of the patron. Duck, for example, cares for his poetry “not out of a desire for fame, so much as a principle of gratitude; to please his friends that had been so generous to him” (Spence 26). The married Pamela similarly says she will continue her writing and reading only in order to please Mr. B, to be “worthier of [his] company and conversation” (264). Duck diminishes the quality of his work, noting gentlemen may like his poems, “because they were made by a poor fellow in a barn; but that he knew as well as any body, that they were not really good in themselves” (Spence 26). From these self-effacing sentiments, Spence concludes that Duck has “good sense and virtues.” After her marriage we see Pamela also downplaying her writing by calling it “amusement” and “scribble” (281). In another significant scene after her wedding, Mr. B showcases her revised psalm for an audience of visiting ladies. As they heap praises on her, it is crucial to her credibility as a patronized writer that she express proper modesty; she says, “[F]or I see not such excellence in these lines, as they would make me believe” (321). It should be clear by now that Pamela’s elevation conveys a wide range of social, ideological, and literary meanings. Through her influence, the upper gentry and aristocracy recall their responsibilities of 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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noblesse oblige and social decorum, but also in elevating Pamela, Richardson self-interestedly has elevated nonelite writers and nonelite writing. By returning to her pivotal trial at Lincolnshire, we can see that Richardson may have been even more specific in his defense of nonelite writers and their entitlement to literary patronage than the preceding analysis has shown. Lincolnshire was the home of Laurence Eusden, the Poet Laureate whose death in 1730 provoked a controversial race between frontrunners Stephen Duck and Colley Cibber. Although I do not wish to assign exact allegorical parallels between Duck, Cibber, and the Georgian court, and Pamela, Jewkes, and Mr. B, there is a general critique of the “sycophantic” nature of the servants in the Lincolnshire household that evokes the criticisms of Colley Cibber, whom Richardson treated with bemused but distanced toleration. In his illuminating study of the laureate race, Daniel Ennis speculates that Duck gained his status as a favorite because he represented all that the neoclassical wits did not—a “lack of artiface,” (223), a “harmless, dependent, and utterly subservient” writer (224). Colley Cibber eventually won out, however, because he combined the political experience Duck lacked with the ability to simulate the deference Duck embodied (229). In his culturally optimistic revision of this contest, Richardson depicts the victory of the virtuous, genuine Pamela over Mr. B and Mrs. Jewkes, issuing a subtle critique of the Georgian court’s final preferment of a writer like Cibber, a rakish opportunist who could masquerade as refined and polite. As the novel concludes, Pamela has a literal waiting list for those who want to read her papers, from her parents, to Mr. B, to Lady Davers and her aristocratic acquaintances. These readers are charmed not so much by her literary technique as by the values her writing upholds. Like Duck, she becomes known for her exemplary character—what Christmas calls the “trinity of values,” “honesty, industry, and piety” (65)—and less for the quality of her writing. In his conduct-book like delineation of the reciprocal duties and benefits, not just between master and servant, but also between patron and writer, Richardson implies that the profit the upper classes receive for their patronage of nonelite writers is the benefit of their moral example. In their respective introductions to Fielding’s Shamela, Thomas Keymer and Catherine Ingrassia assert that Fielding in his satire went beyond a simple attack on Richardson’s novel itself, turning it into an occasion to critique the depredations of Hanoverian art, politics, and society as a whole.43 Indeed, Ingrassia justly places the work on par with Pope’s Dunciad Variorum in its satiric scope (23). Yet while the breadth of cultural critique found in Shamela may be attributed to the 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




author’s Scriblerian-Secundus hobbyhorses, it also registers Fielding’s astute recognition of the far-ranging cultural politics to be found in Richardson’s novel itself. Perhaps because he first assumed the novel’s author was Colley Cibber, Fielding wasted no time in debunking the novel’s celebratory portrayal of “unlettered” virtuous writers in the marketplace. In Fielding’s terms, it mattered not whether a self-taught plebeian thresher poet or half-educated middling poet won the 1730 Poet Laureate race. Both types of authors illustrate the degradation of literature under the reign of Walpole and the tasteless Hanoverians. In his hilarious lampoon of the “Poet Horreat” in The Champion a year prior to the publication of Shamela, Fielding memorably stages a mock trial of Cibber for murdering the English language in Cibber’s recently published, An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740). Two of Cibber’s servants are brought in as witnesses, but of course condemn rather than defend him, for we learn that Cibber consulted with them about such matters as proper spelling and the success of his future writing projects. The footman Tom recounts how Cibber drew inspiration from “something that was written upon the window [of an inn]” and cried out, “That will do, an excellent thing for my book!”44 Crystallized here are neoclassical satirists’ techniques of conflating high and low, the Poet Laureate and the uneducated servant, the Poet Laureate’s memoir and popular doggerel verse inscribed upon a windowpane. They are techniques Fielding will reprise in Shamela, as the schoolmaster’s daughter who was “once better off” becomes the barely literate product of an orange seller and soldier, and as the virtuous and clever maiden of the ballad tradition becomes the scheming prostitute. These reductive strategies are appropriate, in Fielding’s view, to expose a court that patronizes those who know more of flattery and opportunism than they do of the classics.45 Fielding, as we know, was at this moment aligned politically with the Patriot Opposition, yet he was not one to place his faith in cultural renewal in the democratization of print.46 In the Covent-Garden Journal, he diagnoses the literary marketplace as being in a “state of anarchy,” “in which there is no subordination, no lawful power, and no settled government”; people are writing “without the qualifications of genius or learning” (qtd. in Zionkowski “Territorial Disputes,” 7–8). Artists like Hill, Hogarth, and Richardson, in contrast, developed a literary nationalism fueled, quite sincerely, by the aesthetic and moral virtues of traditional English culture. The symbolic capital generated by this movement granted unprecedented though delimited access to print for those of the lower orders, as they became metonymically linked to the voice of virtuous and “solid” Englishness. In Richardson’s novel, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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as Mr. B and Pamela stroll pass Reverend Williams who is reading Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux’s mock-epic Lutrin, B says, “while you are perfecting yourself in French, I am trying to learn English; and hope soon to be master of it.” Reverend Williams replies, “Mine, Sir, . . . is a very beautiful piece of French: but your English has no equal” (305). In this short exchange, Richardson encapsulates practically every appeal made by the cultural nationalists. The simple, untutored, deferential Pamela embodies the desirability of Englishness itself; by comparing her to the French text, Richardson proclaims the victory of several types of writing exemplified in his novel, sincere over satirical, nonclassical over classical, English over French, nonelite over elite, and, perhaps most significantly for the history of the novel, the novel over mock-epic poem, and he has done so by furtively sending his own Grub-street Trojan horse into the “Ancients” camp, in the guise of the traditional English ballad, customary values, and the most ingratiating and sweet figure of servitude that he could possibly muster.







4

“ The Real Soul of a M an in Her Breast”: Memoirs of Female S oldiers and M ilitary Nati onalism, 1 74 0 –1750

Unrepining at thy glory, Thy successful arms we hail; But remember our sad story, And let Hosier’s wrongs prevail. Sent in this foul clime to languish, Think what thousands fell in vain, Wasted with disease and anguish, Not in glorious battle slain. —Thomas Glover, “Admiral Hosier’s Ghost” This is a real Pamella [sic]; the other a counterfeit; this Pamella is real flesh and blood, the other is no more than a shadow: therefore let this our heroine, who is the subject of this history, be both admired and encouraged. —The Female Soldier; or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell1

T

he 1740’s witnessed another prominent and politically charged migration of popular ballad to prose narrative, this time featuring the story of a well-known and celebrated heroine, the female warrior, a laboring-class woman who cross-dresses and goes to war, usually to accompany her enlisted male love-interest, but also often to bring 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Chapter 3


glory to her country. What historical forces occasioned the prose adaptation of this ballad motif? What ideological investments were served by the novel-length narratives of scrappy female soldiers? In this chapter I examine two fictionalized memoirs of female soldiers— Christian Davies’ Life and Adventures (1740) and The Female Soldier; or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell (1750)2—in order to illustrate how laboring and traditional popular culture could be recruited to affirm Britain’s transition to an imperial power based on war that was fought on behalf of strictly commercial objectives. The two memoirs frame and comment on a decade of imperial conflict, including the Anglo-Spanish War (1739–1748) and the overlapping War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), in which Britain fought both Spain and France for control of the West Indies, the East Indies, the European low countries, and parts of North America. It is fitting that the author of Hannah Snell’s fictionalized memoir should invoke Richardson’s Pamela as a context for endorsing his cross-dressing female soldier, for both texts represent a novelization of ephemeral popular culture in the spirit of creating cultural and—in this case—military nationalism. Robert Walpole gave the Patriots a new reason to assail him in the late 1730’s. By turning to diplomacy as the way to handle Spanish naval depredations against the English, including, most notoriously, the severing of Captain Jenkins’ ear, Walpole convinced many that the Georgian court’s hesitation to pursue war was simply another glaring indication of its lack of British pride and its contamination by the effeminizing culture of Europe (particularly France).3 In this climate of dissatisfaction with the nation’s elite men, publishers Robert Walker and Richard Montagu found a perfect heroic alternative to rally the nation by reaching into the storehouse of English lore and showcasing the patriotic female warrior. Much like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe or Richardson’s Pamela, novels that present themselves as authentic accounts and that were perhaps loosely based on historical figures such as Alexander Selkirk and Lady Hesilrige, respectively, the Davies and Snell memoirs purport to be the true life stories of two female soldiers, and, indeed Christian Davies and Hannah Snell did serve in the armed forces and were granted pensions for their service.4 Upon their publication, both memoirs became immensely popular, going through several reprints, editions, and a range of abridged forms. Examining these prose narratives amid the contemporary debates about the War with Spain, we can see that the female soldier functioned as a powerful oppositional emblem with which to define heroic masculinity in the face of both war and defeat after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Through the narratives of Christian Davies 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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and Hannah Snell, the authors stress the customary obligations of the court not only to shore up the nation’s military might, but also to patronize the army and navy’s soldiers and veterans. Scholars have typically attributed the cultural resonance of the memoirs to their provocative implications for eighteenth-century gender roles. Julie Wheelwright sees The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies as a celebratory depiction of a woman resistant to her culture’s gender norms, whereas Lynn Friedli views the fictional female soldiers such as Hannah Snell as exceptional women who end up reifying traditional gender roles.5 Dianne Dugaw significantly deepens our understanding of the narratives by situating them within the context from which they derive: the ballad tradition. Dugaw argues that the female warrior is a common trope of popular ballads dating back to the 1600’s, and within this tradition, the cross-dressed women are not so much progressive or exceptional depictions as they are realistic portrayals of the less-restrictive gender roles for plebeian women and the ubiquitous presence of laboring women in military camps.6 This chapter builds on Dugaw’s insights about the construction of plebeian women’s gendered identities, but argues for a fuller assessment of the middle- and upper-class appropriation of such identities during Britain’s military engagements at mid-century. The printer of The Female Soldier, Robert Walker, issued a cheap text of forty-six pages and in the same year, an illustrated and more extended text of 187 pages (Dugaw “Introduction,” viii). The double texts met the needs of a broad readership; Dugaw notes that these fictional memoirs “for a time attracted a wider and more sophisticated audience” who, although “unaccustomed” to such heroines, found them appealing as “eccentric” and “curious” characters that fed an “early modern preoccupation with cross-dressing in general and women soldiers in particular” (vi). The lengthy prose adaptations of balladry’s female warriors, however, indicate a level of interest that reaches beyond idle curiosity and preoccupations with cross-dressing. As we can surmise by the title pages of the memoirs, the publishers presume that their audience’s interest lies as much in the military content of the narratives as in their unusual protagonists. The title page of Davies’ Life announces that Davies, “commonly called Mother Ross . . . in several campaigns under King William and the late Duke of Marlborough in the quality of a foot soldier and dragoon, gave many signal proofs of an unparalleled courage and personal bravery” and that her narrative was “taken from her own mouth when a pensioner of Chelsea-Hospital.” The Female Soldier is even more specific about Snell’s service in the army and navy: the title page states that “she enlisted in Col. Guise’s Regiment of Foot, and 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


“The Real Soul of a Man in Her Breast”


marched with that regiment to Carlisle, in the time of the rebellion in Scotland” and that the memoir is “a true account of her enlisting afterwards into Fraser’s Regiment of the Marines . . . and her being draughted out of that regiment, and sent on board the Swallow Sloop of War, on of Admiral Boscawen’s squadron, then bound for the East Indies.” The specific military content of the narratives compels us to read the memoirs not only for their gender politics, but also for their nationalist implications; indeed, the narratives illustrate the ways that the laboring-class heroine can bolster nationalist appeals to a wider audience–—men as well as women, and among middling readers, who during the time when anti-Walpolean sentiments were at their peak, perhaps identified more with a protagonist “from below” rather than from above. As a figure at once masculine and feminine, potentially heroic and mock-heroic, the plebeian female soldier embodies and refashions notions of Britishness during a period of history when its identity was most in dispute. Historians have long noted that Britain’s war with Spain in 1739 was fought “solely for balance of trade rather than for balance of power.”7 British merchants, not satisfied with the limits on trade established in the Treaty of Utrecht, resorted to illegal trading with Spanish colonies in the West Indies and South America. In retaliation, Spanish ships repeatedly accosted British ships, confiscated their cargo, and terrorized British seamen. In London, the outraged merchants soon found allies in the Patriot Opposition, who saw in Walpole’s reluctance to declare war an opportunity to so defame him that he would finally be forced from office. According to Philip Woodfine, the opposition “used and fomented a vociferous merchant lobby, part of the increasing independence of City of London politics, and they enjoyed the aid of the ‘numerous tribe of malignant writers’ in the periodical press and in a busy pamphlet war” (188). The blatant commercial impetus for the war challenged traditional “heroic” and noble arguments for war. The “busy pamphlet war” reveals discomfort and even distaste for a war based on trading rights, colonial acquisition, and the Asiento, which granted Britain the exclusive right to supply slaves to New Spain. One of Walpole’s defenders writes, “We city politicians forget that war is quite chang’d from what it was in the days of our forefathers, when in a hasty expedition and pitch’d field, the matter was decided by courage. But now the art of European war is in a manner reduc’d to money; that prince who has the longest purse is sure to have the longest sword.”8 The writer disdains warfare that is no longer a proving ground for male valor, and pragmatically asserts that England should stay out of a costly war. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Similarly, conservative Tories felt ambivalent about such an expensive and protracted conflict fought basically on behalf of the “Whigdominated South Sea Company,”9 yet they did not want to miss this opportunity to accuse the court of ineptitude and cowardice. Most Tories came to realize that if they supported the war, they and the opposition Whigs had the potential not only to expand the British Empire (and receive credit for the attempt), but also to disempower Walpole.10 The underlying anxiety over war for commercial gain surfaced for both court and opposition writers as a debate about the nation’s masculinity, particularly how it was defined and who controlled its definition.11 Opposition writers construed Walpole’s peacekeeping efforts as signs of effeminacy; as Kathleen Wilson observes, “Aristocratic effeteness was proven, above all, in the inability or disinclination of the ‘court’ to pursue the national imperial interest” (“Empire of Virtue” 155). Conversely, Walpole’s hired writers tried to recast his policy of diplomacy as heroic and accused the opposition writers of “interest and Prejudice” and “unmanly partiality” (Address to the Merchants 3). In response, the opposition developed two strategies for justifying war, strategies which help us to understand the political implications of the female-soldier narratives at midcentury. The first strategy was to refashion British masculinity and seamlessly unite the opposition’s stance with proper “manliness.” The second strategy took advantage of Tory populism as a longstanding weapon against Whig supremacy, and asserted that Britain must go to war because “the people” demanded it. Montagu and Walker, the original publishers of the female-soldier narratives, cleverly exploit a figure from popular balladry in order to incite wartime fervor. By examining hundreds of ballads that depict this archetype of a woman who cross-dresses and enters the military, Dugaw has found that each tells a similar story of a “virtuous and rather sentimentally conceived heroine” who “is a lower-class girl in love with a common [but heroic] soldier or seaman”; she crossdresses and goes in search of her lover, with the story following the pattern “of separation, trial, and reunion.”12 Christian Davies and Hannah Snell begin their adventures in this traditional manner. Davies first decides to cross-dress when she discovers that her husband, Richard Welsh, has been the victim of impressment into the army to fight in the Nine Years’ War. Davies notes that she and her husband are “both of a size,” so she can don one of his suits in venturing to look for him (27). If Davies seeks her husband out of love and devotion, Snell seeks hers to exact revenge. Her sailor-husband is a “perfidious” Dutchman who lavishes their money on other women. Having plunged his family into insurmountable debt, he abandons a 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




pregnant Snell and joins the crew of a merchant ship. The child dies after seven months, and Snell dons a military disguise to facilitate her search for him. Departing from the ballad tradition, however, both heroines experience a zeal for military life that eclipses their initial search for their husbands. After a brief stint as a soldier in the Nine Years’ War, Davies remains in disguise and works odd jobs until 1700. When Davies hears of the ensuing War of the Spanish Succession, she reports, “This News of a War awakened my martial Inclination” (57) and reenlists. Having “recourse to wine and company” (65) helps her forget her husband; and when she does finally see him—and in the arms of another woman—she refuses to be a wife. She tells him, “notwithstanding the hardships” of military life, she “had such a liking to the Service, that [she] was resolved to continue in it, and to that end, would pass as his brother” (90). In detaching Davies and Snell from the romantic motivations that drive the ballads and highlighting military significance of the female soldier narratives, the biographers take a well-loved laboring-class heroine and turn her into a foil to the men of Britain’s ruling classes.

Female Masculinity and British Nationalism In their early arguments for war, the popular opposition to the Court resorted to a time-honored claim: going to war was Britain’s manly duty. Admiral Vernon’s conquest of Porto Bello in November 1740, the first victory of the war, gave the opposition an opportune moment to boast of their military prowess and vitality. In a poem lauding the opposition hero, an anonymous poet contrasts Vernon’s heroic rescuing of Britain from Spain’s “hostile insult and Barbaric Spoil” to the court’s “base inaction.”13 Wilson, who has written a thorough account of the popular reaction to Vernon, notes the use of chivalric romance in portrayals of Vernon’s victory as well as other imperial endeavors: “Despite the persistence of an iconography that symbolized the British imperial presence as the female figure of Britannia, colonial conquest was described and glorified as a manly occupation, the proving-ground for national, as well as individual, potency, strength and effectiveness, and the vehicle of paternalistic largess and duty” (155). James Thomson, a loyal Patriot Opposition writer, solidified this image in Britain’s national mythology in his “Rule Britannia,” first printed in his 1740 play, Alfred, a Masque: “Blest isle! With matchless beauty crowned, / And manly hearts to guard the fair. / Rule, Britannia, rule the waves, / Britons never will be slaves.”14 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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When the memoirists of Davies and Snell surveyed genteel and aristocratic society for exemplary men, however, those who met Admiral Vernon’s standards were rare. Even at the height of Vernon’s victory, the famous ballad of “Admiral Hosier’s Ghost” reminded the public of the administration’s failure in 1727 to retaliate against Spain, resulting in the deaths of thousands of British seamen. Furthermore, as Wilson aptly states, “Vernon’s exploits in the West Indies had fanned dreams of imperial expansion without being able to fulfill them” (165). After Vernon’s victories, the one other major conquest of the war was the capture of Cape Breton, which Britain was forced to give up at the conclusion of the war. The Jacobite invasion of 1745, while unsuccessful, still gave occasion to doubt male military might, as English soldiers were reported to flee the rebels without firing a single shot at the Battle of Falkirk. With these moments in recent memory, the author of Snell’s narrative declares the contemporary moment a “dastardly age of the world, when effeminacy and debauchery have taken place of the love of glory, and that noble ardor after war-like exploits” (1). As foils to these examples of male inefficacy, Davies and Snell emerge as provocative models of “proper” masculinity, celebrated for their “uncommon intrepidity,” “masculine air and behaviour” (Davies 3), and possessing “the real soul of a man in her breast” (Snell 7).15 If gender studies has taught us anything in the last decade, it is that in eighteenth-century representations of cross-dressing, gender politics are infinitely variable.16 Dror Wahrman has posited that until the 1780’s and 1790’s an “ancien regime of gender” presided, under which the boundaries of gender were considered quite porous, and “an occasional biological ‘woman’ or ‘man’ [could] sidestep the cultural expectations of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity.’”17 While Wahrman’s ample evidence supports this conclusion, “gender porousness” was still more accepted in portrayals of laboring-class rather than in leisure class women, and indeed, many of the examples Wahrman provides of celebrated Amazonian women are laboring-class.18 Two graphic prints of female soldiers illustrate the different constructions of gender according to class, as well as their different political uses. The first appeared shortly after the Jacobite invasion of 1745 and features Margaret Woffington in uniform as a “Female Volunteer,” reciting an epilogue implying that it was the impotence of the King’s army that caused England’s embarrassing losses to the invading Jacobite army; below the image of the cross-dressed Woffington, the text reads “Well, if ‘tis so, and our men can’t stand/ ‘Tis time we women take the thing in hand.”19 This depiction foregrounds upper-class femininity in order 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




to effect a mock-heroic satire. For the satire to work, Woffington’s delicate, leisured femininity has to be heightened: she looks coyly at the viewer, head slightly tilted, her figure is accentuated by the formfitting uniform, her legs are revealed through a slit in her coat, and her hands display elegant, tapered fingers. As Pat Rogers notes in his analysis of Woffington’s “breeches parts,” these depictions of crossdressing sustain the dominant patriarchal specular economy.20 The print’s mock-heroic satire depends on a conventionalized upper-class female beauty and erotic appeal to bring male military action down to the level of sexual conquest. Affirming the rigidity rather than the permeability of gender roles, the print leaves unquestioned the propriety of ladylike physical attractiveness and male strength. In print images of Christian Davies and Hannah Snell, however, no such delicacy and feminine sexiness is employed.21 Their physiques are broad-shouldered and stocky. They look straight ahead with a stoic expression. Their uniforms are loose and disguise any curves they may have. Their hands, when depicted, clutch swords or rifles. In all points of gender role distinctions, the plebeian female soldier is depicted much more straightforwardly as masculine and heroic. I stress these distinctions to show that in these particular female soldier narratives, the writers sincerely rather than mock-heroically employ a masculine heroism specific to laboring-class women.22 As the work of Dugaw and Easton avers, eighteenth-century writers and artists often depict plebeian women as blurring gender roles, exhibiting many traits that a leisure-class audience would attribute to men. As such, the representations of laboring women offer us a rich historical moment to study what Judith Halberstam usefully terms “female masculinity”—that is, the construction of a masculinity that is detached from the biological male body—allowing us to see how “masculine women have played a large part in the construction of modern masculinity.”23 Using Halberstam’s concept of female masculinity, I argue that far from reifying male masculinity or exhibiting a universal acceptance of gender fluidity, the female warrior heroine possesses her own brand of female masculinity that she uses in order to cajole other male characters in the memoirs into being “real men.” Such a depiction is crucial to the authors’ oppositional objectives to paint the female soldiers as models for the nation’s upper-class men to emulate. Both Walker and Montagu imply that plebeian women transgress leisure-class femininity because of the working conditions they grew up in. Admitting that Davies is an exception to the rule of leisure-class femininity, the title page of her narrative imputes her masculine qualities to her experience in the army. Davies’ amanuensis writes, “by her 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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having been long conversant in the camp, she had lost that softness which heightens the Beauty of the Fair, and contracted a masculine Air and Behavior, which however excusable in her, would hardly be so in any other of her Sex” (iv). In suggesting that working conditions can inform a person’s gender presentation, the author illustrates why plebeian women might blur strict divisions between gender roles. Throughout each memoir, the author emphasizes that before the heroine dons men’s clothing and begins to pass as a man, she possesses masculine qualities. Describing her childhood, Davies relates, “I had too much Mercury in me, to like a sedentary life [of reading and needle work];” instead, “she was never better pleased than when [she] was following the Plough, or had a Rake, Flail, or Pitchfork in [her] hand” (2). Davies takes on numerous activities that even men refused. For example, she boasts of her ability to ride a horse known for his “mettle,” which men “feared to ride” (5), and adds, “I mention this, not as worth notice, but only to shew my inclinations, while a girl, were always masculine.” The memoirists connect these early propensities toward masculine employments and recreation with an inclination toward military life. Once Davies enters the army, she explains her facility for military exercises: “having been accustomed to soldiers, when a girl, and delighted with seeing them exercise, I very soon was perfect, and applauded by my officers for my dexterity in going through it” (29). In the long version of Snell’s memoir, the writer also notes her early propensity for being a soldier: Hannah, when she was scarce Ten Years of Age, had the Seeds of Heroinism as it were implanted in her Nature, and she used often to declare to her Companions, that she would be a Soldier if she lived; and as a preceding testimony of the truth, she formed a company of young soldiers among her play-fellows, and of which she was chief commander, at the head of whom she often appeared, and was used to parade the whole city of Worcester. This body of young volunteers were admired all over the town, and they were stiled young amazon Snell’s company: and this martial spirit grew up with her, until it carried her through the many scenes and vicissitudes she encountered for nigh five years, as is fully and impartially related in this treatise of her adventures.24

The women continue to be praised for their military skill and to participate in military culture even after their identity as women is known. Davies is discovered to be a woman after the famous victory at Ramillies, where she receives a dangerous head wound. The surgeons conclude she must be a woman when they see her breasts. Davies 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




wishes to remain with the regiment, however, and thus is compelled to “re-marry” her husband and continue in the capacity of cook and sutler, foraging for food and selling goods to the soldiers. According to Dugaw, eighteenth-century society readily acknowledged physical toughness of plebeian women, and widely accepted their presence in military contexts.25 Known to be a woman, Davies is never far from military action, continues to defend the camp, spy on the enemy, and consult with officers about military strategy, often demonstrating courage that is superior to that of her male comrades. When a lieutenant’s forehead is grazed by a musketball, Davies teases that “his fright magnify’d [it] to a cannon ball. . . . he desired I would shew him to a surgeon; but his panick was so great, that I believe had he been examin’d at both ends, he stood more in need to have his breeches shifted than his wound dressed” (150). She handles the dangers of war with bravado and nonchalance. While everyone is camped, Davies spies an enemy soldier through the sandbags; she immediately grabs a fellow soldier’s gun and shoots the enemy soldier. At the same time, enemy fire comes through the sandbags and hits her in the mouth, knocking out one of her teeth. When her husband runs up, thinking she’s been shot in the head, she spits both the ball and tooth into her hand and laughs (113). In The Female Soldier, Snell reveals her identity only after they have returned to London and she receives her pay, yet her shipmates still compliment her abilities as a soldier: “they all with one Voice sounded forth her Praise, by applauding her Courage as a Soldier, her Dexterity as a Sailor, her humane Deportment and Sincerity as a Friend. . . . They expatiated much upon the Evenness of her Temper, the Regularity of her Conduct, and the many Dangers and Hardships she underwent” (39). Whether the plebeian heroines are in or out of male disguise, by their example, they inspire, cajole, and reprimand men to be better men and better soldiers. In one episode, while Davies is working as a cook, a colonel attempts sexual assault. As Davies begins to defend herself with a knife, another gentleman enters just in time not to rescue her, but to prevent Davies from seriously harming her assailant. Davies first castigates the colonel for an “attempt so unbecoming his character,” then rewards him for his reformation. She gives him a present of fowls and pigeons—he in return gives her “three barrels of strong beer” and thereafter treats her respectfully and is “very generous” (211). In another example, she chastises her commanding officers for their lack of attentiveness and preparedness in fighting the French. While she is “marauding,” she discovers the dangerous proximity of the French army and returns to camp to find the British 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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officers playing chess: “I ask’d them with some warmth, in a language which only became a Soldier, and a Freedom allow’d my Sex, what they meant by having no better Intelligence and idling their Time at Chess, while the French were on the point of cannonading us” (140). One of the gentlemen present, Lord Kerr, retorts “[she] was a foolish drunken woman, and not worth Notice; To which the Duke [of Argyll] replied, he would as soon take [her] Advice as that of any Brigadier in the Army.” This exchange clearly reveals not only that Davies combines attributes of “her sex” and her experience as a “soldier,” but also that other male characters recognize her authority and heed her advice: the Duke of Argyll—an esteemed Whig in opposition to Walpole in 1740—subsequently mobilizes his troops to defend against the French army. In depicting Snell and Davies as models of proper manliness while they are known to be women, both memoirists pay tribute to a female masculinity that is often integral to the construction of plebeian women’s gender identity. Putting on a uniform thus is simply an extension—not the creation—of the masculinities they exhibit as plebeian women. In their adventures as cross-dressed women, Davies and Snell act as foils to the male soldiers and officers, who are often depicted as elevating desire over duty. The female soldiers tread a fine line between needing to adapt to this culture in order to preserve their male identities and wanting to modify the unruly behavior of their male counterparts. It is no coincidence, for example, that Snell begins her military career during the Jacobite invasion of 1745. While the memoirist says little about this embarrassing moment in British military history, when Charles Edward’s invading army proved much more successful than their antagonists ever anticipated, the writer infers that the female soldier easily outperforms the incompetent male officers. In this, the biographer echoes criticisms of the army found in other well-known satires of the invasion. Similar to William Hogarth’s 1750 engraving, “The March to Finchley,” Snell’s narrative portrays the ineptitude of British regiments who were supposed to defend the country from the Pretender’s invasion. In Hogarth’s print, chaos reigns—the soldiers frequent brothels and taverns and show symptoms of sexually transmitted diseases, and some are thieves who trick street merchants out of their wares. In The Female Soldier, Snell is contrasted with a male Sergeant who spends more time attempting to seduce a young Scottish woman than defeating the enemy. Snell befriends the woman and informs her of the Sergeant’s dishonest intentions. When the Sergeant finds out, he falsely reports to the commanding officer that Snell has been neglecting her duties, and she receives a punishment 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




of 500 lashes. Fearing discovery by a recruit, who could identify her as a woman, Snell becomes a deserter. Through the cross-dressed female soldier the memoirists can balance the need to prove the nation’s virility yet abate fears about unruly male desire during war. In eighteenth-century culture, soldiers and sailors were depicted as notorious womanizers; Bernard Mandeville in Fable of the Bees (1714), for example, writes: “You may . . . see them accompanied with three or four lewd women, few of them sober, run roaring through the streets by broad daylight with a fiddler before them” (207). Snell’s biographer raises anxiety about male “lustful appetites” when Snell is stationed at Fort St. David’s. While she and her fellow sailors are swimming, the men curse and perform “many lewd actions and gestures, such as stripping themselves naked,” and Snell is of course forced to conform “to those rude, indiscreet, and unwomanly actions, which she silently disfavoured and contemned” (17). The author uses this moment to stress Snell’s “innocence and virtue,” which protects her from their “rapacious, boundless, and lustful appetites” (18). Yet Snell cannot be “too” virtuous, or she will be accused of being an effeminate man. Her shipmates, for instance, nickname her “Molly Gray,” and threaten to strip her to reveal that she’s either a eunuch or a woman (19). Thus Snell engages in flirting in order to make herself a believable heterosexual male. In Portugal, she carries on a romance with a Portuguese woman: she “very wisely judged, that by associating herself with them, by shewing a free and cheerful disposition, and by being ready to come into their measures, she should banish from their imaginations the least suspicion of her being a woman, and by that means enjoy a free and uninterrupted passage to her native country, without discovering her sex” (20). Same-sex flirtations occur frequently in both the ballads and prose narratives of female soldiers.26 The episodes provide a covert expression of Britain’s virility, central to the nation’s status as empire builder in that the flirtations give the female soldier a seemingly virtuous justification to have a woman in every port, yet titillate readers with a prurient same-sex or heterosexual fantasy (Wheelwright 492). The Life and Adventures of Christian Davies is more explicit about the female soldier’s role in modeling courtly romance yet disciplining other men’s unruly sexual desires. Davies first flirts with a Burgher’s daughter “in my frolicks, to kill time” (37). She uses the courtship to make fun of “all the tender nonsense . . . employed in such attacks” but then quickly regrets playing with the young woman’s feelings, for the woman “grew really fond of me.” When Davies persists, and the woman resists, Davies is impressed with her virtue and becomes smitten: “I own this rebuff gained my heart, and taking her in my arms, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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I told her, that she had heightened the power of her charms by her virtue . . . indeed, I was now fond of the girl, though mine, you know, could not go beyond a platonick love” (38). Having demonstrated proper courtliness, Davies is then contrasted with a man in her regiment who attempts to rape the Burgher’s daughter. Davies challenges the soldier to a duel, and upbraids him for being an embarrassment to the army and British honor: “I told him, the action in itself was so base, that it made him unworthy of the King’s cloth” (39). In this scene, Davies models a version of masculinity that protects both the honor of the girl, her regiment, and her country. Both female soldiers thus implicitly advance the Opposition’s view that the administration was producing “effeminate and debauched men”—satirically depicted in the memoirs as those men who could stand to learn a thing or two about masculinity from the nation’s stalwart, laboring-class women.

Populist Incitements to War Christian Davies and Hannah Snell represent “the people” at a time when politicians and popular writers alike boasted their ability to act and speak on behalf of the people’s interests (Wilson intro. and chp. 1). Populist rhetoric had been intensifying in the decades leading up to the 1739 war with Spain. Since their proscription from office, Tories had cultivated the perception that they enjoyed the exclusive loyalty of the British public. If they could no longer be the Court’s favored party, they would bask in their claim to being the “people’s” party.27 The perception may very well have been accurate, as contemporary commentators often repeated the basic conclusion, offered by William Pulteney to George II in 1742, that “two thirds of the nation were Tories” (qtd. in Colley 146). Just six years prior to the war, Tories had triumphantly exploited their alliance with “the people” of Britain during Walpole’s attempt to pass the Excise Tax. After the 1733 crisis, The Craftsman portrayed Britannia being “rescued by men ‘dressed in plain habits, with the figures of Looms, Ploughshares, and Anchors emboss’d on their breasts.” Nicolas Rogers insightfully interprets this anecdote to mean that “Britannia had been nobly defended by the ‘people’ against power-hungry politicians and their mercenary crew.”28 In the pamphlet exchange leading up to the war, Walpole’s defenders attempted to turn populist rhetoric to their advantage. They argued that peaceful negotiation with Spain was the only way to act responsibly on behalf of the plebeian, artisan, and merchant classes. In “An Address to the Merchants,” the writer explains, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen



Po l i t i c s o f C u s to m The arts of peace, and their improvements in manufacture and inventions of every kind must proceed in equal steps with the success of their arms: The works of our citizens, our plowmen, our gardeners, our woodmen, our fishers, our diggers in mines, &c. must be equally advanc’d with the triumphs of our fleets, or else their blood will be shed in vain: they will soon return to the same poverty and want of trade which they strove to avoid. (40)

Yet it was the Tory and Whig Opposition that more persuasively asserted that the people wanted retribution against Spain. After war was declared, Sir William Keith gloated that the “vigorous and most just war” brought “universal satisfaction” to the British people, and that “it is . . . the hope of every wise and good man in Britain, that we are no longer to be deceived or misled by the weak and empty projects of pacifick negociations [sic].”29 Embodying populist support for war, both Davies and Snell are members of plebeian families that willingly sprang into military service in order to defend the nation. Davies, born in Dublin in 1667, is the daughter of a brewer father and a mother who runs the family farm. Though Irish, Davies firmly establishes herself and her family as Protestant and loyalist. She mentions that her mother “wept bitterly” at the proclamation of James II as king, and when William arrives in England to usurp the throne Davies’ father decides to defend James II only because he is the “lawful sovereign” (4). Snell is similarly from humble and patriotic origins. She was born in Worcester in 1723, to a father who was a hosier and dyer (3–4). Her grandfather died valiantly when he served as a captain in the War of the Spanish Succession, and the biographer reports that Snell’s nine siblings “save one daughter, were either soldiers or sailors, or intermarried with them” (5). One of the primary ways that The Life and Adventures of Christian Davies incites readers’ desire for war is through the use of nostalgia for Britain’s military greatness during the War of the Spanish Succession, creating a fantasy of the benefits of war for all ranks of society. As many other scholars have noted, nostalgia was a common rhetorical gesture that the Opposition used to taint Walpole’s twenty-one-year administration.30 The Duke of Argyll, one of the Opposition’s most outspoken Whigs, used this tactic in the parliamentary debate on the state of the nation in 1740: I, my Lords, have liv’d long enough in the world, to be able to compare the once flourishing state of this country, with its present melancholy situation; I have seen, my Lords, a time when Great Britain was glorious, triumphant and terrible abroad, her Government lov’d, respected and



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Similarly, the underlying message of the Davies memoir is that through the war, Britain is capable of recapturing her former greatness under Anne’s reign and the victories of the War of the Spanish Succession.32 Indeed, other pseudo-autobiographical soldier narratives make this argument explicitly. In The Life and Adventures of Matthew Bishop, of Deddington in Oxfordshire (1744), Bishop details his service in that war in the hopes that army recruiters will again “consider the old soldier” for service (207). He remembers George II, when a young prince, fighting in the battle of Oudenard, and persuades readers that “there is a duty incumbent upon all his subjects to do the utmost of their ability to serve him [now]” (258). By linking the current war with the former, writers deflect attention from the unheroic reasons for war to a time when war was fought purportedly for the balance of power, aristocratic generals and royalty were noble and provided ample patronage, and plebeian soldiers enjoyed the good fight—and, with luck and ingenuity, acquired lucrative goods from the conquest. In keeping with these objectives, Davies describes in detail the victories of the war and conveys pride in Britain’s performance as well as the nationalist sentiments of the commanding officers. During a battle at Liege, for example, Davies notes how the “English, in particular, distinguished themselves in this assault” (62). Davies herself participates in battles led by the revered Duke of Marlborough and Duke of Argyll, aristocratic generals who are portrayed as having only noble reasons for pursuing war. Argyll, who was dismissed from office in 1740 for criticizing Walpole, is treated in Davies’ memoir as a great hero and inspirational commander. In a speech to Davies’ regiment, Argyll tells the soldiers, “you fight for the liberties of all Europe and the glory of your nation” (183). Erasing any former controversy over Marlborough’s acquisitiveness, the duke is described as altruistic and surprisingly empathetic: Davies says that “he was entirely beloved, not only for his Courage and Conduct, but equally dear to us all for his affability and humanity” (212). He is so caring of his soldiers that “seeing some of our Foot [soldiers] drop, through the Fatigue of the March, he took them into his own coach” (71). While the commanding officers pursue war in order to protect the nation’s and Europe’s liberty, Davies and others of her class are portrayed as motivated by the lucrative possibilities of war. Recruiters often coaxed the plebeian classes into enlisting by promising material gain. In the Life and Adventures of Matthew Bishop, Bishop becomes 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


envied at home; when her Enmity was dreaded, and when her Alliance was courted.31


a recruiter for a brief period and recounts his tactics; after buying interested farmers great quantities of beer, he says, “leave your plough and come along with me, and plough for riches and honour” (126). Bolstering this form of wartime propaganda, after each battle Davies recounts whether her regiment managed to acquire “a very considerable Booty” (62) and whether she was satisfied in her share. An organizing plot device of the narrative is Davies’ increasing skill in obtaining as much plunder as possible. It is not surprising that Davies’ narrative was formerly attributed to Daniel Defoe, for Davies itemizes in Defoefashion all of her material disappointments and successes. At the battle of Liege, she reports that the English “found in the [Fort] thirty Pieces of cannon and beside twenty thousand Florins in Silver” and laments receiving only a large silver chalice and some pieces of plate (63). In describing the plundering of Bavaria, she is particularly specific: “We spared nothing, killing, burning, or otherwise destroying whatever we could carry off. The Bells of the Churches we broke to pieces, that we might bring them away with us. I filled two bed ticks, after having thrown out the feathers, with bell metal, mens and womens clothes, some velvets, and about a hundred dutch caps, which I had plundered from a shop”; she then trades all of this in and buys “several pieces of plate, and spoons, mugs, cups” (80). Davies’ memoir is unusual in that it continues to follow her life after her gender is discovered, when she remains with her husband’s regiment as a camp follower, cook, and sutler. With this plot device the writer is able to illustrate how the profits of war extend beyond the soldiers to all who serve the army. As a sutler, Davies prefers to march with the Camp-Colour men, who are at a greater risk as they march at a distance ahead of the rest of the army (174). This positioning gives her the advantage of having first crack at any plunder there is, and she has a chance to set up her tent and cook the provisions so that she can then sell them once the rest of the army catches up. Of course, for the reading public of 1702 and in 1739, avarice figures just as prominently in the motivations for war as it does for the lower classes, but Davies’ memoir provides them a safe distance from that motivation by depicting it as a plebeian trait. With all of this wonderful bounty generated in 1702 by the war, and implying the promise of more bounty in 1739, the author is forced to make sense of its termination in the Treaty of Utrecht. Here the text provides a clear bipartisan-opposition interpretation: Davies states, “the unanimity of the Allies was the principal cause of a successful war; but now the divisions, which were revived in England between the Whigs and Tories paved the way to, and at last 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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concluded, a less advantageous peace than might have been expected from such a number of conquests and so many glorious victories” (205). The author sends a politically savvy message to its reading public that unity between the two parties (under the rubric of opposing Walpole) is crucial to a successful war with Spain in 1740. Two years after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded in 1748, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell evidences the Opposition’s continued belief in the “necessary and most just war” fought on behalf of the people, despite the disappointing results of the decade-long imperial conflict. After the disintegration of “broadbottom” politics, the now primarily Tory Opposition accused the administration of sabotaging war efforts and criticized its failure to achieve British sovereignty at sea, yet they continued to voice populist rhetoric by praising plebeian heroism during the war. According to naval historian H. W. Richmond, during the parliamentary debates on the king’s state of the nation speech of 1748, members voted not to give thanks for the “signal success that had attended his Majesty’s arms at sea through the course of the war”; “But the opposition distinguished between those in the lower ranks who had shewn gallantry, to whom praise and thanks were due, and those in high authority who had misdirected the war.”33 In Snell’s memoir, the writer adheres to populist rhetoric by depicting Snell as a “deliverer” of the British nation, even in the face of terrible naval defeat during the final siege at Pondicherry, India. Through the descriptions of Snell’s naval service, the author celebrates plebeian traits such as ingenuity, quick learning, and resourcefulness during exigent circumstances. On board the Swallow Sloop, Snell is stationed on the quarterdeck, where she “was obliged to keep watch four Hours on and four off, Day and Night, being often obliged to go aloft, and altho’ unexperienced with these kinds of hardships, soon became expert in the business” (11). Her bravery and love of England compensates for her status as a novice: Though “unexperienced in the Use of Arms, except in learning her Exercise, she behaved with an uncommon Bravery, and exerted herself in her Country’s cause” (14). On the voyage to East India, the ship encounters a terrific storm, and Snell wins the respect of her shipmates by taking “her turn at the pump of a sinking vessel, [and] perform[ing] the several offices of a common sailor . . . with such judgment and intrepidity, that . . . she was looked upon by the ship’s company as a kind of deliverer” (13). The memoir continues to shower Snell with encomiums during the final operation of the war in the East Indies. Glossing over the crass commercialism at stake in the skirmish over who would control 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




trade in the East Indies, the memoir depicts the siege of Pondicherry as Britain’s straightforward attempt to defend itself from the French. The writer states that Snell joins Admiral Boscawen’s fleet because she “was in hopes of acquiring some glory as a soldier, knowing the reason of this fleet’s being fitted out was to annoy the enemies of her country” (14). Hampered by monsoons and outbreaks of disease, the attack was a disaster, and Admiral Boscawen failed to take Pondicherry away from the French, leaving England with a final shameful memory of lost conquests and in a weak bargaining position during peace negotiations. Despite England’s terrible losses during this last battle of the war, the narrator of Snell’s memoir criticizes neither the officers nor the enlisted sailors. When Admiral Boscawen decides to abandon his attack, he is described as “our brave admiral” who refuses to risk lives unnecessarily: he was “unwilling to lose his ships and men, for whom he had great regard.” Similarly, Snell and her fleet’s efforts are lauded for their heroic perseverance: This attack continued eleven weeks, part of which time they had no bread, most of their food being rice; and the many bombs and shells thrown among them, killed and wounded many of their men. During this space of time, she behaved with the greatest bravery and intrepidity, such as was consistent with the character of an English soldier, and though so deep in water, fired 37 rounds of shot, and received a shot in the groin, six shots in one leg, and five in the other. (15)

The memoir’s defense of the “English soldier” is consistent with Opposition support of maritime engagements in India. Their only wish was that more resources had been directed toward Britain’s naval development.34 The Opposition newspaper The Remembrancer printed this bitter pronouncement on the war’s end: “[W]e have exhausted ourselves completely, in a cause, that of all the powers in Europe, we were the last, and least concerned in. The balance of power at land was the bubble we fought for; whereas the commerce and navigation of the world, and the sovereignty of the ocean, ought to have been the principal objects of their attention.”35

Peace, Patronage, and Rousing the Body Politic As the memoirists exploited the figure of the female soldier to incite and reform the nation’s military spirit during wartime, so too did the 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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laboring-class heroine’s peacetime adventures aid in defusing anxieties about plebeian disorder and bolstering the country’s flagging pride. As Joanna Innes has observed, “demobilization at the end of wars apparently provoked an upsurge in crime: the end of every eighteenthcentury war saw a sharp upturn in numbers of property offenses prosecuted.”36 One way of managing this threat, Montagu and Walker seem to suggest, is by appealing to the court and aristocracy’s customary obligations to patronize newly returned veterans. The Davies’ memoir, with its nostalgic evocation of Queen Anne’s reign, details the enthusiastic reception of the court to her petitions for a pension. Painting a romanticized picture of “merry old England,” in which patricians and plebeians possessed a shared culture of sociability, the Davies memoir describes how the Duke of Argyll invites Davies to his home for dinner, after which they “ripp’d up old stories, and were as merry as so many new paid-off sailors” (229). The duke then proceeds to help her draw up a petition to the queen, stating that “for twelve years . . . had served in the Earl of Orkney’s regiment as a man; that [she] had received several wounds, and lost two husbands in the service” (230). Recognized both as a veteran and a veteran’s widow, Davies reports that “The Queen was graciously pleased to receive me with a smile, and . . . said it should be her care to provide for me. . . . My circumstances [were] made very easy by the Queen’s bounty and the charitable assistance of the nobility and officers of the army” (236).37 The Davies of 1740 looks back on these “merry” and lucrative exchanges not without a tinge of the Opposition’s criticism of the current administration: “many of my friends going no longer to court, my former subsistence is greatly diminished from what it was” (262). The Davies memoir encourages readers during the early years of war with Spain to think fondly of the golden age of patronage under Anne as a way to stabilize the chaotic repercussions of war. Snell’s narrative continues to critique the Hanoverian court’s lack of commitment to its displaced soldiers and sailors. The one mention of patronage by the Duke of Cumberland remains tentative, so instead the memoir itself acts as a printed petition to the reading public for support, not just by purchasing the memoir, but also by attending Snell’s performances on stage: “the publick we hope will encourage her, if she should have a benefit play perform’d on her own account, as an encouragement for the many singular adventures, and signal deliverances from the many perils and dangers that environed her, and all in the behalf of her country” (40). The long version of the memoir elaborates on the performances, in which she dresses in uniform, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




performs military exercises, and sings patriotic songs. One of the songs, which concludes the memoir, has purportedly been made popular by a group of “anti-Gallicans,” and is titled, “Britannia’s Gold Mine; or, the Herring Fishery for Ever.” The lyrics specifically refer to a post-war Britain: “the people now are groaning / Beneath a heavy debt [from the war] / And must be soon a bankrupt, / Unless we cast the Net” (183). The refrain, “a Fishing we must go,” argues that the British should turn to domestic markets, taking advantage of the fishing industry, and forsaking imperialist ventures:38 “The ocean round our islands, / If we this trade pursue, / Will yield us wealth surpassing, / The treasures of Peru” (184). A turn to domestic markets, furthermore, will provide employment and riches to everyone: “Then ye, who want employment, / Whose pittance is but small; / Come list beneath our standard, / We’ll cut out work for all.” In the face of unrequited imperial desires, the biographer defines nationalism closer to home, through pride in a British industry and pride in Britain’s industrious people, who by Hannah Snell’s example learn “never to murmur or repine at our hard lot” and to stay “manfully chearful” (186). On the one hand, accounts of the female soldier’s postwar experiences espouse an idealized solution to the displacement of veterans through the prospect of generous charitable support and through an emphasis on plebeian industriousness. On the other hand, there is a way in which the raucous energy of “new paid-off sailors” is itself romanticized, eroticized and offered up as a patriotic testament of British virility. In the conclusion of Snell’s memoir, the descriptions of Snell dramatically alter her from a heroic British sailor and soldier during war to the object of prurient jokes and sexual innuendo during peace. If the first half of the narrative strives to close the gendered distance between Snell and her fellow male sailors and soldiers by illustrating a shared masculinity, the final pages of the narrative widen that distance by asserting her identity as a woman who nearly escapes or nearly instigates a range of sexual encounters. The British heroine’s virtue, like Britain’s, becomes a bawdy joke in a sexually infused farce, yet the memoir remains playfully ambivalent about whether pretensions to female chastity or sexual proclivity define Britain’s “virtue.”39 As the memoir comes to a close, the author returns to different incidents during Snell’s military service and embellishes them with prurient details: “I know the reader will be desirous to know how the ball was extracted out of her groin.” Often in literary portrayals of men at war, a groin wound can signify not only the soldier’s castration, but also the metonymic castration of the military and nation. But 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Now the manner in which she extracted the Ball was full hardy and desperate: She prob’d the Wound with her Finger till she came where the Ball lay, and then upon feeling it, thrust in both her finger and Thumb, and pulled it out . . . chusing [sic] to have her Flesh tore and mangled than her Sex discovered. (36–37)

By exploiting the sexual disguise of the female soldier, and using such erotically charged words as “probing” and “thrusting,” the author thus recasts British losses not as a moment of impotence, but as a semipornographic one that redeems and perhaps incites Britain’s sexual potency. In describing Snell’s return to London, the author depicts her again as an object of sexual interest, but the memoir goes further in characterizing the plebeian world in general as a locus of barely contained sexuality. First the author creates sexual tension by having Snell be the bedfellow of two different “brother marines” (27) who do not know she is a woman: “It is here worthy of observation, that this woman should lay three nights with two different men, one of whom had been her companion and fellow-adventurer, during the space of fifteen months and more; and never, during that space of time, discover the least hint of her being of the female kind” (29). The author compliments Snell on her ability to protect her virtue during her military service, all the while titillating readers with the threat of sexual danger if she had been discovered: “for can it be imagined, that in the midst of so many dangers, where there was no back-door to creep out at, if her sex had been discovered, but she must have fallen victim to the loose, disorderly, and vitious appetites of many on board” (31). In London, Snell returns home to her sister’s house, where her male disguise serves to create a scandal when she greets her brother-in-law in bed and later a female lodger who refuses to allow Snell to share her bed until Snell provides “ocular demonstration” that she’s a woman (32). The author concludes all these racy encounters with a mock-pronouncement of Snell’s unsurpassed British virtue: “This the reader may plainly perceive throughout the whole narration; and I am convinced, that no age or country, ever produced a more distinguished instance of virtue, conduct and resolution, than is to be met with in this our heroine’s adventures” (34). Despite the author’s periodic homage to the country’s sexual virtue, the bedroom farces betray the author’s greater investment and even pride in a plebeian sexuality that “no age or country ever produced.” In popular nationalist 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


depicting the female soldier’s groin wound, and her self-ministration of it, turns the incident into a bizarrely autoerotic act:


literature, in the face of European defeat, it is the plebeian classes who powerfully sustain and inspire the nation’s virility. Samuel Johnson, in his midcentury essay “On the Bravery of the English Common Soldier,” spins plebeian “insolence” during peace as a virtue during war, claiming the lack of deference as a particularly “English” characteristic: “the equality of English privileges, the impartiality of our laws, the freedom of our tenures, and the prosperity of our trade, dispose us very little to reverence superiours.”40 In both versions of her memoir, the narrator describes Hannah Snell as just such an independent, antiauthoritarian laboring-class heroine, in that she will continue to dress as a man and that she has moreover decided never to marry: the long version declares, “she is resolutely bent to be lord and master of herself, and never more to entertain the least thoughts of having a husband to rule and govern her, and make her truckle to his wayward humours” (179). This emphasis on British liberty hearkens back to the rhetoric and popular representations that justified Britain’s decade-long imperialist campaigns. Conveniently erasing some of the primary reasons for Britain’s war with Spain—primarily colonial acquisition and the extension of the Asiento agreement—the rhetoric of war opposed British liberty to foreign enslavement and fostered the notion that Spanish colonists and indigenous peoples would be happier under the rule of the more freedom-loving British.41 Performed at the inception of the war, Edward Phillips’ play, Britons, Strike Home: or, the Sailors Rehearsal. A Farce, dramatizes this logic by creating an allegorical romance in which American colonies are represented by a lady who prefers the liberties of England to the tyranny of Spain. Kitty Clive played Donna Americana, “a Lady whom Kings and whole Nations sigh after” (4). Donna Americana becomes “a spouse contracted by our Church to the Spanish Nation;” but during the course of the play she rebels, stating, “Then this claim of Marriage is the reason, Don, that you use me here as you use your Wives in Europe, with much Jealousy, and much Tyranny; but as I’m grown acquainted with the customs and freedom of the English, ‘tis their own fault, if they don’t partake of my favours, for if our sex has a mind to grant a favour, hinder us if you can, signior” (8). As Phillips’ farce implies that the colonies are more attracted to England because of its greater freedoms, so the memoir of Hannah Snell proudly depicts its British heroine’s desire to remain “lord and master of herself,” as a tribute to the nation’s claim to liberty, even after the embarrassing losses codified by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Gerald Newman posits that mid-eighteenth-century England witnessed a dramatic increase in nationalist sentiments that began 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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specifically as anti-French and antiaristocratic (chps. 4 and 5). In this and the preceding chapter, we see how the novel and novelized memoir responded to the climate of political and cultural dissatisfaction by turning to Britain’s traditional ballads and their laboring-class heroines to create discourses of cultural affirmation. English artists resented the elite’s preference for French culture and art, which purportedly had feminized and debauched the men of Britain’s ruling class; and graphic artists depicted Britannia as an innocent and virtuous lady, in danger of being seduced, dominated, and even dismembered by the French and Britain’s upper-class Francophiles (Newman 78). As the midcentury wars escalated people’s anxiety about the nation’s leadership and the creation of a militaristic British identity, the female warrior motif provided the means both to critique the ruling elite and celebrate Britain’s common people. According to their memoirists, Christian Davies and Hannah Snell embody the people’s strength, virility, and independence—they are much like the defiant, outspoken Pamela, but a Pamela who refuses to be assimilated into the upper gentry, to “marry up,” or to marry at all. The memoirists’ rendering of the female soldiers’ affiliations to balladry’s laboring-class culture and gender identity reveals that customary culture could be strategically deployed in order to consolidate public opinion in favor of such modern developments as war based on trade, British nationalism, and imperial expansion.







4

“Lost i n a Mob of Impu dent P lebei ans”: Landed Gentry, Br i ti sh I dentity, and Popul ar Culture in H U M P H RY C L I N K E R (1771)

In the opening letter of Humphry Clinker, Matthew Bramble directs

his friend and agent, Dr. Lewis, to perform several landlord duties while he is away on vacation, including selling his corn under market price to the poor, donating a cow and money to a recently widowed tenant, and resolving a monetary dispute with a neighbor by having the neighbor give five pounds to the poor in lieu of repaying Bramble himself. A model almost to a fault of subordinating individual profit to the principles of a moral economy, Bramble is presented as an idealized patrician landlord of a country estate. As his nephew Jery notes, “[C]ertain it is, all his servants and neighbours in the country, are fond of him, even to a degree of enthusiasm.”1 Yet despite its apparent pastoral harmony, something is rotten in the state of Brambleton Hall, and especially in the constitution of Bramble himself. Gout, lameness, constipation, and general malaise drive him from his beatific home and relations with his tenants in search of resorts and diversions that will restore him to health. Bramble’s condition, which he self-diagnoses as being “hard to move,” illustrates the plight of the Tory landed gentry amid a host of disempowering political and economic events of the 1760’s and early 1770’s.



Chapter 4


The second half of the eighteenth century finds us in a fundamentally altered landscape of political appeal on behalf of “the people,” custom, and popular culture. With George III’s accession to the throne and the removal of Tory proscription, elites of both parties jockeyed for court positions. The result for extraparliamentary politics, in Kathleen Wilson’s words, was that “dissident politics was deprived of effective elite leadership,” creating a climate of opportunity for a vociferous middling sort to deploy antiaristocratic rhetoric not just against notorious individuals like Walpole, but now to attack patrician authority itself, paving the way for Britain’s first fullest expression of popular radicalism (Wilson Sense of the People 209 and 232). As we have seen throughout this study, however, new political, economic, and cultural movements are often cast in the reassuring tropes of the past, and the strategies of popular radicals were no different. In The Age of Caricature, Diana Donald details the ways supporters of John Wilkes, icon of the populist movement, cleverly exploited “the products of an authentic popular culture” in their satirical prints to promote their radical agenda, including the use of “the common language of crowd ritual, woodcut broadsides and cheap ballads” (50). Similarly, Charles Tilly remarks on the ability of Wilkes and his coterie to advance “fundamental questions of popular sovereignty” by employing various traditional popular rites of protest, such as “calling for candles in windows and cries of catchwords as signs of support for the cause, carrying out rituals such as the hanging or burning of a boot [to signify Lord Bute’s administration], and marching to the royal palace with flags and violins” (Popular Contention 165). Tobias Smollett, hired by Scottish Prime Minister Lord Bute to defend his ministry, was deeply embroiled in these journalistic and graphic print struggles. His last novel, set in this turbulent decade, reflects his resentment over the appropriation of customary culture to facilitate the political and economic power of the middling sort. The novel also foregrounds and contests another Wilkite rhetorical move by which Smollett found himself personally assailed: that of underwriting nascent democracy with a strident Anglocentricism. Many radical appeals for greater enfranchisement were couched in nostalgia for the purportedly more democratic societies specific to the ancient Anglo-Saxons (Newman 183). Popular radicals further promulgated Scotophobic stereotypes that Scots were secretly loyal to the French during Lord Bute’s unpopular negotiation of the Treaty of Paris (1763), to which the disgruntled William Pitt quipped, “we retain nothing, although we have conquered everything” (qtd. in Newman 172). In the North Briton, pamphlet literature, and graphic 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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prints, Wilkes and his followers made sure to include Smollett in their anti-Scottish attacks.2 I read the densely politically allusive Humphry Clinker as Smollett’s defensive response to the middling sort’s increased political and economic clout as well as to popular radicals’ efforts to limit nationalism to the confines of Englishness. Smollett perhaps predictably reasserts a customary social order by refusing the “middling sort” a separate existence from the plebeian classes; indeed, the term “middling” occurs not even once in the novel as a demographic term. In Bramble’s world, there are simply “impudent,” socially ambitious plebeians and deferential, traditionally minded plebeians. What is more remarkable, however, is that Smollett reconstitutes patrician identity and what it means for patricians and plebeians to return to an “organic” society based on a shared culture. Beating the Wilkites at their own game, Smollett appropriates the innovative and free-market spirit of “impudent” plebeians as a way to reestablish patrician dominance. Doing so effaces the ways that new forms of commercialized agriculture such as enclosure imperiled the livelihood of rural laborers, making this new development appear a natural part of customary relations between upper and lower orders. He further redefines traditional popular culture as it was being deployed at the time, wresting it away from the homogenizing and Anglocentric bias of the popular radicals and—anticipating the Celtic revival of the 1780’s—embracing diverse popular cultures from Scotland, Wales, and England to create a culturally heterogeneous British nationalism.

Patrician Obsolescence Humphry Clinker everywhere records the symptoms of the extinction of Matt Bramble’s culture. Bramble observes in Clifton, one of the first destinations on his domestic tour, “half a dozen poor emaciated creatures, with ghostly looks, in the last stage of a consumption, who have made shift to linger through the winter, like so many exotic plants languishing in a hot-house; but, in all appearance, will drop into their graves before the sun has warmth enough to mitigate the rigour of this ungenial spring” (13). As a valetudinarian himself, Bramble invites comparison between these “exotic plants” and his own situation at Brambleton Hall. His utopian estate, according to the logic of the novel, has served for Bramble as such a “hothouse,” an artificial environment that, however protective, has allowed him to become an exotic, languishing ghost. Visits to Bath and London similarly illustrate Bramble and his coterie’s literal and metaphoric loss 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


“L o s t i n a M o b o f I m p u d e n t P l e b e i a n s”


of stature. In Bath Bramble faints at the ball, he abandons decorum and is embroiled in a physical brawl with two African servants, and in London he withdraws from public gatherings, not even willing to attend the theater. His friends likewise appear to be vanquished in this cultural war: “seven lamed by the gout, rheumatism, or palsy; three maimed by accident; and the rest either deaf or blind” (51), they “are now reduced to lead a weary life in this stewpan of idleness and insignificance” (54). Contrasted with patrician “insignificance” are portrayals of the endlessly energetic, invasive middling sort. Empowered by the profits of imperial conquest and global trade, a new, middling group of tradespeople, which the novel strategically insists on classifying as “plebeian,” has not merely infiltrated elite spaces; this group has begun to warp the spaces themselves, degrading genteel culture to reflect middling culture’s own lack of taste. In Bath, “Clerks and factors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces . . . Knowing no other criterion of greatness, but the ostentation of wealth, they discharge their affluence without taste or conduct, through every channel of the most absurd extravagance” (34). As a result, “a very inconsiderable proportion of genteel people are lost in a mob of impudent plebeians” (35). The genteel have lost their influence over taste and over customary notions of respect and deference as well, as plebeians “have neither understanding nor judgment, nor the least idea of propriety and decorum; and seem to enjoy nothing so much as an opportunity of insulting their betters.” As scholars have observed, these middling incursions into culture are symptomatic of larger shifts in the realms of British economics and politics. Susan Jacobsen notes that Bramble’s rants reflect the diminishing economic power of the landed gentry, as the economy shifted from an emphasis on production to consumption: “while the landed interest theoretically supported preservation and production with the interests of the nation in mind, the trading interest profited by encouraging exorbitant spending and rapid consumption of goods” (“‘Tinsel of the Times’” 77). In London, this wealthy group had become so influential that elite politicians courted their support. In a veiled reference to William Pitt, Bramble despises seeing “a [political] man of birth, education, and fortune, put himself on a level with the dregs of the people, mingle with low mechanics, feed with them at the same board, and drink with them in the same cup” (98). Of course, this description of Pitt mingling with “the dregs of the people” is another example of Smollett’s strategic conflation of middling and plebeian. John Sekora clarifies that when Smollett refers to politicians 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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consorting with the vulgar or the mob, Smollett really means “middling sort of tradesmen”; “A figure like Pitt would certainly come into physical closeness with the middle-class voters of the City. But ‘dregs,’ ‘low mechanics,’ ‘prejudices,’ ‘belchings,’ ‘beer,’ ‘grossness,’ and ‘impertinence’—these identify the mass of workers and unemployed who, whatever their fearsome habits, had no voting rights and no direct political influence” (Luxury 192 and 225). Relegating the middling sort to the status of “plebeian” is without doubt one of the ways that the novel seeks to contain the threat of middling independence. Critics have taken this assertion of willful denial to pertain to the politics of the novel as a whole, demonstrating that the novel’s final solution to the landed gentry’s plight entails an almost mythical retreat to Bramble’s original pastoral and patrician ideal at Brambleton Hall.3 As we have seen, however, Bramble’s pastoral retreat was never idyllic to begin with. Nor, as this chapter will argue, are the patrician ideals that Bramble upholds at the beginning of the novel the same as those he espouses by its end. Having safely consigned the middling sort to the customary social category of “plebeian,” the novel enables a new ideological inscription of “organic” or shared culture between patricians and plebeians, in which patrician identity can reconstitute itself by taking on or “sharing” plebeian attributes, whether traditional or insurgent.

Revitalizing Patrician Identity One way the novel shows the powerful influence of plebeian culture on the gentry is through its central preoccupation with metaphors of the body, health, and disease. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White have noted the increasing cultural and social elevation of the “classical” body during the eighteenth century as a way of legitimating the nobility and bourgeois above the collective body, which is denoted by its grotesqueness, its filth, and its connection with scatology (Politics and Poetics chp. 2). The description of Matt Bramble’s attitudes toward his own body in the first part of the novel supports this broad cultural movement.4 As Jery writes, his uncle “has the most extravagant ideas of decency and decorum in the oeconomy of his own person” (172). His anxiety about the violation of his own body as well as about mingling physically with the grotesque collective is seen most dramatically in his description of the mob. Bramble retorts, the “mob is a monster [he] never could abide, either in its head, talk, midriff, or members: I detest the whole of it, as a mass of ignorance, presumption, malice, and brutality; and, in this term of reprobation, I include, without 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




respect of rank, station, or quality, all those of both sexes, who affect its manners, and court its society” (35). Bramble’s denial of his own physicality and of the grotesque plebeian orders is so graphic and memorable that scholars often overlook the ways that Clinker, also a member of the plebeian classes, helps him to overcome this resistance over the course of the narrative. The novel repeatedly stages Clinker as Matt’s rescuer, and through this motif, Smollett sheds critical light on patrician withdrawal from a shared social and cultural relation with the lower orders. Such elitism has resulted not only in “idleness and insignificance,” but also, through metaphors of the body, in disease and sterility. In one of the novel’s primary metaphors uniting the human body and the body politic, London is described as “an overgrown monster; which like a dropsical head, will in time leave the body and extremities without nourishment or support” (82–83). The analogy conveys London’s command of commerce at the expense of its agricultural areas—Matt decries the depopulation of villages and the movement of workers to the city, who have only crime to which to turn to support themselves. As Lismahago notes in a corresponding metaphor, it moreover indicates the metropolis’ draining of the resources of British provinces and colonies.5 Although it has rarely been read this way, I would like to interpret it also as a metaphor denoting class relations, with the aristocracy, gentry, and nouveau riche gaining at the expense of the laboring classes, figured as the body’s extremities. Bramble speaks as if he as a member of the landed gentry is exempt from this characterization, yet the metaphoric language of disease implicates him as well. Similar to the nation’s dropsical condition, Matt’s illnesses involve the collection of fluids in parts of the body that negatively affect his extremities. Gout, for example, entails the collection of uric acid in the body causing inflammation of the joints; dropsy likewise entails the accretions of water in various parts of the body, causing abnormal swelling. In both ailments, the circulation of fluids through the entire organism is obstructed, causing deprivation in some parts and excess in others. Introduced to the Bramble family in the role of driver for their carriage, Clinker and his mobility contrast the sedentary nature of the Bramble party. He skips, hops, and dances various “jigs”; his energy is so uncontrollable that he does a miserable job of waiting on the Brambles at the dinner table, spilling desert, stepping on the dog, dropping a dish. Clinker’s biography as a whole echoes that of a picaresque hero, as we learn of his movement from one job to the next, from workhouse to blacksmith apprentice, to stable boy. If one of Bramble’s primary sources of physical disruption is the lack 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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of circulation, then Clinker’s constant movement, and that of the laboring classes themselves, functions as a restorative force. The text thus on the one hand disparages the loss of customary treatment of the poor, as Matt does when he shames an innkeeper for his callous disposal of Clinker when he becomes too sick to work; on the other hand it romanticizes rural plebeian unemployment and homelessness by metaphorically subsuming picaresque mobility into a redemptive “cure” for the sedentary gentry. Bramble travels through Wales, England, and Scotland before he reaches an adequate diagnosis of his condition and cure: he realizes he “absurdly sought health in the retreats of laziness—I am persuaded that all valetudinarians are too sedentary, too regular, and too cautious. . . . I have even found a change of company as necessary as a change of air, to promote a vigorous circulation of the spirits, which is the very essence and criterion of good health” (311). Not only is Clinker responsible for helping Bramble increase his bodily circulation, but also one can posit that the domestic tour of the British Isles is itself an appropriation of the laboring-class picaro’s itinerant life, thereby bringing much-needed change to Bramble’s sedentary nature and lofty, calcified relations with the laboring classes. By employing some of the positive, Rabelaisian connotations of the collective body against the Enlightenment, classical body, the novel portrays Clinker as symbolically pivotal to Matt’s journey from sickness to health. One of the first turning points in Bramble’s recuperation occurs in Scarborough, when Matt is sea bathing. Mistaking Bramble’s outburst from the chill of the water for a sign that he’s drowning, Clinker plunges into the water to rescue him. Bramble has to endure becoming “a spectacle to the multitude” (171), as he imagines being known to people as “the monster that was hauled naked ashore upon the beach” (172). He views Clinker as being a kind of fairground impresario, turning Bramble into a freakshow “furnish[ing] the mob with further entertainment at my expence” and diminishing his patrician authority. Yet the symbolism of baptism, even a mock one, is unmistakable here, with Clinker acting both as Bramble’s physical, spiritual, and social savior. The mock-baptism implies that Clinker, who by class is related to the “monstrous mob,” helps Matt to reconnect with his body and accept that he too is a “monster” and part of the “multitude” from which he so fervently wants to separate.6 Significantly, however, reintegration with the multitude, even through the evocation of popular fairground entertainment, does not result in an attending loss of patrician identity or authority. Smollett reassures his upper-class audience of their authority 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




as Bramble himself becomes reassured in the novel, by describing that Clinker, who stands shaking from “the dread of having offended his master,” “had acted from motives of fidelity and affection” (172). Clinker also assists Bramble in unifying Enlightenment rationality with his physical body, including its unpleasant extremities and excretions. The text unmistakably and pervasively associates the laboring classes with scatological imagery. Clinker’s first significant impression is made through his ragged pants. And Win, in addition to her numerous scatological malapropisms, bares her nether parts at least three times in the novel. Bramble during the early part of the narrative is able to assert his body’s superior relation to such scatological body parts; when the carriage overturns outside of Bath, for example, Bramble tellingly uses Win’s posteriors “as a step to rise in his ascent” (74). Yet another important stage in Bramble’s restoration occurs when he must acknowledge Clinker as his son. The scatological implications of Clinker’s name (denoting excrement) emerge more explicitly as Bramble is compelled to accept his illegitimate son, the product of his own scandalous physicality, as a plausible heir to his estate. Thus metaphorically through the scatological meanings of “clinker,” Bramble reclaims disavowed body parts and bodily functions, particularly his sexual desire and reproductivity, another trait associated in the text with the laboring classes.7 At the end of the novel, Bramble predicts “a whole litter of [Clinker’s] progeny,” as Clinker is “stout and lusty” and Win is “as great an enthusiast in love as in religion” (315). We learn that Bramble was once as lusty himself as these two: “the rogue proves to be a crab of my own planting in the days of hot blood and unrestrained libertinism” (293). This is the most vital physical description we have had of Bramble, dramatically contrasting his characteristic sedentary, decarnalized, and cerebral nature. Clinker’s conception also points to a time when Bramble was not as phobic about mingling or even comingling with the plebeian orders. Clinker’s mother is Dorothy Twyford, “barkeeper at the Angel at Chippenham” (292). While the older Matt Bramble abhors the possible exchange of bodily fluids between a London street vendor, who dusts off her fruit with her own spittle, and her potential upper-class customer, a fine lady of St. James’ parish, the younger Bramble appears to have had no disdain for such an exchange. David Weed also illuminates the metaphorical implications of Matt’s resistance to the exchange of fluids with those of the lower orders. He observes that Matt’s constipation, his “refusal to excrete normally,” is a symptom that he is “obstructing his normal, porous intercourse with England’s body” (“Sentimental Misogyny” 626). 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Drawing on Gail Kern Paster’s The Body Embarrassed, Weed argues that Bramble’s bodily dysfunction is at odds with how the time period understood the proper balance of fluids or humors: “the health of the body depends on a balance in the transfer of liquids between its interior and the world outside it.” Discussing another scene in which Clinker rescues Bramble, this time from the serious possibility of drowning, Weed notes that Clinker is instrumental in restoring Matt’s humoral balance by turning his body from side to side to release swallowed water, and then bleeding him, helping him to “emit the fluid that he has needed to excrete throughout the expedition” (627). Weed attributes Clinker’s healing influence to his maleness, yet his plebeian identity is also a significant element of the agency Clinker exercises in this incident.8 Clinker’s laboring skills are specifically referenced in the details of his intervention: he pulls out a “horse-fleam” and lets him “blood in the farrier stile,” a skill he learned working in the stables. While Matt looks upon his libertine past and Clinker as “the sins of my youth,” the confession of such sins also enables his redemption. Shortly after the revelation of Clinker’s lineage, Bramble tells his friend Dr. Lewis that his “health is so much improved, that [he is] disposed to bid defiance to gout and rheumatism” (310). The novel through its rich series of bodily metaphors posits that patricians, if they are to avoid becoming infirm and obsolete, need to reestablish their convivial relations with the lower orders. Doing so, the novel reassures its eighteenth-century upper-class audience, does not entail a loss of but rather strengthens the gentry’s paternal authority. Though sympathetic to the hierarchical Tory views of authors such as Swift and Pope, Smollett in his last work does not replicate their disdain for patricians’ imbrication in the popular. Stallybrass and White note that authors such as Pope and Swift helped to create a refined public sphere by forcing “together the high and the low as contaminated equivalents, somehow in league with each other and part of a conspiracy of exchange and promiscuity in which the low was ebbing higher to flood the court and the court was sinking into the filthy ways and pastimes of the low” (109). Part of Matt Bramble’s transformation involves his transition from this Popean and Swiftian thinking about the popular, the populace, and his own physical grotesqueness, to acceptance. The period’s otherwise frequently satirized “Squire Boobies” who have not learned to distinguish between high and low culture are actually celebrated in Smollett’s novel. Landed gentlemen such as Jack Wilson offer up their hybridized identities as models to other gentry, including Matt Bramble. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




In Matt’s assessment of his renewed sense of health, he notes, “We should sometimes increase the motion of the machine, to unclog the wheels of life” (311). The reference here to mechanical skill resonates in two important ways with members of the laboring classes. The first, of course, is with Clinker himself, who literally uses mechanical expertise repeatedly to save the Bramble family from being stranded on the roadside in their broken carriages. The second way this phrase resonates, however, is in the way that laboring masculinity in general is invoked in order to reassert the virtues of productivity over consumerism in estate management. As becomes clear from the description of Baynard’s estate, the gentry have fallen prey to the tasteless consumerism of the middling sort. In order to rehabilitate their friend’s estate and to revitalize patrician authority, Bramble and his friends Dennison and Wilson seek to restore the estate’s productivity, but do so through a reclamation of physical labor. Indeed, the return to labor is a vital component of what Ruth Perry has called “the idealized small farmer trope.”9 Occurring in several fictional works throughout the last half of the century, the motif serves, in Perry’s words, as “a return to subsistence economy rather than cash exchange—filberts rather than fountains—small-scale farming is envisioned as an alternative to the newer system of surplus, luxury, and profit” (301). In Humphry Clinker’s rendering of this trope, Baynard has completely sacrificed his masculinity to his wife’s capricious consumerism; Bramble declares, “she fastened upon the weak side of his soul, and held it so fast, that he has been in subjection ever since” (267). Under her direction, the estate’s utility has been completely eradicated in favor of trivialized decoration. For example, by pulling up trees and pulling down a garden wall, she lets in harsh winds which destroy plant growth, and she turns a small farm into a walking garden, depriving two mills of their water and killing off the trout that thrived in it (269). Two other members of the landed gentry, Charles Dennison and Jack Wilson, act as foils to Baynard in that they have shored up their masculinity through work and through managing estates that produce goods instead of displaying them. Dennison refutes the old-school belief that farming can be known only to those “bred up to it from the cradle” and that it requires such skill, industry, and economy “as no gentleman could be supposed to give or practice” (295). He asserts that if “a peasant without education, or any great share of natural sagacity, could maintain a large family, and even become opulent upon a farm . . . surely he himself might hope for some success from his industry.” Acquiring the skills a “peasant” would have, Dennison successfully restores the estate that his elder brother 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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ruined through dissipation and neglect. Wilson likewise illustrates the beneficial blending of laboring and gentlemanly pursuits. As Dennison says, “Jack is an universal genius. . . . He is an excellent carpenter, joiner, and turner, and a cunning artist in iron and brass” (299). Wilson notes that for his embracing of these laboring qualities, he is despised by “fashionable company, as a low fellow, both in breeding and circumstances” (300). Judith Frank discusses the striking similarity between the description of Wilson’s eclectic abilities and Clinker’s when Clinker first persuades Bramble to take him into service. Frank concludes from this symmetry that the novel evades class conflict by reinventing the laborer, “this time an independent one: a farmer who both works and hires laborers” (Common Ground 117). The novel does indeed neutralize class conflict, but does so not by reinventing the laborer, but by reinventing the landed gentry. The successful landed gentleman no longer imperiously directs from above, at most dispensing charity as the extent of his involvement with the lower orders. Instead he learns to share the culture of labor with his employees. While Matt takes responsibility for directing Baynard’s estate toward the proper path of improvement, he too possesses some of Baynard’s weaknesses as a landlord. As Prior states, “by virtue of his delicacy, Bramble is lent a curious femininity” (501). Throughout the novel, the management of his estate is delegated to his friend, Doctor Lewis, so that Matt can cure his sickly condition. Brambleton Hall overflows with products of his estate, “my bread is sweet and nourishing, made from my own wheat, ground in my own mill, and baked in my own oven; my table is, in a great measure, furnished from my own ground . . .” (112), yet Bramble nowhere participates in the production of any of these goods. It is for this reason that he confesses that Dennison has succeeded where Matt has failed: he [Dennison] “has really attained to that pitch of rural felicity, at which I have been aspiring these twenty years in vain” (294). As actual rural labor begins to be displaced by the enclosure of common-use lands, fictional representations such as Smollett’s subtly absorb labor into a customary ideal of the patrician landlord. To return to Matt’s determination to “unclog the wheels of life,” we can also posit the association of “unclogging” with one of Win’s favorite malapropisms, her substitution of “grease” for “grace.” Salvation, in this funny but thematically significant mistake, is found in the laboring classes providing the “grease” to help the gentry unclog their wheels. Matt, through the inspiration of Clinker, and hybridized gentry like Dennison and Wilson, therefore, learns to become a more active participant in the functions of his estate. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




At the end of the novel, for example, he resolves to “renounce all sedentary amusements” (322). That so many scholars designate nostalgia and social and economic amnesia as the definitive politics of the novel shows how compellingly Smollett revitalized the appeal to a customary “organic” social order purportedly to resist the influx of new money derived from global conquest and colonial profits. So far we have seen how the novel reclaims old-fashioned “Squire Boobies” by showing that they receive positive benefits from mingling with the collective and embracing their proximity to labor and productivity as a way to fend off the effeminizing influence of luxury and consumption. What has been less explored in criticism of the novel, however, is the subtle way that Smollett, having lured us in with these traditional ideals, also fundamentally reinvents customary social relations, in effect casting modernizing and free-market principles as a necessary part of patricians’ maintaining their reciprocal relations with the lower orders. The novel conveys this transformation as natural and inevitable: Matt’s relations with the plebeian classes must change—indeed because the constitution of the plebeian classes has changed—if the landed gentry is to remain vital to the nation. The representation of plebeian culture at first seems rather traditional in its emphasis on customary rights and privileges. If there are encroachments on these customs, the plebeian classes find subtle ways of resisting them. At the Bramble estate, the housekeeper clearly defies Tabitha’s restrictions on their household rights to food and beer by inventing stories about how these goods managed to disappear; the housekeeper says the gander has broken the eggs, thunder has spoiled two barrels of beer (42). John Thomas also lets the family know to whom their loyalties should lie in the contest between him and Tabitha’s pampered dog, engaging in a Billingsgate match with her that unfortunately still gets him fired—though Bramble resolves to give him a “character for honesty and sobriety” (86). Yet there are also signs that the lines between the moral and freemarket economies are blurring and that the lower orders exploit this line when they see fit. The servants at Bath expertly navigate this murky territory, using the discourse of one economy to promote the activities of the other. Win writes of them, Molly! The sarvants at Bath are devils in garnet. . . . they look for a couple of ginneys a-piece at our going away; and this is a perquisite they expect every month in the season; being as how no family has a right to stay longer than four weeks in the same lodgings; and so



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The servants thus use the argument for their customary perquisites to justify not only their monthly vails or tips, but also to expedite the turnover of guests so that they maximize their profits in a season. In this blurred line between moral and market economies, it becomes difficult to assess what is a traditional right and what is a crime, as Win catches the charwoman stealing household goods (including some of Win’s belongings) and food. But the cook of course won’t hear of prosecuting the woman, and “said it was her rite to rummage the pantry” (67), and Bramble tacitly agrees. The novel’s featured plebeian characters also exploit this ambiguity, at times evincing their loyalty to custom and at others reveling in their newfound opportunities for self-expression and upward mobility. Win, for example, asserts her right to marry whenever she wishes and conveys no shame about her worthiness to marry Clinker: “what subjection can the ‘squire make to our coming together?—Thof my father wan’t a gentleman, my mother was an honest woman—I did’n’t come on the wrong side of the blanket, girl” (309). At other times she uses her rights to her mistress’ cast-off clothing to appear of a higher class than she is, though this is not usually successful, either rhetorically or practically, as when she boasts that she “was taken by lamp-light for an imminent poulterer’s daughter, a great beauty” (103). Once married to Clinker, she likewise pretends that she can no longer be “familiar with the lower sarvents of the family” (323). Her social ambition, as John Zomchick observes, affiliates her with the social insurgency of the mob, but she still remains a fusion of both traditional and insurgent qualities, as her upbringing and sparse education have permanently imprinted her language (“Social Class” 184). Her closing words in the novel, that they have “by God’s blessing, been removed to a higher spear” confirms both her elevation and the indelibility of her class of origin; it is an ambiguity Smollett exploits as a way to contain defiance of the social hierarchy within the patrician order. Such doubleness characterizes Clinker as well, who is at first sight easy to identify as a simple, humble, and deferential rural laborer. He is all gratitude to Bramble on the one hand, offering to work for him “without fee or reward” (78) and promises Tabitha to serve her “on bended knees, by night and by day, by land and by water; and all for 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


the cuck swears, she will pin the dish-clout to mistress’s tail; and the house-maid vows, she’ll put cowitch in master’s bed, if so be he don’t discamp without furder ado—I don’t blame them for making the most of their market, in the way of vails and perquisites. (66)


the love and pleasure of serving such an excellent lady” (79). But Clinker’s devotion to Methodism complicates this picture, showing that he, too, has significant correlations with what Bramble terms the “mob of impudent plebeians.”10 Jery and Bramble first encounter Clinker’s Methodist ministry after they have been at St. James’ Palace, meeting “all the great men in the kingdom,” such as the radical John Wilkes (91). As they are leaving, they see Clinker “exalted upon a stool, with his hat in one hand, and a paper in the other, in the act of holding forth to the people” (94). This representation visually quotes from several popular prints of the 1760’s that depict lower-class tradesmen and artisans engaging in political debates inspired by Wilkes. That Bramble asks Clinker whether he has turned mountebank also raises the question of Clinker’s politics, as politicians were often satirized as selling “quack” potions to a credulous populace (Brewer Common People and Politics, 252). Clinker’s assertion that “at the day of judgment, there will be no distinction of persons” (95) further smacks of the egalitarian rhetoric of popular radicalism. The novel’s equation of the revolutionary political energies of the Methodists with that of the Wilkites comes to a head when Bramble catches Clinker preaching not just to his fellow servants, but also to the female members of his own family. Bramble’s outrage that Clinker believes he has a “right . . . to set up for a reformer” and his demand that Clinker quit his service in order to preach echoes antiradical prints such as “The Blacksmith Lets his Iron Grow Cold Attending to the Taylor’s News” (1772) depicting tradesmen who neglect their work in order to pursue politics (see Figure 4.1). But as T. B. Shepherd observes in Methodism and the Literature of the Eighteenth Century, Smollett’s novel does not merely reproduce the typical satires of the movement—its appeal to the laboring classes and women by focusing on emotional and physical expressions of faith. Indeed, Shepherd makes the surprising statement that Humphry Clinker “is as much an apologia for Methodism as it is a criticism” (224). Clinker of course relents under Bramble’s tirade: “I’m bound to love and obey your honour—It becometh not such a poor ignorant fellow as me, to hold dispute with gentlemen of rank and learning” (131). But rather than abandon his Methodist beliefs, Clinker has simply emphasized another aspect of it. John Wesley was actually quite conservative in his politics. Commenting on the Wilkes disturbances, Wesley was furious that “every Cobler, Tinker, Porter, and Hackney-Coachman took it upon himself to pronounce on politics” and he preached that “subjection to higher powers was the duty of Christians.”11 Again we see that within a religious movement appealing 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Figure 4.1 “The Blacksmith lets his Iron grow cold attending to the Taylor’s News.” 1 July 1772. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University



to the plebeian classes, the seeds of both deference and self-assertion are present. Clinker taps either potentiality at will, deferring to Bramble on the one hand, and returning to preaching again—this time in jail—on the other. Rather than assert patrician ideology to suppress the impudent mob,12 Smollett shows his idealized patrician gradually taking on—and thereby forestalling the threat of—some of its free-market and imperial transactions. At the beginning of the novel, Bramble and Tabitha represent opposite value systems regarding estate management. Bramble consistently defends the paternalistic moral economy, whereas Tabitha abides by the self-seeking, profit motive of the free-market economy. Bramble, for example, is willing to sell corn “off to the poor at a shilling a bushel under market price” (5), whereas Tabitha is distraught when the price of flannel has fallen (41). Bramble is willing to “let Morgan’s widow have the Alderney cow” but Tabitha wants to sell it (6). Bramble also abides by the traditional rights and perquisites accorded to plebeians by patrician landlords, refusing, for example, to punish Higgins for poaching beyond a verbal reprimand (14). Tabitha, on the other hand, vigilantly polices traditional perquisites that household servants were accustomed to, like access to beer and extra food (41). Bramble gives a lamb’s skin to one of the hinds who works on the farm, but Tabitha makes such a fuss about it belonging to her, that Bramble returns the skin to her and pays the hind for it. When the servants at Bath demand their vails at the termination of the Brambles’ stay, Tabitha wants to leave without paying them, and so Bramble does so quietly without Tabitha’s knowledge. Of course, Matt eventually acknowledges to Jery that despite his differences with Tabitha, “this precious aunt . . . is become insensibly a part of my constitution” (58). Such openness to Tabitha’s way of operating intensifies after Clinker’s mock-rescue of him in Scarborough and his disparaging acknowledgment of his own “monstrous” nature, as well as the tour through Scotland, where Bramble becomes increasingly interested in the for-profit aspects of dealing with the plebeian classes. Bramble praises the citizens of Edinburgh, for example, for their use of poor houses, “in which all the poor, not otherwise provided for, are employed, according to their different abilities, with such judgment and effect, that they nearly maintain themselves by their labour, and there is not a beggar to be seen within the precincts of this metropolis” (216). Such an attitude dramatically contrasts with Bramble’s previous adherence to a moral economy. Plebeians stridently resisted the use of poor houses as an infringement on their basic rights as “free-born Englishmen,” and, as Charles Tilly 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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explains, they believed they had a “right to be relieved in [their] own home,” not in the virtual prison of a workhouse (Popular Contention 183). Bramble also advocates enclosure in the Highlands: “as for the warmth, it would be much more equally obtained by inclosures; one half of the ground which is now covered, would be retrieved, the cultivation would require less labour . . .” (227). By asserting that enclosure results in “less labour,” Bramble basically advocates the unemployment of rural laborers, leading to the mass exodus of rural plebeians to the cities, a movement that he purportedly deplores. Zomchick perceptively argues that Scotland, because it is still on the threshold of modernity, can function for Bramble as a utopian space where he can advocate improvement without having to face the attending challenges to the social order that result from modernization: “because of its transitional status, Scotland does not suffer from the South’s problems [of social disorder]; rather, it serves as a model for an imaginary solution to the social dislocations accompanying development” (179). But there is another ideological motive at work in attributing these developments to Scottish society: Smollett exploits the supposedly greater “organic” society existing in Scotland in order to neutralize and naturalize these free-market modernizations. Without doubt, Bramble’s yoking of paternalism and free-market principles is inherently contradictory (Frank Common Ground, 98). Matt’s newfound fervid devotion to enclosure effectively removes the traditional means by which rural laborers were able to supplement their waged income, and thus enclosure became the catalyst for many agricultural workers to flock to the cities for employment and to abandon their customary relation to the gentry in favor of one based solely on contract and wages. The landed gentry’s interest in enclosure radically breaks with their paternalist role, as it stems from their wish to carve up and rent more sections of their estates, yielding them more of an individual profit and less a communal benefit. And yet “free-market” paternalism is exactly what the novel, through Bramble’s transformation, advocates. Bramble appropriates the freemarket spirit of the “impudent plebeians” he decried in Bath, but uses his patrician authority to direct new wealth to customary ends. To return to Bramble’s complaint about “impudent plebeians” in Bath: he lists several newly moneyed beneficiaries of Britain’s colonial exploits, those clerks and factors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces; planters, negro-drivers, and hucksters, from our American plantations, enriched they know not how; agents,




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Bramble posits that there’s no stopping this trend of plebeian economic and political empowerment, “till the streams that swell this irresistible torrent of folly and extravagance, shall either be exhausted or turned into other channels” (35). In the last part of the novel, Bramble learns to use his patrician influence to, indeed, “turn it into other channels.”13 Perhaps reflecting Smollett’s own coming-to-terms with the wealth he accrued by marriage from plantations in Jamaica,14 Bramble makes his peace with the free-market and colonial wealth being generated as long as it is directed to a traditional hierarchical order. Bramble, for example, encourages highwayman Martin to legitimate his “active and enterprising disposition” by trying his fortune in the East Indies (174–175). He praises Captain Brown, a former weaver who did make his fortune in the East Indies, for returning home to help his family financially and to set up a manufacture, “to give employment and bread to the industrious” (245). Ushering in new economic practices through the rubric of “restoration,” Bramble orders the gardener of Baynard’s estate both to “turn the rivulet into its old channel” and to enclose lands by digging ditches and hedges; suddenly the patrician landlord has transmuted the free-market energies of “the mob” into agrarian profits through enclosure. Some critics have described Bramble’s own estate as “noncapitalist,” to use Frank’s term, yet the mortgaging of Lydia and Tabitha’s marriage dowries in order to reduce the interest of Baynard’s debts shows a new zeal for embracing modes of capitalist increase. Whereas in Bath Bramble decried the “usurers,” by the end of the novel, he has arranged for Lydia and Tabitha to receive four percent interest for loaning their dowries to help Baynard reduce his debts, all in service, of course, to maintaining a traditional landed estate. Perhaps one of the most revealing, final examples of how Bramble modifies his patrician identity to parallel the novel’s representation of plebeians’ amalgamation of tradition and innovation lies in the employment of Clinker and Barns as comanagers of Brambleton Hall. Barns, we learn, would like to turn out a tenant who cannot make his rent, and give it to a new tenant, who can pay (13). Bramble pairs this more profit-minded manager with Clinker: “[Clinker’s] incorruptible honesty and indefatigable care will be serviceable in superintending the oeconomy of my farm; tho’ I don’t mean that he shall interfere 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


commissaries, and contractors, who have fattened, in two successive wars, on the blood of the nation; usurers, brokers, and jobbers of every kind; men of low birth, and no breeding, have found themselves suddenly translated into a state of affluence. (34)

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with Barns, of whom I have no cause to complain” (321). Assigning both moral and market principles to the plebeian orders allows Smollett to organically assimilate both qualities into his ideal patrician under the customary rubric of “shared culture.” Such a move also—as Smollett construes it—brings the individualistic energies of a free market within the confines of patrician purview. Far from disappearing into an idealized Tory fantasy, the conclusion of Smollett’s novel actually reflects the complex historical reality of Wales as well as rural Britain in general in the late eighteenth century, as patricians learned to move strategically between customary and market discourses and practices. The typical understanding of Georgian Wales is that of “a largely unchanging hierarchical society, dominated by landowners in which every man knew his place” (Thomas “Remaking of Wales,” 1). Yet Wales did undergo change in the last half of the century. Gwyn Williams, for example, remarks that by 1750, there had been an influx of new landlords from England who were both modernizers and Whigs; “they tended to forget their predecessors’ paternalist concern for their Welsh tenants and their Welsh culture” (“Beginnings of Radicalism” 120). Through Matt Bramble, Smollett portrays a landlord able to stave off this dominance by integrating both agrarian capitalism and customary use. In balancing such worldviews, Bramble is hardly a fictionalized exception. Ian Christie aptly characterizes late-eighteenth century British society as “disordered cohesion,” in which the moral and capitalist economies coexisted in a sort of strategic, checks-and-balances system (Stress and Stability 54). Food riots, for example, were undoubtedly caused by a breach in paternalist and protectionist attitudes toward the laboring poor, as farmers or middlemen dealers sought to increase their own profits by raising grain prices. The laboring classes rebelled by destroying grain mills and stores of wheat, and the till-then complacent town officials and local landlords typically took the laborers’ side, reinforcing the moral economy by pressuring farmers to lower prices, either by giving them rebates on their rent, or by threatening the non-renewal of a lease (Christie 153). As E. P. Thompson puts it, “the paternalist model had an ideal existence, and also a fragmentary real existence. In years of good harvest and moderate prices, the authorities lapsed into forgetfulness. But if prices rose and the poor became turbulent, it was revived, at least for symbolic effect” (Customs in Common 200). Thus the paternalistic moral economy was still vital enough that it could be tapped when needed by the laboring classes as well as the landed gentry to evade outright class revolution. Smollett’s novel evinces and deploys this duality of moral and market economies, but 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen



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Popularizing British Heterogeneity While observing the mélange of tourists at Bath, Jery and Matt weigh the consequences of social mixing brought on by the influx of wealth from global trade. The optimistic Jery tries to provide a constructive outlook on plebeian presence in formerly exclusive venues, arguing that since they “discovered such eagerness to imitate the dress and equipage of their superiors, [plebeians] would likewise, in time, adopt their maxims and their manners, be polished by their conversation, and refined by their example” (48). Bramble vehemently disagreeing, the two of them turn to the actor Mr. Quin to decide whether “such an unreserved mixture would improve the whole mass” and Quin satirically retorts, “yes . . . as a plate of marmalade would improve a pan of sirreverence.” This exchange typifies the anxiety that pervades the novel over the inevitable social and cultural mixing occurring in Britain, particularly after the Seven Years’ War. Would such blending result in greater cultural refinement or greater degradation? How, in the midst of such an incoherent brew, was Britain’s national identity to be maintained? This question held particular urgency for Smollett, who during the 1760’s witnessed and bore the brunt of popular radicals’ charges that Scottish culture was invading and polluting the otherwise healthy and robust culture of England. Humphry Clinker issues an overt challenge to Wilkites’ Anglocentric graphic prints of the 1760’s, resisting their reactionary recourse to cultural homogeneity. Smollett’s novel counters the popular radicals’ appropriation of English plebeian and popular culture, allowing the culturally eclectic Clinker to take center stage rather than the xenophobic butcher or sailor typically featured in radical prints. Smollett also exploits a trope from another arena of popular culture: the grotesque Harlequin from pantomime, at its height of popularity in the middle of the century. As I will show, Smollett uses the aesthetic properties of the grotesque to formulate a paradigm for managing cultural difference, in which the comic union of disparate, disproportionate parts becomes a way to celebrate Britain’s social and cultural difference without threatening its social order. The preceding section analyzed how Smollett appealed to social custom to justify new forms of agrarian capitalism; in the following analysis, we will see how customary popular culture becomes a powerful tool for 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Smollett pushes their strategic relations to each other even further, by translating the practices of commercialized agriculture through the comforting grammar of custom.

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domesticating fears of cultural difference attendant on the expansion of Britain’s empire.15 Several antiadministration prints from the beginning of George III’s reign follow a typical neoclassic use of grotesque portraiture to signal cultural degradation. The artists depict classicized or at least robust English plebeians consistently waging pugilistic war against distorted Scottish figures. “The State Quack” (1762) for example, satirizes Lord Bute, Scottish prime minister of George III, as a quack doctor luring innocent English to imbibe poisonous concoctions (see Figure 4.2). Grotesque sexual imagery depicts George III’s mother,

Figure 4.2 “The State Quack.” September 1762. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University





turned ropedancer, being penetrated by a gigantic boot, implying Bute’s illicit control over the court. In the lower right corner, a corpulent female street vendor compels the pristine English woman to buy wares imported from France. Foregrounded in the center of the print, a sailor, who declares Bute almost poisoned him, is the sole defender of English dignity, as he prepares to beat a scrawny, kilted Scot (fused graphically to a devilish figure on the left) who deceptively insists on the quack doctor’s credibility (Brewer 101). Another print, also from 1762, entitled “A Poor Man Loaded with Mischief. Or John Bull and his Sister Peg” shows that the grotesquely imaged Scots have been successful in bringing the English down to their debased state (see Figure 4.3). Bute’s influence over the court here is figured as a grotesque and exploitative union of Sister Peg and John Bull as she rides him through the town. John Bull is blinded and bears the telltale horns of cuckoldry in this unnatural, “woman-on-top” gender paradigm. The peace negotiations concluding the Treaty of Paris are satirized in the way that Sister Peg deals with the primitivized, apelike Frenchman without Bull’s knowledge. “The Frenchman at Market” (1770) also predictably portrays the Frenchman as effeminate, and the Scot as sneaky and devilish, again graphically fusing him to the hanging animal carcass, with upturned legs and hooves serving as horns, as he steals from the vigorous English butcher (see Figure 4.4). Yet what is unusual and foreshadows Smollett’s positive use of the grotesque is the portrayal of the other three plebeian figures that conduct a charivari shaming ritual against the Frenchman. Similar to the figure of “Sister Peg,” the pipe-smoking, English female street vendor’s face is distorted and masculine, and her physical stance is also bold and aggressive as she laughs at the Frenchman’s humiliation. Also like the earlier John Bull portrait, the man holding the chimney sweep on his head is presented with grotesque features and contorted posture. The man, boy sweep, and dog are all meshed into one figure, reinforcing their collaborative mischief making as the dog pisses on the Frenchman’s stockings and the boy places a mouse in his wig. Yet unlike the “Poor Man Loaded with Mischief,” this print signals a celebrated grotesque that Smollett expands upon in his novel, as grotesque plebeian bodies and folk customs are recruited for patriotic ends. As a journalist, Smollett was undoubtedly familiar with such popular prints. In the novel, he might have countered Scottish prejudice by simply electing to classicize the Celtic characters and distort the English, but instead the grotesque offers Smollett a way 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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of retaining rather than erasing cultural and social distinctions, not just among social classes, but also among the regionally diverse peoples of Britain itself. Eric Rothstein has noted the ways in which

Figure 4.3 “A Poor Man Loaded with Mischief. Or John Bull and His Sister Peg.” September 1762. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University



Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect 2011-03-13

Figure 4.4 “The Frenchman at Market.” 1770. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

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Clinker and Lismahago share the same representational field, both typifying scotophobic stereotypes such as being bare-assed, ragged, impoverished, emaciated, and dirty.16 I would add that both adhere to grotesque portraiture.17 Clinker from his first introduction to the Bramble family exemplifies several attributes of the grotesque body, from his name’s association with excrement to his ragged pants that barely cover his posteriors, he is consistently connected to scatological imagery. Even after he is cleaned up and clothed, he continues to be depicted as awkward, “stooping,” with incongruous features such as “bandy legs,” a “high forehead,” “flat nose,” and “long chin.” Lismahago, similarly, not only plays the lead in a pantomime—Harlequin Skeleton—at the end of the novel, but also his entire characterization throughout the novel echoes that of the grotesque figure of Harlequin from commedia dell’arte.18 The description of Lismahago similarly emphasizes out-of-proportion physical attributes: he would be tall “had he stood upright; but he stooped very much, was very narrow in the shoulders, and very thick in the calves of his legs . . . his face was, at least, half a yard in length, brown and shriveled, with projecting cheek-bones . . . a pointed chin . . . a high, narrow forehead” (175). Like Clinker, Lismahago’s entrance into the Bramble society is accompanied by bodily embarrassment, as bystanders interpret Lismahago’s patched and plastered head as a sign of either of sexual or pugilistic excess. What both these grotesque characters share is a kind of cultural integrity; even as they are assimilated by marriage or birth into the Bramble family, they retain their indelible characters: Clinker by marrying Win retains his plebeian identity, and Lismahago the morning after his wedding night dances a “Highland sarabrand,” showing that he will continue to celebrate his Scottish identity and customs. Both these characters, not surprisingly, help Bramble alleviate his fears about cultural mixing. In an age when increased consumption leads to everyone looking alike and when greater political enfranchisement is secured by Anglocentricism, Bramble expresses disgust that “there is no distinction or subordination left—The different departments of life are jumbled together” into a monstrous sameness (84). Through debating with Lismahago, however, Bramble learns to create sympathies across national borders without the loss of self.19 Bramble also gradually learns to modulate his Anglocentric, Enlightenment perspective in order to embrace regional popular folk beliefs. At dinner in Scotland, a party of noblemen discusses the “vulgar 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




notions of spirits and omens, that prevail among the commonality of North Britain” (250). Their confidence in the absurdity of such notions lessens, however, as they begin to tell their own stories of the supernatural. Bramble remains the voice of reason and skepticism, but is unsuccessful at fully divesting them of the same superstitions that they formerly criticized the laboring classes for possessing. It is the revelation of Clinker’s heritage that forces Bramble to soften his Enlightenment prejudices and revisit his own Welsh folk wisdom. After relaying the “surprising circumstance” of Clinker’s birth to Doctor Lewis, he adds, “you see, Doctor, that notwithstanding all your philosophy, it is not without some reason that we Welchmen ascribe such energy to the force of blood” (294). Bramble juxtaposes the doctor’s “philosophy” with a characteristic Welsh pride in the force of lineage that makes itself known without the conscious direction of reason and intention. In so doing, Smollett takes a typical romance convention usually associated with aristocratic ideology,20 and transforms it into something particular to the common culture of Wales. He further endorses popular culture in this scene by undermining the romance convention’s rendering of the inherent nobility of the discovered child of elite parentage; Clinker continues to style himself, “a poor object conceived in sin, and brought forth in inequity, nursed in a parish work-house, and bred in a smithy” (293). While Bramble of course does not give up his penchant for reason after this recognition, the revelation of his connection to Clinker encourages him to admit the substantial “energy” of irrational folk beliefs. Bramble learns that allowing for a “grotesque” contiguity of Enlightenment skepticism and regional folk beliefs thus does not “pollute” or corrupt the other. The comic grotesque thus continues to play a vital part in the representation of popular culture in the novel, as it comes to function not just on a visual, aesthetic plane, but on a cultural one, signifying possibilities for cultural syncretism or cultural heterogeneity. Through this use of the grotesque, Smollett wrests the popular away from the popular radicals and their Anglocentric bias, returning instead to the ancient popular traditions of the Celts, primarily the Welsh and Scots, and advocating a more comprehensive sense of British identity through a regionally diverse popular culture. Oliver Goldsmith in his “Some Particulars Relative to Charles XII” (1759) observes that “the polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of every other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people” (qtd. in Clark, English 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Society 218). Indeed, in Humphry Clinker, the plebeian classes and their culture anchor the novel’s central preoccupation with managing the cultural differences arising from global trade and conquest. The cultural politics of Humphry Clinker have been explored from several angles, with some scholars focusing on cultural and regional diversity within Britain itself, particularly between the Scottish and English, and other scholars interpreting Lismahago’s captivity narrative as illustrating Britain’s relationship with colonial “others.”21 At question in all of these studies is whether the novel’s and Smollett’s politics are, in the end, hostile or receptive to the processes of transculturation. While the majority of scholars argue that the novel recognizes but ultimately rejects cultural mixing, I believe that by attending to how the plebeian characters respond to cultural difference, we can see that Smollett’s final novel is somewhat open to the inevitable cultural heterogeneity that Britain experiences in the late eighteenth century, positing Britain’s diverse regional popular cultures as the basis for a unified though discordant British identity, but also using it to occlude Britain’s violent displacement and subjugation of colonized peoples around the globe. Winifred Jenkins provides a case study of the potential for cultural syncretism. According to W. Arthur Boggs, who has extensively studied her language, misspellings, and malapropisms, even though Win has never left Wales before the Bramble expedition, her language is an amalgam of Welsh, English, Cockney, and Scots (“Dialectical Ingenuity” 327–337). Her language is thus linguistically grotesque, a comic embodiment of the diversity of the British national community.22 Throughout their travels, Win comically meshes seemingly disparate cultural traditions. In London, she compares the rope dancing at Sadler’s Wells to Welsh superstitions about the existence of witches: “I tho’t it was all inchantment; and, believing myself bewitched, began for to cry—You knows as how the witches in Wales fly upon broom-sticks; but here was flying without any broom-stick, or thing in the varsal world, and firing of pistols in the air, and to be sure, they must deal with the devil”(102). And though Methodist teaching would have the laboring classes give up their folk culture, she easily allows for the coexistence of both forms of spirituality to protect her from “the devil”: “As for me, I put my trust in the Lord; and I have got a slice of witch elm sowed in the gathers of my under petticoat” (282). As Tabitha becomes converted to Methodism, she wants the servants to spend their time singing hymns rather than popular ballads, yet her own servant, Win, continues to quote from ballads and bawdy proverbs despite her conversion. Win even uses a ballad to criticize 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen




Tabitha’s choice of husband: “I vow she would fain have a burd/ That bids such a price for an owl” implies that Tabitha has overpaid for her new husband (282). The novel’s titular character also showcases his immersion in a wide variety of popular cultures, all of which he joyfully embraces. Advertising his abilities to Bramble, Clinker boasts, “I know something of single-stick, and psalmody, . . . I can play upon the Jew’s harp, sing Black-eye’d Susan, Arthur o’ Bradley, and divers other songs; I can dance a Welsh jig, and Nancy Dawson . . . ” (79). Clinker thus also blends his Methodist beliefs (psalmody) with laboring-class diversions (singlestick, a form of fencing), and his knowledge of music extends from knowing how to play a Jewish harp, to English songs written by John Gay, and to Welsh jigs. Clinker’s Methodism, like Win’s, coexists fluidly with his beliefs in folklore. In Scotland, for example, Bramble writes that Clinker’s “natural superstition has been much injured, by the histories of witches, fairies, ghosts, and goblins, which he has heard in this country” (233). Clinker and Win comically model a form of cultural syncretism that Charlotte Sussman, in her study of cultural consumption in the novel, exclusively associates with the Miami tribe described in Lismahago’s captivity narrative. Sussman notes that Lismahago praises the Miamis for resisting assimilation, and that “the ability of the Northeastern tribes to ‘incorporate’ and ‘adopt’ foreigners into their own society without diminishing their own cultural integrity fascinated European observers” (Consuming Anxieties 87). Not only do they adopt foreigners such as Lismahago, but they do so without disempowering or emasculating him (Sussman 90). Such cultural syncretism is ultimately not rejected by the politics of the novel as a whole. Indeed, the novel endorses this syncretic quality by illustrating how Clinker and Win similarly embrace disparate cultural and spiritual traditions without allowing one to overpower the other. That some of the esteemed landed gentry also exhibit the ability to learn and participate in various cultural traditions lends a serious endorsement to Smollett’s otherwise comic rendering of this plebeian capacity. Jack Wilson, the landed gentleman who attracts Bramble’s rare respect, is probably the most vivid example. Wilson not only commands an impressive knowledge of culinary techniques from all over the world but also is fully versed in traditional British popular and laboring culture: [H]e taught me to brew beer, to make cider, perry, mead, usquebaugh, and plague-water; to cook several outlandish delicacies, such as



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These dishes come from Spain, Italy, the West Indies, Asia, East India, and the Middle East, challenging the “culinary patriotism” or xenophobia usually associated with the novel.23 Wilson’s familiarity with games, songs, the leisure-class violin as well as the plebeian hornpipe dance shows his range of familiarity with popular entertainments throughout the social spectrum. By the end of the novel, Wilson even converts Jery, who has been so elitist about the social status of Lydia’s strolling actor-suitor, by persuading him to participate in putting on theatrical productions for the local community: “we have got up several farces, which afforded unspeakable entertainment by the effects they produced among the country people, who are admitted to all our exhibitions” (316). Wilson’s immersion in various cultures, global as well as British, once more evokes Smollett’s use of the “grotesque” as a model of unifying incongruous cultures. In this portrait of Wilson, the novel literally and metaphorically domesticates international cultural difference through cooking, and later as we shall see through marriage, by subsuming nonwestern culture into British customary culture. Anticipating the Celtic revival of the late 1780’s, the novel explicitly celebrates traditional Scottish popular culture’s capacity for cultural syncretism as essential to building national unity.24 During the cawdies’ ball, in which the errand boys of Edinburgh temporarily reverse traditional social hierarchies and invite local noblemen and gentlemen to be feted but also “roasted,” the cawdies make several satirical, bawdy, and subversive toasts; a few of these toasts deal with the unity of Great Britain, such as the ones made to “Great-Britain and Ireland” in the hopes that “a’ unkindness cease betwixt John Bull and his sister Moggy” (211). These rhetorical gestures toward national and regional unity become allegorized in the three marriages that conclude the novel between Welsh, Scottish, and English characters (Newman 135). Popular culture’s syncretism further unites these various couplings as the wedding parties celebrate their unions by adhering “to the custom[s] of the antient Britons” (318). Jack Wilson, the hybridized gentleman who embraces popular culture, plays a central role in directing the customary festivities by plying Lismahago with liquor, breaking cake over Tabitha’s head, and setting loose a cat shod with walnut shells into the bedroom of Clinker and Win. The novel not 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


ollas, pepper-pots, pillaws, corys, chabobs, and stufatas. He understands all matter of games from chess down to chuck-farthing, sings a good song, plays upon the violin, and dances a hornpipe with surprising agility. (299)


only appeals to ancient popular Welsh and Scottish customs in its celebration, but also associates these with contemporary forms of popular culture in England. Regional, rural, and urban popular entertainments are conjoined when Jery is reminded of the vaulters at Sadler’s Wells by seeing Lismahago dance his Highland sarabrand the morning after his wedding. Even the cultural mixing resulting from global trade and conquest is subsumed into this grotesque, syncretic paradigm in that the wedding ceremony is infused with products of the Americas: Tabitha wears a “fur cloak of American sables” and Lismahago has given the rest of the wedding party gifts such as “a fine bear’s skin” and “an Indian purse, made of silk grass, containing twenty crown pieces” (318). Given this fantastical depiction of the Bramble family’s cultural pluralism, I think we cannot help but agree to some extent with Tom Keymer that “Humphry Clinker is nothing if not a euphoric book. . . . the bizarre mismatches in which [the novel] ends suggest not conformity but an exuberant, chaotic and thoroughly carnivalesqe mingling of cultures, languages and bloods” (“Smollett’s Scotlands” 131). Throughout Humphry Clinker, Smollett struggles to imagine a cultural and political model that allows for both cultural difference and social hierarchy. We see a glimpse of this imagined community in his self-portrait in the novel, in which he portrays his culturally diverse but orderly Grub Street milieu: Not only their [the writers’] talents, but also their nations and dialects were so various, that our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. We had the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged off by the most discordant vociferation . . . some droll repartee passed, and much laughter was excited; and if any individual lost his temper so far as to transgress the bounds of decorum, he was effectually checked by the master of the feast, who exerted a sort of paternal authority over this irritable tribe. (119–120)

The self-portrait recalls the portrayal of Matt Bramble, who at the end of the novel presides with a “paternal authority” over an “irritable tribe” in which various cultures are articulated but also unified through the emblem of marriage. Smollett’s vision here of managed discord can perhaps be described as a kind of pluralistic Tory worldview that resists the homogenizing, though more democratic, Whig philosophies that were gaining political momentum in the second half of the century. The novel powerfully predicates the restoration of Bramble (and by extension the landed gentry) as well as the health of the nation on a 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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resurgence of plebeian and popular cultures from diverse regions of Great Britain. When the reviews of Tobias Smollett’s final novel appeared in 1771, critics were unanimously puzzled by Smollett’s choice of title; the reviewer of the London Magazine wrote, “[T]he title is certainly an improper one, because Humphry Clinker is one of the least considerable in the whole catalogue of persons.”25 While Clinker himself may play a marginal (albeit richly symbolic) role, the plebeian class and popular culture he represents pervade the novel. Smollett endows plebeian culture with a redeeming, grotesque duality that incorporates both traditional and modern values. In so doing, he justifies under the guise of maintaining an “organic” relationship the landed gentry’s turn to free-market practices. As Bramble says, “we should . . . now and then take a plunge amidst the waves of excess” (311). Although framed as a vehicle of resistance, customary culture actually provides an anchor in the storm of modernity, enabling but containing its chaotic energies. In the face of popular radicals’ fomenting a nascent democratic but homogeneous culture, Smollett allows for social elevation but reaffirms a paternalist, hierarchical society in which everyone still maintains their separate identities, including Clinker and Win who remain culturally plebeian. That the novel ends with Win’s letter and her grotesque amalgamation of British dialects and slang also suggests the way that plebeian and popular cultures stabilize the inevitable cultural mixing brought on by Britain’s expanding empire. In one of Win’s revealing malapropisms, she describes the Americas as the land of “selvidges”; the linguistic conjoining of “self” and “savage,” self and colonial other, speaks to the way that the novel offers up the comic grotesque as a way to domesticate foreign influences; these, too, the novel suggests, can become safely incorporated into the traditional but culturally syncretic popular culture of the British Isles.







4

C A L E B W I L L I A M S (1794 ): R adical Incursi ons into Cu stomary Politics and Genre

I and my [novelist] predecessors [were] traveling in some sense to the same goal, at the same time that I struck out a path of my own, without ultimately heeding the direction they pursued . . . —Godwin on composing Caleb Williams1 Above all, let me entreat you to abstain from harsh epithets and bitter invective. Show that you are not terrible but kind, and anxious for the good of all. Truth will lose nothing by this. —Godwin advising Joseph Gerrald on his court defense, (358)

C

aleb Williams evidences Godwin’s struggle to comprehend how people advocating for basic civil rights of assembly and representation could be convicted as traitors to the nation. The political and historical context of this novel renders its arrival staggeringly opportune, since it was composed as members of the London Corresponding Society (L. C. S.) were forging groundbreaking alliances between radicals of Scotland, England, and Ireland, as L. C. S. delegates to Edinburgh were arrested and convicted for sedition, completed while Godwin visited Joseph Gerrald awaiting transportation in Newgate, and published on the day of the arrest of twelve more radicals. In January of 1794, as Gerrald prepared his defense, Godwin wrote with fervid optimism that Gerrald’s trial would “be a day such as England, and I believe the world, never saw. It may be the means of converting 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


Chapter 5


thousands, and, progressively, millions, to the cause of reason and public justice” (356). He saw Gerrald as standing “on as clear ground as man can stand on” and that if he could only convince the jury of one central point—the right to peaceful assembly—Gerald would “obtain a verdict” (357). Godwin wrote these encouraging words not simply to boost his friend’s confidence as he stepped into a lifethreatening trial and sentence. In the rhetorical strategies of his legal defense, we see how Gerrald too shares his fellow radicals’ faith that jurors will be swayed by arguments from reason, history, and philosophy (The Defence of Joseph Gerrald). The preface to Caleb Williams, withdrawn from publication for its inflammatory potential, barely disguises Godwin’s anger and despair at the British government’s failure to heed these principles, as Godwin states his novel’s aim to conduct “a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man.” Yet Godwin surprises us by turning for explanations of “despotism” not solely to the legal system or to Britain’s political history, but to what Caleb calls the “rank and rotten soil,” the “poison of chivalry”; this cultural reference approximates what Raymond Williams defines as a “structure of feeling,” a structure of beliefs and collective emotions that undergird and maintain the power structure of society (Long Revolution 64). Marilyn Butler and others have helped illuminate how this aspect of the novel critiques Edmund Burke’s appeal to lost chivalric values in Reflections on the Revolution in France, but I want to extend this line of thought to show that through an exploration of the chivalric romance and its values, Godwin also undertakes an analysis of customary culture embedded in patrician-plebeian relations, a culture traditionally seen as antithetical to the rationalist values of his contemporary Jacobin circle.2 Scholars who have considered Caleb Williams in the context of radical debates about whether to include plebeians in the political public sphere have ironically painted a picture of Godwin’s views that is remarkably similar to that of anti-Jacobin satire. Hannah More’s cheap tract “Mr. Fantom, the New Fashioned Philosopher, and His Man William” mocks Godwin as a kind of armchair radical, buried in his writings and callous to the tragic consequences his beliefs have for his servant and pupil, William. Drawing examples primarily from Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), scholars such as Ian Haywood and Carl Fisher have shown that, for Godwin, customary and popular culture jeopardize plebeians’ ability to exercise the individual responsibility and reasoned judgment necessary to participate in politics.3 Haywood asserts that Godwin believed “the task 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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of enlightenment is best left to ‘a few favoured minds’ of ‘enquiring men,’” that “plebeian politics is volatile and unstable;” he further cites Godwin’s remark that “‘the conviviality of a feast may lead to the depredations of a riot’” (41). I would like to posit, however, that in Caleb Williams Godwin forges a path quite different from his anticustomary cultural views set forth in Political Justice (EPJ). To a great extent, I concur with those who observe that Godwin’s fictional work often “runs fundamentally contrary to the explicit political assumptions and expectations of Political Justice.”4 But one current of political thought he maintains throughout his theoretical and literary writings is his commitment to gradualism (Marshall William Godwin, 140). Scholars to date have overlooked the extent to which Godwin, witnessing the power of customary values firsthand and their grave consequences for his radical peers in court, searched for the emancipationist potential of custom as part of his gradualist vision. In coming to terms with this formidable yet invisible “structure of feeling” that obstructs a radical reformation of society, it is particularly fitting that Godwin turned to former eighteenth-century novelists who so successfully reproduced the uses and abuses of customary culture. As the previous chapter asserts, increasingly over the last half of the eighteenth century, the economic and political realities of Britain were indeed beginning to turn the plebeian-patrician order into a strategic fiction both inside and outside of novels. In his 1832 preface to the Standard Novels edition of Fleetwood, Godwin describes how he gathered “any productions of former authors that seemed to bear on my subject” (351). Godwin was not only “familiar with the novels of Richardson and Fielding, he also consulted quite different texts such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751), and Humphry Clinker (1771) while composing Caleb Williams.”5 Thus this novel provides an apt selection with which to conclude, for in Caleb Williams Godwin revisits the master-servant relations of Pamela, the criminal biography of Moll Flanders, and the resistant and complicit energies of popular culture portrayed variously by the female soldier narratives as well as by Humphry Clinker. Godwin revisits not to work against or fatalistically succumb to—as many critics have argued—but to learn to work through patrician-plebeian values and the genres that convey them. Like Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Caleb Williams is both metafictional and metacritical, self-consciously taking up and manipulating the romance genre that is patrician order’s master-narrative, the rogue narrative 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


CALEB WILLIAMS


that is its subversive doppelganger, and pointing to a new kind of working-class story that is neither. As this chapter will illustrate, Godwin predicates Caleb’s political coming-of-age on two related processes. Constructed by Falkland as an “exceptional” peasant worthy of social elevation, Caleb first learns to disengage from seductive beliefs of inherent upper-class nobility by realigning with plebeian society and customary culture. Throughout the novel, Godwin depicts the plebeian public sphere as a site of critical debate through which customary values can be mobilized to defend the rights of laboring and underclass people. A second, intertwined development foregrounds the analogical relationships between social and literary authority, between social and literary convention. That is, Caleb’s enfranchisement depends upon his becoming a critical rather than an absorptive reader of both genre and social authority. In doing so, he—and the reader—is able to resist literary and cultural authority from within generic paradigms; thus, as the revised ending of the novel highlights, Caleb becomes a savvy and strategic manipulator of the deferential social fiction of patrician-plebeian relations as well as of the romance and rogue genres.

Pamela Redux In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke defends the patrician order by charging the revolutionaries with stripping away the affective relations of society, leaving the king a mere man and the queen a mere woman. “The age of chivalry is gone,” he proclaimed, “never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom” (170). Political readings of the novel have shown that Godwin’s novel of “things as they are” challenges Burke by showing the various ways that the age of chivalry is still very much alive and well. But as a student of Richardson, Godwin explores multiple versions of chivalry and romance. He astutely reveals that romance can celebrate both the social upstart Guy of Warwick and the aristocracy, as in many Arthurian romances. Readers, too, are able to take multiple positions, resisting or internalizing the ideologies of what they read or experience in the world. In challenging Burke, Godwin finds inspiration in Pamela, but he strikes out “a path of his own” by reversing the stages of Pamela’s transformation from radicalized plebeian to assimilated, landed gentry. Like Pamela, Caleb begins as an “exceptional” laboring-class character. He describes himself as a boy of the peasant class, but 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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one who stood apart from his peers culturally and socially. Unlike Pamela, who at first maintains her loyalty to others of her class and derives strength from her plebeian identity, Caleb notes that he “had a considerable aversion to the boisterous gaiety of the village gallants” and that “village anecdotes and scandal had no charms for me” (6). Those same anecdotes of village scandal that help Pamela anticipate and resist Mr. B’s seductive traps Caleb eschews in favor of “books of narrative and romance.” As a reader, he engages in what William Warner terms “absorptive” reading (Licensing Entertainment chps. 3 and 5): “I panted for the unraveling of an adventure with an anxiety, perhaps almost equal to that of the man whose future happiness or misery depended on its issue” (6). Godwin will later explicitly criticize this sort of readerly experience when he frets that his own novel has become “a story to be hastily gobbled up by [readers], swallowed in a pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without chewing and digestion” (353). In the novel undigested reading is connected with an uncritical attitude toward political and social authority; thus it comes as no surprise that Caleb would be selected for Falkland’s service because he evinces the same blind admiration of his superiors that he manifests in his studies. Upon hearing Falkland’s history, Caleb feels the same absorptive identification with his mentor that he did as a reader of romances: “I found a thousand fresh reasons to admire and love Mr. Falkland” (112). The identification is so complete that he drops the role of Collins as embedded narrator and assumes the narration of Falkland’s story himself (11). Caleb in this stage of political awareness mirrors that of Allen Davenport, future republican and Chartist, who says that in 1794, I was a bit of a patriot, and thought, at that time, that every thing that was undertaken by England was right, just, and proper; and that every other nation that opposed her was wrong and deserved chastisement. And that France who had just killed her king, exiled her nobles, and reviled and desecrated the Christian religion, was very wicked indeed; and I shouted “Church and King” as loud and as long as any priest or lord in the kingdom . . . And that was the feeling of nine tenths of the people of England [in] 1794. (Qtd. in Thompson Customs in Common, 91–92).

In the first part of Pamela, Richardson counters such a glowing portrait of patrician values by providing his heroine with multiple interpretive communities, from her parents to her fellow servants to the literature she has read, and these help her to form a critical stance toward Mr. B’s intrigues. As Donald Wehrs and others have perceptively noted, Caleb’s politicization, too, turns on his ability 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


CALEB WILLIAMS


to challenge the “aristocratic hegemony” of romance narratives that he had imbibed as a child and that structures Falkland’s history and relationship with Caleb.6 Following Richardson’s lead, the “village anecdotes and scandal” that Caleb initially derides provide the counterhegemonic narrative and reading experience that spark a cognitive dissonance in Caleb’s mind and awaken his plebeian loyalties, particularly toward the Hawkins’ family. “There was something strange in the character of Hawkins. So firm, so sturdily honest and just, as he appeared at first; all at once to become a murderer!” (112); upon reading his letter to Falkland, Caleb is immediately struck by Hawkins’ “blunt, downright, honest mind” (121). The Hawkins history explores patrician-plebeian relations “from below,” with Godwin exposing the tenuous fault lines of power in rural South England. The landed gentry control the economy through tenant farming and the political arena through pressuring tenants to vote for particular candidates. As a farmer who owns his lease, Hawkins wields a certain amount of independence and therefore has no compunction about asserting his customary rights. Yet as a tenant of Underwood’s estate he also participates in certain deferential customs, such as willingly giving his vote “at my landlord’s bidding” (70). In this case, however, he refuses to vote for Marlow because his huntsman has infringed on his livelihood by riding over Hawkins’ fields and destroying his corn. Hawkins’ only recourse to receiving justice in the matter is to appeal to another landowner, Tyrell, for protection. Tyrell, who initially seems to espouse proper patrician relations with his tenants, supports Hawkins, saying “order and subordination are very good things; but people should know how much to require” (71). Godwin perceptively pinpoints a dynamic aspect of patrician-plebeian relations—the line determining “how much to require” of ruling and laboring classes is in constant negotiation. As the conflict over Hawkins’ son evinces, patricians and plebeians can and did disagree over what constitutes a mutual obligation. Tyrell expects Hawkins’ gratitude for singling out his son for service in his home. Hawkins, on the other hand, registers a long-standing disdain for service within the plebeian community, seeing it as a corrupting force in which the servant takes on the master’s vices and subjugates himself so much that he forgets “what is due to him” (73). His son’s future, for Hawkins, signals the limit of his obligations to his superior. As the resources of the customary world fail him, Hawkins’ discourse begins to sound more and more Painite. Perhaps invoking the contemporary Haitian revolt led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, Hawkins warns Tyrell of the consequences of crossing this line: “the poorest neger, as 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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a man may say, has some point he will not part with. I will lose all that I have, and go to day-labour, and my son too, if needs must; but I will not make a gentleman’s servant of him” (74). Godwin renders the possibilities for plebeian agency and resistance within this power structure, yet, as Godwin’s fellow radicals recognized, the plebeian classes in the 1790’s faced a difficult predicament. As the first volume of the novel records, benevolent paternalism was eroding, with many patricians refusing to abide by a moral economy. Underwood first defies this system by requiring Hawkins to vote for a man who has jeopardized his harvest; Tyrell initiates a series of breaches, from virtual impressment of Hawkins’ son into service, to blocking road access to their property and charging the son with violating the Black Act. Hawkins possesses only so much leverage with which to fight these encroachments, and he begins to run out of powerful gentry to assist him. Foreshadowing Falkland’s betrayal of his own principle of lightening “the yoke of these unfortunate people” (80), Falkland is out of town when Hawkins most needs him. Hawkins in many respects transforms into Godwin’s paragon of enlightened radical plebeian identity. In his letter to Falkland, he stresses intellect as the key to liberation: “if we little folks had but the wit to do for ourselves, the great folks would not be such maggoty changelings as they are. They would begin to look about them” (120). He believes that the legal system should protect everyone, though he does not go so far as to suggest that there be the same laws for everyone: “I hope there is some law for poor folk, as well as for rich” (italics mine, 75). Without doubt these are Jacobin ideals that stress reason and just laws. Significant to my mind, however, is the tragic failure of these ideals to curtail the injustices that Hawkins sustains. Written after the conviction of the “Scottish Martyrs” as well as of his friend Joseph Gerrald, and before the successful defenses of Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke, John Thelwall and others, this section of the novel reveals that Hawkins’ honest, forthright discourse, much like Gerrald’s in his defense, falls on deaf—and corrupt—ears.7

Queering Political Structures of Feeling Caleb’s story mirrors Hawkins’, reflecting the persecution of the lower orders by the elite, yet in Caleb’s history, Godwin explores a very different route to political awareness originating from within the affective bonds of master and servant.8 One of the most astute insights Godwin has into Richardson’s Pamela is the way that erotic desire can be recruited for political ends. As we saw earlier, the Pamela 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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controversy was fueled by anti-Pamelists’ outrage that a female servant would be celebrated for exerting erotic power over her master to elevate her own social standing. In Caleb Williams, Godwin reproduces a similar structure of desire and seduction between master and servant, but refuses Richardson’s naturalization of that desire into patriarchal, heterosexual gender relations. Instead—and I am arguing in opposition to those who see a homophobic portrayal of same-sex desire in the novel9—Godwin taps the dissident spirit of queer desire, as a perverse pleasure spurs Caleb to reveal the terrible exploitative nature that Falkland hides behind aristocratic pretensions to benevolence and honor. “Are my passions to be wound and unwound by an insolent domestic? Do you think I will be an instrument to be played on at your pleasure, till you have extorted all the treasures of my soul,” Falkland exclaims (123). Godwin queers the trope of the seductive servant in order to disturb desire’s normative trajectory and reorient it toward an alternative politics. In a memorable passage, Caleb reflects on the “strange sort of pleasure” he experiences in becoming “a watch upon [his] patron” (112): [T]o do what is forbidden always has its charms, because we have an indistinct apprehension of something arbitrary and tyrannical in the prohibition. To be a spy upon Mr. Falkland! That there was danger in the employment served to give an alluring pungency to the choice. I remembered the stern reprimand I had received, and his terrible looks; and the recollection gave a kind of tingling sensation not altogether unallied to enjoyment. (112–113)

The delight Caleb experiences over the course of the first two volumes alters its source; the pleasure of compliance with the aristocratic order is surpassed by the pleasure of an active questioning of it. The passage validates a queer redirection of desire in that Caleb recognizes the “arbitrary and tyrannical” nature of the taboo against enquiring into the affairs of the leisure class. As Caroline Reitz asserts, in depicting Caleb as a “spy” Godwin appropriates the espionage activities of Pitt’s administration for progressive uses; in his earlier writings on the Hastings trial, Godwin sided with Burke in espousing the necessity of a curious public to check “the rotten character of imperial authority.”10 Perhaps surpassed only by Edgeworth’s Thady in Castle Rackrent, Caleb progressively becomes a formidable mixture of the arts of duplicity and seduction and the noble pursuit of truth and justice, the very qualities of anti-Pamela and Pamela. What I find striking in this novel is that Godwin defies the typical critique of servitude—described 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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in Political Justice and echoed by the Jacobinesque Hawkins—that it coerces the servant into forgetting “what is due” to him. Instead, it is through Caleb’s role as a servant and the seemingly subservient relations between plebeian and patrician that Caleb gains the power to unravel the aristocracy’s secrets and figure out exactly “what is due to him” and others of his class. With his “artless and untaught remarks” (113), “having an air of innocence,” and “an apparent want of design in [his] manner,” Caleb encourages Falkland “to lay aside his usual reserve and relax his stateliness” (114). When Caleb becomes too obvious in his prying, he employs plebeian self-abnegation, comically rendered in Richardson’s novel through Pamela’s frequent blushing and “curcheeing.” After Caleb confesses he has secretly read Hawkins’ letter, he literally simpers, “turn me out of your house. Punish me in some way or other, that I may forgive myself. I am a foolish, wicked and despicable wretch. . . . I love you more than I can express. I worship you as a being of a superior nature. I am foolish, raw, inexperienced—worse than any of these;—but never did a thought of disloyalty to your service enter into my heart” (125–126). Paradoxically, it is Caleb’s “consciousness” of his power in the relationship with his master that attaches him to Falkland “more eagerly than ever”; he “swears a thousand times . . . that [he] would never prove unworthy of so generous a protector” (127). We may say of Caleb what Robert Tracy perceptively writes of Edgeworth’s Thady: that he may be read as the “loyal but simpleminded retainer who is bedazzled by his masters, petty squires though they be,” or as one “who studies his masters from behind a mask of adulation, and cynically plays upon their weaknesses” (“Cracked Lookingglass” 199). The queerness of Caleb’s desire for his master appropriately captures its instability, its ineffability—is it sincere, is it duplicitous? This ambiguity is the legacy of protolaboring class politics as well as plebeian cultural representation in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. Exhibiting an early version of “double consciousness”—to use W. E. B. Dubois’ well-known formulation— Caleb is torn between “the most complete veneration” for his master and his own “watchful, inquisitive, suspicious” propensity (128). Rather than cynically depict Caleb’s attachment to his master as a kind of false consciousness, Godwin shows this intimacy to be conducive to political awareness. Godwin acknowledges the complex, contradictory “structures of feeling” between master and servant.11 The “magnetical sympathy” (117) between Caleb and Falkland, rather than mystifying Falkland’s power, enables Caleb to identify the source of Falkland’s guilt. In a scene reminiscent of Hamlet’s “mousetrap,” Caleb carefully 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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[W]e exchanged a silent look, by which we told volumes to each other. . . . I perfectly understood his feelings, and would willingly have withdrawn myself. But it was impossible; my passions were too deeply engaged; I was rooted to the spot; though my own life, that of my master, or almost of a whole nation had been at stake, I had no power to change my position. (132)

Significantly, Caleb’s “perfect” understanding of Falkland’s feelings fortifies rather than weakens his resolve to know his master’s crime. Reversing loyalist propaganda that depicted Jacobins as common murderers, the scene helps to bring into stark relief the distinction between the peasant hero who publicly and within the condoned context of a boxing match, accidentally delivers a fatal blow, and the aristocrat, who stabs his enemy in the back in a dark street, like a “lurking assassin” (106). Aristocratic honor, then, is rendered a sham that is held in place only by the exploitation of the poor, as the Hawkins’ men are framed for Falkland’s crime. Depicting Caleb’s politicization as developing from within the affective bonds of master and servant is one of Godwin’s most forward-thinking contributions to the history of plebeian cultural representation and reveals how much his anticustomary views had shifted since writing EPJ. The first two volumes of Caleb Williams explore differing expressions of plebeian resistance, from Hawkins’ rational appeals to Caleb’s queer emotional entanglement with his master. The structure of Caleb’s sentence, “I had no power to change my position” is rich with ambivalence, overtly asserting the servant’s assumed lack of power, yet undermining this meaning by the vagueness of “my position,” which refers not just to Caleb’s subordinate status but also to his determined stance to unmask his master. The power of the passage increases as we realize Caleb’s desire to know the truth leads to political knowledge that will indeed jeopardize his own life, his master’s and by implication the nation’s whole social framework. Drawing out the political uses of the erotic,12 Godwin provides a complex, exhilarating account of coming into political awareness, as Caleb can barely suppress his revelations and feels “a kind of rapture for which [he] could not account. [He] was solemn, yet full of rapid emotion, burning with indignation and energy. . . . [He] was never so perfectly alive as at that moment” (135). And yet he discovers something else about himself, that political clarity has not 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


observes Falkland’s reaction during the examination of the peasant who has been accused of murdering a rival for his girlfriend’s affections. Caleb says,

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dissipated his affections and that the two coexist in a strange and contradictory way: “I had no inclination to turn informer. I felt what I had had no previous conception of, that it was possible to love a murderer, and, as I then understood it, the worst of murderers” (136). As Blake explores in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell, such a state of contradiction, rather than nullifying the energies of each position, enhances them, propelling Caleb on to further consciousness. The same emotional intensity and ambivalence attends his opening of Falkland’s trunk, one of a series of metaphorical renderings of Caleb’s breaking through “mind-forg’d manacles”: “I know not what infatuation instantaneously seized me. The idea was too powerful to be resisted. . . . After two or three efforts, in which the energy of uncontrollable passion was added to my bodily strength, the fastenings gave way, the trunk opened and all that I sought was at once within my reach” (138). The self-loathing that erupts soon after this event coupled with Caleb’s designation of the trunk opening as “monstrous” “insanity” and “offence” has led some critics to interpret this scene either as a qualification of Godwin’s support for the revolutionary energies which turned violent during the Reign of Terror or as an indictment of the invasions of privacy perpetrated by the British government at this time (139–140).13 To reach these conclusions, however, is to miss a persistent pattern in Caleb’s psychology as he makes an emotionally wrought transition into political awareness. He possesses the capacity at once to interpret events from dominant and marginal views, to reverence “the sublime mind of Mr. Falkland” and to pursue his own “thirst of knowledge;” indeed, it is the friction created between these mutually exclusive perceptions that propels him to greater awareness. The imagery and context of the trunk-opening scene resonate with implications of interclass plebeian alliances and challenge the view of Godwin as completely dismissive of plebeian collectivity. Although radicalized plebeian cooperation is rarely overtly represented in the novel, it is often rendered there metaphorically, encouraging an imaginative and thoughtful understanding of the connection between various groups rather than the uncritical affiliation Godwin opposes in Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.14 Caleb, a servant, makes use of the “chisels and other carpenter’s tools” lying nearby to pry open the lock. He thus unites the resources of servant and artisan in order to do justice to rural laborers: a persecuted tenant farmer and his son (Caleb later speculates that the trunk contains Falkland’s memoirs that would reveal his framing of the Hawkins men). The fire that simultaneously rages in Falkland’s estate enhances the revolutionary 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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implications of Caleb’s labor. Seeking to explain the emotional chain of events that led him to “leap from the high-raised precipice,” Caleb cites an “unexplained and involuntary sympathy. One sentiment flows by necessity of nature into another sentiment of the same general character. This was the first instance in which I had witnessed a danger by fire. All was confusion around me, and all changed into hurricane within” (139). The language of natural and involuntary sympathy that inspires his personal “hurricane” suggests the inspiring force of collective energies, with one sentiment becoming a catalyst for another. That Caleb in hindsight reads his participation in this moment also as “monstrous” and “desperate” only serves to highlight his “unpracticed apprehension.” Godwin profoundly rather than cynically portrays the complex psychological dimensions of Caleb’s political transformation. Such an exhilarating process is also inevitably intermixed with doubt, guilt, and remorse. Caleb’s renewed clarity amidst such conflicting emotions testifies to the ultimate optimism of Godwin’s vision, extant even, as we will see, in his revised ending to the novel. Despite the differences between customary and radical approaches to resistance, Hawkins and Caleb end with the same convictions. Caleb determines to preserve “the liberty of acting as I pleased . . . whatever might be the risk” and begins to proceed with “premeditation and system” (151). As he—and the Jacobins—realized, this liberty had long been understood as an English prerogative and proved a conducive common ground for radicals and other plebeians from which to build allegiances: “I am an Englishman, and it is the privilege of an Englishman to be sole judge and master of his own actions” (165). Caleb idealistically believes that he can transcend the power relations of society, remove himself “from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer” (162). Similar to the fate of Godwin’s fellow radicals, however, the very system that purports to protect his liberty instead criminalizes his rights to self-determination when Falkland accuses him literally and figuratively of having stolen his property. With this new form of injustice directed at him, Caleb can’t believe “the folly of [his] species that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious” (162). Godwin continues, however, to show that in a contest of radical or customary political action, the customary world will always prevail. As Caleb is accused of theft, Caleb looks in vain to his fellow servants for support, “but not one of them, either by word or gesture, expressed compassion for my calamity” (182). Thomas, a family friend, not only rejects him but also predicts others will “tear [him] to pieces, and [he] will never live to 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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come to the gallows” (183). Ever nuanced, however, the novel reveals that radical ends can be achieved from within the patrician-plebeian order; the same class that rejects outright discourses of revolution often consumed tales of plebeian resistance in the form of criminal biographies.

Politics of Crime and Popular Print Ulrich Wicks in his study of picaresque fictions notes that the picaresque or rogue narrative developed historically in opposition to the romance genre; its protagonist is resolutely unheroic and proves both a victim and exploiter of a chaotic world (Picaresque Narrative 54–55). In composing Caleb Williams, Godwin seems to have grappled with the oppositional yet symbiotic relationship between the two genres. Falkland himself has two generic histories: the official, romance version in which he upholds noble virtues and rescues damsels in distress, and the unofficial rogue version in which he enacts a vigilante revenge and evades persecution through tricking the law and leaving others to take the blame for his actions. In the first part of the novel, under Godwin’s political scrutiny, the rogue narrative becomes romance’s doppelganger, revealing its corrupt essence beneath the guise of nobility. The second part, which reveals the influence of Defoe, reverses this structure, examining the heroic and politically subversive elements of the criminal biography. In Moll Flanders, Moll turns criminal because the precarious economy thwarts her attempts to make an independent living any other way. Similarly, Godwin reworks the criminal biography in order to tout the abilities of the underclass and plebeian orders to survive and resist a corrupt ruling order. Through invoking the histories of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, he hearkens back to the notoriously crooked postbubble years, when thieves like Sheppard were celebrated as being at least honest about their doings, whereas the government and business leaders, in the words of the “Newgate Garland,” “called Briberies Grants and plain robberies Pensions” (qtd. in Linebaugh London Hanged, 40). Mr. Raymond from Caleb Williams echoes this assessment of the ruling order by saying, “we who are thieves without a licence, are at open war with another set of men who are thieves according to law” (224). Godwin further exploits the potential for political critique in the criminal biography by showing that in the 1790’s, the attempt to live independently, free from the structure of patrician and government authority, itself becomes criminalized. Moll’s prayer, “God 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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give me not poverty, lest I steal,” becomes Caleb’s “God! Give me poverty! . . . Suffer me at least to call life and the pursuits of liberty my own” (218–219). Witnessing the government’s prosecution of his fellow radicals and the throng of popular criminal literature that sprang up around the sedition trials, Godwin shows that criminal biography can be appropriated by the radical cause as well in order to defend the life of a political dissident. Godwin’s choice to represent the criminal biography and its popularized variants also leads him to confront a central dilemma at the heart of the radical effort, namely, whether it was possible to harness the subversive potential of popular print culture. In the 1790’s, loyalists and radicals each anxiously imagined the other had more successfully recruited popular print for their own ends. E. P. Thompson records how the Attorney-General at Paine’s trial complained that Rights of Man was “thrust into the hands of subjects of every description, even children’s sweetmeats being wrapped in it” (qtd. in Making of the English Working Class 108). This melodramatic complaint reveals anti-Jacobin fears that radical thinking was “made even more dangerous by its assimilation into plebeian customary culture” (Haywood 22). Andrew McCann, on the other hand, argues that radicals as a whole witnessed “the coercion of public opinion at this time,” and this fostered a “paranoid retreat from the public sphere and a corresponding valorization of private space as the site of uncoerced communality and the ideal speech community” (61). Godwin seems to confirm such a conclusion; after Thomas Paine’s sedition trial, he writes, “As I came out of court, I saw hand-bills, in the most vulgar and illiberal style distributed, entitled, The Confessions of Thomas Paine. I had not walked three streets, before I was encountered by ballad singers, roaring in cadence rude, a miserable set of scurrilous stanzas upon his private life” (“Letter to Mr. Reeves” 116). Thomas Holcroft similarly noted that “ballad singers were drilled, paid, and stationed at the end of streets, to chaunt the downfall of the Jacobins” (qtd. in Haywood 73). Sullivan detects a similar distrust of popular print in Caleb Williams, arguing that the handbill-version of Caleb’s criminal history perpetuates a ruling-class ideology that Caleb at the end of his tale is finally unable to escape (335). McCann also emphasizes that in the novel, criminal biographies don’t just function as a “check on state authority . . . but also as its agent” (75). But as we saw with Godwin’s treatment of romance, his understanding of genre and readers is not so unidirectional. Although he may acknowledge and decry the government’s cooptation of popular print, he nonetheless realizes that 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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[N]ot only did he become that “example” of the majesty of his country’s laws which hangings were designed to produce, but also his prior escapes were a legend that survived him in pantomime, on vase paintings, at Bartholomew Fair, in ballad, story and play. Such forms of expression were popular and proletarian, and it was from them therefore that people to some extent formed their understanding of freedom. (3)

In the second and third parts of Caleb Williams, I posit that Godwin mines both disciplinary and libratory possibilities inherent in criminal biography. Jonathan Wild’s complicity with the authorities is echoed in Gines’ thief-taking endeavors as well as his authorship of the handbill that leads to Caleb’s capture. Caleb’s “criminal” narrative, on the other hand, resonates with details of Jack Sheppard’s rebellious criminal history, particularly his antiauthoritarian stance and the subversive use of his carpentry apprenticeship for house- and prison-breaking. As the incarcerated Caleb begins to expand his critique not just of his master, but “to the whole machine of society” (190) and to draw on the powers of his imagination to retain his humanity, he remembers that as a child he “had read of housebreakers to whom locks and bolts were a jest” (195). Readers of Sheppard’s exploits will find obvious parallels in Caleb’s multiple attempts to escape. Caleb also relies on carpentry skills and an “Edgeworth Bess” (Miss Peggy) to secretly pass him tools for breaking out of prison. When these modes fail, he, like Sheppard, resorts to the implements of his own imprisonment—a nail, an iron bar, a “broken link of my fetters” (212)—which he transforms into tools to pry open locks and chisel through brick walls. In these instances, we see the ways Godwin draws on the symbolic power of Sheppard’s escapes, but also by highlighting the particular details of his feats, he emphasizes a specific kind of resistance from within an oppressors’ structure. Sheppard and Caleb use their artisan skills as well as—to borrow from Audre Lorde—the “master’s tools” to dismantle the “master’s house” (“Master’s Tools” 50). Model and “ingratiating” convicts during the day, they work quietly and surreptitiously at night. They do not bust open locks or through doors, they disassemble lock boxes and remove door hinges; they do not scale walls, they create their own passageways through them, brick by brick. This motif of the criminal narrative functions as a metaphor for 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


stories lend themselves both to hegemonic and subversive readings. In The London Hanged, Peter Linebaugh compellingly describes the rich repository of resistance to be found particularly in the criminal history of Jack Sheppard:


the ways that Caleb survives the oppressive patrician order; he learns to grasp the agency available to him within a circumscribed role rather than overtly overthrowing the power structure. E. P. Thompson provides a useful corrective to those who overlook this strategy as form of plebeian resistance. He notes that under “the security of anonymity,” laborers were quite capable of an unsentimental view of their masters: “the same man who touches his forelock to the squire by day—and who goes down to history as an example of deference—may kill his sheep, snare his pheasants or poison his dogs at night” (Customs in Common 66). Through taking on various disguises, Caleb seeks to use anonymity for purposes of resistance. Adopting the identities of Irish beggar, Jew, and physically disabled person, he imaginatively builds alliances between these oppressed groups, showing that one is no more “safe” from persecution than another and reflecting cosmopolitan interests radicals had in extending political reforms beyond English soil. At the same time, this interchanging of plebeian and marginalized identities dramatizes their shared rhetorical and physical resources for eluding an oppressive power structure. Caleb from his youth “possessed a considerable facility in the art of imitation” (246). He knows how to adopt “peculiar slouching and clownish gait” as well as “an Irish brogue” (247). Without doubt, the novel does raise questions about the long-term effectiveness of plebeian customary resistance. Caleb calls these strategies “miserable expedients” that keep men from attaining complete “manhood,” and yet he acknowledges them as “necessary to employ for the purpose of eluding the inexorable animosity and unfeeling tyranny of his fellow man!” (247). There’s a concession here to customary culture that scholars often ignore. In writing a novel that depicts “things as they are,” Godwin to a large extent pays tribute to prevailing and pragmatic forms of laboring-class resistance. Caleb out of necessity deploys his Irish or English accent to elude captivity, but—true to his radical beliefs—Godwin also shows that whether Caleb is Irish, Jewish or an English beggar, he will be treated as if he is guilty of something until society transforms into what it should be.

Plebeian Publics as Political Commons What is particularly illuminating about Godwin’s first foray into fiction is that the novel insightfully represents an interstitial moment in which customary and radical values collide but also, more importantly, collude. Thus when we read Godwin’s strident and elitist opinions in Enquiry Concerning Political Justice that, as Haywood summarizes, show 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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“Godwin preferred to subscribe to a more classical, polite notion of a public sphere composed of autonomous, genteel intellectuals” (33), we also need to allow for intellectual growth and change amid the repressive context of the 1790’s. Although customary values were usually considered in radical circles as detriments to enlightened political participation, Godwin’s novel provides several instances where they actually contribute to radicalized plebeian consciousness.15 As the novel shows, plebeian collectivity and resistance is far from a consistent entity, yet it is, as E. P. Thompson so well describes it, spontaneous and specific to particular kinds of issues (Customs in Common 64–83). Thomas, for example, is implacable when it comes to questioning his “benevolent” master’s innocence, yet he can be persuaded to defend his basic “English” rights. Witnessing Caleb’s maltreatment in prison, Thomas exclaims, “Zounds, how I have been deceived! They told me what a fine thing it was to be an Englishman, and about liberty and property, and all that there; and I find it is all a flam. Lord, what fools we be! Things are done under our very noses, and we know nothing of the matter; and a parcel of fellows with grave faces swear to us that such things never happen but in France” (210). Radicals in Godwin’s community increasingly came to understand that an appeal to traditional English liberties could be a fruitful discursive “commons” where customary and radical values could cohabitate. In a move that is rare for Jacobin novels, Godwin provides two extended scenes depicting a plebeian public sphere and the role of popular print within it; both scenes render customary culture as dynamic, varied, and critical of ruling-class ideology. The first scene takes place in the thieves’ hideout. Having discovered the handbill narrating Caleb’s crimes and advertising a reward for him, Larkins urges his comrades to cash in. The scene thus illustrates that popular print culture can be hijacked for state or ruling-class ideology—as indeed it was during this time—yet Godwin’s portrayal of plebeian response to the handbill complicates its effectiveness. A debate ensues not only about the handbill’s values but also about its credibility. Sullivan, upholding his view of Godwin as elitist, interprets the thieves’ debate as one-sided, “for it is Raymond’s superior rhetoric more than his truth-claims that finally changes their minds”; he concludes that the thieves are clearly “not equipped to partake in the kind of positive rational discussion [Godwin] describes in Political Justice” (333–334). Here Sullivan misses two larger, more significant points: in the scene Godwin portrays a plebeian community engaging in critical discussion; further, and this is one of my major points, such a reading also overlooks 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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the basis of Raymond’s rhetoric: that it depends on specific appeals to customary culture. For example, he reminds them of the value of hospitality over selling “the life of his neighbor for money” (231); he advocates “reading from below,” enabling them to see Caleb simply as a servant who wished to leave his present employment and choose another; he emphasizes Falkland’s betrayal of patrician responsibility, “driving his late dependent from house and home, depriving him of a character and all the ordinary means of subsistence” (233). In short, Raymond revitalizes his fellow thieves’ plebeian loyalty. Having heard him out, Larkins proclaims, “Betray him! No not for the worlds!” (233). This representation does not reflect a Godwin for whom customary sensibilities are simply disdained as “feudal remnants.”16 Quite to the contrary, in this scene, customary culture provides the critical lens with which to expose Falkland’s machinations and defend Caleb as one of the community’s own. The second scene depicting the plebeian public sphere occurs when the disguised Caleb overhears an alehouse discussion of the handbill and how the “notorious housebreaker, Kit Williams” “makes talk for the whole country” (244). Again Godwin registers possible competing interpretations within the plebeian public sphere, with some expressing blind loyalty to Falkland, and others noting how squires “twist the law to their own ends.” Still others depict Caleb as the novel itself does when he escapes from prison; the waitress elevates him to a folk-hero, an outlaw whose good looks and cleverness inspire admiration and who functions as a symbol of antiauthoritarianism. It’s true that Caleb surveys the debate with a condescending attitude, mockingly calling the laborers “gentry,” “historians and commentators,” yet he places importance on the fact that “though the story was very circumstantially told, and with a sufficient detail of particulars, it did not pass unquestioned” (245).17 His own ability to question the tales, to determine the “variety of the falsehoods,” provides him amusement and even exultation at the discovery of his “self-possession” amidst the competing narratives. The “considerable pleasure” he experiences from the waitress’ rendition of him is on the one hand self-aggrandizing, but on the other, Godwin is attesting to the multiple readerly pleasures that such popular tales evoke as well as sustaining the novel’s consistent association between pleasure, erotics, and political awakening. At a time when Jacobins, especially Godwin, are accused of destroying life’s simple delights, this momentary shared enjoyment of the emancipatory possibilities in popular culture reveals his commitment to reassessing the radicals’ disdain for plebeian politics and culture.18 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Godwin paradoxically depicts the scene of print production and consumption in urban London as much more mercenary and less conducive to open interpretation than in the small towns of southern England. London print culture is politically amoral, governed only by what will sell, as Caleb learns in his endeavors to publish his writing. The print market indiscriminately accommodates authors such as Caleb whose writings resist dominant culture and Gines whose writings are complicit with it. Caleb, who refuses to continue writing essays in the “style of Addison’s Spectators” because he distrusts his “resources in the way of moral disquisition,” is drawn inexplicably—but tellingly nonetheless—to writing about the lives of criminals. Godwin continues to acknowledge the dissident possibilities of popular print by once again offering subtle parallels between Sheppard’s robberies and Caleb’s writing. Like Sheppard, Caleb is a master of subterfuge, using a female go-between to “fence” his “illicit goods.” Gines, like Jonathan Wild, vacillates between “the two professions of a violator of the laws and a retainer to their administration” (269). He exploits his plebeian “insider” status to track down Caleb and author the “half-penny legend” that exponentially multiplies London’s policing agents. Even though the handbill reflects both official and seditious interpretations of its criminal—Caleb is both the “wretch” who brings “false accusations against his master” and equal “to the most notorious housebreaker in the art of penetrating through walls and doors” (279)—the iron vice of greed prevalent in the city impedes readers’ critical thinking. As Caleb bitterly notes, “The prize of one hundred guineas was held out to excite their avarice and sharpen their penetration” (279). Caleb now disdains even the libratory possibilities of popular print and grows frustrated with readers who are locked into their habitual reading responses: “I had gained fame indeed, the miserable fame to have my story bawled forth by hawkers and ballad-mongers, to have my praises as an active and enterprising villain celebrated among footmen and chambermaids” (284). Godwin parallels Caleb’s struggle with customary plebeian resistance and his frustration with the available genres with which to both author and shape his life. He wishes to evade the poles of romance or rogue hero: “I was neither an Erostratus nor an Alexander” (284). While working within these traditional modes helps him to survive, he realizes that “the result of all, [is] to be brought back to the point from which I began!” (284). As Caleb struggles to balance the arts of survival and the arts of social reform, the rest of the novel foregrounds the art of narration and discursive power. We see Godwin searching for a way to chart another kind of story, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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another form of resistance; it is a possibility glimmering within the text, but ultimately never fully realized.

In London, Caleb’s aborted attempt to bring Falkland to trial highlights the discursive power of the legal system rather than its use of physical punishment. Godwin imbues Caleb’s accusation with authorial metaphors: he seeks to “publish” Falkland’s secrets; he was “extremely averse to be the author of the unhappiness or the death of a human being” (285); he is denied a hearing for his story because “the author of it is a servant” (287). As in the courtroom scene of Godwin’s first ending to the novel, Caleb enters the discursive arena as a citizen equal before the law, convinced that he has “the power” (287) to bring the real criminal to justice. He decides to “thro[w] off every vestige of disguise” and appear in his “own person.” His statement is straightforward with no rhetorical flourishes. This strategy mirrors that of Caleb in the original ending of the novel, as he finds himself “perfectly self-possessed” and feels “all the satisfaction of undoubting certainty” (340), and “as well entitled to be heard as another man” (340). These rhetorical strategies fail not just because Caleb is a servant and is automatically treated as discreditable, but also because he refuses to work within the established frames of narrative and social convention, eschewing the language of patrician nobility or of plebeian deference and self-abnegation. The breakdown of this radical approach reflects Godwin’s idealism and pragmatism present also in Godwin’s counsel to his fellow radicals during their sedition trials. Godwin’s letter to Gerrald, in particular, effusively espouses the potential of Gerald’s “tale” to convert “thousands, and progressively, millions, to the cause of reason and public justice” (356). To be sure, the letter puts forth much of the radical emphasis on reason and the soundness of the English constitution. And yet Godwin also tells him not to “spend [his] strength in vain defiance and empty vaunting” (356), but instead to “probe all the recess of their souls,” to appeal to “all the genuine feelings of the human heart,” and to show that he “is not terrible but kind” (356 and 358). The attentiveness to the structures of feeling at work in the jury also takes on explicitly chivalric characteristics, as Godwin urges Gerrald to paint the radicals as rescuers of the nation which they adore: they “are the true friends of the nation . . . [They] place [them]selves in the breach to snatch your wives and children from destruction” (357). “Truth,” Godwin insists, “will lose nothing by this” (358). 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Gerrald’s defense, printed by the London Corresponding Society, reflects much of the idealistic strain of Godwin’s letter, but little of the pragmatic, audience-based advice Godwin dispenses. Gerrald risks alienating his Scottish jury by implying their laws and legal processes are antiquated.19 He dismisses the charge of his using French terms as “ridiculous” (7). In keeping with radical rhetoric, his arguments rely heavily on examples from constitutional history and political philosophy. I do not mean to suggest that Gerrald was found guilty because he neglected to heed Godwin’s advice, but to posit that Godwin, as he concurrently composed Caleb Williams, saw the tragic results of such a rhetorical strategy. Indeed, Gerrald’s arguments from principle make him appear even more dangerous in the eyes of the court: the Lord Justice Clerk is recorded as saying, Taking his own account of the matter to be just; supposing that he has acted from principle and that his motives are pure, I do say that he becomes a more dangerous member of society than if his conduct was really criminal, and acting from criminal motives. A man acting from criminal motives is not so dangerous a member of society as a man who thinks he is acting from principle. (52)

The depiction of the failure of Caleb’s strategy to argue from principles of equality and justice thus echoes what Godwin saw enacted in courtrooms. His revised ending, as we will see, does not so much exhibit defeatism or cowardliness as has been hitherto argued; rather it offers a sobering realization of the power of social and generic tradition, a power which can nevertheless be harnessed for radical ends.

The Legacies of Romance “The situation in which I was now placed had some resemblance to that in which I had spent my earlier years,” Caleb writes of his transition to Wales (305). Adapting the pastoral return of Tom Jones and Humphry Clinker, Godwin depicts Caleb’s flight from the “artifice, sadness and terror” of the metropolis in search of a countryside retreat that is “clean, cheerful and of great simplicity of appearance” (299). Like Tom and Humphry, Caleb is also looking for a family and place to call home, yet unlike their happy returns, he is betrayed by this family romance and is forced to embark on an endless road journey. His regression to his former infatuation with romance nonetheless plays an import final stage of liberation, reminding him that he has to contend actively with these discursive modes rather than sink passively into them. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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A maternal, instead of a paternal, figure becomes the source of political, social, and literary escapism in the last part of the novel. Laura’s history exhibits many of the typical markers of a romance narrative: her noble heritage, her status as a European exile, and her family’s flight from persecution. Indeed, Godwin creates obvious parallels throughout this section with another well-known master-servant relationship from Shakespeare’s romance The Tempest—that between Miranda and Caliban. The Miranda-esque Laura has derived her notions of “honor and superiority” not from her peasant society, but from her private study and naïve acceptance of all that she reads. She proclaims that truth and virtue are self-evident, even in a halfpenny handbill: “true virtue shines by its own light, and needs no art to set it off” (310). Enamored with her, Caleb, too, has succumbed to the seductions of romance. He has tried to repress “the memory of [his] story,” soothe his “mind with fond imaginations” and lose himself in a leisure-class study of etymology. Godwin reinforces the oppressive connotations of this state of being by having bricklayers—those laborers who build walls—be the means of introducing the criminal handbill. The friction created between the high- and low-culture narratives jolts Caleb back into critical activity. He pleads with Laura to entertain the possibility that even “the most upright conduct” can be subject to “the danger of ambiguity.” This possibility Laura of course refuses, casting him off like Caliban: “you are a monster and not a man.” He attempts—in vain—to convince her of her Mirandalike naïvete: “it would be impossible for you to hold this language, if you had not always lived in this obscure retreat” (310). Caleb begins to write his story at the point in the narrative where he has come full circle; he has extricated himself from an uncritical absorption of the literary paradigms of romance and picaresque tale, he has experienced the failure of alternative modes of discourse, and he has revisited the power of traditional narrative and social convention. He emerges from this process with a sharpened sense of the material basis of discourse and of how truth can be mediated by social realities.20 As he learns in the print battle with Gines, narratives have material bases and consequences. At first he hypothesizes treating narratives as divorced from material contexts: “At present [Gines] appears to be the persecutor, and I the persecuted: is not this difference the mere creature of the imagination?” (317). He contemplates entering into Gine’s contest, but he can’t “convert this dreadful series into sport” (317). Instead he finds he is restrained by “the necessity of providing for myself the means of subsistence” (317). His “fetters” are now those literary devices Gines uses to keep him poor and on the run. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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The final encounter with Collins reveals the material underpinnings of narrative, as well. In response to Caleb’s wish to tell his side of the story, Collins pragmatically remarks, “for the purchase of this uncertainty [of Falkland’s character] I must sacrifice all the remaining comforts of my life” (320). Caleb exhibits a new level of understanding of social and literary convention in this exchange. He does not want the aging Collins to lose his livelihood, especially since he is so close to his retirement. The exchange of letters between Collins and Caleb constitutes the novel’s final representation of the plebeian public sphere. As a writer, Caleb manifests a strategic understanding of the ways that his material and social realities can shape what sort of story he tells. Caleb appoints the pragmatic and materialist Collins as the “executor” of his literary estate, and it is within this plebeian public sphere that he deploys the fiery rhetoric of his closely aligned namesake, Caliban. Resisting the hegemonic construction of himself as “impotent, imbecile, and idiot-like” (325), he can be seen to embrace Caliban’s form of verbal resistance, “You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse.”21 He makes a battle zone of the public sphere, “with this engine, this little pen, I defeat all his machinations” (325), resolving “to supply” “amply, severely” the place of Falkland’s aristocratic narrative (326). With this revolutionary language, Godwin perhaps unconsciously points to the more strident rhetoric possible within a separate plebeian public sphere. It will not be the mode of discourse with which Godwin in subsequent years aligns. Even in the novel this militant literary exchange is deferred (placed into safekeeping until later) or is truncated by Collins’ death, but Godwin still manages to convey the power of Caleb’s revolutionary discourse as his story, finally, does quietly supplant Falkland’s. As Caleb’s rhetorical situation changes when he arrives at the Harwich court, Caleb reassesses the strategy of his accusation; “there must have been some dreadful mistake in the train of argument that persuaded me to be the author of this hateful scene. There must have been a better and more magnanimous remedy to the evils under which I groaned” (330), and indeed there is—the more magnanimous remedy is the narrative of romance. Those critics who see Caleb’s final accusation-turned confession as exhibiting Godwin’s turn to discourses of sympathy overlook the ways that Caleb’s affective display is also colored with the language of heroic romance and of patrician-plebeian modes of deference22: “I have reverenced him; he was worthy of reverence: I have loved him; he was endowed with qualities that partook of divine” (331). 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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Tilottama Rajan astutely notes that Caleb’s confession takes the form of “a highly theatrical performance: a performance so effective that it asks us to listen to this ideology, but also so melodramatic that it asks us to listen for its silences” (“Wollstonecraft and Godwin” 245). Indeed, in his confession, Caleb proffers a substantial rewriting of his own history, saying that Falkland “was unhappy; I exerted myself with youthful curiousity to discover the secret of his woe” (331). This contrasts strikingly with his earlier description comparing Falkland’s situation to “that of a fish that plays with the bait employed to entrap him” (114). He paints himself as enduring Falkland’s persecutions with “patience and submission,” “constancy and fidelity,” (333) rather than as employing the active resistance depicted in the earlier narrative. He says he should have “opened his heart” to Falkland, but again, he has already related several other honest and moving discussions between them. Nor can these discrepancies be dismissed as an artistic oversight on Godwin’s part. In documenting his writing process, Godwin relates that he wrote the novel in reverse, thus volumes one and two would have been fresh in his mind as he composed the second ending. The discrepancies create cognitive dissonance in the reader and highlight Caleb’s speech as a rhetorical performance shaped by the material realities of a court ready to uphold reigning literary and social paradigms. While various critics have concluded that in the revised ending, Caleb succumbs to the oppressive patrician order that he has learned so fervently to resist, we should be skeptical of Caleb’s recourse to the same language of self-evident truth that Laura used to discuss his criminal biography; just as Laura insists that the criminal tale “in its plain and unadorned state” unequivocally condemns him, so Caleb proclaims, “I have told a plain and unadulterated tale. I came hither to curse, but I remain to bless. I came to accuse, but am compelled to applaud. I proclaim to all the world that Mr. Falkland is a man worthy of affection and kindness, and that I am myself the basest and most odious of mankind!” (334). As Caleb reminds Laura, however, not even the “most upright conduct is always superior to the danger of ambiguity” (310). More importantly, Caleb’s self-abnegating strategy works. Those that hear him are moved to tears, and Falkland himself is brought to a confession as he concedes the narrative war to Caleb: “I see that the artless and manly story you have told has carried conviction to every hearer. . . . My name will be consecrated to infamy, while your heroism, your patience, and your virtues will be for ever admired” (335). Godwin’s commitment to working within existing literary and social paradigms reflects his well-known gradualism and illustrates, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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as Peter Marshall has documented, the reason for the split between many radical artisans and middle-class intellectuals. Godwin had a substantial falling out with one of his radical friends over just the sort of rhetorical approach depicted in Caleb’s final speech. As the passionate and direct-action radical John Thelwall faced his sedition trial, Godwin advised him to restrict “‘the spirit of resentment and asperity’ against his persecutors in his letters, and to remind him of the ‘divine principle of loving our enemies’” (qtd. in Marshall William Godwin, 140). His similar advice to Joseph Gerrald shows Godwin believed that “truth loses nothing by this,” and that it was possible to achieve radical ends by working within established structures to change or eradicate those structures. Just as we cannot read Caleb’s romance and patrician rhetoric unambiguously, neither can we take at face value the self-incriminating turn that Caleb makes in the final pages of the novel. Pamela Clemit insightfully illustrates the way that Godwin appropriates several anti-Jacobin discourses throughout the novel, mirroring well-known examples such as Burke’s eulogy of Marie Antoinette in the eulogy of Falkland, and imitating the plebeian Socratic dialogue Hannah More used in Village Politics in the discussion between Caleb and Thomas regarding the maltreatment of prisoners (40 and 47). I would add that we should also pay attention, therefore, to the way that Caleb’s reiteration of the criminal handbill-version of himself also reproduces and disturbs anti-Jacobin rhetoric. His charge that he has become Falkland’s murderer, that he is an “atrocious, execrable wretch” sounds eerily familiar to “The Last Dying Speech, Confession, . . . of Thomas Paine” in which the fictionalized Paine is recorded as saying “I have been a vile rebel against my king” and “I am stained with the blood of thousands of innocent persons . . . The Lord have mercy on my guilty soul.” The blatant speciousness of the Paine pamphlet disturbs the truth claims of Caleb’s speech, inviting readers to resist from within the dominant social and literary structures of their historical moment and to entertain the multiple possibilities of meaning. Thus while Garret Sullivan’s interpretation of Caleb as acceding “to the definition of his character presented in the pamphlet” (335) is on the surface correct, such a reading works against the critical self-consciousness about narrative that the novel engages in as a whole. In maintaining this interpretation, I am somewhat persuaded by those scholars who see in the ending a pivotal moment in which the reader detaches from Caleb, rejecting his seeming return to a state of false consciousness, in order to carry out the utopian project of social reform delineated in Godwin’s Political Justice. Andrew McCann, for example, argues 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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that what is most progressive about Godwin’s novel is its ability to “demystify the process of its own public reception” (81), so that we as readers are empowered to reject the defeatism Caleb exhibits.23 Yet I view Caleb as well as the novel’s potential readers as having achieved the role of critical and savvy manipulator of generic and social discourses. Perhaps not all readers will come away from the novel having acquired such insights. Reflecting on the novel’s impact in his 1832 preface, Godwin almost mirrors the self-recrimination of his own character, Caleb: “From time to time the author plainly reels to and fro like a drunken man. And, when I had done all, what had I done? Written a book to amuse boys and girls in their vacant hours, a story to be hastily gobbled up by them, swallowed in a pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without chewing and digestion.” He takes heart, however, in reminding himself of another reading experience, that described by Joseph Gerrald, who read the novel in prison while awaiting transportation, and who also hastily read the book, but came away feeling “refreshed” and perhaps galvanized in his political resolve (353–354). The two readerships Godwin describes return us, as Rajan nicely encapsulates it, to the novel’s hermeneutic lessons and the possibilities of subversive reading. When taking these interpretive positions into account, the final paragraph elicits a richly ambiguous response. Caleb’s claim that he has “no character” to vindicate may also be seen as a rejection of the patrician discourse of providing “characters” of plebeians. His overtly deferential and reverential promise to complete Falkland’s story as the only one worth perpetuating masks the Caliban-like supplanting of Falkland’s role as author. Lastly, in a final subversive appropriation of the conventions of romance, Caleb is seen as rescuing the reading public from the imposition of a “halftold and mangled tale” that would have resulted from Falkland’s absolute authorship. The year following the novel’s publication, Godwin spoke out against both the Pitt administration’s censoring bills and the L. C. S.’ direct political agitations. “Reform” he wrote, “is a delicate and awful task. No sacrilegious hand must be put forth to this sacred work. It must be carried on by slow, almost insensible steps, and by just degrees” (“Considerations on Lord Grenville’s and Mr. Pitt’s Bills” 211). Caleb Williams makes visible how much relevance Godwin ceded to customary culture and generic traditions as part of his gradualist vision of social reform. The punitive backlash against his fellow radicals made him cautious, but not defeatist. The novel provides a rich and compelling account of how these oppressive structures and narratives could be resisted from within, pointing to, but not realizing, a future 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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The 1790’s expelled th[e illusion that plebeians were “free”], and in the wake of the experiences of those years the relationship of reciprocity snapped. . . . We move out of the eighteenth-century field-of-force and enter a period in which there is a structural reordering of class relations and of ideology. It is possible, for the first time, to analyse the historical process in terms of nineteenth-century notations of class” (Making of the English Working Class 96).

These structural and historical shifts paved the way for new kinds of discourses, but they would be written not by middle-class intellectuals like Godwin, but by writers of the early nineteenth-century working-class.



moment when the discourses of paternalism and tradition could be completely rejected. E. P. Thompson provides a summation of this decade that illuminates Caleb Williams as political and literary artifact of its time:




Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot. —Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (10) Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness—not much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! —Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (558)

In the preface to Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive (1797), Tyler

describes with pride the spread of literacy and access to print available in the early American republic: “The diffusion of a taste, for any species of writing, through all ranks, in so short a time, would appear impracticable to a European. The peasant of Europe must first be taught to read, before he can acquire a taste in letters. In New England, the work is half completed. In no other country are there so many people, in proportion to its numbers, who can read and write” (vii). He continues to underscore his Enlightenment narrative by noting an evolution in the laboring classes’ reading material from popular print based on oral tradition to the novel: “Dolly, the diary (sic.) maid and Jonathan, the hired man, threw aside the ballad of the cruel stepmother, over which they had so often wept in concert, and now amused themselves into so agreeable a terrour, with the haunted houses and hobgoblins of Mrs. Ratcliffe, (sic.) that they were both afraid to sleep alone” (viii–ix). Given the preponderance of such Enlightenment narratives, one might expect to confirm the novel’s legitimation, its elevation in the print market, as dependent upon its eventual repudiation of “lowbrow” print and culture with which it was so often disparagingly associated. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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As Tyler’s trajectory implies, even the laboring classes, with which popular print is at the end of the century exclusively associated, are throwing out their ballads in order to read novels. And yet what this study reveals, as well as a glance at novelists’ portrayals of popular and customary culture in the early nineteenth century will show, is that there was rather continuity between the novel and traditional popular culture that proved tactically enduring. Indeed, what Tyler’s cryptic progress narrative also illustrates is how the novel continued to draw inspiration from the traditional ballad, in this case the well-known “Children of the Wood,” in order to evoke the same gothic reinscriptions of the past, effecting similar affective states of grief and terror, as traditional popular culture. As Katie Trumpener’s Bardic Nationalism comprehensively illustrates, the Romantic British novel, particularly those novels produced in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, continued to respond to the challenges of modernity by appealing to traditional popular culture, although what constituted traditional popular culture itself underwent significant revision as antiquarians sorted out which aspects of their nation’s heritage best facilitated the construction of a heroic past. Located in a time when culture was shared and transmitted orally by all ranks of society, the medieval bard became a touchstone for evoking national consciousness in the face of English imperialism. Similar to the use of customary culture in novels in this study, bardic nationalism’s “relationship to modernization is dialectical rather than simply derivative or reactive. New losses invoke the old: the modernization process triggers cultural memory both because modernizers and improvers appear determined to suppress and replace it and because new forms of economic oppression are being joined to old forms of political oppression” (Trumpener 23). Thus in Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian (1818), after successfully obtaining a pardon for the sister of Jeanie, the novel’s laboring-class protagonist, the Duke of Argyle departs, humming a ballad tune which he himself purportedly composed. Scott ends the scene with the following patriotic declaration: “Perhaps one ought to be actually a Scotsman to conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation, they feel their mutual connection with each other as natives of the same country.”1 In this example, shared oral popular culture underpins Scott’s vision of a “rude and wild” country where “the high and low are more interested in each other’s welfare” than in countries like England that are “well-cultivated.” And yet this novel that protests English superiority also participates paradoxically in the processes of imperial expansion, as it exiles Whistler, the 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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illegitimate and lost child of Effie Dean and George Staunton, to the Americas as a suitable outlet for his “savage” nature among the “wild Indians” (506). As Charlotte Sussman observes in her analysis of the imperial implications of the novel, Scott effectively cleanses Scotland of its “savage” associations by removing its unruly inhabitants to the colonies and replicating a long-standing English imperial practice.2 Comparing Scott’s novel to Smollett’s Humphry Clinker written almost fifty years earlier, we see that both novels employ the rhetoric of custom and traditional popular culture in similar ways that simultaneously react against English hegemony and facilitate the expansion of the British Empire. What distinguishes their approaches, however, is Scott’s vision of cultural separatism that departs from the cultural heterogeneity embraced in Humphry Clinker. Such a distinction bears the traces of revolutionary nationalism made available by the American and French revolutions, as Scott is now empowered to insist on the rights of cultural if not political self-determination. Scott’s evocation of traditional popular culture also reveals the gentrifying or “sanitizing” of popular culture carried out by antiquarians, who not only disdained the politicized, urban content of printed ballads and preferred the rural, oral tradition, but who also excluded those ballads of the oral tradition that had “libelous, seditious, and/or bawdy” content.3 Although published within a decade of the Ossian controversy and Percy’s Reliques of Ancient Poetry (1765), Smollett’s scatological, comic grotesque vision of Britain’s exuberant popular culture in Humphry Clinker shows few signs of antiquarian influence unless it is one of contest. In The Heart of Midlothian, Scott has not completely banished allusions to bawdy popular ballads; however, their invocation often signals the ballad singer’s moral demise. Effie Dean’s attendance at a country-dance and her playful recitation of “an old Scotch song” with bawdy lyrics, which Scott abruptly cuts off for the sake of propriety (99), all foreshadow her sexual lapse, which results in an illegitimate child and tragic charges of infanticide. Through the characterization of her sister Jeanie, Scott gives us a more “pure” and heroic tradition of Scottish popular culture, highlighting Jeanie’s adherence to Scottish customs and values, such as her frugal and stoic choice not to wear shoes and socks on her long journey to London to petition the Queen for her sister’s pardon (271). Scott further endorses his revaluation of Scottish popular culture by ending the novel with Effie’s banishment to a convent and Jeanie’s integration into the pastoral, semifeudal retreat presided over by the Duke of Argyle. While the novel as a genre continued to draw on the explanatory power of customary and popular culture, certain aspects of its 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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hierarchical understanding of society became increasingly unpalatable. The Jacobin novel Hermsprong by Robert Bage, for example, demystifies the noble aims of antiquarianism by revealing its investment in “a lost feudal order and a lost feudal absolutism” (Trumpener 125). Paul Murphy’s survey of literary criticism in early nineteenth-century British working-class periodicals similarly documents an antipathy toward the novels of Sir Walter Scott and his Tory nostalgia for a lost feudal order. One critic, Thomas Jonathan Wooler, exclaims, “but since Sir Walter Scott has begun to pervert history in his novels, to serve the despotism which he loves for the favours it has conferred upon him, a closer attention is necessary, to expose such frauds.”4 The last decade of the eighteenth century witnessed a profound rift in the rhetoric of custom as radical discourses of universal rights gained ascendance over those of reciprocal and select customary rights. For radicals like Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine, the French Revolution represented not only a war on the decadent aristocracy, but also on a history and tradition that perpetuated social status without merit and that impeded individuals’ access to education and economic self-sufficiency. As William Godwin in Caleb Williams seems to have understood, however, laboring class writers could not extricate themselves from customary relations as abruptly or as absolutely as their fellow middle-class radicals would have liked. A shift occurs gradually over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century as the laboring classes, particularly literate male workers, sought to define themselves apart from the social rituals of plebeian deference in a bid for equal representation with the middle classes for greater political enfranchisement. In the 1780’s, as the dispute between the laboring poet Ann Yearsley and her patron Hannah More reveals, customary relations between laboring and leisure classes showed signs of strain, but were far from being obsolete. In More’s letter to Mrs. Montague endorsing Yearsley, More reveals the conditional nature of patronage, based not simply on whether the “milkwoman’s” poetry was worthy of support, but also on whether she thought Yearsley’s “heart was rightly turned”—that is, whether she met the criterion of being humble and content with her station. More assures Montague that she did not think patronage of Yearsley would “unsettle the sobriety of her mind, and, by exciting her vanity, indispose her for the laborious employments of her humble condition.”5 More’s appreciation of Yearsley’s “bold and vehement” descriptions, her reluctance to see “the wild vigour of her rustic muse polished into elegance or laboured into correctness” reveals that while More was ready to reject the neoclassical aesthetics 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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of the century she grew up in, she was not yet ready for the political and social ramifications attending such departures from tradition. For in opposing More’s absolute control over the profits of her book, was not Yearsley merely inserting her “wild vigour,” her “bold and vehement” artistic expression into the social and economic realm? Donna Landry has made the compelling argument that Yearsley, in vying for economic independence and the right to direct her book’s profits to the care of her family and children, has struck out on a very different path than that of Stephen Duck, who in 1730 assured his royal patron that the fruits of his artistic labor rightfully belonged to his Queen: “In a world of traditional aristocratic patronage and clientage, such anxiety about ‘rights’ and ‘bankruptcy’ and the legal proving of claims, even when projected into the future, would be unthinkable. Yearsley here stands as a fully conscious, bourgeois head of the family, and bourgeois writer” (Muses of Resistance 155). More’s outraged reaction to Yearsley’s bid for autonomy certainly confirms the radical disruption of the politics of patronage, as she asserts Yearsley must have been drunk to defy More so openly and accused her of the “monstrous charge of ingratitude.”6 Yet the rhetoric of Yearsley’s narrative of self-defense betrays the continued pressure she felt to conform to the role of deferential plebeian. Similar to Caleb’s access to the court of law in Godwin’s novel, her access to print did not necessarily grant her the opportunity to be heard unless she couched her defense in the rhetoric of customary social relations, as is evident in the way she addresses readers of her second book of poems: “Here let me close this true but unpleasant narrative, with the humble hope of your forgiveness, for obtruding on your attention so insignificant a tale; but, as character is more precious than life itself, the protection of that alone compelled me to the task” (xxiv). Yearsley was able to salvage her character and continue writing and other literary endeavors only by soliciting support from other, more influential male patrons. After More, Lord Bristol, the Bishop of Derry, became Yearsley’s most prominent patron, and a host of well-to-do supporters intervened in her plans to open a public house, which they thought was a “disgusting plan” and offered to help her open a circulating library instead.7 Her account of the dispute with More reveals not only her recourse to the discourses of deference and self-abnegation, but also her participation in forms of protest specific to plebeian customary rights. Buried in footnotes, but present nonetheless, her related dispute with More about whether Yearsley could negotiate independently with More’s cook for the “hogwash” of the kitchen shows that customary 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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rights coexisted during the end of the eighteenth century along side emerging notions of universal rights. Yearsley insists that the rights to sell scraps from the kitchen were the cook’s perquisite solely, and did not concern More’s realm of authority in the least (xvi). Yearsley thus challenges More in a variety of strategic ways in striving to exert a new-found independence through the evocations of social custom, accusing More of overstepping her patrician bounds, seeking out new patrons who know the limits of obligation and interference, and sustaining a traditional character that is, in the words of More herself “industrious in no common degree, pious, unambitious, simple and unaffected in her manners” (xix). Turning our attention to the metropolis of London, it becomes clear that urban male artisans were much more able than rural workers, particularly female workers, to flout the customary rituals of deference, although as the autobiography of Francis Place illustrates, such defiance came at a heavy cost. Place notes the profound impact the ideas of the French Revolution had on the social aspects of customary culture: it “broke up many old absurd notions, and tended greatly to dissipate the pernicious reverence for men of title and estate without regard to personal knowledge or personal worth.”8 Even as a young man, Place bristled against the expectations of deference required in the apprenticeship system and was fortunate to find in his first employer someone who valued and needed his skills and competence more than his obedience. When he first entered the leather breeches trade, he notes that his curfew was set at 10 p.m., and that this was “soon extended to eleven, but after some time, I was left to do as I liked” because his master “could not have found the means to support his family [without Place] and he dared not therefore risk the doing any thing which might induce [him] to leave him, as [Place] should certainly have done, had any attempt to restrain [him] been made” (78). The adult Place eventually redirected his drive for independence from the juvenile prerogatives of drinking and carousing with friends to issues of economic justice. After being fired for being associated with disgruntled workers who conducted a strike, he joined them officially in their petition for better wages and devised ways for them to stay afloat financially during their unemployment. The money eventually ran out, however, and the strike failed, with workers returning to the same wage agreements. Place felt this time the severe cost of such defiance; he was blacklisted from employment by all the local masters of his trade, leaving him, his wife and children in crushing poverty. Place’s reaction to being shut out of employment opportunities signifies a new direction available to urban male artisans in that 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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he refuses even though his family is literally starving to return to the apprenticeship system. Revealing an important divide in terms of laboring-class gender roles, his wife “frequently importuned [him] to go again to Journey work, and offered to try to procure it herself if [he] would let her” (157). Whereas his wife sees no other method of survival but to capitulate in some fashion to a paternalist system, Place strives for another way to obtain a living: “I however resolutely refused, I insisted upon it that I should work my self into a condition to become a master tradesman and should then be able to maintain my family respectably.” Place’s autobiography reveals a subtle though important shift in the conception of social mobility from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century and persisting into our own time. Instead of a rise in social status being predicated on patronage or construed as a reward for abiding by one’s inferior place in the social hierarchy, Place believes he can rise on his own through excellence in his work: “I had compared myself with every one in the trade with whom I had come in contact and was fully persuaded that upon the whole I was better qualified for business than any one of them” (101). Such notions of individual merit were certainly bolstered by the popular radicalism of the 1760’s and the antimonarchical and antihereditary positions that arose during the American Revolution. The radical writings of Thomas Paine, cheap editions of which Place had acquired (126), threw into question how a “race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species” and encouraged people to begin imagining a republic run by a meritocracy rather than aristocracy.9 In Place’s memoir we see how these ideas began to transform even the paternalistic microcosm of the apprenticeship system. For Place, the radical rejection of customary social relations necessarily implicated the popular recreations and culture of the laboring classes as well, which he felt kept the laboring classes dissolute, impoverished and therefore dependent. His personal experience growing up with a father whose pastimes were “drinking, whoring, gaming, fishing and fighting” (20) and who as a result of these recreations repeatedly not only devastated their finances but also abandoned the family without notice, led Place to have a decidedly unromantic view of laboring and popular culture. As many scholars have noted, Place held fast to the Enlightenment narrative of social progress and bourgeois selfimprovement. In his introduction, he states that one of the primary objectives in writing his autobiography was to note the advancements in “the ignorance, the immorality, the grossness, the obscenity the drunkenness, the dirtiness, and depravity of the middling and even of 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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a large portion of the better sort of tradesmen, the artisans, and the journeymen tradesmen of London in the days of my youth” (14). He views in particular the waning of popular song, or its gentrification, not as an occasion for nostalgic lament but as indicative of greater refinement and politeness. The bawdiness of popular ballads and their frequent celebration of criminals for Place are responsible for an overall moral depravity which laboring and middling people would do well to renounce: “Want of chastity in girls was common. The songs which were ordinarily sung by their relatives and by young men and women and the lewd plays and interludes they occasionally saw were all calculated to produce mischief in this direction. The whole of this is materially changed, the songs have all disappeared and are altogether unknown to young girls” (57). While Francis Place urged his fellow laborers to leave the tavern and its “gross” popular songs to study French with him, other laboringclass radicals responded by infusing radical ideals into popular culture, in effect creating a “popular Enlightenment,” to use Ian Haywood’s formulation.10 William Cobbett, who grew up as an agricultural laborer and gardener, provides an interesting foil to the attitudes of Francis Place, as he transitioned politically in his middle age from Tory populist and anti-Jacobin to radical, bringing social and economic reforms to the countryside and to a population of rural workers that were thought by urban radicals to be irrevocably conservative to the detriment of their own well-being. In ways that show the prescience of Godwin’s gradualist vision in Caleb Williams, Cobbett refused to see “face to face relations with employers, relatively low rates of literacy, as well as labourer’s much-maligned veneration for old England” as liabilities; according to Ian Dyck, Cobbett “turned these characteristics of village culture to radical advantage by arguing that they facilitated popular protest and class consciousness.”11 As the organic ideals of agrarian society buckled in the face of capitalist farming practices such as enclosure, Cobbett galvanized rural laborer’s collective memory of having been once “better off,” reflected in the community’s oral tradition, not to advocate a nostalgic return to patrician hegemony, but to argue for greater self-sufficiency and enfranchisement for the working population. Battling Hannah More’s Cheap Repository Tracts that delivered conservative and loyalist propaganda through popular print forms such as the ballad and chapbook, Cobbett launched his own cheap political tracts in the form of the two-penny broadside, “vended at hiring-fairs, market-places and public houses, together with other cultural productions such as chapbooks, almanacs, broadside songs 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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and other assorted expressions of a magico-religious world-view” (Dyck 82). He further adapted his language to the vernacular of the countryside and the rhythms of popular song, using, as Dyck illuminates, “lyrical phrases and the punctuating repetition of personal pronouns” (79 and 84). Both More and Cobbett’s efforts to politicize popular print are a testament to its continued influence on the lives of the laboring classes. Even in the early nineteenth century, as Jonathan Rose’s fascinating study The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes indicates, popular chapbook stories remained as vital and important in early experiences of literacy as they were in the eighteenth century. Rose provides the example of Robert Collyer (b. 1823), child laborer in a Fewston linen factory, whose first book that he bought was the chapbook, The History of Dick Whittington and His Cat. Defending the mention of it in his memoir, he writes, Does some reader say, Why should you touch this incident? And I answer, I have a library now of about three thousand volumes . . .; but in that first purchase lay the spark of a fire which has not yet gone down to white ashes, the passion which grew with my growth to read all the books in the early years I could lay my hands on, . . . I see myself in the far-away time and cottage reading, as I may truly say in my case, for dear life. (Qtd. in Rose 3)

The laboring classes not only read popular print “for dear life,” but they learned to read critically through them, as well. Joseph Mayett, son of a Methodist farm worker, registers his disillusionment with the tracts put before him, whose “contents were chiefly to perswade poor people to be satisfied in their situation and not to murmur at the dispensations of providence”; he noted that “those kinds of books were often put into my hands in a dictatorial way in order to convince me of my errors for instance there was [Hannah More’s] the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain . . . and many others which drove me almost to despair for I could see their design” (Qtd. in Rose 30). As Godwin dramatized through Caleb’s reinscribing of popularized criminal narratives, other laboring-class readers honed their critical reading strategies by learning to reinterpret favorite chapbooks and ballads for their subversive import. In the words of radical activist Thomas Spence, The stories of enormous and tyrannical giants, dwelling in strong castles, which have been thought fabulous, may reasonably be looked upon as disguised truths, and to have been invented as just satires upon



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These instances of working-class readers both revising and reinterpreting centuries-old popular narratives demonstrate that the birth of natural rights discourses, though it pitched reason and individual merit against tradition and hierarchy, did not result in the complete disavowal of popular culture or print, as memoirs of urban radicals like Francis Place seem to suggest. Rather, the “rights of man” debates opened up new ways of making sense of traditional popular culture as well as of representing customary and popular culture in novels. I would like to conclude by directing attention briefly to the uses of customary and popular culture in the work of Charles Dickens. Dickens’ novels, particularly David Copperfield (1849–1850), were some of the most beloved novels of the British working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Rose 111–115). Although more of a populist than a supporter of the working-class rights, Dickens sought to repair at least imaginatively the divisions cemented by the Representation of the People Act of 1832, which enfranchised middle-class men of property. In light of these political and economic disparities, it became less and less tenable for novelists to depict a shared culture or identity between middle and working classes, but as we see in the case of Dickens, customary culture continued to provide a discursive framework with which to soften the brutal realities of class conflict. Without doubt, the agitation for increased political rights among the working classes disrupted and revised the ways that middle-class authors could invoke certain aspects of customary culture, in particular the social codes of plebeian deference. In David Copperfield, Dickens proffers a searing critique of this older form of class relations in the character of Uriah Heep. Raised in a charity school, Heep describes how he was taught day and night “to be umble to this person and umble to that” (558). Similar to the strategies we’ve seen deployed by plebeian protagonists Pamela Andrews and Caleb Williams, as well as by plebeian writers Stephen Duck and Ann Yearsley, Heep has learned to advance socially and economically by insisting on his “humbleness”: “‘when I was quite a young boy,’ said Uriah, ‘I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, ‘Hold hard!’ When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. ‘People like to be 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


great lords. For if those fabulous monsters were said to eat the people and their children, your real monsters really eat their meat and savour out of every enjoyment . . . These are the monsters, or giants, that the world want to be rid of. The extirpation of these should employ the philanthropic giant killers, the deliverers of mankind.12

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above you,’ says father. ‘Keep yourself down.’” While eighteenth-century readers would have looked on Heep’s understanding of his place in the world as a sign of impeccable virtue, for Dickens it reveals the depth of Heep’s intractable depravity. David Copperfield, after listening to Heep, responds: “I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base unrelenting, and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.” In this exchange, Dickens acknowledges and decries not just Heep’s individualized strategy of reaping the rewards of social mobility through deference; he indicts an entire system of social indoctrination for producing “base, revengeful” spirits. As we see, however, in Dickens’ most nostalgic and ever popular work, A Christmas Carol (1843), other aspects of customary culture proved to be a lasting resource for reimagining harmonious class relations. In his dedication, Dickens calls the work “a ghostly little book, to raise a ghost of an idea” (ix). Written during the “hungry forties,” just a few years before the radical critiques of capitalism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the European social revolutions of 1848, Dickens raises the ghost of a customary, organic society unified by popular cultural traditions in order to modulate the mercenary effects of free-market capitalism. Now it is the middle-class professional, not the elite investor of the South Sea Bubble of Defoe’s time, that is cut off from paternalist obligation to the poor. “Sharp as flint” and “solitary as an oyster” (2), Mr. Scrooge refuses to keep Christmas or even provide his clerk with the customary perquisite of coal. While other employers and professionals revive customary rituals of the holiday feast, with the Lord Mayor giving “orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord mayor’s household should” (7), Scrooge requires a more rigorous reeducation through ghostly transport back to his own experience as a lowly apprentice. Here his former employer, Mr. Fezziwig, models patrician generosity and inclusiveness by entertaining his own workers as well as those of his neighbors, and he participates in traditional dances like that of “Roger de Coverley,” a clever way to connect his “captain of industry” to the patrician ideals embodied in one of The Spectator’s most beloved characters. “A small matter” the ghost says, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude” (26). Newly cognizant of paternalism’s “power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome” (26), Scrooge begins to reconceive his relations with his employee, Bob Cratchit, wishing he were able to “say a word or two to my clerk” (27). 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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The ghost of Christmas present, evoking the symbolism of a pagan fertility god, provides an aerial view of the world’s workers to show the ability of popular tradition to unite all levels of society. On the ship, a Christmas tune bonds the captain socially stratified and crew in a populist moment of celebration: “They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day” (43). And at Scrooge’s nephew’s house, music and song conjoin in service to a kind of bardic capitalism, as the middle-class revelers, accompanied by the harp player, sing along to “a simple little air” familiar to Scrooge’s sister when she was a child (46). On hearing the music, Scrooge’s heart and mind soften as he regrets overlooking “the kindnesses of life” for the rewards of money (46). For Dickens, customary life, with its pastimes, music, and communal living, has the power to bring middle-class professionals back into the fold of an organic community and awaken their responsibilities to those below them. In Scrooge’s resolve to live in the “past, present, and future,” we see how to be cut off from history and tradition is to be isolated and inseparable from the processes of objectification upon which free-market capitalism depends. Having reconnected with the past and its possibilities for collective experience, Scrooge can then set out to ameliorate the ruthless effects of capitalism and class division by reinstituting a relationship of patronage to the poor. In contrast to the eighteenth century, however, such patronage is motivated in the nineteenth by private acts of Christian charity rather than by the socially and historically sanctioned obligations of patricians. Over the course of the eighteenth century and moving into the nineteenth century, customary culture in Britain transitioned from a lived idea to a “ghost of an idea” that would “haunt [readers’] houses pleasantly,” to cite Dickens once more, even until today. This study I hope reminds us that even in the age of Enlightenment, custom and modernity existed in dialectical relationship to each other, with customary consciousness possessing the capacity both to impede and make palatable Britain’s transition to a modern, imperial state. It is a dialectic that haunts the novel, as well; with all its charms and charges of novelty, the novel could legitimate itself by invoking the enduring legacies of customary and popular culture, whether in the form of the last dying speech, female warrior ballad, or two-penny broadside.



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Introduction 1. J. Paul Hunter furnishes an excellent overview of the “novelty” of the novel in Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth Century English Fiction, 3–28. 2. Cheryl Nixon provides an invaluable survey of eighteenth-century discussions of the novel and related generic terms in Novel Definitions: An Anthology of Commentary on the Novel, 1688–1815. For the purposes of brevity, I use the term “novel” to refer to a broad range of prose narratives, including romances as well as fictionalized memoirs. 3. “When was the first English novel and what does it tell us?” in Remapping the Rise of the European Novel, 28. See also Scott Black’s cogent review essay, “Is the Novel Modern?” forthcoming in EighteenthCentury Life, as well as Margaret Doody’s The True Story of the Novel, Katie Trumpener’s Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire, and Wolfram Schmidgen’s Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property. 4. For a fascinating account of The Spectator “as a model for the development of an English novel tradition that sought less to offer a new form for a new world than to adapt traditional forms to a print culture in which novelty means renewal and innovation means adaptation” (338) see Scott Black, “The Spectator in the History of the Novel.” 5. Schmidgen’s Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property also asserts the British novel’s investment in premodern, even feudal, “manorial” ideals, giving over eventually in the nineteenth century to liberal individualism. Resisting such teleological closure, this book departs from his in showing how these ideals are mobilized variously throughout the period’s fiction in order to both impede and make possible modern developments. 6. A Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1 (London, 1755). 7. The World We Have Lost: England before the Industrial Age. 8. See for example, J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Regime, and Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in EighteenthCentury England. 9. The Spectator, 8 vols. (London: 1712–1715). Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO). All subsequent citations are to this edition.



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10. In Other Words: Essays towards a Reflexive Sociology, 170. 11. Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684–1750, 93 and 125–126. See also Catherine Labio’s “‘What’s in Fashion Vent’: Behn, La Fayette, and the Market for Novels and Novelty.” 12. Quoted in John Tinnon Taylor, Early Opposition to the British Novel: The Popular Reaction from 1760–1830, 14. Jan Fergus in her meticulous analysis of provincial readers has also noted a pattern throughout the century that while male and female novelists were read equally in the first years of publication, women’s novels rarely achieved a longstanding place in the literary market, and thus women writers were under constant pressure to produce works that were new. Frances Burney proved to be one of the few exceptions to this trend; see Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England, 77–92. 13. See for example, Chapter 4 of George Justice’s The Manufacturers of Literature: Writing and the Literary Marketplace in EighteenthCentury England. 14. Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions: Subversive Laugher, Embodied History. 15. For the bifurcation of popular culture into traditional and modern during the eighteenth century see Paula R. Backscheider’s forthcoming essay, “The Paradigms of Popular Culture” The Eighteenth-Century Novel 6–7 (2008) and Patricia Anderson, The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790–1860, 8–12. 16. See The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature and Patricia Meyer Spacks, Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction. 17. “Social Rank, ‘The Rise of the Novel,’ and Whig Histories of Eighteenth-Century Fiction.” 18. For a description of early women writers’ affiliations with Continental romance, see Warner’s Licensing Entertainment, 8–32. Michael McKeon’s Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740, a work that Hudson greatly oversimplifies, argues for a dialectical history of the novel that accounts for the “persistence of romance and the aristocracy” (4). 19. George Boulukos intriguingly argues that the “rise of the middle class” thesis may have pertained more to Ian Watt’s own post–World War II experience than to the eighteenth century; see “The Secret History of the Rise of the Novel: The Novel and the Middle Class in English Studies” forthcoming in Eighteenth-Century Theory and Interpretation. 20. Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840, 7. 21. “The Novel: History and Theory,” 123–124. 22. The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780, 3. 23. Quoted in Peter Earle, “The Middling Sort in London,” in The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800, 146. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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24. The Nonsense Club: Literature and Popular Culture, 1749–1764, 255. 25. The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class, 3. 26. Moll Flanders: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, and Source Criticism, ed. Edward H. Kelly (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1973), 5. All subsequent citations are to this edition. 27. Ronald Paulson, Popular and Polite Art in the Age of Hogarth and Fielding and Pat Rogers, Literature and Popular Culture. Notable exceptions to this trend that have influenced my thinking are Bruce Robbins, The Servant’s Hand: English Fiction from Below and Judith Frank, Common Ground: Eighteenth-Century English Satiric Fiction and the Poor. 28. See helpful discussions of the Addison essays by Albert B. Friedman, The Ballad Revival: Studies in the Influence of Popular on Sophisticated Poetry, 87–110; and Steve Newman, Ballad Collection, Lyric, and the Canon: The Call of the Popular from the Restoration to the New Criticism, 27–33. 29. The Touch-stone: Or, Historical, Critical, Political, Philosophical, and Theological Essays on the Reigning Diversions of the Town, 22. 30. Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, A Cultural History, 1740–1830, 77. 31. Images of the Outcast: The Urban Poor in the Cries of London, 107. 32. Samuel Richardson, Pamela; Or Virtue Rewarded, ed. Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 5. All subsequent citations will be to this edition. 33. The Plain Dealer 36 (July 24, 1724). 34. Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Shamela, 310. 35. “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D—— de F——, of London, hosier, who has liv’d above fifty years by himself, in the Kingdoms of North and South Britain, x. 36. See “Rethinking Folklore, Rethinking Literature,” in The Other Print Tradition: Essays on Chapbooks, Broadsides, and Related Ephemera; and Rogers, “Classics and Chapbooks” in Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England. 37. See his introduction to Guy of Warwick and Other Chapbook Romances, 10. 38. The History of Pompey the Little: or, the Life and Adventures of a Lap-dog, 8. 39. Of course, the realities of limited literacy skills and economic resources expose many of the claims for the novel’s lower-class readership as hyperbolic and specious. Yet current research about reading practices reveals that the novel had the potential to reach at least the servant and apprentice-sector of plebeian society. Ian Watt was the first to posit this possible audience, and since then scholars have documented many more instances of the practice of reading aloud as a household pastime, at which servants often were present, 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

49.

50.

51. 52.

N ot e s as well as servants’ actual purchasing of novels and other reading materials. Thus we shouldn’t completely dismiss the possibility that novelists and prose writers kept such laboring audiences in mind when they were composing their works. See Watt’s Rise of the Novel, 47; Naomi Tadmor’s “‘In the Even my Wife Read to Me’: Women, Reading and Household Life in the Eighteenth Century,” 162–174 and Jan Fergus’ “Provincial Servants’ Reading in the Late Eighteenth Century,” 202–225, in The Practice and Representation of Reading in England. Reprinted in Moll Flanders: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, and Source Criticism, 325. Quoted in Bram Dijkstra’s Defoe and Economics: The Fortunes of Roxana in the History of Interpretation, 104. Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture, 314. Daniel Defoe: His Life, 435. Quoted in Robert Mayer, “Did you Say Middle Class? The Question of Taste in the British Novel,” 299. See Zionkowski’s “Territorial Disputes in the Republic of Letters: Canon Formation and the Literary Profession,” and Kathy MacDermott, “Literature and the Grub Street Myth,” in Popular Fictions: Essays in Literature and History. See Gerald Howson, “Who was Moll Flanders?” reprinted in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources Criticism, 312–319. Society and Literature in England 1700–60, 76. “Representing an Under Class: Servants and Proletarians in Fielding and Smollett,” in The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature, 92. See excellent studies, many of which have inspired this book, such as Dianne Dugaw’s Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850, Donna Landry’s The Muses of Resistance: Laboring-Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 and William Christmas’ The Lab’ring Muses: Work, Writing, and the Social Order in English Plebeian Poetry, 1730–1830. Carolyn Steedman’s “Poetical Maids and Cooks who Wrote” offers a convincing hypothesis about why plebeian writers gravitated toward poetic forms (17). “Literacy and Literature in Popular Culture: Reading and Writing in Historical Perspective,” in Popular Culture in England, c. 1500–1850, 72–73. “Problematizing Popular Culture,” in Popular Culture in England, 10. Griffin’s England’s Revelry: A History of Popular Sports and Pastimes, 1660–1830 is a refreshing return to examining popular culture as a site of class conflict, but I disagree with her claim that this class-based approach counts exclusively as a way assess the politics of popular culture, 11–25.



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53. Peter Burke’s Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe develops this influential thesis about the gradual withdrawal over the eighteenth century of the elite from popular culture. In their introduction to Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection, John Mullan and Christopher Reid offer an excellent survey of debates over the study of popular culture as they seek to demonstrate, in opposition to Burke’s thesis, “the shifting nature of cultural boundaries in the eighteenth century when relations between the popular and the polite were negotiable and, therefore, constantly being redrawn” (17). 54. Cited in Paula McDowell, “Women and the Business of Print” in Women and Literature in Britain, 1700–1800, 136. 55. In The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, Bourdieu theorizes that new artists and art forms inhabit “a universe in which to exist is to differ, i.e. to occupy a distinct, distinctive position” (58). 56. “The Eighteenth-Century Novel and Print Culture: A Proposed Modesty,” in A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century English Novel and Culture, 344. 57. See Lennard J. Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel, Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel, and J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction.

Chapter 1 1. Due to the limitations of space, I am unable to pursue a similar argument for Defoe’s endorsement of social hybridity in Colonel Jack (1722), but one clear example of the novel’s thematic correspondence is that Jack finds his leisure-class first wife acceptable for remarriage only after she has endured a life of crime and hard labor. 2. I employ E. P. Thompson’s loose definition of a moral economy; though he concedes that mercantilist capitalism during 1700–1760 did often conflict with paternalist obligations of the state to protect the poor, he asserts that “the form of much economic argument remained (on all sides) moralistic: it validated itself at most points with reference to moral imperatives (what obligations the state, or the landowners, or the dealers ought to obey),” Customs in Common, 269. 3. Although the subversive appeal of Jack Sheppard’s exploits explodes on the literary and theatrical scene after the publication of Moll Flanders and Roxana, many popular entertainments and print forms were already exploiting an oppositional discourse of crime, as Peter Linebaugh notes in The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century, 16–41. Lincoln Faller’s groundbreaking study, Crime and Defoe: A New Kind of Writing shows that



N ot e s

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4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

“by disturbing, displacing, deforming, and opening up the complete and ready-made ‘aesthetics’ of criminal biography, by failing to advance the ‘prepared theses’ it typically confirmed,” Defoe elevated the novel form above these cheaper printed texts (xvii). In contrast, this chapter describes the ways Defoe’s novels echo the subversive implications of criminal narratives by depicting the laboring and criminal classes as models of survival in an immoral economy. The Rise of the Novel, 114. Bram Dijkstra also echoes this view: “What separates Defoe’s writings from those of the bourgeois novelists who came after him is precisely his lack of interest in any attempts to cover up the details of the exploitative and predatory aspects of the capitalist experience. He rejoiced in them and saw in them the driving forces to a great economic future” (Defoe and Economics, 23). Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe, 15. “Daniel Defoe and Immigration,” 309–310. Complete English Tradesman, 3rd ed. (London: Charles Rivington, 1727–1732), 2.111. ECCO. Hereafter all citations are to this edition. Richard Wiles, “The Theory of Wages in Later English Mercantilism,” 113–126. Paula Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: His Life, 462. Mist’s Journal, April 30, 1720. Repr. in Great Bubbles, 3.119. “A Collection of the Several Petitions of the Counties, Boroughs, and etc., Presented to the House of Commons, Complaining of the Great Miseries the Nation Labours under, by the Great Decay of Trade, Manufacturers, and Publick Credit, Occasion’d by the Mismanagements of the Late Directors of the South-Sea Company, their Aiders, Abettors, and Confederates,” 7. Daniel Defoe, Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas, 575. Dianne Dugaw, “High Change in ‘Change Alley’: Popular Ballads and Emergent Capitalism in the Eighteenth Century,” 43. January 9, 1720. Repr. in Great Bubbles, 3.117. See, for example, Novak’s Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe, 86. Moll’s trusting of the elder brother is also in keeping with betrothals prior to Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753; before the law was passed, especially for the laboring classes, “marriages could result from a mere declaration of intent by the couple”; see Bridget Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England, 205. “Class Struggle without Class,” 154. The World of Defoe, 184. Mist’s Journal, August 20, 1720. Reprinted in Great Bubbles, 3.124. William Rufus Chetwood’s play, South-Sea; or, the Biter’s Bit uses this term to describe a stockjobber who is in turn cheated himself. For a summary of various newspaper reports of suicides following the stock market crash, see Pat Rogers, “‘This Calamitous Year’: A Journal



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of the Plague Year and the South Sea Bubble,” in Eighteenth-Century Encounters: Studies in Literature and Society in the Age of Walpole, 154. In “Moll Flanders, Incest, and the Structure of Exchange,” Ellen Pollak argues that “Moll’s incest constitutes the ultimate threat to patriarchal authority—a refusal, to borrow Luce Irigaray’s phrase, of the goods to go to market”; Defoe then tries to “harness—or even cancel—the subversive force of Moll’s desire” by having her express revulsion at her act (16). By having Moll return to England and its social hierarchies, Pollack argues, Defoe “reinscribes women’s status as a fundamental form of sexual currency whose circulation is an enabling condition of social order” (7). “Monstrous Generation: The Birth of Capital in Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Roxana,” 1024 and 1028. Humphrey Mackworth, “A Proposal for Payment of the Publick Debts,” vi. Gary Hentzi, “‘An Itch of Gaming’: The South Sea Bubble and the Novels of Daniel Defoe,” 35. Reprinted in vol. 6 of The Pickering Masters: The Works of Daniel Defoe, 132. “Crime, Criminal Networks and the Survival Strategies of the Poor in Early Eighteenth-Century London,” in The Poor in England, 1700–1850, 147 and 150. “Moll Flanders and the Rise of the Complete Gentlewoman-Tradeswoman,” 8–9. For a notable exception, see Srividhya Swaminathan’s “Defoe’s Alternative Conduct Manual: Survival Strategies and Female Networks in Moll Flanders.” This illustration of mutual protection conforms to Shore’s study of criminal gangs who protect each other (149). “Robinson Crusoe, Enumeration, and the Mercantile Fetish,” 23. “Public Credit; Or, The Feminization of Virtue in the Marketplace,” 1037. Ian Watt, for example, has called it an irony that Moll Flanders and Colonel Jacque “were able to find legitimate expression there (in the colonies) for the impulse which had made them criminals at home (96). More recently, Jacques Sohier states that it is ironic that Moll ends up a colonist, and that her forays into colonialism represent a form of “money laundering” (11). While the ironic similarity between theft and colonialism is apparent to us, for Defoe, there is a significant difference between self-interested gain and wealth accumulated for the benefit of the home country. August 10, 1720. Reprinted in The Manufacturer, 1719–1721 together with related issues of The British Merchant and The Weaver, n.p. [Richard Savage?], “Some Considerations on the Late Mismanagement of the South-Sea Stock; On the New Scheme Propos’d for Redress; and Likewise on Trade,” 22.



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36. In contrast, Lois Chaber in “Matriarchal Mirror” argues that in the ending of the novel Defoe has simply integrated these two opposing economic structures; he “combines the best of the threatened, conservative idyll of England’s agrarian past with the capitalist dream of unlimited mobility and growth” (222). 37. Daniel Defoe, Roxana, ed. Jane Jack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964; Repr. 1991), 228. All subsequent references will be to this edition. 38. I employ Ann Louise Kibbie’s formulation from “Monstrous Generation,” 1024. 39. In “The Dutch Wives’ Good Husbandry: Defoe’s Roxana and Financial Literacy,” Gabbard persuasively overturns the critical consensus that Roxana “exemplifies the successful manipulation of emerging capitalism” by showing that Roxana fails to embody the financial literacy idealized during this period in the figure of the Dutch merchant’s wife (237). 40. Backscheider in Daniel Defoe posits that “Above all, Amy, her loyal maid, manifests this world of evil and disorder that Defoe feared” (509). I argue that Amy’s agency reflects another fear of Defoe’s— that of the servant whose competence outstrips that of his or her master. 41. “‘Amy, Who Knew my Disease’: A Psychosexual Pattern in Defoe’s Roxana,” in The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny. 42. While my reading foregrounds the dangers of Roxana and Amy’s role reversal in business relations, Straub’s interpretation reveals the threat such a reversal poses to the moral order of the family; see chapter four of Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century Britain. 43. See, for example, Lisa Moore’s Dangerous Intimacies: Toward a Sapphic History of the British Novel, 12, as well as my discussion of Richardson’s sapphic portrayal of Mrs. Jewkes in “‘A Sawce-box and Boldface Indeed’: Refiguring the Female Servant in the Pamela–AntiPamela Debate,” 273–280. 44. Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-Century English Literature, 150. 45. Amy, for example, tells the guardians of Roxana’s son that she acquired her wealth from the East Indies, “for it was not a strange thing for young women to go away poor to the East-Indies, and come home vastly rich” (193). 46. Reprinted in vol. 7 of The Pickering Masters: The Works of Daniel Defoe, 100. 47. In “‘Callico Madams,’” Chloe Wigston Smith makes a valid point that by pitting female consumers against laboring men in these tracts, Defoe effectually erases the contributions of female workers in the textile industry. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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1. Samuel Richardson, Pamela; Or Virtue Rewarded, eds. Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely (2001), 518. All subsequent citations will be to this edition. 2. Christine Gerrard, Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725–1742, 49–69. 3. For a discussion of Hill’s failed attempts to enlist patronage from Robert Walpole for a royal fund to reward new plays, see Gerrard’s Aaron Hill: The Muses’ Projector, 1685–1750, 132–135. 4. Tim Fulford, “Fallen Ladies and Cruel Mothers: Ballad Singers and Ballad Heroines in the Eighteenth Century,” 309–317. 5. Matthew Gelbart, The Invention of “Folk Music” and “Art Music”: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner, 17–32. 6. On the emergence of plebeian writers in the literary marketplace, see Donna Landry’s groundbreaking study, Muses of Resistance, William Christmas’ The Lab’ring Muses, and Linda Zionkowski’s “The Politics of Containment: Stephen Duck, Ann Yearsley, and the Problem of Polite Culture.” 7. “Literature and the Grub Street Myth,” 17. 8. Oliver Goldsmith, for example, at one point advocates returning to the golden age of patronage under Queen Anne; see Zionkowski’s illuminating discussion of Goldsmith’s essays in “Territorial Disputes in the Republic of Letters,” 1–7. 9. Quoted in T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, Samuel Richardson: A Biography, 89. 10. As Paula McDowell documents, early ballad commentators did not make distinctions between an older, “purer,” oral tradition of popular ballads and the newer, “corrupted” topical print tradition of the broadside ballad, distinctions which became more pronounced after the publication of Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765); see her “‘The Manufacture and Lingua-facture of Ballad-Making,’” 151–178. 11. “Brother Trouble: Incest Ballads of the British Isles,” 289. Lance Bertelsen’s “Popular Entertainment and Instruction, Literary and Dramatic: Chapbooks, Advice Books, Almanacs, Ballads, Farces, Pantomimes, Prints and Shows” provides an excellent overview of popular ephemeral literature in the eighteenth century; in The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780, 61–86. 12. Albert B. Friedman credits Addison with inaugurating ballad criticism with his “Chevy Chase” papers. I am also indebted to Friedman’s discussion of the neoclassical underpinnings of Addison’s essays on English ballads; see The Ballad Revival, Chapter 4. 13. Addison’s Rosamund contains elements of “A Mournful Ditty on the Death of Rosamund, King Henry the Second’s Concubine,” Hill’s Elfrid is linked to “A new Sonnet of Edgar King of England, how



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15. 16.

17.

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N ot e s he was deceived of a Lady which he loved, by a Knight of his own Court,” and Rowe’s Jane Shore dramatizes “A new Sonnet, containing the Lamentation of Shore’s Wife, who was sometimes Concubine to King Edward the Fourth; setting forth her great Fall, and withal her most miserable and wretched end”; all three ballads can be found in Thomas Deloney’s Garland of Good Will. Lillo’s play derives from “An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwell” and Dodsley’s play stems from an oft-reprinted “A Pleasant Ballad of King Henry II and the Miller of Mansfield.” Dodsley also adapted as a play “The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.” For these ballad attributions, see Friedman’s Ballad Revival, 112 and 165. Such play adaptations of ballads continued throughout the century. Ruth Perry in a private correspondence notes that John Home’s play Douglas (1756) is based on the ballad “Child Maurice” which can be found in Francis Child’s edited collection, no. 83 in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. For Steele, see The Tatler no. 95, November 17, 1709. For the oft-cited Boswell anecdote, see Pat Rogers, Literature and Popular Culture, 165. Carolyn Steedman discusses the use of ballad verse in eighteenth-century early childhood education in “Poetical Maids and Cooks Who Wrote,” 14–15. William C. Slattery, ed., The Richardson-Stinstra Correspondence and Stinstra’s Prefaces to Clarissa, 27–28. See “The Lovers Quarrel, or, Cupids Triumph being the Pleasant History of Fair Rosamond of Scotland, being daughter to the Lord Aundel whose Love was Obtained by the Valour of Tommy Pots who Conquered Lord Phenix . . .” Surveying Richardson’s correspondence subsequent to publishing Pamela, Peter Sabor describes his “mounting unease with his first novel, which he came to regard as unworthy of its successor”; see “Teaching Pamela and Clarissa through Richardson’s Correspondence,” in Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Samuel Richardson, 37. This was an unease, no doubt, that resulted in what Thomas Keymer has called Richardson’s “marathon of defensive revision,” as he sought to gentrify his servant heroine and her language, diminish the bawdy scenes and innuendoes, and “curb Pamela’s expressions of popular piety and gesticulation”; “Assorted Versions of Assaulted Virgins; or, Textual Instability and Teaching,” ibid., 29. Most of my examples come from ballad broadsides; however, the theme of morganatic courtship and marriage can also be found in popular ballads of the oral tradition, particularly those from Scotland, such as “The Laird O Drum” in which the upper-class suitor tells his brother that he is justified in marrying a lower-class woman by saying, “I’ve wedded a woman to work and win,/ An ye hae ane to spen.” In another version, the laboring-class wife asserts her equality with her lord: “ere seven years were at an end,/ They’d not ken your



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dust fae mine”; see ballad no. 236 in Francis Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The phrase is from Christmas, The Labr’ng Muses, 29. For the gender politics of these ballads, see Joy Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany, 142–143 and Katherine Binhammer’s The Seduction Narrative in Britian, 1747–1800, Chapter 4. On the ballads as political allegories, see Newman’s Ballad Collection, Lyric, and the Canon, 18–23. For possible romance antecedents to Pamela, see McKeon’s The Origins of the English Novel, 255–258. Several scholars interpret the Pamela/Anti-Pamela debate as it pertains to the history and representation of servant or laboring-class women. See my “‘A Sawce-box and Boldface Indeed’: Refiguring the Female Servant in the Pamela-Antipamela Debate,” Laura Rosenthal’s “Pamela’s Work” and Kristina Straub’s “Reading the Domestic Servant Woman in Pamela” in Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Samuel Richardson, 70–76 and Chapter 3 of her Domestic Affairs. “The West-Country Lawyer or, The Witty Maid’s Good Fortune.” “The Love Sports of Wanton Jemmy and Simpering Jenny.” See Tom Keymer’s “Introduction” to Pamela, xxvii. Joseph Andrews and Shamela, 317 and 319. In “Bite upon Bite: or the Miser Outwitted by the Country Lass,” a poor young woman needs to find a way to support a baby she’s conceived out of wedlock, so her mother tells her to name the baby “Maidenhead,” and then go into town to sell the child by this name. She successfully dupes a wealthy miser, who ends up being ordered by the town magistrate to care for the child. For this critical consensus of the novel’s politics, see Ian Watt’s Rise of the Novel, 166; Nancy Armstrong’s Desire and Domestic Fiction, chapter three; Michael McKeon’s Origins of the English Novel, Chapter 11. “Love in a Barn, or the Country Courtship” appears as early as 1670, but I am quoting the later ballad chapbook edition because of its availability, 3. Samuel Richardson, 18. See E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, 80. The Afterlife of Character, 1726–1825. Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor, Pamela in the Marketplace: Literary Controversy and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland, 5. See Catherine Ingrassia’s Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit, Chapter 5. See Brean Hammond’s discussion of the Scriblerian’s attack on “novelization” in Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670–1740, Chapter 7. Quoted in Claude Rawson, Satire and Sentiment, 1660–1830, 219.



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37. Christmas, The Lab’ring Muses, 29. Robert Dodsley, for example, can be seen to ride the coat tails of Duck’s royal patronage though his family was propertied and his father was a schoolmaster; see Harry M. Solomon’s The Rise of Robert Dodsley: Creating the New Age of Print, Chapter 1. 38. “An Account of the Author,” in Stephen Duck’s Poems on Several Occasions. 39. Quoted in Daniel J. Ennis, “The Making of the Poet Laureate, 1730,” 226. 40. In “The Patron as Poet Maker,” Betty Rizzo speculates that in Richardson’s publishing the posthumous poems of Mary Leapor we can detect his “ambition to be recognized as a natural genius on the order of Shakespeare, thus defeating Fielding” (254). Duck may have chosen the “gardener” metaphor to refer to the position first offered him under Queen Caroline’s patronage—a helpful note from the anonymous reader at Palgrave Macmillan. 41. Christmas shows that the revisions made to this official version of the poem, which Duck wrote under patronage, differ from the more radical implications of the earlier, pirated edition of his poetry, Lab’ring Muses, 79. 42. For a useful discussion of the racial politics of gratitude, as well as a compelling argument about the ways gratitude became one of the most eminent markers of racial difference, see George Boulukos, The Grateful Slave: The Emergence of Race in Eighteenth-Century British and American Culture, 20–32. 43. See Keymer’s “Introduction,” Joseph Andrews and Shamela, xi–xxiv, and Ingrassia’s introduction to Anti-Pamela and Shamela, ed. Catherine Ingrassia, 23–29. 44. The Champion 80 (May 17, 1740). 45. In his private correspondence Richardson showed that he could return the favor: “Poor Fielding! I could not help telling his sister, that I was equally surprised at and concerned for his continued lowness. Had your brother, said I, been born in a stable, or been a runner at a sponging-house, we should have thought him a genius, and wished he had had the advantage of a liberal education, and of being admitted into good company” (qtd. in Rawson 220). 46. Judith Frank convincingly reads Shamela and Joseph Andrews as Fielding’s attack on increasing laboring-class literacy; see Common Ground, Chapter 1. But Fielding later in life seems to have modulated his cynical attitudes toward Grub-street and its anarchic energies; see Lance Bertelsen’s Henry Fielding at Work, chapters 4 and 5.

Chapter 3 1. (London: R. Walker, 1750), repr. with intro. by Dianne Dugaw (Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Soc., 1989), 41.



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2. Richard Montagu published the 1st ed. of Davies’ Life in 1740 and a 2nd ed. in 1741; in 1740, another, possibly pirated, ed. claimed to be printed by C. Welch (Davies first enlists as “Christopher Welch”); all subsequent citations are to this edition (London: Printed for C. Welch in Chelsea, and Sold at the Printing Office in Baldwin’s Gardens, 1740) ECCO; and T. Cooper, who appears to have published many Opposition texts, issued an abridged version in 1742 and 1744. Likewise, The Female Soldier was made available through several publications. Besides Walker’s 46- and 187-page editions, shorter versions of her tale were published in 1750 in two middle-brow periodicals, the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Scots Magazine and through the last half of the eighteenth century, it appeared as a chapbook; see Dugaw, “Introduction,” vi–vii. 3. Kathleen Wilson, “Empire of Virtue: The Imperial Project and Hanoverian Culture c. 1720–1785,” 155. Also see Wilson’s Sense of the People, 137–205. 4. Dugaw, “Introduction,” v. Fraser Easton has authenticated the pension records of Hannah Snell, Christian Davies, and Mary Lacy in “Gender’s Two Bodies,” 144. 5. “‘Amazons and Military Maids,’” 489–502, and “‘Passing Women,’” 243. 6. “Balladry’s Female Warriors,” 1–20. 7. Harold Temperly quoted in Philip Woodfine, “The Anglo-Spanish War of 1739,” 186. 8. An Address to the Merchants of Great Britain, 18. 9. Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy, 224. 10. As Cristine Gerrard notes in Patriot Opposition to Walpole, “Even Pope turned from a peace poet [in which he lauded Anne’s Treaty of Utrecht] into a war poet” (9). 11. According to Gerald Newman, the attacks on the masculinity of Britain’s ruling elite escalated over the next decade, reaching its peak during the Seven Years’ War (80–84). I maintain that there is enough evidence from 1740–1750 to illustrate earlier concerns about the nation’s masculine military virtue. 12. Dugaw, Warrior Women, 180. 13. A Poem on the Glorious Atchievements [sic] of Admiral Vernon in the Spanish West Indies, 6 and 8. 14. James Thomson: Poetical Works, 422. Italics mine. 15. In addition to representations of plebeian women modeling or embodying masculinity, genteel women were used symbolically to rouse men’s martial valor. Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race, Chapter 3. 16. Beth H. Friedman-Romell makes precisely this point in her essay, “Breaking the Code,” 459–479. 17. The Making of the Modern Self, 43.



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18. We might view the feminization of female soldiers seen in Wahrman’s selection of graphic prints as part of a larger movement to impose the standards and domestic ideology of middle-class femininity on the laboring classes as a whole; see Wahrman, 22–31. 19. Reproduced in Dugaw’s Warrior Women, 53. 20. “The Breeches Part,” 244–258. 21. Print of Hannah Snell is reproduced in Dugaw, Warrior Women, 55. 22. For an alternative discussion of a mock-heroic use of a laboring-class female soldier, see Frank Felsenstein’s “Unravelling Ann Mills,” 206–216. 23. Female Masculinity, 46. Although the focus of Halberstam’s work is on late nineteenth- and twentieth-century examples of female masculinity, she also argues for the relevance of studying female masculinity in earlier historical periods. 24. The Female Soldier, 17 of 187-page version. 25. “Balladry’s,” 3. For an overview of women’s roles in the military during the eighteenth century, see Barton C. Hacker, “Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe,” 643–671. 26. Theresa Braunschneider compellingly argues that narratives of passing women attempt, albeit unsuccessfully, to “present both gender transgression and homoerotic liaisons as consistent with—even in the service of—what we might call normative heterosexuality” in “Acting the Lover,” 213. 27. See Colley’s explanation of the “fabric of the Tory appeal” to the plebeian classes in Chapter 6. Colley cautions us, however, not to take expressions of Tory solidarity with the laboring classes too literally and provides several examples of Tory leaders directly contradicting their protectionist rhetoric toward the laboring classes (147–151). In effect, she argues that being the people’s party was a convenient fiction: “dissident politicians needed, or believed they needed, reinforcement from outside Parliament” (152). 28. Whigs and Cities, 54–55. 29. Some Useful Observations on the Consequences of the Present War with Spain, 1, 18, 24. 30. See, for example, Isaac Kramnick’s Bolingbroke and His Circle. 31. The Conduct of His Grace The D——ke of Ar——le for the Four Last Years Review’d, 34. 32. Patriot Opposition leader Aaron Hill in his The Fanciad (1743) similarly underscored his support for the current war with Spain by memorializing the Duke of Marlborough’s exploits in the War of the Spanish Succession. 33. Quoted in H. W. Richmond, The Navy in the War of 1739–48, 3:251. 34. In Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random (1748), another fictional rendering of the War with Spain, Smollett likewise emphasizes the egregious misdirection of the war rather than the occasion of war itself. For a discussion of this aspect of Smollett’s work, see David McNeil’s The 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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40. 41.

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Grotesque Depiction of War and the Military in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction, 92. Quoted in Jeremy Black, Britain as a Military Power, 1688–1815, 103–104. “The Domestic Face of the Military-Fiscal State: Government and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain,”108–109. The memoir also implies that the nobility in opposition to the current Walpole regime were better patrons to Davies in 1714 than were the more commercially minded Whigs and Tories of that era. For example, Queen Anne tells the earl of Oxford to give Davies an extra £50, yet Oxford, one of the founders of the South Sea Company, never carries the order through. Davies has to petition the queen again, who then tells Sir William Wyndham to provide Davies with the money. He does so expediently (232). Wyndham, respected leader of the Tory party during Walpole’s reign, had just died in 1740, the year Davies’ memoir was published. According to Bob Harris’ Politics and the Nation, after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle several Tory and Opposition Whig politicians proposed the development of Britain’s fishing industry to help fight unemployment and poverty amongst the demobilized troops and to bolster the domestic economy. Although the song implies that the fishing industry will supersede the need for colonial acquisition, these schemes also provided a way to keep the British navy staffed and in training for future conflicts at sea, particularly with France (253–266). Charlotte Sussman has noted that representations of veterans shift from a depiction of “sexualized roaming” earlier in the century, as in texts like The Recruiting Officer, to one of “tragic and irremediable dislocation” at the end of the century. I am grateful for her permission to read and cite her unpublished essay, “The Veteran’s Tale: War, Mobile Populations, and National Identity.” In Samuel Johnson, ed. Donald Greene, 549–550. For an excellent discussion of the “myth of the British nation as fundamentally opposed to slavery,” see Nicholas Hudson, “‘Britons Never Will be Slaves,’” 559–576.

Chapter 4 1. Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker: An Authoritative Text, Contemporary Responses, Criticism, ed. James L. Thorson (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983), 8. All further parenthetical citations to the novel will be to this edition. 2. See Janet Sorenson’s Grammar of Empire in Eighteenth-Century British Writing, 110–112. Eric Rothstein discusses satiric graphic prints depicting Smollett according to conventional anti-Scots imagery, namely as “bare buttock[ed]” in “Scotophilia and Humphry Clinker: The Politics of Beggary, Bugs, and Buttocks,” 64–65. 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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3. Susan Jacobsen, for example, reads the ending of the novel as “bitter—though ultimately feeble and essentially nostalgic” (73). John Sekora’s view is representative of the “escapist” school of thought, arguing that Smollett depicts not an “alternative society” but the “values of an earlier society—one where life was simpler and where order, station, and identity were more firmly established and respected” (Luxury 286). 4. Tim Prior, for example, sketches the novel’s thematic arc according to Bramble’s struggle to achieve the impenetrable, classical body in “Lydia Melford and the Role of the Classical Body in Smollett’s Humphry Clinker,” 501. 5. Lismahago says, “there is a continual circulation, like that of the blood in the human body, and England is the heart, to which all the streams which it distributes are refunded and returned: nay, in consequence of that luxury which our connexion with England hath greatly encouraged, if not introduced, all the produce of our lands, and all the profits of our trade, are engrossed by the natives of South-Britain” (257). 6. I disagree here with Prior’s conclusion that Matt learns over the course of the novel to model himself after Lydia’s classical body; the novel instead reveals Matt’s gradual acceptance of his own grotesque nature as he is guided by Clinker. 7. Robin Ganev provides a fascinating study of eighteenth-century popular ballads in which rural workers are depicted as having greater sexual health and reproductivity than wealthier people who lived in cities. She shows that such assumptions intensify in the last half of the century in nonfictional tracts on population, management of the poor, and tirades against urban luxury (“Milkmaids, Ploughmen, and Sex in Eighteenth-Century Britain” 42–48). 8. Weed provides another illustration of men saving each other when Lismahago is unable to save Tabitha from drowning, and Jery’s servant must assist. But again, rather than view this as evidence that “men must rescue each other from the excesses of England’s corrupt and effeminate culture in order to keep each other healthy, balanced, under control, and masculine” (628), it is specifically laboring-class masculinity that is portrayed as redemptive. 9. Novel Relations, 300. For a related reading of Adam Smith’s use of the agrarian ideal, see Chapter 4 of Catherine Labio’s Origins and the Enlightenment: Aesthetic Epistemology from Descartes to Kant. 10. Zomchick is one of the earliest critics to notice Clinker’s complexity in this regard. He states that “Clinker stands as a near-perfect amalgam of the old and the new . . . He is deferential, but there are also hints of radical Christian equality in his Methodism” (182). 11. Quoted in J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1660–1832, 288 and 290. 12. Zomchick argues that the novel “represses the strident voice of an emergent culture—as embodied in the mob” (175). 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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13. Michael Rosenblum, detecting a “Tory politics of containment,” has made a similar observation about this aspect of the novel: the influx of colonial profits is acceptable as long as they go to the landed estates rather than the city (“Smollett’s Humphry Clinker” 190). 14. See James P. Carson, “Britons, ‘Hottentots,’ Plantation Slavery, and Tobias Smollett,” 479. 15. For an illuminating study of the ways Smollett ameliorates anxieties about empire expansion through the domestic tour of the British Isles, see Brett C. McInelly, “Domestic and Colonial Space in Humphry Clinker.” 16. For Rothstein, Smollett displaces these Scotophobic stereotypes onto Clinker in order to deconstruct their negative associations and replace them with alternate values such as “the egalitarian state of being human” or the need for charity and compassion for the unfortunate (“Scotophilia and Humphry Clinker,” 67). 17. Other grotesque portraits include Tabitha who with her maid Win are the two Welsh family members that are also most rooted in Welsh culture. Moira Dearnley, for example, has noted that Tabitha’s capitalist endeavors adhere to the stock characteristic of Welsh women being shrewd businesswomen (Distant Fields: Eighteenth-Century Fictions of Wales, 89). 18. Joanne Lewis, “Death and the Comic Marriage: Lismahago in Harlequin Skeleton,” 405–417. For an excellent overview and analysis of the cultural politics of pantomime in the eighteenth century, see John O’Brien’s Harlequin Britain: Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690–1760. 19. Evan Gottlieb persuasively argues that rather than illustrate an immediate and uncontrolled sympathy between Bramble and Lismahago, the novel depicts not only the active work it takes for Bramble to be reconciled to the alternative points of view that Lismahago (and the Scottish as a whole) presents, but also that Bramble is able to do so without the loss of his essential identity—he retains several differences of opinion about the situation of the Scots despite Lismahago’s disputatious efforts (“‘Fools of Prejudice’” 91). 20. I am using Michael McKeon’s definition of aristocratic ideology (Origins of the English Novel 131–133). 21. Those who argue that the novel’s depiction of British nationalism reveals an Anglocentric bias include Debra Leissner, “Smollett Colonizes Scotland,” Janet Sorenson, Grammar of Empire, 119–137, and Thomas R. Preston, “Contrary Scriptings,” 198–216. My argument concurs with those scholars who detect greater textual evidence for British cultural heterogeneity, such as Alfred Lutz, “Representing Scotland in Roderick Random and Humphry Clinker”; Michael Murphy, “Marriage as a Metaphor for the Anglo-Scottish Parliamentary Union of 1707”; Tom Keymer, “Smollett’s Scotlands”; and Robert Mayer, “History, Humphry Clinker, and the Novel.” 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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22.

23.

24.

25.

Several studies focus on the captivity narrative of Lismahago and generally conclude that Smollett rejects the racial mixing and loss of British masculinity brought on by colonization. Charlotte Sussman’s conclusion that the novel acknowledges but finally disavows cultural mixing through a regulation of consumption has been very influential; see her “Lismahago’s Captivity,” 597–618 and Chapter 3 of Consuming Anxieties. See also Tara Ghoshal Wallace, “‘About Savages and the Awfulness of America,’” and James E. Evans, “‘An Honest Scar Received in the Service of My Country.’” This view contrasts with Janet Sorenson’s designation of Win’s hybrid language as a “linguistic no man’s land” that locates the maidservant “outside of a literate British national identity” (Grammar of Empire 133). Nicholas D. Smith argues that food in the novel functions as an important satiric tool to bolster English nationalism against the French, in effect advocating a kind of “culinary patriotism” (416), yet Smith neglects to discuss “the culinary cosmopolitanism” portrayed by Jack Wilson and by the Bramble family’s experience of Scottish food, some of which they come to appreciate (“‘The Muses O’lio’” 416). Charlotte Sussman also argues that the novel works through issues of interculturation through food: “to avoid becoming the other, one must simply avoid eating the other” (Consuming Anxieties, 84). Writing about Wales in the eighteenth century, R. Paul Evans notes that it is not until 1789 that we can detect a large-scale Celtic revival (“Mythology and Tradition” 151). Reprinted in Lionel Kelly, ed., Tobias Smollett: The Critical Heritage, 207.

Chapter 5 1. William Godwin, Caleb Williams or Things as They Are, ed. Maurice Hindle, 352. All further in-text citations to the novel and its appended materials, such as the original ending, Godwin’s letter to Gerrald, and his description of his writing process, are from this edition. 2. See Butler, “Godwin, Burke, and Caleb Williams” and Jane Austen and the War of Ideas; James T. Boulton, The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke; and David McCracken, “Godwin’s Caleb Williams: A Fictional Rebuttal of Burke.” 3. See Haywood’s The Revolution in Popular Literature. For Fisher, Godwin’s political and fictional writings illustrate that the moral economy “is violent at the bottom and corrupt at the top” (“The Crowd and the Public in Godwin’s Caleb Williams ” 48). I will also be engaging the work of Andrew McCann, Cultural Politics in the 1790’s: Literature,



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5. 6.

7.

8.

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Radicalism and the Public Sphere; Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr., “‘A Story to Be Hastily Gobbled Up’”; and Nicolle Jordan, “The Promise and Frustration of Plebeian Public Opinion in Caleb Williams.” Gary Handwerk, “Of Caleb’s Guilt and Godwin’s Truth,” 940. Other critics who see Godwin’s novels departing from Political Justice and anticipating later theoretical positions include Marilyn Butler and Pamela Clemit, The Godwinian Novel, 66. See “Introduction” by Handwerk and Markley, eds., Caleb Williams, 29. In “Rhetoric, History, Rebellion: Caleb Williams and the Subversion of Eighteenth-Century Fiction,” Wehrs was the first to posit Caleb as a “counter-hegemonic” reader of Falkland’s history, which resembles “official” narratives reproduced by Richardson, Fielding, Goldsmith and Burney (499–500). Wehrs argues that Godwin in the end questions the “moral consequences” of subverting this narrative “for the sake of abstract ‘truth’” and renders the power of an “inherited worldview,” 509–510. Kristen Leaver similarly sees both Caleb and Falkland each as “a slave to the literary construction of his character,” in “Pursuing Conversations,” 596. Most recently, David S. Hogsette, in his “Textual Surveillance, Social Codes, and Sublime Voices” reads both Caleb and Falkland as failed critical readers of romances who are “enslaved to ancient aristocratic codes” (par. 6); the published ending confirms Caleb as a reader who is unable to break out of these codes. G. D. Kelly speculates that Caleb in the revised ending most closely exhibits the heroic discourse of Gerrald during his court defense, but I am struck by the closer rhetorical parallels between Hawkins and Gerrald, whose tragic fate Godwin witnessed as he wrote the novel, if we accept his chronology of the composition of the novel (English Jacobin Novel 196–197). In the following discussion in which I illustrate the productive force of emotion in Caleb’s transition to political awareness, I am indebted to Chris Jones’ persuasive argument that shows Godwin’s increasing belief in the radical possibilities of passionate feeling; see his Radical Sensibility: Literature and Ideas in the 1790’s. Jones quotes from one of Godwin’s later revisions to the Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, in which Godwin states, “Virtue, sincerity, justice and all those principles which are begotten and cherished in us by a due exercise of reason will never be very strenuously espoused till they are ardently loved,” 97. I posit that the productive role of feeling in Caleb Williams shows Godwin exploring these ideas in his fiction before he later codified them in his theoretical writings. See most notably Robert Corber, “Representing the ‘Unspeakable.’” While Corber’s reading of the novel in the context of the homophobic climate of the late eighteenth century highlights definitively the homoerotics of Falkland and Caleb’s relationship, I do not share his



N ot e s

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

N ot e s perception of Godwin as using homophobia to discredit aristocratic masculinity. Such a reading asks us to accept Tyrell’s homophobic and xenophobic comments about Falkland as creditable. Further, Godwin’s cosmopolitanism seems to work against a tidy understanding of the Continent as the locus of sexual deviance. In contrast to Corber’s argument, I share Eric Daffron’s view of Caleb’s prying as having subversive sexual undertones. In his “‘Magnetical Sympathy’” Daffron reads the sodomitical resonances during this part of the novel as Caleb employing “tactics that can be read variously as radical, criminal, and sexual,” 226. Caroline Reitz, “Bad Cop/Good Cop,” 181. Reitz’ essay provides a persuasive rebuttal to Ian Ousby’s argument that through representing Caleb as a detective, Godwin indicts both Caleb and the Pitt administration for spying activities. See his “‘My Servant Caleb.’” In the following discussion, I am offering a significant revision of those interpretations that stress Godwin’s portrayal of love in the novel as inherently delusive and politically obfuscating. For examples of such readings see Alex Gold, “It’s Only Love” and Dorothea Von Mücke, “‘To Love a Murderer.’” I am indebted for this phrase to Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic” in which she theorizes the relationship between the erotic and political empowerment. See Ronald Paulson’s Representations of Revolution, 231–236 and Ian Ousby’s “‘My Servant Caleb,’” 47–56. For a discussion of Godwin’s antipathy to community or political organizations, see Fisher, “The Crowd and the Public in Godwin’s Caleb Williams,” 61–63 and McCann’s Cultural Politics in the 1790’s, 59–61. I share Nicolle Jordan’s insight that the novel’s representation of the public sphere is more optimistic about plebeian participation than previous scholarship suggests; however, I depart from her reading of the ending, in which she interprets Caleb as a failed political participant and concludes that Godwin thereby shows the populace as ill-equipped from social reform. She writes, “this denouement, with its simultaneous self-contempt and rapt genuflection to rank, signals how far the narrative has strayed from its initial enthusiasm for collective and populist political engagement” (266). Though I am challenging this well-accepted view of Godwin’s beliefs, encapsulated here by Fraser Easton, I have found Easton’s main argument delineating Fanny’s deployment of plebeian resistance in Mansfield Park to be a helpful model of analysis for this chapter; see his “The Political Economy of Mansfield Park.” I depart here from Sullivan’s claim that “all of the readers in the world of the narrative have accepted false appearances, have taken pamphlets and handbills for representations of fact,” 334. In both representations of the plebeian public sphere, readers learn to question what they read.



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18. In Hannah More’s Village Politics, for example, Jack states, “These poor French fellows used to be the merriest dogs in the world; but since equality come in, I don’t believe a Frenchman has ever laughed,” 19. 19. Gerrald states, “When I was taken up I asked for the warrant, but it was refused. My temper, I trust, is mild and peaceful, though in England had a similar process taken place, the officer might have paid for his irregular conduct with the forfeiture of his life” (The Defence of Joseph Gerrald, 4). 20. David Collings offers an erudite analysis of Godwin’s acceptance of the mediated status of truth in both his theoretical and fictional writings; see his “The Romance of the Impossible.” 21. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 3rd ed. (London: Arden, 1999), 1.2.437–438. 22. For readings of the ending that highlight Godwin’s turn to sympathy as the basis for moral action, see Mitzi Meyers, “Godwin’s Changing Conception of Caleb Williams”; Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, 66–67; and Pamela Clemit, The Godwinian Novel, 66. John Bender, on the other hand, compellingly delineates the hierarchical power relations inherent in Caleb’s overtures of sympathy; see his “Impersonal Violence.” 23. See also Kristen Leaver’s “Pursuing Conversations,” 590; Pamela Clemit’s The Godwinian Novel, 68; and Tilottama Rajan’s “Wollstonecraft and Godwin,” 249.

Epilogue 1. The Heart of Midlothian, ed. Claire Lamont (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 374. 2. “The Emptiness at The Heart of Midlothian: Nation, Narration, and Population.” Although Trumpener does not discuss The Heart of Midlothian at length, the novel adds further evidence of a pattern she sees in bardic nationalism as a whole: “a lasting source of anti-imperialist inspiration, it also helps ensure that cultural nationalism (as long as it separates cultural expression from political sovereignty) can be contained within an imperial framework” (xiii). 3. See Paula McDowell, “‘The Manufacture and Lingua-facture of Ballad-Making’: Broadside Ballads in Long Eighteenth-Century Ballad Discourse,” 155. 4. Quoted in Paul Thomas Murphy, Toward a Working-Class Canon: Literary Criticism in British Working-Class Periodicals, 1816–1858, 67. 5. “Letter to Mrs. Montague,” in Ann Yearsley, Poems on Several Occasions (London, 1785). 6. Ann Yearsley, Poems on Various Subjects (London, 1787), xv. ECCO. 7. See Frank Felsenstein, “Ann Yearsley and the Politics of Patronage, The Thorp Archive: Part One,” 373–374. Donna Landry also notes 10.1057/9780230111875 - The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction, Scarlet Bowen


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8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

the ways Yearsley is forced to sustain relationships and discourses of patronage, Muses of Resistance, 155 and 165. The Autobiography of Francis Place (1771–1854), 15. Thomas Paine, Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, on the Following Interesting Subjects, (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1776), 9. ECCO. The Francis Place anecdote is provided in Jonathan Rose’s The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 62–63. See also Ian Haywood’s The Revolution in Popular Literature: Print, Politics and the People, 1790–1860. Ian Dyck, William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture, 6. See also David Collings’ discussion of Cobbett in Monstrous Society: Reciprocity, Discipline, and the Political Uncanny, c. 1780–1848, 241–250. Quoted in the introduction of John Mullan and Christopher Reid, eds. Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection, 12. For further discussion of the persistence of customary culture in nineteenthcentury British ballads and chapbooks, see Patrick Joyce’s Visions of the People, chapter 10.



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Addison, Joseph 3–4, 10, 12–14, 56–58, 67, 153, 177n28 The Algerine Captive 163–164 Ancien regime culture 3; and gender roles 85 Anderson, Patricia 176n15 Anglo-Spanish War 80, 82–85, 91–96 anglocentricism 104–10, 122, 127–28, 191n21 antiquarianism 164–166 anti-Pamelists 60, 62, 65, 142 Argyll, 2nd Duke of (John Campbell) 89, 92, 93, 97, 165 Armstrong, Nancy 21, 59, 185n28 Asiento 82, 100 Astell, Mary 2 Austen, Jane 5, 20, 137 Backscheider, Paula 16, 26, 29, 33, 44, 176n15, 182n40 ballads 5, 7, 11, 13–14, 17, 20, 21, 25, 29, 54, 129, 148, 153; ballad opera 57, 60; and dramatic adaptations 11; and female warrior motif 79–81, 83–84; and the gothic novel 163–164; morganatic ballads 184n18; and Pamela 12–14, 55–67; and Heart of Midlothian 165; and Francis Place 170; and South Sea Bubble 29; individual ballads: “Admiral

Hosier’s Ghost” 85; “Chevy Chase” 2, 10, 13, 56–57, 183n12; “Children of the Wood” 13, 163–164; “The Crafty Chambermaid” 66; “The Knitter’s Job” 61; “Love in a Barn” 63, 65; “North Country Miller Outwitted” 59, 65; “True Love Exalted” 59, 62; “William and Margaret” 13, (see also Addison and antiquarianism) Bancks, John 70 Barry, Jonathan 17 Beggar’s Opera 11, 36, 57, 58, 60 Behn, Aphra 1, 4–6 Bender, John 195n22 Bertelsen, Lance 8, 183n11, 186n46 Binhammer, Katherine 185n20 Black, Jeremy 189n35 Black, Scott 175n3, 175n4 “The Blacksmith Lets his Iron Grow Cold” 116 Boggs, Arthur W. 129 Boswell, James 58 Boulton, James T. 192n2 Boulukos, George 176n19, 186n42 Bourdieu, Pierre: In Other Words 4; Field of Cultural Production 6, 20, 179n55 Braunschneider, Theresa 188n26 Brewer, David 66 Brewer, John 116, 124



Index

Index

Britannia, iconography 84, 91, 98, 101 broadsides 7, 21, 57–60, 104, 170, 174, 183n10, 184n18 Brown, Laura 49–50 Burke, Edmund 136, 138, 142, 159, 192n2 Burke, Peter 179n53 Burney, Frances 4–5, 176n12, 193n6 Butler, Marilyn 136, 192n2, 193n4 captivity narrative 129, 130, 192n21 Carson, James P. 191n14 Castle Rackrent (Edgeworth) 142–143 Castle, Terry 46, 48 Celtic revival 105, 131 Centlivre, Susanna 3 Chaber, Lois 182n36 chapbooks 15, 21, 58, 170–172; Cheap Repository Tracts 170; History of Dick Whittington and His Cat 171; The Lovers Quarrel, or … Pleasant History of Fair Rosamond of Scotland [and] the Valour of Tommy Potts … 58–59; Shepherd of Salisbury Plain 171 Christie, Ian 121 Christmas, William 69, 70, 71, 75 178n49, 186n41 A Christmas Carol (Dickens) 173–174 Cibber, Colley 55, 75–76 Clark, Anna 8 Clark, J. C. D. 3, 128 classical 2, 11, 13, 16, 58, 67, 77, 107, 109, 151, 190n4, 190n6 Clemit, Pamela 159, 193n4, 195n22, 195n23 Cobbett, William 170–171 Colley, Linda 91, 188n27 Collings, David 195n20, 196n11 Colonialism and British empire 4,

6, 82; and Defoe 25, 43–44, 49, 52, 181n33; in female soldier narratives 52, 83–84, 90, 100, 189n38; and Scott 165; and Smollett 106, 114, 119–123 passim 129, 132–133, 191n13 Continental romance 4, 6, 9, 15, 54, 60, 84, 128, 136–140, 147–148, 153, 155–161 176n18 Corber, Robert 193n9 country dances 5, 130, 131, 132, 165, 173 Coventry, Frances 15 crime: and business 36–39; and Jack Sheppard 147, 149, 153, 179n3; and Jonathan Wild 147, 149, 153; and mercantilism 40–42 criminal biography 25, 137, 147–150, 156; The Last Dying Speech, Confession, … of Thomas Paine 159 “Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela” 1 Cross-dressing, politics of 85, 86, 187n16; women’s 81, 83 Cultural patriotism 13, 54, 57, 69 Cultural syncretism 128, 129–131 Custom: and containment of nonwestern culture 131; customary culture 138, 148, 160, 164, 196n12; customary social relations 2, 5, 18, 60, 63, 114, 167, 169, 172–173; definition 1–3, 64; during American and French Revolutions 20, 137, 163, 166, 168; dynamic nature of 3–4, 122, 151, 174; as habitus 4; and popular culture 20, 131, 165; and popular radicalism 104;



216

(see also Thompson, E.P.); rebellion in defense of 3, 63, 115, 152, 168; women writers’ treatment of 2, 5 Daffron, Eric 194n9 David Copperfield (Dickens) 163, 172–173 Davies, Christian 3, 9; The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies 81: and female masculinity 84–91; and gender roles 81, 85–86; and homoeroticism or sexuality 90–91; and nationalism 82, 93–101; and populism 92; veterans 81, 97 (see also ballads, female warrior motif) Davis, Lennard 20 Dearnley, Moira 191n17 “Defence (sic) of Joseph Gerrald” 136, 195n19 Defoe, Daniel: and Caleb Williams 137, 147; and Christmas Carol 173; contemporary reception of his works 15–16; economic thought 25–27; itemizing of material goods 94; and social hybridity 9, 16, 30 Works: “The Anatomy of Exchange Alley” 37–38; Colonel Jack 179n1; Complete English Tradesman, (Defoe) 26, 36, 38, 39, 43, 45; The Manufacturer 26, 43, 50, 51; Moll Flanders 9, 15, 16; and colonialism 43–44; and crime 36–43; and mercantilism 40–44; and paternalist moral economy 27–28, 29–30; seduction or marriage and stockjobbing 28–30, 32–36; and social hybridity 30–31; women’s sexual labor 28–29,

217

35; Robinson Crusoe 9, 14, 15, 23, 24, 80; Roxana 25; and foreign imports 49–52; and homoeroticism 46–48; and mercantilism 44, 49–52; and sexual labor 50; and social hybridity 41, 48–49; and women as tradeswomen 45–46; “Trade to India Critically and Calmly Consider’d” 50 Dickens, Charles 172–174 Dijkstra, Bram 180n4 The Distrest [Distressed] Poet (Hogarth) 12 Dodsley, Robert 11, 18, 58, 69, 70, 72, 73, 186n37 Donald, Diana 104 Duck, Stephen 11, 18, 55, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 167, 172, 183, 186 Dugaw, Dianne 19, 29, 81, 83, 86, 88, 178n49, 187n2 Dunciad (Pope) 16, 54 Dyck, Ian 170–171 Earle, Peter 8, 30 East India 50–51, 95, 80, 82, 95–96, 106, 119, 120, 182n45 Easton, Fraser 86, 187n4, 194n16 economic individualism 3, 24, 25, 39 enclosure 3, 105, 113, 119, 120, 170 Engels, Friedrich 173 Ennis, Daniel 75 “The Enraged Musician” (Hogarth) 11–12, 54 Evans, James E. 192n21 Evans, R. Paul 192n24 fairground 5, 109 Faller, Lincoln 179n3 Felsenstein, Frank 188n22, 195n7



Index

Index

female masculinity 46–47, 85–91 female warrior trope in ballads 81, 84, 101; in graphic prints 85–86 Fergus, Jan 20, 176n12, 178n39 Fielding, Henry 12, 14, 55, 62, 75, 76, 137, 186n40, 186n45, 186n46 Fisher, Carl 136, 192n3, 194n14 Flint, Christopher 20 Frank, Judith 177n27, 113, 119, 120, 186n46, “Frenchman at Market” 124, 126 free-market economy 17, 24–26, 28, 40, 44, 105, 114, 118–120, 133, 173–174 free-wage labor 26–27 Friedli, Lynn 81 Friedman, Albert 57, 67, 177n28, 183n12 Friedman–Romell, Beth 187n16 Fulford, Tim 183n4 Gabbard, Christopher 45, 46, 182n39 Ganev, Robin 190n7 Gelbart, Matthew 183n5 gender roles: ancien regime of gender 85; aristocratic men 83, 93, 96; and consumerism 49–52, 112; leisure-class women 5, 31, 81, 86; plebeian or laboring women 31, 59–67, 81, 86, 188n18; women as camp followers 81, 88, 94; (see also marriage and sexuality) gentry 7, 8, 16, 17; and Defoe 27, 30; and Hannah Snell 101; and Richardson 55, 67, 68, 69, 73, 74; and Smollett 104, 106–9, 111–114, 119, 121, 130, 132, 133 Gerrard, Christine 54, 183n3, 187n10 Gildon, Charles 14–15

Godwin, William 5, 135–136, 38, 140, 141, 152, 158, 160, 166, 170–171; and writing of Caleb Williams 137, 158 Works: Caleb Williams, criminal or rogue narrative 147–149, 153–154; and homoeroticism 141–143; plebeian publics 150–152, 157; plebeian resistance 140–147, 154–155; politics of master–servant relationship 138–147; reworking earlier novels 137; romance and absorptive reading 139, 155–156; subversion of romance/ rogue genres 157–161; Enquiry Concerning Political Justice 136, 145, 150, 193n8 Gold, Alex 194n11 Goldsmith, Oliver 128, 183n8 Gottlieb, Evan 191n19 Griffin, Emma 17, 178n52 grotesque 68, 107–8, 111, 122–124, 127–129, 131–133, 165, 191n17 Habermas, Jurgen 10 Hacker, Barton C. 188n25 Hadfield, Andrew 2 Haitian Revolution 140 Halberstam, Judith 86 Hammond, Brean 185n35 Handwerk, Gary 193n4, 193n5 Harlequin 122, 127, 191n18 Harris, Bob 189n38 Harris, Jocelyn 64, 72 Harris, Tim 17 Haywood, Eliza 4–6, 61, 66, 68 Haywood, Ian 136, 148, 150, 196n10 Heart of Midlothian (Scott) 164, 195n2; contrast with Humphry Clinker 165 Hentzi, Gary 181n25 Hermsprong 166



218

Heydt-Stevenson Jillian 5 Hill, Aaron 12, 13, 14, 53, 54, 56, 58, 60, 76, 183n3 Hill, Bridget 31, 180n16 Hogarth, William 11–12, 15, 18, 54, 55, 76, 89 Hogsette, David S. 193n6 Homer 2, 10, 57, 67 homoeroticism 46, 48, 90–91, 141–147, 182n43, 188n26 Howson, Gerald 16 Hudson, Nicholas 5–6, 189n41 Hunt, Margaret 8 Hunter, J. Paul 1, 21, 175n1 incest 33, 34, 181n22 indigenous people 52, 100 “Industry and Idleness” (Hogarth) 15 Ingrassia, Catherine 68, 75 Ireland 92, 131–132, 135, 150, 164 Jacobinism 136, 141, 143–144, 146, 148, 152, 159, 166, 170 Jacobite Rebellion (1745) 85, 89 Jacobsen, Susan 106, 190n3 Jamaica 120 Johnson, Samuel 2, 100 Jones, Chris 193n8 Jordan, Nicolle 193n3, 194n15 Joyce, Patrick 196n12 Justice, George 5, 176n13 Kelly, G. D. 193n7 Kelly, Lionel 192n25 Keymer, Thomas 67, 75, 132, 184n17, 191n21 Kibbie, Anne Louise 33, 34, 182n38 Kramnick, Isaac 188n30 Labio, Catherine 176n11, 190n9 Landry, Donna 167, 178n49, 183n6, 195n7 Laslett, Peter 3 Latour, Bruno 2

219

Leaver, Kristen 193n6, 195n23 Leissner, Debra 191n21 Lewis, Joanne 191n18 Life and Adventures of Matthew Bishop 93 Lillo, George 11, 58 Linebaugh, Peter 179n3 literary marketplace 11, 53, 55, 67–77, 183n6 London Corresponding Society, (L.C.S.) 135, 155, 160 Lorde, Audre 149, 194n12 Lutz, Alfred 191n21 MacDermott, Kathy 16, 55 Mander, Jenny 2 Mandeville, Bernard 90 Manley, Delariviere 4, 6, 61, 66 March to Finchley (Hogarth) 89 marriage: plebeian customs 31, 35, 47; and business 32–36, 120; rejection of 100; allegory for cultural unity 132–133 (See gender roles and sexuality) Markley, A. A. 193n5 Marlborough, Duke of (John Churchill) 81, 91, 188n32 Marriage of Heaven and Hell 145 Marshall, Peter 137, 159 Marx, Karl 173 mass culture 4, 5, 176n15 Mayer, Robert 178n44, 191n21 McCann, Andrew 148, 159, 192n3, 194n14 McCracken, David 192n2 McDowell, Paula 20, 165, 183n10 McKeon, Michael 7, 176n18, 185n21, 185n28, 191n20, McInelly, Brett C. 191n15 McNeil, David 188n34 Methodism 116, 129, 130, 190n10 mercantilism 24, 25, 26, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 50, 51, 52, 179n2 Meyers, Mitzi 195n22



Index

Index

Miamis 130 middling sort 7–9, 24; and Defoe 23, 30, 35, 36; and Richardson 63; and Smollett 104–7 Montagu, Lady Mary 16 Moore, Lisa 182n43 moral economy 7, 18, 23–27, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51–52, 103, 121, 141, 179n2, 192n3 More, Hannah 136, 159, 166–168, 170–171, 195n18, Moretti, Franco 7 “Mr. Fantom, the New Fashioned Philosopher, and His Man William” (More) 136 Mücke, Dorothea Von 194n11 Mulcaire, Terry 41 Mullan, John 179n53, 196n12 Murphy, Michael 191n21 Murphy, Paul Thomas 195n4 neoclassical 10, 14, 57, 72, 75–76, 166, 183n12 Newman, Gerald 17, 100, 101, 104, 131, 187n11 Newman, Steve 177n28, 185n20 Nine Years’ War 83, 84 Nixon, Cheryl 1 Novak, Maximillian 25, 27, 37 novel: and aristocracy 6; associations with ephemeral print culture 12–17, 163–164; audience for 15–16, 163, 172, 177n39; challenging modernity of 175n3, 175n4; definition 175n2; in literary marketplace 20–21, 174; and laboring-class culture and identity 3, 15, 17; and the middle class 3, 6, 7, 9, 68; modernity of 2–3, 20–21; Whig and Tory histories of 6 novelty: general 1, 3, 18; and novels 4–5, 7, 18, 21, 174, 174n1, 175n4, 176n11

O’Brien, John 191n18 Ossian controversy 165 Ousby, Ian 194n10, 194n13 Paine, Thomas 140, 148, 159, 163, 166, 169 pantomime 122, 127, 149, 183n11, 191n18 Paster, Gail Kern 111 pastoral 103, 107, 155, 165 patrician 1–2, 6, 7, 16, 19, 20, 73, 104; and Defoe 27–28, 29–30; and Godwin 136, 139, 157–161; and Richardson 63–65, 73–74; and Smollett 105–113, 118–122, 132–133 Patriot Opposition 6, 11, 17, 18, 54, 71, 73, 76, 80, 82–86, 89, 91, 92, 94–97 Patronage: literary 55, 67–75, 186n37, 186n40 Paulson, Ronald 9, 194n13 perquisites 114–115, 118, 168, 173 Perry, Ruth 57, 112, 184 Phillips, Edward 100 picaresque 32, 108, 109, 147, 156 Pitt, William 104, 106, 107, 142, 160, 194 Place, Francis 168–170 plebeian: deference 65, 73, 172; definition 8; and Defoe 24, 30, 31, 35, 39; forms of resistance 3, 63, 115, 152, 168; and Hogarth 11–12; and military nationalism 79–101; passim; plebeian poets 11, 18, 59, 67, 69, 71, 74; public sphere 10, 138, 151–152, 157, 194n17; relation to middling sort 9; (see also gender roles, homoeroticism, marriage, and sexuality) poor houses 118 Pollak, Ellen 34, 181n22



220

“Poor Man Loaded with Mischief” 124–125 Pope, Alexander 16, 54, 72, 75, 111, 187n10 popular culture: Ancients’ satire of 10; and drama 11; and elite culture 17; forms of 5; locus of customary values 6, 17, 21; Moderns’ embrace of 10; and nationalism 11–12; and novels 12–16, 17–19; as a way to express and contain cultural difference 131–133; and women writers 5; (see also ballads, broadsides, chapbooks, country dances, fairground) popular radicalism 104, 116, 169 Preston, Michael 15 Preston, Thomas R. 191n21 Prior, Tim 113, 190n4 prostitution 28, 38, 47–50, 76 public sphere 9–10, 111, 136, 138, 148 (see also plebeian public sphere) Rabelaisian 109 Radicalism (Jacobinism) 4, 6, 17, 135–138, 141, 145–148, 150, 152, 154–155, 159–160, 166, 169–170 Rajan, Tilottama 158, 160, 195n23 Ralph, James 11 Rawson, Claude 69, 186n45 Reid, Christopher 179n53, 196n12 Reitz, Caroline 142 Reliques of Ancient Poetry 165 Richardson, Samuel 1, 5, 68–69; childhood reading of chapbooks 58; contemporary reception of as a writer 16; and Scriblerians 67; writing of Pamela 56 Works: Pamela: and Caleb Williams 137–142; and

221

cultural patriotism 54–55; and David Copperfield 172; and narratives of female soldiers 79, 80, 101; and plebian poets 55–56, 68–76; and rustic language 12–14; Pamela Vogue 12, 60, 67, 75–76; (See ballads and Pamela) Richetti, John 16–17 Richmond, H. W. 95, 188n33 Rizzo, Betty 74, 186n40 Robbins, Bruce 68, 177n27 Rogers, Nicolas 91 Rogers, Pat 9, 15, 16, 86, 180n21 Rogue narrative 137–138, 147, 153 Rose, Jonathan 171–172 Rosenblum, Michael 191n13 Rosenthal, Laura 185n22 Rothstein, Eric 125, 189n2, 191n16 Sabor, Peter 67, 184n17 Sadler’s Wells 129, 132 scatology 107, 110, 127, 165 Schmidgen, Wolfram 40, 175n5 Scotland 82, 105, 109, 118–119, 127, 130–131, 135, 164–165, 184 Scotophobia 104, 127, 191n16 Scott, Sir Walter 164–165, 166 Scriblerians 67, 68, 76 sedition trials 135–136, 148, 154, 159 Sekora, John 106–7 Selkirk, Alexander 80 servants: and Defoe 27, 45, 46, 48, 49, 51, 182n40; and Dodsley 72; and Fielding 76; and Godwin 136, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 152, 154, 156; and reading 177n39; and Richardson 55, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 72, 73, 75, 137; and Smollett 103, 106, 115, 116, 118, 129



Index

Index

Seven Years’ War 122, 187n11 sexuality: leisure-class norms 5, 47; plebeian or laboring–class 28, 47, 60–65, 98–100; (see homoeroticism) Shamela (Fielding) 14, 55, 75–76 Shepherd, T. B. 116 Shesgreen, Sean 11 Shore, Heather 38, 181n30 Simons, John 15 slavery 82, 84, 119–120, 189n41 Smith, Chloe Wigston 182n47 Smith, Nicholas D. 192n23 Smollett, Tobias 4–5; as a journalist 104–105, 122; and Swift and Pope 111 Works: Humphry Clinker: and Caleb Williams 137; comic grotesque in graphic prints and novel 123–127; cultural syncretism of plebian culture 122–132; duality of plebeian orders 114–118; estate management 120; global trade and colonialism 120, 131–133; and Heart of Midlothian 165; labor and consumption 110–113; patrician order 105–114; plebeian orders as redemptive 109–112; Roderick Random 137, 188n34; and Scotland as organic society 119; and Wales as organic society 121–122 The Female Soldier; or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell (Snell) 3, 9; and female masculinity 84–91; and gender roles 81, 85–86; and homoeroticism or sexuality 90–91, 98–100; and populism 92; and nationalism 82, 93–101;

veterans 81, 97–98, (see also ballads, female warrior motif) Sohier, Jacques 38 Sorenson, Janet 189n2, 191n21, 192n22 South Sea Bubble 9, 23–27, 31, 33, 35, 37, 53, 173 Spacks, Patricia Meyer 176n16 Speck, W. A. 16 Spence, Joseph 69, 70, 74 Spence, Thomas 171–172 Stallybrass, Peter 9–10, 107, 111 “The State Quack” 123 Statt, Daniel 25 Steedman, Carolyn 178n49, 184n14 Steele, Richard 58 stockjobbing 16, 24, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 68 Straub, Kristina 46, 182n42, 185n22 Stuart, John, 3rd Earl of Bute 104, 123–4 Sullivan, Garrett A. 148, 151, 159, 194n17 Sussman, Charlotte 130, 165, 189n39, 192n21, 192n23 Swaminathan, Srividhya 181n29 Swift, Jonathan 15, 72, 111 Tadmor, Naomi 178n39 Taylor, John Tinnon 176n12 The Tempest (Shakespeare) 156–157, 160 textile industry 26, 42, 49–52 Thomas, Peter 121 Thompson, E. P.: “Class Struggle without Class” 7, 29—30; Customs in Common 3, 6, 8, 27, 63, 121, 139, 150, 151, 179n2; Making of the English Working Class 148, 161, 185n31 Thomson, James 84 Tilly, Charles 104, 118 Tracy, Robert 143



222

transculturation 129 Tory 3, 6, 54, 83, 92, 95, 103–4, 111, 121, 132, 166, 170 Treaty of Aix–la–Chapelle 80, 95, 100 Treaty of Utrecht 82, 94 Treaty of Paris 104, 124 Trumpener, Katie 164, 166, 175n3, 195n2 Vernon, Edward 84–85 veterans 81, 97–100 Wagstaffe, William 14 Wahrman, Dror 3, 7, 85, 188n18 Wales 105, 109, 121, 128–129, 155, 164, 191n17, 192n24 Wallace, Tara Ghoshal 192n21 Walpole, Robert 9, 11, 18, 53, 54, 76, 80, 82, 83, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95, 104, 183n3, 189n37 War of the Spanish Succession 80, 92, 93, Warner, William 4, 66, 67–68, 139, 176n18 Watt, Ian 3, 6, 10, 25, 31, 176n19, 178n39, 181n33, 185n28 Webster, William 13, 53

223

Weavers’ Riots 26 Weed, David 110–111, 190n8 Wehrs, Donald 139, 193n6, Wesley, John 116 Wheelwright, Julie 81, 90 Whig 6, 41, 54, 59, 64, 83, 89, 92, 94, 121, 132, White, Allon 9, 10, 107, 111 Wicks, Ulrich 147 Wiles, Richard 26 Wilkes, John 104–5, 116 Williams, Gwyn 121 Williams, Raymond 136, 137, 141, 143, 154 Wiltenburg, Joy 61, 185n20 Wilson, Kathleen 83, 84, 85, 91, 104, 187n15 Wollstonecraft, Mary 166 women (see gender roles) Woodfine, Philip 82 working class 8, 63, 138, 148, 161, 166, 171–172 Yearsley, Ann 166–168, 172, 183n6, 196n7 Zionkowski, Linda 16, 76, 183n6, 183n8 Zomchick, John 115, 119, 190n10, 190n12



Index

The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction

British Fiction of the 1990s

British Politics in the Age of Anne

Almanac of British Politics

Principles of Comparative Politics (UCLA Custom Edition)

Change in British Politics (West European Politics)

Contemporary British Fiction

British Science Fiction Cinema (British Popular Cinema)

Dynamic Psychology in Modern British Fiction

The Custom Of The Country

British Politics for Dummies

The Novel Now: Contemporary British Fiction

Custom Ride

The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy 1933-1940 (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics)

The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy 1933-1940 (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics)

Representation: Theory and Practice in British Politics

British Children's Fiction in the Second World War

Local Custom

Sisters in Time: Imagining Gender in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels

Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels

Race And British Electoral Politics

Local Custom

The French Revolution and British Popular Politics

Performance Politics and the British Voter

The New British Politics (4th Edition)

Custom and Conflict in Africa

The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction

British Fiction of the 1990s

British Politics in the Age of Anne

Almanac of British Politics

Principles of Comparative Politics (UCLA Custom Edition)

Change in British Politics (West European Politics)

Contemporary British Fiction

British Science Fiction Cinema (British Popular Cinema)

Dynamic Psychology in Modern British Fiction

The Custom Of The Country

British Politics for Dummies

The Novel Now: Contemporary British Fiction

Custom Ride

The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy 1933-1940 (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics)

The Impact of Hitler: British Politics and British Policy 1933-1940 (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics)

Representation: Theory and Practice in British Politics

British Children's Fiction in the Second World War

Local Custom

Sisters in Time: Imagining Gender in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels

Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels

Race And British Electoral Politics

Local Custom

The French Revolution and British Popular Politics

Performance Politics and the British Voter

The New British Politics (4th Edition)

Custom and Conflict in Africa

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