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The Representation of Factory Children in Early Victorian Industrial Fiction of the 1830S and 40S

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The Representation of Factory Children in Early Victorian Industrial Fiction of the 1830S and 40S 1 Novel Intersections: The Representation of Factory Children in Early Victorian Industrial Fiction Pei-Hsuan Lo Thesis Submitted for the Doctor of Philosophy in English Royal Holloway, University of London 2014 2 Declaration of Authorship I, Pei-Hsuan Lo, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ______________________ Date: 28 Jan. 2014 3 Abstract This thesis examines the representation of factory children in early Victorian industrial fiction of the 1830s and 40s. It investigates the multiple ways the factory child is represented and manipulated. Focussing on the hybrid novelistic representations of factory children, the thesis through its examinations aims at an intertextual and intermedial understanding of the mixed mode of the early Victorian industrial novel, in which a variety of ideologies, discourses, formal properties, cultural inheritances, and visual representations intersect. Positioning the fictional factory children within the relationships of the working and middle classes as represented in these novels, this thesis investigates the interrelationships of age, class, and gender, as envisioned in early industrial fiction. The representation of factory children becomes a coordinating point that connects and mediates contradictory social (class, gender, and adult–child) relationships as well as intertextual and intermedial relationships. The factory child figure, then, is not always a 'child' in the strict sense, but may have attained puberty with its transgressive potential; or may serve to embody the infantilization of the working class by the middle class. As this thesis demonstrates, writing about factory children and the transition to writing about working-class women become tactics used by middle-class male and female writers to express their social concern for lower-class people and to negotiate their own rights. Eventually, as Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna's Helen Fleetwood (1839-41) and The Wrongs of Woman (1843-44) portray problematic working-class heroines, following them from childhood into womanhood, and empower women across classes with their moral influence, the early Victorian industrial novels with factory children protagonists lead the way to later social novels by women writers with subversive heroines, such as Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth (1853). 4 Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the help of so many people in so many ways, to only some of whom it is possible to give particular mention here. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisors. Professor Sally Ledger, briefly worked with but greatly appreciated and missed, helped get me started on the path to a PhD degree and continues to be a source of true strength and inspiration after her untimely death. Dr Ruth Livesey kindly and persistently guided me afterwards with her patience, understanding, and scholarly knowledge. Professor Adam Roberts also gave me practical advice and encouragement during Dr Livesey’s maternal leave. This thesis also owes a tremendous amount to my examiners, Professor Clare Pettitt and Dr Ella Dzelzainis, who closely read the entire manuscript and made invaluable suggestions for strengthening it. I am also grateful to many academics in Taiwan, who encouraged me at different points in my scholarly career. Dr Chia-Yen Ku and Professor Hsiu-Chih Tsai have witnessed my growth since my undergraduate years in National Taiwan University. The genuine letter from Dr Ming-Cherng Du after my presentation at National Taitung University boosted my confidence. Professor Chen-Sheng Liu and Dr Kien Ket Lim shared their valuable experience and insights during my adjunct teaching at National Chiao Tung University. Professor I-Wen Su provided me with beneficial teaching opportunity, training, and advice at National Taiwan University. Finally, as an admirable mentor to me at National Dong Hwa University, Professor Chen-Chen Tseng inspired me with her warm and generous heart, as well as her earnest and scholarly attitude. I would also like to thank my friends in Taiwan and in the UK, including Chierh Cheng, EJ Fang, Vivianne Chang, Jack Liou, Michelle Chan, Carolyn Huang, Men-shan Lee, E-ting Cheng, volunteers of the Tzu Chi Foundation UK, colleagues at the Lewisham Indo-Chinese Community School, and others. I consider myself extremely 5 fortunate to have met them. Their warm companionship, intellectual and emotional support has been enjoyable and nourished my research life. Special thanks are due to Yu-jie Zhong, an endearing friend and almost a sister, whose unfailing support, encouragement, and faith in me throughout is sincerely acknowledged. Most of all, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to my beloved family. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my parents, Yih-Chang Lo and Shu-Hui Chang, for the love and support they provided me through my entire life. I am indebted as well to my husband, Chin-Jung Chuang, whom I luckily met during this doctoral journey and who has always been there cheering me up and standing by me through different milestones and life stages. 6 Contents Title 1 Declaration 2 Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 Contents 6 List of Figures 8 Introduction 9 Chapter One. The Rise of the Ten Hours Movement and the Status of the Factory Child 31 I. The Rise of the Ten Hours Movement 32 II. The Factory Child: a Point of Agreement for Disparate Groups 34 III. Paternalism, Lack of Free Agency and Infantilization of the Working Class 43 IV. Age Definition of Children 47 Chapter Two. Factory Children and Machinery: From Injured Bodies towards a Cooperative Body 56 Introduction: Mechanization and the New Human-Machine Relationship 56 I. From Luddism (1811-17) to the Melodrama The Factory Lad (1832) 59 II. A Memoir of Robert Blincoe (1832) and the Representation of Factory Accidents 72 III. Factory Children in the Industrial Novel Michael Armstrong (1839-40) 78 i. The Factory Lad versus the Factory Child: the Issue of Free Agency 83 ii. The Dangerous Balance between Factory Children and Machinery 96 IV. From Factory Children to White Slaves 102 Conclusion 113 Chapter Three. Apologists for the Factory System and the 'Blessed' Factory Child 118 Introduction 118 7 I. Harriet Martineau, Political Economy, and the Factory Movement 122 II. Narrative Elements and the Blessed Factory Girl in Mary Ashley (1839) 131 Chapter Four. Evangelicalism and the Factory Girl 170 Introduction 170 I. Retrieving the Romantic Rural Childhood of the Victorian Factory Girl 176 II. Realistic Representations of the Evangelical Factory Girl 189 i. Original Sin in Association with Natural Innocence 189 ii. The Factory Girl as the Embodiment of Practical Evangelicalism 194 iii. From Hannah More's Conservative Evangelicalism to Tonna's Evangelical Activism: The Collier Girl Mary versus the Factory Girl Helen 197 III. Death of the Factory Girl and Female Sentimentalist Reform Narrative 207 Conclusion 230 Chapter Five. From Factory Girls to Working-Class Women: Domesticity and Cross-Class Female Relationships 235 Introduction: the Shifting Focus from Factory Children to Working-Class Women 235 I. Virtuous, Immoral, and Victimized Factory Girls 245 II. The Milliner and the Incapable Wife 260 III. Tonna's Monstrous Working-Class Mothers in Factories and the Unwomanly Female Miners in Parliamentary Reports 265 IV. Cross-Class Female Relationships: From Hierarchical Management to Reciprocal Sisterhood 274 Conclusion 284 Bibliography 290 8 List of Figures Chapter Two Figure 2.1. Cobden, The White Slaves of England (1853) 116 Figure 2.2. Trollope, Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong (1840) 117 Chapter Three Figure 3.1. Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 308 163 Figure 3.2. Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures, p. xii 164 Figure 3.3. Taylor, Factories and the Factory System, p. 252 165 Figure 3.4. Cotton workers at Dean Mills near Manchester in 1851 166 Figure 3.5. Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, p. 211 167 Figure 3.6. Montagu, Mary Ashley, p. 73 168 Figure 3.7. Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures, frontispiece 169 Chapter Four Figure 4.1. 'The Child in Her Gentle Slumber', Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, chapter 1 234 Figure 4.2. 'At Rest', Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, chapter 71 234 Chapter Five Figure 5.1. Naked Face Workers 287 Figure 5.2. 'Sketch of Ann Ambler and William Dyson' in P.P. 1842 288 Figure 5.3. 'Ann Ambler and William Dyson' in Westminster Review 288 Figure 5.4. 'Ann Ambler and William Dyson' in Halifax Guardian 289 Figure 5.5. Female Miners 289 9 Introduction The Industrial Revolution and its aftermath in the nineteenth century not only caused great social change in England, but brought about significant literary innovations. 1 The industrial novel, as it was later designated by modern critics, emerged as a distinct subgenre around 1840.2 This thesis focuses on the earliest group of Victorian industrial novels, published between 1839 and 1844, and examines the multiple representations of factory children which these novels centre upon. The core texts to be examined by this thesis include Frederic Montagu’s Mary Ashley, The Factory Girl, or Facts Upon the Factory (1839), Frances Trollope’s The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, Factory Boy (1839-40), and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna’s Helen Fleetwood (1839-41). What fuelled the creation of the early industrial narratives was a campaign for textile factory reform: the 'Ten Hours Movement'. The Ten Hours Movement was a wave of political activism, lasting throughout the 1830s and into the 1840s, which called for legislation to limit the number of daily working hours in mills.3 As the demand of this popular short-time movement was initially made on behalf of young workers and then females, abuse of 1 For studies in social, economic, or labour history of the Industrial Revolution, see, for example, E.
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