INFORMATION TO USERS THE CAPTAIN OF CNDUSTRY IN BRITISH LITERATURE, 1904 - 1920 Adam Christopber Hunt A thesis submitted in confomiity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English Univernty of Toronto Copyright by Adam Chnstopher Hunt (1998) uishns Acquisitions et 9Bi iognphic SeNices servias biMiogcephiques The author has gcanted a non- L'auteur a accordé une Licence non exclusive licence aiiowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de teproduce, loan, distnaue or seil reproduire, prêter, distriiuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous papcr or electronic formats. la fome de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fÎom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be p~tedor otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the authof's ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. ABSTRACT- The Captain of Industry in British Literature, 1904- 1920 Adam Cbnstopher Hunt Department of Eaglish University of Toronto In this thesis, 1examine fictional representations of the Captain of Industry by six major modern writers, especially in the light of Carlyle's conception of this figure as hero for the spiritually and politically mubled Engiand of the nineteenth cenairy. 1begin the introduction with a discussion of Past and Present ( 1843), in which Carlyle proposes the Captain of Indusny as the best qudified figure for f*g a perceived leadership vacuum and saving the nation frorn the "Chaos" set in motion by the Industrial Revolution. Next, 1 look bciefly at the careers of several actual "Captains of Industry" who addressed themselves to the kind of social, moral, and political tasks that Carlyle saw as urgent and who may well have served him as Living exemplars of the ideal figure he sought to conjure up by his writing. 1 then tum to literanire of the years leading up to the period durùig which my six authon wrote. to see how Victorian writen responded to the ided of the ùidustriaiist/businessmilfl as social hero. The undemurent of scepticïsm that 1fid gaining suength th these works by Carlyle's contemporaries and their Unmediate successors is talren up and given fùll vent by the early modem authon who are the abject proper of my thesis. Even the one text 1 examine that seems to celebrate the Captain-of-Industry figure - Shaw's Major Barbara -- seeks to revise Carlyle's mid-Victorian model, ~hilemy other central texts are clearly part of a sustained critique of the lea&rship potential of this heroic quasi-archetype. Writers see around hem a world of crisis, and capitaiism as part of that crisis, not the solution that Carlyie hoped L mi@ becorne. My authors focus on the visionary, military, nautical. and political connotations with which he had endowed the heroic Captain-o'lndustry figure, only to show them saâly or ûagïcally lacking. After examinhg Shaw's Maior Barbara and Heartbreak House, with its searing spirit of wartime disenchantment, 1 look at Conrad's sombre scmtiny of the Captain of Indusuy in the post-colonial setting of Nostromo, Galsworthy's Strife and The Man of Pro~ertv,Forster's Howards End, and Wells' Tono-Bunw. 1 end with a discussion of DH.Lawrence, who. 1 suggest, rings the death-knelî of the Captain of Industry as a figure of literary interest in Women in Love - a repudiation that begins clearly in the second haif of The Rainbow, is reinforced and completed in Ladv Chatterly's Lover, and is commented on in many anciilary discursive tex& as well as the play Touch and Go. While attending to their different approaches and emphases (as weiî as their critical interest in each other), 1 focus on rny authors' common cause in interrogating and rejecting the Captain-of-Industryfigure. Ouce used by Carlyle to personify the creative and sociaily dedicated aspects of capitalism, the Captain of Industry is now variously seen as suscepnile to imposture, nemsis, materialism. and spiritual and psychological hollowness. We look in vain, these writers say. to such a ff awed figure for strong, wise, inspired leadership, but none of hem can say clearly or confidently where else we are to look. Casting about for other solutions to the pmblem of leadership in modem society, they can point oniy tenratively and speculatively to values opposed to capitalism as they have represented it - mechanistic. materialistic. inhuman. This was also the face of Victorian capitalkm that Carlyle loathed and that the Captain-of-hdustry figure was meant to refue and refom. The modem writers' disenchanmient with the Captain of Industry that 1 mce thus expresses a sharpened sense of the diffculty of the challenge to redeem humanity, and is part and parcel of the problematic, even apocalyptic vision of the future that characterizes the literatwe of this centuxy. 1would like to thank the followbg pmf8~~orsfor their aeeietance: Henry Auster, Miehael Kirkham, Fred Marker, Michael Millgate, Sam Solecki, and Keith Wilson. The CHASS Facility (Computing in the Humanities and Social Sciences) has been most he1pfb.l in pmviding me with cornputer support. Claire Smith in particular has been both patient and knowledgable. And financial support hm corne fkom School of Graduate Studies in the form of three much-needed bumaries. 1 am of course gratefhl for the extensions 1 received tiom S.O.S. Th& p out also to Barbara Muirhead and Rish McNair for their encouragement and support. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to Dennis and Rosemary Hunt, my parents, whose life-long support hae been indispensible. TABLE OF CONTENTS introduction: Part One: Carlyle and the Captain of Industryl 1 Part Two: The Literary Background. 1843-1W/33 1. Major Barbara and Heartbreak How: George Bernard Shaw and the Trarisformation of the Captain of Industry/ 62 3. Galsworthy and the Captain of Industry in Strife and The Man of Roperty/ 138 4. Tono-Bungay : Dispensing with the Captain of Industry/ 177 5 Howards End: Mt Wilcox Takes Early Retirement/ 207 6. D.H. Lawrence and the Extinction of the Captain of Indu- in Women in Love1224 Introduction Part One: Carlyle and the Captain of uidustq "Captains of Industry are the tnie Fighters, henceforth recognisable as the only tme ones: Fighters against Chaos, Necessity and the Devils and IUtuns; and lead on Mankind in that great, and alone me, and universal wiufm;the stars in their courses fighhg for them. and aü Heaven and Earth saying audibly, Well done!" (Past and Present 268) What this thesis seeks to examine is. Fit, the assessment in Engiish Literaaire from 1904 to 1920 of the success of the Captain of Industry in meeting Thomas Carlyle's challenge in Past and Present (1 843); second, the transformations in the literas, representations of that figure; and third, the changes in Engüsh society registered in the work of six major authors of the penod. Beginning with the prernise that they wrote with a specü?c awareness of Carlyle's ideal of the industrial capitalist as hero, 1 first examine briefly Carlyle's seminal text and discuss a few of Carlyle's contemporaries and near- contemporaries who may have helped to inspire his vision of the new hero and to exemplify it Then. drawing in pan on existing criticism, 1set the literary context for the treatment of the Captain-o'ladustry figure in writing. in the penod spaaning the publication of Past and Resent in 1843 and 1904, when my study proper begins. The two plays by Shaw with which 1start engage unmistakably with Carlyle's notion of the Captain of Iiidusay as a visionary leader and as a servant of society, as well. The earlier of the two, Maior Barbani (1907), offen oaly a mild version and updating of Cadyles notions; 2 the second, dtten in the midst of bitter disenchantment caused by the Fit World War, engages in a corrosive analysis of culture and society just before the outbreak of the war, repudiating very much in Carlyle's spirit the failures of the power elite, including especially "the practical men of business." The spirit of the Captain of hdustry is embodied in the doddering yet still vital Captain Shotover, whose house, designed to resemble a ship -- drawing io mind the figurative ship of state - depends on his dwindling creative energies, which he devotes to inventions of a military and destructive nature. The other texts 1 examine. beguiniog with Nostromo (1904) and ending essentiaily with Women in Love (1920), interrogate Carlyle's concept of the Captain of Industry and ais0 subvert it The authors suut off by exploring the potentiai of the Carlylean figure, or master trope, but then discover by way of theû examination that the figure is barren. 1 ded with Shaw first not only because his worlcs are plays rather than novels, but aiso because they manifest interesting thematic contrasts. Since Shaw, both as a dramatist and as a political thinker, was an impassioned eioqwnt and systematic analyst of the social problems and trends of his the and engaged directly with my topic very much in the spirit of Carlyle, he is an indispensible part of this study. As for the novels 1 go on to discuss, each one, except for The Man of howrty, is to my mind the best example of its author's interest in the Captain of Industry, ideal and actual In the case of Galsworthy. his novel is important to my thesis because its systematic examination of the capitaiist class ignores the heroic Carlylean figure, whom he puts at the centre of the nearly contemporary play SWe.