Journal Article

Gender and Class in Two Chartist Short Stories

Paul, Ronald

2021

Overview

According to John Saville, Jones’s “success as a poet of Chartism was quickly established; thousands of people heard the poems sung or recited at meetings all over the country, and during his lifetime and after, many testified to their power and influence” (Saville, Jones 20). While the woman is only trying to relocate her husband so they might start a new life together in the capital, the owner of the mansion dismisses her as part of an underclass of beggars whose distinct personal histories are of no consequence. [...]even the Bastiles closed their accursed gates against him [the husband - RP] – they were overgorged – the door-step, and the park, and the arch of the bridge were forbidden ground; the houseless outcast was not even allowed to lie on the cold bed that God had smoothed – the hard wet ground – the inhospitable stones – for the ‘move on’ of the policemen broke the rest of the exhausted beggar. (188) [ 10 ] The mention of a ‘political economist’ in the same context as the New Poor Law Bill of 1834 is most likely a reference to Thomas Malthus, the population theorist who initiated the debate about the ‘feckless’ poor who should be punished for their inability to fend for themselves.

• Publisher: Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies
• Subject: Chartist Short Stories / Ernest Jones / Litteraturstudier / Mary Hutton / Poetry / Poets / Short stories / Studies of Specific Literatures / Working class