Implementing Abolitionist Strategies (2)

Use of Personal Notoriety to Defend the Discourse

     William Thackeray’s professional career primarily started with journalism, as a way of making a living. In the beginning of the Victorian era, that is to say in the late 1830s, he “contributed a total of more than five hundred articles to over twenty different periodicals” (Simons 64). He contributed to a variety of newspapers -published in England and overseas, and they did not all share the same political views, and did not have the same popularity: for instance, Fraser’s Magazine, in which was published “Going to see a man Hanged”, was a conservative newspaper, but he also wrote for the Morning Chronicle, a moderate liberal weekly [1], for The Times, also liberal, or for the Pictorial Times, a newspapers which was only published for five years [2]. He would write letters, essays and literary reviews, such as, for instance, one on Victor Hugo’s Rhine, published in April 1842 in the Foreign Quarterly Review (Simons 73).

    Thackeray was also an illustrator in his early career, he contributed to Punch, who “opened its columns” to him and let him publish for ten years after the publication of “Paris Sketch Book” in 1840 and “Irish Sketch Book” in 1843 (Wallace 36). Moreover, he started turning in more of his work to Punch than to Fraser’s Magazine around 1846 for economic reasons (Simons 91), as he had already achieved a certain amount of recognition through his many publications.

    Among his first literary publications was Catherine: A Story, a serial fiction written and published in Fraser’s Magazine between 1839 and 1840 -prior to witnessing Courvoisier’s execution. This novel was supposed to be a parody of Newgate novels, which were fictions that “glamorized the exploits of notorious criminals and were accused of encouraging vice” (Wood, under “A social ‘truth’”). Thackeray’s intent was to write a criminal story that was more than just portraying evildoers and containing graphic passages, he wanted to avoid writing a romanticised character. The story is based on a real criminal named Catherine Hayes, a woman who had been executed for killing her husband John Hayes in March 1729. It was supposed to be an unflattering portrayal of a particularly vile individual and his idea was to criticize the glorification of criminals, to sum up, not a positive representation. Nonetheless, the character as Thackeray wrote her did not appeal to him, and this caused him to dislike his work (Cabot 404). Although Catherine is neither the novel that made Thackeray’s career nor the work he is remembered for, he still received positive reviews for this work, for instance Thomas Carlyle expressed his admiration for this work (Colby 387). At times, Thackeray would sign some of his works with different pen names rather than his own name. He used “Titmarsh” more often than not (Wallace 36), but signed Catherine as “Ikey Solomons”. Ironically, there was a criminal named Isaac “Ikey” Solomon active throughout the 1810s and 1820s, who was known for being a receiver of stolen goods, and for having escaped from arrest (White, “Juvenile crime in the 19th century”, under ‘Popular fears’)

    He also made a name for himself with his traveling books and sketches, in particular concerning the history regarding Ireland and his pejorative depiction of the Catholics. He reached fame in the 1840s, and especially in the later years of the decade with the publication of the Snob Papers, and then Vanity Fair.

    Deborah A. Thomas made a connection between the death of a character of William Thackeray’s famous novel Vanity Fair, published as a serial from 1847 to 1848 in Punch, and his feeling on having been part of the crowd on Courvoisier’s execution in1840, making this experience relevant in his work years after. At the end of the last chapter of the novel, Joseph “Jos” Sedley, the older brother of one of the two protagonists, dies an unexpected death while being away in France, where the other protagonist, Rebecca “Becky” Sharp, had followed him. Because of Becky’s personality, her will to climb the social ladder, and because after his death, his assets were divided equally between his sister and her, there is a possibility that she may have murdered Jos. However, Thackeray remains vague on the circumstances of his death, and his own execution seems to be kept private, as it is only his death which is told by the narrator. Thackeray’s change of opinion is made perceptible with this work: while he seemed to oppose any execution in 1840, either public or within the prison walls (hence being against the death penalty), his position then evolved to “tolerating [capital punishment] if it were kept out of public view in 1845” (Thomas 6). This change of mind is also visible in Dickens’ letters, from the 1846 series, in which he expresses being against any execution, to the 1849 letter in which he favours executions carried out privately within prison walls.

    In a way, it can be said that Charles Dickens’ career began in his teenage years through his experience, as his life then more or less mirrored that of the characters he depicts in his stories: although he was born in a middle-class family, his father accumulated debts. By the time he was ten years old, he had to leave school because his family could not afford to pay for his education, and at twelve, he saw his father being arrested because of his debts, making him live at an aunt’s and work at a factory for a few months (Bowers Andrews 298). His work was thus inspired by his own life and by what he witnessed growing up.

    He started working for the Mirror of Parliament in 1828 through a relative, at age sixteen, later he also worked as a freelance court stenographer, and by 1831 he participated in the coverage of Parliamentary debates (Kaplan 42). In the late 1820s, he explored his appeal for the world of theatre, and tried his hand at acting and writing plays. Although he had given up on trying to become a professional actor in the 1830s, he began producing and directing plays, and his career in journalism went on (Kaplan 46-47). He became a reporter for various newspapers, like the Morning Chronicles and The Times, and grew critical of what he witnessed, especially regarding the corruption on the political scene.

    Dickens was already famous entering the 1840s, his latest work at the time being Oliver Twist in 1838, in which he already offered a certain vision of criminality, yet everything was not fiction there as he took inspiration from everyday London life and highlighted social issues in his works -not only this novel, making him a precursor and “honorary “social worker”” (Bowers Andrews 297). Before this, he had published Sketches by Boz (his pen name), a collection of short stories published between 1833 and 1836, which was a success and allowed him to earn enough renown to be commissioned a novel by a publisher, and wrote The Pickwick Papers which was published as a serial between 1836 and 1837.

    In Oliver Twist, most of the main characters are criminals, but Dickens does not fail to portray them in a good light -or at least as evildoers with qualities. His thief and leader of a gang of criminal children, the Artful Dodger, is capable of showing sympathy towards Oliver and can be “resourceful and streetwise, even cheeky, survivor” (Slater 285); the readers are made to have concerns about Oliver, who is left to fend for himself at the bottom of the food chain; and Nancy, another pickpocket and “ill-fated prostitute” (Bowers Andrews 301), tries to have Olivier stay away from the kind of life Fagin wants to drag him into, to such an extent that she eventually dies as a result. Dickens gives attributes to his criminal characters, they are not completely utterly evil, but only perform evil deeds, and this more nuanced representation overshadows the usual Manichaean duality. It is especially visible with Nancy, a supposedly immoral character who ultimately redeems herself. This idea of individuals evolving towards goodness appears in Dickens’ series of letters published in the Daily News, in which he explores alternatives to (public) executions in order to allow criminals a chance at some kind of redemption. It is not so much on the public aspect of executions, but more on the lethal and irreversible aspect of it.

    Both of these authors were thus not entirely new to expressing themselves on criminal matters, yet at the same time, they also contributed to feeding this rising interest for crime-related stories, only through fictional works. 

 

 

[1] Morning Chronicles, British Newspapers Archive    https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/morning-chronicle

[2] Pictorial Times, British Newspapers Archive https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/pictorial-times

 

ANDREWS, Arlene Bowers. "Charles Dickens, Social Worker in His Time." Social Work [Online]. Vol. 57, no. 4 (2012): 297-307. [Accessed 04/06/2021]. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23719443.

CABOT, Frederick C. "The Two Voices in Thackeray's Catherine." Nineteenth-Century Fiction [Online]. Vol. 28, no. 4 (1974): 404-16. [Accessed 14/06/2021]. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2933235.

COLBY, Robert A. "Catherine: Thackeray's Credo." The Review of English Studies [Online]. Vol. 15, no. 60 (1964): 381-96. [Accessed 14/06/2021]. URL : http://www.jstor.org/stable/512308.

KAPLAN, Fred. Dickens A Biography. New York, USA: Open Road Media, 2013.

SIMONS, Gary. ""Show Me the Money!": A Pecuniary Investigation of William Makepeace Thackeray's Early Victorian Journalism." Victorian Periodicals Review [Online]. Vol. 45, no. 1 (2012): 64-96. [Accessed 14/06/2021]. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41638123.

THOMAS, Deborah A. “Thackeray, Capital Punishment, and the Demise of Jos Seydley”. Victorian Literature and Culture [Online]. Vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 1-20. 2005. [Accessed 26/11/2020]. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25058693.

WALLACE, R. W. "WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY." The Journal of Education [Online]. Vol. 74, no. 2 (1837) (1911): 36-37. [Accessed 14/06/2021]. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42818758.

WHITE, Matthew. “Juvenile crime in the 19th century”. The British Library [Online]. 14 October 2009. [Accessed 15/06/2021]. URL: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/juvenile-crime-in-the-19th-century.

WOOD, Claire. “Oliver Twist: a patchwork of genre”. The British Library [Online]. 15 May 2014. [Accessed 23/03/2021]. URL: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/oliver-twist-a-patchwork-of-genres.