Jacobin novel
Encyclopedia
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. The term was coined by literary scholar Gary Kelly in The English Jacobin Novel 1780-1805 (1976) but drawn from the title of the Anti-Jacobin: or, Weekly Examiner, a conservative periodical founded by the Tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
politician George Canning
George Canning
George Canning PC, FRS was a British statesman and politician who served as Foreign Secretary and briefly Prime Minister.-Early life: 1770–1793:...
. Canning chose to tar British reformers with the French term for the most radical revolutionaries: Jacobin
Jacobin Club
The Jacobin Club was the most famous and influential political club in the development of the French Revolution, so-named because of the Dominican convent where they met, located in the Rue St. Jacques , Paris. The club originated as the Club Benthorn, formed at Versailles from a group of Breton...
. Among the Jacobin novelists were William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
, Robert Bage
Robert Bage
Robert Bage may refer to:* Robert Bage , English novelist* Edward Frederick Robert Bage , Australian explorer and soldier...
, Elizabeth Inchbald
Elizabeth Inchbald
Elizabeth Inchbald was an English novelist, actress, and dramatist.- Life :Born on 15 October 1753 at Standingfield, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, Elizabeth was the eighth of the nine children of John Simpson , a farmer, and his wife Mary, née Rushbrook. The family, like several others in the...
, and Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility....
.
The genre began in an attempt to make revolutionary thought more entertaining and easier to comprehend for the lower order. On the midst of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, literacy was growing amongst the lower classes, the mass behind the revolutionaries. “A reading public had become a revolutionary public.”
The Jacobin
Jacobin (politics)
A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...
novelists used this literacy to swell their radical beliefs throughout the lower classes. The Jacobin novelists adapted the romance novel structure into radical political subjects. The Jacobins cleverly blended their revolutionary principles into engaging, fantastical tales of honor, cruelty, and power. The Jacobin novelists were able to reach a massive non-intellectual demographic, which was generally apolitical, through this new genre.
The Jacobin novel, most quintessentially represented in William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
’s Caleb Williams (1794), attacked the established social and political order. Along with William Godwin, some of the major Jacobin novelists include, Elizabeth Inchbald
Elizabeth Inchbald
Elizabeth Inchbald was an English novelist, actress, and dramatist.- Life :Born on 15 October 1753 at Standingfield, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, Elizabeth was the eighth of the nine children of John Simpson , a farmer, and his wife Mary, née Rushbrook. The family, like several others in the...
, Thomas Holcroft
Thomas Holcroft
Thomas Holcroft was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer.-Early life:He was born in Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London. His father had a shoemaker's shop, and kept riding horses for hire; but having fallen into difficulties was reduced to the status of hawking peddler...
, and the earliest, Robert Bage
Robert Bage
Robert Bage may refer to:* Robert Bage , English novelist* Edward Frederick Robert Bage , Australian explorer and soldier...
. Of all these authors, Godwin was the most effective and outstanding. Almost all of the Jacobin novels reflect theories and principles of Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Although it is not a novel it is the foundation that the goals of the Jacobin novelists’ are based upon.
In Godwin’s novel, Caleb Williams, the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
is a devoutly honorable man who is cast into a “theater of calamity” by unforeseen circumstances. Throughout Caleb’s entire journey, whenever he comes in contact with any forms of government or institutions of law he is cruelly and wrongfully castigated. Godwin’s novel is an illustration of the effects of an abusive and tyrannical government, it reveals the devastating effects that established power can result in.
The Jacobin novel was especially significant because its audience was the masses. The Jacobins’ message, although superficially simple, was very complex, and in the opinion of the conservatives, too complex for the lower order to understand. The reactionaries believed that the Jacobin novels were incredibly dangerous because it put ideas of revolution in the minds of those who couldn’t fully understand the concept. The Jacobin novel led to a great anxiety by the government and the middle and upper classes. At one point there was even a suggestion to create a new tax on books in order to discourage literacy among the poor. In order to defend against these revolutionaries another genre was born, the anti-Jacobin novel.
Anti-Jacobin Novel
Although the Jacobin novelists are contemporarily more popular, the anti-Jacobin novel overtook it across the 1790s and into the early 19th century. The anti-Jacobin novel became immensely popular around the late 1790s (bolstered by the TerrorReign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
), although they began to appear in the middle of the decade. The genre itself is neither original nor impulsive, without the Jacobin novel it would not exist.
Anti-revolutionaries saw these Jacobin novelists as corrupting the ignorant lower classes by disguising fiction as reason. These reactionaries saw this blend of political thought into the fiction novel as radical, even anarchistic, propaganda that the Jacobins were tricking the non-intellectual lower order into supporting.
In Thomas Matias’ The Pursuits of Literature (1794), he states, “Government and Literature are now more than ever intimately connected.” What Matias goes on to clarify is that in order to defeat the radicals, conservative writers must change their approach in order to capture the audience. To defend King
King
- Centers of population :* King, Ontario, CanadaIn USA:* King, Indiana* King, North Carolina* King, Lincoln County, Wisconsin* King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin* King County, Washington- Moving-image works :Television:...
and country, conservatives decided the best way to attack the radicals was through the same medium. The conservatives’ goal became, paradoxically, to take up the fiction that they had denounced and write their own fictional satires of the Jacobin novels, for the same audience. By adopting the Jacobins’ propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
conveyance, the anti-Jacobins were able to captivate the lower order in the same way but with the opposite message.
Among dozens of the anti-Jacobin novels, George Walker
George Walker
George Walker may refer to:In arts and letters:*George Walker *George Walker , English chess player and writer*George Walker , American composer...
’s The Vagabond
The Vagabond
The Vagabond is a silent film by Charlie Chaplin and his third film with Mutual Films. Released to theaters on July 10, 1916, it co-starred Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Leo White and Lloyd Bacon...
has been called the most effectual. The Vagabond illustrates the flaws of revolutionary philosophy and how it would be disastrous if ever put into actual practice. The novel includes numerous direct quotations of Godwin’s doctrine and illustrates its application, with satirically dreadful results. The book is a blatantly direct attack on Godwin and the Jacobin novel.
Along with Walker were Elizabeth Hamilton
Elizabeth Hamilton
Elizabeth Hamilton was a British essayist, poet, satirist and novelist. Born in Belfast to Charles Hamilton , a Scottish merchant, and his wife Katherine Mackay , she lived most of her life in Scotland, dying in Harrogate in England after a short illness.Her first literary efforts were directed in...
, Robert Bisset
Robert Bisset
Robert Bisset was a Scottish writer, best known as the biographer of Edmund Burke and of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and other contributors to The Spectator.-Life:...
, Henry James Pye
Henry James Pye
Henry James Pye was an English poet. Pye was Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death. He was the first poet laureate to receive a fixed salary of £27 instead of the historic tierce of Canary wine Henry James Pye (20 February 1745 – 11 August 1813) was an English poet. Pye was Poet Laureate...
, Charles Lloyd
Charles Lloyd
Charles Lloyd is an American jazz musician. Though he primarily plays tenor saxophone and flute, he has also occasionally recorded on alto saxophone and more exotic reed instruments which include the Hungarian tárogató. Lloyd's saxophone playing is often characterized as an individualized,...
, Jane West
Jane West
Jane West [née Iliffe] , who published as "Prudentia Homespun" and "Mrs. West," was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and writer of conduct literature and educational tracts.- Life :...
, and Edward Dubois. These anti-Jacobin novelists combined history and fiction through satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
. Walker clarifies this goal in his dedication of The Vagabond, “Romances are only Histories which we do not believe to be true, and Histories are Romances we do believe to be true.” Although the anti-Jacobins despised the Jacobins’ radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
adaptations of the romance structures of the novel, they also realized how effective it could be among the impressionable and naïve lower order. Consequently, the anti-Jacobins decided to fight fire with fire.
In the anti-Jacobins’ opinions, the Jacobin novelists placed more importance on the romance of the novel than on truth and history. To differentiate themselves from this the anti-Jacobins strove to emphasize truth and historical precedents. Simply put, the goal of the anti-Jacobins was to defeat radicalism by challenging the blend of political treatise and romance while maintaining the importance of truth and history.
The formula of the anti-Jacobin novel usually includes a satirical interpretation of revolutionaries or revolutionary supporters who accept the power of romance over reason, Jacobin protagonists whose principles are egotistical and/or criminal, verbatim invocations of Godwin’s texts, and a failure of revolutionary philosophy put into place. Many of the novels illustrate the danger of politics in a novel and the susceptibility of the naïve to corruption through the novel. The irony of a novel telling the reader the danger of novels was not missed by the reader and worked to precipitate the relative failure of the genre.