Vagrancy in the Victorian Age Book contents
- Vagrancy in the Victorian Age
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Vagrancy in the Victorian Age
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Country
- Chapter 1 Gypsies, Hawkers and Handicraft Tramps
- Chapter 2 Poachers
- Part II The City
- Part III The Frontier
- Afterword: London 1902
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Chapter 2 - Poachers
from Part I - The Country
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2021
- Vagrancy in the Victorian Age
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Vagrancy in the Victorian Age
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Country
- Chapter 1 Gypsies, Hawkers and Handicraft Tramps
- Chapter 2 Poachers
- Part II The City
- Part III The Frontier
- Afterword: London 1902
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Summary
Most actual poachers were not vagrants in the Victorian period; but a significant number of literary ones were, especially during the so-called Hungry Forties. Examining popular and literary sources from across the political spectrum, this chapter argues that the vagrant poacher became a politically loaded figure in British print culture during the 1840s. In the conservative ‘poacher’s progress’ the poacher’s vagrancy was a sign of selfishness and a staging post on the road to ruin. These morality tales supported the landowning elite and their monopoly on game by depicting the poacher as a predatory criminal. Meanwhile, in radical literature, such as Charles Dickens’s The Chimes (1844), the poacher was represented as a victim of permissive laws; these included both the vagrancy laws and the game laws. In these texts the poacher’s vagrancy was a sign of social oppression and was used to critique what many liberals and radicals perceived as the criminalisation of poverty. Alongside Dickens, this chapter examines Charles Kingsley’s Yeast (1848) as well as works by Hannah More and Charlton Carew.
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- Vagrancy in the Victorian AgeRepresenting the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, pp. 58 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021