3 - Authority and Rebellion

Summary

BARNABY RUDGE, AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, HARD TIMES

There can be few novels that announce as many of their themes and concerns on the first page as Barnaby Rudge (1841) does. The first chapter sets the scene at an inn called The Maypole whose distance of twelve miles from London is measured from the Standard in Cornhill. The description of the inn, its landlord, and regulars conjures up a very conservative image of English traditions and history. Its chief claim to fame revolves around a visit of Elizabeth I culminating in a display of royal authority. And yet the name, The Maypole, evokes a very different tradition, that of the carnivalesque; and Cornhill was the location of the oldest and best-known maypole in England, notorious as the venue for Mayday rioting by the volatile London apprentices.

The novel as a whole follows the fortunes of those caught up in the Gordon Riots of 1780; Dickens concentrates on the interactions of a small number of Protestant and Catholic families and settles their problems in parallel with the restoration of order by the civic authorities and forces of the Crown. But although the power of the state is reasserted at the end, the authority of parents is seriously undermined. The most authoritarian father figures, Haredale and Willett, are proved wrong and, one way or another, admit their mistakes. It is their houses that are laid waste so spectacularly. The destruction of the physical house in each case allows a greater emphasis on the importance of the dynastic house. The vital principle upheld in the elaboration of family histories in the novel is that of succession, of the effective transferral of responsibility from one generation to the next. Willett as father, and Haredale as uncle, both resign from their dictatorial roles. Chester, however, does not; he renounces his son, sheds all family obligations, and organizes his life around routines of physical gratification in a way that becomes increasingly repugnant. His sexual adventuring in youth subverts the dynastic principle, producing an offspring whose gipsy blood threatens miscegenation as well as illegitimacy; and yet he remains snug in his lodgings in the Middle Temple while The Maypole and The Warren burn down.