Description
There exists a vast amount of scholarship dedicated to the study of nineteenth century British literature and its influence on the era's working class masses. Jonathan Rose correctly asserts in his book, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, "the question of whether Dickens, Conrad, or penny dreadfuls reinforced or subverted patriarchy, imperialism, or class hierarchies has become an obsession in academic literature departments and cultural studies programs." Notable Marxist scholars such as Louis James, Raymond Williams, and George Levine pioneered the critical examination of this subject and laid a strong foundation upon which subsequent scholars have exhaustively built. Yet there is one related area of study that has been largely neglected: the literary voice of the working class. In other words, what literary voice or power did the working class possess during this period? Did working class authors contribute anything to the popular Victorian literary sphere? Much of the published research as it stands suggests that the answer is no; working class individuals were helpless, passive receptors of hegemony that remained perpetually at the mercy of the middle and upper classes. However, I argue that "hack" authors -- British writers who were marginalized due to their social status and radical French political beliefs-- and their authorship of penny dreadfuls shaped a strong working class literary voice that threatened hegemony by revolutionizing the way in which popular Victorian literature was consumed. As such, this thesis examines three specific points that I feel have not been adequately addressed in the study of Victorian literature: The literary voice of the working class, the literary merit of the penny dreadful, and the function and importance of illustrations in penny dreadfuls
