Victorian Bestseller

A Woman’s Thoughts About Men: Malthus and Middle-Class Masculinity in Dinah Mulock Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman

“…The three years between Agatha's Husband (1853) and John Halifax are attributed by Bourrier partly to Craik's "frequent headaches", but also, crucially, to a "conscious decision on her part to try to improve her writing". 16 We must add to this that Craik was constructing a radically different text: a historical novel related from a male perspective, about male friendship, about masculinity, and representing the impact of one of the most dominant pieces of masculinist theory of the nineteenth century. 17 The influence of An Essay on the Principle of Population A common reading of Craik's hugely popular novel, criticised and lampooned for its "wholesomeness", can miss the way in which the novel engages with the cultural diffusion of Malthusian ideology, interrogating what we might now, albeit somewhat awkwardly, refer to as the proto-Darwinian, intellectual mood of the decade in which it was published.…”

“…23 Craik was cognisant of the popularity of Malthusian-inflected discourse circulating in the dominant form of cultural dissemination, the periodical press, and she was of the class of men and women who discussed such topics at dinner parties, in print, in private correspondence, and in other social situations such as the one Craik found herself in during the winter of 1854, whilst taking the water cure at Moor Park in Surrey, whose patients, at various times, included Charles Darwin and Alexander Bain. 24 In her biography of Craik, Victorian Bestseller, Karen Bourrier provides details of the "Malthusian" environment of Moor Park, where Craik spent her time during a period of recuperation, whilst also working on John Halifax. As Bourrier charts, each day, from lunch onwards, Craik engaged in lengthy dialogues with George Drysdale, until retiring for the evening.…”

“…As I will show in the next section of this article, in John Halifax, Gentleman Craik was employed in a form of transmutation of her own, exploring these "revolutionary" theories of population management and evolution, whilst simultaneously taking on, for the first time in her literary career, a detailed exploration of masculinity and the male psyche. 26 At the same time as Malthusian ideology was permeating nineteenthcentury critical discourse, insisting upon the "grinding law of necessity" that, "Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the bounties of nature", Lamarckian theories of evolutionary biology were working in contradistinction, as Piers J. Hale has demonstrated in Political Descent: Malthus, Mutualism, and the Politics of Evolution in Victorian England.…”

“…Lamarck's theory of evolution, described in his 1809 work Philosophie Zoologique, was influential for Robert Chambers, Craik's publisher and friend, who caused a sensation with his anonymous contribution to the evolutionary debates of the 1800s, Vestiges of Natural Creation, in 1844, the same year that the Chambers' Journal launched Craik's career. 29 Robert Chambers and his brother William were part of the same social network as the phrenologist George Combe, medically-trained brothers George and Charles Drysdale, and the hydrotherapist Edward Wickstead Lane, whose treatment Craik was undergoing at Moor Park. 30 These men were Craik's peers, socially as well as in print, and, as Karen Bourrier has shown, "When Dinah visited Edinburgh, she often stayed with Robert Chambers [taking] extended visits to the Chamberses' home at 1 Doune Terrace in Edinburgh's Georgian New Town".…”

“…30 These men were Craik's peers, socially as well as in print, and, as Karen Bourrier has shown, "When Dinah visited Edinburgh, she often stayed with Robert Chambers [taking] extended visits to the Chamberses' home at 1 Doune Terrace in Edinburgh's Georgian New Town". 31 From at least the 1840s onwards, therefore, Craik existed in an intellectual milieu of men and women who were heavily invested in debating the two "rival traditions" described by Hale, as so many of their contemporary societal concerns seemed entangled in a negotiation of these theories about population control, about men and women, about class, and about heredity.…”