The Power of Public Opinion: Constructing Class in Agnes Strickland's The Rival Crusoes

Using Agnes Strickland's noncanonical but once-popular 1826 robinsonnade as a test case, this essay takes issue with earlier critical work arguing early British children's literature functions to construct middle class subjectivites. Rather than embracing a tripartite vision of class, Strickland's text co-opts middle class ideologies of sentimentalism and meritocracy to reform and reinscribe a binary construction of class, a construction which leaves the upper class firmly in control of the reins of power.