Aspects of Child Labor in Tonna's Helen Fleetwood

This article explores the unique role of Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna's Helen Fleetwood (1841), one of the first social-problem novels, in shaping the concerns and strategies of the genre. Writing at a moment of cultural change in the attitude toward children, Tonna's Blakean vision of child labor as diabolical allows her to offer a daring critique of social institutions. Yet her political vision is inconsistent: although she redeems the working-class child's point of view and rehumanizes this figure, Tonna's staging of child labor as originating in a metaphysical, divine plan leads her to construct children's suffering as a justifiable and even desirable ethos.