The "Nation-less" State of Great Britain and the Nation-State of France in Household Words

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson argues that the modern nation owes its existence to print capitalism that allowed great numbers of people to imagine themselves as part of the same community, despite their increasingly alienated condition. By participating in the ritual of synchronic reading of the periodical press, readers could develop the sense of belonging to the social entity called nation. In highlighting the role of print capitalism in the formation of modern nations and nationalism, Anderson emphasizes the dual nature of this process, for not only did nationalism direct the evolution of the modern press, but just as fundamentally the modern press influenced the formation and development of nations and the ideology of nationalism. In discussing methodologies within the field of periodicals studies, Lyn Pykett argues for a similarly reflexive approach to periodicals: she cautions against "the colonization of periodical studies by a purely literary or formal method" and instead suggests adopting the view of periodicals "as 'not simply derived from an otherwise constituted social order' but as in themselves 'major elements of its constitution'" (16). Following up on this idea, I propose to approach Dickens's Household Words as not simply "derived" from the period marked by the rise of modern nations and nationalism, but as an active participant in the formation of Victorian national consciousness. I view Dickens's periodical as one of the central elements in the history of Victorian nationalism and argue that Dickens and his Household Words contributors² use France and its state and cultural practices to promote their own middle-class idea of a nation. Household Words (1850–9) belongs to the mid-Victorian period, which is marked by the decline of what Georg Lukács calls "the heroic epoch" of bourgeois development and by the subsequent fusion of aristocratic and industrialist interests; in promoting their idea of a nation, Dickens and his contributors attempt to show the "anti-national" nature of these interests by comparing the highly individualistic social and economic practices of the British state with the collectivistic French ones.

In Victorian Political Thought on France and the French, Georgios Varouxakis shows how the compulsive interest in France of Victorian intellectuals³ can in large part be explained by several tendencies of the time. First, the Victorians strongly believed in the benefits of comparison because, in their view, comparison could "prevent ethnocentric myopia or smugness from taking hold of society." It could "show a society both what its flaws were, and how to try to combat them ..." (9). The Victorians also cherished the idea of diversity among and within nations, believing it to be beneficial for progress since it helped prevent stagnation and create possibilities for improvement. Finally, they valued the "right kind of patriotism" that was necessary to combat the spirit of self-conceit and complacency inherited from aristocratic rule. Guided by these Victorian beliefs, Dickens and his contributors often use France as a mirror to Great Britain, in order to show the flaws of the British social system and the possible ways of overcoming them. I do not claim that Dickens and his contributors hold France as the model that their own country should blindly imitate. Along with insisting that Great Britain should learn from the French the advantages of state control, some Household Words articles argue against the excesses of state control in France, especially in relation to French protectionism.⁴ Such objectivity, however, does not change the fact that France is often used in Household Words as an illustration of a model middle-class nation-state that is more successful than Great Britain at balancing order and control with the culturally and emotionally satisfying communal life of a nation.

Centralization vs. Circumlocution

In Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Leah Greenfeld suggests that English and French nationalisms can be classified as individualistic/civic and collectivistic/civic respectively. Greenfeld argues that, historically, the definition of nationhood in England has been rooted in the aristoc-racy's struggle for independence from the Crown and for individual liberty and political equality. Therefore, nation has traditionally been defined...