Picturing Reform in Victorian Britain by Janice Carlisle (review)

As the title suggests, this book explores the ways in which the politics of franchise reform leading to the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 were visualized in both formal paintings and wood engravings, particularly those published in Punch and the Illustrated London News. The contemporary perspectives placed at the heart of this excellent comparative study are John Ruskin’s political theories of art and Walter Bagehot’s visual theory of politics. But the great value of the book comes from Carlisle’s detailed and insightful discussions of the effects created by the individual paintings and illustrations, which capture critical moments of public concern and debate. For example, she demonstrates how compositional lines in visual representations of both acts resonate with the complex lines of demarcation in the acts themselves, which defined who was eligible to vote and who was not. Indeed, Carlisle’s discussion of the inconsistencies and complexities of the 1832 Reform Act is the best brief account available.

Ultimately, the 1832 Reform Act did not become the revolutionary force the Tories feared or the triumph of democracy the Radicals had hoped for. Carlisle is able to show that, in its representation of the most socially prominent MPs, Sir George Hayter’s famous painting, The House of Commons, 1833, depicts the Commons as a bastion of wealth and privilege. By making this fact visible, the painting “seems to define the constitution in terms of its exclusions, as an instrument of … undiminished power” (76). Hayter’s painting was not put on public display until 1843, when it was also reproduced as a wood engraving published in the Illustrated London News. It was frequently interpreted at the time as representing the “glories of franchise reform” (77). Indeed, the Times and the Illustrated London News called it a “great picture” that made history come alive. But the decade between the painting’s historical moment and its public appearance is significant, for in light of the Chartist agitations, it must have been clear to many who saw it that further reform was inevitable (78–79). Although the painting’s documentary force as a record of a historical event is impressive, “its shape still embodies elitist values,” and thus it “offers less a celebration of the triumph of franchise reform than a reason to lament its inadequacies” (76).

In her third chapter, “Redrawing the Franchise in the 1860s: Lines around the Constitution,” Carlisle compares representations of political violence in Punch and the Illustrated London News prior to the Reform Act of 1867, especially images of the Hyde Park riots in late July 1866. Here again, her analysis of the effects of these illustrations is astute, for she is able to show how they are not quite what they first seem, either thematically or technically. Carlisle argues persuasively that when “The Mob Pulling down the Railings in Park Lane” (Illustrated London News, August 4, 1866) and “No Rough-ianism” (Punch, August 4, 1866) are placed in the context of earlier events and the periodical’s other contents, there is a reversal of ostensible meaning that makes them more or less reassuring.

Space is so limited in a review that one cannot do justice to, or even mention, the dozens of other images that Carlisle discusses. Suffice it to say that her analyses throughout the study are rich in insight and expertise. This is a book that everyone with an interest in Victorian politics should read.