Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T08:06:16.931Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

REALISM, SPECULATION, AND THE GOLD STANDARD IN HARRIET MARTINEAU'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2006

Annette Van
Annette Van
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

AT A CRITICAL JUNCTURE in part one of Harriet Martineau's Berkeley the Banker, the fourteenth novel in her Illustrations of Political Economy series, there is a run on a country bank. The run is precipitated by a casual exchange in a local shop during which Mrs. Millar, the confectioner, is given a five-pound note to change. Her reply “Oh, I cant change that note [sic]” is misunderstood by others in the shop to mean that she is refusing to honor a particular bank's note while, in fact, she is simply not able to make change (169). The panic that ensues ruins Mr. Berkeley, the country bank's proprietor, and serves the novel's aim of demonstrating the precariousness of paper currency unbacked by the gold standard. In describing this incident, as well as through various characters' periodic lectures, the novel argues that only a gold standard could have prevented a calamity such as the bank run. Under a gold standard, citizens of the town of Haleham never could have misinterpreted Mrs. Millar's remarks–they would have known that the note must be honored and that, therefore, the confectioner merely lacked the correct change. Under a gold standard, in other words, the meaning of paper currency is not open to misinterpretation; its value is fully known and stable. Martineau may be convinced of the gold standard's ability to scuttle the dangers of textual ambiguity, but this moment also exposes the challenge of regulating the circulation and proliferation of meaning. The meaning of a speech act and the value of a banknote are both revealed as unstable and difficult, perhaps impossible, to regulate or manage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 115 - 129
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barthes Roland. 1974. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Noonday
Brantlinger Patrick. 1996. Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694–1994. Ithaca: Cornell UP
Burke Edmund. 1986. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Ed. Conor Cruise O'Brien. London: Penguin
Doane Mary Ann. 1991. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge
Emsley Clive. 1996. Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900. 2nd ed. London: Longman
Feavearyear Sir Albert. 1963. The Pound Sterling: A History of English Money. 1931. Rev. ed., E. Victor Morgan. Oxford: Clarendon P
Fetter Frank Whitson. 1965. Development of British Money Orthodoxy 1797–1875. Cambridge: Harvard UP
Fletcher Max E. 1974 “Harriet Martineau and Ayn Rand: Economics in the Guise of Fiction.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 33.4: 367– 79.Google Scholar
Gallagher Catherine. 1985. The Industrial Reformation of English Literature: Social Discourse and Narrative Form 1832–1867. Chicago: U of Chicago P
Goux Jean-Joseph. 1994. The Coiners of Language. Trans. Jennifer Curtiss Gage. Norman: U of Oklahoma P
Goux Jean-Joseph. 1990. Symbolic Economies: After Marx and Freud. Trans. Jennifer Curtiss Gage. Ithaca: Cornell UP
Holway Tatiana M. 1992 “The Game of Speculation: Economics and Representation.” Dickens Quarterly 9.3: 103– 14.Google Scholar
1833 Rev. of Illustrations of Political Economy. Edinburgh Review 58.115 (April): 1– 39.
Levine George. 1981. The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterley. Chicago: U of Chicago P
MacCabe Colin. 1985. “Realism and the cinema: notes on some Brechtian theses.” Tracking the Signifier. Theoretical essays: film, linguistics, literature. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 33– 57.
Martineau Harriet. 1833. Berkeley the Banker. Parts I and II. Vols. 14 & 15. Illustrations of Political Economy. Boston: Leonard C. Bowles
Martineau Harriet. 1984. Deerbrook. 1839. Garden City: Dial
Martineau Harriet. 1877. Harriet Martineau's Autobiography. 2 vols. Ed. Maria Weston Chapman. Boston: James R. Osgood
Martineau Harriet. 1838. How to Observe. Morals and Manners. New York: Harper
Martineau Harriet. 1834. Life in the Wilds. Vol. 1. Illustrations of Political Economy. London: Charles Fox
Martineau Harriet. 1833. Messrs. Vanderput and Snoek: A Tale. Vol. 16. Illustrations of Political Economy. Boston: Leonard C. Bowles
Martineau Harriet. 1836. “On the Duty of Studying Political Economy.” Miscellanies. Vol. I. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 272– 88.
Michaels Walter Benn. 1987. The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism. Berkeley: U of California P
Mill James. 1821. Elements of Political Economy. London:
(1833): “Miss Martineau's Monthly Novels.” Quarterly Review 49 136– 52.
Searle G. R. 1998. Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Clarendon
Shell Marc. 1999. “The Issue of Representation.” The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the intersection of literature and economics. Ed. Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osteen. New York: Routledge, 53– 74.
Smith Adam. 1986. The Wealth of Nations. Books I–III. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Thornton Henry. 1939. An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain. 1802. Ed. F. A. v. Hayek. London: George Allen & Unwin
Webb R. K. 1960. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. New York: Heineman