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Bulwer's Misanthropes and the Limits of Victorian Sympathy

2002; Indiana University Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/vic.2002.44.4.597

1527-2052

Christopher Lane,

Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice

Twenty-one-years old, intent on writing a "History of the British Public," Edward Lytton Bulwer feared in 1824 that the destruction of social values, including sympathy, would spawn widespread misery. Time and experience only intensified this concern. Having come to doubt that the "age of [...] reconstruct[ion]" would redress cultural misery and reform, Bulwer later revised his precocious argument. 1 In April 1863, for example, Bulwer, now aged sixty, published a scathing critique of "The Modern Misanthrope" in Blackwood's, in which he claimed that Victorian intellectuals donned their "masked misanthropy" with "equal suavity and equal scorn." He admonished his peers for coexisting archly, rather than fleeing one another in honest disgust, and urged them to express their rage sincerely, arguing that robust criticism would abet moral reform (477).