Steampunk & the Industrial Novel
Early Victorian literature developed a genre called “the industrial novel,” a novel that addressed the new concerns arising about the urbanization and industrialization of English society, with a special emphasis on the plight of the urban poor. These novels revolved around the same kinds of social problems that were being explored at the time by reformers like journalist Henry Mayhew, whose monumental work London Labour and the London Poor is required reading for anyone interested in Victorian English society, especially its underworld.
Industrial novels did not, however, capture the “authentic” voice of the urban poor; instead, they were middle class literary struggles with the tensions that arose in Victorian England’s expanding capitalist society — what was the role of the aristocratic class in this new industrialized nation? What shape should relations between the “two nations,” the rich and poor, as Disraeli described them, take? Where did technological and scientific advancements fit into faith … or vice-versa? In what ways did gender and social class intersect, especially for the poor?
I’ve argued in previous posts that steampunk’s very name suggests that it should have a socially critical politics and ideology, but that the term has been applied more often to an aesthetic movement than to a body of questioning, dissenting work. There can be no doubt that, as an aesthetic movement, steampunk is strongly informed by industrial chic as well as classic Victorianism. It seems to me, therefore, that there’s also a potentially useful link to be made between steampunk as a literary genre and the Victorian industrial novel. However, attempts to forge this link have been few, with perhaps the notable exception of Gibson & Sterling’s The Difference Engine, which scholar Jay Clayton has argued is a rewrite of Disraeli’s Sybil.
Yet since steampunk’s Victorianesque social ills often act as stand-ins for contemporary problems, it seems to me that one way authors could put the critical “punk” back into steampunk might be to consider it a form of the industrial novel, deliberately seeking to engage with social problems within their stories’ context of steampunk tropes and aesthetics. (Note my differentiation between politicized steampunk and apolitical gaslamp fiction.)
However, while the industrial novel was part of a realist movement in literature, I’m not sure we can accurately call steampunk any form of realist fiction. Perhaps we could coin the term “speculative realism,” insofar as it often quotes or imitates 19th century realist descriptions that, while failing to capture contemporary life, still seek to characterize the gritty, “realistic” everyday activities of people in an industrialized society, emphasizing the ugly and scandalous rather than the utopian and romantic? Or maybe I’m stretching the definition of realism to its snapping point now…!
My ideas about steampunk and the industrial novel are more exploratory than declarative at this time; as always, comments and criticism are welcome.
drupagliassotti @ May 12, 2009