Blog #3: Ineffectual Reform, Successful Revolution

I found Chris Vanden Bossche’s analysis of Felix Holt useful for thinking through why Eliot made Felix such an ineffectual protagonist. Vanden Bossche writes, “When [Felix] refuses to rise above the working class, he is not arguing against social change but rejecting class as a way of defining that change” (7). With his radical political ideals, Felix ardently believes that social change is necessary, but he rejects that change at a larger national-political level. For him, small individual changes seem much more important. In Chapter XXVII, Felix explains to Esther why he will always remain poor: “it enables me to do what I most want to do on earth. Whatever the hopes for the world may be—whether great or small—I am a man of this generation; I will try to make life less bitter for a few within my reach” (263). Felix emphasizes here that he is aware how small his reach is; he can only change the lives of a few and he focuses specifically on the present. Whereas great political changes may bring about positive reforms for the entire working class somewhere in the future, Felix can touch a small number of people right now, which is arguably more useful. As a result, Felix remains ineffectual in converting workers to his point of view, but he continues to try to reach out to them in hopes of finding even one man who will listen.

In Chapter XI, when Felix is at the Sproxton pub, he shows the workers how much he values the individual. After Johnson asks, “Will it do any good to honest Tom, who is hungry at Sproxton, to hear that Jack at Newcastle has his bellyful of beef and pudding?” Felix responds, “It ought to do him good…If he knows it’s a bad thing to be hungry and not have enough to eat, he ought to be glad that another fellow, who is idle, is not suffering in the same way” (137). Felix views the improvement of even one working-class man’s life as a positive move forward and something to be happy about. Unfortunately, he cannot make the workers see this point of view because they are all too caught up in their own suffering and collectively, as a class, want widespread reforms. In “The Address to the Working Men, by Felix Holt,” Eliot writes, “So long as there is selfishness in men…so long Class Interest will be in danger of making itself felt injuriously” (489-90). As she does throughout Felix Holt, Eliot highlights the problematic selfishness of human nature in its connection to class interest. However, she also shows that selfishness is something that can be found everywhere regardless of one’s class, thus it has to be combatted on an individual level first.

Vanden Bossche argues that Felix Holt “inverts the conventional Victorian opposition between revolution and reform…Eliot’s novel treats reform as the action of a class that is always limited to its self-interest in contrast to revolution that involves a transformation of the self into disinterested citizen” (9). Although Felix is an ineffectual protagonist when it comes to mass reforms, he can bring about an even more important individual revolution in Esther after telling her, “I want you to change” (10.123). By the end of the novel, Esther is able to overcome her selfish desires for material wealth and a life of luxury. She is not a member of the working-class, but this individual revolution actually works best with her because she is the character with the most complicated class positioning, not fitting into any one specific category. Both selfishness and class interest are erased in Esther’s personal revolution, which is what Eliot argues is necessary for any greater nation-wide reform. From this point of view, Felix’s character is not as ineffectual as he may seem.