Demos

George Gissing's Demos: A Story of English Socialism (1886) takes a position exactly opposite to that offered by Walter Besant in All Sorts and Conditions of Men: as far as Gissing's upper-class characters are concerned, the social system is fine as it stands; universal education dangerously unfits the lower-class worker for his position; etc. I suspect that even the most non-leftwing contemporary reader would pause at one character's claim that the physical sufferings of the impoverished are equivalent to the mental pains of the wealthy. Despite the title, however, the novel doesn't handle politics particularly well; as the editor of my edition points out, Gissing makes no real attempt to address or engage with actual Socialist politics of the time. In some ways, the working class characters appear to have wandered in from an 1840s "Condition of England" novel (in fact, there's a moment near the end reminiscent of Disraeli's Sybil).

Still, Gissing is on much firmer ground when he's doing what novelists are good at doing, namely, creating interesting central characters. Unfortunately, this interest does not extend to the "good guy," Hubert Eldon, who is, alas, a bore. But the novel spends most of its time with Richard Mutimer, a working-class Socialist unexpectedly elevated to landed status by a misplaced will, and Adela, the young woman in love with Hubert but unpleasantly married to Richard. Gissing doesn't stint in representing their marriage as a wretched one: not only are we continually reminded that Richard's lower-class status forever sunders him from true union with the cultivated Adela, but also we see him suspect her of adultery and, in a moment of rage, even try to rape her (a reminder that matters sexual were becoming more explicit by the 1880s). In a bit of heavy-handed symbolism, their only child dies shortly after birth, thereby warning the reader that cross-class intimacy "produces" nothing. Richard, however, is a genuinely mixed character, not just a heavy-handed villain: he is often in awe of Adela's "nobility" and, indeed, shows real signs of moral strength himself. Gissing implies that, had Richard inherited just the annuity he was originally supposed to receive, he would have developed into a kind of noble figure in his own right--but, nevertheless, one of an irredeemably "lower" sort. Adela, for her part, is not a stereotypical angel in the house. While she usually submits to Richard's demands, she makes no pretense of loving him--indeed, she acknowledges to herself that she is still in love with Hubert. Nor does the narrator chide her for becoming angry at her husband or, indeed, hating him. There are other signs that we're in the 1880s. Adela is certainly a Christian, but not an evangelical, and Gissing does not always represent God as the source of her strength; for that matter, the working-class Emma Vine, jilted by Richard, is strong and virtuous throughout despite her lack of religious feeling. As I mentioned before, the novel is fairly frank about sexual desire (and it's not stretching it to suggest that Adela has a crush on the transcendent, albeit two-dimensional, Stella Westlake).

While there's no danger of Demos displacing either The Odd Women or New Grub Street on the "Gissing must-reads" list, it's still a fairly successful novel--primarily because of Richard and Adela. The actual plot may feel too clunky to modern readers, and the wrap-up is so sudden that it feels like Gissing decided to stop once he hit his targeted word count. And it's not a serious novel of working-class life in the tradition of, say, Gaskell and Kingsley. Still, Gissing's central characters make it worth a look.

(There are a number of sites devoted to Gissing: see, for example, Gissing in Cyberspace, which includes an e-text of Demos.)