ABSTRACT
The claims made on behalf of the letters to Sue are a case in point; Chevalier treats them in just this synecdochic fashion: the letters reflect not only a broader form of popular consciousness but a form of consciousness relatively homogeneous in character. In the same issue they also published Sue's response to a request from the editors to guide them in the formulation of the 'tendency' the paper should adopt. Had the critics of L'Atelier paid any attention to this, they might have found Sue's distinction between the honest artisan and the evil malefactor entirely congenial to their religious-ethical persuasions. Moreover, the terms of its dissent suggest a fear or suspicion of an amorphous mass of literate but 'uninstructed' workers out there in thrall to the blandishments of Sue's novel. Its intervention is thus perhaps less a reflection of wider opinion than a warning to it.
