ABSTRACT
The fear that many working men might share Dandy Mick's relish for violent class conflict as a solution to their problems is never completely absent from Victorian working-class fiction, but it was only at those moments when novelists were naggingly aware of the workers as a mass force that the subject of class conflict was brought into the open and acknowledged as a matter of central importance. It is most apparent in the industrial novel where this kind of awareness is everywhere present. As was pointed out in Ch. I, the industrial novelists were exploring a received mass image of the working classes which made it impossible for them to regard the industrial worker as other than a class representative. He could be placed topographically in his northern cities, which seemed to have no other reason for existing than their industries; ideologically, with Chartism; and occupationally, because everyone worked at, or was associated with, similar jobs. The fact that these jobs were instinctively linked in the public mind with symbols of power and strength - the furnace, engine and factory - added a further frightening element to his mass identity. It was his suffering to which novelists drew attention, but his potential power that was their true concern. The possibility that the workers might
haveideasoftheirownabouttheusestowhichthispowercould beputwasdiscountenancedbythenovelists.Onthissubjectthey hadmadeuptheirmindslongbeforetheybegantheirjourneys northorputpentopaper.Firstandforemosttheywere determinedtoprovemisguidedanyonewhothoughtlikeDandy Mick.
