ABSTRACT
John Ruskin shows the same anxieties and contradictions in his writings on work as Carlyle in his prose, Munby in his diaries, and Ford Madox Brown in his painting. As in Brown’s painting, Ruskin’s anxieties are represented in the context of an idealization of manual labor, especially digging. Fors Clavigera has been criticized for Ruskin’s apparent confusion as to his audience, but also defended as a unique political document. To counterbalance his subversion of writing as labor, he idealizes another form of work, that of digging, as the epitome of masculine industry. The contradictions in his own position therefore led him into the political impasse that many commentators have noted. The contradictions that the author explore in this chapter are also to be found in the writings of William Morris, even though Morris would superficially seem to be at the other extreme of political opinion from Ruskin’s self-described ‘radical Toryism.’
