Victorian Studies

Abstract:

The National Day of Fast and Humiliation, observed in 1847 on the occasion of the Irish Famine, highlights the contested nature of Victorian conceptions of the public. Fast days are interesting in part because they produced a vast amount of literature: sermons, poems, newspaper articles, and essays. Fictional narratives like Elizabeth Gaskell's Lois the Witch (1859) and historical narratives like Charles Trevelyan's The Irish Crisis (1848) even use fast days to achieve narrative resolution. I argue that although fast-day literature works to foster public unity during times of heightened social divisions, it ultimately distinguishes between publics and populations: groups of people who find expression through the state and groups of people who are managed by the state. I suggest that Trevelyan's The Irish Crisis reveals the inherent violence of this distinction. Through his representation of the fast day, Trevelyan works to integrate Ireland into a British public in order to justify the devastating population loss of the Famine.