Carlyle and The Economics of Terror: A Study of Revisionary Gothicism in The French Revolution by Mary Desaulniers

Abstract

of this emergent domestic direction; and is able to see little pedagogic utility in some more recent developments (such as feminist literary theory). But — with its respect for individual, reflective student response, as exemplified in the detailed teaching unit provided by Ian Underhill — neo-Diltzianism has merit as a form of resistance to the circulars and directives currently being produced by the provincial Ministry of Education, where “English” is principally conceived as an element of workplace training. Lambert’s and Gutteridge’s studies, like most work on the discipline of English studies in Canada to date, are confined to Ontario. While they have a broader applicability and relevance — both as examples of detailed and analytical institutional histories, and because of the influence of Ontario in setting curricular directions for English Canada— one hopes for similar studies for other provinces and areas in the near future, and at various levels of analysis (schools, figures, publics, and policies). Only then will the true diversity — and possible future directions — of the discipline become fully apparent. h e a t h e r Mu r r a y / University of Toronto Mary Desaulniers, Carlyle and The Economics of Terror: A Study of Re­ visionary Gothicism in The French Revolution (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995). x, 140. $44.95 cloth. Thomas Carlyle in his first great history The French Revolution (1837) dealt with an historical period in which the velocity of change overwhelmed the participants, in which the event was greater than the men. Influenced by the theories of Saint-Simon, Carlyle believed history advances through al­ ternating periods of expansion and concentration. In a period of expansion, the intuitions of a heroic leader attract the loyalties of disciples who give the Social Idea institutional forms in the state, church, and judiciary. Each new era so begins. But success and consolidation may lead to inertia and a loss of the organic inner spirit. In a period of concentration, the inherited institutional fabric is found wanting and is destroyed. Such a critical period is marked by turbulence and loss of control: “it is the black desperate bat­ tle of Men against their whole Condition and Environment — a battle, alas, withal, against the Sin and Darkness that was in themselves as in others: this is the Reign of Terror” (Carlyle 2: 294). Carlyle quotes the Girondist Vergniaud for an emblem of such a period: “the Revolution, like Saturn, is devouring its own children” (2: 291). It is the antithesis of history as the biography of great men. As Carlyle saw the revolution as a negative phenomenon, it is driven by “Transcendental despair ... though not consciously so” (2: 294). 471 It is as if the Revolution were anthropomorphized, a great feverish body passing through what Carlyle in Sartor Resartus called “the Everlasting No.” The three parts, “The Bastille,” “The Constitution,” “The Terror,” chart the move from immobility to frenzy. The first part covers twenty-five years, from the death of Louis xv at Versailles to the forcible removal of his son Louis xvi and family from Versailles to Paris. “The Constitution” describes the attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy, which ended with the storming of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792. The final part, “The Terror,” opens with the September massacres. Fearful that the numerous royalist prisoners would rise in support of the Duke of Brunswick’s army march­ ing on Paris, a Parisian mob executed many of them. The panic killings ceased when the French patriot army stopped the invasion at Valmy and the Legislative Assembly reestablished its authority. In the new National Convention, power had shifted, however, toward the men of the mountain, the Jacobins, best represented by the incorruptible lawyer from Arras, Max­ imilien Robespierre. In the face of domestic insurrections in the Vendée, Lyons, and Toulon, and with the entry of Britain into the war as part of the coalition against France, “the goaded land waxed mad” (Wordsworth [1850 version] 10.336). Louis Capet and his queen, the Girondist deputies, Hébert, Danton, and Desmoulins — all were beheaded as the guillotine cut at an ever more frenzied pace, until July 1794 when the Convention turned on its Committee of...