Jonathan Taylor

Afterword, After Slavery, After Shooting Niagara

Mark Tapley is alluding here to the famous abolitionist emblem, designed around 1790 by Josiah Wedgwood, which, as Hugh Thomas notes, ‘consisted of a picture of a chained Negro on bended knee with as legend the question: “I not a man and a brother?” ’ As Thomas suggests, ‘this … emblem … was an inspired piece of propaganda’, and, by the time Dickens wrote Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–4), the image and slogan had become so ingrained in public consciousness that Dickens could assume that his reader will follow the link Martin makes between ‘“a man and a brother”’ and a ‘“slave”.’ Undoubtedly, in the context of Dickens’ novel the connection is heavily ironic – Mark goes on to enumerate the ways in which the ‘“man of colour”’, Cicero, has certainly not been treated as a ‘“man and a brother”’ whilst being a slave. Nevertheless, the connection also encodes certain Victorian attitudes towards the notions of equality and recognition that I want to explore further in this ‘Afterword’.

Introduction: Master–Slave Relations, Master–Slave Pacts

In the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel sets out in detail his famous and seminal paradigm of hierarchical relations, the so-called ‘Master and Slave Dialectic’. In a variety of ways, Hegel’s dialectic has been used as a theoretical starting-point or origin in my book, which is more generally concerned with literary representations of master–slave and master–servant relationships in works by Thomas Carlyle and others. For this reason, it is necessary to begin with a short recapitulation and examination of Hegel’s archetypal model.

Capitalists, Castrators and Criminals: Violent Masters and Slaves in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White

In his ‘Master and Slave Dialectic’ (1807), Hegel argues that the slave becomes a slave after capitulating in a ‘life-and-death struggle’ with the master; mastery and slavery, for Hegel, are constituted by, and as, absolute violence. In the Philosophy of Mind (1830), Hegel locates this kind of mastery and slavery in the ancient past, positing the life-anddeath struggle as an originary moment of history; here, he argues that violent forms of mastery and slavery are absent from the modern state, which has surpassed them. As Richard Norman writes, ‘the relationship of master and slave is seen as a first step from the state of nature to social life, typifying the societies of the ancient world, but subsequently giving way to a form of society in which all men are recognised as free.’ In Being and Nothingness (1943), however, Sartre rejects Hegel’s historicisation of the ‘Master and Slave Dialectic’ and detects its presence in all human relations. As Norman notes:

Heroes, Hero-Worshippers and Jews: Music Masters, Slaves and Servants in Thomas Carlyle, Richard Wagner, George Eliot and George Du Maurier

In his essay ‘The Opera’ (1852), Carlyle argues that the ideal music master is a kind of ‘priest’ who is ‘a friend of the gods, and choicest benefactor to man’ (O, 398, 397). The musician is at once on a level with ‘the gods’ and the benefactor or servant of ‘man’. For Carlyle, there is no real contradiction here: the master-musician is ‘a friend of the gods’ precisely because he benefits and serves ‘man’. In Past and Present (1843), Carlyle clarifies this paradox when he suggests that

‘Servants’ Logic’ and Analytical Chemistry: Intellectual Masters and Servants in George Eliot and Charles Dickens

In her essay ‘Servants’ Logic’ (1865), George Eliot complains that servants’ ‘standard measures are of a private kind’, such as ‘a good lump [or] … a handful’ (SL, 392). As far as she is concerned, this is a prime example of what she calls ‘servants’ logic’. According to Eliot, servants are incapable of comprehending any unit of measurement that does not have reference to something as private as their own bodies. Clearly, she assumes that her own imperial measurements are, by contrast, both public and non-arbitrary – and British law supports her in this assumption. The power of the master over the servant in Victorian society would seem to be legitimised by a hierarchy of discourses, whereby the middle class have recourse to an accepted and universal system of measurement, whilst the servant class have reference only to their personal measurements. There is, though, no real difference between ‘a handful’ and the imperial unit of, for instance, ‘a foot’ – both measurements, in fact, derive from the private context of the body. Rather, Eliot’s essay can be seen as part of a Victorian, middleclass strategy to try to restrict servants’ discourse to the domestic sphere, whilst portraying ‘masters’ logic’ as a wider ‘truth’ (SL, 391).

Stump Orators, Phantasm Captains and Mutual Recognition: Popular Masters and Masterlessness in Dickens’ Hard Times and Thomas Carlyle’s ‘Stump-Orator’

For Hegel, ‘mutual recognition’ represents an absolute end to the relation of master and slave. In the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), he posits this ideal state of equality and reciprocity as the end-point of the ‘Master–Slave Dialectic’.

Slaveholders and Democrats: Combined Masters and Slaves in Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens’ American Notes and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative

As Hugh Thomas points out, one of the main ‘causes of slavery named in [the Emperor] Justinian’s Code of Laws [was] … defeat in war’. Similarly, in an article entitled ‘North American Slavery’ (1852), Dickens and his collaborator, Henry Morley, presuppose a past when slaves were mainly ‘prisoners of war’. As we have seen, Hegel provides a paradigm for such slavery in his ‘Master and Slave Dialectic’ (1807). For Hegel, the master’s power originates in a ‘life-and-death struggle’ with the other – the slave being the one who capitulates during this struggle. Carlyle certainly encountered Hegel’s work, and, in Chartism (1839), invokes and justifies hierarchies that have their origins in violence. Here, Carlyle legitimises Hegel’s model by identifying ‘might and right [as] … one and the same’. For Carlyle, ‘conquest, along with power of compulsion, [which is] … essential universally in human society, must bring benefit along with it….

Renormalisation of the Néel temperature and magnetocaloric effect in Tb2Agln

The influence of an applied magnetic field on the antiferromagnetic transition temperature of the localised metallic antiferromagnet Tb2AgIn has been studied. Magnetisation measurements show that as the applied field strength increases the transition temperature is shifted to lower temperatures with a B2 dependence as expected on the grounds of symmetry. On the basis of measurements made in static fields of up to 5.5 T, it was estimated that a field of 7.7 T would be sufficient to suppress antiferromagnetic order at T=0 K. This prediction has been confirmed using pulsed high field magnetisation and neutron diffraction measurements in an applied field. The magnetic isotherms have a complex field dependence producing an entropy change ΔS which becomes negative above the Neel temperature ∼58 K. The temperature at which the entropy change passes through zero provides a more precise value for the Neel temperature than can be obtained from Arrott plots. Significant magnetic entropy persists above 58 K and specific heat measurements show that the Rln(13) expected for Tb3+ is only recovered at ∼2.5 TN.