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Chapter 2 - Gold and Greater Britain

The Australian Gold Rushes, Unsettled Desire, and the Global British Subject

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Philip Steer
Affiliation:
Massey University, Auckland
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Summary

This chapter argues that the 1850s Australian gold rushes profoundly challenged the stadialist developmental logic underpinning political economy and novelistic realism. An initial response, Catherine Helen Spence’s Clara Morison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever (1854), cast gold digging in the language of romance, associated with financial speculation and social upheaval, and imagined the restoration of the stadialist norms of cultivation and culture. The emergence in Australia of the need for a new theory of subjectivity and society can be seen in W. E. Hearn’s Plutology: or, The Theory of the Efforts to Satisfy Human Wants (1864), which abandoned stadialism and labor in favor of a model of consumption based upon individual desire. The formal impact of such insights is also evident in works by metropolitan writers who had previously encountered the gold rushes. W. S. Jevons’ path-breaking “marginalist” Theory of Political Economy (1871) and Anthony Trollope’s sensation novel John Caldigate (1878-79) both center upon and normativize a British subject defined by desire, and through this contribute to a newly deterritorialized understanding of British subjectivity.

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Chapter
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Settler Colonialism in Victorian Literature
Economics and Political Identity in the Networks of Empire
, pp. 79 - 124
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Gold and Greater Britain
  • Philip Steer, Massey University, Auckland
  • Book: Settler Colonialism in Victorian Literature
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108695824.003
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  • Gold and Greater Britain
  • Philip Steer, Massey University, Auckland
  • Book: Settler Colonialism in Victorian Literature
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108695824.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Gold and Greater Britain
  • Philip Steer, Massey University, Auckland
  • Book: Settler Colonialism in Victorian Literature
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108695824.003
Available formats
×