that desire was defined). Indeed, the capacity for such abstraction was what typically characterized these theories as authoritative (and masculine) contributions to social analysis. By contrast, novelists who addressed social problems-even when they adopted the specific solutions generated by these theorists-rejected (or at least modified) the tendency toward abstraction that theorists displayed. When they plotted their solutions as stories of specific individuals, novelists disclosed a fact that theorists often overlooked: in a gendered society, individuals cannot be abstractions; even if their class position can be subordinated to the universal characteristics all «men» share, they-and their desires-are still socially differentiated by sex.
Coningsby, Benjamin Disraeli's eighth novel, is the first of what has come to be called the Young England trilogy, after the youth-worshiping politics Disraeli and his friends espoused. In 1870, Disraeli explained that his ambition in the early 1840s had been to explore what he held to be the primary issues of the day: 'the derivation and character of political parties; the condition of the people which had been the consequence of them; the duties of the Church as a main remedial agency in our present state.' While all of these topics are introduced in Coningsby, only the first receives extensive treatment. Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845) is devoted to the condition of the people, and Tancred, or The New Crusade (1847) takes up the historical role of the Jews in founding the Christian church. The three novels are alike, however, in arguing that the novelist can be an authoritative critic of social issues. Coningsby lays the groundwork for this claim. Its specific contribution entails eroticizing what contemporaries considered the most masculine of all activities so that it would be fit material for novelistic treatment, and politicizing the most feminized of all genres so that it would pass as an authoritative discourse. In order to effect this transformation, Disraeli subsumes erotics, politics, and the -512- novel into a conceptual universe that is, for all intents and purposes, exclusively male.
Coningsby is primarily concerned not with specific solutions to the social problems of the day but with the process that Disraeli considered requisite to addressing these problems-the reconstitution of politics. This reform is accomplished primarily through a narrative of psychological maturation that gives politics both a story and an erotic cast. Like Sybil, then, as well as Gaskell's North and South, Coningsby shows how falling in love can perform political work. Unlike these other novels, however, the love in Coningsby is not exclusively heterosexual.
The main plot of Coningsby traces the transformation of Harry Coningsby from an inarticulate schoolboy into the self-possessed spokesman for Young England. At the beginning of the novel, which is set in May 1832, young Coningsby stands for the first time before his grandfather, the Marquess of Monmouth, the wealthiest noble in England. The boy hopes to win from the stern old man the patronage and affection that Monmouth denied to both of Coningsby's nowdeceased parents. The decisive moment of Coningsby's maturation, which occurs some eight years later, also involves his grandfather. Eager to use Coningsby as a 'brilliant tool' for advancing his own campaign for a dukedom, Monmouth commands Coningsby to stand as Tory candidate for Darlford against Monmouth's old enemy, the wealthy manufacturer Millbrook. Even though he knows it will enrage his grandfather, Coningsby refuses to obey Monmouth, both because he loves the mill owner's daughter and because the principles he has come to hold are not those of the Tory party. By resisting Monmouth, Coningsby avoids what Disraeli represents as the most dangerous snare for an ambitious youth-the «dazzling» allure of party intrigue. Instead of party, Coningsby trusts to himself: 'If the principles of his philosophy were true, the great heart of the nation would respond to their expression,' he decides. Thus the young «hero» comes to embody the formula Disraeli sets out early in the novel: 'Great minds must trust to great truths and great talents for their rise, and nothing else.'
The Carlylean celebrations of individual personality that punctuate Coningsby are complicated by Disraeli's equally powerful insistence that the «principles» that animate his hero are not of his own making. Indeed, Disraeli figures Coningsby's maturation as a series of -513- conversations rather than actions; in all but the last of these Coningsby is a silent vessel into which other men «pour» their ideas. As a schoolboy at Eton, Coningsby listens to Oswald Millbrook expound his father's theories; his first «adventure» after Eton is a chance meeting with the erudite Jew Sidonia, who lectures the boy on the 'influence of individual character'; at the family seat of his friend Lord Sydney, Coningsby learns the significance of ancient ceremonies and manners from the Catholic Eustace Lyle; at Millbrook's home outside of Manchester, Coningsby hears firsthand the manufacturer's thoughts about class and merit; and from Sidonia again, first at Coningsby Castle, then in Paris, the youth learns that 'national character' and a strong monarchy more adequately represent the «people» than can an elected House of Commons. At this level of the plot, there is almost no conflict, not only because the significant «events» are conversations (or monologues), but also because Coningsby is so passive, so unformed. At most, the young man admits to confusion or voices criticism of the Whig party, but until he finally expounds the principles of Young England in Book 7, Coningsby's own ideas are presented as sketchily as is his appearance.
The peculiar amorphousness of young Coningsby does not undermine his heroic potential. Disraeli represents Coningsby's influence as immediate, irresistible, and self-explanatory. At Eton, the boy attains 'over his intimates the ascendant power, which is the destiny of genius'; and when he finally stands for Darlford after Millbrook voluntarily steps aside, Coningsby is received 'as if he were a prophet' by supporters of every party. Coningsby's initial lack of character is, in fact, his primary qualification for inaugurating the reform that Disraeli envisions, for by absorbing the ideas of various men, Coningsby is able to incarnate what Sidonia describes as 'national character.' 'A character is an assemblage of qualities,' Sidonia explains; 'the character of England should be an assemblage of great qualities.'
Just as Sybil unites the 'two nations' by combining in herself the aristocracy and the people, so Coningsby constitutes an «assemblage» that reconciles the interests of a Whig mill owner, an apolitical Catholic, and a Jewish financier. As an 'assemblage,' Coningsby most clearly resembles not Parliament, whose deliberations have degenerated into gossip and self-serving intrigue, but the 'free and intellectual press,' which Sidonia presents as above party and class and as capable of restoring dignity even to the monarchy. 'The representation of the -514- Press is far more complete than the representation of Parliament,' Coningsby echoes two books later. 'Let us propose… a free monarchy, established on the fundamental laws… ruling an educated people, represented by a free and intellectual press. Before such a royal authority, supported by such a national opinion, the sectional anomalies of our country would disappear.'
If Disraeli considers the press so important and Parliament so ineffectual, it may seem strange that he brings Coningsby onto the public stage as a member of Parliament and offers as his only example of a journalist the despicable Rigby, author of «slashing» lampoons and would-be spoiler of Coningsby's success. Like the principles of Young England in general, however, Disraeli's image of the 'free and intelligent' press as an «assemblage» of opinions is frankly idealized. Such idealization, in fact, serves as an explicit counter to what Disraeli and his companions considered the spiritually bankrupt and morally deadening tendencies of utilitarianism, political economy, and Whig party policies. In so doing, it also offers a reformed version of politics. For Disraeli, the ideal «politics» is noncontestatory, disinterested, and capable of subsuming opposing positions. It is, in other words, another version of what Coleridge called the symbol.
In one of the many narrative interpolations designed to educate the reader rather than Coningsby, Disraeli summarizes the dilemma that the politics of Young England were intended to address. The 'Condition-of-England Question' has two facets, the narrator explains. The first attests to England's economic and military superiority; the second shows England's failure to manage the fruits of power. 'There was no proportionate advance in our moral civilisation. In the hurry-skurry of money-making, men-making, and machine-making, we had altogether outgrown, not the spirit, but the organisation, of our institutions.' The program of Young England was designed to rectify such problems without undermining England's prosperity. Specifically, the Tory Young Englanders wanted to improve the condition of the poor by restoring the aristocratic paternalism Disraeli associated with the age of chivalry. Government would be conducted by enlightened landowners; ritualized celebrations of the nation would reinvigorate the spirituality of the people; judiciously administered alms would restore the deference of the poor; and belief in the monarchy and the church would sustain everyone in hard times. With its idealized (and decidedly imprecise) agenda, Young England was developed as an alterna-515- tive to the dismal science of political economy, which reduced the Condition of England issue to a 'knife-and-fork question,' and to the programs of political reform advanced by Chartists, radicals, and many Whigs.
At some points in Coningsby, Disraeli mocks the more «obsolete» ideas of Young England, as when he reduces Henry Sydney's lofty ideas to the absurd suggestion 'that the people are to be fed by dancing round a May- pole.' Nevertheless, like most other novelists who took up social issues, Disraeli clearly longed for a more spiritual, more imaginative alternative to political economy. Devising such an alternative and giving it psychological credibility are the principal functions of the conversations that make Coningsby what he comes to be. At one point in the
