A Critique of Capitalistic Exploitation in Charles Kingsley‘s Alton Locke

Abstract

This research is a study on Charles Kingsley‘s Alton Locke (1850), a historical novel that takes us through the journey of the life experience of Locke, the protagonist. In the novel, Kingsley basically depicts the plight of the poor working class in London whose lives are scorched by the flames of discrimination, exploitation and overwork in dilapidated conditions. This thesis work centres on the analysis of repressive and ideological state apparatuses in the novel used in sustaining the capitalistic system of that era when this novel was written. This research basically applies the neo Marxist theories of Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci but is not just limited to them. The novel has been analysed on light of various critical theories from neo Marxism. It has been found that the poor workers are fleeced by repression of the state and more than that by the ruling ideologies widely circulated by the people in power to keep them as poor as ever and help sustain the capitalistic economic system based on exploitation. It has been found to be an important social document of the time when Chartism, the movement that was based on egalitarian spirit demanded equal rights for the poor working class, was at full swing and some people like Crosswaithe and Locke in the novel were beginning to be aware of the exploitation and injustice concealed in the capitalistic economic system that sustained itself by the use of state power and ruling ideologies. Moreover, what makes his work a social document of his time is his careful and minute exposition of capitalistic mechanism of exploiting the poor working class by means of the ruling ideologies interwoven with the repressive state apparatuses that ultimately serves the purpose of the ruling class: the reproduction of the conditions of production