“Move, move, everything moves”: The Representations of the Body–Machine Relation in the Literature of Factory Reform
“Move, move, everything moves”: The Representations of the Body–Machine Relation in the Literature of Factory Reform

Author(s): Małgorzata Nitka
Subject(s): Cultural history, 18th Century, 19th Century
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: body; deformity; factory reform; literature; machine; 19th century
Summary/Abstract: Taking as its premise Tamara Ketabgian’s interpretation of the factory as “a destructive coupling of humans and machines”, the chapter looks into the body–machine relation as experienced and described by industrial workers themselves, and imaginatively transformed by novelists opposed to the factory system. Examples are provided by, e.g., 'A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy', 'A Narrative of the Experience and Sufferings of William Dodd, a Factory Cripple, Written by Himself', Frances Trollope’s 'The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong', 'The Factory Boy', or Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna’s 'Helen Fleetwood'. These works belong to the broadly understood literature of factory reform, which sought to urge changes in legislation which would, for instance, raise the child labour age limit and reduce working hours for children and women. A key image present in such texts is that of the labouring body, often the child’s body, implicated into the situation of adjustment, requiring it respond to the regular, often fast, movement of the machine. Workers’ failure or inability to respond, because of the physical limitations, fatigue, and inattention, would result in variously damaged bodies: weakened, abused, misshapen, injured, or maimed. Accordingly, even though workers would occasionally admire machinery for its strength, magnificence, and complexity, they could not dissociate it from antagonistic valences, i.e. its abilities to disable the labouring body.

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