Studies in the Novel

Abstract:

The Orientalized magician was a significant figure in the cultural manufacture of the idea of Empire in nineteenth-century Britain. As by definition a deceiver, the conjuror could not help but embody identity and nationhood as unstable, even impossible, performances. With the character Signor Brunoni, in Cranford (1853), Elizabeth Gaskell stages Empire as a multi-faceted, conflicted, and highly paradoxical cultural and commercial show. Three decisive central chapters present the Signor, his technical stunts, and community members’ reactions to these, establishing him as the novel’s pivotal persona. The “panic” he causes subsides when he is exposed as Samuel Brown, a British citizen masquerading as Other. Yet without the intervention of the trickster, the (temporary) restoration of the community—represented by Peter Jenkyn’s return—would not transpire. Appearances, disappearances, and reappearances are orchestrated in Cranford as in a magical display, positing the construction of Empire as itself a “sleight of hand.”