Barnaby Rudge, ‘idiocy’ and paternalism: assisting the ‘poor idiot’

Abstract

Histories of the idea of ‘intellectual disability’ and its genealogically related concepts such as ‘idiocy’ rarely consider cultural representations as historical evidence. However, this form of evidence can present another aspect to our attempts to reconstruct the historical image of ‘idiocy’. Charles Dickens’ novel Barnaby Rudge, with its ‘idiot’ protagonist, uses the image to engage with Chartism and debates over paternalism in the early Victorian period; there is a clear connection between the association of Barnaby with the mob, debates in the 1830s and 1840s over state participation in traditional paternalist structures and the development of ‘idiot asylums’ in the late 1840s and 1850s. Barnaby serves as a critical figure in the novel’s justification of a strain of neo‐paternalism that rejects working‐class claims for greater authority while supporting certain rights and protections for the helpless poor.