The colonial children cry: Jo the crossing-sweep goes to the colonies

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Abstract

© 2015 © 2015 Leeds Trinity University. In this article I explore the affective power of Charles Dickens's character Jo, the crossing-sweep from his novel Bleak House, and his broader cultural significance. Contemporary audiences were deeply moved by Jo's tragic death, sparking a vast popular, and especially visual, culture around the homeless white child. Yet, by establishing an affective and moral opposition between white waif and black heathen, in a relationship Dickens termed telescopic philanthropy, audiences were directed to care about the white poor with the inference that black people were not a proper object of compassion. Jo's touching story circulated widely across the colonies of Australia and New Zealand, and was put to work in transmitting inherited British values and making sense of local political and social circumstances. By the late nineteenth century the emotional regime symbolized by Jo the crossing-sweep effectively consolidated racial exclusions.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)308-325
JournalJournal of Victorian Culture
Volume20
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

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