Split Self-Fashioning: Benjamin Disraeli and Working-Class Resilience in Sybil

My contribution focuses on the minor characters of Dandy Mick and Devilsdust from Benjamin Disraeli’s most famous novel Sybil as an example of working-class vulnerability and resilience. In the dichotomic organization of the narrative matter, they form the comedy duo pitted against aristocratic barbarians, who live in the glittering world of privilege. Exposed to all sorts of dangers encountered by orphans or abandoned infants in the early industrial world, including infanticide, Dandy Mick and Devilsdust simply refuse to disappear, thus demonstrating their remarkable abilities of resistance and adaptation. My point is that they revive the Marrano child prototype, thus playing an essential part in Disraeli’s self-fashioning and political agenda.