Note 9 to Chapter 6 of the author's Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray, which University Press of Virginia published in 1992. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
It is true, of course, that subversive acts are in a sense both authorized and determined by the establishments they subvert, for, on the one hand, subversive acts fall into two categories, those tolerated and those not. Henry Esmond dutifully remains tolerated. And, on the other hand, subversive acts must be of a kind relevant to the establishment bring subverted, else there would be no point. These meanings of determinism are much looser than those invoked by Feltes, who imagined Thackeray under the sway of social and economic powers inevitably producing a novel bearing the establishment stamp in both form and content.
Last modified: 4 April 2001