1865

Vulcan in the Sulks. Punch, Volume 48, March 25, 1865, p. 119

Britannia is traditionally depicted with many of the attributes of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and defensive warfare. She typically wears a crested helmet and aegis (upper body armor), and sometimes also carries a spear. In this odd cartoon, however, Britannia also assumes the role of Venus, the goddess of love. In classical mythology, Venus was married to Vulcan, the lame, middle-aged god of the forge and the patron of craftsmen. The club-footed, physically unattractive Vulcan served as smith to the Olympian deities, forging armor and weapons for the gods and their chosen mortal heroes. For the most part peaceable and even-tempered, Vulcan could become violent and unpredictable when his jealousy was roused. In his devoted pursuit of his craft, he tended to neglect his flighty young wife, who frequently cheated on her husband with a string of lovers, both gods and mortals. Her favorite paramour was Mars, the arrogant and boastful god of war. Both Ovid and Homer describe how the jealous, cuckolded Vulcan gained a measure of revenge by ensnaring his faithless wife and her lover in an invisible net, exposing them to the censure of the other gods.

Here, Vulcan sulks outside the padlocked door of his smithy. At his side is an unfinished shield; a missing section of armor plate reveals the vulnerable wooden layers beneath. With a gesture, the realistically-rendered Britannia/Venus, standing above the equally realistic Vulcan, attempts to draw his attention towards a caricature of Lincoln as Mars striding towards them, flaunting a stars-and-stripes shield. In a strange contravention of Victorian morality, Britannia/Venus appears to threaten her husband with infidelity unless he relents and does her bidding (saying, in the cartoon's subcaption, "If you turn sulky, and won't make my armour, how shall I be able to resist Mars?").

Britannia's inability to "resist Mars," however, may be more accurately read as a reference to contemporary British political and economic issues. During the years of the American Civil War, the British iron industry was wracked with increasing conflict between ironworkers and the ironmasters (owners), who resisted the attempts of their men to unionize. The employers countered strike threats from the unions with lockouts in industrial centers such as Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, and Birmingham. In December, 1864 the ironmasters' association decided to force down wages, and laid plans to break the growing power of the unions by enforcing a general lockout throughout the entire industry in the event of localized strikes. After the wage reductions went into effect on January 14, 1865, workers in many production centers of the English north and midlands did indeed strike, in some cases defying the advice of their own union leaders. In so doing, they set in motion a rolling series of further strikes and lockouts around the country. Among the works ultimately affected was the Park Gate facility, near Portsmouth, which produced armor plate for the Royal Navy.

The London press, reflecting the conservative interests of the ruling class, was largely hostile to the strikers, as it was to trade unionism in general. Some in the British defense establishment were doubtless uncomfortable with the knowledge that, by the latter stages of the Civil War, the U.S. Navy had built the world's largest fleet of modern, steam-powered, ironclad warships (rendering many older ships of the Royal Navy obsolete). But contrary to the claims of Tenniel's cartoon, the ironworkers' strike of 1865 was more significant as an example of British class struggle than as a real threat to national security.

Research assistance courtesy Virginia Hyvarinen.