G. A. Henty - Controversial Views

Controversial Views

Even during his lifetime, Henty's work was contentious; some Victorian writers accused Henty's novels of being xenophobic towards non-British people and objected to his glorification of British imperialism. Examples of Henty's right-wing political views are found in his True to the Old Flag (1885) which supports the Loyalist side in the American War of Independence, and In the Reign of Terror (1888) and No Surrender! A Tale of the Rising in La Vendée (1900) which are strongly hostile to the French Revolution. However, In Henty's novel In Freedom's Cause: A Story of Wallace and Bruce (1885) the hero fights against the English, and bitterly denounces the acts of England's king, Edward I. Henty's novel With Lee in Virginia echoes other conservative thinkers in Victorian Britain (such as Thomas Carlyle) by taking the side of the "aristocratic" Confederacy against the Union.

Henty's popularity amongst homeschoolers is not without controversy, particularly because some of his work has been considered racist by political commentators such as Rachel Maddow. Carpenter and Pritchard note that while "Henty's work is indeed full of racial (and class) stereotypes", that he sometimes created sympathetic ethnic minority characters, such as the Indian servant who marries a white woman in With Clive in India, and point out Henty admired the Turkish Empire. However, they also point out Henty held blacks in utter contempt, and this is expressed in novels such as By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War and A Roving Commission, or, Through the Black Insurrection at Hayti. Kathryne S. McDorman states Henty disliked blacks and also, in Henty's fiction, that "…Boers and Jews were considered equally ignoble". In By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War, Mr. Goodenough, an entomologist remarks to the hero:

They are just like children … They are always either laughing or quarrelling. They are good-natured and passionate, indolent, but will work hard for a time; clever up to a certain point, densely stupid beyond. The intelligence of an average negro is about equal to that of a European child of ten years old. … They are fluent talkers, but their ideas are borrowed. They are absolutely without originality, absolutely without inventive power. Living among white men, their imitative faculties enable them to attain a considerable amount of civilization. Left alone to their own devices they retrograde into a state little above their native savagery

In the Preface to his novel A Roving Commission (1900) Henty claims "the condition of the negroes in Hayti has fallen to the level of that of the savage African tribes" and argues "unless some strong white power should occupy the island and enforce law and order" this situation will not change.

In the novel Facing Death: A Tale of the Coal Mines Henty comes down against strikes and has the working class hero of the novel, Jack Simpson, quell a strike among coal miners.