Demos

A working man inherits, preaches socialism, and meets the Walthams’ world. Gissing’s Demos is money’s comedy and its cruelty: Mutimer’s mill, a marriage across class, the gap between the speech and the life. Reform as a plot that will not stay pure. Inheritance as a political accident. The mill, the meeting, the marriage — each asks whether the people are a cause or a convenience. Gissing does not flatter the answer. Mutimer’s mill will not stay a metaphor for long.