The two nations to which Benjamin Disraeli referred in his Sybil, or the Two Nations did not relate to governments. It referred rather to the wealthy class and the working class, the rich and the poor. His interest in the social conditions of England was highly visible in the measures he introduced in Parliament, which focused on child labor and sanitary reform, as well as support for the Chartist movement. Disraeli always felt empowered by his writing, and the novel acted as a means of analysis, the testing of possible future policy. While his novels represented the ideal side of politics, they helped him relish the realism of public service.

The novel supports Disraeli’s attitude that England’s youth were the trustees of its posterity, and they would set the atmosphere necessary for reform. In a famous speech in 1844 at the opening of the Manchester Athenaeum, Disraeli stated, “It is not so much to the action of laws as to the influence of manners that we must look.”

The novel’s title character is the daughter of Walter Gerard, a man of great faith who represents the labor class and is the true heir to the Mowbray Estates. He works with the editor-reformist Stephen Morley, tirelessly fighting social injustice. They are balanced by, first, the affluent, cold, spurious Marneys, whose ancestors obtained a dukedom following the revolution by appropriating the local abbey lands. A second representative of heartless greed, the Mowbray family holds property rightfully belonging to Walter Gerard. They are descended from an 18th-century waiter who became the right hand of a wealthy nabob and was given stolen property. Both the Mowbrays and Marneys are fairly new to the aristocracy and feel no compunction to fulfill any traditional social responsibility.

Disraeli showed readers misery that existed in industrial towns and the working mines, hoping to gain the sympathy that had to precede reform.

A devoted Catholic, Sybil plans to become a nun but instead marries the book’s male hero, aristocrat Charles Egremont from the Marney family, after he embraces the cause of the oppressed workers. She first meets Egremont with her father and Stephen Morley after an argument with his brother in the ruined abbey, symbol of the destructive forces at work in English society.

The two young people encounter irate mobs and the storming of a local business, as the independent Sybil seeks to convert Egremont to her point of view, and he attempts to convince her that hope exists for the two sides to reach some agreement based on their shared humanity. Multiple minor characters representing the upper class and various egregious acts against the workers, from neglect to direct abuse, include the FitzWaren daughters, Lady Marney, Alfred Mountchesney, Cocky Graves, Captain Grouse, Lady St. Julians, Sarah Lady Jersey, and the mean-spirited Lady Firebrace. They find balance in the rebel Devilsdust, the ill and tragic Warner, and the factory workers Harriet, Caroline, and Julia.

Later critics found narrative excess in the novel and an overblown use of language, leading to unintended humor. However, most agree that Sybil represents Disraeli’s most powerful heroine and is an apt representative of her class and times.

Bibliography
Maurois, André. Disraeli. New York: Time Life Books, 1965.
Sichel, Walter. Introduction to Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970, v–xii.