This paper is an attempt to present Thomas Martin Wheeler’s Chartist novel ‘Sunshine and Shadow: A Tale of the 19^th Century’ as a literary work of two genres - history as well as fiction. The novel’s subtitle ‘A tale of the 19^th century’ bespeaks its generic duality. The work exposes the events corresponding to the 19^th century Chartist Movement which was a working-class male suffrage movement for political reform in Britain. It was kindled by the conflicts between capitalists and working-class during Industrial Revolution in Victorian England. The work comes under the genre of fiction as well since it is a novel with invented characters, plot and incidents. Besides being fictive, the story maintains empirical historical accuracy and becomes an expression of the author’s perception of social reality depicting wretched social, political and economic conditions of the working-class people of 19^th century England. The central character of the novel acts as a mouthpiece for the distressed laborers of the time, afflicted by poverty, brutality, hunger and injustice. These workmen performed industrial labor for the capitalists who used to exploit them. The protagonist undergoes many ups and downs in his life like losing parents in early childhood, tortured by his reckless uncle, learning the skill of printing, suffering from unemployment and hunger, indulging in Chartist movement against government, fleeing from the government’s attack, falling in semi-adulterous love with his friend’s sister, losing the beloved, resuming Chartist activities, marrying a female supporter of the movement, getting afflicted by unemployment and poverty, and finally going into exile and leaving his family behind. The novel conveys Karl Marx’s conviction that the liberation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself, which can be politically and economically strong only through its own conscious efforts and not through the sympathy or philanthropy of the aristocratic or middle classes.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Keywords: Generic Dualism, Chartism, 19^th Century Working Class, Capitalist, Proletariat, Industrial Revolution, Male Suffrage, Political Reform, Victorian England.