The Pinnacle of Duality - Lisa Boydlisaboyd.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/73452107/01 23 14...
Transcript of The Pinnacle of Duality - Lisa Boydlisaboyd.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/73452107/01 23 14...
The Pinnacle of Duality
1832-1914
VICTORIANISM
PART I: DR. JEKYLL
THE HISTORY OF
ENGLAND IS
EMPHATICALLY THE
HISTORY OF PROGRESS.
—THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Pax Britannica (Latin for "the British
Peace", modelled after Pax Romana)
was the period of relative peace in
Europe and the world (1815–1914) during
which the British Empire became the
global hegemon and adopted the role of
global policeman.
PAX BRITTANICA
The Victorian era was a time of relative peace
and economic growth. The British Empire
grew steadily, the Industrial Revolution
expanded, and political power was extended
to the middle and working class.
In 1900, Queen Victoria was queen-empress
of more than two hundred million people
living outside Great Britain.
EMPIRE/IMPERIALISM
1886 MAP OF BRITISH EMPIRE
THE BRITISH EMPIRE
ROMAN EMPIRE 117 CE
BRITISH EMPIRE 1713 CE
BRITISH EMPIRE 1850 CE
BRITISH EMPIRE 1914 CE
THE PROGRESS OF ENGLAND
THE LONDON EXHIBITION OF 1851
VICTORIA STATION
EIFFEL TOWER
1912 TITANIC
RISE OF SPORT
Middle-class Victorians prided themselves on the
material advances of the nineteenth century and
on their ability to solve human problems.
Thrift, responsibility and self-reliance were
important aspects of Victorian middle-class
culture that could be used to define a society in
which success was contingent on individual
perseverance and energy.
THE VICTORIAN MIDDLE CLASS
The Victorian emphasis on decorum
grew from the conviction that life
would be improved if it steadily
became more refined, more
rationally organized, better policed,
and therefore safer.
DECORUM, AUTHORITY
AND MORALITY
VICTORIAN MIDDLE CLASS
HUSBAND AND WIFE
VICTORIAN BRIC-A-BRAC
REFLECTED OBSESSION WITH
MATERIAL POSSESSIONS
VICTORIAN OUTING
DRAWING ROOMS
VICTORIAN FASHION AS A
SIGN OF SOCIAL STATUS
WOMEN’S FASHION
MEN’S FASHION
THE MIDDLE CLASS IDEAL
BECOMES
THE CULT OF DOMESTICITY
Piety – Religion was valued because unlike intellectual pursuits
it did not take a woman away from her "proper sphere," the
home, and because it controlled women's longings.
Purity – Virginity was seen as a woman's greatest treasure which
she could not lose until her marriage night.
Submission – True Women were required to be as submissive
and obedient "as little children" because men were regarded as
women's superiors "by God's appointment".
Domesticity – A woman's actual sphere was the home where a
wife created a refuge for her husband and children; Needlework,
cooking, making beds, and tending flowers were considered
actual feminine activities whereas reading of anything other than
religious biographies was discouraged.
"TRUE WOMEN" WERE TO HOLD
THE FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES:
VICTORIAN MOTHERS
VICTORIA, MOTHER & QUEEN
VICTORIAN WIVES
VICTORIA, WIFE & QUEEN
MANY RETURNS OF THE DAY (1856)
BY PAUL FIRTH
Sentimental, bathetic, maudlin, mawkish, mushy, romantic, schmaltzy
“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”
—Oscar Wilde
SENTIMENTALITY
Little Nell’s Death
SENTIMENTALITY CONTINUED
LITTLE NELL GOING TO THE ANGELS
Mr. Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing
the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him (and
consequently sheer away) with those words and a flushed face. For they affronted him.
PODSNAPPERY: AN ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE
MARKED BY COMPLACENCY AND A REFUSAL TO
RECOGNIZE UNPLEASANT FACTS
PART II: MR. HYDE
The materialism, secularism, vulgarity and
sheer waste that accompanied Victorian
progress led some writers to wonder if their
culture was really advancing by any measure.
Marxism
Darwinism
Freudianism
CRITIQUES OF THE AGE
PART II. A:
MR. HYDE AS A MARXIST
• Serious Problems surfaced during the early years of Victoria’s
reign: economic depression, widespread unemployment,
famine in Ireland, and deplorable living and working
conditions brought on by rapid urbanization and a lack of
measures safeguarding young workers.
• In 1830, revolutions failed in France (i.e. Les Miserables).
• In 1848 revolutions failed in all of Europe (i.e. France,
Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire).
• In 1870 revolution temporarily succeeded in the Paris
Commune.
• In 1917 the Russian revolution succeeded.
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
AND FAILED REVOLUTIONS
VICTORIAN SLUMS
OVERCROWDING AND POVERTY
CHILDREN IN POVERTY
THE URBAN SLUM
VICTORIAN ALLEY
Children as young as four were put to work. In coal mines
children began work at the age of 5 and generally died before
the age of 25. Many children (and adults) worked 16-hour days.
As early as 1802 and 1819, Factory Acts were passed to limit the
working hours of workhouse children in factories and cotton
mills to 12 hours per day. These acts were largely ineffective
and after radical agitation, by for example the "Short Time
Committees" in 1831, a Royal Commission recommended in
1833 that children aged 11–18 should work a maximum of 12
hours per day, children aged 9–11 a maximum of eight hours,
and children under the age of nine should no longer be
permitted to work.
CHILD LABOR
CHILD LABOR
Capitalism (according to Marxist theory) can no longer
sustain the living standards of the population due to its
need to compensate for falling rates of profit by driving
down wages, cutting social benefits and pursuing
military aggression. The socialist system would succeed
capitalism as humanity's mode of production through
workers' revolution. According to Marxism, especially
arising from Crisis theory, Socialism is a historical
necessity.
MARXISM
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the
opium of the people.”
“The production of too many useful things results in too
many useless people.”
“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the
rope.”
Proletarier aller Länder vereinigt Euch!
MARXISM QUOTATIONS
PART II.B:
MR. HYDE AS
A DARWINIST
"Darwinism" soon came to stand for an
entire range of evolutionary (and often
revolutionary) philosophies about both
biology and society. One of the more
prominent approaches, summed in the 1864
phrase "survival of the fittest" by the
philosopher Herbert Spencer, later became
emblematic of Darwinism.
DARWINISM AND
SOCIAL ORDER
What is now called "Social Darwinism" was, in its day, synonymous with "Darwinism" — the application of Darwinian principles of "struggle" to society.
Another interpretation, one notably favoured by Darwin's half-cousin Francis Galton, was that "Darwinism" implied that because natural selection was apparently no longer working on "civilized" people, it was possible for "inferior" strains of people (who would normally be filtered out of the gene pool) to overwhelm the "superior" strains, and voluntary corrective measures would be desirable — the foundation of eugenics.
DARWINISM AND
SOCIAL ORDER
19TH CENTURY
CATEGORIES OF RACE
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one;
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to
the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless
forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being, evolved.”
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive
but those who can best manage change.”
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not
discovered the value of life.”
DARWINIAN
QUOTATIONS
PART II.C:
MR. HYDE AS A FREUDIAN
Freud initially attempted to subdivide the
mind purely in terms of different levels of
consciousness, emphasizing the
unconscious. Though he abandoned that
theory in favor of his tripartite division of
the id, ego, and superego, he held that the
different functions of the mind operated at
different levels.
FREUDIANISM
LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
ID, EGO, SUPEREGO
ENNUI: THE BOREDOM OF LIFE
PRE-RAPHAELITE ART:
SENSUALITY
THE AWAKENING
CONSCIOUSNESS
• “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive
and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
• “No mortal can keep a secret. If the lips are silent, he chatters
with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”
• “Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most
crazy.”
• “Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many
pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it
we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are
perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which
cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions,
which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us
insensible to it.”
FREUDIAN QUOTATIONS
VICTORIAN
DUALITY
• Pax Britannica
• Scientific Progress
• Social Progress
• Rise of the Middle
Class
• Class Conflict &
Revolution (Marxism)
• Doubt from Scientific
Advancement (Darwin)
• The Aware of
Subconscious Desires
(Freud)
Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde
THE DUALITY OF
THE VICTORIANS
As the nineteenth century progressed, living conditions gradually
improved. Food and other commodities became more readily available,
most adult males had the right to vote, laws regulated the use of child
labor, and compulsory education brought about widespread literacy.
However, the beginning of the 20th century with World War I and the
Russian Revolution would destroy the 19th century European world
order. Equally significant, the sense of intellectual doubt begun in the
19th century would come to full fruition in the 20th century.
“We are all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
—Oscar Wilde
FINAL EVALUATION
APPENDIX:
FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW
TO SHOW THE DUALITY OF THE
VICTORIAN AGE
APPENDIX:
FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW
APPENDIX:
FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW
APPENDIX:
FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW
APPENDIX:
FIVE BY ATKINSON GRIMSHAW