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Time and Place

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) wrote "Dover Beach" during or shortly after a visit he and his wife made to the Dover region of southeastern England, the setting of the poem, in 1851. They had married in June of that year. A draft of the first two stanzas of the poem appears on a sheet of paper he used to write notes for another work, "Empedocles on Etna," published in 1852. The town of Dover is closer to France than any other port city in England. The body of water separating the coastline of the town from the coast of France is the Strait of Dover, north of the English Channel and south of the North Sea.

Point of View

The poet/persona uses first-, second-, and third-person point of view in the poem. Generally, the poem presents the observations of the author/persona in third-person point of view but shifts to second person when he addresses his beloved, as in Line 6 (Come), Line 9 (Listen! you), and Line 29 (let). Then he shifts to first-person point of view when he includes his beloved and the reader as co-observers, as in Line 18 (we), Line 29 (us), Line 31 (us), and Line 35 (we). He also uses first-person point of view to declare that at least one observation is his alone, and not necessarily that of his co-observers. This instance occurs in Line 24: But now I only hear. This line means But now I alone hear.

Who Is the Listener? (Line 29)

The person addressed in the poem—Lines 6, 9, and 29—is Matthew Arnold's wife, Frances Lucy Wightman. However, since the poem expresses a universal message, one may say that she can be any woman listening to the observations of any man. Arnold and his wife visited Dover Beach twice in 1851, the year they were married and the year Arnold was believed to have written "Dover Beach." At that time Arnold was inspector of schools in England, a position he held until 1886.

Theme

Arnold’s central message is this: Challenges to the validity of long-standing theological and moral precepts have shaken the faith of people in God and religion. In Arnold’s world of the mid-1800's, the pillar of faith supporting society was perceived as crumbling under the weight of scientific postulates, such as the evolutionary theory of English physician Erasmus Darwin and French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Consequently, the existence of God and the whole Christian scheme of things was cast in doubt. Arnold, who was deeply religious, lamented the dying of the light of faith, as symbolized by the light he sees in “Dover Beach” on the coast of France, which gleams one moment and is gone the next. He remained a believer in God and religion, although he was open to—and advocated—an overhaul of traditional religious thinking. In God and the Bible, he wrote: "At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is."

Type of Work

“Dover Beach” is a poem with the mournful tone of an elegy and the personal intensity of a dramatic monologue. Because the meter and rhyme vary from line to line, the poem is said to be in free verse--that is, it is unencumbered by the strictures of traditional versification. However, there is cadence in the poem, achieved through the following:

Alliteration Examples: �o-nigh�, �ide; �ull, �air; �leams, �one; �oast, �liff (Stanza 1) Parallel Structure Example: The tide is full, the moon lies fair (Stanza 1); So various, so beautiful, so new (Stanza 4); Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (Stanza 4) Rhyming Words Examples: to-night, light; fair, night-air; stand, land; bay, spray; fling, bring; begin, in (Stanza 1) Words Suggesting Rhythm Examples: draw back, return; Begin, and cease, then begin again (Stanza 1); turbid ebb and flow (Stanza 2)

Year of Publication

Although Matthew Arnold completed "Dover Beach" in 1851 or 1852, the poem was not published until 1867. It appeared in a collection entitled New Poems, published in London. .

.

Dover Beach

By Matthew Arnold

�

The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand; Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in......................................14

Notes, Stanza 1

moon . . . straits: The water reflects the image of the moon. A strait is a narrow body of water that connects two larger bodies of water. In this poem, straits refers to the Strait of Dover (French: Pas de Calais), which connects the English Channel on the south to the North Sea on the north. The distance between the port cities of Dover, England, and Calais, France, is about 21 miles via the Strait of Dover. light . . . gone: This clause establishes a sense of rhythm in that the light blinks on and off. In addition, the clause foreshadows the message of later lines--that the light of faith in God and religion, once strong, now flickers. Whether an observer at Dover can actually see a light at Calais depends on the height of the lighthouse and the altitude at which the observer sees the light (because of the curvature of the earth), on the brightness of the light, and on the weather conditions. cliffs . . . vast: These are white cliffs, composed of chalk, a limestone that easily erodes. Like the light from France, they glimmer, further developing the theme of a weakening of the light of faith. The fact that they easily erode supports this theme. moon-blanched: whitened by the light of the moon. grating . . . .pebbles: Here, grating (meaning rasping, grinding, or scraping) introduces conflict between the sea and the land and, symbolically, between long-held religious beliefs and the challenges against them. However, it may be an exaggeration that that pebbles cause a grating roar. strand: shoreline

�

Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea............................20

Notes, Stanza 1

Sophocles . . . Aegean: Arnold alludes here to a passage in the ancient Greek play Antigone, by Sophocles, in which Sophocles says the gods can visit ruin on people from one generation to the next, like a swelling tide driven by winds. it: "the eternal note of sadness" (Line 14). Aegean: The sea between Greece and Turkey. In the time of Sophocles, the land occupied by Turkey was known as Anatolia. turbid: muddy, cloudy Find . . . thought: In the sound of the sea, the poet "hears" a thought that disturbs him as did the one heard by Sophocles.

�

The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world..........................;........28

Notes, Stanza 3

Sea . . . full: See theme, above, for an explanation. girdle: sash, belt; anything that surrounds or encircles I only hear: I alone hear shingles: gravel on the beach

Interpretation

There was a time when faith in God was strong and comforting. This faith wrapped itself around us, protecting us from doubt and despair, as the sea wraps itself around the continents and islands of the world. Now, however, the sea of faith has become a sea of doubt. Science challenges the precepts of theology and religion; human misery makes people feel abandoned, lonely. People place their faith in material things.

�

Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night......................37

Notes, Stanza 4

neither . . . pain: The world has become a selfish, cynical, amoral,

materialistic battlefield; there is much hatred and pain, but there is no guiding light. darkling: dark, obscure, dim; occurring in darkness; menacing, threatening, dangerous, ominous. Where . . . night: E.K. Brown and J.O. Bailey suggest that this line is an

allusion to Greek historian Thucydides' account of the Battle of Epipolae (413 B.C.), a walled fortress near the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. In that battle, Athenians fought an army of Syracusans at night. In the darkness, the combatants lashed out blindly at one another. Brown and Bailey further observe that the line "suggests the confusion of mid-Victorian values of all kinds . . . " (Brown, E.K, and J.O. Bailey, eds. Victorian Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Ronald Press, 1962, Page 831).

Interpretation

Let us at least be true to each other in our marriage, in our moral standards, in the way we thnk; for the world will not be true to us. Although it presents itself to us as a dreamland, it is a sham. It offers nothing to ease our journey through life.

.

Figures of Speech

Arnold uses a variety of figures of speech, including the following examples. (For definitions of the different figures of speech, see the glossary of literary terms:

Alliteration Examples 1: �o-nigh�, �ide; �ull, �air (Lines 1-2); �leams, �one; �oast, �liff; ong ine; �hich the �aves;

�olds, �urled Assonance: tide, lies; Paradox and Hyperbole: grating roar of pebbles Metaphor: which the waves draw back, and fling (comparison of the waves to an intelligent entity that rejects that which it has captured) Metaphor: turbid ebb and flow of human misery (comparison of human misery to the ebb and flow of the sea) Metaphor: TheSea of Faith (comparison of faith to water making up an ocean) Simile: The Sea of Faith . . . lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled (use of like to compare the sea to a girdle) Metaphor: breath of the night-wind (comparison of the wind to a living thing) Simile: the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams (use of like to compare the world to a land of dreams) Anaphora: So various, so beautiful, so new (repetition of so) Anapora: nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain (repetition of nor)

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The Charge of the Light

Brigade

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!

"Charge for the guns!" he said:

Into the valley of Death


2.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"

Was there a man dismay'd?

Not tho' the soldier knew

Someone had blunder'd:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of Death


3.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell


4.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,

Flash'd as they turn'd in air,

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

All the world wonder'd:

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right thro' the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reel'd from the sabre stroke

Shatter'd and sunder'd.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred.

5.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell,

They that had fought so well

Came thro' the jaws of Death

Back from the mouth of Hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.

6.

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honor the charge they made,

Honor the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred.

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Modern Love I

By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:

That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,

The strange low sobs that shook their common bed

Were called into her with a sharp surprise,

And strangely mute, like little gasping snakes,

Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay

Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away

With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes

Her giant heart of Memory and Tears

Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat

Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet

Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,

By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.

Like sculptured effigies they might be seen

Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;

Each wishing for the sword that severs all. �

�

George Meredith

Poetry Collection

Modern Love - XVII

At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps

The Topic over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.

With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: It is in truth a most contagious game:

HIDING THE SKELETON, shall be its name. Such play as this the devils might appal! But here's the greater wonder; in that we, Enamoured of an acting nought can tire, Each other, like true hypocrites, admire; Warm-lighted looks, Love's ephemerioe, Shoot gaily o'er the dishes and the wine.

We waken envy of our happy lot. Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot.

Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine.

George Meredith

Change is in the Air-But Can the Victorians Smell It?: Meredith's Modern Love as a Telling Aroma

Anna Hemberger, Gustavus Adolphus College

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> author —> Works —> Themes —> Style]

eorge Meredith's Modern Love partakes of the sweet perfume of hopeful expectation and the musky cologne of

foreboding anxiety infused the Victorian Age with an odor of confusion and contradiction. Many Victorians did not know

what they were supposed to be epitomizing or how they wanted to be remembered in history. According to Walter E.

Houghton, even sages like Carlyle and Mill were not reflecting on the outlook of 1830 England when they wrote of the idea

of progress; Houghton argues that these two prominent Victorians were instead "attempting. . . to form it" as they helped in

the creation of the Victorian frame of mind (31). What the Victorians did not seem to realize is that "History was not a . . .

process in which advance [and image] waited upon particular events, but a natural and organic development in which each

age was the child of the previous one" (Houghton 29). The disposition towards the previous age of Romanticism took the

form of turning away from self-indulgence (and possibly self-fulfillment) and instead emphasizing social responsibility and

adherence to order and systems (Landow 1). This business-like attitude might have sufficed during Queen Victoria's reign if it

were not all the questions that Victorian society could not suppress or ignore involving religion, morality, labor, and the

nature and particularly the role of women. These issues threatened a massive overhaul of accepted norms and systems. To

complete the stench of contradiction, a new century loomed before them that made the smell of change impossible to ignore.

This disappearance of permanence as epitomized and reenacted in the failed marriage of George Meredith's 1862 poem,

Modern Love struck a blow to the Victorian's sense of self. The loveless union depicted in the poem reflects the string of

cultural crises facing England during the Age of Victoria.

The most obvious of these crises is that of marriage. If the miserable husband and wife in Modern Love did not want to

be wedded to one another anymore, what ever were they doing except torturing themselves and each other as "Their hearts

felt craving for the buried day? (50.8)? Why does the husband say, "Never! though I die thirsting. Go thy ways!" (24.16).

Because, according to Houghton, the legal and social constraints made it merely impossible for them to divorce (361). And

so,

Then each applied to each that fatal knife. Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole (50.9-10).

Unfortunately, this attempt to converse and confess their unfaithfulness and lack of love by getting everything out in the

open brings no resolution as they are still caught in the snare of marriage. Meredith expresses this in the lines that follow:

"Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul / When hot for certainties in this our life" (50.11-12). Houghton writes that "Shelley

shouts his defiance of the established order: . . . `any law which should bind [a husband and a wife] to cohabitation for one

moment after the decay of their affection would be a most untolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration'" (361).

Marriage is not a bond that ought to be taken for granted. But in this age of transition, the turn from unbending institution to

the right to strive for happiness has not yet been made.

Another mammoth issue of this era, as reflected in Modern Love, is the place of the woman. Certainly, equality did not

exist on the above issue of divorce. A man could struggle and pay a large sum to rid himself of a wife, though it was advised

against-as in Charles Dickens' novel, Hard Times. But this was not even a remote option for the wife. Modern Love sets itself

in the quagmire of the woman question as it portrays a woman who ultimately acquires her own freedom on her own terms as

Edna does in The Awakening. In addition, the long poem is narrated by the male partner. For the most part, Modern Love is

from the man's perspective and we hear him placing more blame for the situation on his wife than upon himself. His plea for

her to have "more brain" is sexist and incredibly condescending. Sonnet 48 begins:

Their sense is with their senses all mixed in, Destroyed by subtleties these women are! More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar Utterly this fair garden we might win" (48.1-4).

In the Victorian Newsletter, Hans Ostrom writes that the husband "has fallen back on the most mechanically formulaic

way of perceiving the troubled marriage; the problem. . . no longer exists in the marriage, but rather in the wife's femininity,

in the fact that she is acting "like a woman" (28). Victorian women ranged from Coventry Patmore's angel in the household to

the "new woman" (Houghton 348). The wife in Modern Love falls between these two categories as she does not revolt from

her legal and social bondage as she stays locked in her marriage until the very end of the poem. But, she does demand on right

on equal terms that men have had, to some degree, for centuries. She does not seek "he same education, the same suffrage,

[or] the same opportunity for professional and political careers" as Houghton suggests, though (348). Instead, she seeks sexual

equality in that she takes on a lover just as her husband does. This activity, though not encouraged, was somewhat condoned

in secret for the man as we see with the rising rate of prostitution in the Victorian Age, was certainly not allowed for woman's

dabbling.

This inequality in the acceptance of extra-marital sex brings us to the larger issue of morality. Extreme morality is what

one might consider the Victorian Age is it is remembered for its prudishness. This is perhaps the image that many Victorians

would have liked to have maintained. While the actuality of the sanctity of marriage and the monogamy it entails have been

questioned throughout history, never before did extra-marital affairs become so openly addressed as they did in the Victorian

Age. In the seventh sonnet of Modern Love, the husband expresses his feelings about his wife's promiscuity: "Yea! Filthiness

of the body is most vile, / But faithlessness of heart I do hold worse" (7.13-14). He is bothered by the carnal knowledge she

has beyond him, but that is not the worst of her wrongs as one might expect. This placement of "faithlessness of heart" as the

greater crime than that of the body is a very modern ideas for the mid-nineteenth century.

From one vantage point, the Victorian Age considered sex a necessary and unejoyable act and was certainly not to be

spoken of (Houghton 353). But the Victorians could not entirely resist change and ignore such proclamations as those

endorsed by liberal Saint-Simonians such as: "men and women giving themselves to several without ceasing to be united as a

couple" (Houghton 362). This is precisely the scene Meredith throws at us in Sonnet 25:

"You like not that French novel? Tell me why. You think it quite unnatural. Let us see. The actors are, it seems, the usual three: Husband, wife, and lover. She-but fie! In England we'll not hear of it" (25.1-5)

How shocking this modern display must have been to the more prudish Victorian! Shortly after its publication, Saturday

Review called Modern Love "a great moral mistake" (Norton Anthology 1454). Whether this is a statement about the couple's

actions or Meredith's portrayal of them is not clear; probably it is both. From the more "modern" side of the spectrum, Shelley

says that "Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same

creed" (Houghton 361).

Traditionally, the request to believe the Apostle's or Nicene Creed all of one's life was not only absurd, but required.

Yet, all things change and nothing is permanent. Beyond the realm of basic morality, the question of religion is not addressed

in Modern Love. Houghton explains that man Victorians believed that if faith collapses, then morality would, too, and

"society would disintegrate" (58). If the idea is applied to Modern Love, though, it says that if faith in one's spouse is lost,

then the union is lost forever. Returning to the seventh sonnet, we hear the husband's lament over the disintegrated faith:

Yea! filthiness of body is most vile, But faithlessness of heart I do hold worse. The former, it were not so great a curse To read on the steel-mirror of her smile" (7.13-16).

The requirement of love in a marriage was a rather new concept in the Victorian Age. In 1854, G.R. Drysdale described

the situation: "A great proportion of the marriages we see around us, did not take place from love at all" (Houghton 381). In

the past, it was more of a business deal that was made to bring wealth, social position, or some other advantage. Now, in the

Victorian Age, when love could be the seal on the contract, problems arose; love is not binding and guaranteed like a wax

stamp. Unfortunately, it can wane, fade, or disappear-"Ah, yes! / Love dies!" (Meredith 16.10-11). Ostrom writes:

Marriage was holy. Love was altered by it, for the Victorian, from something a bit nasty to something pure and wonderful. The Victorian anticipated in the state of holy matrimony the most serious emotional experience of his life — quite a different attitude from that of casual eighteenth-century people, with their arrangements, contracts, practicalities. Ah, sacred love. 29

In 1864, Frances Cobb wrote that "we are beginning to see that the canon that `marriage must hallow love' has a

converse quite equally sacred, and that love also must hallow marriage" (Houghton 385). At the time, as volatile love was

slowly becoming a requirement for matrimony and not merely an afterthought, Robert Browning takes the importance of love

much further as he tells us that love is the ultimate purpose in life (Houghton 373).

Meredith's choice of title for his poem about deceit, hate, falsehood, confusion, and suicide is of exteme importance.

"Love" is commonly thought to be the antithesis of these entities. So, we are left the "Modern." What is Meredith saying

about his world? "Modern" also means "new and upcoming" and oftentimes it denotes the "new and improved." He clearly

harbors much of the hopelessness for the future felt in the late nineteenth century, but he is also speaking to his

contemporaries in saying that the Victorian frame of mind has driven them to this situation called Love. Perhaps he is using

the voice of the husband in Modern Love to point out the fruitless notion that "a pessimistic attitude toward the human

situation was considered weak or unmanly" in the Victorian Age as the husband seems to be the more optimistic of the two

married parties that it will all work out in the end (Houghton 54). This forced optimism may be Meredith's attempt at showing

the idiocracy of a forced image or buttressed institution in his era.

In the chasm between past and the looming future of change with the coming of a new century, the Victorians tried to

retain the old, refused to admit its failure, and suffered from a universal sense of anxiety. Numerous Victorian poets expressed

this anxiety, such as Hopkins, who dealt with this struggle by accepting God; Clough who dealt with it by refuting God, or

Hardy, who, in his poem "Hap," wishes there really were some higher power who would make some sense of life.

Others, like the husband and wife in Modern Love attempt to create a facade of a good, respectable married life. In the

seventeenth sonnet, Meredith shows us an example of the play-acting the married couple perform:

At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. Whent the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps The Topic over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat. The see no ghost. With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: It is in truth a most contagious game: HIDING THE SKELETON, shall be its name. Such play as this, the devils might appal! But here's the greater wonder; in that we Enamoured of an acting nought can tire, Each other, like true hypocrites, admire; Warm-lighted books, Love's ephemerioe, Shoot gaily o'er the dished and the wine. We waken envy of our happy lot. Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot. Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine.

While this false appearance they are creating seems almost demented in its deception, we must remember "how

curiously the dynamics of an age affect the human mind" (Houghton 55). In this dinner scene, the husband and wife have

become so caught up in their game of deceit that they are enjoying it. They do such a fantastic job covering their despise for

one another that their friends envy their happy lot. In Sonnet 23, the two married enemies share a bedroom at a Christmas

gathering again to make their friends and families believe their lie. As they attempt to sustain the system of marriage and

upstanding morality, they also are being irreverently immoral by lying to so many others including themselves. The husband

has admitted in the third sonnet that he is still in love with the woman his wife used to be as he says,

She is mine! Ah, no! I know too well I claim a star whose light is overcast: I claim a phantom woman in the Past" (3.13-15).

At the end of the poem in Sonnet 49, the husband, who has maintained a glimmer of optimism throughout the saga,

seems to have convinced himself of the lie as well when

He found her by the ocean's moaning verge, . . . And she believed his old love had returned, Which was her exultation, and her scourge" (49.1, 3-4).

They had been living their lie for so long, they no longer knew what was the truth and what was the facade. This

attempt at the perpetuation of a marriage simply to keep up their image is the culmination of on major contradiction of the

Victorian Age. To place the important of the permanence of the system of marriage over that of the truth is ludicrous and

displays the Victorian's tendency to failure in facing reality.

Meredith does leave us with some hope for his age's mentality-though in a morbid fashion. The wife provides a breath

of realism as she faces her unhappiness and expresses the truth at the close of the poem. In the middle of Modern Love she

says with "quivering under-lip" that happiness "is nowhere for me!" (34.10, 13). She recognizes that the marriage is never

going to succeed with or without love and she is also cognizant of the impossibility of divorce in her society. So, she leaves

the situation by her own accord via suicide. Although death is rarely the best solution to a problem, the wife in Modern Love

has no other choice unless she wants to remain unhappy and live a lie for the rest of her life. She accepts the loss of

permanence of her situation, her life, and her world.

Works Cited

George Meredith scection in.The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Second volume. Sixth ed. New York: W. W.

Norton, 1993. 1454-1459.

Houghton, Walter E. The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Landow, George P. "Victorian and Victorianism ." and "The Reality of Victorianism." The Victorian Web. Encountered 4

December 1997.

Meredith, George. "Modern Love." Selected Poems. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1980. 20-47.

Ostrom, Hans. "The Disappearance of Tragedy in Meredith's "Modern Love." Victorian Newsletter 63 (Spring 1983): 26-

30.

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Race and Victorian Science

Edward Tylor, from Primitive Culture (1871)

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) was an important figure in establishing anthropology's place among the human sciences. Tylor, who specialized in primitive religion, was a professor and museum curator at Oxford University.

In carrying on the great task of rational ethnography, the investigation of the causes which have produced the phenomena of culture, and of the laws to which they are subordinate, it is desirable to work out as systematically as possible a scheme of evolution of this culture along its many lines. In the following chapter, on the Development of Culture, an attempt is made to sketch a theoretical course of civilization among mankind, such as appears on the whole most accordant with the evidence. By comparing the various stages of civilization among races known to history, with the aid of archaeological inference from the remains of prehistoric tribes, it seems possible to judge in a rough way of an early general condition of man, which from our point of view is to be regarded as a primitive condition, whatever yet earlier state may in reality have lain behind it. This hypothetical primitive condition corresponds in a considerable degree to that of modern savage tribes, who, in spite of their difference and distance, have in common certain elements of civilization, which seem remains of an early state of the human race at large. If this hypothesis be true, then, notwithstanding the continual interference of degeneration, the main tendency of culture from primaeval up to modern times has been from savagery towards civilization. On the problem of this relation of savage to civilized life, almost every one of the thousands of facts discussed in the succeeding chapters has its direct bearing. Survival in Culture, placing all along the course of advancing civilization way-marks full of meaning to those who can decipher their signs, even now sets up in our midst primaeval monuments of barbaric thought and life. Its investigation tells strongly in favour of the view that the European may find among the Greenlanders or Maoris many a trait for reconstructing the picture of his own primitive ancestors. . . .

. . . In taking up the problem of the development of culture as a branch of ethnological research, a first proceeding is to obtain a means of measurement. Seeking something like a definite line along which to reckon progression and retrogression in civilization, we may apparently find it best in the classification of real tribes and nations, past and present. Civilization actually existing among mankind in different grades, we are enabled to estimate and compare it by positive examples. The educated world of Europe and America practically sets a standard by simply placing its own nations at one end of the social series and savage tribes at the other, arranging the rest of mankind between those limits according as they correspond more closely to savage or to cultured life. The principal criteria of classification are the absence or presence, high or low development, of the industrial arts, especially metal-working, manufacture of implements and vessels, agriculture, architecture, &c., the extent of scientific knowledge, the definiteness of moral principles, the condition of religious belief and ceremony, the degree of social and political organization, and so forth. Thus, on the definite basis of compared facts, ethnographers are able to set up at least a rough scale of civilization. Few would dispute that the following races are arranged rightly in order of culture: — Australian, Tahitian, Aztec, Chinese, Italian. . . .

. . . [T]he pictures drawn by some travellers of savagery as a kind of paradisiacal state may be taken too exclusively from the bright side. . . . Savage moral standards are real enough, but they are far looser and weaker than ours. We may, I think, apply the often-repeated comparison of savages to children as fairly to their moral as to their intellectual condition. The better savage social life seems in but unstable equilibrium, liable to be easily upset by a touch of distress, temptation, or violence, and then it becomes the worse savage life, which we know by so many dismal and hideous examples. Altogether, it may be admitted that some rude tribes lead a life to be envied by some barbarous races, and even by the outcasts of higher nations. But that any known savage tribe would not be improved by judicious civilization, is a proposition which no moralist would dare to make; while the general tenour of the evidence goes far to justify the view that on the whole the civilized man is not only wiser and more capable than the savage, but also better and happier, and that the barbarian stands between. . . .

. . . Arrest and decline in civilization are to recognized as among the more frequent and powerful operations of national life. That knowledge, arts, and institutions should decay in certain districts, that peoples once progressive should lag behind and be passed by advancing neighbours, that sometimes even societies of men should recede into rudeness and misery — all these are phenomena with which modern history is familiar. In judging of the relation of the lower to higher stages of civilization, it is essential to gain some idea how far it may have been affected by such degeneration. What kind of evidence can direct observation and history give as to the degradation of men from a civilized condition towards that of savagery? In our great cities, the so-called "dangerous classes" are sunk in hideous misery and of depravity. If we have to strike a balance between the Papuans of New Caledonia and the communities of European beggars and thieves, we may sadly acknowledge that we have in our midst something worse than savagery. But it is not savagery; it is broken-down civilization. Negatively, the inmates of a Whitechapel casual ward and of a Hottentot kraal agree in their want of the knowledge and virtue of the higher culture. But positively, their mental and moral characteristics are utterly different. Thus, the savage life is essentially devoted to gaining subsistence from nature, which is just what the proletarian life is not. Their relations to civilized life — the one of independence, the other of dependence — are absolutely opposite. To my mind the popular phrases about "city savages" and "street Arabs" seem like comparing a ruined house to a builder's yard.

Race and Victorian Science

Benjamin Kidd, from The Control of the Tropics (1898)

The Anglo-Irishman Benjamin Kidd (1858–1916) was a civil servant and amateur naturalist who became a best-selling author with his controversial Social Evolution (1894). The Control of the Tropics was published in 1898.

* * *

The next principle, which it seems must be no less clearly recognized, is one which carries us a great stride forward from the past as soon as we begin to perceived the nature of the consequences which follow from its admission. It is that, nevertheless, there never has been, and there never will be, within any time with which we are practically concerned, such a thing as good government, in the European sense, of the tropics by the natives of these regions. The ultimate fact underlying all the relations of the white man to the tropics is one which really goes to the root of the whole question of the evolution which the race itself has undergone. The human race reached its earliest development where the conditions of earliest development where the conditions of life were easiest; namely, in the tropics. But throughout the whole period

of human history the development of the race has taken place outwards from the tropics. Slowly but surely we see the seat of empire and authority moving like the advancing tide northward. The evolution in character which the race has undergone has been northwards from the tropics. The first step to the solution of the problem before us is simply to acquire the principle that in dealing with the natural inhabitants of the tropics we are dealing with peoples who represent the same stage in the history of the development of the race that the child does in the history of the development of the individual. The tropics will not, therefore, be developed by the natives themselves. However we may be inclined to hesitate before reaching this view, it is hard to see how assent to it can be withheld in the face of the consistent verdict of history in the past, and the unvarying support given to it by facts in the present. If there is any one inclined to challenge it, let him reflect for a moment on the evidence on the one side and the difficulty that will present itself to him of producing any serious facts on the other side. If we look to the native social systems of the tropical East, to the primitive savagery of Central Africa, to the West Indian Islands in the past in process of being assisted into the position of modern States by Great Britain, to the Black Republic of Hayti in the present, or to the Black Republic Hayti in the present or to modern Liberia in the future, the lesson seems everywhere the same; it is that there will be no development of the resources of the tropics under native government.

We come, therefore, to a clearly defined position. If we have to meet the fact that by force of circumstances the tropics must by force of circumstances the tropics must be developed, and if the evidence is equally be developed, and if the evidence is equally emphatic that such a development can only take place under the influence of the white man, we are confronted with a larger issue than any mere question of commercial policy or of national selfishness. The tropics in such circumstances can only be governed as a trust for civilization, and with a full sense of the responsibility which such a trust involves. The first principle of success in undertaking such a duty seems to the writer to be a clear recognition of the cardinal fact that in the tropics the white man lives and works only as a diver lives and works under water. Alike in a moral, in an ethical, and in a political sense, the atmosphere he breathes must be that of another region, that which produced him, and to which he belongs. Neither physically, morally, nor politically, can he be acclimatized in the tropics. The people among whom he lives and works are often separated from him by thousands of years of development; he cannot, therefore, be allowed to administer government from any local and lower standard he may develop. If he has any right there at all, he is there in the name of civilization; if our civilization has any right there at all, it is because it represents higher ideals of humanity, a higher type of social order. This is the lesson which, slowly and painfully, and with many a temporary reversion to older ideas, the British peoples have been learning in India for the last fifty years, and which has recently been applied in other circumstances to the government of Egypt.

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Colonialism and Gender

Charlotte Brontë, from Jane Eyre (1848)

Charlotte Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre engages the subject of colonialism in a number of ways. Rochester's mad wife, Bertha Mason, is half Creole, the daughter of a West Indian planter whom Rochester marries in Jamaica. Jane Eyre obtains her small fortune through her uncle, John Eyre, who had made the money in Madeira. Jane's cousin, St. John Rivers, tries to persuade Jane to come with him to India as a missionary and his wife. The passage below, a conversation between Jane and Rochester, in which Rochester tries to buy clothes for Jane for their upcoming wedding, uses the image of the harem to portray Jane's sense of her position.

* * *

Glad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of a jeweller's shop: the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation. As we re-entered the carriage, and I sat back feverish and fagged, I remembered what in the hurry of events, dark and bright, I had wholly forgotten — the letter of my uncle, John Eyre, to Mrs. Reed: his intention to adopt me and make me his legatee. 'It would, indeed, be a relief,' I thought, 'if I had ever so small an independency; I never can bear being dressed like a doll by Mr. Rochester, or sitting like a second Danae �� with the golden shower falling daily round me. I will write to Madeira the moment I get home, and tell my uncle John I am going to be married, and to whom: if I had but a prospect of one day bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of fortune, I could better endure to be kept by him now.' And somewhat relieved by this idea (which I failed not to execute that day), I ventured once more to meet my master's and lover's eye; which most pertinaciously sought mine, though I averted both face and gaze. He smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might, in a blissful and fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched: I crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously, and thrust it back to him red with the passionate pressure —

'You need not look in that way,' I said: 'if you do I'll wear nothing but my old Lowood �� frocks to the end of the chapter. I'll be married in lilac gingham — you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of the pearl-grey silk, and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black satin.'

He chuckled; he rubbed his hands: 'Oh, it is rich to see and hear her!' he exclaimed. 'Is she original? Is she piquant? I would not exchange this one little English girl for the grand Turk's whole seraglio; gazelle-eyes, houri forms, and all!'

The Eastern allusion bit me again: 'I'll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio,' I said; 'so don't consider me an equivalent for one; if you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir, to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay; and lay out in extensive slave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend satisfactorily here.'

'And what will you do, Janet, while I am bargaining for so many tons of flesh and such an assortment of black eyes?'

'I'll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty to them that are enslaved — you harem inmates amongst the rest. I'll get admitted there, and I'll stir up mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw as you are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our hands; nor will I, for one, consent to cut your bonds till you have signed a charter, the most liberal that despot ever yet conferred.'

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The Nature of Woman

Charlotte Brontë, from Jane Eyre

In Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë tells the story of an orphan girl who becomes a governess and ultimately marries her master. The novel, both in its own time and in ours, has seemed to express woman's rebellion against the limitations of her lot. In the passage below, Jane voices her feelings of restlessness and rebellion when she takes a few moments out from her duties of tending the child, Adele. Mrs. Fairfax is the housekeeper. In A Room of One's Own (1929), Virginia Woolf argues that this passage reflects a rage that limits Charlotte Brontë's achievement (NAEL 8, 2.2092–2152).

Chapter 12

* * *

Anybody may blame me who likes when I add further that now and then, when I took a walk by myself in the grounds, when I went down to the gates and looked through

them along the road, or when, while Adele played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the store-room, I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having reached the leads, �� looked out afar over sequestered field and hill, and along dim sky-line — that then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.

Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot and allow my mind's eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it — and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my ear to a tale that was never ended — a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, and feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence.

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

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The Nature of Woman

John Ruskin, from Of Queen's Gardens

John Ruskin was both the leading Victorian critic of art and an important critic of society. His essay Of Queen's Gardens (1865), published in Sesame and Lilies, has been taken as an eloquent statement of the conservative ideal of Victorian womanhood. However, the essay also urges women to abandon trivial feminine pursuits in order to act as a moral force in countering the ills of society.

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Now their separate characters are briefly these. The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power is for rule, not for battle, — and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial: — to him, therefore, the failure, the offense, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or subdued, often misled, and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offense. This is the true nature of home — it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before those faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love, — so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light, — shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos �� in the stormy sea; — so far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home.

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head; the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot: but home is yet wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled �� with cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless.

This, then, I believe to be, — will you not admit it to be — the woman's true place and power? But do you not see that, to fulfill this, she must — as far as one can use such terms of a human creature — be incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise — wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service — the true changefulness of woman.

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William Booth, from In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890)

William Booth (1829–1919) was a religious and social reformer who founded the Salvation Army. He drew the extended analogy for In Darkest England from a variety of Victorian narratives of exploration, especially Henry Stanley's best-selling account of his travels through Africa, Through the Dark Continent (1879). Booth hoped to solve the problem of urban poverty by developing work colonies in Great Britain and abroad.

John Thomson, "The 'Crawlers' " (c. 1877). From Thomson and Adolphe Smith, Street Life in London (1877–8).

Part I. — The Darkness.

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Why "Darkest England"?

This summer the attention of the civilized world has been arrested by the story which Mr. Stanley has told of "Darkest Africa" and his journeyings across the heart of the Lost Continent. In all that spirited narrative of heroic endeavor, nothing has so much impressed the imagination, as his description of the immense forest, which offered an almost impenetrable barrier to his advance. The intrepid explorer, in his own phrase, "marched, tore, ploughed, and cut his way for one hundred and sixty days through this inner womb of the true tropical forest." The mind of man with difficulty endeavors to realize this immensity of wooded wilderness, covering a territory half as large again as the whole of France, where the rays of the sun never penetrate, where in the dark, dank air, filled with the steam of the heated morass, human beings dwarfed into pygmies and brutalized into cannibals lurk and live and die. Mr. Stanley vainly endeavors to ring home to us the full horror of that awful gloom. * * *

It is a terrible picture, and one that has engraved itself deep on the heart of civilization. But while brooding over the awful presentation of life as it exists in the vast African forest, it seemed to me only too vivid a picture of many parts of our own land. As there is a darkest Africa is there not also a darkest England? Civilization, which can breed its own barbarians, does it not also breed its own pygmies? May we not find a parallel at our own doors, and discover within a stone's throw of our cathedrals and palaces similar horrors to those which Stanley has found existing in the great Equatorial forest?

The more the mind dwells upon the subject, the closer the analogy appears. The ivory raiders who brutally traffic in the unfortunate denizens of the forest glades, what are they but the publicans who flourish on the weakness of our poor? The two tribes of savages, the human baboon and the handsome dwarf, who will not speak lest it impede him in his task, may be accepted as the two varieties who are continually present with us — the vicious, lazy lout, and the toiling slave. They, too, have lost all faith of life being other than it is and has been. As in Africa, it is all trees, trees, trees with no other world conceivable; so is it here — it is all vice and poverty and crime. To many the world is all slum, with the Workhouse as an intermediate purgatory before the grave. And just as Mr. Stanley's Zanzibaris lost faith, and could only be induced to plod on in brooding sullenness of dull despair, so the most of our social reformers, no matter how cheerily they may have started off, with forty pioneers swinging blithely their axes as they force their way into the wood, soon become depressed and despairing. Who can battle against the ten thousand million trees? Who can hope to make headway against the innumerable adverse conditions which doom the dweller in Darkest England to eternal and immutable misery? * * *

The Equatorial Forest traversed by Stanley resembles that Darkest England of which I have to speak, alike in its vast extent — both stretch, in Stanley's phrase, "as far as from Plymouth to Peterhead"; its monotonous darkness, its malaria and its gloom, its dwarfish de-humanized inhabitants, the slavery to which they are subjected, their privations and their misery. That which sickens the stoutest heart, and causes many of our bravest and best to fold their hands in despair, is the apparent impossibility of doing more than merely to peck at the outside of the endless tangle of monotonous undergrowth, to let light into it, to make a road clear through it, that shall not be immediately choked up by the ooze of the morass and the luxuriant parasitical growth of the forest — who dare hope for that? At present, alas, it would seem as though no one dares even to hope! It is the great Slough of Despond of our time.

And what a slough it is no man can gauge who has not waded therein, as some of us have done, up to the very neck for long years. Talk about Dante's Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture-chamber of the lost! The man who walks with open eyes and with bleeding heart through the shambles of our civilization needs no such fantastic images of the poet to teach him horror. Often and often, when I have seen the young and the poor and the helpless go down before my eyes into the morass, trampled underfoot

by beasts of prey in human shape that haunt these regions, it seemed as if God were no longer in His world, but that in His stead reigned a fiend, merciless as Hell, ruthless as the grave. Hard it is, no doubt, to read in Stanley's pages of the slave-traders coldly arranging for the surprise of a village, the capture of the inhabitants, the massacre of those who resist, and the violation of all the women; but the stony streets of London, if they could but speak, would tell of tragedies as awful, of ruin as complete, of ravishments as horrible, as if we were in Central Africa; only the ghastly devastation is covered, corpse-like, with the artificialities and hypocrisies of modern civilization. * * *

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Cry of the Children

In 1842–43, a parliamentary commission investigated the conditions of the employment of children in mines and factories; the commission's report was written by R. H. Horne, a friend and collaborator of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). Many of the details of Browning's 1843 poem are taken from the report of the commission.

"Alas, my children, why do you look at me?" — Medea ��

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Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing toward the west — But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago. The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy; "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary, Our young feet," they say, "are very weak! Few paces have we taken, yet are weary — Our grave-rest is very far to seek. Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children; For the outside earth is cold; And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old."

� "True," say the children, "it may happen That we die before our time. Little Alice died last year — her grave is shapen Like a snowball, in the rime. We looked into the pit prepared to take her. Was no room for any work in the close clay! From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.' If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries. Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, For the smile has time for growing in her eyes.

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And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in The shroud by the kirk-chime! �� It is good when it happens," say the children, "That we die before our time."

� Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking Death in life, as best to have. They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, With a cerement �� from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do. Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty. Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through! But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasure fair and fine!

� "For oh," say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run or leap. If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop in them and sleep. Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping, We fall on our faces, trying to go; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. For, all day, we drag our burden tiring Through the coal-dark, underground — Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron In the factories, round and round.

� "For all day the wheels are droning, turning — Their wind comes in our faces, — Till our hearts turn, — our heads with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places. Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, Turns the long light that drops adown the wall, Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling, All are turning, all the day, and we with all. And all day the iron wheels are droning, And sometimes we could pray, 'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning) 'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"

� Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouth! Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals. Let them prove their living souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! — Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark.

� Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, To look up to Him and pray; So the blessèd One who blesseth all the others, Will bless them another day. They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us, While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred? When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word. And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)

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Strangers speaking at the door. Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him, Hears our weeping any more?

� "Two words, indeed, of praying we remember, And at midnight's hour of harm, 'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm. We know no other words except 'Our Father,' And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within His right hand which is strong. 'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely (For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 'Come rest with me my child.'"

� "But, no!" say the children, weeping faster, "He is speechless as a stone. And they tell us, of His image is the master Who commands us to work on. Go to!" say children, — "up in Heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving — We look up of God, but tears have made us blind." Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach? For God's possible is taught by His world's loving, And the children doubt of each.

� And well may the children weep before you! They are weary ere they run. They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory Which is brighter than the sun. They know the grief of man, without his wisdom. They sink in man's despair, without his calm; Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm, — Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly The harvest of its memories cannot reap, — Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly. Let them weep! let them weep!

� They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see, For they mind you of the angels in high places With eyes turned on Deity! — "How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, — Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, And your purple shows your path! But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath."

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Ada Nield Chew, Letter of a Crewe Factory Girl

Born on a farm in North Staffordshire, Ada Nield Chew (1870–1945) left school at the age of eleven to help her mother take care of house and family. In her early twenties, Chew worked as a tailoress in a factory in Crewe. She wrote a series of letters to the Crewe Chronicle about working conditions in the factory. When her identity was discovered, an uproar ensued and she was fired. She became active in politics and continued to write for political causes.

The following letter is her second to the Chronicle; the first appears in the Norton Anthology (NAEL 8, 2.1579).

A Living Wage for Factory Girls at Crewe, 19 May 1894

Sir, — In your issue of 5 May you were good enough to publish a letter of mine on the above subject, and also to invite me to write you further on our wages, hours of work, and conditions of employ-ment. Before responding to the same I have waited in the hope that an abler pen than mine might take up my subject and say a word on our behalf. I conclude, however, that sufficient interest is not taken in factory girls and their wrongs outside their own sphere to call for any comment. Speaking for our-selves, sir, I can assure you that this question of prices paid for our work and the general inadequacy of the same in proportion to the work done is one naturally of keen interest, and forms the subject of constant discussion and complaint — entirely amongst ourselves, please take note, sir! Notwithstanding this general private discontent, we unfortunately as a body regard the existing state of things as inevitable, and have not suffi-cient courage, and do not know how if we had, to make a resolute stand against the injustice done us. I feel my position, sir, in this matter of giving information, to be one of peculiar difficulty. On the one hand, to be quite fair to myself and to those I am endeavouring to represent, I ought, and would like to describe fully and explicitly the exact kind of work done by us, the exact amount of it, and the exact price paid for that amount, and to give my own experience without reserve. But on the other hand, were I to do this I should be making revelations which would lead to instant recognition by many people of the particular factory in which I am employed, and probably also, sir, to the identification of your correspondent, which I shall do well to avoid. And therefore, on that account I feel reluctance to reveal them, greatly as I value this opportunity which you, sir, have so kindly given me of emphasising — for it must already be known — the fact that we are suffering from a great evil which stands in urgent need of redressing.

However, I think that even within the limits to which I shall have to restrict myself I can make good the statements contained in my first letter. I must explain before proceeding further that I shall speak of the branch of factory work known as 'finishing' �� only. I have reason to believe that the other branches [of female employment] are not overpaid, but I shall speak only of what I know to be actual fact. With regard to wages. We are paid not by the hour or day, but a certain sum per garment. Wages, then, vary greatly. For instance, many different classes of work have to be done, and different prices are paid, not at all, however, in proportion to the amount of work to be done, for while one price may yield us as much as 3d an hour (occasionally), another will not yield us 1 1/2d an hour (quite frequently), working equally hard for each sum. Of course, all classes of work have to be done, and we have to accept with gratitude (or otherwise) whatever sum someone — our employer presumably — thinks it right to give us. We are doing excellently when earning 3d �� an hour. We not infrequently work for 1 1/2d an hour. An average of about 2d for the average 'hand' may be taken as fair. Occasionally we may get work which will yield us as much as 4 1/2 d an hour, but it is so very occasional that it may be passed by in silence — otherwise, of course, we should have no cause for complaint.

And now to take an average of a year's wage of the 'average ordinary hand', which was the class I mentioned in my first letter, and being that which is in a majority may be taken as fairly representative. The wages of such a 'hand', sir, will barely average — but by exercise of the imagination — 8 shillings a week. I ought to say, too, that there is a minority, which is also considerable, whose wages will not average above 5 shillings a week. I would impress upon you that this is making the very best of the case, and is over rather than understating. What do you think of it, Mr. Editor, for a 'living' wage?

I wish some of those, whoever they may be who mete it out to us, would try to 'live' on it for a few weeks, as the factory girl has to do 52 weeks in a year. To pay board and lodging, to provide herself decent boots and clothes to stand all weathers, to pay an occasional doctor's bill, literature, and a holiday away from the scope of her daily drudging, for which even the factory girl has the audacity to long sometimes — but has quite as often to do without. Not to speak of provision for old age, when eyes have grown too dim to thread the everlasting needle, and to guide the worn fingers over the accustomed task. Yet this is a question which some of us, at least, ought to face, ignore it as we may, and are compelled to do. The census showing such a large preponderance of women over men in this country, it follows that the factory girl must inevitably contribute her quota to the ranks of old maidenism — be she never so willing to have it otherwise.

And now as to the number of hours worked to earn — or rather to get — this magnificent sum. I explained in my first letter that we are subject to fluctuations as to the amount of work supplied us. In other words that we have busy seasons and slack ones. It follows, then, that in busy seasons, to total up to the yearly average I have given, we make good wages — and, of course, work a proportionately long number of hours — and in slack seasons bad wages.

Now, sir, our working day — that is, in the factory — consists of from 9 to 10 hours. Take out of this time (often considerable and unavoidably so) to obtain the work, to obtain the 'trimmings' and materials to do it with, and then to get it 'passed' and booked in to us when done, and then calculate how much — say we are getting 2d an hour — we shall be able to earn in an ordinary working day in the factory. It will be plain that in order to average this wage we have in busy seasons to work longer than the actual time in the factory.

Home-work, then, is the only resource of the poor slave who has the misfortune to adopt 'finishing' as a means of earning a livelihood. I have myself, repeatedly, five nights a week, besides Saturday afternoons, for weeks at a time, regularly taken four hours, at least, work home with me, and have done it. This, too, after a close hard day's work in the factory. In giving my own experience I give that of us all. We are obliged to do it, sir, to earn this living wage! It will be unnecessary to point out how fearfully exhausting and tedious it is to sit boring at the same thing for 14 or 15 hours at a stretch — meal times excepted of course.

But we are not asking for pity, sir, we ask for justice. Surely it would not be more than just to pay us at such a rate, that we could realise a living wage — in the true sense of the words — in a reasonable time, say one present working day of from 9 to 10 hours — till the eight hour day becomes general, and reaches even factory girls. Our work is necessary (presumably) to our employers. Were we not employed others would have to be, and if of the opposite sex, I venture to say, sir, would have to be paid on a very different scale. Why, because we are weak women, without pluck and grit enough to stand up for our rights, should we be ground down to this miserable wage ?

With regard to the conditions of our employment, those of which I can speak leave nothing to be desired. In the particular factory in which I am employed, we work in greatest freedom and comfort, and I should like to add, that as far as I personally am concerned, from those in immediate authority over me I have never received anything but consideration and courtesy.

In conclusion, sir, I am aware that in writing these letters to you I arn probably doing what I was reading of the other day, namely, 'butting my head against a stone wall'; but, as the writer I am quoting went on to say, 'How can one be sure it is a stone wall, or one made only of paper, unless one does butt one's head against it?' Now I am not quite sanguine enough to think that the wall against which I am butting my head will give way at least with my solitary 'butt' . Nevertheless, sir, I am determined to butt my head against it. Indeed, I feel it to be personally degrading and a disgrace upon me to remain silent and submit without a protest to the injustice done me.

And if the wall is of stone, sir, and the only remedy lies in the radical one recommended by the minority report of the Labour Commission, �� then will you allow me to urge upon your readers, upon those of my own sex who though not yet having the privilege of voting themselves, yet have influence with those who have, to use that influence intelligently, in the right direction? And to those of the opposite sex who do enjoy this privilege, to send only those men to Parliament, of whatever political creed, who stand pledged to do all in their power, with the utmost possible speed, to relieve the burden of the oppressed and suffering workers of this country, not least amongst whom are the factory girls of Crewe.

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In 1844, the proposed Kendal and Windermere rail line threatened to violate William Wordsworth's precious lakes district. He responded with a literary campaign against the line. Wordsworth wrote poems and letters that were published in the Morning Post to gain the support of the public and specifically address the members of the Board of Trade and the House of Commons. In his letters, Wordsworth is:

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This first letter was not received well; William was quoted in a letter to a friend responding to the opposition, “They actually accuse me of desiring to interfere with the innocent enjoyments of the poor, by preventing this district becoming accessible to them by a railway” (Mulvihill, 306). Wordsworth’s second letter to the Morning Post dated December 9, 1844, searches to explain his position regarding the working class more thoroughly and carefully. In the very first paragraph he states:

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Essentially he is expounding upon his original conception that an appreciation for nature is an acquired taste and it would be futile to bring the lower classes in because they would not have a developed context with which to compare the richness of the Lake District. Wordsworth dedicates the rest of the letter to listing other reasons why the proposed Kendal and Windermere rail would be bad. It seems though; that he makes these further statements to gain back the ‘face’ he may have lost with the people he offended with the first letter.

Wordsworth claims that with the influx of strangers the railway promises could potentially estrange the local poor and wreak moral havoc upon the Lake District, “There cannot be a doubt that the Sabbath day in the towns of Bowness and Ambleside, and other parts of the district, would be subject to much additional desecration” (Selincourt, 155).

The Furness Abby issue gave Wordsworth hope; he wrote that the antiquity was able to be saved by finding an alternative around it. This led him to conclude that the Lakes district was just as worthy of saving:

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Wordsworth concludes this final letter with a disclaimer to prevent anyone from claiming that his arguments were based on selfish initiatives:

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Section A: Contextual Linking

Answer Question 1.

In your response to this section of the paper you must refer to your wider reading across all

three genres (prose, poetry and drama). You may also refer to your AS coursework texts.

Question 1

0 1

Read the following extract carefully. It is taken from an article written by the novelist

William Makepeace Thackeray in 1860 for The Cornhill Magazine. Here Thackeray

expresses his views on the rapid industrial progress of the Victorian era.

How does the writer present his thoughts and feelings about aspects of Victorian life?

How far is the extract similar to and different from your wider reading in Victorian

literature? You should consider the writers� choices of form, structure and language, as

well as subject matter.

(45 marks)

We who have lived before railways were made, belong to another world. In

how many hours could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to London, with

a light carriage built expressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop the next

stage? Do you remember Sir Somebody, the coachman of the Age, who took

our half-crown so affably? It was only yesterday; but what a gulph between now

and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-

horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman

legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth � all these belong to

the old period. I will concede a halt in the midst of it, and allow that gunpowder

and printing tended to modernize the world. But your railroad starts the new era,

and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We are of the

time of chivalry. We are of the age of steam. We have stepped out of the old

world on to �Brunel�s� vast deck. Towards what new continent are we wending?

To what new laws, new manners, new politics, vast new expanses of liberties

unknown as yet, or only surmised? I used to know a man who had invented a

flying-machine. �Sir,� he would say, �give me but five hundred pounds, and I

will make it. It is so simple of construction that I tremble daily lest some other

person should light upon and patent my discovery.� Perhaps faith was wanting;

perhaps the five hundred pounds. He is dead, and somebody else must make

the flying machine. But that will only be a step forward on the journey already

begun since we quitted the old world. There it lies on the other side of yonder

embankments. You young folks have never seen it. We elderly people have

lived in that praerailroad world, which has passed into limbo and vanished from

under us. I tell you it was firm under our feet once, and not long ago. They

have raised those railroad embankments up, and shut off the old world that was

behind them. Climb up that bank on which the irons are laid, and look to the

other side � it is gone. There is no other side. Try and catch yesterday. Where

is it? Here is a Times newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this is Tuesday 27th.

Suppose you deny there was such a day as yesterday?

Easter Holiday Revision and Exam Preparation

Thomas Hardy’s poetry

My Spirit Will Not Haunt The Mound

My spirit will not haunt the mound Above my breast,

But travel, memory-possessed, To where my tremulous being found

Life largest, best.

My phantom-footed shape will go When nightfall grays

Hither and thither along the ways I and another used to know

In backward days.

And there you'll find me, if a jot You still should care

For me, and for my curious air; If otherwise, then I shall not,

For you, be there.

CONTENTS and INSTRUCTIONS

1. ‘Critical Approaches’ pages from York Notes (Advanced) and questions.

Read the article and answer the questions in full, in your jotters.

2. One excellent sample past paper essay and the specific mark scheme

that was applied to this exam. Read the mark scheme, then mark the

essay yourself and note what the candidate did to get high marks.

3. Five critical articles from The English Review and emagazine. Read

these and use them to enrich your interpretation of the poems. (See

AO3)

4. The Thomas Hardy questions from one examination paper (January

2010). Please complete BOTH essays under timed conditions (ie spend

one hour on each). Please handwrite your essays, unless you have

arrangements made to type your exam.

5. One generic mark-scheme. Please assess your own essays using this

scheme before you return to school, and justify your mark. I will mark

the essays as well, when you return.

Please note that the following work will be due when you return:

· the Critical Analysis comprehension questions

· both essays, marked by you.

Final complete FINAL

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