Cours époque victorienne - anglais

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVEL

The late 18th century and the 19th century were characterized by sweeping (=radical) economic, political, technological and social changes. Industrialisation enabled (=a permis) industrialists to make fortunes and witnessed the emergence of the working class whose living and working conditions deteriorated.

The period was marked by differing reactions to these social and economic changes. The celebration of industrialisation coexisted with objections to its appalling effects on society, and the rapid urban cultural developments that occurred throughout the country coincided with a growing desire to return to nature.

In Britain's Century: A Political and Social History, historian William Rubinstein depicted the 19th century as a period of “predominance, fear and complacency”. This expression appears as an oxymoronic way of describing something but will be quite relevant to describe not only the British political and social landscape, but also the cultural, artistic and literary fields of the time.

The industrial revolution and the age of manufactures:

There was a demographic explosion in England, Wales and Scotland in the 19th century. The population grew from 10 million in 1800 to 37 million in 1901 due to an increase in the birth rate and a decrease in the death rate of course, but also to important waves of immigration (especially from Ireland following the Potato Famine for instance between 1845 and 1852)

In the meantime, revolutionary advances in technology were very impressive. Steam Power developed through the 18th century and was applied to industry in the 19th century. The mining Industry boomed as a result, along with the train and railroad industry in the 1830s and the train became a familiar element of the British  landscape, as can be seen in William Turner’s work.  

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Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway by  Joseph Mallord William Turner (1844)

In this famous painting, he depicted the end of an agrarian era, epitomized by the plough on the banks of the river Thames. It was painted close to the end of the Industrial Revolution, which brought a massive shift from an agrarian economy to one dominated by machine manufacturing in the Victorian Era. The railway was among the most potent symbols of industrialization, since this new way of transportation heavily affected industrial and social life. Turner seemed to be a generation ahead of other artists, as he was among the few painters at the time to consider industrial advancement as a commendable subject of art.  The painting suggests that modern technology is a reality racing towards them.

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The Fighting Temeraire (Turner) is also a very symbolic depiction of modernity and industry about to leave the past behind. The big ship in the background was a relic from the Battle of Trafalgar during the Napoelonic War (1805), and is painted as it is being towed up the river Thames by a steam boat to be destroyed.

The textile industry throve as well with the advances in wool and cotton weaving thanks to the Spinning Jenny for instance.

Agricultural life also changed tremendously with the beginning of the enclosure movement, mechanization and crop rotation.

Technological innovations suddenly eradicated entire fields of specialized laborers (weavers) and this was “One of the greatest tragedies of the Industrial Revolution”, according to Rubenstein. A huge, cheap workforce quickly became available to the industrial machine – and there was a mass movement from rural to urban areas. Big industrial centers mushroomed and the urban sprawl was spectacular. This came along with the emergence of cotton factories, coal, copper and lead mines. As industrialization increased, large-scale manufacturing industries multiplied throughout the country and produced the biggest share of national output. More capital was available to invest in expanding industries. Urbanization was one of the consequences of the industrial revolution. In 1800, only 3% of the world's population lived in cities, compared to nearly 50% today (the beginning of the 21st century). Manchester had a population of 10,000 in 1717, but by 1911 it had burgeoned to 2.3 million. The size and equipment of the towns were not appropriate for so many newcomers.  During the early 19th century the River Thames was an open sewer in London for instance, with disastrous consequences for public health, including cholera epidemics. It was not before 1870 that the new sewage system was complete. Children as well as adults worked and lived in cramped and unsanitary areas, as is very well depicted by Dickens in Hard Times for example, a novel in which the story is set in an industrial town called Coketown. The city itself is the epitome of the new way of working and living during the industrial revolution:

“ It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.  It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.” ( Hard Times Book I, Chapter 5  - 1854)

This overwhelming impression of sameness and uniformity is also conveyed in Over London , by rail for example, in which Gustave Doré depicted a row of cramped houses, and London’s appalling living conditions. (cf series of engravings 1869-1873). The first house is replicated time and time again and the row stretches out of sight in a circular shape, thus suggesting endless repetition.

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The landscape changed, there were mills and chimneys everywhere in big industrial centers like Birmingham, or Manchester for example.

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Birmingham in the early 19th century.

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Manchester, 19th century

+ début video Turning point in History jusqu’à 2.10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Efq-aNBkvc

A new economic doctrine, social reform  and the making of the English working class

The period was marked by intense economic and political debates and produced major socio-economic theories that led to economic and social reforms. Repression from local and national governments tried to prevent the spread of radical ideas and actions.

Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, often considered as the father and theorician of economic liberalism and capitalism, set out the principles of his economic theory in his most famous work Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). He explained that the market and the capitalist society were self-regulated and that everything was taken care of by a mysterious "invisible hand", that economic activity depended on individual self-interest and that the state was to have a limited role, as natural regulation of economic transactions would ensue from natural healthy competition. He thus supported a laissez-faire economic model.

Adam Smith’s philosophy, praising individualism, found its counterpart in the philosophy of utilitarianism.  Jeremy Bentham was a moralist and a reformer, who wrote An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1789, in which he defined good and evil in terms of pain and pleasure. Morals should consist of the pursuit of happiness and law should therefore aim at decreasing pain. “Evil is pain, or the cause of pain, good is pleasure, or the cause of pleasure.”  His utilitarian principles were then used to reform the Poverty relief system in England, and he was soon followed by John Stuart Mill (Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, 1844) and Samuel Smiles for example (Self-Help, 1859).  Utilitarianism is blatantly criticized by Charles Dickens in Hard Times and in Oliver Twist for example.  

The English working class was born with industrialization and urbanization, and the 19th century was also the time when agitation grew over the question of expanding the franchise (the right to vote) and of public responsibility for dealing with poverty and public health. Several revolts occurred in the context of the industrial revolution, the most famous of which was probably the one led by Ned Ludd between 1811 and 1816. Industrial workers got organized to destroy machines that were accused of stealing the jobs of many. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIIxM5v2mm4 (juste 1 minute 19). In 1831, the same type of revolt was organized by agricultural laborers who were led by a mythical leader who was nicknamed Captain Swing.