a short critical examination of the effects of the industrial revolution on british literature

7/30/2019 A Short Critical Examination of the Effects of the Industrial Revolution on British Literature

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A Short Critical Examination of the Effects

of the Industrial Revolution on British

Literature:The disappearance of the aristocratic ruling class began to occur in Great Britain a

relatively short time after the development of the factory system of manufacturing.

The political power shift that resulted from this change in the economy left

profound scar on the literature of the Victorian period (about 1832-1902) that

continues to mar the literature of the modern period.

The pivotal literary figure in the transformation from the Romantic Period to theVictorian Period was Matthew Arnold. Arnold was skeptical about the quality of life

in an industrial society. In Arnold's era the same aristocratic intelligences who had

presided over English culture for so long were still people of great learning,

stimulating each other's minds and perpetuating English cultural orthodoxy. This

would soon change, because at the same time, the working classes were increasingly

demanding improvements in their quality of life.

The factory system was quickly eliminating the feudal master craftsmen and his

apprentices who produced high quality, hand-made goods. They were being

replaced by large teams of unsophisticated laborers producing a large quantity of

lower quality goods at lower prices. This development began occurring more rapidly

between the 1850s and the turn of the century, creating for the first time in

English history the lowest class of the laborer proletarian.

Victorian writers joined the public outcry at the lamentable state of the laboring

class. The state responded with the formulation of what, in England, are known as

"board" schools. Unfortunately, most of the problems with the early British "board"schools could be witnessed in modern American schools. The state saw the usefulness

of an opportunity to indoctrinate the masses. Life in the schools at that time was

not so different from the miserable life in the factories. It was "noisy, overheated,

odorous from dirty clothing and a hundred unwashed and unhealthy bodies - and

the atmosphere of stern discipline and unimaginative force feeding of the rote

memory." (Altick, 250)

There is no point in teaching classical thought to people who will be factoryworkers. In fact, it is detrimental to their will to be factory workers. Arnold


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observed the changes in motion around him and foresaw a cultural decline. He

describes himself in these famous lines from Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuseas

"wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born." The

teachings of modern science that had come with the industrial age had been

cultural orthodoxy unbelievable to many. Arnold consideredpoetryto be a religious

medium. Robert Adams states in his book, The Land and Literature of England,

that:

Arnold proposed that Culture in the form of humane letters must take the place

once held by religion in softening manners and energizing ideals. Nowadays, I think,

we are a little less likely to look in literature for a guide to behavior a talisman

against ill fortune. We are also less confident of being able to recognize and make

use of "the best that has been known and thought in the world." (425)

The English public educational system did not create great scholars; instead, it

created a class of people who probably read as little as possible. When they did

read, they mostly read penny novels. These schools succeeded in creating semi-

literates, which was about as much as they had set out to do. The circumstance of

the State controlling education in a democratic system is one that, for ethical

reasons, should be questioned. The conveyor belt system of education could not

possibly be expected to produce great intellects that would be inclined to willfully

pursue the study of classical literature.

The next really dynamic poetic figure to come along was Gerard Manly Hopkins

who experimented with rhythm and alliteration. He was always in pursuit of new

poetic structures. According to David Daiches in A Critical History of English

Literature, he:

Charged older words with new meanings by the contexts in which he set them; he

experimented with word combinations reminiscent of the Anglo-Saxon "kennings;"he restored their original meanings to dead metaphors thus providing a shock of

surprise. (1043)

The publication of Hopkins' poems, long after his death in 1918 was a significant

factor in the development of the new poetic style. The first poem of this new style

was T. S. Eliots' The Waste Land. A clue to Eliot's poetic method may be found in

this quote from The Metaphysical Poets:

"Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety andcomplexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex
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results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more

indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into this meaning."

(Daiches, Norton, 2515)

The work of Eliot became a model for twentieth century writers. Eliot's WasteLanddepicted contemporary industrialized society and foreshadowed the physical

wasteland of the war-time era. Eliot's poem made extensive use of symbolism and

he purposely incorporated information from some of his obscure studies into his

poems. Oddly enough, there may be a case for using personal symbolism and

obscure knowledge when a writer's audience is too insufficiently educated to

understand his work, anyway. But symbolism and metaphor are usually intended to

illuminate a subject in a way that could not be done with more direct language, not

to further cloud the subject. I contend that being enigmatic for no other reasonthan to pass one's self off as an intellectual or to simply bewilder the reader is bad

writing. It is of concern that this kind of writing is the inspiration of modern

writers.

Nevertheless, we see that the impact of the Industrial Revolution manifested itself in

British literature in a variety of ways. It provided an unattractive background for

much of literature, most famously, that of Dickens. The ugliness of the industrialized

towns caused some writers like William Butler Yeats,James Joyceand D. H.

Lawrence to flee their hometowns in search of places more conducive to the artistic

fancies of great writers. The scientific discoveries that accompanied the industrial

revolution destroyed faith in orthodox religious teachings and shined a severe light

on the beauty of classicism. The factory system, which incorporates the many into a

body of one, destroyed individual creativity and left little time for the pursuit of

classical ideologies. The poor educational system created a multitude of semi-

literates who could not be expected to comprehend great literature. The aristocracy

was almost entirely destroyed, and with it went the spirit of classicism and

romanticism.

Works Cited

Adams, Robert M. The Land and Literature of England. New York: W. W. Norton

and Company, 1983.

Altick, Richard D. Victorian Peoples and Ideas. New York: W. W. Norton and

Company, 1978.
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Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. New York: The Ronald Press

Company, 1970.

Daiches, David. The Norton Anthology, Third Edition. New York: W. W. Norton and

Company, 1962.

a short critical examination of the effects of the industrial revolution on british literature

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