Victorianism MA 9

The Popular and

Changes in Life Style

Periodicals 1

• 1780: 76 newspapers and periodicals in England and

Wales

• between 1800 and 1809 154 new ones

• 1830s: 968

• 1860s: 1,639

• 1890s: 3,423

• Steam press (The Times, 1814):up to 2,500 sheets per

hour

• Rotary press (Lloyd’s Weekly News; 1856): by 1904:

55,000 32-page papers per hour

Periodicals 2

• Before1853: one successful provincial daily

(Liverpool Telegraph and Shipping Gazette)

• By 1870: 60

• by 1900: 171

• Total circulation of all London newspapers:

– 56,000 in 1837

– 410,000 by 1874

– 680,000 in 1887

Books and religion

• Early 1800s: 300 book titles annually

• by 1842: nearly 3,000

• by 1897: about 8,000

• 1814-46: religion: 20.3 percent; fiction:16.2

percent;

• early 1870s: reversed

• By1901: religion 8.6%; fiction 33.0%

• 1873, the ratio of secular to religious magazines:

60: 40

• by 1902: 80: 20.

Literacy of the working classes

• 1841: jobs requiring literacy:

– 27.4 percent of male workers;

– 7.4 percent of female workers

• 1891:

– 37.2 percent of male workers

– 15.4 percent of female workers

• Literacy for leisure; second half of the century:

– their real incomes rose by 80-100 percent

– their working hours decreased

Popular/working class reading

• penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers

• The quarter educated

• Public libraries:

– between 1851 and 1862: 23

– between 1868 and 1886: 98

– between 1886 and 1918: altogether 584

• 1851: 610 mechanics’ institutes: 102,050

members; 681,500 volumes

Jane Austen: The Northanger

defence of the novel• we [novelists] are an injured body: Although our

productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. And what are you reading, Miss -- -? Oh! it is only a novel! replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda ; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

Novel concerns

• Poisonous/dangerous reading

• Bovaryism

• Moral and political effects of mass literacy, of reading

• Three-decker – cheap literature

• Serialisation – warning: cliffhanger

• Uncategorisability of novels

• From 1860s:

– sensation novels

– crime stories

The sensation novel: when,

what

• Mid-Victorian period (1860s)

• First novel:

– Wilkie Collins: Woman in

White (1859)

– Serialised in All the Year

Round

• Serialised novels

• Plot elements/topics: novel

with a dark secret

– Crime

– Insanity

– Violence

– Transgression

– Dysfunctional or illicit

sexual relationships

– Forgery

– Theft

– Bigamy

– Seduction

– Murder

– Kidnapping

– Loss/change of identity

– …

The sensation novel: examples

• Wilkie Collins: Woman in White (1859)

• Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1860-61)

• Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood: East Lynne (1961)

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Lady Audley’s Secret (1862)

• Evelyn Benson: Ashcombe Churchyard (1962)

• Wilkie Collins: No Name (1862)

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Aurora Floyd (1863)

• Charles Reade: Very Hard Cash (1863)

• Thomas Hardy: Desperate Remedies (1871)

The sensation novel: cultural

meaning

• Best sellers

• High and low culture

• Shock or thrill to the readers’

nervous system (=“sensation

novel”)

• Generic sources and mode of

presentation:

– the romance

– the realist novel

– the melodramatic novel

– the Newgate novel

• Periodical culture:

– Conglomerate of all

kinds of texts

– Readership-dependent

– Cliff-hangers

– News serving as

stimulus for sensation

novels

• Impact/origins:

– Moral panic, disease,

corruption, poison

The sensation novel:

social background

• Appeal to the crowds: shock rather than aesthetic experience

• “Training in modernity, acclimatizing people to the pace of

industrial and urban life through […] shock and suspense.”

(Nicholas Daly)

• Emerging mass consumerism

• Self-definition not in terms of production, but in terms of

consumption

• Leisure of the middle classes

• Social boundaries: not so distinct

• Paradox: economic stability – threat/fear of social instability

The sensational novel:

narrative structure• Central:

– Mystery

– Criminality/transgres

sion of all kinds

• Plot drive: detection:

– Narrator: not in

control of the

narrative

• Coincidences

• (Apparent)

inconsistencies

• Contingency,

haphazardness

• Impact:

– Confusion

– Instability

– Lack of control

• The “Other”/double of the realist

text

– Contingency: present in the

realist text too, but in

reversed proportions

– The uncanny other of

realism

– Brings to the surface/centre

what is hidden by/

peripheral in the realist text

– Gothic parallels

The sensation novel: a

symptom and a code 1• Gothic vs sensation novel:

– No longer projected on distant spaces/times

– Contemporary setting: fears brought to home grounds

• A code for the expression of social anxieties and fear of

instability:

– Blurring class boundaries

– Blurring gender boundaries

• re: Victorian ideology of the gendered separate

spheres

• Loss of identity

• A backlash on a changing social-cultural structure

– Criminalising/delegitimising the working classes and

women

The sensation novel:

a symptom and a code 2

• Uncanny knowledge about/of the middle classes

– Familiar and unfamiliar (heimlech and unheimlich)

– Unacknowledged and inadmissible, terrifying

knowledge

• Expression of doubts about the “pure” origins and the

stability of the (middle) classes

– Part of the realist novel too: Middlemarch (Nicholas

Bulstrode)

The sensation novel: a

symptom and a code 3• Questions of decency and propriety

– What is behind the facades of the established middle

and upper classes

– What are the sources/origins of the established middle

and upper classes

– How safe is the space of the established middle and

upper classes

• Challenging the myth of pure upward social mobility

• Exposing and challenging class and gender boundaries

• The sensation novel: the “other” of the mid-Victorian

realist novel

– Difference: in quantity and perception/evaluation of

crime/illegitimacy not in quality

Shows

• Music hall vs opera/theatre

• Freak shows

• Zoos

Emerging pet culture 1

Emerging pet culture 2• Up until 18th c:

– Pet owning: ostentatious, frivolous; aristocratic consumers,

spending money in an absurd way

– Animals: to earn their keep (and/or beaten)

• 19th c: moral value to pet owning → recommended for children

• Character building: caring, domesticity

• Middle classes: pedigree dogs

• Upper classes: even exotic animals, parrots, monkeys

• Working classes: capture birds - keep in cages

• Dogs: steadfast, loyal, courageous – Victorian values

• For boys: rabbits (incl. Building hutches)

• Cats: rather kept to catch mice (utility animals + associated with

withces

• New form of consumerism: self-help books, pet food,

medication, cemetaries

Photography• 1826: eight hours

• 1839: 15 mins (Louis Daguerre; daguerrotype) → seconds

• Stiff postures and unsmiling faces: “say prunes” (smiling: look

an idiot)

• Hidden mothers: disguised as chairs or camouflaged under

decorative throws

• Death photography: “mirrors with memory”

– Posthumous portraiture: a way of preserving the dead in memory

– Death for the Victorians: ordinary and everpresent

– 1840: photography: getting democratic (cost pennies)

– Often the only picture of the person

– Symbols of death (flowers)

– Paint open eyes

Hidden mothers

Death photography

Julia Margaret (Pattle) Cameron

(1815-79)• (Virginia Woolf’s great-aunt)

• Anglo-Indian (Calcutta): British father and French aristocrat mother

– Seven sisters: non-traditonal behaviour and dress

• Sarah Prinsep (sister): Little Holland House: Pre-Raphaelites,

Tennyson, Browning, Thackeray, etc.

• “All my sisters were beautiful, but I had genius. They were the brides of

men, but I am the bride of Art.”

• 1st camera: 1863

• Studio: Freshwater, Cornwall

• One of the greatest portrait photographers of the age

– Soft close-up

• Mythological and literary figures and scenes

• Professional recognition: exhibitions, member of photographic societies

• Contemporary exhibitions: MOMA (2013), Victoria and Albert Museum

(2015), National Portrait Gallery (2003, 2018)

Portriats of men: hero worship:

Tennyson, Darwin, Henry Taylor

Portraits of women: Ellen Terry,

Julia Jackson, May Prinsep,

Children:

angels and allegorical figures• Innocent, kind and noble?

Mythological and literary

figures and scenes

Football, rugby

• Modern rules: 19th century

• Cambridge Rules: 1848: Trinity College

– Not universally adopted

• Football Association: 1863

– Complete set of rules

• Rugby Football Union: 1871

– Origins: Rugby School

• FA Cup: 1872

– 1st international football match: England-Scotland

• Rugby: more middle class

• Soccer: more working class

Prostitution 1

• Double sexual standard

• The bifurcation of the images of women

– Chastity, prudence, grace vs prostitution

– Angels in the house vs fallen women

• London: 8600 (police) to 80,000 (estimated) prostitutes

• Causes: circumstances, lack of advantages and better choices

– Working class living and working conditions:

• Engagement: premarital sex

• Factory workers: exposure, rape, “inappropriate knowledge”

• Seamstresses: overworked and underpaid → extra money

• Servants: seduced/raped by masters

– Prostitution by choice: comparatively lucrative

– Originally middle-class women in lack of profession/job/income/support

Prostitution 2

• Spaces: brothels; around armies and sailors, streets

• Conditions: poverty, insecurity, physical danger, alcoholism, disease

and police harassment

• Subculture:

– Clothes: showy; no hats

– Support system among themselves

– Fight for territories/possessions

• Poems on prostitution:

– Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Jenny (from the perspective of a customer)

– Julia Augusta Webster: A Castaway (from the perspective of a

prostitute)

Contagious Diseases Acts• 1864, 1866, 1869: informed by concerns of the declining health and

effectiveness of the military

• The right to

– stop and detain any woman identified as a prostitute

– force her submission to an examination with the intent of identifying whether

the woman in question suffered from a venereal disease

– detained in a hospital for a specified amount time so that the disease could

be handled and cured if possible

• Debate: “progressive sanitary enlightenment” vs “immoral abuses of the

constitution”

• Objected to by moralists and feminists alike

– The unquestionable right of an official to stop any woman suspected of

infection

– Double sexual standard: law does not apply to men → infect their wives

– Working-class women: often indistinguishable from prostitutes

– Josephine Butler and Elizabeth Wolstenholme: Ladies’ Association against

the Contagious Diseases Act (1869)

• Repealed: 1886

The New Woman

• New Woman was constructed ‘as simultaneously non-female,

unfeminine and ultra-feminine.’ (Pykett 1992: 140)

• What are the basic characteristics of the New Woman? She is trying

to make a better life for women. Above all she is striving for equality

of opportunity with man to enjoy full life, and she seeks the right to

make decisions for herself, the right to determine her own destiny.

… The Woman of Tradition has … accepted life as it comes. By

contrast the New Woman strives to mould her own life in the way

that she would wish it. …. Besides the right to determine her own

personal destiny, the New Woman demands a say in the

development of the society in which she lives.’ (Meares 9-10, 11, 18,

21, emphases in original)

Sarah Grand, ‘The New Aspect of

the Woman Question’ (1894)

• ‘The man of the future will be better, while the woman will be stronger and wiser. To bring this about is the whole aim and object of the present struggle, and with the discovery of the means lies the solution of the Woman Question.’ (Grand 1894a: 31).

• [The Old Woman is] ‘unaccustomed to the practice which the New Woman has adopted, of exposing the sores of Society in order to diagnose its diseases, and find a remedy for them’ (Grand 1898a: 71)

The New Woman (?)

‘Speaks for itself’, Hub, 17 October 1896

The New Woman:

Butch or Lady?

‘The Championess’

• "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I

think it has done more to emancipate

women than anything else in the world. It

gives women a feeling of freedom and

self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every

time I see a woman ride by on a

wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled

womanhood.” Susan B. Anthony (US

social reformer)

Travelling for leisure

• 18th c: Grand tour of Europe

– Aristocrats

• Gradually: upper-middle, middle-middle

etc

• Mass travel preconditions:

– Infrastructure (road/railway system)

– Leisure time

– Money

– Agencies

Thomas Cook (1809-1892)• Midlands, Baptist, Temperance Movement (1820 on)

• 1st tour: 540 Temperance campaigners from Leicester to

Loughborough

• 5 July 1841: deal with the railway company:

– passengers: full price and food

– his share

• 1st publicly advertised, but privately chartered excursion

train

• 1851: 165.000 to Great Exhibition

• 1855: 1st excursion abroad: Calais

• 1856: 1st circular tour in Europe

• 1860: Egypt, US

• By 1888: over 3.25 million tickets sold

• Bankrupt: 2019

Beach culture

• 18th c: women and men bathing together, naked

• 19th c: emerging beach culture

• Isle of Wight: 1814: 1st pleasure pier

• Southport pier 1860: oldest iron pier in the country; 2nd

longest; tramway

• By 1890s: 80 piers: “necessary to alter the map of

England and represent it as a huge creature of the

porcupine type, with gigantic piers instead of quills”

• 19th c: swimsuit – but: women: not to be seen in them

• 1832: law: men and women were to be at least 60 feet

apart at the beach

Bathing machine

• 1750s, but not in use)

• Changing room for women

• Carried out to see

• Dipper pushed women into the sea

• Legal segregation of male and female beach-goers (60

feet away from each other – never kept): over in 1901

• Bathing machines: as stationary changing houses for

women and men

• 1914: most of the bathing machines disappeared

• The rest: repurposed

Hiking and rock climbing• Spreading culture

• By definition: for men

• Women: strict rules on dresses:

– Knickerbockers underneath

– Two skirts

– Cause of accidents

• Rock climbing

– Associated with danger, transgression and the sublime

– Women: excluded from men’s clubs → their own in 1908: Ladies

Scottish Climbing Club (Lucy Smith)

– By the end of 1908: fourteen members

– To qualify, women had to ascend four peaks of at least 3,000

feet with two snow climbs and two rock climbs

– Alps, Scotland

Country clothing• For the wealthy living in the countryside → middle

classes

• Travelling for leisure

• Wax coats

– Development from oilskin (fishing)

– Barbour: 1894; wax coat: paraffin

– Green coat (waxed cotton), brown corduroy collar, tartan lining

• Wellington boots (wellies)

– From 18th century

– → modified by 1st Duke of Wellington

• Tweed: Prince Albert’s design when purchasing

Balmoral estate

• Mackintosh: waterproof coat: 1824 (urban too)

• Thank you for your attention!