Northanger Abbey Continued

Continuing with Austen's Northanger Abbey

Review

• The Gothic as a politically charged form
• tied to current events ("something shocking coming out of London")
• related to fear of disorder, excess, appetite, but also passion, awe, the extraordinary (in other words, the sublime about which we will talk later)
• But also in this novel the gothic is tied to something more ordinary
• We might focus on the novel's investment in education
• the country girl who goes to the city
• the naive girl who learns about the world
• the young girl initiated into love by the older man
• and so on
• We might notice all of the novel's "scenes of instruction"
• Catherine describing her own education (as torment)
• Isabella initiating Catherine into "female" rituals of Bath
• Mrs. Allen "educating" Catherine about what should be important to women
• Countless scenes where Henry "educates" Catherine (about the world, fashion, the picturesque, England, etc.)
• We might consider all of the "sources" of education
• books and reading
• friends and "friends"
• family and parents
• lovers
• the social world
• And finally we might want to consider the relation between the novel's form, Gothic parody, the novel's "narrative"--the education of the heroine, and the structure of the novel in general: Expectation leads to disappointment (or fulfillment?) as stated in the first sentence of Volume 2

What ultimately is the attraction of the gothic (or of horror in general)?

• fear?
• not really; more the feeling of fear while not actually being fearful
• in the gothic what do we have to fear?
• in this novel's "gothic" parts, what do we have to fear?
• in this novel, what do we have to fear?
• Return to Henry in Chapter 14
• what do we learn about him? that he's really a bully
• Who else are bullies in the novel? (see Day 1)
• What exactly do we have to fear from the "bullies" in the novel?
• Surprise or suspense?
• What are the sources of suspense?
• not knowing
• secrets
• whispers
• conspiracies
• imprisonment
• tyrannic exercise of power
• Note how "education" is the "cure" for all of these
• But what education?
• bullied by Henry
• education as torment
• education as oppression (if a woman has intelligence, she should hide it)
• Catherine's "close questioning" of Henry about Captain Tilney's behavior
• what good is "education" if one cannot act morally
• Captain Tilney's actions considered immoral by most everyone
• Henry's refusal to act considered immoral by Catherine (and us)

Catherine's Ultimate Education

• She succumbs to the Gothic
• Henry's gothic parody in the carriage (114-117)
• The "scroll" of papers (120, 126)
• Catherine's suspicions about the absent mother (131-132) 
• Ironies about Catherine's "education"--she's called "well-read" (133), "not misled" (136), "naturally" (137), and has "read too much" not to understand (140)
• She is corrected (educated, tormented, chastised, humiliated) by Henry (Vol 2, ch. 9, or ch. 24)
• Begins in confusion of the "domestic" and the "gothic"
• Henry thinks Catherine's visit to his mother's room is occasioned by honor and respect of the domestic
• It turns out that her interest is not domestic but "gothic" and sensational
• But the entire novel is interested in what might be called the sensational of the domestic--"neighborhood of voluntary spies . . . where roads and newspapers lay everything open" (145)--this is a world that assumes under every placid surface is something prurient, sensational, and gothic
• Henry manspains 
• but also admits that his father was "not perfectly amiable" (145)
• suggests that his mother might have suffered under his father
• asserts that gothic plots could not happen in England; rejects the sensational
• Catherine's response
• Romance over
• gives up extravagance and fancies, but also "liberty"
• "hated herself"--this seems too strong and suggests the ultimate goal of "education" is not to invest oneself with authority, but to make one question one's own right to authority, to hate oneself for one's failings, misreadings, misunderstandings and hope to find for oneself a teacher
• Henry called "formidable"--more bullying
• But still has reservations about the General (and as we will see, she's right)
• Her education "complete"--"the anxieties of common life began soon to succeed to the alarms of romance"--in fact, this has always been true, as detailed earlier in all the occasions when Catherine is fearful and the language of the novel becomes gothic

Actual and Natural Evil

• But Catherine was right about the General
• It turns out we have more than enough to fear in the ordinary and everyday
• Faithful promising
• Henry teases her about this expression (144), but promises are often not kept in the novel
• Isabella breaks her promise (several times)
• Catherine's friends force her to break her promise
• Catherine accuses Mrs. Allen of failing to warn her (and thus of breaking her "promise" in her role as guardian)
• And the General is the most sinister promise breaker of all (167)
• What replaces Gothic fear?
• After being told that she must leave Northanger Abbey, Catherine returns to her room, which earlier was the occasion of her wild Gothic imagining
• There she contemplates the "actual and natural evil" (167) that is far scarier than any Radcliffe novel
• There she resigns herself to a sleepless night "without curiosity or terror" but full of real suffering
• "how mournfully superior in reality and substance" 
• Ultimately, a happy ending (or is it?)
• Recall the scroll of papers that turns out to be an inventory of linen (i.e., a laundry list)
• Again, the domestic intervenes in place of the gothic; gothic imagining proves to be in excess
• or is it?
• To a young independent woman on the brink of marriage, what could be more frightening than a laundry list? Isn't the trivial and mundane universe of domestic chores, "homemaking," and the care of husbands and children, the ultimate frightening artifact?

Northanger Abbey, Day 1

Some Notes on Austen's Northanger Abbey

Something shocking will soon come out of London (chapter 14, page 81)

• This moment of miscommunication combines the "horror" of political unrest of the time of writing/initial time of reading 
• with the "horror" of the gothic novel

The Gothic

• a politically charged form
• French Revolution, the "Reign of Terror," twenty-two years of war
• Note the "gothicism" of these passages about the French Revolution
• Helen Maria Williams, from Letters from France, 1796 (Longman 135) 
• Edmund Burke, from Reflections (Longman 113)
  This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant children, (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people,) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcases. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king’s body guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women.
•  Violence, chaos, disorder, but also inheritance, usurpation, tyranny
• The Gothic associated with excess--therefore the "anti-gothic" must be moderation, a key Austen word
• We can play the binary game with qualities associated with the gothic
• Gothic: Disorder, Passion, Extraordinary, Supernatural, Excess
• Anti-gothic: Order, Reason, Ordinary, Natural, Moderation

Back to Chapter 14

What's happening here?

• Education by Henry (he's never wrong (83))
• Something shocking (82-83); stupid sister
• Picturesque (80-81); discussion of politics leads to silence
• Consider all the other silences: 
• Chapter 7 (32) when Catherine is fearful of having an opinion
• Catherine's judgment of John Thorpe; of Isabella, etc.
•  And Catherine being lectured by Henry--this will be a key episode in Volume 2
• Education as torment (80)
• Recall that the passage begins with Henry correcting Catherine's grammar (78); Henry being "nice" about her use of the word "nice"
• Guide book language echoed: if a woman knows anything, she should conceal it (83)

Henry Tilney is the source of Catherine's "education" and the passage concludes with the narrator's ironic repetition of Catherine's gushing response: he could never be wrong about anything. If we are skeptical, then we are good readers--Austen wants us always to be skeptical about such such judgments.

All this forces upon us the question, just who is Henry Tilney?

• an "authority"
• her "teacher"/tormentor
• the "new" generation (in contrast to his father)
• knowledgeable about all manner of things, including fashion--a know-it-all?
• sure of himself (the narrator refers to John Thorpe as a "self-assured man"--if Thorpe is self-assured, then what should we call Henry? super-self-assured?)
• conceited (full of himself)
• kind of a prig--yes, he's right about being "nice" about language, but he's not very nice 
• a bully?

Bullies in the novel?

• John Thorpe
• Catherine's friends
• Isabella
• Henry Tilney?
• Others?
• Novel thematizes bullying/tormenting as teaching and as "authority"
• Man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal (10, 54)
• Catherine mistrusts her own authority (9, 47)
• Appeals to Mr. Allen (13, 75) who is given final patriarchal authority (so long as it agrees with Catherine's opinion at least)

Who or what are the authorities in the novel?

• Men
• Books
• narratives of female initiation
• Domestic--the Assembly Rooms of Bath
• Gothic--Northanger Abbey (see Volume 2)
• Conventional Narratives
• Isabella's narrative
• John Thorpe's narrative
• Catherine's story (maybe, in Volume 2)
• Her double must be revealed and punished
• She must submit to Henry's authority 

Why do we need authorities? Education

• Specifically the education of women
• Men
• Books
• Parents--where are the parents in this novel?
• Real Imprisonment
• bullied into agreement or silence by friends and lovers
• denied a real education (only torment available)
• denied life experience (except of suffering and torment)
• lack of financial independence
• lack of mobility

The real "fear" of the novel is not gothic and supernatural, but domestic and everyday

• high drama of the dance--gothic language (10, 52-53)
• watched mysteriously by the General (echoes earlier scene in the theatre when she feels that Thorpe and the General are talking about her) (10, 57)
• "imprisoned" by Thorpe in the carriage (11, 62)
• shunned by Henry (12, 66); the true terror of a woman's life
• bullied by friends (13, 72) and robbed of her autonomy (by Thorpe who makes her arrangements for her)

That last episode originates in Catherine's promise to go on a walk with Henry and Eleanor, which is the occasion of the episode in Chapter 14 discussed above. It is also one of many moments in the novel that focuses on promising, and keeping one's promises. Curious given the structure of experience that defines the novel itself and summarized by the first sentence of Volume 2: "Catherine's expectations of pleasure from her visit in Milsom-street were so very high, that disappointment was inevitable" (93). Promises, or "expectations of pleasure," are never kept.

Notes on Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Notes on the Rights of Woman

1)      Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

a)      Wollstonecraft’s Biography

i)        grows up in abusive household—protects mother from tyrannical father

(1)   becomes lady’s companion but returns to nurse mother

(2)   leaves home for good; works as seamstress then schoolmistress

ii)      turns to writing to pay off debts after school fails

(1)   Thoughts on the Education of Daughters published in 1786

(2)   Meets Joseph Johnson who publishes Mary, A Fiction (1788)

iii)    becomes part of Johnson’s circle (Blake, Paine, Priestley, Fuseli, Godwin, Barbauld and Joel Barlow)

(1)   A Vindication of the Rights of Men published anonymously in 1790; with her name in 1791 and earns her reputation

(2)   Publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792

iv)    Her public behavior stigmatizes her and her argument

(1)   enamored of Fuseli and publicly pursues him

(2)   goes to Paris in 1793 to forget Fuseli; meets and “marries” Gilbert Imlay

(3)   has child with Imlay (Fanny); they split

(4)   returns to England and finds Imlay living with actress; attempts suicide

(5)   he sends her to Scandinavia; she returns in Oct 1795 to find him living with a different actress; attempts suicide by jumping into the Thames

(6)   publishes her letters to Imlay in attempt to win him back; letters win admiration of Godwin

(7)   pregnant with Godwin’s child, they marry; child born (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley); Wollstonecraft dies

(8)   Godwin publishes his Memoir of Wollstonecraft, which details all of the above; his attempt to honor her ends up scandalizing her

v)      Even some modern feminists still upset over the damage Wollstonecraft did to women’s rights. While her writing advanced the cause, her lifestyle tainted it for decades if not centuries

b)      Dedication to M. Talleyrand-Perigord (who advocated female education but along Rousseau lines—trained for subservience to men)

i)        Refers to wives as slaves (305)

ii)      Sees women as coerced into their domestic role (305)

c)      Introduction

i)        offers no apology for treating women “like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood” (308)

ii)      women’s education creates weak women

(1)   women “are rendered weak and wretched”—not naturally so but made (306)

(2)   “false system of education” to blame (306-7)

iii)    women’s treatment makes them dependent

(1)   treating women softly softens them; treating them as dependents trains them to be dependent (308)

(2)   women “objects of desire” (309)

(3)   women’s “artificial weakness” (the weakness they have been trained up to) “produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning” (309)

d)     The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered

i)        Society must be judged by how well it enables (310)

(1)   Reason

(2)   Virtue

(3)   knowledge

ii)      How would we (Europe) be judged? (not in Longman 3^rd  or 4^th or 5^th )

(1)   slavery (235)

(2)   a history showing power gained through vice (236)

(3)   subordination of man to man

(a)    monarchy (310)

(b)   example of army and navy (310-1)

(c)    clergy and universities (311)

e)      The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed

i)        Women are assumed to not have enough Reason to acquire Virtue (311)

(1)   and yet they must be virtuous

(2)   this lack is the product of a poor education (311)

(3)   frequently compared with children—yet children can grow into rational beings while women cannot (312)

ii)      Example of Milton

(1)   He makes women subservient to men because they lack reason (312)

(2)   He has Adam argue for an “rational” partner (312-3)

iii)    Women enslaved by their lack of proper education

(1)   education by snatches if at all (313)

(2)   always secondary to beauty (313)

(3)   compared to soldiers

(a)    gallantry like coquetry (314)

(b)   both acquire manners (rules) without morals (thought) (314)

iv)    Enslavement desired by the “sensualists”

(1)   Rousseau a sensualist—woman as plaything (241-2) (not in Longman 3^rd or 4^th)

(2)   sensualists claim that the “whole tendency of female education ought . . . to render them pleasing” (315)

v)      Dr. Gregory’s conduct book

(1)   assumes certain traits in women “natural” (316)

(2)   encourages lying, weakness, dependence (316)

(a)    Wollstonecraft refutes

(i)     encourages friendship over love (316)

(ii)   speaks against passion (316)

(3)   goal is to get a husband

(a)    women must look beyond a husband

(b)   proper education—“a well stored mind would enable a woman to support a single life with dignity” (317)

vi)    “Teach them, in common with man, to submit to necessity, instead of giving, to render them more pleasing a sex to morals” (319)

f)       The Same Subject Continued

i)        Different education and treatment of boys and girls (320)

(1)   refutes claim that girls naturally like sedentary activities while boys like active activities

(2)   Her evidence and experience—gender differences socially constructed not natural

ii)      Dependence of body leads to dependence of mind (320)

(1)   women encouraged to be “delicate”

(2)   a kind of tyranny exercised by the weak

iii)    “It is time to effect a revolution in female manners” (321)

(1)   Men compared to viceregents (colonial?) (321)

(a)    because they rule the weak they are bound to become tyrannical

(2)   Women trained to dependence are left defenseless when they lose their protectors (fathers, brothers, husbands)

(3)   Women trained to be coquettes cannot be adequate teachers of the young

iv)    Man and woman must be the same

(1)   there are no “sexual” virtues (i.e. virtues that belong to one gender and not the other)

(2)   wealth and female softness debase mankind

g)      Concluding Reflections

i)        Sexual distinction is arbitrary (325)

ii)      From the tyranny of man, the greater number of female follies proceed (325)

iii)    Compares women to dissenters (325)

iv)    “Asserting the rights which women in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. If so, it is reasonable to suppose that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense” (326).

h)      Some Discussion Questions

i)            Describe Wollstonecraft's conception of human nature -- what are the main human faculties or characteristics, and how should they be ranked and otherwise related?

ii)          According to Wollstonecraft, how are women seen in relation to these conceptions of human nature?

iii)        What does it mean to call something “natural”? How does Wollstonecraft use this key term?

iv)        On 308, Wollstonecraft opposes "virtue" to "elegance." How does she define virtue, and how is it opposed to elegance?

v)          How does Wollstonecraft's style and manner of argumentation generate authority for her as a writer addressing inequities in gender relations?

vi)        On 312 and elsewhere, what does Wollstonecraft suggest is the key to men's continuing domination over women? (treat them like children)

vii)      What is Wollstonecraft's criticism of Milton on 312-3 and elsewhere?

viii)    Why is education so important a concept to Wollstonecraft on 320 and elsewhere? You might relate this question to her view of human nature.

ix)        Explain Wollstonecraft's analogies between women and soldiers on 313-4. What do such comparisons allow Wollstonecraft to argue about the "naturalization" of perceived gender differences?

Reading a Blake Poem

Reading a Blake poem requires one to be responsive to the poem's language and imagery and open to nagging doubts that are often occasioned by what on closer inspection looks like curious word choice or even contradiction. In that slowing down, which occurs because of form or diction or outright logical inconsistency, we are forced to confront the provocative satire that is almost always at the heart of Blake's work.

Take for example the poem "Holy Thursday," originally published in Songs of Innocence. This poem, like so many of the Songs of Innocence poems, doesn't strike one as being particularly rich or profound.

Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean 

The children walking two & two in red & blue & green 

Grey-headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow,

Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow 

O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town 

Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own 

The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs 

Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands 

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song 

Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among 

Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor 

Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door


On first read, the poem appears to describe an event, the gathering of charity school children for an annual service in St. Paul's Cathedral in London on Ascension Day. For those of you not familiar with St. Paul's, it is the main Anglican cathedral in London, a magnificent edifice designed by the noted architect Christopher Wren and built at the end of the 17th century to replace the original St. Paul's, which was destroyed by the Great Fire of London.

Here's an artist's rendering from around Blake's time:

Looking again at the poem, probably what one notices first is the mostly "positive" language: innocent, clean, wands, white, snow, flowers, radiance, lambs, innocent, heaven, voice of song, harmonious, Heaven, wise, guardians, cherish, angel. Also, the last line feels like the "moral" of the poem, similar to the ending of Blake's "The Chimney-Sweeper" and others.

But what else begins to surface? Most of the language is "positive" but there are a few "off-notes." For example, the beadles are described as "grey-headed," which, of course, might simply point to their age. Later, after all, they are called "aged men" and "wise guardians." But "grey-headed" stands out for another reason. Note all of the color in the first stanza: the children are "red, and blue, and green," while the adults are "grey." And the "wands" they carry are "as white as snow," which in the initial context of the poem suggests innocence (the word "innocent" occurs twice in the poem). But what exactly are these "wands" they carry? Wand seems like a pretty fanciful word for the context. Are we to imagine that the beadles are magicians or endowed with magical powers? Quick Robin, to the OED!

In fact, Blake's use of "wand" is pretty clever. The word certainly has its fanciful meaning (as in a certain shop in Diagon Alley), but it also has a more prosaic and more menacing one. According to the OED, a "wand" is also a "rod or staff borne as a sign of office; esp. a tall slender rod of white wood . . . carried erect by an officer of the royal household or of a court of justice, by a verger or beadle, or by an official whose duty is to walk before a judge or other high dignitary on occasions of ceremony." This meaning seems perfectly appropriate to the context. The "grey-headed beadles" are walking before the children carrying their ceremonial white wand. But besides ceremony, why might a beadle be carrying a wand? And what exactly is a beadle? Back to the OED!

If you read Dickens' novels you already know what a beadle is. A beadle is a minor church functionary usually charged with keeping order, sort of like an usher in church or a vice-principal in school. That last comment is not facetious. Beadles were often in charge of discipline at parish schools and charity schools. Charity schools? Discipline? Wands? Blake uses the word "wand" because we can read it for a split-second as positive (ooh! magic!), and then read it in context (oh, yeah, part of the ceremony), and then read it as suggestive of the world outside this little show (oh, yeah, discipline, school, children).

We can now see that the poem sets up a sharp contrast between the adults and the children. The children are the source of our "positive" reading, the language used to describe them never varying from what appears to be a naive optimism. Nine of the poem's twelve lines focus on the children, so our initially "positive" reading is to be expected. Only two lines focus specifically on the adults, though, one could certainly argue that the last line is an "adult" line. Now the contrasts seem striking. We already noted the color contrast in the first stanza, the children like a rainbow conducted into the cathedral by "grey-headed" adults. They are "flowers," which picks up on the color imagery of the first stanza, but which also suggests mortality (countless antecedents including "all flesh is grass"). They possess a "radiance all their own," which both excludes the adults from being part of it or the source of it and suggests that the adults lack this radiance (they are "grey-headed" after all). And it's interesting to think that the radiance can only be "all their own," like the chimney-sweepers comforting each other in a world in which they (children) are exploited by adults who not only cannot be trusted but who are literally their oppressors.

The last key contrast occurs at the end. Note how the children are rising up or ascending. They are "raising their innocent hands," and they "raise to heaven the voice of song." Do you remember what Holy Thursday commemorates? It is also known as Ascension Day. It commemorates the bodily ascension of Christ into Heaven (described in two of the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles) that has become incorporated into the Nicene Creed: "He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end." So the children are ascending, like Christ, into Heaven. They are referred to line 7 as "lambs," though that reference was probably completely unsurprising given Blake's frequent association of children with lambs, an association we have already questioned (sacrificial) and found to be more provocative than it appears to be. Where are the adults amidst all this ascending into Heaven? The poem's speaker tells us, "Beneath them sit the aged men." They are clearly not ascending. The first stanza's sharp contrast used color--we as readers are asked to visualize the stark contrast between the colorful children and the grey beadles. In the last stanza the contrast is spatial--the children are ascending while the adults sit.

At this point in the poem we should read the last phrase used to describe the adults, "wise guardians of the poor," as deeply ironic. How exactly are the beadles, or any of the adults that we are to imagine involved in "guarding" these children, wise? In fact, the term "guardian of the poor" is an actual job title given to officials elected to the parish board in charge of administering the poor laws, so at some level Blake's use of this phrase is purely descriptive--they are, in fact, Guardians of the Poor. But it's hard not to hear the "double-ness" in "guard," the root of guardian, which allows the word to refer to both one who protects and defends the children and one who, like a prison guard, keeps an eye on and controls the children.

This final phrase, "wise guardians of the poor," also returns us to the purpose of the event being described--the annual ceremony of conducting the charity school children into St. Paul's Cathedral for a special service. This ritual of public pity and public self-congratulation occasions the last line of the poem: "Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door." This last line, which alludes to a Biblical passage (Hebrews 13:1-2) concerned with the treatment of strangers, probably raises the question with which we might have started: Who is the speaker? Unlike most of the other Songs of Innocence, the speaker is not a child. When we reach the end "The Chimney-Sweeper" and hear the child speaker repeat the conduct homily "if all do their duty they need not fear harm," the effect is a curious combination of poignancy and outrage. When we reach the end of "Holy Thursday" and hear our presumably adult speaker repeat the proverbial warning against turning away an angel from your door, our response is probably not at all touched by poignancy. Instead, this reading of the Holy Thursday production by our self-satisfied speaker probably strikes us the same way a person's boast about how much they give to charity strikes us--self-serving, narcissistic, deflecting. Or as Blake himself put it in "The Human Abstract" in the Songs of Experience, "Pity would be no more, / If we did not make somebody Poor." In "Holy Thursday," note the close conjunction of "poor" (end of line 11) and "pity" (two words later), and finally note the word that comes between them, "cherish." The speaker tells us to "cherish pity." Cherish pity? Cherish means "to hold dear, treat with tenderness and affection," and "to treat with fostering care, foster tenderly, nurse (children, young creatures)." Hmm, let's look around this poem to see what we can cherish. Too bad there aren't any children available to cherish, because if we are going to be cherishing anything it probably ought to be children. Oh well, let's cherish "pity" instead, and pat ourselves on the back for being wise guardians of the poor, and think of those wands carried by the beadles as magical, and take credit for the radiance of the children.

Background on the Industrial Revolution

First a quick review. Some terms:

• Revolution and tradition
• Reason and Feeling
• Imagination and Nature
• Common language and common people: art and the subject(s) of art
• Rights, Freedom, Liberty or Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote (and was quoted by J. S. Mill): "the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole;" that, therefore, the object "towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on which especially those who design to influence their fellow-men must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of power and development;" that for this there are two requisites, "freedom, and a variety of situations;" and that from the union of these arise "individual vigor and manifold diversity," which combine themselves in "originality."
• Economics, rights, justice, tradition (we'll see more of this in Wordsworth
• Urbanization and the loss of community (or the refashioning of new communities (the project of the 19th century in Britain)
• Economics, rights, justice, and an oppressive tradition (as in Blake's Songs)
• Industrialization and the Industrial Revolution

Notes on Industrialization

These notes are from Hobsbawm's The Age of Revolutions, 1789-1848.

1)      What does it mean to say the Industrial Revolution “broke out”?

a)      Some time in the 1780s, and for the first time in human history, productive power of human societies became capable of constant, rapid and up to the present limitless multiplication of people, goods and services—what economists call the “take-off into self-sustained growth” (29)

b)      “To ask when it was complete is senseless, for its essence was that henceforth revolutionary change became the norm.” (29)

2)      Revolution initiated by Britain (29)

a)      The source of Britain’s advantage?

i)        Not scientific and technological superiority

ii)       Not educational or theoretical—an educated person would read Adam Smith, yes, but also French economists as well.

b)      The Right Conditions (31)

i)        Some power vested in people (certainly since 1649)

ii)       Private profit and economic development seen as the primary object of government policy

iii)     Agricultural advances

(1)   increased production and productivity to feed a rapidly increasing non-agricultural workforce

(2)   surpluses for cities and towns

(3)   provide a mechanism (land) for the accumulation of capital

c)      1793-1815 War eliminated all rivals

3)      The Example of British Cotton (33)

a)      Cotton industry created and nourished by colonial trade

i)        Cotton and slavery linked (34)

(1)   money from Indian cotton goods used to buy slaves

(2)   Slaves worked the cotton plantations of the West Indies

(3)   Planters used their money to buy cotton checks (a kind of fabric)

b)      The triumph of the export market over the home (35)

i)        by 1814 Britain exported four yards of cotton cloth for every three used at home

ii)       by 1850 the ratio was thirteen yards to eight

c)      Exploitation of colonial and semi-colonial markets

i)        Britain’s monopoly established by war, other people’s revolutions and her own imperial rule (35)

ii)       The Case of India (35)

(1)   systematically de-industrialized

(2)   former net exporter turned into net importer

(a)    in 1820 imported 11 million yards

(b)   in 1840 imported 145 million yards

d)      Exploitation of labor

i)        In colonies, slavery could be used to expand production (36)

ii)       In British Isles, mechanization introduced because of lack of labor (36)

iii)     Putting out system, domestic labor

4)      Consequences

a)      Social

i)        transition to new economy created misery and discontent (38)

(1)   Luddites (machine-breakers)

(2)   reaction against “fund-holders” (those who bought war bonds and were guaranteed a high rate of return for their investment)

b)      Economic flaws of the new economy (according to capitalists)

i)        Boom and bust cycle—seized on by critics of capitalism

ii)       Falling profits over time

(1)   Causes

(a)    competition

(b)   lowered production costs due to mechanization

(2)   “Remedies”

(a)    wage-cutting

(i)      substitute cheaper workers

(ii)    mechanize

(iii)   wages can go only so low—capitalists blame Corn Laws (tariffs attached to grain to shield them from foreign competition)

iii)     Shortage of profitable investment opportunities

(1)   Iron, coal and steel (43)

(2)   railway (44)

(a)    began as means of transporting coal

(b)   later became a consumer of coal pushing for greater coal-mining

(3)   comfortable and rich classes accumulated income so fast and in such vast quantities that they could not spend or invest it (45)

(a)    No attempt made to redistribute this wealth for social purposes

c)      Redeployment of Economic Resources (47)

i)        labour shifted from agriculture to industry (47)

ii)       agriculture mechanized and rationalized (due to fewer labourers)

iii)     enclosure to put more land under the plow (48)

iv)     rural destitution increases rural flight of workers (49)

v)      the right kind of worker (49)

(1)   factory life—the time clock; mechanized not seasonal

(2)   women and children seen as more tractable and cheaper (50)

(3)   de-skilling

5)      Conclusion

a)      “In this rather haphazard, unplanned and empirical way the first major industrial economy was built. By modern standards it was small and archaic, and its archaism still marks Britain today. By the standards of 1848 it was monumental, though also rather shocking, for its new cities were uglier, its proletariat worse off than elsewhere, and the fog-bound, smoke-laden atmosphere in which pale masses hurried to and fro troubled the foreign visitor . . . And both Britain and the world knew that the Industrial Revolution launched in these islands by and through the traders and entrepreneurs, whose only law was to buy in the cheapest market and sell without restriction in the dearest, was transforming the world. Nothing could stand in its way. The gods and kings of the past were powerless before the businessmen and steam-engines of the present” (51-52).