The Victorian Era ( )

Transcription

1 The Victorian Era ( )

2 Further reading: Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South (1855) Wives and Daughters (1866) George Eliot: Middlemarch (1872) Adam Bede (1856) The Mill on the Floss (1860) Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1861) Bleak House (1853) Our Mutual Friend (1865) Pickwick Papers (1836) W. M. Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Charles Darwin Victorian Poetry: An Anonotated Anthology, edited by Francis O Gorman The Norton Anthology of English Literature (6 volumes)

3 Charles Dickens, born : coldest decade in the United Kingdom since records began. 1843: Publication of A Christmas Carol.

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5 The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, 1851

6 View of Liverpool-Manchester railway, 1831

7 Sankey Viaduct, 1831

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9 Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South ( )

10 Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South ( ) From rural South England to industrial North England It was the latter part of July when Margaret returned home. The forest trees were all one dark full, dusky green; the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams; the weather was sultry and brooding still. [ ] [Margaret went] out on the broad commons into the warm scented light, seeing multitudes of wild, free, living creatures, revelling in the sunshine, and the herbs and flowers it called forth. This life at least these walks realized all Margaret s anticipations. She took a pride in her forest. Its people were her people.

11 Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South ( ) From rural South England to industrial North England It was the latter part of July when Margaret returned home. The forest trees were all one dark full, dusky green; the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams; the weather was sultry and brooding still. [ ] [Margaret went] out on the broad commons into the warm scented light, seeing multitudes of wild, free, living creatures, revelling in the sunshine, and the herbs and flowers it called forth. This life at least these walks realized all Margaret s anticipations. She took a pride in her forest. Its people were her people. Margaret moved into the twilight of an early November evening. [ ] The leaves were more gorgeous that ever: the first touch of frost would lay them all low on the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.

12 Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South ( ) From rural South England to industrial North England Railroad time inexorably wrenched them away from lovely, beloved Helstone, the next morning.

13 Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South ( ) From rural South England to industrial North England Railroad time inexorably wrenched them away from lovely, beloved Helstone, the next morning. [on the train:] For several miles before they reached Milton, they saw a deep leadcoloured cloud hanging over the horizon in the direction in which it lay. [ ] Nearer to the town, the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke.

14 Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South ( ) From rural South England to industrial North England Railroad time inexorably wrenched them away from lovely, beloved Helstone, the next morning. [on the train:] For several miles before they reached Milton, they saw a deep leadcoloured cloud hanging over the horizon in the direction in which it lay. [ ] Nearer to the town, the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke. At Milton the chimneys smoked, the ceaseless roar and mighty beat, and dizzying whirl of machinery, struggled and strove perpetually. Senseless and purposeless were wood and iron and steam in their endless labours; but the persistence of their monotonous work was rivalled in tireless endurance by the strong crowds, who, with sense and with purpose, were busy and restless in seeking after What?

15 Pollution London Fog = combination of weather and coal smoke.

16 Pollution London Fog = combination of weather and coal smoke. Charles Dickens, Bleak House ( ) Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. [ ] Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. [ ] Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

17 London, 1827

18 River pollution, 1859

19 River pollution Punch, July 10, 1858.

20 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend ( ) Rivermen picking up valuables from the river (including dead bodies). Marcus Stone. Engraving: The Bird of Prey, illustration to Our Mutual Friend

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22 Recycling in Charles Dickens s Our Mutual Friend ( ) E. H. Dixon. Watercolour: King s Cross, London: The Great Dust Heap (1837) (mostly made of ash and cinders, used for fertilizers and brick manufacture)