Victorian Nostalgia- Gabriela Lipson

There is a new consciousness evolving on college campuses, as students are becoming more aware of the ramifications and effects of colonialism—what Britain’s imperialism precipitated. The consequences from her global involvement are still evident today.

I think that the Victorian era could be scrutinized more easily, in today’s day and age, as there is an increased awareness and understanding of patterns of subjugation and the plights of Native peoples under colonialism.

Ganges writes, “Enquiring whether this or any other empire was a “good” or a “bad” thing is historically bogus, because answers to this question vary so much according to when, what, and who you choose to look at, and, critically, according to who you are. Focus, for example, on Britain’s role in the slave trade in the 18th century, and its empire seems an early holocaust. But concentrate instead on how Royal Navy seamen sacrificed their time and lives hunting down other countries’ slavers in the 19th century, and one can feel proud of Pax Britannica. Look at how the British covered India with railroads, and it is easy to view them as modernisers. Look, however, at the abysmal levels of mass illiteracy in the subcontinent they left behind in 1947, and they appear rather differently.” ( Gange, the Victorians, Ch 10)

It’s impossible to imagine what the world would be like without England’s expansion. Surveying British history invites really uniquely personal and moral questions—as Gange points out. For example if we take the quote above, can someone even argue that Britain’s efforts to stop the slave trade morally outweighed their treatment of the Indians as second class citizens? The only way we can examine the Victorian age is by understanding the nuance and contradictions of the era, and our class readings invited us to do that.

I wanted to include this quote from the reading to start this next part of my discussion post:

“Dinah Birch’s insistence that we listen to the Victorians has been echoed in a range of different fields over recent years. Such invocations have praised the Victorians in effusive terms. Writers such as Birch are not suggesting that the Victorians ‘got things right’ but that they were unusually willing to think through difficult problems and to embark on challenging programmes of reform: we should be as willing as the Victorians to confront, rather than ignore, our most fundamental problem….” ( Gange, The Victorians, Ch 10)

This passage really caught my attention. I identify with Gange’s words because throughout the class I have characterized the Victorians as “trailblazers”.

The Victorians were authors who created new genres of writing. They were doctors who discovered anesthesia. They were social reformers who captured the public’s heart and the fathers of modern epidemiology.

The characters from our novels even capture the progressive Victorian spirit. Frankenstein pushes the boundaries of science. The Invisible Man confronts the unknown. The characters from the News from Nowhere craft an entirely different future for themselves.

Why do I see the Victorians this way? Are we as inventive today as the Victorians were? Why might we see the Victorians as more pioneering?

I think the Victorians are romanticized this way because of their “collective imagination.” I see this collective imagination as the rounding up of certain Victorian perspectives, new types of literature, and advancing methods of science.

Do we think that some of this Victorian inventiveness was birthed from the fact that their little island was reaching the farthest edges of the earth? Did this symbolism weigh strongly on the English psyche. Did it permeate through all echelons of society? Gange discusses this in the first few chapters of the novel.

I think Neo-Victorian works like Arabella of Mars and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman strongly capture what I explained as the Victorian “collective imagination”.

I think Gange does an excellent job painting the Victorians as a people seeped in contradictions. For example, he ventures to explain the conservative push back and the religious fundamentalism that were a response to Darwin and new theories of time.

I feel that this Victorian “collective imagination” cannot and could not exist in a post WWI world. I see the Victorians as almost the last vestiges of “pure imagination” in a pre-WW1 world.

During the Victorian age, empire was fueled by trade and prospecting in other countries, but many people could look the other way and see progress, not the exploitation that funded it. Although terrible horrors were happening in the colonies, much of the public remained in the dark—although the Boer war did elicit a very strong push-back.

During WWI, death and horrors previously unknown were experienced on a massive, global scale like never before and much closer to home-than Britain’s imperial exploits.

In Hugo, Méliès film gear is melted down into metal molds for WW1 weapons. I will use this metaphor to function in my explanation.

Melies gear in the film is romanticized through the qualities ascribed to it. His film equipment represents Victorian dreams, and their subsequent sale and destruction represents a “global shift”. Kaitlin touched upon this in her blog post.

I think in our longing for a pre-WWI world, we especially imagine the Victorian era, remembering her Crystal Palace, the way Victorian technology was used for advancement, entertainment, and folly—not death ( although technology like automatic weaponry and factory machinery killed many).

Gange mentions in chapter 10 that the Victorians demonstrated a superior ability in the way they conjured up innovative solutions to many issues. I find this interesting. At the same time Victorians were solving problems, they were paradoxically creating many new ones though their rapid expansionism. Many of the problems resulting from their global efforts under the crown persist till today. Countries in Africa struggle for their economic and political stability, as they were stripped of their resources by the British.

The Victorian age was a unique pocket of time where technology and science were advancing so quickly that people had a special and profound hope for progress, but they were not yet so tired and jaded. I feel like there is a sentiment today that everything has been tried, experimented, and done before. The Victorians appeared to have not carried this idea with them, and that is why I feel that we look to the Victorian age to find our own inspiration to move forward. We want to exist in a world where many things are yet to be proven as impossible.

I feel that the technology from Victorian age is the aspect of the era is most often romanticized today.

Gange writes “The crucial role steampunk gives to technologies based on steam, brass, and clockwork ought therefore to make us think about our own relationships to the technologies of modern life. Over recent decades, several transformations have taken place. Wires that once carried only electricity began to convey information. Technology then began to become invisible: information was carried without wires or any other tangible medium. The subsequent minimization of technology made it inaccessible, integrated, and unknowable. It became impossible to replace the batteries in many electronic items; cars with complex circuitry cannot easily be tinkered with on a Sunday afternoon. Steampunk hankers after an age when the interface between humans and technology was apparently transparent. The Victorian period has come to symbolize a time when technology was accessible, when it wore its functions on its sleeve, and when any piece of tech could be modded or pimped by the amateur inventor, engineer, or electrician. “ ( Gange, the Victorians, Ch 10)

Gange explains how the technology of the Victorian age can be characterized as more “human” than ours. The technology was progressive for its time, but information-still traveling across “wires” not through WiFi and invisible mechanisms, leading us to identify more with it.

Today’s renewed fascination with automata, as in Hugo, reinforces the way Gange believes people feel nostalgia for machines that are “less removed from” us. The automata of the Victorian age had human-Iike qualities in their movement. Now, their aging and rusting pieces, make them seem even more like us.

In conclusion, I believe Victorian “nostalgia” can strongly be tied back to Victorian dreams in a uniquely pre-WW1 world. The conditions of the Victorian age called for new innovations, new technologies, solutions to social inequality, and ways to expand empire. Some Victorians rose to the occasion, writing novels about imagined universes and brave protagonists much like themselves while some Victorians continued to perpetuate old models of thinking. Gange does an incredible job of highlighting different Victorian narratives. I have really enjoyed this class, and our discussions. I look forward to seeing the final projects!

All the best,
Gabriela