Victorians 6-8

There are so many things to touch upon from this really rich and detailed reading. I decided to focus on a few aspects that I particularly identified with. I am very to discuss this more and to elaborate on any of my points. I look forward to hearing your opinions!

The main idea I arrived at during the reading:

New technology and modes of production is factories led to the mass exploitation of labor, as the struggle to meet quotas of mass production endangered children and infringed upon the rights of women and men, and this inequality permeated each social strata differently, as religion and class tried to explain the varying plights of the Victorians.

I want to specifically discuss child labor specifically.

The children of the rich didn’t have to work in factories, as difficult economic circumstances were what forced impoverished children to work to support their families. Children were given some of the most dangerous jobs of the Victorian age, and their horrific treatment inspired a grand social movement that improved working conditions for all. I thought I would insert an excerpt from Professor Lane’s History of England lecture this week.

“….often tell the story of my visit to an industrial museum in England. I had heard stories of children working in factories, and getting maimed and killed by the machines. The picture in my mind was of a tired child falling into a stationery machine and being killed. But at the museum, our group was led into a room that had a big spinning machine along one wall, with a switch next to it. The room was large and empty; the machine only occupied the one wall. Our group was told to stand perpendicular to the machine, behind a yellow line. I couldn’t see why; the room was empty. Then the guide started the machine and we all held our hands over our ears. The huge rack of spindles started to move across the floor in front of us, gliding on big iron wheels. It pulled out the threads behind it, about 2 feet above the floor. When it reached the opposite wall, the rack slammed back to its original position across the room. The children, the guide said, were supposed to crawl on their bellies under the fibers while the machine moved across the room, sweeping up the dust bunnies with their hands. If they didn’t reach the opposite side by the time the rack slammed back, they’d be crushed. Then I understood.” (Professor Lane).

The Sadler report recounted the horrors of child labor in Victorian England.The publishing of this document inspired the passing of the Factory Act of 1833, but the Sadler report, that tugged on the heart strings of many Christian men, was contested by others. Andrew Ure wrote, when referring to the report, “Consequently, if a child remains at this business twelve hours daily, he has nine hours of inaction. And though he attends two mules, he has still six hours of non-exertion. Spinners sometimes dedicate these intervals to the perusal of books. The scavengers, who, in Mr. Sadler’s report, have been described as being ‘constantly in a state of grief, always in terror, and every moment they have to spare stretched all their length upon the floor in a state of perspiration,’ may be observed in cotton factories idle for four minutes at a time, or moving about in a sportive mood, utterly unconscious of the tragical scenes in which they were dramatized.’’ (Ure, the Philosophy of Manufactures, https://salemcc.instructure.com/courses/451/pages/andrew-ure-the-philosophy-of-manufactures-1835). Ure is implying that the reports of child abuse and inhumane conditions were dramatized, illustrating that in the Victorian age, people could look the other direction and avoid what they didn’t want to see, and their existence within isolated classes and communities reinforced their beliefs.  I chose the issue of child labor to illustrate this.

More generally, churches seemed to try to bridge the gap between the classes, trying to bond the public together over social issues and through strong Evangelism, an appeal to the heart. Gange writes, “These developments showed that the role of the Church of England had changed. It was not now a powerful, authoritarian arm of the state itself, but a public guide on questions of morality and an orchestrator of local and national events. It had invented for itself a strong cultural role within a rich and multifarious free market in religion.”

It’s ironic that the same men who created the economic conditions that might’ve led women to pursue prostitution, as a means to support their family, were the ones condemning prostitutes through the Contagious Disease Act of 1864. What do you think about this?

It is clear that in the Victorian age, as in today, that religion wasn’t always tied to someone’s morality. What I gleaned from the chapters was that while some branches of Christianity were moving towards liberalism and pushing for social reform, conservatism still had a strong presence in communities.

Frankenstein contains many spiritual elements that invite the reader to question their own morality. Justine’s futile words prior to her execution, “God knows… how entirely I am innocent’’, embody a feeling likely deeply entrenched in the Victorian psyche. Some Victorians thought similarly. They knew they were innocent souls and questioned why they suffered such difficult conditions and long hours to earn simply a surviving wage.

At the same time, were any workers “giving into’’ a system of inequality through their blind faith? How much did religion keep people from questioning their station? How could any God let them live this way? Did the the laborers fully understand and blame the factory owners for creating their reality? Justine never came to know it was the monster and Frankenstein who were responsible for her death.

This article suggests that Victor Frankenstein is not a religious Christian, while the Creature, in contrast, seems to be questioning his existence and even searching for spirituality as he entreats the universe to tell him is purpose. I think that Shelley could’ve used these moments to explain how religious pursuits, or lack their of, don’t inherently make someone moral or immoral.

“Although Victor Frankenstein’s own religious views are never clearly articulated, it is evident that he is not a Christian. M. Krempe’s joking remark that Victor “believed in Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as in the gospel” (p. 68) serves only to remind us of the absence of any other suggestion that he believed in the gospel at all. In fact, although he refers to himself and Elizabeth as children sent from heaven and periodically exclaims “Great God!” — and although he ransacks the Christian maledictory tradition to find terms of abuse with which to berate his creature, it becomes clear early on that Victor is not even a theist in any traditional sense…. At the same time, he is shown to have more than his quota of superstition, such as his belief that various good and evil agencies were struggling for control of his destiny (p. 45). This lack of a coherent metaphysics may be blamed in part for his irresponsible creation of a living being with so little forethought given to the meaning or consequences of his act.

By contrast, his creature, from the beginning of his existence, shows a strong metaphysical curiosity. He subjects himself early on to a rigorous catechetical inquisition: “Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred,” he says, “but I was unable to solve them” (p. 128). The answers come to him unexpectedly when he stumbles, by chance, upon a copy of Paradise Lost. He receives the poem literally as a revelation, “a true history” as he calls it (p. 129), not only of the events recorded in Genesis but of the subsequent unfolding of the divine redemptive plan and even of the development of Christian doctrine as presented in Michael’s prophecy to Adam in Book XII. Milton’s epic provides the Monster with an organized, identifiable set of religious beliefs, a quite adequately orthodox creed.3 He becomes not only a theist but what one has to call a Christian, since he accepts as true the central tenets of the Christian faith. And it is worth noting that his acceptance of Milton’s religion is not a case of vulgar superstition or credulous ignorance seduced by the art of a persuasive poet. The Monster had already heard the standard Enlightenment critique of Christianity earlier on in the book, when he eavesdropped as Felix DeLacey read aloud and offered “very minute explanations” of Volney’s Ruins, which runs through, in some detail, the long catalogue of Christian crime and imposture (pp. 178-81). When, therefore, the Monster accepts the religion of Paradise Lost he does so having heard the worst of what was being said against it in his time. He deliberately embraces the Miltonic world-view in preference to the critical rationalism of modern “philosophy,” with which Mary Shelley has thus taken pains to acquaint him.” ( Robert Ryan, Shelley’s Christian Monster, http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/ryan.html)

Is Shelley subtly implying that asking too many questions about of one’s existence, in the form of spiritual exploration, is problematic? If someone is too spiritual will they not practically see who is responsible for their reality and their role in their own life? She certainly illustrates that no man is immune to sin, religious or not.