Industrialism: Beginning of the Victorian Age

The ironic thing about the writings in this section that lead to the Victorian Age is that their theme is awfully reminiscent to the writings from the French Revolution, which brought in the Romantics. The bulk of these writings reflect either the pros or the cons to what is going on with the new advancements in technology of the time. So for some positive takes on the new use of science, we turn to the account of Fanny Kemble who was the first woman to ride on the steam locomotive, despite all of the opposition that came along with it being built. She loves it, with the new feeling of being able to cut through the air unlike before and to feel like flying as she described it was amazing (491). Also, on that very same page, we start to read about Macaulay who simply described these new advances as the "natural progress of society"(491).

People like Charles Dickens, Friedrich Engles and Henry Mayhew were not so optimistic about the new changes in society. In his account of an industrialized city he calls "Coketown," Dickens gives a very negative description of everything that is going on, going so far as to describe the new factories and machinery as giant prisons. He is upset that there is no longer a need for working with the seasons or with daylight, because of the new technology, people don't need to rely on the sun or warm weather for work. In his last sentence of his passage, he talks about gentlemen "that lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter, and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable," saying that if these are the kind of people that an industrialized society produces, people who are wasteful and ungrateful of what they are given, then it is not a very good society (498).

Mayhew takes a turn similar to that of Blake's depictions of the Chimney Sweepers in his poems with the Watercress Girl. He, like Dickens, is unsure that society can properly function with people who are so detached from one another's lives. In particular, he speaks of this one 8 year old girl who's only purpose is to labor over watercress, who is already familiar with the "bitterest struggles of life" but has yet to ever play in a park or with toys (508). He also tells a similar heart-wrenching story of A Boy Crossing-Sweeper.

Luckily, at least from what I can see, living in America, industrialism has progressed to a stage where child labor is no longer needed, nor tolerated for that matter. But we must ask ourselves whether or not the forewarnings from writers like Dickens, Mayhew, and Engels had any substance value. If you think about, because of technology, we aren't even sitting in a class room having a personal discussion about these readings, we're writing blogs, does that mean that we're not personal with each other. Or for instance, when walking across campus and you see a familiar face you don't recognize, do you just look away or at your phone instead of saying "Hi"? I think that Engels said it best when he said that Industrialism will do nothing more than create an "isolation of the individual- this narrow-minded egotism" (502).