Nineteenth Century Thought (2 page)

The
nineteenth
century
English
society
struggled
to
resolve
issues
s
uch
as
poverty,
inequality,
oppression
and
injustice
in
a
manner
unheard
of
in
the
previous
centuries.
We
have
evidence
of
this
in
the
works
of
Dickens, George
Eliot
and
Hardy
all
of
whom
,
to
use
a
mild ph
rase,
presented
a
self-reflexive,
guilt-ridden
and
divided
c
o
nscience
.
This
e
x
i
s
ts
in
them
at
the
level
of
depiction and
awareness.
However,
the
nineteenth century
English writing did not
go
much
beyond
this.
Most
of
the
time,
authors
felt
unsure about
taking
a
clear
position
on
contemporary
issues.
One
cannot, therefore,
call
these
writers
happy
contented
souls
driven
by
a
clear
vision.
An
epoch
of
massive
happenings,
the
century
also
in
its broader
working
faced
quite
a
few
theoretical-ideological
challenges. Ignoring
or
bypassing
these
would
have been dangerous in
the long
run,
throwing
the
society
backwards as
the
rest
of
the
western world moved ahead.

The
most
significant
of
the
challenges,
to
my
mind,
was
to
cope
with
the
questioning
of
transcendental
power,
call
it
God
if
you
like, hitherto
perceived
to
be
dominating
human
existence.
It
is
not
simply
that
the
advent
of
science
put
paid
to
the
concept
of
a supreme
power through
a
questioning
of
its
basic
premises.
Instead,
the
bright inventive
minds of
the
day
found
the
presence
of
faith
in
ordinary
life
too
arbitrary
and
repressive
to
be
overlooked.
 
The
nineteenth century
came
to
observe
that
faith
seldom
helped
people to
see things
in
their
connection
with
life.
It
merely
sought
to
contain people's
aspirations
within
a
world
of
peace
and comfort that did not
exist
in
fact.
God
seemed
to
help
only
those
who
held
power and
were
able
to
help
themselves.
Was
something
seriously
lacking in
the
human
capacity
to
think?
Or
is
it
that
the
whole
edifice
of spirituality
stood
on
an
unsustainable
ground? The nineteenth century
realized that
the
world
was
not
well-ordered
and
regulated.
It
also
realized
that
it was
man-made
and,
therefore,
subject
to laws.

Another
challenge
of
more
or
less
the
same magnitude
was
to
meet the
demands
that
social
life
organized
under
a
structure
made
on
the citizens.
Understandably,
as
suggested
in
the
term
'citizen,'
the
concern
behind
these
demands
was
for
the
stability
and sustenance
of
the upper
stratum-
it
is
they
whose
interests
mattered.
The
system
needed to
mobilize
citizens
for
'managing'
its
affairs.
But
the
demands
of life away
from
this
stratum
were
heavy
and
indeed
daunting,
and
pointed towards
areas
outside
the
controlling
structure
in
the
domain
of
true collectivity.
On
its
side,
the
upper
stratum
sought
to
put
the
central
issues
of life such
as
basic
economic
needs,
social
justice
and
equality
on the
back-burner. The said challenge from the system came in the guise of questions
such as: How should the individual define ideas of culture, tolerance,
adjustment or good taste? A number of thinkers came forward to argue that in
the midst of conflicts, the point was to establish harmony in society and if
that was difficult to achieve, to take attention away from tough questions.

What we see in the mid-nineteenth
century is that there is a gradual movement from radicalism to an acceptance of
what existed. We have called it a challenge. We notice that behind this
development lay the fact of relative prosperity in England in the wake of
changed levels of production. The attitude we have defined above got expressed
in literature in the form of what is known as Victorianism.

Nonetheless, one thing is
certain. Being carriers of social discontent in divided societies, writers
generally come in clash with entrenched interests. Their job is twofold: one,
they have a strong motivation to 'express': two, they reflect an attitude, at
once cogent and decipherable, in the course of their writing. We as students of
literature can usefully identify such an attitude through a close examination
of the literary text. Yet, the definitive clue to the writer's attitude-is
embedded in the cultural-ideological environment of the text and the author.
Obviously, the 'age' or period is the vital area in which writers, thinkers and
social visionaries come to interact in a significant manner, helping one
another to gain in individual perception. This argument is the basis of the
present selection of thinkers from the nineteenth century Europe.

In the middle of the nineteenth
century, we notice a gradual movement from radicalism to an acceptance of what
existed. This was a new development. Something had changed at the level of
production and use of resources with England forging ahead economically and
entering an era of relative prosperity. This forced a new understanding of life
in literature at the centre of which stood such new ideas as harmony and
balance. Add to these the issues linked with selfhood and identity. Troubled sensitivities
of the nineteenth century were made to look for support from any corner as the
challenges got gradually defined in terms of the much needed quietude and
peace. Face to face with radical thought, (Carlyle,

Ruskin,
Wilde)
the
governing
forces
of
the
day
discreetly
encouraged aesthetic
pleasure,
spirituality,
wisdom
and
understanding.
 
See how
selfhood
and
identity
would
eventually
point
towards
the general
abstract
principle
of
universal
human
morality
and
take
attention
away
from
social
injustice.
Still,
beneath
the
calm
waters of
Victorian
stability
ran
strong
currents
of
distrust
generated
by social
inequality.

Threatening
and
destabilizing
factors
other
than
radicalism
were linked
with
the
emerging
middle
class
a
large
segment
of
which comprised
women.
It
is
significant
that
the
mid-nineteenth
century English
writing
recognized
women
as
a
distinct
social
category regarding
whom
complaints
and
queries
went
far
beyond
reformist
or
moralist
paradigms.
According
to
it,
uplifting
women
ideologically alone
or
treating
them
with
sympathy
was not
sufficient.
Instead,
the educated
masses
of
whom
writes
were
an
integral
part
felt
inclined
to see
the
way
in
which
the
contemporary
social
world
defined
women, the
way
the latter were
made
to
carry
the
burden
of
family-centered life.
Since
women
themselves
were
involved
in
th
i
s
important
venture
of
recognizing
gender
inequality,
the
concern
for
gender
justice
and
equality
became
greatly
valuable.
This
should
help
us grasp
the
running
thread
in
the
essays
in
this
volume
with
respect
to
the
issues
they
raise.

We
have
to
keep
in
mind
the
role
novelists
and
poets
of
the
nineteenth
century
played
in
society.
It
is
also
necessary
that
we
locate
in
the
writing
of
the
period
such
important
trends
as critiquing
faith,
resisting
injustice
and
making
women
equal
partners
in
life.
The
writers
of
the
nineteenth
century
brought
our directly
as
well
through
characters
in
their
fictional
works
the
way human
beings
interpreted
their
natural
and
social
surroundings, the
way
the
people
of
this
era
made
sense
of
the
world
in
which they
lived.
They
learned
from
their
actual
life-conditions.
But
this was
only
for
the
authors
of
poems,
novels
and
plays
whose
endeavour was
imaginative
and,
therefore,
'unreal.'
What
about
the intelligentsia,
the
group of
analysts
and
commentators
whose
words
mattered in
the
domain
of
politics?
The
picture
is
mixed,
but
it
offers
sufficient
pointers
to
the
potentiality
of
critique
and
rejection among
the
common
people.
Have
we
realized
well
enough
that precisely
the
same
concerns
as
reflected
in
the
poetic
and
fictional works
were
voiced
by
the
important
thinkers
of
the
time?

Most literary
studies
in
English
till
a
short
while
ago
missed
out
on
the
role
of
the
wider
intelligentsia
in
the
nineteenth
century society.
It
is
only
now
that
we
take
cognizance
of
the
intellectual efforts
of
this
important
section
in
the
nineteenth
century
towards underlining
humanist
concerns.
We
should
recognise
that
utilitarians
thinkers,
social
philosophers
and
reformers
are
as
much part
of
the
cultural
process
in
the
nineteenth
century
as
writers. While
some
of
them
unveiled
existing
prejudices
against
women, others
studied
the
equally
important
phenomena
of
injustice
in economic
distribution.
The
two
could
not
be
separated.
Also,
the educated
middle
classes
grappled
with
questions
of
human
tolerance and
etiquette
which
they
found
useful
in
developing
culture.

This
proves
the
point
I
have
initially made
that
literary
writing
and
ideological-philosophical
responses (with,
of
course,
variations in
quality
and
depth
of
interaction)
work
in
tandem
.
No
other
century could
be
a
better
e
x
ample
of
such
a
unified
phenomenon
than
the nineteenth
century.
It
is
indeed
fascinating
to
watch
the
actual
correspondence
between
these
two
areas
of
life,
imaginative
representation
and
intellectual-theoretical
analysi
s
,
and
therein
note the
manner
in
which
both
get
shaped
in
a
common
environment. Our
job
is
to
study
the
two
in
their
relationship
and
identify
how,
for
instance,
John
Stuart
Mill
may
have
been
inspired
to
formulate
his thesis
on
the
woman
question
in
the
'age'
of
Jane
Austen,
Charlotte Bronte
and
George
Eliot.
However,
the
English
society
had
gradually reached
the
conclus
i
on
that
the
existing
order
of
things,
with
its values
and
thought-systems,
was
to
give
way
to
the
forces
of
change and learn
to
live
with
radically
different
attitudes.
 
Gone
were the days
of
old
subservience
and
homage
to
traditional mores.

For us
to
grasp
the
nature
of
division of
work
(with
writers reflecting on
society
in
the
field
of
literature
and
thinkers busy commenting
on
economic
or
political
issues)
in
the
nineteenth
century
England
should
not be
a
tall
order.
Areas
of
work
had become
well-defined
around
the
middle
of
the
nineteenth
century because
of
which
a
kind
of
aesthetic
principle
on
the
one
side
and interpretive approach
on
the
other
had
begun
to
assume
clearly
distinctinguishable
shapes.
Live
as
we
do
in
the
modern
world,
we
realise
that
literature
and social
thought
are
part
of
an ever-evolving shared environment.
Interaction
of
people
from
different
walks
of
life
in
a
manner
that
all
address
common
problems
contributes
to reform
or
change
in
society
and
makes
individuals'
participation truly
meaningful.
Thus,
studying
a
trend·
together
with
the happenings
of
its
period
and
looking
for
a
common
thread
between the
two
is
now
considered
ordinary
intellectual
activity
in
which we
as
students
of
literature
engage
to
mould
our
understanding. In
this
sense,
Mill,
the
Bronte
sisters
and
George
Eliot
are inseparable,
respond
as
they
do
to
a
general
social
ethos.
We
see
them
as
active
agents
of
change
in
a
world
that
struggled
hard
to move
forward.

The
nineteenth century
is
particularly
known
for
its
new
radical ideas
that
decisively
shook
the
entrenched
attitudes,
if
not
altogether
replaced
them.
Think,
for
instance,
of
the
desired
social bond
of
fellow-feeling
and
togetherness
between
people
on
the basis
of
the
recognition
that
they
are
essentially
human.
The
implication
is
that different
'stations'
or 'walks'
oflife
had no
sanctity of
their
own
and
were,
in
fact,
man-made.
According
to
the
new
realisation
it
did
not matter
where
an
individual
was
born.
The important
thing
was
that
s/he
performed
one's
social
role
like
any other
in
the
country.
Significance
came
not
from
one's
birth
but from
the
real
acts
of
life.
An
actually
lived
life,
therefore,
was
subject
to
objective
laws
of scrutiny
which
alone
would
determine
whether a
person
had
genuine
merit
and
worth.
This
can
be
defined
as
the equality-centered
democratic
doctrine.
A
good
foundation
of
this
had
been
laid
in
England
in
the
seventeenth
century
Cromwellian
Revolution.
But
only
the
foundation,
since
much
depended on how
the
basic
ideals
of
the
English
Revolution
were
to
be
realized
in life. The eighteenth century followed
the impact of the
Cromwellian
Revolution with its own
specific social agenda in mind and made use of this event with its own economic
expansion and parliamentary principles of governance. This phenomenon was
undoubtedly progressive but
esentially
bourgeois in
nature.

The first two decades of the
nineteenth century in England were marked by a rising consciousness among
people of the injustice meted out to the poor within the large society. This
was the era of a perspective that tended to see beyond the democratic doctrine.
The difficulty with ordinary democracy was that it revolved around the
individual to whose satisfaction it was committed. But in reality, a society
could not be considered a mere group of individuals whose aim would be to seek
personal fulfilment. A better and qualitatively different way of looking at the
phenomenon was that societies were divided into classes based on the kind of
labour
they performed under an accepted pattern of
relations. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the word 'socialism'
struck the general imagination and made people dream of a classless society
that was free from exploitation.

The class-based doctrine had a
distinct history in Europe that now moved more or less inexorably towards a new
system of life. Inexorably yes, but not along a straight line or
inevitably.
 
Instead of being a fate-like
determinant, society came to be recognized as a growing organism intertwined
with actions of individuals and groups. Capturing such a complex happening on a
broad scale was indeed difficult. Challenges of this nature may have compelled
the minds of the day to evolve a new logic prevailing at the time and method of
enquiry. It is not surprising thus to see the thinkers of the period to break
free from the mechanistic logic and
recognise
the
working of dialectics in history. The dialectic method of enquiry
revolutionalised
thought and enabled capable minds to study
socio historical trends in a new way.

A space had been created by the
powerful thinkers and writers of the eighteenth century for those particularly
who had lived on the margins of society all along. Let us go over the unfolding
of tendencies in social life to grasp the true nature of this development. I
term it
the era of dawn of bourgeois materialism which had a
firm basis in the expanding economic activity with the attendant conflicts as
well as ups and downs.