Hey everyone, My name is Daniela Velez and this is my senior year. I am an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. I was on track to study abroad at Middlesex this semester so taking this class is sort of bittersweet, but I don’t really regret it because I would’ve been crying over my loan debt after graduation. I’ve always been a little obsessed with London because I love the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray. Most of what I know about Victorian London comes from fiction I’ve read and classes I’ve taken surrounding the economic aspects of industrialization and the social/cultural consequences of it.
Robinson accurately described the attitude taken towards these consequences. He states, “The grinding poverty of Dickensian London was real and vicious, yet in many ways the city was improving.” In general it was improving – much like technology in the twenty first century has improved our lives – yet it was only benefiting the upper classes and wealth seems to always be built on the backs of the lower and middle class. I have a feeling repetition throughout history will be a prevalent theme this semester. I was surprised to learn about the development of government and public works, like the establishing of parks, museums, and slum clearance. However, this occurred in the 1850s but, “south London was smelly and – with its prisons, asylums and dodgy taverns – it had a bit of a reputation,” since the 1700s.
Works Cited
Robinson, Bruce. “London: ‘A Modern Babylon’” BBC News. BBC, 11 Feb. 2011. Web. 25 Aug. 2015.
I feel like half of what I know about history I’ve actually learned from fiction. And Victorian England has been a very popular setting for historical fiction over the past couple of decades.
I am definitely not arguing against the fact that modernity and technological advances are usually built upon the back of the lower and middle classes, but from what I gathered from Robinson’s essay, it seems as though during the Victorian era, technological advances benefited the middle and lower classes to a certain extent. This post-Industrial Revolution development further granted working opportunities, i.e. factory jobs, for those who could not previously find work, as well as the opportunity for especially those of the middle class to expand beyond the slums of London and to the easily-accessible suburbs. I surely do not feel comfortable defending capitalism, but in my opinion, Robinson’s essay shows Victorian London in a light I had never seen.
I agree Daniela, the “grinding poverty of Dickensian London was real and vicious, yet in many ways the city was improving.” At that time, London was the international epicenter of commerce and endured because it was able to transformation itself to meet the economic, social, political and religious challenges of the time.
-Katie Vyas
Welcome to the class! I’m sorry you weren’t able to study abroad, but glad that it means that you’re in our class. I’m happy to talk about Conan Doyle (and all Holmes adaptations) with you if you want to talk with another fan, and we’re studying some Holmes stories and Dorian Gray this semester!
You’re entirely right that London was built by oppressing others, and yet it’s also true that the Victorian period was marked by attempts to reform the laws and systems to make things less oppressive (with varying success). It’s a strange paradox.