The Escape Artists in Gothic Literature

A prominent theme throughout British Literature in a good number of the works we’ve read this semester is escapism.  This theme is most openly recognized in Confessions of an Opium Eater, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but is also recognizable in a more indirect works like Lenora and The Lady of Shallot.  Pretty much every piece of literature from 1780 to present has some form of escapism even if not directly stated. 

One form of escapism is the most literal form depicted in The Importance of Being Ernest.  Jack and Algernon both come up with alternate personas as an escape from their realities; Jack goes to visit his brother Ernest in town and Algernon uses Bunbury to go to the country.  Both characters have dissatisfaction within the normality’s within their own lives and as a result come up with, as one blogger described, a “physical escape” responsibilities and obligations to be whoever they want to be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcnbutsPmyM

Another example of an escape from reality is in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  For Carroll, Alice in Wonderland was an escape from reality for the readers of the time.  Because Carroll uses satire, imagery and figurative language to depict the serious issues going on within the government and in society.  In looking at the genre of nonsense literature as a whole, it was a way for authors of the time to “bash” what they didn’t agree with.  In the presentation that I did with my partner, we discovered this topic and what it meant to authors like Carroll to use escapism as means of social commentary.  We found that he uses personification and imaginative language and situations to delve into issues that concerned the people of England at the time. 

Another way to look at the escapism in Alice’s Adventures is the whimsical escape that it provides for the readers based on the nonsensical plot from just a fantastical point of view.  As Alice makes her way through Wonderland and it many worlds, learning its many lessons, the reader is able to venture with her and escape from our own realities.  This goes hand in hand with the perception that Alice is literally escaping from her sister and her own world to follow the white rabbit down the rabbit hole.  However, the deeper she dives into her fantasy reality, the deeper she delves into reality and the new sense of awareness that comes from experience.  This proves that maybe there is something to be learned from an escape from reality.

This concept is also similar in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Jekyll seems to delve deeper into his true desires and personas of himself through the escape of Mr. Hyde.  In a sense Jekyll is using Hyde, like Jack and Algernon in The Importance of Being Ernest, as a way to escape the realities of society and the responsibilities of life.  At the same time, he is also using it as a way to explore his deepest desires.  In a class discussion we talked about how Hyde is a representation of Jekyll’s repressed carnal desires and this form of escapism, for Jekyll is a way of exploring that side of his personality.  Obviously, due to societal expectations and social confines, this hidden desire has escapism written all over it. 

The most direct and brutally honest representation that we’ve read about escapism is in De Quincy’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater.  De Quincy explores what writers went through and why they took opium as a way to explore their creativity.  The drug itself and what it did for the artists can be seen as the ultimate form of escapism.  It was a way for the writers to delve into new worlds for the sake of their writing.  It is also a representation of what a frightening place letting one’s self escape into their wildest imaginations can be.  Opium is personified as a terrible and negative outlet into the darker places of imagination.  This can be seen as a representation of how the concept of escapism isn’t always a positive one.  Through the use of confusing medical terminology and long winded explanations, the reader can truly feel the frustration and terror almost (but not quite) as if they were experiencing it firsthand. 

A much more abstract form of escapism is it Burger’s Lenora in the way that she is disillusioned by her loved for the soldier.  When death comes to visit her, in the disguise of her love, she sees the whole ordeal as a means by which to escape with him off into the sunset.  However, she does not realize that she is so disillusioned by the idea of being consumed with affection that she is blinding and willingly escaping to her death.  Much like that which is explored in De Quincy’s thoughts about the terrors of escapism, Lenora is experiencing those same terrors until she finally disillusions herself to her biter demise.

Another abstract work read this semester is in the Lady of Shallot.  There are many subtle references to escapism hidden under all the feminism and social issues; the first of these being the mirror.  The Lady of Shallot is forever trapped in her tower, never able to even look down at the actual world around her but instead she is forced to only see the world through a mirror image.  The mirror is a representation of a world that she can never be a part of but so desperately wants to be. 

My final example of escape literature is in Cowper’s “The Negro’s Complaint.”  One blogger wrote about a bit of an identity crisis going on with the author and to me escapism and identity crises go hand in hand.  This all goes with an exploration of one’s self and doing so through the use of another persona.  By Cowper writing the piece through a slave’s perspective, he is taking a deeper look in what it would be like from that point of view.  As a writer, one is able to experience many more things that others do not as well as exploring different perspectives.  In this he is able to get his point across to the people and give them a new insight into what the enslaved peoples go through. 

These are among the many examples of escapism in places that are both clearly visible and well hidden.  It is clear that no matter whom you are and what your story is, the ability to get away from reality is a strong driving force.  So, no matter if you are using escape to get away from realities and responsibilities, a new means of self-exploration, or a means of perspective understanding, escapism is everywhere.  Everyone has something that they are running from or looking toward.  This is a theme that was prominent in the past, as well as one that still haunts us today.

Work’s Sited:

• ·        The Importance of Being Ernest.  Film clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcnbutsPmyM
• ·         http://scarboroughvoice.co.uk/2012/10/16/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-at-whitby-pavilion/

The Importance of Reputation

-->

It is vital to have an admirable reputation so that people will respect you. If you have ever heard someone speak ill of someone, then you would most likely not respect them. If you ever hear something bad circling about you from someone, it will most likely hurt your feelings. 

A bad reputation can make it harder to try to find a decent job, make friends and/or get into a good college. While it may seem bizarre, many life-changing opportunities depend on your reputation, so it is important to maintain a good one. The importance of reputation is a theme that I have recognized in many of the novels and poems that we have read through the course of the year.

One of the clear readings that runs with this theme is that of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. In the novella, Dr. Henry Jekyll is convinced that all men possess two personalities. So as a result of this, Jekyll creates a drug to separate these personalities, and he tests it on himself. Thus, we get Mr. Hyde, Jekyll’s ferocious alter ego.

Stevenson explores the battle between good and evil within us. He believes that each person has opposite forces within. We all wear faces. How we act outside our home is completely different than how we are when we're alone behind closed doors. This is because we care about how people view us, and this is where the theme comes into play.

As Rose mentioned in her “Case in Point” post, “Dr. Jekyll is absorbed in separating [the] two halves of himself. He is so concerned with becoming a perfect version of himself that he creates Mr. Hyde as a cover for his imperfections.” Jekyll does not want to be known for his bad qualities as a person, so he makes it his mission to try and make a perfect version of himself by creating Hyde as someone to represent all his bad qualities. 

The depth of this system of worth is apparent in the way that Gabriel John Utterson and his distant cousin and friend Mr. Enfield are scornful of gossip. Utterson is a rather unexciting character. However, he plays an important part in the story. He represents the perfect Victorian gentlemen. He preserves order, refuses to gossip and protects his friends’ reputations as if they were his own. This is evident when he suspects Jekyll of criminal activities. Instead of ruining his friendship, he decides to shake off what he thinks and has learned of his good friend. He would rather give into thinking that his friend is still a good man to his core. We can all relate to this in some form or another. Think about this, someone is always talking about you, whether it is pleasing or not, which is a scary thought. 

A bad reputation can keep you from countless opportunities, while a good one can lead you to them. I often find myself thinking about this too much. Every act or thing I say, I have to carefully think about it before doing or saying something, especially when it comes to good friends. Whenever I hear that a friend of mine has done something bad, I refuse to believe it and I talk to them about it— and whenever it is true, I don’t look at it as a big deal, or I try not to. I feel like this is how it is with most people. We will do whatever we can to protect our friends, and help them.

Mr. Enfield is the same as Utterson. However, his role in the novella is not quite as vast. Like his cousin, Enfield is rather reserved individual that avoids gossip. He even takes long walks with Utterson at times and they do not say a word to one another. I find this to be quite interesting to me because I do not speak that much unless I am really comfortable with the person. This makes me a great listener, but a terrible conversationalist. I am constantly thinking about how people view me. So when it comes to walking with someone, sometimes I feel that it is best not to say anything or nothing at all. I would rather have not said anything than to have said something that should not have been said. I feel that is how these two men feel when they walk for long stretches.

“They saw it but for a glimpse, for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and left the court without a word” (Stevenson 20). In this passage from Chapter 7, Utterson and Mr. Enfield walk by the “mysterious door” and spot Jekyll in one of the windows. Utterson calls out to him and they speak briefly before the joy leaves Jekyll’s face and becomes more terrifying. Utterson and Enfield both walk away and don’t comment on the matter. They would rather refrain from speaking than talk about people— in this case, Jekyll, who is the topic of discussion within the community.

In another reading, “The Circus Animal’s Desertion” by William Butler Yeats, the poem obviously deals with one’s view of theirself. We are introduced to a speaker who is looking over his poetic career, when his motivations for writing were clearer. He believes that he is nothing “but a broken man” now. He longs to write like he used to, when he wrote elaborate poems with fun themes, like “circus animals.”

“Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride.”

-       Yeats, “The Circus Animal’s Desertion”

However, all these fun thoughts and inspirations for writing have escaped him. The speaker thinks back on the work from his youth, when they were “masterful,” and questions their honesty.  As we mentioned in class when we talked about the poem, the speaker so desperately cares about his work and how people view his work that he becomes obsessed in thinking about his previous work, when everything was more lively and interesting.

In class, we also discussed how dark of a time for literature this was when Yeats wrote this poem. As Daydreamer’s mention in their post, “It seemed as if many authors had lost their trust in the beauty of nature and humanity, and that directly affect their writing styles.”

“When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain…”

-       John Keats, “When I Have Fears”

Keats’s poem, “When I Have Fears,” is a very similar piece of work to Yeats’s poem. They are both poems about poets worried about their work. In “When I Have Fears,” the speaker has a great fear of dying before reaching his full creative potential. The speaker does not want to be known for being an average poet. He wants to be known for producing great poems that can be studied, which leads to his constant worry of death. Quentin Tarantino can be placed in the same boat. If anyone is familiar with him as a person, he is obsessed with his filmography and how it needs to be perfect, so that he will always be remembered as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. That is exactly how the speaker is.

The last and final reading is “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde. In this play, the upper class cares about being respectable— so much so that they lie about it. Despite how good of a man Jack may appear to be on the surface, he is a very much so a liar.

Jack thinks that the key to having a good reputation is to be rich and come from a good family. Any deviation from these value rules— being poor or having bad character— may prevent one from continuing down the noble path. So as a result, he invents an alter ego named Ernest, his fictional brother, because his life has been so monotonous. Creating Ernest allows him to go around town while protecting his reputation at his country estate.

“You have no right whatsoever to read what is written inside. It is very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case” (Wilde 59). Unlike Jack’s good friend Algernon, Jack has a sense of morality. To Jack, it is very “ungentlemanly” to pry into another person’s private life. He thinks that it is good know only what people tell you about themselves. They should never go searching, which is not Algernon’s way of thinking, as evidenced by his later desire to look in Cecily’s diary.

Reputation is quite important in our society, which is why it is the theme of many of the texts that we have read over the course of the year. “Reputation is most usefully viewed as a social construction” (Mahon). It helps people make judgments about others. Each of the characters in these readings play a significant role in determining the eventual results of the stories.

Works Cited

Mahon, J. F. and Mitnick, B. M. (2010), Reputation shifting. J. Publ. Aff., 10: 280–299. doi: 10.1002/pa.362

Photo 1: http://mythicalmonkey.blogspot.com/2011/10/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-1932.html

Photo 2:  http://theresawilliams-author.blogspot.com/2008/12/circus-animals-desertion-ii.html

The Motivations Behind Men Becoming Monsters

One of the profoundly evident recurring themes of this course has been that of a moral fall-from-grace, so to speak, that leads to men becoming corrupt monsters – both literally and figuratively. We have read multiple works that begin with morally upstanding and respectable characters who, throughout the course of the story, make compromises to their character for a variety of reasons including greed, lust, and desire for power. Upon looking at the works of William Blake, Joseph Conrad, Thomas De Quincey, and Robert Louis Stevenson, we may explain the motivations behind the common literary trend of men becoming monsters in British literature.

In William Blake's Songs of Innocence/Songs of Experience, he explains that it is through the act of experiencing life while growing older that mankind loses that innate state of child-like innocence that we are born with. It is not because of one specific life-changing tragedy that we shift into adulthood but rather through a culmination of experimenting and failing that we become aware of the negativity of world around us. While this alone does not necessarily pertain to concept of man becoming something more monstrous, a fine connection may be drawn between Blake's idea of the fall from innocence and Thomas De Quincey's motivation to take opium in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater. The way that De Quincey describes the sensation of being on opium is very much a state of child-like wonder. According to him, opium “communicates serenity” and “gives a preternatural brightness” to the world. This sounds like a state of bliss similar to that of a child seeing the world through unadulterated eyes. While on the drug, the hustle and bustle of society is grossly unattractive to De Quincey and he cannot stand to be out in the adult world while taking opium. It reverts him back to a state of innocence and wonder that actually debilitates him from experiencing the world of, well, experience. Because of this, De Quincey becomes a miserable shell of a man unable to connect with the world around him for the sake of pursuing the child-like state of innocence he has lost.

Additionally, De Quincey states that opium greatly invigorates a man's sense of self possession. He establishes that the drug increases his sense of self-control and potential of what he is capable of accomplishing as a man. This is an interesting contrast to Dr. Jekyll's motivation for taking his own “drug of choice” in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll indulges on his medicine because it strips him of all moral conscience and he feels free to do as he pleases while on it. This side of Dr. Jekyll is known as Mr. Hyde – a coldblooded and frightening maniac who terrorizes the public with no sense of consequence for his actions. Dr. Jekyll's desire to escape the formality of his profession and lifestyle is a commentary on the stifling effect of strict social expectations in upper-class British society. Dr. Jekyll rejoices in the freedom that comes from his transformation into Hyde, as illustrated by the following clip from the 1931 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Manners and customs, taught and enforced by both the church and society, were very much in opposition to the more primal and natural urges of man in terms of sexual discretion and aggressive action. Class blogger under the screen name of lago's personality coach stated it well when he or she posted that “Maybe Dr. Jekyll was too nice - causing frustration that had negative actions when control was lost.” While De Quincey wished to become closer to his own personal conscience via opium and was thus overwhelmed by the amount of insight it granted him, Jekyll wishes the opposite and wants only to remove himself from his own head for a while. This theme of escapism leading to corruption and personal decay is evident in both of these works. By surrendering moral conscience, Jekyll becomes the abomination known as Hyde. In contrast, by inching closer and closer to the existential core of his being by taking opium, De Quincey is hollowed out and unable to carry on a normal life in society due to excessive awareness of self. Jekyll discovered a way to relieve himself of the burden of conscience and, in doing so, created a monster that ultimately destroyed him.

Joseph Conrad portrays men becoming monsters by motivations based not in personal awareness or escape but rather as a result of their environment and desire for dominance. In The Outpost of Progress, Conrad introduces two men named Kayerts and Carlier as upstanding and successful European businessmen. They are assigned to an outpost in the African jungles as representatives and agents of an ivory initiative. 

As businessmen from Europe, Kayerts and Carlier have expectations that they will be immediately and unconditionally respected by the native population – to whom the British colonists have traded technology and medicine with over the previous years. As explained by class blogger Alpa Chino, the men were under the impression that this yielded power in their favor. “The white men wielded all of the 'power' for two reasons:” he writes, “the first being the supplies coming from other parts of the empire and the second was the fact that the natives believed them to be powerful.” This delusion of power and nobility serves as a set of blinders to the men and pushes them further down the path of mental and moral decay. As Trudy Martinez puts it in her essay, “An Outcast of Progress”, “Conrad makes it apparent from the first day of their arrival that the men have no immediate object of thought in the simple apprehension of their own reality.” The men are in denial of their lack of authority and consequently isolate themselves in their cabin for an extended period of time. To them, the environment is so unruly that they are reluctant to even attempt to establish dominance among the native population. By isolating themselves, Kayerts and Carlier begin to go mad and make moral compromises in the form of trading slaves for ivory – a deal that proves to be very profitable albeit completely illegal and against their moral codes.

The man in white on the right emphasizes the contrast between the native population
and British colonists such as Kayerts and Carlier.

Once the men taste this slight bit of power, they begin their downward spiral into becoming bitter and despicable. The vehicle by which the two men become monsters is not the possession of power but their unyielding thirst for and self-entitlement of it. In the jungle they are left entirely to their own devices to obtain respect and, when they are too afraid to venture out of their comfort zone afforded them by their previous lives and company, they are driven crazy. Rather than work with the locals and stoop down to their levels, Kayerts and Carlier stubbornly hold on to the idea that they, as white men, are superior. Because of this, the two men fall ill and eventually snap under the pressure they have put themselves under. We see their rationality and ability to reason break down as the two men violently argue over sugar-cubes – a conflict that ends in Kayerts shooting Carlier in cold blood. Because the men were unable to obtain power outside of their comfort zone, they began savagely pursuing it among one another.

The pursuit of unattainable purity, the desire of escaping one's moral conscience, and an insatiable thirst for dominance are all three strong motivations that could drive a stable man to the edge and lose himself. All three of these motifs are heavily backed by centuries of tradition, imperialism, and ideologies present in British society. When it boils down to it, all of these men lost themselves in an attempt to control things that were not entirely meant to be controlled.

Works cited:

Martinez, Trudy A. "An Outcast of Progress by Trudy A. Martinez: An Analysis of Joseph Conrad’s “The Outpost of Progress | Grama's Space Bubble." Gramas Space Bubble. Bedford, 12 Dec. 2006. Web. 07 May 2013.

http://wikis.lib.ncsu.edu/images/5/59/Ivory026.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Ivory_1880s.jpg/287px-Ivory_1880s.jpg

Poetry as Reform: An Appeal to Compassion

I find an immense amount of irony in the use of the term “Romanticism” in labeling an era so rife with human suffering, as evidenced by reflection upon the literature of the time.  Along with fancily frilled garments and increasingly efficient industrial technologies, The Age of Romanticism brought along a cloudy shadow to cast upon Britain’s less-favored demographics.  Women, children, and Africans all endured immoral exploitation under the pummeling fist of the patriarchy, and the nation under reign of Queen Victoria only necessitated further sufferings of sweat to fuel the fire of unrelenting industrial growth.  For the majority of the population, each day was met with constant toil and hardship, appointed them by wealthy white landlords and politicians smoking cigars and ordering ‘round guards atop ornamented towers.

But a handful of talented men and women saw the hole in the heart of the monarch.  A small army of artists put their pens to the page, punching poems and stories from typewriters, enraged by the prospect of purchasing slaves, heartbroken by the starving fates of so many of the nation’s children, discontented by the slow stifling of the hardworking English women hushed and confined to the cramp of the household.  The poets and literary artists of the time used their talents to speak for those powerless populations who were simply in no position to put forth a fight themselves.  These writers made their appeals to change by creating precise and sincere realizations of the fates of those oppressed in an attempt to elicit compassion within the hearts of the oppressors, in an effort to mitigate the growing hive of hurt and suffering.  

Slavery

Britain’s slave population was important to them for fairly obvious reasons: they meant to maintain a labor force of hardy, resilient, iron-willed workers who could help to fulfill their goal of solidifying them as the world’s leading power, a goal summarized by John Ruskin in an address at Oxford in 1870, in which he urged England to “found colonies as fast and as far as she is able, … seizing every piece of fruitful waste ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these her colonists that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and sea.” (Broadview Anthology, p. 508)

But Robert Southey and William Cowper respond to the inhumanity of slavery by speaking for the African slaves, those poor human souls oppressed to the point of voicelessness.

In Southey’s “The Sailor Who Served in the Slave Trade”, the speaker is not the oppressed but the oppressor.  Southey chooses to approach his poem from the slave-trader’s point of view because he is aware that the audience he is writing for is going to more easily and comfortably identify with a character of similar social status.  Southey hopes that the revulsion of his poem’s character at the sinful deeds he has committed will inspire the same revulsion in his readers:

The Captain made me tie her up

And flog while he stood by,

And then he curs'd me if I staid

My hand to hear her cry.

She groan'd, she shriek'd--I could not spare

For the Captain he stood by--

Dear God! that I might rest one night

From that poor woman's cry!

During a class discussion, Professor Porter presented us with this image of a medallion designed in 1787 by a potter named Josiah Wedgwood. Click here to find out more about this image’s importance in the abolitionist movement.

This image and inscription inspired social reform toward the abolition of slavery in much the same way that Southey’s poem did:  it appealed to the human being’s potential for compassion by creating an intensely human connection with the suffering character.

William Cowper’s poem “The Negro’s Complaint” makes a similar appeal, but the story is told instead from the perspective of the slave.   Throughout the poem, the African speaker makes arguments attesting to his humanity:

“Fleecy locks and black complexion

Cannot forfeit nature’s claim;

Skins may differ, but affection

Dwells in white and black the same”

Cowper, by sincerely and completely humanizing the African slave, forces the reader to consider that treating him as any other than a human is an act of extreme violence and sin, thus appealing to the universality of compassion.

Both Robert Southey and William Cowper are aware that the extreme disillusionment of the oppressive upper class is combatable by the harsh slap of reality, made possible by the eloquent precision of poetic language.

Women

Literature’s poignant appeal to compassion in the effort of reform brings us next to the issue of women’s subjugation during the populous rise of industry.  Britain’s women were victims of a prescribed gender role that harkens back much further than the time periods here discussed, but the exploitation that they suffered was perhaps as immense as ever, the victorian web(2) indicating that about one in three women were fated to work as spinners in factories such as the one shown in the included image, while those not engaged in manual labor of a similar kind were confined to a grossly limited mode of domestic life, expected to refrain from any personal indulgences.  Additionally, women were denied voting rights until 1928.

Thomas Hood’s poem “Song of the Shirt” paints a sorrowful portrait of a Victorian woman’s life as a factory laborer.  The speaker’s persistent demands of “Work--work--work … Stitch--stitch--stitch!” repeatedly drive the labor’s monotony into the reader like a knife.  Just as Cowper humanizes his character in “The Negro’s Complaint”, in order to connect the reader to the painful plight of the oppressed, Hood does so with the hard-working weaver woman:

“Oh! but to breathe the breath

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet--

With the sky above my head,

And the grass beneath my feet,

For only one short hour

To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want

And the walk that costs a meal”

Hood conjures the lovely image of a stroll through the natural world that excites the senses and eases the mind, creating a stark contrast between the miserable obligation of constant work and a simple but impossible wish for a woman with a fate such as hers.  Hood, aware that nature is a typical delight for a human being, forces the reader to realize the misery of a life that does not allow even this simple pleasure.  In doing so, he manipulates the more fortunate, hard-hearted audience of his poem into genuine empathy, and thus appeals to human compassion as a means of inciting social reform.

Children

Britain’s lust for industrial growth created an increasing demand for laborers. What better way to vastly expand the workforce than to exploit the labor of impoverished children!(sarcasm) In the year 1821, about half of the workforce was under 20 years old.  Factory owners could pay children much cheaper and control them easily.  (1)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” is a poignantly heart-wrenching reform poem that gets right to the hurt of the matter, employing a plethora of powerful human sympathies.  Browning makes her appeal in the same mode of compassion as the aforementioned poets, but speaks to the audience directly:

“Do you question the young children in the sorrow

Why their tears are falling so?”

In the fifth stanza, the speaker tells the children to go out from the city to play and sing within the meadow.  But their reply?

“Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal shadows,

From your pleasures fair and fine!

For oh, we are weary,

And we cannot run or leap”

Just as the female character in Hood’s poem, these children, driven to nothing but weariness by their ceaseless obligation toward factory work, are unable to enjoy a human pleasure as simple as playing among the grass.

“It is good when it happens, say the children,

That we die before our time.”

Browning’s appeal to human compassion borders unbearable, rendering her message of reform perfectly effective.  It seems that no amount of disillusionment caused by wealth or social status could resist the piercing reality of Britain’s suffering by poverty.

It is within this sole stanza that my argument is precisely punctuated:

“How long, O cruel nation,

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart,--

Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,

And your purple shows your path!

But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper

Than the strong man in his wrath.”

What further to inspire compassion for the reform of oppressive government? How more gruesome an image?  The wealthy class, the monarch, the gold-heapers ... tread the royal path of purple toward the marketplace, sit upon a throne and drive metal heels into the hearts of children, blood splashing upon golden coins.

This, a pleading appeal to human compassion; literature as social reform; the literary artist as the one true political hero.

With the “how” of literary reform made clear, we may attempt to put the troubled mind of Thomas Hardy at ease:   

Yes, we must, as the aged thrush, throw our souls upon the growing gloom.  For always there will be the exploited, the voiceless;  always will there be gold-heapers, stomping on our beloved with metal boots.  Always will we need a poem to free them loose.

Bibliography:

1).  "Child labour." The National Archives. UK government, n.d. Web. 9 May 2013.

     <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/struggle_democracy/childlabour.htm>.

2).  The Annals of Labour: Autobiographies of British Working Class People, 1820-1920. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1974.  http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/burnett2.html