Monday, June 6, 2011

Industrialism, Perspectives on the Past and Present

The from Benjamin Disraeli’s “Sybil” describes a conversation between two strangers.  The younger one states that the new queen reigns over two nations, the lower and upper classes.  The two classes are,“are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.” (page 499).  Yet, they are from different worlds.  The poor and the rich live in very different neighborhoods and circumstances.  They do not intermarry, or even associate really, with members of the other class.  It is no surprise that prejudice arises between the two classes and that between them, “there is no intercourse, and no sympathy,” (page 499).
  
Charles Dickens presents the issue on a smaller scale in his description of Coketown in the excerpt from, “Hard Times”.  In Coketown, there are eighteen different churches, all for the upper class.  “It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning and note how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets,” (page 498).  Thus, there is a cultural divide between the upper and lower class.  One is pious, one is not.  It is easy to judge one as moral and religious, and the other as base and sinful.  Yet, the testimonies of the Eggley sisters give another reason.  Ann stated that, “I thought it too bad to be confined on both Sundays and week-days.  I walk about and get fresh air on Sundays,” (page 466).  Elizabeth said, “I have often been obliged to stop in bed all Sunday to rest myself,” (page 466).  Should these two girls, their peers, their parents, or their neighbors, be begrudged one day of real rest?  
In this kind of society, religion becomes reduced to a luxury, just another symbol of status.  Piety becomes an excuse to feel, “holier than thou”.  Dickens describes how there was a move to force the lower class to attend church.  How the Teetotal Society, “complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement human or Divine (except a medal), would induce their custom of getting drunk,” (page 498).  Similarly, the lower class came to embody other vices like opium, singing, and dancing.  Because, of course, the upper class was far too pure and holy to ever touch alcohol or opium, and they would never ever stoop to (shudder) singing and dancing.  The prejudice of the upper class grew to such an extent, that one gentleman could blame his crimes on engaging in such activities.  
These issues and perspectives are hardly unique to this time period.  Ann and Elizabeth Eggley could very well be William Blake’s chimney sweepers.  Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that the upper classes, “would rather justify oppression that correct abuses,” (page 62).  The sharp class division is not something that has gone away over time.  The state of a neighborhood here in Macon, for instance, changes from one street to the next.  Take Mercer, a lovely patch of brick buildings and trees.  Then cross the bridge over the highway.  And I’m sure I’m not the only one to have been approached by a starving homeless man or woman after buying a week’s supply of groceries.  And there are still prejudices.  They’re probably just on drugs, or alcoholics.  It’s their own fault they couldn’t hold down a job.  They got themselves into this mess.  And those people living in the run down houses, yeah, they should really start taking care of their property somewhere between those two minimum-wage jobs.  So when does it end?  Is poverty and a class system inevitable?  Do they all deserve help?  All questions that our generation has to answer if we don’t want our children to have to.    

1 comment:

  1. Heather,

    Excellent engagement not just with the texts you quote and explore but also with their ideas, and with the relevance of those ideas and issues to our own time and place. Keep up the great work!

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