Oppression of Minorities Throughout Literary Periods

            One social issue that has remained prevalent, though at varying degrees, throughout the literary periods we have studied in class is the oppression of minorities. The treatment of this issue by writers, however, has changed dramatically over the decades.

            In the Victorian Period, the racist ideas of whites living in Great Britain were spoken and written about without shame. Whites felt that it was their duty to civilize those underneath themselves; they felt superior to other ethnicities. This notion can be seen in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education”, where he states that, “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” Macaulay perpetuates racism and justifies it by saying that it is necessary to teach Indians western values because Great Britain is India’s ruler.

In contrast, the Early Twentieth Century contains the novel A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. This novel does not advocate racism. It takes place in India and includes characters of color, who are not made to be bad characters; however, the protagonist is still white, and many of the other main characters are as well. Also, the novel, although providing a new perspective for its predominantly white readers, was written by a white male who had only traveled to India twice. This demonstrates just the extent to which people of color were still marginalized during this time period.

One of the most significant differences between the Late 21^st Century and earlier periods is that we see more and more works written by authors of color. These authors finally have the chance to speak out about their situation in life and the difficulties they may have encountered. In 1991, Jamaica-born poet Linton Kwesi Johnson published “Inglan Is a Bitch.” This dub poem depicts the troubles that Johnson encounters while living in London. In lines 35 to 36, he writes, “dem seh dat black man is very lazy / but if y’u si how mi work y’u woulda seh mi crazy.” Johnson is frustrated by the fact that he is not appreciated for the hard work he does. Clearly, although people of color are not restricted by as many racist laws as before, they still face maltreatment based on the color of their skin. Another poem, titled “In My Country” and also published in 1991, discusses the way that non-whites are subject to scrutiny and questioning solely based on how they look. The author of this poem is Jackie Kay, a half-Nigerian, half-white woman. She writes that, “a woman passed round me / in a slow watchful circle / as if I were a superstition; / or the worst dregs of her imagination… / ‘Where do you come from?’ / ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Here. These parts.’” The speaker of the poem is in her own country but is unfairly treated as a foreigner. People of color at this time were still viewed differently than whites, and still face injustice at the hands of those in power. Even though they are not harmed in the physical and overt way that they were in earlier periods, they are subject to a certain degree of oppression, mostly in the way that they are perceived by others.

Cataclysmic Conditions: Prompt 1

British literary movements are rooted in societal views, events, and conditions. As these conditions evolve, from industrialization to colonization, and war for example, different literary styles emerge. This is clearly depicted over the last two centuries of literature ranging form the Romantic era of the late 1700s to the Postmodern movement of the late 1900s and early 2000s. This is easily deductive when comparing the historical events that altered the conditions of the authors and poets that led to the varying literary genres and eras.

             The historical events that the authors lived through had an extreme impression on the meanings and motivations of the poetry and stories written. This is clearly depicted in the Romantic era poetry. Poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge kicked off the movement with the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Viewing poetry as “spontaneous overflow[s] of powerful emotions”, the poetry written by the first generation romantics captured supernatural elements, common language, daily occurrences, as well as, coining the literary term suspense of disbelief (149). Romanticism is rooted in nature and the natural world, but also contains liberal political undercurrents such as civil liberties including freedom. However, the French Revolution stifled the political context of first generation Romantics. The “fervor for freedom” that the French Revolution idolized slowly transformed into a stark reality of war atrocities and massacres that caused the first generation poets to transform political ideologies.

            Furthermore, the Victorian Era of literature that began in approximately around 1832 still contained traces of the aftermath of the Industrial and French Revolution. Major movements such as realism, anti-realism, and gothic literature, as well as,  the extreme poverty of Britain and imperialism altered the literary structure and style of the 1800s. Realism is “a mode of amplifying experience and extending our fellow men beyond the bounds of personal lot” (530). Structurally, this means extremely detailed descriptions of geographical landscapes as well as an emphasis on the complexity of individuals’ motivations. This developed out of conditions including inadequate housing, disease, and low wages. Authors utilized literature as a method to discuss the extreme poverty, which led to the utilitarian movement. Charles Dickens “A Walk in the Workhouse” demonstrates the literary awareness of the poverty ridden Britain. Poetry such as Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade was quintessential to the Victorian movement and actually led to military reform. Continually, the era was transformed by the growing colonization that led to the British Empire.

            The British imperialism spans the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of Modernism movement. Charles Dickens “The Noble Savage” illuminates the imperialistic mindset of Britain by exposing the superiority complex and deeply rooted nationalism that led to the exploitation of the other nations by Britain. Dickens believed, as did much of Britain, that they "could not get rid of it [indigenous people] too soon” (1023). Frankly, that the indigenous people should be eradicated. This attitude is mimicked in Mayhew’s “Hindu Beggars” as well, stating that the impoverished Hindu were deservedly poor.

            By the early 20^th century, EM Forster published A Passage to India. This novel highlighted the horrific attitudes of the Anglo-Indians of the British Empire that resided in indigenous India. While his writing is seemingly traditional for the Modernist era, he was a member of the Modernist Bloomsbury Group led by Modernist novelist Virginia Woolf. The British Empire eventually fell due to World War I. 

             This catastrophic and cataclysmic event altered humanity internationally. As the Great War emerged, poets such as McCrae, Hardy, Gurney, and Owen began constructing poetry revolving around the war. John McCrae’s “In Flanders’s Field” idolized the war and thus is often seen as the most recited poem from World War I. The poetry reinforced the idea to volunteer for service to keep the spirit and fight of those who died in the trenches alive. However, the other poets wrote of the biologically chemical warfare and the atrocities witnessed. Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” depicts the realities of war and urges the end of the ultimate “lie”, that dying for your country is courageous.

            These historical events altered the literary movements, structures, and beliefs that encompass the latter of the British literature.

Poetic Form - Coleridge to Eliot

This semester, we looked at two particularly long poems - Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Eliot's The Waste Land. Just by looking at the printed text of each, it's fairly obvious how different they are, but a closer examination can reveal how British approaches to longer narrative poetry changed in the almost 100 years separating the texts.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the more traditional of the two in form; it sticks more or less to the ballad form, with regular rhyme that is only broken with purpose (as in rhyming 'thus' with 'albatross' when the Mariner shoots the albatross) and stanza lengths that begin to stray more frequently from 4 lines as the supernatural elements of the poem drift more into focus. It also has much more solid exposition, establishing the narrative frame of the Mariner telling his story to the wedding guest clearly at the beginning and referring back to him to re-establish the frame as the wedding guest's mood changes ("I fear thee, ancient Mariner!"). The narration itself is loftier than the diction of the 'common man' espoused by the same book in which this poem appeared, Lyrical Ballads, but remains stylistically grounded by its straightforward, chronological narrative that only breaks to maintain the framing device.

The Waste Land, on the other hand, is a much less straightforward poem. It contains fragments of narrative interspersed with meditations and image-based sections that come together to form more of a collage than a plot (I imagine this poem would translate well into a film - maybe even a music video). There is no regularity at all in this poem; though some images and ideas are repeatedly referenced, they appear in different capacities each time they appear (see my previous post on water for one example). There is no exposition to speak of; in section 2 of the poem, several scenes play out without introducing characters or settings, and when scenes are sketched out, as at the beginning of section 3, the point seems to be a meditation on the images presented rather than to set up any action there. The narration is hard to pinpoint, being comprised of both casual ("He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you") and more typically 'poetic' English ("And I Teiresias have foresuffered all/Enacted on this same divan or bed"), multiple languages in addition, and allusions to religion, literature, and culture woven throughout.

An interesting commonality between the texts is that both were at some point published with notes from their respective authors. Coleridge included a gloss to provide interpretations of the text, potentially in response to criticism of Rime's lofty style. Eliot's footnotes to The Waste Land translate some of the lines in languages other than English, and refer to other works in cases where Eliot lifted lines ("To Carthage then I came" being from Augustine of Hippo). Only in The Waste Land are the notes truly necessary to make sense of some parts of the text, as The Waste Land is so fragmented that no one reader could reasonably hope to read all the languages and get all the allusions on their first reading.

Going from Rime to The Waste Land, we see some adoption of more common diction, but overall The Waste Land is more difficult to make sense of. Its resistance to poetic and narrative convention is purposeful in helping communicate its themes of fragmentation and a loss of beauty and truth in the post-WWI world. Gone is the linear structure, regular rhyme and stanza length, and exposition of Rime; indeed, gone is its comprehensibility. Even the idea that a work of literature could 'teach' us something, as the Mariner teaches the wedding guest to love all of God's creations, is gone, lost to a meditation on death, pollution, and famine, brought on by the earth-shattering reality of the 'Great War.'

Man's Relationship Status Change from Romantic to Early 20th Century

Over a span of roughly 120 years that the Romantic era to the early 20^th century covered, I noticed that a common focus of the literary movements of Romanticism and that of the Early Twentieth Century gradually shifted from man’s relationships with nature to that man’s relationships in society. Romantic authors typically wrote pieces that centered around the common man’s relationship to nature, particularly of the individual’s experience. Early Twentieth Century authors on the other hand, wrote works that generally spoke to man’s relationships in society and nature was left by the wayside as merely description of setting if mentioned at all. Obviously, not all literary works followed this mold as per the period’s rules, but on the whole the authors of each respected period conformed to these different focuses of relationships with nature and society.

Romanticism is widely known for being primarily about nature and the individual’s emotions or sensibility that is experienced while in nature. In our class we read countless pieces that support the nature relationship concentration. William Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” “Tintern Abbey,” and “Nutting” all reference man’s relationship to nature as important elements. In his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” where he described what poetry should involve, Wordsworth stated that men who lead rural lives “are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature,” (Broadview 148). Wordsworth believed true poetry should involve the common, rural man because these types of lives are closer to nature—to him these rural people have a stronger, better relationship to nature and this should be admired in poetry. His other poems clearly meet the expectations he set in his “Preface” well.

In “Nutting” a scene of a picturesque hazelnut grove is described by the speaker who saw both at the time and looking back on as a peaceful and beautiful place in nature before he ruined it by tearing down branches to get hazelnuts (Broadview 156-157). As readers, we can clearly see the meaningfulness this hazelnut grove has on the speaker of the poem in line 2 “I speak of one from many singled out” and lines 51-52 “I felt a sense of pain when I beheld/ The silent trees and the intruding sky,” (Broadview 156-157). The speaker has remembered this particular scene from his past and felt bad for ruining the bower and hurting the trees. We can infer that this emotional impact shows that this speaker valued his relationship with nature, particularly these specific woods. “Tintern Abbey” shows much of the same relationship the speaker of the poem has with nature. When he needs a break from the urban city he simply remembers the calming, stunning landscape he hasn’t scene in years. Wordsworth went beyond nature being a beautiful escape to this speaker by incorporating the speaker feeling as he has gotten older that nature is his spiritual center in lines 110-112, “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse/ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/ Of all my moral being” (Broadview 146). This particular speaker’s relationship with nature is more of religious one than just being that respite from urban life. Though not quite the same as Wordsworth’s poetry, Romanticist Samuel Coleridge’s poetry also focused on man’s relationship with nature.

Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” both have the focus of an individual man’s connection with nature. The unique work, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” clearly shows that a man whose relationship with nature was not one of respect and appreciation was punished horribly at sea until he appreciated the beauty of sea wildlife. “A spring of love gushed from my heart… And from my neck so free/ The Albatross fell of…” is the moment when the Mariner’s punishment ends as his feelings for nature turn positive (Broadview 288). Since this disrespect turned to respect theme is the whole point of the Mariner’s story, we can see that Coleridge’s piece also valued the man to nature relationship. “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” is much more like Wordsworth’s and other Romanticist poets’ works. In this poem, the speaker is jealous of his friends going on a beautiful hike while he is stuck in a little garden. He obviously appreciates and is jealous of the wild nature scenes his friends will be witnessing, “…They, meanwhile, Friends… On springy heath, along hill-top edge, Wander in gladness” (Broadview 294). And at first he disregards the garden’s beauty by calling it his prison before finding beauty even within the smaller setting. He comes to the sweeping declaration, “That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure” (Broadview 295). The speaker seems to be saying that nature is always there for those that have come to respect it.

The speaker also claims that nature is for the human soul, “…keep the heart/ Awake to Love and Beauty,” which further supports the importance of the relationship humans should have with nature in order to be open to beauty (Broadview 295).  Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge focused mostly on the serene and loving sort of relationship men could have with nature, but even the different genres of writers at the time mentioned this theme. Even the Gothic literature of the time commented on nature and how it affects humankind through the sense of sublimity—feeling small and insignificant yet awed in the face of something magnificent in nature.  

Let’s fast-forward about 120 years and enter the early 20^th century. The focus of man’s relationship of nature has gradually shifted in the course of the Victorian age and came to focus on man’s relationship with that of his society. In this class we also read a lot of war related poetry, but there were many examples of Early Twentieth Century works that distinctly explore individuals figuring out their relationship and place in social society.

Bernard Shaw’s play Mrs. Warren’s Profession, has numerous characters of different societal positions all attempting to figure out how to interact with each other and within the society. Mrs. Warren runs several brothels and has not told her daughter about it, Sir George Crofts is higher up on the social ladder but still a bit crooked, Praed an artist, moneyless and profession-less Frank, his father the Reverend and finally freshly graduated and daughter of a prostitute Vivie are thrown together by Shaw. As readers we can see that the differences among the social standings create humorous but telling situations. For example, the Reverend asks whose garden he is entering before doing so as his position keeps him held accountable (Broadview 1079). The Reverend also makes the point that social standing is important to keep up by telling Frank to think about it before marrying Vivie. He states, “I was speaking of higher things. Social position, for instance,” (Broadview 1079). Mrs. Warren also knows where she likes to be in society. She didn’t want to stay in the poor working class as a girl, but she also does not want to quit working and retire as a rich woman among “good society” like her sister did (Broadview 1105). Even though Vivie’s mother like’s her seedier standing, she wants a better social position for her daughter: “Havnt I told you that I want you to be respectable? Havnt I brought you up to be respectable?” (Broadview 1105).  These are just a few instances where a characters connection to society is discussed in Shaw’s play about the daughter of a prostitute trying to create her own place in society. Vivie’s struggle to figure out societal positions and norms is comparable to Laura’s of Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party.”

Laura from “The Garden Party” fails to understand why her upper class family will not postpone their party out of respect for the family of the lower class whose husband and father had died. Her mother outright tells her that “People like that don’t expect sacrifices from us,” however, Laura still does not comprehend the implications of position. The rest of the short story goes on to describe the difficulty Laura faces in understanding her’s and other’s relationship/place in society. If this upper class girl is having difficulty in her own country, imagine the struggle of navigating class structure in a colonialized India.

E.M. Forster’s Passage to India illustrates a very real depiction of the Anglo-Indians’ and locals’ relationships in society. In this novel, Forster gave the reader insight to Aziz’s (and other natives’) justified distaste of the British superiority in addition to the complex class relationships between the Indian people. However, it is clear by the end that Aziz feels the society of colonial Indian does not create healthy, friendly relations when he tells Fielding, “Down with the English anyhow…We may hate each other, but we hate you most,” (Forster 361). The locals may not like each other, but they can stand united hating the British. The importance of man’s relationship to society is apparent by how Forster made Aziz believe that once the society in place failed and the British no longer colonized Britain would an Englishman and an Indian be able to be friends (Forster 362). Fielding himself is another character that wrestles with his relationship with society. As an Englishman, he is expected to behave as the others with a superiority complex and refusal to mingle with local people and he is most definitely expected to side with the English in the case against Aziz. He knows as soon as he picks the Indian’s side that  “he would be called ‘anti-British,’” (Forster 193). Fielding’s decision greatly impacts his relationship to the surrounding society—the British condemn and ban him from the club while the Indians celebrate him as one of their own.

Through many of our readings we’ve had the opportunity to read and discuss, to me it is apparent that multiple Early Twentieth Century writers preferred to write pieces that prodded readers to contemplate an individual’s relationship and position in society. It is also widely acknowledge that many Romantic writers wrote about the individual’s relationship to nature. There are clearly many pieces from each time period where these relationships were not prominent themes, but I started noticing and paying attention to these focuses while reading pieces from the Victorian age. I feel the Victorian era was the middle ground where many writers played with both man’s relationship to nature and society. I found the exploration of both themes in the readings to be extremely thought provoking, but I’ve decided that the exploration of man’s relationship to society of the Early Twentieth Century to pique my interest a bit more.

Social Issues that Contribute to Death

Two poems, "The Chimney Sweeper" (1789) by William Blake and "Dulce et Decorum Est" (1920) by Wilfred Owen, discuss death resulting from social issues. While both poems utilize first-person speakers who experience the social injustice and witness (or at least realize the potential for) a person's death, the speakers share very different attitudes toward the specific death.

"The Chimney Sweeper" addresses social issues of poverty, child labor, and unhealthy working conditions. To deal with his dangerous work reality,  the speaker tells of  Tom's (Tom is a new co-worker) dream of an angel who unlocks black coffins and sets thousands of sweepers free: "Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run/And wash in a river and shine in the Sun," (lines 11-16). The angel makes a conditional promise to Tom: "If he'd be a good boy/He'd have God for his father & never want joy," (lines 19-20). It's curious that Tom, and not the speaker, experiences this dream. Despite not experiencing the dream himself,  and Tom waking from the dream to the harsh reality of life as a chimney sweep, the speaker reiterates the angel's promise in the last line of the poem:  "So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm." Possibly the speaker is making the best out of a hopeless situation. Possibly the speaker actually believes that it's his duty to be a chimney sweep, and that by doing good as a chimney sweep, he will get the promises made by the angel. The speaker in "Dulce et Decorum Est" holds no such hope. 

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is Latin for "Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country," (see footnote to "Dulce et Decorum Est"). This sentiment mirrors the promise made by the angel in "The Chimney Sweeper," yet the speaker of this poem calls it "The old Lie," (line 27). After recounting the hardships of marching during WWI, the speaker intensifies the frenzied situation in the second stanza, revealing the fear and desperation resulting from gas-shells. In the final stanza, the speaker addresses the reader: "If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace...could watch...could hear..." (lines 17-24), essentially could witness the violent and sickening death--if  you could see what I see, the speaker insists, "you would not tell with such high zest/To children...The old Lie," (lines 25-27).

Both social issues, children as chimney sweeps and war, are dangerous. Chimney sweep labor laws were rarely enforced (see footnote 1 to poem), and society at large seemed to overlook the injustice. While the dangers of war and chimney sweeping may seem unbalanced in comparison, the more unbalanced aspect lies in the resulting opinion of the situations.  In contrast to "The Chimney Sweeper," which promotes a future dream-like hope for children entering this line of work, "Dulce et Decorum Est" graphically reveals the reality of war and fights against instilling false ideas of glory and nobility in new recruits.  

Impacts of Literature on Culture

Literature has always been a driving force for social change. The words of great authors have been the catalyst for change countless times throughout written history, holding an uncanny ability to provoke emotion through their works that push the common people to fight for something better for themselves and others. For instance, Percy Bysshe Shelley's Song to the Men of England, called out the slavery of the common English man, detailing how they work themselves into their graves for men who neither care for them, nor have their best interests in mind. "In this song, which became a hymn for the British labor movement, Shelley urges the proletariat to force change in the social and economic order" (412). This poem forced a change in the common people, resulting in them standing up for their basic human rights and demanding better for themselves and their families. Another example not discussed in class, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, calls attention to the corruption in modern day democracy, pointing out the submission the common people have unwittingly submitted themselves to, slaving away beneath corrupt politicians. This work, which became an even more influential movie, inspired entire movements and freedom fighter groups, from Occupy Wall Street and the hacktivist group Anonymous to Democracy Spring. It showed the common people how blind they had been and called for them to change it, which the people have been fighting to do ever since, adopting the Guy Fox mask used by V in both the graphic novel and film as a symbol for freedom.

Authors have always used literature to drive social change, whether or not people originally looked at that push the way they do now is a question that will likely never be answered. Today, there is more awareness placed on the power an author holds and their ability to inspire change and readers have come to assume that is what any work is attempting now. The most popular books are typically those with a message trying to be told that readers can easily cling to. We now understand that literature exists to make a statement and to send a message; after all, that is what writing was created to do in the first place, to communicate ideas. We may never know if people originally recognized that fact, recognized the messages hidden within an author's works, but we can most certainly say that people today do.

Women in Literature - Romanticism & The Early 20th Century

Women in Literature - Romanticism & The Early 20th Century (Northanger Abbey & Passage to India)

Women have long taken a backseat in the literary world, both as writers and literary figures. Until recently, many classical artists fell behind the shadow of the male writer in historic periods of literature and art. In present day, most people recognize the critical female writers behind popular novels and works, such as Jane Austen or Mary Wollstonecraft. I feel that there is a significantly measured jump in the presence of women in such acclaimed literature, even within short frames of mere centuries. 

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey generated plenty of discussion and class material during this semester. The social roles and constraints surrounding Catherine and her company played directly into the novel’s plot. Catherine wove through the delicate web of culture and proprietary to meander toward her own satisfaction. Catherine’s role in her social sphere was directly correlated to her gender. That is, what Catherine was bound by was the expectations surrounding someone female. Her interactions, choices, and upbringing were determined by a world where every person has a position they must abide by. Catherine’s gender, in this sense, is central to who she is and how she maneuvers through Austen’s gothic parody. Being a woman, Catherine directly reflects the gothic protagonists speckling popular novela at the time. 

E.M. Forester’s exploratory story in A Passage to India features a central female character, Adela Quested. Adela ventures to Chandrapore with her companion Mrs. Moore, in an attempt to discover ‘the real india’. Adela, like Catherine, also faces an aggressive social caste within which she must contain herself. Adela is bound by very similar rules as Austen’s protagonist, but unlike Catherine, Adela’s femininity is not the central attribute of her character. While her gender is pivotal at times in the novel (i.e. the caves situation, her relationship with Aziz), Adela is not restrained by her gender in the same manner as Catherine. Where Catherine is defined by her gender and the plot centralizes it, Adela’s gender is a secondary aspect to her character. Catherine is unable to say no because she is a woman - Adela is unable to say no because it is not something she desires to do. 

Though the difference is small, I feel that this progression of female characters in popular narratives shows the steps toward popular fiction as we know it today - women as heroines, fighting outside of their social norms. Women in Austen and Forester’s stories fight dissension within their own gender stratification.