EN278: ENDS AND BEGINNINGS An Overview
To get us in the mood of the era…
“Miya Sama” from W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s
The Mikado (1885)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqG7iDCxgqc]
Why consider the period
1880s-1910s collectively?
•  ‘Victorian’ (1837-1901);
‘Edwardian’ (1901-1910)
•  Fin de siècle
•  The ‘Long’ Nineteenth Century
•  Emphasizing continuity between late
nineteenth century and early twentieth
century
Literary and Artistic Issues
•  Sometimes called period of ‘Transition’;
‘English literature in transition’
•  The so-called birth of modernism
Literary and Ar,s,c Issues Impressionism and
beyond
Walter Sickert,
‘Ennui’ (1914)
The Birth of Cinema (1895) Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897) James Williamson, “The Big Swallow” (1901) William Morris wallpaper (Arts & Cra>s Movement), 1891 The House of Painter Frederick Leighton, Holland Park, London The built environment
–  The first skyscrapers (in
the US), 1880s
–  Urban regeneration
–  Wallpaper, tiles, furniture,
etc.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow, circa 1904
Cultural, Social, and Political Issues:
Women
•  Women and Labour
–  New Women
–  Odd/’Surplus’ Women
–  Women in the Colonies and the Workplace
–  Married Women’s Property Act (1882)
–  Suffrage Movement
•  1893: Women in colony of New Zealand get the
vote
•  1918: Women over 30 with sufficient property
allowed to vote in Britain
Women and Educa,on –  In the University •  1878: University of London becomes first university to admit women to degree programmes •  1878-­‐1893: Oxford opens first women’s colleges (Lady Margaret Hall, Sommerville, St Hugh’s St Hilda’s •  1869-­‐1895: Cambridge opens Girton, Newnham, Hughes –  Elizabeth Garre^ Anderson •  London School of Medicine for Women (1874) The ‘Invention’ of Homosexuality:
Some Milestones
•  Medico-Legal Theories of ‘Psychopathia
Sexualis,’ ‘Psychical Hermaphrodism,’ and
Perversion
•  1885 Passage of the Labouchere Amendment
to the Criminal Law Amendment Act
–  creates the penalty of “gross indecency” for men
and dubbed the “blackmailer’s charter”
–  ‘invisibility’ of women in the statute
•  The Oscar Wilde Trials (1895)
Sentencing Statement from the Second Criminal Trial Justice Wills: Oscar Wilde and Alfred Taylor, the crime of which you have been convicted is so bad that
one has to put stern restraint upon one's self to prevent one's self from describing, in language which I
would rather not use, the sentiments which must rise in the breast of every man of honor who has heard
the details of these two horrible trials. That the jury has arrived at a correct verdict in this case I cannot
persuade myself to entertain a shadow of a doubt; and I hope, at all events, that those who sometimes
imagine that a judge is half-hearted in the cause of decency and morality because he takes care no
prejudice shall enter into the case, may see that it is consistent at least with the utmost sense of
indignation at the horrible charges brought home to both of you.
It is no use for me to address you. People who can do these things must be dead to all sense of shame,
and one cannot hope to produce any effect upon them. It is the worst case I have ever tried. that you,
Taylor, kept a kind of male brothel it is impossible to doubt. And that you, Wilde, have been the center
of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men, it is equally impossible to
doubt.
I shall, under the circumstances, be expected to pass the severest sentence that the law allows. In my
judgment it it totally inadequate for a case such as this. The sentence of the Court is that each of you be
imprisoned and kept to hard labor for two years.
[Cries of "Oh! Oh!" and "Shame!"]
Wilde--And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?
The court adjourned.
Courtesy of http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/wilde/wilde.htm
Globaliza,on, Commerce, and Conflict •  The Suez Canal (1869) •  The Panama Canal (construc,on begins 1882, completed 1913) •  The Mahdist (or Anglo-­‐Sudanese War) –  The Siege of Khartoum (1883-­‐5) and the death of General Gordon Globaliza,on and Conflict •  The Anglo-­‐Boer War (1899-­‐1902) –  ‘White’ against ‘white’ colonial conflict –  Barbed wire and concentra,on camps –  Fears of the physical degenera,on of the working classes Thomas Edison, “The Ba^le of Mafeking” (1900) ‘Drummer Hodge,’ by Thomas Hardy
(1899)
I
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined - just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
II
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew Fresh from his Wessex home The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
III Yet por,on of that unknown plain Will Hodge forever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-­‐eyed constella,ons reign His stars eternally. •  China: the new fron,er of Empire •  Eight-­‐na,on alliance •  Rise of Japan as Asian Power Thomas Edison, ‘The Bombardment of the Taku Forts’ (1900) Changes to the Colonies
•  The Rise of Indian Nationalism
–  Founding of Indian National Congress (1885)
–  Partition of Bengal (1905)
•  Self-governing settler colonies
–  Canada: Dominion (1867)
–  Australia: Federation (1901)
–  New Zealand: Dominion (1907)
–  South Africa: Union of South Africa (1910)
Term 1 London as/and Global City London
at the turn of the century
•  World’s largest city for much
of the nineteenth century
•  The “heart of the empire”
•  Publishing hub for Britain and
the Colonies
Grand Infrastructure St Pancras Railway StaUon, London (1876) Victoria Terminus, Bombay (1887) Estação da Luz, São Paulo, Brazil (1901) Poverty and Slums •  Charles Booth’s poverty map h^p://booth.lse.ac.uk/cgi-­‐bin/do.pl?
sub=view_booth_and_barth&args=531000,18
0400,6,large,5 •  Crime –  Jack the Ripper, the ‘first’ serial killer (1888) Poverty and Slums: Slum Clearance The Old Nichol, 1890 Poverty and Slums: Slum Clearance Arnold Circus, The Boundary Estate (1901) Somerset Maugham, Liza of Lambeth (1897)
CHAPTER ONE
IT was the first Saturday afternoon in August; it had been broiling
hot all day, with a cloudless sky, and the sun had been beating down
on the houses so that the top rooms were like ovens ; but now with
the approach of evening it was cooler, and every one in Vere Street
was out-of-doors.
Vere Street, Lambeth, is a short, straight street leading out of the
Westminster Bridge Road; it has forty houses on one side and forty
houses on the other, and these eighty houses are very much more
like one another than ever peas are like peas, or young ladies like
young ladies. They are newish, threestoried buildings of dingy grey
brick with slate roofs, and they are perfectly flat, without a bowwindow or even a projecting cornice or window-sill to break the
straightness of the line from one end of the street to the other.
Somerset Maugham, Liza of Lambeth (1897)
This Saturday afternoon the street was full of life: no traffic came
down Vere Street, and the cemented space between the pavements
was given up to children. Several games of cricket were being
played by wildly excited boys, using coats for wickets, an old
tennis-ball or a bundle of rags tied together for a ball, and,
generally, an old broomstick for bat. The wicket was so large and
the bat so small that the man in was always getting bowled, when
heated quarrels would arise, the batter absolutely refusing to go
out and the bowler absolutely insisting on going in. The girls
were more peaceable; they were chiefly employed in skipping,
and only abused one another mildly when the rope was not
properly turned or the skipper did not jump sufficiently high.
Somerset Maugham, Liza of Lambeth (1897)
Worst off of all were the very young children, for there had been
no rain for weeks, and the street was as dry and clean as a
covered court, and, in the lack of mud to wallow in, they sat
about the road, disconsolate as poets. The number of babies was
prodigious; they sprawled about everywhere, on the pavement,
round the doors, and about their mothers' skirts. The grownups
were gathered round the open doors; there were usually two
women squatting on the doorstep, and two or three more seated
on either side on chairs; they were invariably nursing babies, and
most of them showed clear signs that the present object of the
maternal care would be soon ousted by a new arrival. Men were
less numerous, but such as there were leant against the walls,
smoking, or sat on the sills of the ground-floor windows.
Somerset Maugham, Liza of Lambeth (1897)
It was the dead season in Vere Street as much as in Belgravia, and
really if it had not been for babies just come or just about to
come, and an opportune murder in a neighbouring doss-house,
there would have been nothing whatever to talk about. As it was,
the little groups talked quietly, discussing the atrocity or the
merits of the local midwives, comparing the circumstances of
their various confinements.
“You'll be 'avin' your little trouble soon, eh, Polly?” asked one
good lady of another.
“Oh, I reckon I've got another two months ter go yet,” answered
Polly.
“Well,” said a third, “I wouldn't 'ave thought you'd go so long by
the look of yer!”
Somerset Maugham, Liza of Lambeth (1897)
“I 'ope you'll have it easier this time, my dear,” said a very stout
old person, a woman of great importance.
“She said she wasn't goin' to 'ave no more, when the last one
come.” This remark came from Polly's husband.
“Ah,” said the stout old lady, who was in the business, and
boasted vast experience.
“That's wot they all says; but, Lor' bless yer, they don't mean it.”
“Well, I've got three, and I'm not goin' to 'ave no more, bli'me if I
will; 'tain't good enough that's wot I says.”
“You're abaht right there, ole gal,” said
Polly. “My word, 'Arry, if you 'ave any more
I'll git a divorce, that I will.”
Poverty and Slums: Immigra9on Princelet Street Synagogue PeXcoat Lane, circa 1900