Class Separation, Street Sweepers, and Angsty Poets

Friday, September 05, 2008

The morning began with a class session with Prof. Margaret Hombreger, a professor from UEA who has worked with the Dickinson program before. She lectured us about Victorian social reforms, and talked a lot about Dickens’s social commentary, in particular. She talked about how Britain was the first industrial power, and then the positive and negative effects of that industrialization. Steam power, the Underground, telegrams, and, particularly the railways, provided new jobs, increased travel speeds, and more urbanization in general. Cities gained social power where it had previously belonged to the gentry class. The Victorians celebrated this power by building large parks, museums, shopping arcades, and department stores to encourage a new consumer culture. This, of course, was only for the wealthy. The Victorian working class did not get off so easily. For the other half, there was depression and poverty, pollution and chaos. Out of this, though, came some of the most influential social reforms of the age: universal male suffrage and the fight for women’s suffrage, eventual education reforms and reformation of the treatment of the insane.
Many authors, particularly Dickens, tried to make sense of the vast class separation in London. Going to the poor docklands in the East End was like exploring Africa. No one of class went there. There was a strange Victorian belief that poverty was the fault of the poor, not society. This resulted in an amendment of the Poor Laws, which, instead of helping the increasing poverty, established workhouses so that the lazy, poverty-stricken masses could learn discipline and improve themselves. Dickens hated the workhouses, as seen in his satirical description of them at the beginning of Oliver Twist, and his description, particularly that of the food shortage, made an impact.
We briefly discussed the Ragged Schools, which were charity schools scattered throughout London to teach the working-class children and keep them out of the workhouses. It was a place for them to receive a basic education, and often they gave out food and clothes. This discussion was particularly poignant, as we went to visit the Ragged School Museum in Mile End later in the day.

After class we had some time for lunch before we ventured to the East End. I went out and bought a lot of vitamin C because I’m getting a cold.

As a class, we took the Tube out to Mile End in the East End, No Man’s Land between the City and Canary Warf and the docklands. It is definitely different than west London. Most of the people I saw were either of Middle Eastern or South Asian background, and everything looked more run down, although not to the extent that it was in the Victorian era and even in more recent times. There’s been a good deal of refurbishment, turning old warehouses into trendy studio apartments. I know that Hall mentions this refurbishment in Salaam Brick Lane and how East Enders see it ruining the community and imposing on their East Ender’s pride. I wonder how much of it is pride and how much is fear that this new trendy-ness will force them even further away from the cultural center of the city as the culture moves spreads.

We went to the London Ragged School Museum and learned about the Ragged Schools for the poor in Victorian times. My impression of the museum itself was that it was largely designed for elementary school children in order to have them experience what it would have been like to live in the Victorian East End and to attend a ragged school. The museum guide still gave an interesting talk, even if it was designed for 8-year-olds, but I felt like I didn’t learn much that I didn’t already know. Well, that’s not entirely true. I learned that slate pencils and tablets are impossible to write on. I’ve never been more grateful for paper and pen.

I think a lot of the class-related issues that have surprised me in London stem from my general ignorance, idealism, and the fact that I’ve never lived in a city before, where so many social classes are present at once. Coming home from Goodge Street Station today, I noticed a street sweeper with his cart and broom brushing away leaves and rubbish from the gutter. It bothered me that I had never really given any thought to the street sweeping profession, and that my only real memory of ever having thought of it before was when I read Anthem by Ayn Rand in 9th grade. That book basically made the street sweeper into a ridiculous profession, where Equality 7-2521, a character desperate to learn, and Union 5-3992, a character who suffers from epilepsy and is referred to as “they of the half-brain,” are both assigned to the occupation. Obviously, in this context, Rand is making a point about individualism and writing against ideas of Communism. My only thoughts about street sweepers, though, have been colored by this description. Seeing this one man on the side of Gower Street, though, forced me to reconsider the fact that this is a real job that real people do. A strange thought to be had walking back from the Tube station, I’m sure, but I’m going to try and be more socially aware from now on.

In the evening we went to “Late at the Tate,” which is, as the name would suggest, a late-night opening of the Tate Britain. There was a live band, drinks and snacks, performance art and “interviews” with famous artists like Andy Warhol. It was all rather chic and I felt decidedly underdressed. Definitely a cool way to see a museum. I like this museum better than the Tate Modern. I saw many paintings that I remember from my Romantic and Victorian anthologies, particularly those by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Waterhouse’s painting of “The Lady of Shallot.” (There were many different genres of art, of course. I am just particularly fond of the Romantics.) One painting that caught my attention was “Chatterton” by Henry Wallis, which portrays the death of Thomas Chatterton.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Chatterton.jpg

It intrigued me, so I read the description. Thomas Chatterton was an 18th century poet who is famous for having written poetry under the guise of Thomas Rowley, a 15th century monk whom Chatterton made up when he was a young teenager. He was able to pass off his “Rowleian” poems as authentic, fooling even prominent Chaucer scholars. By the age of 15, he was a noted political writer and contributed to many magazines, arguing against the most famous political satirists of the age. At 17, Chatterton was writing political letters, eclogues, lyrics, operas and satires, both in prose and verse. But his finances were tight, and people weren’t as receptive to his works in London as they had been in his native Bristol. At the age of 17, faced with rejection and imminent starvation, he took an overdose of arsenic and committed suicide. He was really, as one fellow museum-goer noted, “the original Kurt Cobain.” I find the story very intriguing, and I want to read his works and more about him. If I can make sense of his poetry, I could see doing a thesis on him.