bbc radio 4 in our time program on Victorian pessimism

Mathew Arnold on honeymoon cannot be too optimistic


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night



Fragmentation lonelnesss vulnerability uncertainty(abt aty of scriptures, higher criticism); turn too personal- coomunal loss has to be faced alone

1844- engels on english poor. All in dark, stranded. ‘struggle’ is v. Darwinian although b4 origin of species. Loss of confidence has to do with scientific change and loss of faith(henry oldenberg, future secy of royal sociey met Spinoza)

Sea of faith/fate?; Aegean tragedy.

Housman of a later generation talks of abandonment; all props gone. His pessimism becomes a matter of austerity; discipline in imagination; economy of despair.

Oxford from anglicism to catholicism(newman)

Bible just a book- german comparative historians; strauss ‘life of jesus’ transltd by george eliot(who also translated Spinoza)

39 articles canonicity; to get fellowship, degree, clergyman

Geology- charles lyall; ruskin’s ‘sound of hammer’ ; sun will go out

1869 victorian liberal arnold wrote culture and anarchy; barbarians are landed class who are nto well rounded human beings but can control; philistines are middle class.

Ward healers and backslappers vs political punditry

Competition from America and germany; v r not centre of creation; other repercussions of Darwinism; eugenics coined by galton, cousin of Darwin; beautiful evoltx?.; founder of salvation army says put them in an island; degeneration theory-nordau?; power of steam to transform travel; electricity-commcx.; elite worries of being outpopulated by masses; breaking up of certnties made others take advntage. George gissing, powerful voice of pessimism, alientatd from own community. Hardy doing comparable work. Women getting new opps. Writing in new ways but no 2 cheerfully. ‘New woman’ novel.

Cloudburst- steam and electricity. Univ college London-clough; wells(gloomy texts were v popular; 1895 time machine discusses degnrtx and also new physics-last scenes 30 m years into future talk of death of sun; abominable desolation of dying red disc and final struggles of life on earth hot survive) and gissing-loer middle class.

Pessimists do literary art better. Murky depths get canonized. WT Stead- pioneer of sensationalist modern jornalism, exposed child prostitution in London(The Victorians, AN Wilson); Football Assoctx begins in 1863;30 clubs by 1868; Aston Villa Wesleyan Chapel, Christ Church Bolton-->Bolton Wanderers;Bramhall lane Sheffield drawing crowds of 10k in late 1870s. 1871-72 dostoevsky writes the devils."Man canot possibly exist without his former Gods"-Kirilov

Period of mass education. 1870 state funded education. Vote extended.

Fear of cities- semi vicious savage class. Lambroso early criminologist; looks at head features. Undersanitation.

Both marx and Darwin; underground culture; literary and also in non-lit; the u/g we travel in; novel ‘netherworld’. Failing of the light. Right now nightmare is ‘burned up’-2 much light. Cos of pollution, less lite. Whats happening in agriculture? Collapsing; depopulated ;

Holmes always gets man and out of darkness. First virtual celebrity. Threatening but solvable.