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Mentalities, Movements and Institutions Characteristic for the Victorian Age in

Historical Succession
Summary
I.THE MENTALITIES
So far we have studied the following mentalities:
- the utilitarian mentality, which was the dominant 1 one; it was the
appanage of the entrepreneurial middle classes and rested upon the social
laws and institutions related to the creation of wealth; it was inspired by
Jeremy Benthams philosophy turned into a slogan about the greatest
happiness of the greatest numbers
-the old liberal and humanistic paradigm, dominant in the first half of the
nineteenth century (inspired from Thomas Carlyles free preaching of
Puritanical values to the mass of mankind) and which was transformed by
John Henry Newman into a system of education ,with distinterestedness,
knowledge and virtue, as its main values
-the new, modern liberal and positivistic paradigm, dominant in the midVictorian period, namely in the 1850s and 1860 and transmitted to modern
enlightened and democratic, i.e., liberal societies (to the capitalistic
1

See Raymond Williamss text Dominant, Residual, Emergent, in Surdulescu, R and

Stefanescu, B Reader in Contemporary Critical Theories. Bucharest: the English Department
of the University of Bucharest. 1999, p.150seq
The complexity of a culture is to be found not only in its variable processes and their
social definitions - traditions, institutions, and formations - but also in the dynamic
interrelations, at every point in the process, of historically varied and variable
elements.()

By residual I mean something different from the archaic, though in

practice these are often very difficult to distinguish. Any culture includes available
elements of its past, but their place in the contemporary cultural process is
profoundly variable.//

By emergent I mean ()elements of some new phase of the

dominant culture () and those which are substantially alternative or oppositional to

it; emergent in the strict sense, rather than merely novel//. The area of effective
penetration of the dominant order into the whole social and cultural process is thus
now significantly greater.NOW REFERS TO CAPITALISM, IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY: in advanced capitalism, because of changes in the character of labour, in
the social character of communications, and in the social character of decisionmaking, the dominant culture reaches much further than ever before in capitalist
society into hitherto reserved or resigned areas of experience and practice and
meaning.

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democracies) in the twentieth century. This mentality was turned into a
civic, ethical conception by John Stuart Mill, who explained how societies
can practically function in fairness to truth and to their mature members.
Mill borrowed virtue, this important component of the old liberal, idealistic
paradigm as an essential modern virtue from the residual culture of the
humanistic idealists. Matthew Arnold also added to the positivistic, new
liberal conception the old virtues of the classical tradition, of Bildung. He
wished to educate the majority of mankind so as to develop persons in a
plenary way, multilaterally, through the four powers. Especially, Matthew
Arnold used the power of beauty, as he was a poet, also, to develop the
historical sense of modern people. Notice the combination between the
residual elements of the old liberal paradigm and the values of Bildung in
the dominant, new liberal conception.

Dover Beach
BY MATTHEW ARNOLD
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the gean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earths shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
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.

As can be seen in Dover Beach, he circumscribed modernity as an age with only

feeble faith, and consequently suffering from a state of confusion. He wished to
raise the cultural awareness of the moderns and to enrich their lives through the
contact with tradition. For Arnold, the literature of older civilizations and earlier
important or canonical stages of civilization could equip the present as a whole with
interpretive power and deliverance; they could alleviate modern unhappiness.
Interpretive power was the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a
wonderfully full, new, intimate sense of them of things and of our relations with
them (Maurice de Guerin, in Essays in Criticism, the First Series 1865). In
addition, culture offers deliverance to man. Deliverance is the comprehension of
the present and the past and puts man in possession of general ideas (On the
Modern Element in Literature, 1857).
After studying the cultural campaigns and movements for correcting the contours of
the mainstream or dominant mentality, which meant to enlarge it with the point of
view of opposing mentalities (as for example enlarging the new liberal paradigm
with the old liberal paradigm in modern education), it will be possible to talk about
the emergent mentality of agnosticism and of aestheticism. Agnosticism, as
presented by Thomas Henry Huxley in Agnosticism and Christianity (1899) was a
mentality which insinuated itself in the wake of science, as superior on the scale of
mankinds intellectual evolution. Aeshteticism imposed itself upon the late Victorian
contemporaries as a decadent, underground, subversive movement (but it became

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the dominant cultural movement of the first half of the twentieth century, in
modernism). Whereas agnosticism addressed what Arnold had called the power of
intellect and knowledge, by separating it for ever from theology (to which the
intellect had been considered organically linked in the old liberal paradigm),
aestheticism was one of the late Victorian emergent mentalities and movements
which criticized the dominant materialism and utilitarianism of the day. Aestheticism
had this in common with socialism, the utopian brand, as will be seen below.

The people who call themselves "Agnostics" have been charged with
doing so because they have not the courage to declare themselves
"Infidels." It has been insinuated that they have adopted a new
name in order to escape the unpleasantness which attaches to their
proper denomination. To this wholly erroneous imputation, I have
replied by showing that the term "Agnostic" did, as a matter of fact,
arise in a manner which negatives it; and my statement has not
been, and cannot be, refuted. Moreover, [310] speaking for myself,
and without impugning the right of any other person to use the term
in another sense, I further say that Agnosticism is not properly
described as a "negative" creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind,
except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a
principle, which is as much ethical as intellectual. This principle may
be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is
wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of
any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically
justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my
opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which
Agnostics deny and repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine,
that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without
logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach
to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported
propositions. The justification of the Agnostic principle lies in the
success which follows upon its application, whether in the field of
natural, or in that of civil, history; and in the fact that, so far as
these topics are concerned, no sane man thinks of denying its
validity.

II.Movements, Institutions

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The social and cultural movements of the Victorian age are, all of them, expressions
of the quarrel between dominant capitalism, its practices and institutions, residual
idealism, and emergent socialism.
Socialism was a mentality that wished to extend the benefits of modern life to the
underprivileged labourers, whom Karl Marx considered to be the exploited creators
of the modern material wealth2. Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels called them
proletarians. Radical, revolutionary Marxism and utopian socialism ended up
advocating the complete abolition of property and the capitalist mode of production,
and its replacement by a more just form of communist ownership over the
production means. This cause was enthusiastically embraced by artists, William
Morris, the leader of the Arts and Crafts movement and sponsor of the workshops of
this movement and Oscar Wilde. Wiliam Morris wrote How I became a Socialist
and Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man Under Socialism. But there existed another,
more moderate form of socialism, Fabianism from the name of the Fabian Society
set up in London in 1884 by the Anglo-Irish artist George Bernard Shaw and his
friends, the couple of Beatrice and Sidney Webb. This brand of socialism advocated
the slow reformation FROM WITHIN of blind capitalism. Fabianism was a brand of
socialism that sought to reform the laissez-faire state by improving the social
structure of the capitalistic state slowly (the name of this brand of socialism derives
from a Roman general, Fabius Cunctator, who strategically delayed action in order
to win battles). Fabian socialism was seeking to achieve a fairer distribution of
wealth as a means of securing fairer living conditions for the mass of society in a
more interventionist state than the original laissez-faire one. It is along Fabian
principles that the 20th century British state developed, working towards a mixed
economy, organized along both capitalistic, trade lines while it also gave
planning/interventionist/centralized authority to the state. The best literary
explanation of Fabianism as a social cause is to be found in the play Major
Barbara, by George Bernard Shaw (published in 1905), which confronts the effects
of the Christian institution of charity called The Salvation Army with the effects of
reforming along utilitarian lines the life of the poor social orders. Major Barbara and
her fianc tried to discover a better brand of maturity than that of their middle-class
parents. They were out to offer food, shelter and spiritual consolation by Christian
conversion to people whose maturity and wisdom was coined in anger. By the
conversion of contrite souls, the Salvation Army sought to appease the social anger
of the down-to-earth, rough maturity of laid-off workers, a typically staunch maturity
of the lower orders of society. Shaws play is related to the confrontation between
the social link provided by charity (in the establishment of the charitable
organization of the Salvation Army) and the social link provided by pragmatic
efficiency (as embodied in the arms factory which creates work-places for people).
2

Looking back from Marx, Wilde and Shaw, it is obvious that Thomas Carlyle was a protosocialist. In Past and Present (1843)he criticized the cruelties of laissez-faire capitalism and
its worship of the God Mammona, or Mammonism, as Thomas Carlyle called the modern cult
for money.

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EXCERPTS FROM OSCAR WILDES THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM (1891)

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is,
undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living
for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost
everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.()
Wilde considered that there were people who, just like the Salvation Army or
the soup canteens with admirable, though misdirected intentions (.) very

seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that
they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed,
their remedies are part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in
the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is
an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on
such a basis that poverty will be impossible.
Socialism advocated the abolition of property because, as Wilde stated: Socialism,
Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and
substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly
healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact,
give Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But for the full development of Life to its highest
mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is Individualism.

The most outstanding cultural movement was that of the first avant-garde, the
Pre-Raphaelite artists movement (see the Power Point presentation). This
movement was supported from inside the establishment institution of the Royal
Academy of Arts, by John Ruskin, who was also one of the proto-socialists, together
with Carlyle, and had turned his back on the present, returning in painting to the
Pre-Raphaelite period of Giotto and Giovanni Bellini and in architecture to the Gothic
style. He was the cultural father of the Gothic revival in architecture, which
produced the Houses of Parliament and the red-brick universities designed and
constructed in the same style all over the British Empire.
The Oxford Movement a religious revival movement within the Anglican High
Church, whose brilliant leader was, in the 1830s, John Henry Newman. They
published several Tracts for the Times, and Newmans Tract 90 demonstrated how
Victorian religiousness was tepid. At the time, there also existed a group of
rationalist Christians, called the Noetics, who had a more positivistic view of

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faith.Also, there existed Low Church revivals, for example the Methodist revival,
which can be understood in George Eliots novel Adam Bede, one of whose
protagonists is Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher.
As far as the Victorian institutions are concerned, after the movements
enumerated, it becomes obvious that the Royal Academy of Arts was one of the
institutions which defended the dominant mentality and therefore conservative,
while the Arts and Crafts movement and its workshops represented the emergent
mentality together with the avant-garde movement of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Similarly, the Oxford Movement worked against the dominant mentality in the
established High Church and as proof of that, John Henry Newman eventually
opted for another, non-English religious establishment: the Catholic or Rome
Church. But the Tractarian movement led to the appearance of Anglo-Catholicism as
a new religious denomination. Also, notice the spread of newer Protestant, Low
Church Movements, which led to the appearance of the Free Church Federation in
Britain at the end of the nineteenth century.
Appendix, texts to translate in the seminars, before the exam
From the Cambridge Dictionary of Illustrated Heritage THE ARTS AND CRAFTS
MOVEMENT entry
From Thomas Carlyle: Past and Present, Part III (The Modern Worker), The Gospel of
Mammonism

.we for the present, with our Mammon-Gospel, have come to

strange conclusions. We call it a Society; and go about professing
openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual
helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named 'fair
competition' and so forth, it is a mutual hostility. We have profoundly
forgotten everywhere that Cash-payment is not the sole relation of
human beings; we think, nothing doubting, that it absolves and
liquidates all engagements of man. "My starving workers?" answers
the rich mill-owner: "Did not I hire them fairly in the market? Did I
not pay them, to the last sixpence, the sum covenanted for? What
have I to do with them more?"Verily Mammon-worship is a
melancholy creed. When Cain, for his own behoof, had killed Abel,
and was questioned, "Where is thy brother?" he too made answer,
"Am I my brother's keeper?" Did I not pay my brother his wages, the
thing he had merited from me?

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Carlyles proto-socialist critique of laissez faire from Book I of Past and Present

The world, with its Wealth of Nations, Supply-and-demand and

suchlike, has of late days been terribly inattentive to that question
of work and wages. We will not say, the poor world has retrograded
even here: we will say rather, the world has been rushing on with
such fiery animation to get work and ever more work done, it has
had no time to think of dividing the wages; and has merely left them
to be scrambled for by the Law of the Stronger, law of Supply-anddemand, law of Laissez-faire, and other idle Laws and Un-laws,
saying, in its dire haste to get the work done, That is well enough!
'Laissez-faire,' 'Supply-and-demand,' 'Cash-payment for the sole
nexus,' and so forth, were not, are not and will never be, a
practicable Law of Union for a Society of Men. That Poor and Rich,
that Governed and Governing, cannot long live together on any such
Law of Union. Alas, he thinks that man has a soul in
him, different from the stomach in any sense of this word; that if
said soul be asphyxied, and lie quietly forgotten, the man and his
affairs are in a bad way.