Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde is a chilling allegory of the duality of human nature that rang true for many Victorians when it was published. It is the tale of a doctor who experiments in a lab with his dark side; he creates a concoction that turns him into the evil Mr. Hyde, his hideously deformed alter ego, who performs the monstrous crimes that Dr. Jeckyll can only fantasize about. According to Professor Harrington’s lecture, the story was extraordinarily popular when it was published, and it reflected the uneasy sentiment of the late Victorian era. It falls under the category of the late Victorian Gothic revival tradition, according to Professor Harrington, which was characterized by a preoccupation with “monstrous crime” and “evil genius,” horror and terror portrayed through “spooky” settings and situations, the use of embedded narratives, and, crucially, a focus on the dark inner psyche of mankind and a connection with evolutionist/degenerationist themes.
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde contains all of these, capitalizing on the preoccupations and fears of Victorian England. Interestingly many of these fears stemmed from newly emerging ideas and understandings of human evolution and man’s place in nature, or what might loosely be termed “Darwinian” concepts. The fact was becoming clearer and clearer that man was not much different, evolutionarily speaking, than a gorilla, and this was intensely frightening for many people (it still is very frightening to some people, even today). The anxiety that the only thing separating man from beast is the “thin veil of civilization” was played upon in Stevenson’s work, in which Hyde represents the simian, beastly creature lurking beneath the surface of every self-respecting Victorian man and woman. To me, Jeckyll’s mad and reckless experimentation with science represents the fears that people had about science taking things too far; the worry that if science had proven that men were no more than mere beasts already, what other evil and monstrous things could it uncover? This fear and distrust of modernization, technology, and scientific innovation is reflected throughout the ambivalent end of the Victorian era.
Sunday 26 July 2009
Tropical Medicine: Justification for Imperialism
Paul’s lecture on Victorian-era tropical medicine and its connection to imperialism was really interesting to me. I find it fascinating that tropical medicine was both formed out of necessity because of imperialism, and came to be a justification for the very existence of the empire as the field was developed.
Life for British imperialists living in colonies was very difficult. Acclimatization was slow for most and impossible for some; colonies came to be known as “the white man’s grave” because of the vast numbers of people dropping dead from tropical diseases. Living in an imperial colony was a risky venture, and there was a generally accepted high mortality rate among colonists. Malaria, in particular, was responsible for many of the deaths, and two British scientists, Patrick Manson and Ronald Ross, began studying the unforgiving disease. According to Paul’s lecture, Manson’s approach was laboratory research-based; he founded the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1898, and focused his efforts on labs in the UK. Ross, however, took more of a hands-on approach, preferring to do his work “on the ground,” with labor-intensive measures to eliminate malaria in India. Paul noted that this marked the beginning of the divide between medicine and public health, with Mason’s approach representing medicine, and Ross’s representing public health.
The use of tropical medicine specifically, and science in general, as a justification or explanation for imperialism is really quite interesting, and parallels can be drawn with more modern movements of imperialism that have taken place in the name of democratization. English natural philosophers felt that it was their duty to spread scientific enlightenment to the third world; Christianity, which had once been the main excuse for imperialism, was largely replaced by the seemingly more legitimate excuses of scientific knowledge, medicine, and modernization.
Life for British imperialists living in colonies was very difficult. Acclimatization was slow for most and impossible for some; colonies came to be known as “the white man’s grave” because of the vast numbers of people dropping dead from tropical diseases. Living in an imperial colony was a risky venture, and there was a generally accepted high mortality rate among colonists. Malaria, in particular, was responsible for many of the deaths, and two British scientists, Patrick Manson and Ronald Ross, began studying the unforgiving disease. According to Paul’s lecture, Manson’s approach was laboratory research-based; he founded the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1898, and focused his efforts on labs in the UK. Ross, however, took more of a hands-on approach, preferring to do his work “on the ground,” with labor-intensive measures to eliminate malaria in India. Paul noted that this marked the beginning of the divide between medicine and public health, with Mason’s approach representing medicine, and Ross’s representing public health.
The use of tropical medicine specifically, and science in general, as a justification or explanation for imperialism is really quite interesting, and parallels can be drawn with more modern movements of imperialism that have taken place in the name of democratization. English natural philosophers felt that it was their duty to spread scientific enlightenment to the third world; Christianity, which had once been the main excuse for imperialism, was largely replaced by the seemingly more legitimate excuses of scientific knowledge, medicine, and modernization.
Darwin's Personification of Natural Selection
In his landmark work On the Origin of Species, Darwin introduces his concept of natural selection as the driving force behind evolution. Although it was published as a mere abstract for his much longer and more detailed manuscript, Origins does provide a vast array of evidence supporting natural selection. Professor Durant talked a lot about the reception of Origins by the public, and in particular, the wider impact it had on people’s understanding of theology. However, he also noted that Darwin took great pains to avoid controversy by never explicitly referring to “God” anywhere in the book, and by keeping quiet his thoughts on how natural selection and evolution apply to the human race. People read much more into Origins than Darwin had anticipated, and the larger implications for religion and the role of the human race were hotly debated, despite his avoidance of these issues.
In reading Chapter IV of Origins, however, I was struck by Darwin’s personification of the force of natural selection throughout. He constantly uses action verbs to describe the work of nature, and he even refers to a being “Nature,” with a capital “n.” Indeed, in comparing the act of natural selection to that of artificial selection performed by humans, Darwin is, whether consciously or not, giving this being “Nature” human-like qualities and agency. For example, Darwin states, “Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her…” Perhaps this was merely a device of Victorian writing, to refer to inanimate things as “she,” but to me, it seems as if Darwin is attempting, by giving natural selection animate qualities, to leave room for people to interpret this driving evolutionary force as God, if they so choose, as if he is apologizing for the inevitable religious implications of his theory.
In reading Chapter IV of Origins, however, I was struck by Darwin’s personification of the force of natural selection throughout. He constantly uses action verbs to describe the work of nature, and he even refers to a being “Nature,” with a capital “n.” Indeed, in comparing the act of natural selection to that of artificial selection performed by humans, Darwin is, whether consciously or not, giving this being “Nature” human-like qualities and agency. For example, Darwin states, “Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her…” Perhaps this was merely a device of Victorian writing, to refer to inanimate things as “she,” but to me, it seems as if Darwin is attempting, by giving natural selection animate qualities, to leave room for people to interpret this driving evolutionary force as God, if they so choose, as if he is apologizing for the inevitable religious implications of his theory.
The Charles Darwin Correspondence Project
On July 20th, we visited Cambridge University, and had a brief introduction to the Darwin Correspondence Project at the Cambridge University Library. The Darwin Correspondence project was founded in 1974, with the goal of finding and publishing transcripts of all letters to and from Charles Darwin during his life. There are many challenges in undertaking such an ambitious project. Not only did the researchers have to track down every letter that Darwin had written, but they also had to attempt to put all the correspondence in chronological order, which was a challenge because many of the letters did not bear dates, but merely denotations such as “Sunday afternoon.” After collecting all the letters and piecing together the chronological puzzle, researchers faced the daunting task of deciphering the handwriting of the letters and transcribing them. Darwin had infamously illegible handwriting, but as the experts at Cambridge told us, with enough practice, reading it becomes much easier. According to the project’s website, they have located around 14,500 letters exchanged by Darwin with over 2,000 people around the world. The letters are being published in hardcopy, as well as online, chronologically by year.
The website states, “Darwin's correspondence provides us with an invaluable source of information, not only about his own intellectual development and social network, but about Victorian science and society in general.” It is true that his letters and private notes, of which the University has many, provide much insight into his ideas and scientific work, as well as his social relationships. I find his correspondence with Alfred Russel Wallace to be particularly interesting; because of the somewhat awkward and uncomfortable situation Darwin found himself in after Wallace sent him his ideas on natural selection, it is really fascinating to read the letters between the two men. There is a sense of self-conscious politeness in many of the letters from Darwin to Wallace, and he seems to choose his words delicately.
One question that arose in my mind as we listened to the archivists tell us about the project is the issue of privacy. Professor Durant posed a similar question later on, noting that many of the letters between Darwin and Huxley were quite intimate, as the two were close friends. The woman compared these letters to an email-type exchange, and I pondered how I would feel if my own emails were published in 200 years. I wonder whether Darwin ever thought that his most private letters and notes would be available to the masses as they are now, just a click away on a website.
The website states, “Darwin's correspondence provides us with an invaluable source of information, not only about his own intellectual development and social network, but about Victorian science and society in general.” It is true that his letters and private notes, of which the University has many, provide much insight into his ideas and scientific work, as well as his social relationships. I find his correspondence with Alfred Russel Wallace to be particularly interesting; because of the somewhat awkward and uncomfortable situation Darwin found himself in after Wallace sent him his ideas on natural selection, it is really fascinating to read the letters between the two men. There is a sense of self-conscious politeness in many of the letters from Darwin to Wallace, and he seems to choose his words delicately.
One question that arose in my mind as we listened to the archivists tell us about the project is the issue of privacy. Professor Durant posed a similar question later on, noting that many of the letters between Darwin and Huxley were quite intimate, as the two were close friends. The woman compared these letters to an email-type exchange, and I pondered how I would feel if my own emails were published in 200 years. I wonder whether Darwin ever thought that his most private letters and notes would be available to the masses as they are now, just a click away on a website.
The Divergence of Mental Illness in the Late 19th Century
The late 19th century saw a rapid decline of the state of asylums in Great Britain. The image of the grand, impressive asylum was now one of decaying grandeur. I find this backwards progress to be very intriguing and baffling, because the field of mental medicine had come so far in the previous few decades. However, a few factors of the time led to the downward spiral of psychiatry, including asylum overcrowding, the emergence of a Darwinian perspective on mental illness, and increasing pessimism and ambivalence toward the progress and modernity of the era.
The idea that humans are descended from beasts took its toll on the practice of psychiatry at the time. Madness was now thought to be inherited and incurable, a manifestation of the “beast within” rising to the surface of a person’s character. Interestingly, mental illness diagnoses diverged along class lines at the time, with low-class criminals being characterized as “degenerate,” and the wealthier insane classified by the less-harsh term “neurotic.”
The explanation of degeneracy is easily understood in a cultural context; Max Nordau wrote in 1892 about how the rapid modernization of Victorian England brought with it an ugly underbelly of crime and insanity. There was a movement towards studying the physiognomy of criminals, in an attempt to discern some underlying physical characteristic that demonstrated the degeneration of an individual.
On the other side of the class divide, the diagnosis of “bad nerves” became much more common with the development of the field of neurology. The wealthy and upper-class could avoid a stay in an asylum if they were merely “neurotic.” This “epidemic of bad nerves,” as Professor Harrington called it in class, can also be clearly attributed to modernization and the new culture of hurry, worry, and technology. It is very interesting to me that psychologists and neurologists at the time seemed to have understood the cultural roots of these diseases, but characterized them in such different ways for the different classes.
The idea that humans are descended from beasts took its toll on the practice of psychiatry at the time. Madness was now thought to be inherited and incurable, a manifestation of the “beast within” rising to the surface of a person’s character. Interestingly, mental illness diagnoses diverged along class lines at the time, with low-class criminals being characterized as “degenerate,” and the wealthier insane classified by the less-harsh term “neurotic.”
The explanation of degeneracy is easily understood in a cultural context; Max Nordau wrote in 1892 about how the rapid modernization of Victorian England brought with it an ugly underbelly of crime and insanity. There was a movement towards studying the physiognomy of criminals, in an attempt to discern some underlying physical characteristic that demonstrated the degeneration of an individual.
On the other side of the class divide, the diagnosis of “bad nerves” became much more common with the development of the field of neurology. The wealthy and upper-class could avoid a stay in an asylum if they were merely “neurotic.” This “epidemic of bad nerves,” as Professor Harrington called it in class, can also be clearly attributed to modernization and the new culture of hurry, worry, and technology. It is very interesting to me that psychologists and neurologists at the time seemed to have understood the cultural roots of these diseases, but characterized them in such different ways for the different classes.
Tuesday 21 July 2009
The SS Great Britain
On Thursday, July 17th, we visited the SS Great Britian in Bristol. The SS Great Britain is widely considered to be the first modern ship, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel with an iron hull and a steam engine-powered propeller. At the museum next to the Great Britain, one of the displays in particular was fascinating to me, because it related to a question that I posed in class about the relationship between the military and engineering in the Victorian era. I was interested in this relationship because today, most, if not all, technological and engineering innovation originates in the military, whereas most of the innovations of the Victorian time we have learned about have come from the private sector. Professor Durant noted that Brunel did work closely with the navy on the development of the ship, but the fact that the ship considered to be the first real modern ship was developed in the private sector rather than the navy is still intriguing to me. The display at the museum described how during the Crimean War, the government was short of vessels to transport troops and supplies, and it began chartering passenger vessels. In 1854, the SS Great Britain was enlisted, and carried 44,000 British, French, and Turkish troops over the course of its service in the Crimean War.
The Battle of the Gauges
In class and in the readings for July 16th, we learned about Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his Great Western Railway, which is the route we actually took on our trip to Bristol. I was very interested in the so-called “Battle of the Gauges” that took place among the railroad companies during the mid-19th century. This conflict arose from the fact that during the railroad expansion between 1820-1850, different railroad companies were building tracks of different gauges, or sizes. The trains that ran on these tracks had to have wheels that fit the gauge of the track, so that passengers often had to switch trains mid-journey to ride on a differently gauged track. Eventually two gauges emerged as the most widely used in Great Britain: Brunel’s 7’ gauge, or wide gauge, and Stephenson’s 4’ 8.5”, or narrow gauge. The need for a standard-sized gauge was becoming apparent, and a debate raged over which gauge would win out as the standard. Brunel’s wide gauge allowed for larger and more comfortable coaches, and faster and smoother trains, but it was also much more expensive. Stephenson’s narrow gauge had strong precedents and was more widely used than the wide gauge, and it was also cheaper to build and operate than the wide gauge. In the end, Brunel died young, and the advantages of the narrow gauge won out over those of the wide gauge; 4’ 8.5” was adopted as a national, and later international, railroad standard.
There are interesting parallels between this historical anecdote and the advent of Bazalgette’s sewage system in London, which Professor Durant mentioned in class. Bazalgette famously calculated quite accurately what size sewage pipes would be necessary for a reasonable estimate of population growth in England; he doubled that number and that was the measurement he used for the sewage pipes. If he had not taken the initiative and doubled his calculation, the sewage pipes would have had to been replaced in the 1960’s, but Bazalgette’s sewage pipes are still used to this day in London because of his leap of faith. Had the wide gauge railway won out in the Battle of the Gauges, trains today would be able to do amazing things. They would be immeasureably more efficient, faster, and more comfortable. Unfortunately, unlike in the case of the London sewage system, cost efficiency won out over foresight, and we will most likely be stuck with narrow gauge railways for the foreseeable future.
There are interesting parallels between this historical anecdote and the advent of Bazalgette’s sewage system in London, which Professor Durant mentioned in class. Bazalgette famously calculated quite accurately what size sewage pipes would be necessary for a reasonable estimate of population growth in England; he doubled that number and that was the measurement he used for the sewage pipes. If he had not taken the initiative and doubled his calculation, the sewage pipes would have had to been replaced in the 1960’s, but Bazalgette’s sewage pipes are still used to this day in London because of his leap of faith. Had the wide gauge railway won out in the Battle of the Gauges, trains today would be able to do amazing things. They would be immeasureably more efficient, faster, and more comfortable. Unfortunately, unlike in the case of the London sewage system, cost efficiency won out over foresight, and we will most likely be stuck with narrow gauge railways for the foreseeable future.
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