Ship of Fools: Why the emphasis on Victorian Values?

Thread: Why the emphasis on Victorian Values? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

This is slightly spinning out of the typing thread in Heaven, where we've started comparing teaching drills like typing to Victorian schools.

Now, because I think our impressions of Victorian schools are wrong and making the current curriculum change more draconian than they might be, have wandered off to check a few facts and figures:

Victorian schools were not made compulsory until the Education Act of 1880, followed by the Education Act of 1891 which made elementary education free. Before then there were schools provided by the Church or by industrialists to mind the children of their factory workers, but in 1835 the average duration of attendance at school was 1 year and by 1861 that only risen to 2 years.

Victorian children were only expected to attend until they were 11, and many schools were only for 6 to 12 year old children. Currently schooling starts for children the year they turn 5, so for my August born daughter she started primary school at 4 and 4 months. In the next county she would have started at 4 years and 2 weeks and children are now compulsorily in education and training until they are 18.

So looking back at the lovely school books of Victorian children, where the 11 year olds were expected to multiply in £sd we now have:

quote:
In the first year of school, pupils will be expected to read and write numbers up to 100, count in multiples of ones, twos, fives and tens and learn a series of simple sums using addition and subtraction off by heart.

Note: this is for 4 to 5 year olds - and actually, I did a lot of this with preschoolers, but I have taught students of 11 and 15 who do not understand that counting means adding one on. Neither am I denying that knowing number bonds to 10, 20 and 100 is really useful, and it's one I keep pushing. But let's just power on regardless whether they understand this or not.

quote:
Children will also be introduced to basic fractions such as ½ and ¼ at the age of five – a subject currently left until pupils are aged seven to 11 – and algebra will be taught at the age of 10.

Not impossible for a bright child, we used to chant times tables on car journeys and walking to school when my daughter was 7 or 8. The schools do teach this and I've seen some brilliant ideas for teaching them, but there will be quite a few in the class who still do not get these ideas, but, hey, we'll teach them algebra anyway.

quote:
Further changes include the requirement to learn 12 times tables by nine rather than an expectation that pupils will master tables up to 10x10 by the time they leave primary school at 11.

The problem with the rote learning of one way to solve something is that there's no real understanding of how numbers work and how to find different ways to achieve the same sums. And the curriculum that is to be replaced was doing a lot of work on understanding numbers rather than doing sums by rote.

One of my mortifying memories was being tactless enough to show my astonishment when my grandmother, who was educated pre the 1940s Education Acts and who finished school at 11, asked me how to do long multiplication and long division because she didn't know how to do so with double digits, just single. In my defence I was only 12 or 13 myself.

So how good was Victorian schooling really and why do we think we should reintroduce those values now?

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

It sounds like Golden Age thinking. (Like there ever was a true "Golden Age" of anything. [Roll Eyes]

) As you point out there was no Golden Age of Victorian education. And all this forcing kids beyond their developmental capacities is for the birds. Ideally, a child who reached the learning threshold of a certain subject sooner than their peers would be given the opportunity to run with it. Maybe home support? But expecting all children or even most to be at that point when studies show that they are not, well, phooey on that!

Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :

I thought it was about keeping up with the Japanese and the Shanghainese rather than going back to 'Victorian values'.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

The use of 'Victorian Values' always makes me laugh: presumably those (not just politicians) who keep hankering after some mythical golden age aren't thinking of many of the most common facts of Victorian life:

Think high child mortality - approximately 15% under the age of 1 year and 10% under the age of 5. 12% of all people died before the age of 27.

In towns and cities most children had rickets and child prostitution was rife. Children born in the countryside were more fortunate in that they had fresh, clean air to breathe and they ate vegetables and fruit but they frequently had little meat or protein.

The majority of children only had 1 year of education pre 1890 - and if you were the oldest in a poor family you were unlikely to even get that since your time would be spent helping your parent with looking after younger siblings.

The 'golden age' which invented childhood was still capable of thinking it OK for children to be sent down mines, to work long shifts in factories: David Copperfield's experiences in the blacking factory were based on Dickens' own memories of such work. At the age of 12 a boy could join the army as a drummer boy and be shipped off to the farthest flung parts of empire - where he stood a high chance of dying of disease. The school year in the UK still reflects Victorian Values - we have the long break at the end of summer and beginning of autumn because that was for children to help with the harvest.

Victorian Values were a good thing if you were born into the upper or upper-middle class, preferably living in the country.

For most of the population life was hard and short, and such schooling as they received may have been thorough but was delivered in freezing cold, over-crowded classrooms as one of a class of up to 70 pupils.

Return to Victorian Values - never.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

The thing about "Victorian values" is that they were wonderful for some groups of people. Mainly, the wealthy. SO today, we see the wealthy want a return to the time when their type could make money easily.

The problem - and the other side of the coin - is that this wealth was made on the deaths of many workers, on the abuse of workers, on the dismissal of their rights to things like education.

Never mind that women were still considered property.

The Victorian era was good for some. A few. It was crap for most. My granddad died at the age of 55, probably due to the appalling working conditions in the paint factory. That is the price paid for the success of some.

In particular the schooling was not in general very good. For the majority, yes they would learn their lessons, because they would get then beaten into their behinds. For many, they would learn just enough. The wealthy could do better, but the education that the majority of people get today is to be applauded.

Of course, a poorly educated populace is exactly what manipulative politicians want. A return to the point where only the rich could get educated would suit them very well.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

And heaven forfend in Victorian times if you were not the whitest of white persons. I fail to see how any person of ethnicity, different sexual orientation, or gender could tolerate the idea for a moment. Victorian society was set up for white men of property, period. Everyone else was on the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

Posted by Sober Preacher's Kid (# 12699) on :

The unstated truth in the "Victorian Values" is that failure was rife. Illiteracy and innumeracy were common; if you didn't "take to the lessons" you'd just drop out of school and go into manual labour on a farm or in a factory. The curriculum can say what it wants, but if most children did not attain that level then why bother?

Nowadays we expect and demand universal basic literacy and numeracy and that changes everything.

And to give a Canadian example, Ontario enacted universal, free, compulsory schooling between 1850 and 1871. The 1850 Act implemented educational property taxes and free schools; the 1871 Act made primary education compulsory. But is started from a dreadfully low level:

quote:
But Ryerson was fighting for free schools. He knew that thousands of children were growing up ignorant, especially in the large towns. He was able to show that in the city of Toronto, out of 4,450 children of school age in 1846, only 1,221 were on the common school registers and that the average attendance was scarcely one thousand. Even if it were granted that another thousand were in attendance at private and church schools, the fact remained that not more than half the children in Toronto were being educated.

Egerton Ryerson and Education in Ontario

Rev. Egerton Ryerson was the lion of 19th Century Canadian Methodism and he created Public Education in Ontario. He is thus one of the United Church of Canada's most esteemed and beloved fathers. Public Education and the United Church are tied at the hip in Canada.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

In my experience, more people appear to long for the 1950s than the Victorian Era.

"In the 50s, there was no divorce and no one was shooting each other in our schools. In the 50s, everyone had a job and you can let your kids walk around town without a worry."

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Yeah, but, there was in fact much more violent crime, child mortality, police brutality and corruption, sexual abuse - you just didn't hear about it.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

In the 1950s there were quotas for black people and Jews in almost every institution and profession. (None for Asians, because it was inconceivable that one would ever show up wanting a job or a degree.) Women (married ones) were fired when they became pregnant -- my mother lost her job that way before I was born. And don't even think about premarital sex, or homosexuality.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Yeah, but, there was in fact much more violent crime, child mortality, police brutality and corruption, sexual abuse - you just didn't hear about it.

If you didn't hear about it, how do you know it was worse? I agree that the 1950's were worse in regard to civil rights issues and medical care, but I do think there was less crime. Even for groups like African Americans who have come such a long way as far as integrated schools and job opportunities, the young men in the 1950's weren't being shot in the streets the way they are now.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Sorry, I was unclear, you didn't hear about it at the time. The child mortality figures are matters of record, the big corruption cases started to get to court in the sixties. And of course the large scale abuse scandals have gone right back to the fifties.

The police issues eventually led to a royal comission of enquiry in 1960.

(In the UK)

[ 22. June 2014, 18:54: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

Yes, you're right, and I just looked at the murder rate in 1950 and 2012 ad it's 4.7 both years. Which leaves me flabbergasted. I've been watching way too many crime dramas.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

I can only comment on Scottish Victorian education. Education became compulsory from 5 to 12 in 1872. Prior to that, approx 95% of children had some education, usually around age 8.

It varied a lot from place to place - when education became compulsory, Edinburgh already had enough school places for all 5-12 year olds (though some were in substandard buildings)and Aberdeen was similar. Glasgow fiddled the figures by having a de facto starting age of 6, until they had built enough new schools to take in 5 year olds as well. But Dundee hadn't anything like enough physical school places in 1872, and with a rising population to contend with, education was not achievably compulsory until the mid 1880s.

There were clearly defined standards of education. Arithmetic was taught to what would now seem a very high standard, because everyday life (e.g. buying 5 oz of oatmeal at 1 3/4d an oz) required it. But reading came slowly; most children wouldn't have much, if any reading material at home.

A Victorian 10 year old would be far better at arithmetic than a C21st 10 year old, but far, far, worse at reading.

One feature of (Scottish, but I assume elsewhere) teaching reading in Victorian times was the steady swinging back and forward between phonics and whole book reading. This was interspersed with occasional bampot reading schemes. My favourite daft scheme was the one in which children were taught the alphabet first, then all combinations of two letters. Once they had mastered "is" and "on" etc they moved onto three letter words - this is where "The cat sat on the mat" came from. This took to about age seven. Once they could read (I'm not making this up) "God has no joy in the way of man for the way of man is sin" they were allowed to venture onto four letter words. They finally reached words like "newspaper" at age 10.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Originally posted by Curiosity killed:

quote:
So how good was Victorian schooling really and why do we think we should reintroduce those values now?

I think it's fair to say that Victorian teachers (at least those who gave papers at conferences, or wrote letters to the teaching journals) were well aware of the limitations of rote learning, and were keen to move away from it. Educational theories were hotly debated, but pragmatism usually won out - rote learning was an efficient use of a trained, qualified teacher's time. It allowed the maximum number of children to be taught by the minimum number of teachers. Better quality education cost more, and this cost was borne by the ratepayers.

There was a constant tension between raising standards and keeping taxes down.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Yes, you're right, and I just looked at the murder rate in 1950 and 2012 ad it's 4.7 both years. Which leaves me flabbergasted. I've been watching way too many crime dramas.

Bear in mind that crime, at least in North America, began to decrease in the early 1990s, and as far as I know has not gone back up(and is possibly still decreasing, I don't know).

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Yes, you're right, and I just looked at the murder rate in 1950 and 2012 ad it's 4.7 both years. Which leaves me flabbergasted. I've been watching way too many crime dramas.

Actually, your experience is a common one. Most people today think we live in a very violent society, and would put rates of violent crime far higher than reality.

This is the effect of the media as a whole (including the prevalence of crime drama) which gives us a mistaken perception of reality.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Yes, you're right, and I just looked at the murder rate in 1950 and 2012 ad it's 4.7 both years. Which leaves me flabbergasted. I've been watching way too many crime dramas.
Bear in mind that crime, at least in North America, began to decrease in the early 1990s, and as far as I know has not gone back up(and is possibly still decreasing, I don't know).

The same is true in the UK - IIRC the peak was around 1994.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

If you want to read the book that decisively proves the case, have a look at THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE by Stephen Pinker. His thesis is that yes, we are getting better. And he marshals tons of proof. One of those books which, after you close it, you immediately go and pray that he is right.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

I second that - a very challenging and optimistic book.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Originally posted by l'organist:

quote:
The 'golden age' which invented childhood was still capable of thinking it OK for children to be sent down mines, to work long shifts in factories: David Copperfield's experiences in the blacking factory were based on Dickens' own memories of such work.

In fairness, both the real-life Dickens and the fictional David Copperfield were adults when Victoria came to the throne; Dickens was born in 1812 and so was 25 when the Victorian era started. His childhood can't be described as "Victorian."

Originally posted by Brenda Clough:

quote:
we are getting better.

I think this was one of the good things about the Victorian Era - they believed that things could get better.

Elementary education become universal, compulsory and free. Huge public works creating sewers and piping in clean water could, and did, eradicate diseases such as cholera. Medical research pushed on apace.

Democracy spread as increasing numbers of men (not women) got the vote. But women did campaign for Women's Rights, and those rights started to accrue; professional college training for female teachers from around 1850, the first female doctors, the Married Women's Property Act 1884 and the Universities (Scotland) Act 1892 which meant that women could attend any University in Scotland.

One of the difficulties of describing "Victorian values" is the sheer length of Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901. Britain experienced huge changes in those 64 years, and so it's difficult to talk about "Victorian" without pinning it down further - early / mid / late Victorian etc. This applies to "Victorian education" too - you could support almost any educational argument by appealing back to "Victorian values."

Posted by blackbeard (# 10848) on :

Brilliant, NEQ!

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

The full post that made me irritated enough to bring it over here said:

quote:
Victorian schoolchildren were required to perform to a higher standard altogether in arithmetic, and from an early age were expected to master number systems based on other than the decimal system and be able to calculate fluently in them. They were expected to memorize a lot of things, as there would be fewer books and no e-resources to save them the bother of having to remember anything for themselves.

They were taught how to handwrite properly and neatly, a skill that is in decline these days. Spelling was considered essential, and these days if anything it ought to be more so because if you can't spell properly you'll struggle to do an accurate keyword search.

They were given an overview of history in chronological order - none of this experimentation with the syllabus that means that you might start the first three years of secondary school studying the period from the Romans to the Tudors, then discontinue the subject altogether unless you opted in to studying it for GSCE/O level, when you might find yourself doing something like 1919 to the present day, with no very clear idea of what happened in between, and then maybe at the next level, Charlemagne and his contemporaries.

Geography involved, amongst other things, learning where the other countries of the world were and identifying them on a map. There are children today who cannot do this and wouldn't be able to instantly locate Africa on a map.

Art and drawing were taught in a way that involved you looking closely and carefully at the subject you wanted to draw or paint, with the result that many could and did actually produce sketches and drawings that looked like the real thing. Many of today's children have never been taught how to do this and couldn't do a pencil sketch of even a simple, single object.

Technology is a useful thing but when it robs people of developing their own skills, of learning to rely on their own memories, makes them lazy and ignorant about the world they live in, it is not a good thing.

It starts with so many misunderstandings of what has been in the outgoing National Curriculum.

I commented on the maths claims in my OP as experience suggests that the Edwardian school pupils did not necessarily achieve that level in mathematics. Certainly, I had better maths than my grandmothers, both of them, by the end of primary school. Mental arithmetic is tested at KS2 and KS3 and has been since the advent of the National Curriculum in 1995. It wasn't unknown before then. (I used to have to calculate in imperial measurements in my mental arithmetic tests as an additional challenge to extend me - and know my times tables to 20. I've now forgotten the conversions for bushels, pecks, poles, rods and chains.)

In addition, the history claim above is dubious. The schools where the history syllabus is taught out of chronological order under the outgoing National Curriculum are the small country primary schools of two or three classes where the syllabus is taught on a rolling programme, not year by year. That's because each class, as in Victorian schools, have children of several age groups. So all the topics can be covered, for arbitrary example, Egyptians or Greeks, Romans, Tudors, Victorians, WW1 and WWII, if the child arrives in class 2 with the KS2 pupils, so ages 8, 9, 10 and 11, at the start of the programme they study history in chronological order, starting with Egyptians and Romans, but their classmate joining the class a year later will start on Tudors and Victorians and cover the first topics in their final year. This tends to be a bit more based on kings and queens than at secondary school. In classes where I've seen this happen there have been timelines around the walls with connections made explicitly.

The secondary curriculum for history has covered the Norman Conquest and feudalism, mediaeval Britain, Tudor politics and the growth of the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution and Slave Trade, Victorian changes into World War 1 and World War II. Political history rather than by royalty, and chronologically.

Geography tends to be physical rather than political. So pupils may not be able to tell you where a country is, but they can tell you where earthquakes and volcanoes are found and why, where the rain forests are and why, and the implications for the planet; about climate and weather patterns, how to read maps, with some contrasting studies between different areas, rivers and flooding, formation of geographical features, how settlements are formed. It's very different from the drilling on lists of countries and their exports.

Spelling drills have been part of the Literacy Hour compulsorily and National Curriculum for the last 17 or so years, but most schools have taught them continuously. However the complications of English does mean that ACE dictionaries are helpful tools for some students.

Art really does teach drawing to most children. I've seen (and written) so many different curricula that start with basic drawing skills. Observational drawing is part of the primary curriculum.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Originally posted by Ariel:

quote:
Victorian schoolchildren were required to perform to a higher standard altogether in arithmetic, and from an early age were expected to master number systems based on other than the decimal system and be able to calculate fluently in them. They were expected to memorize a lot of things, as there would be fewer books and no e-resources to save them the bother of having to remember anything for themselves.

I would agree with this, but bear in mind that fractions are actually easier in a number system based on twelve, which divides neatly by 2, 3, and 4. Plus simply running errands to the shops gave children practical experience of "number systems based on other than the decimal system" so their ability to do so wasn't gained solely from school.

quote:
They were taught how to handwrite properly and neatly, a skill that is in decline these days. Spelling was considered essential, and these days if anything it ought to be more so because if you can't spell properly you'll struggle to do an accurate keyword search.

Paper was expensive. First "writing" was done in with fingers in sand boxes and then on slates with slate pencils. Children started writing in lead pencil and then pen and ink much later than children in school today. I think children are more proficient today, though probably less neat.

quote:
They were given an overview of history in chronological order - none of this experimentation with the syllabus that means that you might start the first three years of secondary school studying the period from the Romans to the Tudors, then discontinue the subject altogether unless you opted in to studying it for GSCE/O level, when you might find yourself doing something like 1919 to the present day, with no very clear idea of what happened in between, and then maybe at the next level, Charlemagne and his contemporaries.

History may have been chronological in the Victorian classroom, but it was facile and anecdotal. Every child was taught about Alfred burning the cakes, Canute trying to stop the waves, Harold getting an arrow in his eye. "Chronological" was probably the only good thing to be said for it.

I'm no apologist for today's teaching of history, but it is far, far better.

quote:
Geography involved, amongst other things, learning where the other countries of the world were and identifying them on a map. There are children today who cannot do this and wouldn't be able to instantly locate Africa on a map.

True, but one set of maps pinned to wall would have been the entire Geography teaching resource; it's no wonder that that one resource was taught exhaustively. Today schools have far more resources, far more flexibility, and children's geographical knowledge isn't focussed on knowing three maps.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Would this be a good moment to bring up the focus on reading and writing Latin and Greek? Apparently this was the main goal of upper-school education. As a badge of upper-class status it was as good as any, I would think. But not -practical-.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

More practical than you might think in a world where Latin was the widely known language of church, scholarship, government, and science, and therefore usable for communication almost anywhere in the Western world. Find an educated person and it doesn't matter what their vernacular is(was); you're good to go.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Exactly. It was the Sekrit Langwidge, and if you weren't in on it you were forever locked out.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Not much Sekrit about a language that anybody could learn by picking up a book! Heck, I learnt quite a bit without ever picking up a book at all, just by the bits and pieces scattered around English texts.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Not much Sekrit about a language that anybody could learn by picking up a book! Heck, I learnt quite a bit without ever picking up a book at all, just by the bits and pieces scattered around English texts.

Most people had never been taught to read. And books were so expensive you might as well say "picking up a Ferrari". And Latin's not that easy to just "pick up from a book". You could have a Latin text and be given a glossary of the meaning of every word in it and still not get more than the barest gist; it works so differently to English.

Believe me, I was made to study it for four years at school but that's not enough to be able to translate more than the simplest of texts. Learning it to a level where you could actually converse in it would require devoting most of the curriculum time to it.

[ 25. June 2014, 06:57: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

(realised we're talking about a later time than I was originally thinking about wrt illiteracy and price of books. Nevertheless, other points stand. It's also worth pointing out that whilst the middle and upper classes did indeed study Latin and Greek, they were not, and have not been for centuries, taught as spoken languages. I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule. Probably more than now, when it's almost no-one, but certainly not any "educated person". It wasn't taught for conversation. It was taught to allow the reading of classical texts. And because it Just Was.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

My Dad knew Latin really well. I couldn't count the times when I asked the meaning of a word and he said "It's from the Latin ..."

Very useful imo.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Have a look at your hymn books and look at the names of the translators of hymns. In Victorian times, the emphasis on boys learning Greek and Latin meant that most men didn't have a modern second language.

Girls were taught modern languages as being "easier" than Latin and Greek; hence most hymns etc which were translated from French, German etc were translated by women.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
My Dad knew Latin really well. I couldn't count the times when I asked the meaning of a word and he said "It's from the Latin ..."

Very useful imo.

I can do that. It's not as useful as you might think. It's just as easy to learn the meanings of the English words as learning the Latin and then guessing (not necessarily correctly) the English. It's a strange way to learn your own language's vocabulary [Biased]

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Not much Sekrit about a language that anybody could learn by picking up a book! Heck, I learnt quite a bit without ever picking up a book at all, just by the bits and pieces scattered around English texts.

You'd be surprised - I've got no idea where I picked this up from, but will try and find a reference (unless someone else knows what I'm talking about and beats me to it) but towards the end of the 19th century/early 20th at one of the international congresses (1st Geneva? the one at the end of the Fashoda incident?), the British delegation were not only fluent enough to discuss their aims and objectives amongst themselves in Latin, but the pronunciation taught at the public schools was so ideosyncratic compared to the rest of the world that they were able to use it as a secret language to hide their thoughts from the other nations. And did so.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Originally posted by Karl, Liberal Backslider:

quote:
It's also worth pointing out that whilst the middle and upper classes did indeed study Latin and Greek, they were not, and have not been for centuries, taught as spoken languages.

Latin was a requirement for University admission (in Scotland and I assume elsewhere) and so working class boys with hopes of University had to study it as well.

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Elementary education become universal, compulsory and free. Huge public works creating sewers and piping in clean water could, and did, eradicate diseases such as cholera. Medical research pushed on apace.

Agreed - but few such improvements were hardly altruistic in intention.

Most simply aimed to increase living standards in order to provide a workforce to maintain the position and wealth of the "better orders." Little hope of the working classes sharing in that wealth, then other than by extension and scraps from the table.

I suppose from that POV we are returning to Victorian Values with the wealth gap in the UK continuing to increase. Thanks Dave!

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Karl:

quote:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule.

I'm not so sure. I am not an expert on education history, but I do remember reading a Charlotte M. Yonge (late Victorian) story in which the hero was expected to compose original verses in Latin as part of his schoolwork; presumably this was a fairly common task given to advanced students. M. R. James has the (late Victorian/Edwardian) Latin master in 'A School Story' getting his pupils to make up Latin sentences themselves to check they've learned how to use a new verb properly. I think it's highly unlikely that anyone could spend seven years or so learning Latin at school without speaking it at all.

Knowing Latin is quite useful if you are studying one of its modern dialects [Devil]

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Elementary education become universal, compulsory and free. Huge public works creating sewers and piping in clean water could, and did, eradicate diseases such as cholera. Medical research pushed on apace.

Agreed - but few such improvements were hardly altruistic in intention.

Most simply aimed to increase living standards in order to provide a workforce to maintain the position and wealth of the "better orders." Little hope of the working classes sharing in that wealth, then other than by extension and scraps from the table.

I'm not sure that's true - the 19th century in the UK was in many ways the last time that genuine altruism and economic dynamism existed alongside each other. An exception could be made for 1945 to about the late 50s, but that's slightly different as by this time the altruism was manifesting as a general agreement that the state should be doing x,y,z, whereas in the 19th C it was more about private philanthropy.

Now, there's a whole different argument to be had (not in this thread) about Victorian attitudes to deserving and undeserving poor, and unenlightened attitudes to a whole host of things, but they did change/shape/create the UK that we live in by and large.

I don't think anyone now would bracket (more's the pity) as the Victorians did, arts manufacture and commerce into the same institution - nor has (IMO) the country ever been more genuinely P/progressive than it was between the Great Exhibition and the Great War. OK, it started from a low base, but that 60 odd years was transformational.

And I don't think it's good enough to reduce it all to a utilitarian* argument about producing the optimum labour force - there were enough people that genuinely cared about what they were doing.

//Tangent// I've always thought it rather sad about the Benthamites that their utilitarianism was supposed to promote happiness, yet led to John Stuart Mill being brought up, as he admitted, to be a "dessicated calculating machine" - weighing everything up and actually becoming very dry. It's to his credit that he took the good bits from Bentham and his father and then moved on.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Karl:
quote:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule.
I'm not so sure. I am not an expert on education history, but I do remember reading a Charlotte M. Yonge (late Victorian) story in which the hero was expected to compose original verses in Latin as part of his schoolwork; presumably this was a fairly common task given to advanced students. M. R. James has the (late Victorian/Edwardian) Latin master in 'A School Story' getting his pupils to make up Latin sentences themselves to check they've learned how to use a new verb properly. I think it's highly unlikely that anyone could spend seven years or so learning Latin at school without speaking it at all.

Knowing Latin is quite useful if you are studying one of its modern dialects

There's a massive difference between composition in a foreign language and spontaneous speech. I did Latin, and I can (or could) compose in it, but attempting to speak it would have been halting, and comprehension very slow. The process, as traditionally taught, goes something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8

Seriously.

That it wasn't used spoken is evidenced by the fact that by this period the pronunciation of Latin in different European countries was so different that speakers from different countries wouldn't understand each other anyway. "Vicissim" would have been "Vie-sissim" in England, "Veechissim" in Italy and "Veesissim" in France. The Romans would, by the way, have said "Weekissim" [Biased]

[ 25. June 2014, 08:37: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule. Probably more than now, when it's almost no-one, but certainly not any "educated person". It wasn't taught for conversation. It was taught to allow the reading of classical texts. And because it Just Was.

I don't know - I went to school in the 1990s and even then the Classic Sixth could converse pretty seamlessly in Latin and Greek (and switch between the 2 mid sentence). Of the 8 of them, at least 4 are now professors/university lecturers, and one a Fellow of All Souls.

In the early 20th century, the school debating society regularly conducted its debates in Greek and Latin - including interventions. Memoirs of various Old Boys make clear that this wasn't daunting either.

Now, you would be write in thinking even then that the numbers were miniscule, but at the same time probably high enough to include the upper echelons of the civil service/government, the universities, and the diplomatic corps.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule. Probably more than now, when it's almost no-one, but certainly not any "educated person". It wasn't taught for conversation. It was taught to allow the reading of classical texts. And because it Just Was.
I don't know - I went to school in the 1990s and even then the Classic Sixth could converse pretty seamlessly in Latin and Greek (and switch between the 2 mid sentence). Of the 8 of them, at least 4 are now professors/university lecturers, and one a Fellow of All Souls.

In the early 20th century, the school debating society regularly conducted its debates in Greek and Latin - including interventions. Memoirs of various Old Boys make clear that this wasn't daunting either.

Now, you would be write in thinking even then that the numbers were miniscule, but at the same time probably high enough to include the upper echelons of the civil service/government, the universities, and the diplomatic corps.

And yet no-one at my school, with a strong Classics tradition, could do so. I wonder what they were saying?

Just recalling how the Classics were taught I just don't know how you'd get to spontaneous speech - there was none in lessons. I daresay it's possible to teach them as spoken languages - and the Romans managed to use Latin that way after all - but I've never actually seen it done. This was the late 70s-early 80s in my case.

[ 25. June 2014, 08:41: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

Sorry for the double post - I make no claims for my own facility with the language btw. Competent translator at best; I lived in awe of their ability to be given a song and sing it back in Latin (with reasonable scansion) pretty well immediately.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Elementary education become universal, compulsory and free. Huge public works creating sewers and piping in clean water could, and did, eradicate diseases such as cholera. Medical research pushed on apace.

Agreed - but few such improvements were hardly altruistic in intention.

Most simply aimed to increase living standards in order to provide a workforce to maintain the position and wealth of the "better orders." Little hope of the working classes sharing in that wealth, then other than by extension and scraps from the table.

I suppose from that POV we are returning to Victorian Values with the wealth gap in the UK continuing to increase. Thanks Dave!

I don't agree. Some public health measures were motivated by self-preservation; typhus fever etc might start in the slums but it could spread, and the best way of keeping the affluent middle classes free of infectious disease was to attack it at source.

But there was a huge amount of selfless, altruistic work going on in Victorian times, with a proliferation of charities and church schemes of all types. Where people saw a need, I honestly believe they strove to meet that need. Some of those efforts might be misguided when seen through 21st eyes, but I do not believe that the Victorians were motivated simply by self-interest.

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
And I don't think it's good enough to reduce it all to a utilitarian* argument about producing the optimum labour force - there were enough people that genuinely cared about what they were doing.

Well Dickens recognised it in "Hard Times."

As for genuine caring well I wouldn't deny it but care for what (whose) ends? Who would it really benefit in the long run?

I've spent long enough listening to the stories of the rural poor (and being part of some of those stories) to know that the gap between academic theory, contemporary reporting (hardly unbiased) and the reality of existence, was enormous. I saw the remnants of this "benevolent altruism" into the 1970's.

It was all about the exercise of power. We (the rich) give you (the poor) just enough to stop you from starving and/or rioting.

[fixed code]

[ 25. June 2014, 08:45: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'd suggest that in the Victorian period the number of people who could have actually sustained a conversation in Latin of any complexity would have been miniscule. Probably more than now, when it's almost no-one, but certainly not any "educated person". It wasn't taught for conversation. It was taught to allow the reading of classical texts. And because it Just Was.
I don't know - I went to school in the 1990s and even then the Classic Sixth could converse pretty seamlessly in Latin and Greek (and switch between the 2 mid sentence). Of the 8 of them, at least 4 are now professors/university lecturers, and one a Fellow of All Souls.

In the early 20th century, the school debating society regularly conducted its debates in Greek and Latin - including interventions. Memoirs of various Old Boys make clear that this wasn't daunting either.

Now, you would be write in thinking even then that the numbers were miniscule, but at the same time probably high enough to include the upper echelons of the civil service/government, the universities, and the diplomatic corps.
And yet no-one at my school, with a strong Classics tradition, could do so. I wonder what they were saying?

Just recalling how the Classics were taught I just don't know how you'd get to spontaneous speech - there was none in lessons. I daresay it's possible to teach them as spoken languages - and the Romans managed to use Latin that way after all - but I've never actually seen it done. This was the late 70s-early 80s in my case.

Well, presumably you'd get to it in the same way you do with other languages - I do remember even as a first former having to speak latin in latin lessons in the same way as French in French lessons. We had a strange old chap as our classics master who used to fire out random questions in latin to quailing 12 year olds, alongside reading about whatever it was that Caecilius was up to... I suppose, that after 7 years of that, those who had progressed to A Level and were reading it for fun, may get to that stage.

Admittedly, my school was like a high octane combination of The History Boys and if..., but the fact that people were sitting around doing this in their own time in the sixth form (while the more normal of us were out on the cricket field) didn't ever seem that strange.

I suppose that's why I find it easier to believe that 19th century classics teaching, when it was good, could be very good indeed.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

When... [Biased]

- I think the way the LoB clip resonates with everyone I know who learnt Latin indicates it may not always be taught well. I think your experience might be quite unusual; most folk I've talked to recall lessons entirely in English with Latin read, written and translated, but never spoken. Noses to the grindstone learning principle parts, but never spontaneously firing the gerund of Scribo in anger.

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
never spontaneously firing the gerund of Scribo in anger.

"A gerund it is a - it is a verbal substantive, molesworth, declined like neuters of the second declension any fule knos that"

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

One of the engines of Victorian altruism, IMO, was the existence of middle class women who needed something to do. Servants took care of the housework, and paid work was an anathema. And so they got together in groups large and small, meeting in drawing rooms and church halls, from whence they sallied forth into the hospitals and orphanages and slums.

No corner of society was safe from these determined, capable women - prostitute rescue, publishing "handy hints for hard up households" sewing new underwear for families hit by infectious diseases so that the old underwear could be burned, campaigning for the provision of fire-guards to keep babies from falling into fires, bulk buying soap and selling it at cost price, campaigning against vivisection, against the Contagious Diseases Acts, campaigning for old age pensions, for franchise extension and for female doctors. Not to mention fund raising - bazaars, tombolas, sales of work. They went to lectures, they learned first aid. Nothing daunted them.

Their efforts may have bee piecemeal, they may have been misguided; but they believed they were changing the world for the better.

And I believe (YMMV) that many of them did change the world for the better.

[ 25. June 2014, 09:08: Message edited by: North East Quine ]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Just recalling how the Classics were taught I just don't know how you'd get to spontaneous speech - there was none in lessons. I daresay it's possible to teach them as spoken languages - and the Romans managed to use Latin that way after all - but I've never actually seen it done.

While I agree that we weren't taught it like that, one of my Latin teachers could speak fluently in Latin. (We couldn't understand him, but I think it's harder to fake speaking a nonsense language than you might suppose.)

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Just recalling how the Classics were taught I just don't know how you'd get to spontaneous speech - there was none in lessons. I daresay it's possible to teach them as spoken languages - and the Romans managed to use Latin that way after all - but I've never actually seen it done.
While I agree that we weren't taught it like that, one of my Latin teachers could speak fluently in Latin. (We couldn't understand him, but I think it's harder to fake speaking a nonsense language than you might suppose.)

Yeah, I've just found a bloke on Youtube who does it, and teaches it that way, with proper reconstructed Classical pronunciation as well I'm glad to say. But my point was that the vast majority of Latin learners come, and came, out of the system with the ability to translate and read, and compose, but with limited ability to use Latin spontaneously as a means of conversation, and I imagine it would have been similar 150 years ago.

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:

No corner of society was safe from these determined, capable women -

I rather think it all passed over the existence of the rural poor.

Determined and capable? Without doubt they had time on their hands. But many who were campaigning for the reform of prostitution were working their kitchen maids for 16 hour days and putting them to sleep in damp attics. many who wept over little Nell in Dickens, made the life of teenage servants hell.

Even in the move to reform prostitutes, there was a vested interest. The use of such "services" was pretty universal in the metropolitan towns (in London 1 in 6 women were estimated to be prostitutes): it wasn't just Mrs Beeton who caught syphilis from a prostitute via her husband.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

What's your source for the claim that "in London 1 in 6 women were estimated to be prostitutes"? That suggests that every man in London was financially supporting 1/6 of a prostitute. Which seems improbable.

Or do you mean that 1 in 6 women had turned to prostitution at some point in their lives?

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

Never mind a few years of schooling, I have a degree in (French and) Latin and I wouldn’t be able to speak it spontaneously. I could probably compose a sentence if I was writing down*, but I’d have to think about it. Compare with my French. I codeswitch into French with complete ease; when I speak French, I think in French. These days I find speaking French no harder than speaking English.

*or at least I could have done just after I finished University. I've forgotten it all now.

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
What's your source for the claim that "in London 1 in 6 women were estimated to be prostitutes"? That suggests that every man in London was financially supporting 1/6 of a prostitute. Which seems improbable.

Or do you mean that 1 in 6 women had turned to prostitution at some point in their lives?

Sorry! It's the latter - 1 in 6 at some point ....

The source is twofold though I can't quote page no.s at the moment - Henry Mayhem - London's Underworld; Charles Booth London Labour and the London Poor

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

The sources that I'm familiar with - all Scottish- drew a distinction between women who earned their living from prostitution and those who earned their living in some other way (piece work in dress-making or millinery was often cited) who turned to prostitution when work was scarce, perhaps only at a single point in their lives.

One of the objections to the Contagious Diseases Acts was that women in the latter category could find themselves labelled as prostitutes, when they regarded themselves as "dressmakers" or whatever.

If the latter were categorised as "prostitutes" rather thanm say, "milliners" the the 1 in 6 becomes plausible.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

I have sometimes wondered how anyone knows with any confidence the correct pronunciation of Latin, or indeed of any language spoken before sound recording (or before the phonetic alphabet was devised). I know people claim to know such things, and I know some deductions can be made from spelling and rhymes and such, but how confident can one be?

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

This worries me a great deal. I am writing a time travel novel.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

Don't give dialogue phonetically, it is a bugger to read anyway, just stick with - she could tell from his accent he was Londinium or else that she noticed latin didn't sound how Mrs Bayford had taught them, it took her a while to get her ear in.

Posted by M. (# 3291) on :

Exclamation Mark,

quote:

The source is twofold though I can't quote page no.s at the moment - Henry Mayhem - London's Underworld; Charles Booth London Labour and the London Poor]

It's Henry Mayhew, of course, but I prefer your version.

M.

[code]

[ 25. June 2014, 21:35: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
The sources that I'm familiar with - all Scottish- drew a distinction between women who earned their living from prostitution and those who earned their living in some other way (piece work in dress-making or millinery was often cited) who turned to prostitution when work was scarce, perhaps only at a single point in their lives.

One of the objections to the Contagious Diseases Acts was that women in the latter category could find themselves labelled as prostitutes, when they regarded themselves as "dressmakers" or whatever.

If the latter were categorised as "prostitutes" rather thanm say, "milliners" the the 1 in 6 becomes plausible.

The same is true of those termed "Charlady" in London. It was a convenient cover for a lady's real source of income.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

But "milliner" or "dressmaker" wasn't "a convenient cover for a lady's real source of income"; it was their main occupation and the main source of their income over the majority of their life; prostitution was the last resource when work was scarce.

Millinery was a barometer of economic conditions; if times were hard, buying a new hat was easily deferred, if times were good, everyone wanted a new hat.

This left milliners susceptible to boom and bust personal finances; but to say that prostitution was their "real source of income" is a gross distortion.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I'm inclined to agree with that, bar one small quibble. The word seamstress was used, I have been led to believe (not only by Terry Pratchett), in some quarters, as slang for prostitute. Hence the historical change in name from Gropec**t Street to Threadneedle Street (which I have recently seen referred to as a real change to fabric working businesses, so maybe what I was originally taught is wrong).

Posted by St Deird (# 7631) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
When... - I think the way the LoB clip resonates with everyone I know who learnt Latin indicates it may not always be taught well. I think your experience might be quite unusual; most folk I've talked to recall lessons entirely in English with Latin read, written and translated, but never spoken. Noses to the grindstone learning principle parts, but never spontaneously firing the gerund of Scribo in anger.

I think it largely depends on the way you're taught Latin.

It sounds like betjemaniac was taught with the Cambridge Latin Course, which is highly focused on natural conversational style (there are at least two page-long conversations per chapter, as well as more dialogue in the pages of narration). It's a style of teaching which leads to less ability to conjugate without a thought (ala Monty Python), but more ability to construct your own sentences for conversation.

(The CLC was first created in the 70s, and is becoming increasingly popular, so I imagine there's also a gap between Latin students based on age.)

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I have sometimes wondered how anyone knows with any confidence the correct pronunciation of Latin, or indeed of any language spoken before sound recording (or before the phonetic alphabet was devised). I know people claim to know such things, and I know some deductions can be made from spelling and rhymes and such, but how confident can one be?

Reasonably. When a language has several descendants, it's possible to narrow down the number of possible ancestral forms a given sound may have had; Latin 'c' before i/e, for example, gives "ch" (as in Eng. Church) in Italian, but "ss" in French and Spanish. It cannot therefore have been "ch" in Vulgar Latin, as "ch" cannot readily become "ss", but it could have been "ts" which can. Given that the Romans invented their own spelling, and used the same symbol for this and for the sound before o/u (which is "k" in all Romance languages), it's a reasonable conclusion that it was originally "k" in all positions - a conclusion which is supported by cognates and borrowings.

Or take the Latin consonantal "u", often written "v", as in the famous "Veni, vidi, vici". The Spanish reflex is a bilabial fricative; in the other Romance languages it was a labio-dental fricative (as in English). The Romans gave us "wine" from "vinum" and "Wight" (as in the Island) from "Vectis". Had it been a fricative when these words were borrowed, then the Anglo-Saxons would almost certainly have used their nearest equivalent, which was "f" - which had two allophones in complementary distribution equivalent to modern English "f" and "v". An Anglo Saxon would almost certainly have heard "vinum", with a fricative "v", as "finum".

Reconstruction is mostly a process of looking at borrowings and descendant languages. Spelling mistakes are useful as well; we know that Vulgar Latin short "i" and "e" fell together in the later period because they're frequently written for each other - we even have texts by the pedants of the day complaining about it.

Greek's even more fun. Especially since there's a certain amount of pride amongst Greeks that they still speak Greek after 3000 years. There can be a reluctance amongst some Greek speakers to accept how much their language has changed from that of Socrates and Plato; anyone bored enough can look up the talk page on Wikipedia's Ancient Greek Phonology article to see the fur fly. But I digress.

[ 26. June 2014, 11:43: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by St Deird:

It sounds like betjemaniac was taught with the Cambridge Latin Course, which is highly focused on natural conversational style (there are at least two page-long conversations per chapter, as well as more dialogue in the pages of narration). It's a style of teaching which leads to less ability to conjugate without a thought (ala Monty Python), but more ability to construct your own sentences for conversation.

Bit of both really - CLC alongside endless rote conjugation which those who had Kennedy's Latin Primer inflicted on them would recognise. The intention of the latter being to address exactly the point you raise about the CLC not giving you instinctive grammatical facility. By the 4th form we'd moved onto Virgil anyway.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

No no, I agree. Transcribing dialect like Twain or even Dickens is right out. If I cannot indicate accent and social stratum purely by pace, vocabulary and tone, I am failing in my art.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

What is meant by "Victorian values" ?

To British people, the Victorian era was the time in history when we were the most powerful nation, the most advanced economy. A certain amount of confidence and pride goes along with that. Not individual pride, but being part of a successful society (exporting "civilisation" to the benighted foreigners...)

It was before the welfare state - self-reliance and a positive attitude to hard work were a requirement.

It was a time of optimism and belief in the progress of science.

It was a time of expansionist capitalism, when the entrepreneurs who could see how to harness the technology could be elevated to the peerage. It was before socialism, so the peerage meant something. It was a class-divided society where upward movement was possible.

It was the time of pre-Raphaelite painters. It was a can-do society, a time of philanthropists and Boy Scouts.

In our modern cynical world with all its problems, there's something very attractive about the Victorian outlook...

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

It was a time when if you were not a white male upper class person, you were SOL.

Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
It was a time when if you were not a white male upper class person, you were SOL.

I would say upper-middle class white men also had it fairly well. Note there are some subtle differences between Britain and the US. In Britain you couldn't be real upper class without some recognition from the existing upper class that you were at least gentry so the poorest upper class were considerably poorer than than the richest upper-middle class. Admittedly a generation or two of wealth and a few marriages usually eased the wealthiest upper middle class families into the upper class (along sometimes with a change in religion to CoE if they weren't that already).

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

I hope the following doesn't come across as rude--it is certainly not meant personally, but it is my honest reaction to the array of ideas in question. Please imagine "I believe" at the start of each of my responses.

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
What is meant by "Victorian values" ?

To British people, the Victorian era was the time in history when we were the most powerful nation, the most advanced economy. A certain amount of confidence and pride goes along with that. Not individual pride, but being part of a successful society (exporting "civilisation" to the benighted foreigners...)

And thank God that's in the past now. The US desperately needs to get over it as well. I agree with Chesterton that the whole "empire" thing was a terrible, terrible thing for England--as it has been for the US--and, of course, for the numerous victims worldwide of both of our empires.

quote:

It was before the welfare state

Which, while it needs to be improved on both sides of the pond, is a hell of a lot better than unbridled capitalism.

quote:

It was a time of optimism and belief in the progress of science.

Optimism is good, working on the sciences is good, but the whole science-worship of the last couple of centuries was a ghastly mistake on a number of levels.

quote:

It was a time of expansionist capitalism

To me this is by no means a good thing.

quote:
when the entrepreneurs who could see how to harness the technology could be elevated to the peerage.

On the backs of the workers, yes.

quote:
It was before socialism

And thank God we've improved some in that regard.

quote:
In our modern cynical world with all its problems, there's something very attractive about the Victorian outlook...

Honestly, I find a lot of it horribly repugnant. I find the attitude here in the US about such things--especially among a lot of the wealthy and powerful--to be excruciatingly and dangerously toxic.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Originally posted by Russ:

quote:
It was before the welfare state - self-reliance and a positive attitude to hard work were a requirement.

The origins of the welfare state can be traced back to Victorian times - and much earlier. In Scotland Poor Relief was administered by the church from the initial legislation in 1579 until it was transferred to the state by the Poor Law Act of 1845.

Poor relief provided the bare minimum but it did exist. In my village I've used the poor records (which are an excellent resource for family historians) to trace one family through three generations of dipping in and out of poor relief - initially an unmarried mother who relied on poor relief when her children were little, came off when her children started earning, her daughter then became an unmarried mother and went onto poor relief, and so on.

I assume England had similar legislation.

So if you regard the "welfare state" as state provision of aid to the poor, then it was existence from an early part of Victorian times, and grew from there.

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:

I assume England had similar legislation.

England had in the mid 16th century a parochial poor rate, collected from parishioners, to provide for the poor, it became statutory obligation in 1568. There were also various poor laws made, culminating in the Poor Law in 1601, some of these included the provision of work for benefits but provision was also made for those incapable of work, and benefits might include money, food or clothing. Parishes made individual emergency payments too, for providing for poor women who had just given birth or nursing sick parishioners, for example. They provided care and schooling for orphans, wet nurses in the country for orphaned infants and provided money for families of the poor deceased.
Of course, state hospitals also existed in the 16th c, Barts was jointly paid for by Henry VIII and the City of London.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
I agree with Chesterton that the whole "empire" thing was a terrible, terrible thing for England--as it has been for the US--and, of course, for the numerous victims worldwide of both of our empires.

Seems to me that US "imperialism" is at its most attractive in those who really believe that democracy is a great good that everyone should be able to share in, and that helping other peoples get there by joining them in fighting their tyrants is a good thing.

That value can be abused - used as rhetoric to cover interventions designed for economic self-advantage or one's own geopolitical power. And it can be acted out in a blinkered and culturally-insensitive way. If you want to condemn any particular act of US foreign policy, I'll probably agree with you.

But it's the value system itself rather than the consequences of any particular attempt to enact it that we're focussing on here.

And expansionist capitalism seems to me better than zero-sum capitalism - the assumption that so many make today that all wealth is at someone else's expense.

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :

The thing is it's* attitude to democracies who've voted the wrong way is slightly questionable.
(and often come back to bite it)

I mean if just claiming Democracies good is enough then North Korea must be the most attractive country in the world. (it isn't, in case you hadn't noticed)

*And the UK's, especially 100 years ago

[ 29. June 2014, 13:41: Message edited by: Jay-Emm ]

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
if just claiming Democracies good is enough then North Korea must be the most attractive country in the world. (it isn't, in case you hadn't noticed)

Perhaps you're confusing democracy with voting ?

Some of the most valuable elements of western democracy as we know it are less to do with which bunch of bastards gets to hold the reigns of power and more to do with limiting the harm that they can do to us when they get there.

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Some of the most valuable elements of western democracy as we know it are less to do with which bunch of bastards gets to hold the reigns of power and more to do with limiting the harm that they can do to us when they get there.

... valuable to who? Isn't "limiting the harm that they can do to us" (italics mine) missing the point of whether a governmental system becomes better or worse?

Forgive me if I misunderstand you here, but I think that the whole "change the rest of the world to suit us" mindset is indeed a horribly toxic kind of imperialism--and, yes, was spiritually deadly to England in the past, and is so to the US now.

Believing that one has a good thing and wanting to share it with others (in this case, western-style democracy, and often with some sort of Christianty) is great, but the ends never justify the means.

I am OK with some kinds of capitalism (someone opening their own fish and chip shop is great, etc.), but what that often was, and continues to try to become (at least here in the US) seems to come from a very definitely "I win, you lose, screw the poor" mindset. There's a lot of Ayn Rand's "no one has a social obligation to help anyone else" attitude here amongst those with massive amounts of wealth and power. It is perhaps easy to paint all kinds of/approaches to capitalism with that broad brush right now, but I don't mean that people should not be able to make products that other people want to buy and use money as a means of exchange.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

In one of the Lord Peter novels, his fellow investigator Miss Climpson recalls Victorian social strictures as difficult and humiliating. That's what strikes the modern researcher -- that the rules were so complex, so strict, and so ultimately pointless. it was not possible to exclaim, "Who cares?" People were confined in these rigid systems.

Posted by blackbeard (# 10848) on :

The term "Victorian Values" seems to have more than one meaning; for instance, "the way things are", or "the way things should be". And Victorian society was complex, as ours today is, and values in one part might not be the same as in another.

One of the things I admire about the Victorians is the way some of them, at least, believed that life could be better and worked towards that end - in some cases with success. They might not have eliminated poverty, sickness, and injustice, but some of them, at least, had a pretty good try. We, today, are in their debt.

Of course there were some nasty ideas and some nasty people around then, as there still are. But the overall impression I get is energy, optimism and a desire for progress.

Blackbeard, looking on the bright side

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

What strikes me (I have been researching like gee golly whiz) is the chiaroscuro -- the tremendous contrasts. The darks were very dark and the brights tremendously bright. Appalling poverty, a misery that is hard to find today, side by side with stupendous wealth that is also hard to find today (although possibly I do not move in the right circles). Tremendous creativity and invention, right alongside the most stultifying conservatism and unwillingness to change.
Modern society has, by and large, smoothed over the highs and the lows to some extent.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Russ:
[qb]I am OK with some kinds of capitalism (someone opening their own fish and chip shop is great, etc.), but what that often was, and continues to try to become (at least here in the US) seems to come from a very definitely "I win, you lose, screw the poor" mindset. There's a lot of Ayn Rand's "no one has a social obligation to help anyone else" attitude here amongst those with massive amounts of wealth and power. It is perhaps easy to paint all kinds of/approaches to capitalism with that broad brush right now, but I don't mean that people should not be able to make products that other people want to buy and use money as a means of exchange.

I appreciate the distinction you're making.

"I win, you lose" is zero-sum thinking. That's not the Victorian (English) mindset. I imagine that the Victorians would say something like "industry makes wealth" with no implication of taking away from anyone.

I'm tempted to add that taking away is what governments and brigands do, but that might get us sidetracked...

Philanthropy is part of "Victorian values". Many English towns have a civic park that was given to the people by a local rich industrialist. Don't know if soup kitchens are a Victorian invention - it wouldn't surprise me.

They didn't invent missionaries, but Protestant missions were a part of Victorian culture.

So I don't see either aggressive business competitiveness or absence of social concern as strong elements of what English people mean when they talk of Victorian values, although the emphasis in the US may be different. I see the Victorians as more paternalistic. (You may not think much of that either).

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I have in my possession a cherished table and two chairs bought from the estate of one Charlotte Despard by my grandparents, who respected her as a suffragist. (Not sure if they knew she later supported Sinn Fein.) She was a little later than Victoria, and the reason her furniture was sold was because it had been seized as a result of her not paying fines. The fines were because she refused to pay taxes without representation. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, the taxes she wasn't paying were the National Insurance payments for her household staff. So her principles trumped care for the poorer members of society. Very Victorian. And an attitude we can see in politics now.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I see the Victorians as more paternalistic. (You may not think much of that either).

I think genuine paternalistic care is at least well-meaning; I believe very strongly in nobless oblige myself. There can be issues with it, such as the assumptions about various people (especially ethnocentric or sexist assumptions), but those could be corrected with experience and openness--the principle of trying to help those who are perceived as weaker than oneself, or in need, is I believe an absolutely right one.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

One thing that impresses me very favorably about the Victorians is that prominent scholars and scientists, such as Thomas Huxley, were willing to give talks at Workmen's Institutes describing their work in terms that the hearers could understand.

The audience was self-selected, but any man who wanted to learn could attend these lectures.

Moo

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Yes, that was a new thing. Nothing like it, so far as I know, previous to that time. We are spoilt, with our Google and internet. There was a time when to find out something quite simple (how to propagate a begonia, for instance) took some doing. Or you just dived in and reinvented the wheel yourself, experimenting until you made it work.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
One thing that impresses me very favorably about the Victorians is that prominent scholars and scientists, such as Thomas Huxley, were willing to give talks at Workmen's Institutes describing their work in terms that the hearers could understand.

The audience was self-selected, but any man who wanted to learn could attend these lectures.

Moo

Oh dear, this has reminded me of a story retailed in a dictionary of Sussex dialect compiled by a vicarage daughter who did not wholly understand the Sussex rural people. She tended to assume lack of education meant stupid, and she had no sense of humour. This story does suggest that people would turn up to be lectured on anything, though.

At such an institute, the lecturer was announced and the assembled locals told the subject was to be "Optics", at which an elderly attender spoke up. "I don't know about where you come from, but round 'ere, we calls 'em 'op-poles'." (I have omitted most of the dialect indicators she wrote, out of good manners.)

Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
One thing that impresses me very favorably about the Victorians is that prominent scholars and scientists, such as Thomas Huxley, were willing to give talks at Workmen's Institutes describing their work in terms that the hearers could understand.

I think this owes more to the beginnings of the mass labour movement than to the Victorian era - as similar things were replicated across different countries.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
One thing that impresses me very favorably about the Victorians is that prominent scholars and scientists, such as Thomas Huxley, were willing to give talks at Workmen's Institutes describing their work in terms that the hearers could understand.
I think this owes more to the beginnings of the mass labour movement than to the Victorian era - as similar things were replicated across different countries.

But it was middle-class people like Huxley who were willing to give their time and effort to this.

Moo

Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
But it was middle-class people like Huxley who were willing to give their time and effort to this.

Moo

and where they didn't, you had libraries in working men's clubs and free debate. It's really very little to do with the Victorian era.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

In this novel, my Victorian hero is in the pamphlet business. Informational pamphlets, everything from begonia propagation to (gasp!) birth control. A proto Google...

Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
In this novel, my Victorian hero is in the pamphlet business. Informational pamphlets, everything from begonia propagation to (gasp!) birth control. A proto Google...

I thought birth control literature was frowned upon by most Christian denominations then and distribution generally done by the freethinking side (Annie Besant [at that time an atheist] and Charles Bradlaugh were convicted in 1877 for publishing a book on birth control and then had the conviction dismissed on a technicality) though England didn't go to the lengths the US did in forbidding birth control literature. However wasn't you hero somewhat on the church side?

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:

No corner of society was safe from these determined, capable women -
I rather think it all passed over the existence of the rural poor.

Determined and capable? Without doubt they had time on their hands. But many who were campaigning for the reform of prostitution were working their kitchen maids for 16 hour days and putting them to sleep in damp attics. many who wept over little Nell in Dickens, made the life of teenage servants hell.

Even in the move to reform prostitutes, there was a vested interest. The use of such "services" was pretty universal in the metropolitan towns (in London 1 in 6 women were estimated to be prostitutes): it wasn't just Mrs Beeton who caught syphilis from a prostitute via her husband.

It's really interesting reading Agatha Christies from the earlier ones to the later ones, and seeing the gradual shift from young girls going into service to them working in shops, cafes etc - accompanied by the upper-middle-class characters complaining about not being able to find 'suitable' staff. Something which was written with the aim of arousing sympathy for the mistress of the household, rather than being heartened at fewer girls in service (though obviously by this point working as a servant was not much like its Victorian equivalent).

One of the more concerning things is the return to cheap domestic labour as the norm - though this time it's imported rather than home-grown. I see little difference between the Victorian woman who campaigns against prostitution but works her teenage servant half to death, and a modern woman campaigning against FGM but paying her Latvian cleaner £5 an hour cash in hand.

Posted by ExclamationMark (# 14715) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:

quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:

No corner of society was safe from these determined, capable women -
I rather think it all passed over the existence of the rural poor.

Determined and capable? Without doubt they had time on their hands. But many who were campaigning for the reform of prostitution were working their kitchen maids for 16 hour days and putting them to sleep in damp attics. many who wept over little Nell in Dickens, made the life of teenage servants hell.

Even in the move to reform prostitutes, there was a vested interest. The use of such "services" was pretty universal in the metropolitan towns (in London 1 in 6 women were estimated to be prostitutes): it wasn't just Mrs Beeton who caught syphilis from a prostitute via her husband.
It's really interesting reading Agatha Christies from the earlier ones to the later ones, and seeing the gradual shift from young girls going into service to them working in shops, cafes etc - accompanied by the upper-middle-class characters complaining about not being able to find 'suitable' staff. Something which was written with the aim of arousing sympathy for the mistress of the household, rather than being heartened at fewer girls in service (though obviously by this point working as a servant was not much like its Victorian equivalent).

One of the more concerning things is the return to cheap domestic labour as the norm - though this time it's imported rather than home-grown. I see little difference between the Victorian woman who campaigns against prostitution but works her teenage servant half to death, and a modern woman campaigning against FGM but paying her Latvian cleaner £5 an hour cash in hand.

Agree with you 100% What's worse - they pay minimum wage or less, not the living wage.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
Never mind a few years of schooling, I have a degree in (French and) Latin and I wouldn’t be able to speak it spontaneously. I could probably compose a sentence if I was writing down*, but I’d have to think about it.

You probably wouldn't have to. Many years ago my Latin teacher told me that spoken Latin was different from written Latin, and that people spoke a rather more colloquial form than you might expect from the written texts that have survived.

Interestingly, the same is true of Arabic today, in that there is a formal written Arabic, also used for news broadcasts and other occasions, which is widely understood across the Arabic-speaking world but not used at home, where people speak whatever regional dialect of Arabic they happen to have been brought up in, so I see no reason why that shouldn't have been true of Latin.

I have to say the grammatical rules are quite a lot easier in colloquial Arabic - you can just get on and speak it, whereas the niceties have to be observed in formal Arabic. I find it hard to believe that every Latin speaker was punctiliously correct, especially in the provinces where their own native languages would have influenced not only their accent but their syntax and vocabulary, innit?

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Ariel:

quote:
I find it hard to believe that every Latin speaker was punctiliously correct, especially in the provinces where their own native languages would have influenced not only their accent but their syntax and vocabulary, innit?

Some linguists have suggested that modern Romance languages are really all dialects of the same language (pause for furious splutterings from the Academie Francaise). If you add all the non-standard dialects and minority languages such as Catalan, Galician and Occitan into the mix you can produce a rather nice dialectal continuum that covers most of what used to be the Roman Empire - although a lot of these are edging towards extinction, especially in France where the government refuses to recognise minority languages.

But yes; it's very unlikely (I'd say impossible) that Latin had a single spoken variety that was exactly the same as literary Latin and was spoken in exactly the same way throughout the empire. It goes against everything we know about how languages work.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

Vulgar Latin - mind, the problem is that as it was a spoken vernacular we have a lot less to go on to reconstruct it. I'm sure that Latin speakers did observe correct noun cases and so on, as speakers of languages that decline nouns today generally do. The loss of the Latin case marking system through the Vulgar Latin and Romance periods was more to do with a falling together of sounds in endings than a fundamental issue with case marking itself.

Nevertheless, even spoken Classical Latin is simplified compared with the written, just as it is in English where there's no official distinction between vernacular and written. One has the space in writing to compose long sentences with lots of dependent subclauses, clearly considered good style in Classical times, given the output of Caesar and Cicero that you may or may not have suffered at school, where the subject and the verb can be separated by many words and clauses. Spoken language is more spontaneous and tends to avoid that sort of thing, simply because brains don't like holding onto unresolved bits of language waiting for the bit that makes sense of them.

[tangent]

For example, take Puella (girl), First Dec. Fem.

Nom. Puella
Voc. Puella
Acc. Puellam
Gen. Puellae
Dat. Puellae
Abl. Puella (long a)

First of all, final -m had ceased to be pronounced in the days of the Republic, becoming a nasal preceding vowel, and lost completely during the Empire. That causes the Nom. and Acc. to fall together, requiring word order to serve to avoid ambiguity.

Secondly, the vowel length distinctions were lost, causing the Nom./Voc./Acc. endings to fall together with the Ablative - hence there's now a need for prepositions to distinguish Ablative functions from Accusative.

-ae fell together with -e, giving us only two forms in the Sing. - Puella/Puelle. And Puelle is of course identical with the plural Nom./Voc. forms.

Similar falling together occurred in 2nd Dec. Masc. nouns; -us changed to -o, -um also to -o

Once you're using word order and prepositions, the semantic load of the case marking system is lessened, and can become unstable, especially when that analytic move has resulted from a reduction in distinctiveness of the case endings themselves.

[/tangent]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
a lot of these are edging towards extinction, especially in France where the government refuses to recognise minority languages.

Oi! That's not strictly true. France may not have ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Language (although it did sign it), but according to this page, the constitutional law of July 23, 2008 recognised "Regional languages belong to the patrimony of France".

Admittedly, recognising anything other than the mythical "Republican ideal", of which French is the language and in which ethnicity does not exist, is intrinsically complicated here.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

For fictional purposes I can fudge my birth control publications a bit. I am well used to taking shocking liberties with reality in the cause of a good story, and this is irresistible. (I never resist temptation.)
Everything will be clearly labeled for the married couples only, and be distributed by women's health institutes and medical missions serving the poor. And lost in a welter of pamphlets about the nature of the Eucharist, and propagating begonias...

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Some linguists have suggested that modern Romance languages are really all dialects of the same language (pause for furious splutterings from the Academie Francaise).

Mm yes. I'd be inclined to agree with that - being able to speak French and Italian (and having done Latin at school) has been very helpful in that so far I haven't needed to learn either Spanish or Portuguese to be able to get the gist of the written languages.

I believe it was Henry Beard who came up with the Latin phrase for "French is really just badly pronounced lower-class provincial Latin." [Biased]

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I heard a radio programme which argued that the people of Ancient Rome were speaking something much more like Italian than might have been expected - the evidence being the misspellings in graffiti, which, assuming that the writers were actually recording speech phonetically, were readable as that.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I heard a radio programme which argued that the people of Ancient Rome were speaking something much more like Italian than might have been expected - the evidence being the misspellings in graffiti, which, assuming that the writers were actually recording speech phonetically, were readable as that.

Late Imperial Rome, yes. But Vulgar Latin retained the case system for example which Italian has lost; it still exists in Old French, albeit reduced to two cases, and a relatively complex case system still exists in Romanian. However, it's really quite hard to know how far back the periphrastic tense forms which gave rise to the tenses used in modern Romance languages go; the French future for example is derived from Infinitive+to have, and the French perfect and pluperfect are not derived from the Latin tenses either but from forms of "to have", in the present or imperfect tenses + past participle. We will probably never know whether the Roman in the street would have said "Ire habeo ad villam" (which would give rise to the modern French future tense construction) or "Ad villam habebo" (as our Latin teachers would have taught us)*.

A parallel can be seen in Modern Colloquial Welsh compared with the literary language; the latter has an inflected imperfect which cannot be used in the colloquial language which uses a periphrastic construction to express the tense; the inflected imperfect exists in speech only as a conditional. The preterite and future can both be expressed using inflections or periphrastic constructions using gwneud - "do"; should the inflected forms fall out of colloquial use then a similar disparity would exist as between Classical Latin and Romance, and quite possibly between Classical and Vulgar Latin. It may be that at certain periods our Roman in the street might have used either sentence, perhaps as an matter of register.

*Apologies now for any errors in Latin grammar; it was over thirty years ago.

[ 03. July 2014, 18:54: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:

Knowing Latin is quite useful if you are studying one of its modern dialects

Not only that--because Latin is a language which is no longer changing, there is very little uncertainty regarding its grammar. This is incredibly useful when you go on to learn another language. Once you have a concept of things like verbal moods and declensions of nouns and adjectives (things which are practically vestigial in English), it becomes a lot easier to learn German, Russian, French, et al.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I found a need recently to get the original Latin of a dirty graffito, found on a wall in Pompeii. Unfortunately vast googling only ever got me the English translation, and I can't afford to fly to Naples and look at the wall in question. However, with the English in hand it was possible to reverse-engineer the obscenities back into Latin, and a kindly Latinist adjusted it into the vulgar Latin so that it was more suitable for scribbling onto restroom walls.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Eutychus:

quote:
France may not have ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Language (although it did sign it), but according to this page, the constitutional law of July 23, 2008 recognised "Regional languages belong to the patrimony of France".

Glad to hear that my information is out of date!

Karl is right too. The "Roman Empire" lasted for hundreds of years; if you add in the empire-building years during the Republic, somewhere between six and eight hundred years. Of course the spoken language changed during that time; think of how much English has changed since Chaucer's day.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

Some languages change more than others. That's partly due to influences like trade, occupation by foreign powers, etc. Spanish, for example, has changed less than English. With a knowledge of Spanish, it's possible to read medieval Spanish documents much more easily than it is to read English ones of the same period.

[ 04. July 2014, 11:34: Message edited by: Ariel ]

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
The "Roman Empire" lasted for hundreds of years; if you add in the empire-building years during the Republic, somewhere between six and eight hundred years.

Add about a thousand to that. The Roman Empire was finally destroyed in 1453, when the Turks took Constantinople.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
The "Roman Empire" lasted for hundreds of years; if you add in the empire-building years during the Republic, somewhere between six and eight hundred years.
Add about a thousand to that. The Roman Empire was finally destroyed in 1453, when the Turks took Constantinople.

Since the Eastern Roman Empire spoke Greek, for these purposes for Roman Empire read Western Roman Empire [Biased]

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by blackbeard:
Victorian society was complex, as ours today is, and values in one part might not be the same as in another.

One of the things I admire about the Victorians is the way some of them, at least, believed that life could be better and worked towards that end... ...the overall impression I get is energy, optimism and a desire for progress.

Yes. A short list of Victorian values would have to include Progress as well as Industry.

And Duty. And Propriety and Good Manners.

Not that the Victorian age was perfect or that everybody always lived up to these values. When did that ever happen ?

But that sort of value set seems much healthier than some held today. To listen to some people today, you'd think their only value was following tradition, or overthrowing tradition, or flattening the income distribution.

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

I am quite sure that those who are only looking for gain and profit are to be found equally today and in Victorian times, as could a number of other value systems.

And remind me, in what era did Karl Marx live?

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
And remind me, in what era did Karl Marx live?

*applause*

Yes, there were good things back then, but I think that we need to remember the horrible things that needed reform back then too, which Marx and Dickens and others wrote about.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Dafyd:

quote:
Add about a thousand to that. The Roman Empire was finally destroyed in 1453, when the Turks took Constantinople.

Yes, but as Karl said the Eastern Empire spoke Greek and I was talking about the Western Empire. Sorry for not being clear.

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
And remind me, in what era did Karl Marx live?
*applause*

Yes, there were good things back then, but I think that we need to remember the horrible things that needed reform back then too, which Marx and Dickens and others wrote about.

Hmmm, but by the same token there's an argument that Marx, together with most of the other Young Hegelians, only got to his view of the world because of both the positive and negative assumptions he was able to make about the aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and proletariat from observation.

What could be regarded as the more positive elements of mid/late Victorian society (and don't forget the majority of Dickens' books - especially David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, are projecting backwards into the Regency/Late Georgian era NOT Victorian) such as thrift, industry, self-help, strong belief in progress, made it possible to conceive of the sort of world that he's talking about in the German Ideology where a man can labour in the morning, then fish or hunt in the afternoon.

If he saw the world as it is now, and with the examples of the USSR et al, would he still be as confident in the triumph of the proletariat? I make no doubt, seeing as how he was a clever chap, that he would have come up with something, but the Communist Manifesto is taking the best bits of Victorian scientific and intellectual thought and riffing off them. In his own way, he's no less of a product of Victorian mores and experience, than Winston Churchill, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, or King Edward VII (all of whom responded to their age in very different ways both professionally and privately).

Above all, Marx was also quite a jolly, innately positive chap. He saw the problems of his era, but didn't get despondent so much as very Victorianally say "I've come up with this highly rational 19th century system, and when it's implemented everything's going to be ok."

Whereas what he didn't see coming was the triumph of some sort of turbo charged amalgam of Adam Smith without the controls and John Stewart Mill without the morality, planted in a society that looks like a degenerate version of what Thorstein Veblen was writing about in the Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899!

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Marx was also heavily into eschatology, wasn't he? He seems very influenced by Jewish and Christian notions of an 'end' and a 'beginning', all couched in secular terms. They stormed the gates of heaven, and so on. But like many eschatological schemes, it collapses in disappointment.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
Whereas what he didn't see coming was the triumph of some sort of turbo charged amalgam of Adam Smith without the controls and John Stewart Mill without the morality, planted in a society that looks like a degenerate version of what Thorstein Veblen was writing about in the Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899!

One could argue that was precisely what he did see. What he didn't see coming was capitalism with a welfare state attached. (Nor did Marx think that you could get from a pre-capitalist society like nineteenth century Russia to a post-capitalist society without going through period of capitalism in between.)

Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
Whereas what he didn't see coming was the triumph of some sort of turbo charged amalgam of Adam Smith without the controls and John Stewart Mill without the morality, planted in a society that looks like a degenerate version of what Thorstein Veblen was writing about in the Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899!
... What he didn't see coming was capitalism with a welfare state attached....

I hadn't thought of that when I typed it, but actually CWAWSA isn't a bad (and certainly pithier) description of what I was driving at ref Smith, Mill and Veblen. Certainly post WW2 UK politics may have set up the UK's welfare state with the best of intentions (probably closest to Mill's), but the fact that it suited the purpose of Smith (in terms of having a healthy and productive workforce), and was an enabler of Veblenism can't but have helped.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

Oh Lord, I'm not at all a Marxist--I was just saying that Marx wrote about "horrible things that needed reform back then too."

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I have just finished reading THE VICTORIANS by A.N. Wilson, a huge fat book that is alas! rather disorganized. Not the best view into the era.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

Is that the one that kicks off by establishing that neither Victoria nor Albert were the children of their putative fathers? I agree that after that rather interesting start, it went downhill.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Yes, that's the one. (In theory DNA testing among all the various descendants could sort this out, but I am certain that will never happen.) The book completely wanders away into the bulrushes by the end.
Tell you the book about the period that I found both enlightening and entertaining: MRS. ROBINSON'S DISGRACE, by Kate Summserscale. About the OJ Simpson trial of the period, only this trial could never take place today.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

From what I know of A.N. Wilson's other work (specifically a quite distorted biography of C.S. Lewis) I would not trust a word of it.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Does anyone have an especially good book on the period they recommend? There has to be something better than Wilson.
I am about to get my hot little hands on the first volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill, which should be interesting.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

I don't think a single good overview book could exist; you'd need to narrow down which aspect of Victorian life you're interested in. In 64 years, Britain changed hugely - industrialisation, urbanisation, growth of the Empire, legislative reform, growth of the middle classes, scientific breakthroughs, changing role of women, changing role of children, development of the railway system, emigration, increasing (male) suffrage, appearance of mass media etc etc. It was 64 years of a society in a state of flux with winners and losers.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Actually, Judith Flanders "A Circle of Sisters" is interesting; four sisters, one of whom became the wife of Edward Burne-Jones, one the wife of the Director of the National Gallery, Edward Poynter, one the mother of Rudyard Kipling and one the mother of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin; the story of their lives, marriages, births, deaths, also touches lightly on many topics - the art world, commerce, industry, morality, India, class structure, religion.

It's not an overview of the Victorian era by any means, just one family's story.

I enjoyed it very much.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I did read that, and it was great. I also liked THE VICTORIAN HOME, I think by the same author.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Have you read "The Invisible Woman" the biography of Dicken's mistress Ellen Ternan, by Claire Tomalin?

Gives lots of good background stuff about the Victorian theatre, the start of mass media, Victorian London, railway travel, the literary scene, as well as the fascinating story of Ellen Ternan herself, all meticulously researched.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Yes, I have. (It is on my business card: Annoyingly well-read.) They made it into a movie, did you see it? Quite good, with Ralph Fiennes as Dickens.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

I didn't want to see the film; I loved the book and didn't want anything to spoil it.

How about Flora Annie Steel's "The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook"?

On the one hand, it gives you a grim insight into the unthinking assumption of superiority of the British in India.

On the other hand, it is impossible not to admire a woman who gives breezy directions for dealing with cholera ("even if collapse sets in, and apparent death, hope should not be given up") transporting pianos to the hills ("if the road is only a camel road, the piano must be carried by the servants, of whom fourteen or sixteen will be needed") treating a bite from a rabid dog ("cauterise remorselessly with nitrate of silver, or carbolic soap, or actual hot iron.") etc etc.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Well you do get a stupendous snippet of Fiennes (in his role as Dickens) doing his famous reading from DAVID COPPERFIELD. But there is no way a movie can get as deep in as a book, it is true. I will scout around for the Indian manual...

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:

How about Flora Annie Steel's "The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook"?

On the one hand, it gives you a grim insight into the unthinking assumption of superiority of the British in India.

On the other hand, it is impossible not to admire a woman who gives breezy directions for dealing with cholera ("even if collapse sets in, and apparent death, hope should not be given up") transporting pianos to the hills ("if the road is only a camel road, the piano must be carried by the servants, of whom fourteen or sixteen will be needed") treating a bite from a rabid dog ("cauterise remorselessly with nitrate of silver, or carbolic soap, or actual hot iron.") etc etc.

I have that on my Kindle, I must get round to reading it. We referred to her during my OU course on 'Empire'.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

It's a "dip in and out" rather than a "read" The recipes are mostly dull, but the chapters on "Duties of the Servants" and "Simple remedies" are eye-opening.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Clearly I need to look at this. My characters are on the way to the Honduras, which surely must have been primitive in the 1860s. So I will be ISO rough-and-ready period treatments.
Today I went to the library and got out THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY, a collection of period photographs. Also THE VICTORIAN WORLD PICTURE by David Newsome and (totally out of period but I could not resist) THE PROFLIGATE SON by Nicola Phillips.

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