CAO, RUEPERT JIEL D.

COM535M G01

THE VICTORIAN AND THE MODERN MAN

The British people had a lot of thinkers and literary figures that made history and became fountain of
knowledge in the study of culture. In particular, two influential figures in cultural studies are British:
Matthew Arnold and Raymond Williams. The two lived in different eras: one is a Victorian and one
lived in the modern era. This key difference influences not only difference in language but also
difference in thoughts, insights, and ideologies.

Matthew Arnold lived in the Victorian era a time of large-scale change in the British society brought
about by the Industrial revolution. An empowered middle-class, the stagnant democracy, and the everexploited masses was at the center of his cultural treatise. In the first chapter of his Culture and
Anarchy entitled Sweetness and Light, Arnold focused on defining culture, which is, according to him,
the pursuit of perfection. It is the marriage of beauty and intelligence a goal, an ideal, which
everybody needs to embrace and attain. It is a broad intellectual interest with the goal of social
improvement. To summarize, it is a common weapon that everybody should have to do good. He
always mentioned the will of God and religion in his arguments to make people understand what he
means by pursuit of perfection.

Another figure in cultural studies emerged in the 20th century in the person of Raymond Williams. In
his work Culture is Ordinary, Williams defined culture not as an ideal, but as a reality that everybody
experiences. He argued that culture in two ways: as a way of life and as arts and learning. He argues in
the first part of Culture is Ordinary that every human society has its own shape, its own purpose, its
own meaning. Every human society expresses these in institutions and directions...