Unit 5: English Literature and Culture II

DAYPO: https://www.daypo.com/ud5-complementos-lengua-inglesa.html
5.1. Victorian and Edwardian Britain
The Edwardian Era (1901-1910) still retained many of the characteristics of
the previous era regarding moral values and conduct. As king, Edward enabled the
modernisation and reorganization of the British Navy and Army, favored peace and
diplomatic relationship with the other European nations and embraced the new
technological advances.
There were many changes regarding the political sphere, with advancing
imperialism in Africa and Asia, for the control of raw resources, markets and trade
routes. For Britain, the control of the Suez Canal (from 1888) and strategic outposts
in the Mediterranean (Gibraltar) meant that Britain still ruled the seas.
There was also a development in the strength of workers and trade unions,
legalized in 1872.

5.1.1. Women’s movements

In Victorian England the interests of women were represented by those of
their fathers and husbands. The word “feminism” was only introduced in English
dictionaries in the 1890s. Until then, it was referred to as “the woman questions”.
Ideas about social and humanitarian reforms helped to fuel the concern for
the woman question, engaging political, social and economic aspects of reforms that
were led by men.
The feminist movement was concerned with several aspects:
- the idea of equality between men and women
- ideas from the Enlightenment that advocated for the suppression of privileges
- utopian socialist ideas were embraced

Mary Wollstonecraft defended such views in the 18th century, although the
French Revolution and the extreme political conservatism in Britain due to the
Napoleonic Wars led to repression of any idea considered as radical.
The first organized women’s movements appeared around the 1850s to
demand the reform of the legal system.
The English feminist movement was influenced by French utopian socialist
thought and socialist thought that considered women’s situation as part of the
working-class situation. Women’s inequality was theorized by Engels as a direct
consequence of their exclusion from socially productive work.
The Utilitarian philosophy that influenced the English feminist movement
advocated for equality in education and the separation of all religious influence from
ethis, law, and politics.
In 1893 New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant the vote
to all women over the age of 21.
In Britain, Emmeline Pankhurst founded in 1903 the British Women’s Social
and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only association that fought for the right to
vote. The term “suffragette” refers to members of this women’s rights organization
that were active through civil disobedience and radical actions.
With the outbreak of WWI, the movement focused on the war effort and
volunteered for many traditional male roles, emphasizing that women were capable
too.
In the 1918 general election, some women were able to vote for the first time
(those that were property owners and over 30). Women were also allowed to be
elected to parliament. In 1928 the voting suffrage for women was extended to all
women over 21.

In the American context, the demand for women’s suffrage began to gather
strength in the 1840s. During the Seneca Falls Convention (1848), considered as the
first women’s rights convention, a resolution was passed in favor of women’s
suffrage. The first national suffrage organizations were established in the 1870s and
mainly pursued women’s suffrage: the National American Woman Suffrage
Association (NAWSA), and The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and
later the National Woman’s Party (NWP). Their appeals to vote were rejected, and
they advocated for the amendment of the US Constitution state by state.
Women gained the franchise in the states of Washington in 1910, but not all
states allowed women to vote in the same conditions. In 1912 the Progressive PArty,
formed by Theodore Roosevelt, endorsed women’s suffrage.
It wasn’t until the outbreak of WWI in 1917 that the suffrage movement had a
significant influence, as women replaced men into workplaces in the home front.
By 1918 as consequence of the suffrage in Britain, women in most Canadian
provinces could vote and that pressured the US into passing the 19th Amendment to
the United States Constitution. By the end of 1919 women could vote for president in
most of the states in the US. The 1920 election became the first United States
presidential election in which women were allowed to vote in every state.

Feminist literature
Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792) is
considered the earliest work of feminist philosophy.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, authors take positions regarding the role
of women and their rights in western society by writing foundational works of
feminism that supported the suffrage.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is regarded as an important work in the American
feminist literature. It was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 and it portrays
the mainstream attitudes towards the mental health of women in the 19th century,
where hysteria was the main diagnosis for women.
In “A Room of One’s Own” (1928), Virginia Woolf gives the reasons why a
woman must have money and a room of her own to write fiction: the creation of the
creative space to produce their own reality.

5.1.2. House of Windsor

In 1917 George V became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which
he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German
public sentiment with the outbreak of WWI.
As a result of WWI the empires of Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of
Germany fell, and the British Empire achieved its greatest extension. George V was
King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from
May 6th, 1910 until his death in 1936.
George V was succeeded by his son Edward VIII who would abdicate after
just ten months to marry Wallis Simpson. After this, George V’s brother George VI
became king → he was a symbol of endurance in the home front during WWII.

5.2. The British Empire: Development until the 1900s

5.2.1. India
The official discourse emphasized the deplorable conditions the British
officials and civil servants had to suffer because of the climate and diseases to help
the Indian leaders and population organize in a civilized way, but the British Empire
obtained great benefits from India, mainly economic, and this wasn’t invested back
into the country, but taken to the metropolis or to other parts of the Empire, while
India suffered famines during the 19th century.
British rule in India had been managed by the East India Company until The
Indian Mutiny in 1857, which left a legacy of mistrust and hatred between the Indians
and the British. After the rebellion, the British government took direct control of India.
The period of British rule after the mutiny until the Partition and Independence of
India and Pakistan in 1947 is called the Raj.
Only the elite and high classes of India gained from the British rule, while the
majority of the population did not see much change in their lives. Under British rule
farming was improved, the coal industry was developed, and public health and life
expectancy were improved due to the use of new water supplies and the introduction
of new medical knowledge to treat deadly diseases like malaria.
The best resource India had to offer was the human capital: the Indian army
was used by Britain in all of its outposts worldwide including during WWI and WWII.
It was precisely during WWI that the Indian Independence Movement started
to slowly take shape with the figure of Mahatma Gandhi, an army doctor who would
later become the leader of the Independence Movement after the British Empire did
not grant self-government to India.

5.2.2. Scotland and the Irish Free State

As industrialization continued during the end of the 19th century and the first
decades of the 20th, Wales, Scotland and Ireland became weaker as their
economies depended on the Empire.
Wales had rich coal mines that became the center of a rapidly growing coal
and steel industry. As soon as Wales was given the possibility to vote thanks to the
reforms of the nineteenth century, the Welsh workers got rid of the Tories and the
landowning families who had represented them for more than 300 years.
Scotland was also divided between a new industrialized area in Glasgow and
Edinburgh, and the Highland and Lowland areas. There were coal mines and
factories producing steel and iron, as well as the British shipbuilding industry on the
River Clyde. Scotland became strongly Liberal when its workforce was allowed to
vote. The clearances of the Highlands continued, as it became more profitable to
replace the sheep with wild deer. Many old clan lands were sold to new landowners.
Ireland
In the 19th century an increasing number of Protestant Irish turned to England
as a protection against the Catholic inhabitants. To the Catholics, most Irish
Protestants were a reminder that English was still as powerful as it had been in
1690. The struggle for Irish freedom from England rule became a struggle between
Catholic and Protestant. The first great victory for Irish freedom was when Catholics
were allowed to become MPs*** in 1829. In fact, in Ireland this decision was
accompanied by a repression of civil and political liberties.
Ireland suffered the worst disaster in its history between 1845-1847 with the
Great Famine (aka The Great Hunger and The Irish Potato Famine) when the potato
crop failed and around 20 % of the population died from hunger. The wheat that
Ireland had was solely for export to England.
Many Irish people had to leave and at least a million of them left during these
years, so between 1841 and 1920, almost five million Irish people settled in the US.
Some of them went eastwards to the towns and cities of Britain and helped build
Britain’s railways.
The famine would return to Ireland in 1879, but the Land League, led by
Michael Davitt, encouraged the mass boycott of landlords to avoid families being
destitute during a famine. Nevertheless, the emotional wounds of the Great Famine
and the consequent political movements and social unrest amongst the Catholic Irish
population led to the Land War and the independence.
The Easter Rising (1916) proclaimed the Irish Republic (Eire) that only lived
for one week, the repression by the British Army led to more unrest and a higher
nationalistic pressure for independence. The Irish War of Independence or
Anglo-Irish War was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the
Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British forces. The Republican party Sinn Féin
won the 1918 election, they formed a government and declared Irish Independence.
Irish railwaymen refused to transport British Army supplies. British authority
collapsed in 1920 and both sides continued the conflict through reprisals and attacks
on the civilian population.
On Bloody Sunday (Nov 21th, 1920) in Dublin 14 British intelligence
operatives were assassinated and the British Army fired on the crowd at a Gaelic
football match, killing 14 civilians and wounding 65. Martial law was declared in
Southern Ireland and the center of Cork was burnt out by British forces in reprisal.
The conflict in Ulster was marked by religious factions: the Catholic minority
was attacked in reprisal of IRA actions by the Protestan majority that supported the
British government.
In 1921 Ireland was partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland
Act and Northern Ireland was created.
A ceasefire in 1921 led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended
British rule in most of Ireland and the Irish Free State was created as a
self-governing Dominion in 1922.

5.2.3. The Penal Colony: Australia

The growth of cities due to the movement of the population from the
countryside, and the high rates of poverty and crime, together with the failure of
public hangings to deter crime led to the establishment of a new system to manage
criminals: to send prisoners out of sight, across the sea and as far away from Britain
as possible.
One option during the 18th century was North America. Prisoners were sent
through a system of indentured servitude: sold as slaves to plantation owners in the
colonies of Maryland and Virginia and later to the new territories of the American
west. Prisoners would work for the stipulated amount of time for their crime or debt
while learning a trade.
When the American colonies became independent in 1776, prisons back in
Britain were overcrowded and in 1785 Australia started to be used as a penal
settlement. The First Fleet transported 800 prisoners to Botany Bay (Sydney Cove).
The penal settlements were: Norfolk Island, New South Wales, Tasmania, and
Queensland.
In 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia was founded, as a self-governing
dominion of the British Empire.
In 1914, Australia joined Britain in fighting WWI and Australian troops took
part in many of the important battles of the Western front. It was the Battle of
Gallipoli where the ANZAC was defeated that signaled the birth of patriotic
sentiment.
5.2.4. Other parts of the globe
British policy in Asia during the 19th century was concerned with expanding
and protecting its hold on India, viewed as its most important colony and the key to
the rest of Asia. The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire
in Asia and its army joined forces with the Royal Navy and Army in the Napoleonic
Wars and beyond: the eviction of Napoleon from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java
from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Singapore (1819) and Malacca
(1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826). From its base in India, the company had
also been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to China since
the 1730s. This trade led to the war against China in the First Opium War, and the
seizure by Britain of the island of Hong Kong.
Thanks to discoverers like captain James Cook, New Zealand was discovered
and mapped and it was established as a British colony within the Empire in 1841 and
it became a dominion in 1907.
The British Empire also had a presence in South Africa due to the interest in
raw materials.
The Boer War was fought between the British Empire and two independent
Boer states (republics founded by Dutch settlers) and, after a long guerrilla war, the
republics were merged with the Union of South Africa in 1910 as part of the British
Empire. The measures the Imperial troops took scandalized the British population,
so the troops needed support and it came from Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and
Canada. Many Irish fought against the British.

5.3. The Great War: WWI

The spark of WWI in 1914 was the death of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand
(from the Austro-Hungarian Empire) assassinated by a Bosnian in Sarajevo. On July
28th, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
Germany boasted great military strategy and was prepared for the hostilities
to conquer France through Belgium. Russia would hold the Austro-Hungarian and
Ottoman Empires.
The Battle of Marne in 1914 stopped the German fast attack on Paris and
initiated a long and tedious time of battles and slow process with no final victory in
sight. In 1915, German forces sank the British ocean liner Lusitania, resulting in the
deaths of more than 1200 people.
 The losses that Russia suffered provoked the outbreak of the Russian
Revolution in 1917 and the rise to power of the Bolsheviks who negotiated peace
with Germany. Once the US joined the war in 1917 for the western front to avoid a
possible alliance between Germany and Mexico, Germany signed an armistice with
the Allies. At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War
ends.
The nations at war in WWI (Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and
Austria-Hungary) had allied countries and colonies and that meant that the battle
could be fought wherever in Europe.
The British Empire played an important role in the war effort, as the colonies
sent supplies and soldiers for the British army. Many of them enlisted due to
propaganda, film, posters and paintings.
The Spanish flu epidemic (1918-1920) became associated with Spain due to
the uncensored information about death tolls and incidence in a neutral country
during WWI. The warfare conditions could have helped spread the disease.
The years after the war, aka The Roaring Twenties in the US, were
characterized by the social changes derived from the economic growth,
technological advances, splendor in the arts and entertainment, and an easy.going
attitude, but this ended in 1929 with a major historical turning point. In 1929, prices
dropped, and on October 29th, aka Black Thursday, the US economy collapsed and
went into depression. The Great Depression (1929-1933) was felt also in Europe
where nations like Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918-1033) and the parts of the
collapsed Austria-Hungarian Empire were still recovering from the war and had to
pay war reparations when the American loans stopped. Europe’s financial system
collapsed in 1931.
In Germany, unemployment caused a sentiment of injustice → these were the
seeds for WWII.

5.4. British and American Literature until the 1930s

This period is marked by the trauma of war, by the Jazz age of the 1920s, the
threat of Fascism and Communism and the Depression. Thus, the main themes for
novelists between 1900 and 1930 in English literature were: loneliness and isolation,
the difficulties of relationships with others and within the community on a social and
cultural basis. There is also a profound divergence between popular writing and
intellectual literature.
- Rudyard Kipling wrote traditional novels and short stories and is a
representative of colonial literature. Many of his prose works are set in the
countries of the British Empire. He wrote about psychological dimensions of
life under British rule for the colonies, but didn’t innovate in the form of the
narrative. He advocated the responsibility of the white man in creating a single
rich civilization through the Empire.
- John Galsworthy was concerned with issues of class and social awareness,
depicting the late Victorian days to the early 1920s and the change of the
ruling classes and British bourgeoisie in his “Forsyte Saga” (1906-34),
comprised by nine traditional novels.
- H. G. Wells is best known for his scientific novels and socialist-liberal version
of the future where inequalities and social privileges of the Victorian era would
be destroyed to herald a new world order. “The Time Machine” (1895); “The
Invisible Man” (1897); and “The War of The Worlds” (1898). Conservative.
- P- G. Wodehouse wrote comic novels focused on the English perception of
class in a timeless age. In “My Man Jeeves” (1919) and “The Inimitable
Jeeves” (1923) through to the 1970s, he uses the contrast between the dim
upper-class Bertie Wooster and the resourceful butler Jeeves.
- John Buchan published his most famous work “The Thirty-Nine Steps” in
1915. A spy-thriller set prior to WWI, reflecting the preoccupation with the
genuine threat of chaos in a disintegrating world.

The war period represents the end of all certainties and this traumatic
realization, the war to end all wars (no creo que sea importante pero me gustó jaja).
The detective story became popular in this period. Agatha Christie, “the
Queen of Crime” is the most successful. She wrote over 60 detective novels
featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

The 19th century is defined by Modernism, an artistic movement that

redefined literature and it encompassed the changes that overtook society’s
expression of its concerns and anxieties in the first half of the twentieth century. It
was a period where stable values and systems were questioned and overthrown.
Modernism tries to redefine every aspect of society and the personality of the
individual voice of the author. It is also a new age of critical writing and reflection
about creativity. The term covers a number of related and overlapping artistic and
literary movements: symbolism, futurism, cubism, surrealism, and expressionism. In
the British context, the Bloomsbury Group and the Auden Group were
representatives, but full of different and diverse personalities in their creative
achievement.
Modernism adopted new techniques, especially in narration with the stream of
consciousness: the character’s words and impressions mix with the narrator’s own
perception, and with influence from the visual narratives of the cinema (cross-cutting,
close up and visual awareness). The traditional form of the novel (with a plot
development and a logical order) was discarded and new stylistic techniques were
used.
The most representative works of modernism were published in 1922:
James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”.

- James Joyce wrote Ulysses, where he explored a rich variety of ideas. The
characters and episodes of the novel have parallels in ancient Greek stories
and the Homeric story. He contributed to the development of the novel in
English in the 20th century with new techniques of narrative and he wrote
about Dublin and its people as human universal experience. In “Dubliners”
(1914) he depicts the lives of ordinary people of the city with realism, and in
“The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” he uses the stream of
consciousness as a glimpse of the development of the genius towards
intellectual, and artistic adulthood.
- In “The Waste Land”, T. S. Eliot expresses the rupture in the psychological
state of humanity, with the rigid Victorian ideals and the trauma of WWI.
- D. H. Lawrence reflected how industrialization and modernity had
dehumanized society. He explored sexuality, vitality and instinct and his works
often scandalized British society. His works are: “Sons and Lovers” (1913);
“Women in Love” (1920); and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1929).
- E. M. Forster in “Where Angels Fear to Tread” (1905) and “A Room With a
View” (1908), “Howards End” (1910) and “A Passage to India” (1924) focuses
 on contrasts of different world views meeting and changing by the reflection
on the other and the hypocrisy of class difference.
- Virginia Woolf’s main novels are: “Mrs Dalloway” (1925); “To The Lighthouse”
(1927); and “The Waves” (1931). She used a styled version of stream of
consciousness that became a definitory characteristic of Modernism.

The Lost Generation experienced the war and survived it, being also aware of
how much was lost. This term refers in the British context to those who died in war,
but it also refers to the generation of expatriate American writers in Paris in the
1920s. Some are:
- Gertrude Stein who wrote “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”
(1933) depicting the artistic scene of 1920s Paris with artists like
Picasso, Matisse or Cézanne.
- Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” (1926) portrayed the experience
of the post-war generation.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald identifies as a writer from the Lost Generation. In
“The Great Gatsby” he wrote about the decadent and frivolous lifestyle
of the wealthy, the corruption and death of the American dream”.
- Ezra Pound was the editor of several American literary magazines that
helped discover the work of T. S. Eliot, Hemingway and Joyce.

In the US there were several important novelists like William Faulkner with
“The Sound and the Fury” (1929) and John Steinbeck with “The Grapes of Wrath”
(1939) portraying the Depression.
- Robert Frost and E. E. Cummings used free-form modernist poetry.
- Jack London was a pioneer of science fiction: “The Iron Heel” (1908)
is considered as the first example of a dystopian novel, and “Before
Adam” (1906), a hypothesis about life as a hominid. “White Fang” and
“Call of the Wild” about the Gold Rush in Alaska and the use of animals
as main characters.

5.5. Children’s literature until 1930s: origins and development

Many books that weren’t for children have ended up being children’s books,
such as “Gulliver’s Travels” or “Robinson Crusoe”. And many others that were for
children are nowadays considered for adults too, for example Harry Potter.
Children’s literature has a lot to do with how adults see childhood and its values, and
their own socio-political and economic interests. As Zipes points out, it is in
childhood that we first experience literature in all its forms: fairy tales, nursery
rhymes and songs, tongue twisters, lullabies, fables and stories.

5.5.1. Fairy tales and the oral tradition

Fairy tales weren’t created for children. They were developed as a way of
sharing knowledge and entertainment. They referred to topics that aren’t probably
suitable for children. The printing press allowed for a number of these narratives to
be written and they became popularized, but in this process the aspects from the
target readers were introduced in the aesthetics and morality.
Fairy tales acquired a fixed structure (example: the Grimm bros). There are
two types: the miracle tale that focuses on magical transformations and characters
and the fantastical aspect; or the cautionary tales that tried to teach the reader.
Some tales were christianized and used as examples in liturgy, or incorporated from
the classical tradition, and some others were incorporated from the experiences of
soldiers, sailors and travelers whose only aim was to shock and entertain the
listener.
The fairy tale was introduced in the classroom practice at the end of the 19th
century although there were approaches that considered it better that the tales had a
didactic aim.

5.5.2. Early writing for children

The introduction of the printing press in the 15th century favored the creation
and circulation of books.
“Orbis sensualium pictus” (1658) by Johann Amos Comenius is considered
the first book that was aimed at children who were learning to read (under 6). It is a
bilingual Latin grammar that represents the world and knowledge through images.

By the 17th century English had replaced Latin as the instruction language
and the literature that was aimed for children was heavily influenced by Puritanism.
Children were taught to read but also instructed in religious values. This tendency
can be seen in James Janeway’s “A Token for Children” (1671). He defended the
idea that children should read only texts that had an exemplary didactic message.
In the 18th century this literature was influenced by the philosophical
tendencies of the Enlightenment. Emphasis was on the role of reason and the idea
of progress. It promoted the child as a future citizen and warned them of the dangers
of ignorance and superstition and defended the French philosopher Rousseau’s
ideas of preserving the children from the corruption of society’s evils.
In this century, some books specifically written for children appear, such as “A
little book for little children” and “A description of three hundred animals”, but it was
from 1740 onwards that the moral tone of the books for children changed for a more
didactic purpose, with illustrations and graphics and less religion.
- The first collection of children’s rhymes and nursery songs appears in 1744
with “Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song” by Mary Cooper.
- The first book for children where enjoyment was more important was John
Newbery’s “A Little Pretty Pocket-book” that followed Locke’s ideas about
learning through enjoyment. Newbery is considered the father of English
children’s literature → The Lilliputian Magazine; The History of Little Goody
Two-Shoes.

5.5.3. The 19th century and first decades of the 20th century.
The Romantic period is the Golden Age of English children’s literature
because of the great literary value of the works and their illustrations. For many,
fantasy and fairy tales constitute the core of children’s literature.
- The Grimm Brothers fairy tales were published in German in 1812, and
translated into English in 1823.
- Hans Christian Andersen’s stories appeared in the 1830s.
- And Lewis Carroll’s “Alice Adventures in Wonderland” was published in 1865.

The characteristic features of Romanticism as embodied by authors like

Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth will also appear in this literature, with the role of
imagination, individuality and originality. The child is seen as an innocent vessel of
curiosity and potential. Fantasies are varied: Beatrix Potter’s “Tale of Peter Rabbit”
(1902); J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan” (1904); Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the
Willows” (1908); and in the US L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”
(1900).

The male reader was expected to read adventure books like R. L Stevenson
Treasure Island (1881) or Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894), while the female reader
was expected to read works where the main characters were girls in realistic
settings, faced with domestic issues, like Little Women (1868) or Heidi (translated
into English in 1884), or in the US Anne of Green Gables (1908) and Pollyanna
(1913). This would also be the general trend during the first decades of the twentieth
century.

The twentieth century is the beginning of great works of fantasy, starting with
L. F. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in
the Willows (1908), P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins (1934), C.S. Lewis The Narnia
Chronicles, and J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937)