Enlightenment theorists used science and rational thought to explain natural processes. Their scientific ideas contradicted the medieval religious perspective that was prominent among Western Europe's intelligentsia. However, when French theorist Jean Jacques Rousseau opposed Enlightenment theory, he criticized traditional European cultural patterns and inspired the Romantic Movement. After neo-classicism bridged the gap between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the idealistic romantics created cultural nationalism, which helped to unify certain regions of Western Europe. As Victorian writers replaced idealism with literary realism primarily through the novel, they addressed society's conservatism that had emerged as a result of Romanticism.
Unenlightened Enlightenment Thinkers
Enlightenment theorists challenged the conservatism of church doctrine so effectively that they initiated the trend of repositioning religion and spirituality from the mainstream of intellectual activity to the periphery of human affairs in the West. However, romantic writers temporarily interrupted the inclination to devalue theology when they reevaluated the relevance of God. Romantics also questioned Enlightenment concepts pertaining to reality, history, self-expression, and social equality. Although romantic theorists and writers seriously challenged Enlightenment thought, they could not address all the boundaries of reason that several Enlightenment thinkers clearly exceeded.
Political theorist John Locke, for example, wrote that people by nature are good, have inherent rights, and should enjoy personal freedom. However, as Martin Bernal asserts, Locke believed Africans “…were not much smarter than apes,” so the so-called father of Western Liberalism was extraordinarily conservative toward people of African descent. In Western Civilization to 1789, Marvin Perry explains that political theorist Thomas Hobbes had a malevolent view of common people as exemplified by his stirring commentary that such people are more selfish, adversarial, and uncooperative than others. Francois Marie Arouet, Voltaire, shared Hobbes’ sentiments. He referred to commoners as obsessive, irrational people who did not deserve basic civil rights.
Superiority and Women
Charles Louis de Secondat, baron of Montesquieu published Spirit of the Laws in 1748. Perry explains that Montesquieu's work was responsible for establishing the academic-intense discipline sociology. However, as part of his group-comparison analysis, Montesquieu makes, at best, some irrational observations in reference to his climate/location theory. As Martin Bernal indicates, Montesquieu suggests that Europeans are coincidentally superior to people of color because Europe’s location allows Europeans to achieve higher than other groups in such areas as science, technology, and education. In other words, European superiority happened naturally.
As for the status of women, other than Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat and Thomas Paine, Enlightenment thinkers believed women were inferior to men. Although Caritat’s 1791 essay On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship has a pro-women tone, he, intentionally or unintentionally, speaks inauspiciously about women. In the essay Caritat comments that the few exceptionally brilliant men, who obviously ascend above everyone else, are the only men who are superior to women. Caritat’s rationale is society has no accomplished women, so they should accept the premise that women are only equal to the unexceptional men.
Break From Tradition
J.M. Roberts suggests that Rousseau’s opposition to the Enlightenment was an important development in European history. Not only did Rousseau present harmonious views about society, but also he questioned the underlying Western traditions that had dominated the medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and to a certain extent, neo-classical periods. Following Rousseau’s lead, romantic writers refused to accept the perspective that society benefits from rational thought, scientific application, and social disparity. Therefore, in some ways, romantics moved away from traditional Western concepts of social equality, which featured rights only for the elite.
Rousseau was one of the few Enlightenment thinkers who believed in educational and political impartiality. Rousseau exhibited non-traditional ideas about social equality, and he disliked the Enlightenment theorists who adamantly professed their superiority to common people in Europe and to people of color. Although neo-classical writers did not contest Enlightenment theorists as much as Rousseau did, they also influenced Romanticism.
Neo-Classical Views
James Thomson, Thomas Gray, and William Collins were major neo-classical writers. They studied ancient European literature to create new stories about established subjects they put in poems, odes, and elegies that conveyed ideas about nature. In standard neo-classical writings, “nature” meant the innate order of the universe. However, the tendency to focus on nature influenced some neo-classical writers to redefine the meaning to tempestuous, sacred, mystical abstractions. According to The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, this new definition motivated artists to use it so broadly that they incorporated mythical, supernatural qualities into their works. For example, William Collins wrote Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland. Collins dedicated his verse to a clergyman, but he uses the supernatural to explain reality. This style of writing influenced romantics.
The novel also emerged at this time. Historians point to Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and Daniel Defoe as the first novelists. Although they did not call their works “novels,” Ian Watt indicates that special attributes in the writings compelled literary observers to identify Fielding, Richardson, and Defoe as innovators in fiction. The early novelists developed their field when poems and essays were popular, but romantic writers refined the novel's focus to complement their unconventional, artistic sensibilities.
Romantic Movement (1798–1832)
If it is true, as Harold Cruse contends, that the intellectuals and artists of an advanced society create the new ideas and images for each generation, J.M. Roberts is correct about Rousseau’s affect on the Romantic Movement with its surreal, nature-filled concepts. Roberts advances Rousseau as “…the key figure in the making of what has been called Romanticism.” One could argue that the Romantic Movement started as a reaction to the Enlightenment because romantics determined that no one could appropriately explain the world through science and intellectual analysis. According to Perry, romantics believed that a person must cultivate and polish his/her intuition, imagination, and emotions to understand reality. In turn, this creative process would enable an individual to become an autonomous thinker.
After several romantic writers expanded the nature-centered themes to pure idealism, they revised the use of sonnets, poems, odes, essays, and novels. Some exceptional writers of the period were John Keats, Percy Shelly, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Walter Scott. According to The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Wordsworth wrote about common people, the ones most Enlightenment theorists detested, and he indicated that poets should write in a simple language to express philosophical ideas.
Ramifications of Romanticism
Romantic writers developed particular ideas about history. Western Civilization to 1789 details the favoritism romantics exhibited toward the medieval period. They viewed it as a time “…abounded with Christian mysteries, heroic deeds, and social harmony” that “helped people to prepare for a better future.” Romantics wanted people to study history to value the distinctive qualities about political and cultural institutions. When people unscientifically or intuitively appraise past institutions, romantics believed such practices could not be irrational because reality consists of unique individuals who imagine and feel certain things about the world.
Romantics not only venerated historic events and political institutions, but also glorified myths that helped to develop group pride. As the latter occurred, it did not matter that myths were fiction because romantics interpreted reality from an idealistic perspective. As Perry indicates, when people “think” or “feel” a myth is real, it is real to them. Because romantics assessed social situations based on an exclusive sense of reality, they united around their perceptions about the past. Although they sought cultural unity, Perry suggests that romantics fostered political unity and conservatism as well by popularizing legends and folklore they tied to common language. Germany, for example, became a state in 1871 after people in the region unified around their perceptions about past cultural occurrences. Consequently, they created political nationalism, which eventually transformed into extreme nationalism (fascism) based on imaginary, superstitious events of an earlier period.
Victorian Age (1832 – 1901)
At the beginning of the Victorian period Paris was the key city in Europe, but as England’s industrialization advanced, London challenged Paris in this regard. As England transformed, people populated the cities. According to The Norton Anthology of English Literature, when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 London had approximately 2 million inhabitants. By the end of the century, however, more than 6 million people lived there. It was in the backdrop of a transitioning region that Victorian writers developed their craft.
Victorian Style
Victorian writers utilized poems, critical essays, and novels. Several celebrated writers were Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, John Ruskin, Christina Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Mathew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, and John Stuart Mill. As the novel dominated the era, Victorian writers discarded idealism for literary realism. Although realism varies in meaning among academic scholars, educators, and philosophers, Watt traces its artistic origins to the “French Realists,” who used the term to distinguish Rembrandt’s portraits from neo-classical paintings. Rembrandt painted exactly what he saw, not what he imagined. In terms of the novel, however, it is difficult to create “realism” per se because the novelist cannot write about situations exactly the way they occurred.
Nevertheless, because Richardson, Fielding, and Defoe altered the depiction of “real” people in their writings, literary historians viewed it as a new development in characterization. Defoe’s Mall Flanders, for example, is a poor woman in England who steals to survive. Therefore, the initial definition of literary realism featured descriptions of poor, exploited victims of society. Watt, however, thinks the importance of “…realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents, but in the way it presents it.” Watt must have had Charles Dickens in mind when he made this statement.
Conservatism Attacked
Dickens was the quintessential literary realist. He used his novels in a most “skillful way” to, at times, depict conservatism that had grown, in part, from the Romantic Movement. In Dombey and Son, for instance, Dickens criticizes the conservative nature of society through his portrayal of the egotistical, obstinate protagonist “Mr. Dombey.” To symbolize society’s hierarchical structure in the form of Mr. Dombey’s “natural” superiority, Dickens creates a provocative scene at the dinner table.
As everyone waits for dessert, Mr. Dombey, unhappy with his wife’s rejection of the invitation to entertain his planned social gathering for the next evening, is sure he will coerce her to relent by speaking to her through his business associate, Mr. Corker. Mr. Dombey knows his wife can hear him, so he looks at Corker and tells him, in a serious tone, to tell his wife that she must always do exactly as he says under any circumstances. With his inflexible attitude, Mr. Dombey’s "kingdom" ultimately crumbles after he loses his wife and his son. Therefore, because conservatives believe in a natural hierarchy, by humbling Mr. Dombey, Dickins implies that anyone with that type of power is detrimental to society.
Sources:
- Abrams, Donaldson, Smith, Adams, Monk, Lipking, Ford, Daiches. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. II, NY: WW Norton & Company, Inc., 1976, p. 875.
- Bernal, Martin. Black Athena, Vol. I, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987, pp. 203, 204.
- Caritat, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas, Marquis de Condorcet. A Translation of Condorcet’s Essay “Sur l’admission des femmes aux droits de Cité” (On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship). By Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery (Letchworth: Garden City Press, 1912).
- Cruse, Harold. Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York: Quill, 1984, p. 96.
- Kermode, Hollander, Bloom, Price, Trapp, Trilling. The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Vol. I. New York/London: Oxford University Press, 1973.
- Perry, Marvin. Western Civilization – A Brief History, Vol. II, 4th Edition. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001, pp. 371, 378-9.
- Roberts, J.M. History of the World. Penguin Books, 1995, p. 668.
- Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957, pp. 10, 11.
William Cook - Mr. Cook is a graduate of Hunter College of the City University of New York. He is pursuing a Ph.D in History and Education.
