The period of industrialism, and the Industrial Revolution (1760’s-1840’s), was a time of rapid transformation in England from the late 18th to mid-19th century, characterized by mechanization and the rise of factories. This era drastically altered the Victorian outlook on nature. Many Victorians perceived nature as something being lost or corrupted by industrial progress, with polluted cities and exploited natural resources. The National Bureau of economic Research suggests that, “The preponderance of the evidence suggests that the lack of improvement in mortality between 1820 and 1870 is due in large part to the greater spread of disease in newly enlarged cities,” (Cutler, p. 102). Nature was often viewed either as a force to be controlled for human gain or as a mirror reflecting societies decay. Industrialism replaced the rhythms of the natural world with the ceaseless demands of machines and urban life, leaving workers and ordinary people estranged from the environment.
Thomas Hood’s, “The Song of the Shirt,” (1843) reflects these social and environmental shifts. The poem exposes the harsh conditions endured by industrial-era seamstresses (specifically Mrs. Biddell), particularly women, who labored endlessly for starvation wages. Hood emphasizes the mechanical, repetitive nature of their work and highlights how industrial labor dehumanized people, turning the, into extensions of machines. Though the poem does not directly describe landscapes, the absence of nature in the seamstress's life symbolizes how industrialization had removed people from their natural world. Hood’s imagery of exhaustion, poverty, and decay parallels the environment in which England was forced to exist in during the time of the Industrial Revolution, illustrating not only the withering of the, “self,” but also the withering of the environment due to pollution.
Source used for research:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21647/w21647.pdf
https://allpoetry.com/The-Song-of-the-Shirt
Source used for photo:
https://speakoutsocialists.org/the-lowell-mill-strikes-working-women-org...