The Catholic Emancipation Act

Catholic Chapel, Picardy Place, Edinburgh

In 1829, partly in response to widespread agitation throughout Ireland led by Daniel O'Connell's Catholic Association and the possiblity of revolution in Ireland, the Catholic Emancipation Act, enabling Catholics to sit in the British Parliament at Westminister, was passed. (Wohl)

A little bit more context for why there had to be a catholic emancipation act.  In 1800, the Act of Union created the United Kingdom by merging Great Britain and Ireland.  This made parliament directly responsible for Irish affairs and had direct responsibility for the fate of a number of Roman Catholics equal to more than a third of the total population of England and Wales.(Chadwick)

So the Roman Catholics, who were mostly Irish, had no say in parliament in their governing body and union for almost 30 years.  What is interesting to see in this fight for rights and after the Catholics finally got emancipation—how each side saw this act.  The Catholics would see this as being able to have more say and deservingly enough since they are a big portion of the population. While the Church of England saw this emancipation as a major loss, letting Catholics be able to have any say in the dealings of their established church.  Which is ironic seeing as they have had say in the lives of the Catholic Church all the way up to this point.

This power struggle gives more light and context of our reading of North and South.  When Margaret learns that her brother is a Roman Catholic, there is a moment of interpersonal confusion on how to see her brother since he isn't part of the Church of England.  But at the same time she thinks of her dad, and how he gave up his position as minister in the church and she doesn't really know where everyone stands in religion and in class.  She realizes that in regards to her brother she might be the same, where as before, she would be entitled to think herself above a Catholic because of her dad holding a position in the Church of England.

Overall this emancipation would lead to a more pluralistic society with more religions gaining more rights, although there would still be internal and external discrimination, as we saw from the internal thoughts of Margaret.

Works Cited

 Chadwick, Owen. The Victorian Church. London: Adam & Charles Black. 1966.

 Wohl, A. (2018, June 18, Created 1989). Catholic Emancipation. Catholic emacipation. Accessed October 29, 2021, https://victorianweb.org/religion/cath2.html.

Child Labor Laws in Victorian Era: The Factory Acts

In nineteenth-century Victorian England and even through the beginning of the twentieth-century, child labor laws were virtually nonexistent and, where they did exist, went largely unenforced by figures in government until the Factory Act of 1833 was passed by English Parliament which offered protections, if a bit scant, to the class of citizen most in need of protection: children. For an upper-class child in Victorian England, a day might be spent tutoring under a nurse between meals in a private estate; however, for the lower class, children were often forced into public jobs that would help supplement their family’s income with some parents treating the children themselves as sources of income. Thus, in the words of a writer with victorianchildren.org, “having more children who worked raised the income of the home,” as children were pawned off to employers who would offer the child board and pay parents as little as fifteen shillings (about $69.82 today) per year for a laborer who would work for upwards of fourteen hours per day and even into the night with scarce breaks for eating or resting (Victorian Children). For many children this life was normal, even expected, and after learning to behave under their new masters, they grew used to the ever-growing threat of death and disease hanging over them as they worked in factory and mining settings with poor ventilation, unclean conditions, and claustrophobic spaces that threatened to suffocate them at every turn. The Factory Acts of the nineteenth century helped to revolutionize how children were protected from the labor force, and, although provisionary and largely unenforced, they helped lay a groundwork that would outline child liberation in the twentieth century.

Child Labor Before 1833

Before the signing of the first Factory Act which helped protect the workers in cotton mills, mines, and industrial factories, legal protections for working children were almost non-existent. Some children started working in factories as young or younger than nine years, and their slight bodies were used to perform labor that even adults were unable to accomplish. Many children worked in mines where they were often strapped to a cart filled with coal and forced to pull it on their hands and knees to the opening of the mine for collection. Because the mines were not properly ventilated, respiratory problems and black lung were common among child workers who performed these tasks for twelve to eighteen hour per day (Victorian Child Labor). Other children worked in city cleaning as street sweepers or chimney sweeps, literally crawling into chimneys to clean them only to be scrubbed perfunctorily with salt water and sent down the next one. Without legal protections and a way to enforce them, children were tasked with the most dangerous jobs that ought to have been reserved only for the most able adults among them.

To understand this issue more clearly than I can explain it, read the following excerpt from a transcript of an interview with a young woman who had spent most of her life as a laborer:

Elizabeth Bently, called in; and Examined.

What age are you? – Twenty-three.

What time did you begin work at a factory? – When I was six years old.

[…]

What kind of mill is it? – Flax mill.

What was your business in that mill? – I was a little doffer

What were your hours of labour in that mill? – From five in the morning till nine at night when they were thronged.

[…]

What time was allowed for your meals? – Forty minutes at noon.

[…]

Suppose you flagged a little, or were too late, what would they do? – Stap us.

Are they in the habit of strapping those who are last in doffing? – Yes.

Constantly? – Yes.

Girls as well as boys? – Yes

Have you ever been strapped? – Yes.

Severely? – Yes. (Scott)

That excerpt was taken from an interview given before the Sadler Committee in 1831 who worked to give a voice to those who were victimized by the institution of child labor.

The Factory Acts

Although poorly executed in the beginning, the laws passed by British Parliament were among the first in the world to provide any protections for children in the working class. The Factory Acts, as they would be called, began with an Act called the Cotton Mills Act in 1819. According to the official UK Parliament website, this first Act prohibited children younger than nine from working in cotton mills “with a maximum day of twelve hours for all those under sixteen,” (UK Parliament). The Act was narrow in scope and almost impossible to enforce, but it opened the door for a line of legislation that would follow to provide protections for the weakest in Victorian society. The next Act that would follow came in 1833 that demanded that no child under nine should be employed in any industry as well as limiting work for children under thirteen to no more than nine hours per day. It also provided children with schooling for at least two hours per day and prohibited work at night according to the UK National Archives (National Archives). These advances on their own were revolutionary in the early 1800’s, but what made the biggest difference for those children was the final stipulation of the law which required that four factory inspectors would be appointed to enforce that law and offer heavy fines to those who broke it. Following this Act, several others would be passed in 1844, 1850, and 1884 that would improve working conditions and further restrict working hours to only week-days and part of Saturday. Those laws then remained largely unchanged for the rest of the Victorian Era until the end of WWI. Although the new laws were not perfect and would have to evolve further, the Victorian Era ended with rights granted to workers that could not have been imagined by those soot covered children at its beginning.

Works Cited

Moore, Amanda. Factory Act 1850. 2011. Web site. November 2021.

Nye, Eric W. Pounds Sterling to Dollars: Historical Coversion of Currency. 2021. Website. November 2021.

Scott, Jonathan F. Readings in European History Since 1814. Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1930. eBook.

UK Parliament. The Factory Acts. 2021. Web Page. November 2021.

victorianchildren.org. Victorian Child Labor and the Conditions They Worked In. 2 March 2013. Website. 1 11 2021.

—. Victorian Children in Victorian Times. 11 December 2012. Website. November 2021.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning dinner with Wordsworth

Portrait (engraving) of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

On 28 May 1836, Elizabeth Barrett Browning met William Wordsworth at a literary dinner in London; EBB's cousin, John Kenyon, was the host and the event most likely occurred at Kenyon's main residence at the time:  39 Devonshire Place, London, which is right around the corner from EBB's residence at the time:  50 Wimpole Street.  See the associated map.  

Huskar Pit Disaster

Memorial of the Huskar Pit Disaster

The Huskar Pit Disaster (also known as the Huskar Colliery Tragedy of 1838) was a terrible event that illustrates the horror children faced working in coal mines. First off, we must understand what coal mines were like. Coal mines were deep pits. They were usually around 300 feet underground. Huskar Pit was used as ventilation for the miners. Whole families often worked in the mines together. Children worked as trappers, hurriers, and thrusters, helping to bring the coal from the rock face to the surface by carts and passageways. While women worked as hurriers, most often. Trappers sat in the dark and waited for the carts to come pulled by the hurriers. Trappers also kept the mine ventilated. Hurriers were strapped to the carts and pushed and pulled them along the passageways until they reached the surface. Thrusters pushed from behind. They kept the cart moving. These were the roles children had within coal mines.

The roles of children in coal mines are already horrific, yet on July 4, 1838, 26 children lost their lives. That day was a fairly typical day until the early afternoon. A storm blew in and brought with it rainfall and hail. In this specific coal mine, there was a steam engine which brought the coal and the workers up from the pit. The rain doused the boiler, and the engine was unable to work. The many adult workers moved down to the bottom of the pit where they were to most safe until they could be brought up. The children, both boys and girls, waited for the engine to start again. They heard a thunderclap and were afraid something had exploded in the mine. They had been down in the mines for nine hours already, so they became desperate to save themselves. They decided to take the Huskar Pit ventilation drift out. They climbed it and reached an air door. Outside the door, the rain had caused a small stream to bulge and grow to an abnormal size. The children were unaware of the increasing water. They pushed the door open and were soon washed down the drift. They drowned. 26 children died that day, eleven girls and fifteen boys. When this incident was told to Queen Victoria, she took great interest in it, and it led to the Royal Commission which investigated women and children's labor in coal mines.

They have the names of each child that died. I have included them here to help make them a little more real:

Catherine Garnett       11 years

Hannah Webster         13 years

Elizabeth Carr             13 years

Ann Moss                    9 years

Elizabeth Hollings      15 years

Ellen Parker                15 years

Hannah Taylor            17 years

Mary Sellors                10 years

Elizabeth Clarkson      11 years

Sarah Newton             8 years

Sarah Jukes                 10 years

George Birkinshaw     10 years

Joseph Birkinshaw      7 years

Isaac Wright                12 years

Abraham Wright         8 years

James Clarkson           16 years

Francis Hoyland         13 years

William Atick             12 years

Samuel Horne             10 years

Eli Hutchinson            9 years

George Garnett           9 years

John Simpson              9 years

George Lamb              8 years

William Wormersley   8 years

James Turton               10 years

John Gothard              8 years

"Huskar Colliery 1838." Mine Accidents and Disasters. Mining Accident Database. 2021. http://mineaccidents.com.au/mine-accident/202/huskar-colliery-1838

"The Huskar Pit Disaster." The Penistone History Archive. 2018. https://penistonearchive.co.uk/huskar-pit-disaster/

Publication of EBB, "On a Portrait of Wordsworth"

Manuscript of EBB, "On a Portrait of Wordsworth" (Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor)

On 29 October 1842, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's “On a Portrait of Wordsworth, by R. B. Haydon” was published in The Athenaeum.  Image:  Manuscript of the poem, reproduced by permission of the Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University (leaf 3 recto of EBB's autograph notebook).

Great Exhibition

Held from May to October of 1851, “The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations” was opened by Queen Victoria in the structure built to house it, the Crystal Palace, in Hyde Park, London. Image: Interior view of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London during the Great Exhibition of 1851. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was an event in the history of: exhibitions; world’s fairs; consumerism; imperialism; architecture; collections; things; glass and material culture in general; visual culture; attention and inattention; distraction. Its ostensible purposes, as stated by the organizing commission and various promoters, most notably Prince Albert, were chiefly to celebrate the industry and ingeniousness of various world cultures, primarily the British, and to inform and educate the public about the achievement, workmanship, science and industry that produced the numerous and multifarious objects and technologies on display. Designed by Joseph Paxton, the Crystal Palace (pictured above) was a structure of iron and glass conceptually derived from greenhouses and railway stations, but also resembling the shopping arcades of Paris and London. The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations became a model for World’s Fairs, by which invited nations showcased the best in manufacturing, design, and art, well into the twentieth century.

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Audrey Jaffe, "On the Great Exhibition"

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Publication of Coventry Patmore's, "The Angel in the House"

Mrs. Coventry Patmore

The Angel in the House published by Coventry Patmore in 1854 is a narrative poem that prescribes the ideal qualities of a Victorian wife. Patmore, using his own wife as a model, depicted the perfect Victorian woman as angelic, sweet, and lacking any desire for sexual intercourse. Victorian women's "angelic" purpose was to make a morally upright household for her husband. John Ruskin praised Patmore for his depiction of women as keepers of a moral house. Ruskin wrote that a true wife would make a good household wherever she was - that her duty was to make a "moral home" even when out in public. Patmore counteracts the idea of the "angel" with images of "fallen women." He condemned women who had sexual urges, sexual encounters outside of marriage, and prostitutes. 

The Angel in the House advocated for separate spheres - meaning that men had a place in the "real world" and women were naturally attuned to household work. Victorian women's unrealistic moral virtues were used to argue that they were more suited to raise and teach children. The poem also asserts that men were created for public work and their physiognomy was not suited to raising children. 

Upon publication in 1854, The Angel in the House received very little attention from the Victorian public. Later in the century, The Angel in the House became a literary sensation in the United States of America - which later influenced its revival in England. The text has often been studied by feminist scholars and the like not because of its literary influence but because of its reflection on women and gender roles in Victorian society. Scholar Carol Christ describes the poem as "...not a very good poem yet it is culturally significant, not only for its definition of the sexual ideal but also for the clarity with which it represents the male concerns that motivate fascination with that ideal." (Moore, 41). 

One can connect "The Angel in the House" to Brontë's Jane Eyre because of the prescribed gender roles which occur in the latter. For example, Jane is relegated to the sphere of homemaking. Jane does not want to be a teacher, governess, or purely a housewife - yet, according to Patmore, these are the only roles that are acceptable for women. Not only was the concept of "separate spheres" frustrating for Jane, but it also was frustrating for Charlotte Brontë. Bronë wanted to write but was relegated to certain "acceptable" positions in her life. 

Works Cited

Furneaux, Holly. “Victorian Sexualities.” British Library, 15 May 2014, www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/victorian-sexualities#footnote2.

“Sesame and Lilies.” Sesame and Lilies, by John Ruskin, www.gutenberg.org/files/1293/1293-h/1293-h.htm#citation24.

The Battle of Balaclava

[caption id="attachment_3385" align="alignright" width="100"] On October 10, 1854, Russian forces met with British forces at the Battle of Balaclava in Sevastopol, Russia. This engagement saw neither side garner a clear victory, with both Russians and British taking heavy losses. Ultimately, the British came out on top. The English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, commemorated this engagement with "The Charge of the Light Brigade" written on 9 December 1854.

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Florence Nightingale landed at Scutari

Florence Nightingale landed at Scutari one day before the Battle of Inkerman on 4 November 1854. Accompanied by her band of nurses, Florence Nightingale will become the great heroine of the Crimean War. Image: Photograph of Florence Nightingale (1858). This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

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Lara Kriegel, “On the Death—and Life—of Florence Nightingale, August 1910″

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Men and Women

On November 17, 1855, publication of Robert Browning’s Men and Women, a two-volume publication of Robert Browning’s major poetic works. Image: Photogravure of Robert Browning by Juliet Margaret Cameron (1865, printed c. 1893). Original is at the Art Institute of Chicago. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Robert Browning’s Men and Women was a major literary event in nineteenth-century Britain in its shift of emphasis from the private, atemporal and generally non-social genre of Romantic lyricism to the ironies and enigmas of human awareness and social relationships, to dramatic action in human speech. His men and women are presented overtly as speech acts, grounded in psychological and cultural origins, and in the ambiguities of linguistic processes. Readers often found Browning’s mode of writing obscure, but its methods and implications consistently engage with other domains of Victorian thought, in religion, biology, and psychiatry. While the status of this publication was not widely understood at the time, its value is manifest in its reception history, in the discussion and representations that constitute its ongoing existence as a historical event.

Articles

E. Warwick Slinn, "On Robert Browning’s Men and Women"

Aurora Leigh

On 15 November 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh was published by Chapman and Hall in Great Britain. Aurora Leigh—a verse-novel and modern epic—set off literary, social, and political reverberations in Britain, North America, and Europe up to the end of the century. Given its innovative, generically mixed form and its controversial contemporary subject matter, it figured in debates over poetry and poetics, the nature of the realist novel, class divisions and social reform, women’s rights, religion, and the politics of nations. Image: An 1871 engraving of an 1859 photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (photograph by Macaire Havre, engraving by T. O. Barlow). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Marjorie Stone, “The ‘Advent’ of Aurora Leigh: Critical Myths and Periodical Debates”

Massacre of British at Cawnpore, India

Massacre of British at Cawnpore by Nana Sahib’s troops on 15 July 1857. Image: A contemporary engraving of the massacre at the Satichura Ghat, Cawnpore (now Kanpur), India. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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George Eliot Publishes Adam Bede Under Pseudonym in 1859

Mary Ann Evans, born in Warwickshire in 1819, adopted the pseudonym George Eliot for publication of her work, including her first novel, Adame Bede in 1859. During the early to mid-Victorian era, the parameters of the feminine literary tradition were narrow and restrictive, literature by women often being dismissed as sentimental, frivolous, and domestic. To establish themselves “without assuming feminine identities” (Cambridge) and the accompanying stereotypes, many female writers of the time published under pseudonyms. By doing so, they were able to widen their scope beyond the traditional “domain of feminine writing” (Cambridge) into areas such as politics, social issues, gender roles, economics, and other conventionally masculine topics. Through her journalistic persona, George Eliot experimented with narratives and negotiated relationships with her editor and audience. 

One example of such critical negotiation takes place in Adam Bede, in which Eliot challenges the Victorian confines of the female by utilizing the “fallen woman” archetype. Victorian moral conventions asserted that, per Darwinian theory, women are born “angels” and men “animals.” It was considered natural for men to explore and appease their sexual appetites, but “unnatural” for women to do the same. Typical belief of Victorian culture held that a woman’s sexuality was dangerous to herself and to society. Rosalind White explains further how a Victorian woman’s identity was linked to her sexuality: 

“During the Victorian period a woman's identity was indisputably intertwined with her sexual status; a woman was either an untainted "maiden," a wife or mother (which placed her sexuality safely in the domestic sphere), or she was vilified by labels such as "spinster" or "whore," both of which had negative connotations, the former with sexual atrophy, the latter with deviant promiscuity. Essentially, any deviance from the paragon of ideal Victorian womanhood, the "angel of the house," insinuated that a woman's fall was imminent.”  

Eliot challenged this Victorian ideal by using the “fallen woman”, a term which “refers to an irrevocable loss of innocence, a concept originating in the biblical fall in the Garden of Eden; the characterisation of Eve as temptress inextricably links her fallen state with the loss of sexual purity” (White). Hetty Sorrel, one of the main characters in Adam Bede is a perfect portrait of the Victorian "fallen woman". A lower-class maiden, Hetty is seduced by a life of jewels and satin and becomes sexually corrupted by a man who is above her station and has no intention of marrying her. 

Had George Eliot not adopted that pseudonym, her infamous work, her psychological realism, and her striking honesty about provincial life in rural England may not have been received and/or accepted in the way that it was.

SOURCES:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-victorian-womens-writing/victorian-women-writers-careers/38E8D853C4DCD946C779429B1589C72B/core-reader

http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/fallen2.html

https://artuk.org/discover/stories/ten-women-who-used-pseudonyms-and-one-man#

Poems before Congress

On 12 March 1860, publication of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poems before Congress. Image: An 1871 engraving of an 1859 photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (photograph by Macaire Havre, engraving by T. O. Barlow). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Alison Chapman, "On Il Risorgimento"

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The Death of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

On December 14, 1861, Queen Victoria mourned the death of her husband Albert. She would wear a locket of his hair each day until her own death. This marked the beginning of unique mourning traditions during the Victorian Era. Because of her, it started to become popular to wear hair as commemorative jewelry because it would not decay. Another practice done in memory of children was the making of wax baby dolls using the baby's hair. The dolls would be placed on the grave or kept in the home for sentimental purposes.

More customs were introduced with the invention of the daguerrotype announced on August 19th, 1839. Photography during this time was expensive and was only for big events, such as one's passing. These brought comfort to the grieving families, especially those who lost a child (the mortality rate was higher for children). The post-mortem photography process involved little beautification or posing of the body, as a trend, until the turn of the century. It even became common to pose the deceased with their family. Often, this would be the only photo they had of or with the family member.

Due to the high mortality rate and lengthy grieving process, the Victorians would spend much of their lives in mourning. Because loss and grief was such a big part of Victorian culture, it was very important that they commemorate death. Today, we would consider these customs to be grotesque and macabre. However, for the Victorians, it gave them a sense of closeness to their lost relatives and with it feelings of comfort. This contrasts significantly with modern times where death is not something to commemorate or display. Post-mortem photography is now largely reserved for forensics and baby dolls are not replicated after the deceased. It's customary to avoid embellishment of death out of respect. However, in the eyes of the Victorians, that was the respectful thing to do.

Works Cited:

Bedikian, S. A. (n.d.). The death of mourning: From Victorian Crepe to the little black dress - Sonia A. Bedikian, 2008. SAGE Journals. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/OM.57.1.c.

Harmeyer, R. (1970, January 1). Objects of immortality: Hairwork and mourning in victorian visual culture. Repository Home. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://uh-ir.tdl.org/handle/10657/3003.

Great Indian Famine of 1876–78

[caption id="attachment_3198" align="aligncenter" width="700"] The last of the herd. Author: Horace Harral[/caption]In 1876-8, somewhere between six and eleven million people died in southern and western India of starvation and other famine-related conditions.

These estimates are taken from:
Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London: Verso, 2002. Print. pp. 7.

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