Friedrich Engels: Labor, Oppression, and Uncovering Material Inequality

By Artistosteles - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88269700

In "The Great Towns" from "The Condition of the Working Class in England," Engels walks through the slums of industrial cities like Manchester, and points out the oppression of poverty. The overcrowded housing, no sanitation, people living on top of each other with no clean air or light. He calls out how the rich avoid these places entirely, and pretend not to see what’s happening. He’s showing how the Industrial Revolution wasn’t just about progress, but it created a system where poor people, especially working families, lived in awful conditions so the wealthy could live more luxuriously, while they were being made invisible. This fits my theme because Engels is using writing to make invisible suffering visible. He saw what was happening and sought to uncover the material consequences of such extreme poverty. He powerfully asserts, "The very turmoil of the streets has something repulsive, something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not at all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy?" 

Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The VIctorian Age. 11th ed., vol. E, W.W. Norton & Company, 2024.