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The
Brownstone Journal >>
Issues >> Vol.
XII Spring 2005
Education and Experience in Three Victorian
Novels
Jamie Clearfield (UNI 08) from Kingston,
PA, is pursuing an interdisciplinary degree in Education, Urban/Immigrant
Studies, and Economics.
To live under the yoke of constant and variable
expectation is to live teetering on the edge of an invisible
psychological cliff. Whether self-imposed or not, these expectations
can wreak havoc on one's mental outlook, causing extremes of
both happiness and depression. Rest becomes a figment of fantasy,
peace of mind and self contentment relegated to the fancied
ends of one's hope. "If only" becomes the catchphrase
of some never-realized dream. Such expectations are a part of
human nature—and perhaps never as obvious as in Victorian Britain.
Underneath the order and deliberateness of the age, there was
an unvoiced pomp and circumstance demanded by all. The poor
were driven to the complexity of the city in search of a certain
understated eminence; the pious driven to new depths of spirituality;
the rich to higher and higher standards of living. Though physically
and socially diverse, all these groups were united by an unrealized
expectation for something better. Expectation in and of itself
is not damning; to work towards something better is one of the
noblest acts of humanity. But the heavy burden that results
from unattainable or unfulfilled expectations is the essential
quality of damnation.
Ironically, the desire to change for the better
became one of the many social ills of the Victorian period,
which were critiqued by authors of the period—most recognizably
in the area of education. It is not surprising that education
became the focus for many criticisms, because the Victorian
educational system was pitiful at best. As evidenced by the
works of Charles Dickens and, to a lesser extent, Edmund Gosse,
there was a desire to extract a uniform output from each pupil,
regardless of his/her individualism. Presumptions made by the
characters of Dickens' Hard Times and Edmund Gosse's
father, Philip Henry Gosse, in Edmund's Father and Son
reflect Victorian Britain's dependency on expectation. It is
the children who fall victim to this addiction, most notably
the Gradgrind children of Hard Times. However, there
are a few, including Edmund Gosse, who are able to rise above
their education and the expectations placed on them by remaining
true to themselves.
In contrast to both Dickens and Gosse is William
Morris' News from Nowhere, in which Morris presents
a world of no expectations. A utopian novel, News from Nowhere
illustrates a curious world of self-restraint and education
by virtual osmosis. While Morris’ lack of expectation is intriguing,
it is unattainable. But the very fact that he includes in his
utopia an antithetical method of education demonstrates the
extreme problems present in the system of his time. Curiously,
Morris illustrates a world where expectation is nonexistent,
but he seems to protest such an environment. Thus, it seems
that a balance is needed between uniform expectations for all
and none at all; and although no such solution is presented
in the novels, it is what each author is advocating and struggling
for.
The fate of the Gradgrind children draws pity
and remorse from the reader—pity for the state of their mental
health as a result of the way they were raised, and remorse
because the reader most likely is, or is training their child
to be, a Gradgrind himself. As Dickens presents the situation:
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they
were models, everyone. They had been lectured at, from their
tenderest years, coursed, like little hares. Almost as soon
as they could run alone, they had been made to run to the
lecture-room. The first object with which they had an association,
or of which they had a remembrance, was a large blackboard
with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it. Not
that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre.
Fact Forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a
lecturing castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated
into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy
statistical dens by the hair . . . (Dickens
12-13)
The Gradgrind children are raised in virtual
isolation due to the models which they are destined to follow.
It is thus somewhat jarring how self-content their father is,
despite the damage this isolation inflicts upon the children.
At one point, Dickens writes, "Their father walked on in
hopeful and satisfied frame of mind. He was an affectionate
father, after his manner; but he would have described himself
. . . as 'an eminently practical' father" (Dickens 14).
It is this contentment that is so galling to the reader and
that makes the struggle of his children so much greater. The
Gradgrind children are their father's complete victims; they
are never able, as was typical in the Victorian period, to escape
their father's presence and power over their lives. They have
access to education, but only the education their father sets
out for them. In truth, they are only partly educated: they
know the expectations and desires of their father, but never
their own.
Both of their characters reflect this omission.
Louisa becomes a hardened shell of fact:
'What do I know, father,' said Louisa in
her quiet manner, 'of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and
affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light
things might have been nourished? What escape have I had from
problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could
be grasped? . . . The baby-preference that even I have heard
of common among children has never had its innocent resting-place
in my breast. You have been so careful of me that I never
had a child's heart. You have trained me so well that I never
dreamed a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me,
father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's
belief or a child's fear' (Dickens
95)
Thomas becomes a hardened shell, as well—even
towards the sister he loves. He turns vengeful and morally corrupt
due to the expectations he must fulfill. He has been trained
for a certain purpose, and once it is fulfilled, he feels entitled
to his due. He expresses his desire to change his way of life
by living with Bounderby, who is the opposite of Thomas' father
in his approach to life:
'I wish I could collect all the Facts we
hear so much about,' said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth,
'and all the Figures, and all the people who found them out;
and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder under
them, and blow them all up together! However, when I got to
live with old Bounderby, I'll have my revenge. . . . I mean
I'll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see something,
and hear something. I'll recompense myself for the way in
which I have been brought up.' (Dickens
50-51)
Louisa also voices her desire for self-destruction,
proclaiming, "I curse the hour in which I was born to such
a destiny" (Dickens 194). But despite their age, Thomas
and Louisa remain children in their emotions, wanting as children
do to strike out immediately in their hurt. They are thus left
to suffer the hurts of an adult world without any form of immunity
to protect them as they begin their path to maturity.
Bounderby is another victim of his time and
schooling, embodying many Victorian notions of expectation and
superiority. Bounderby receives perhaps the purest education
of his age, one supported and encouraged by sacrifice and love
from his parents, as one character describes:
. . . though he come of humble parents, he
come of parents that loved him as dear as the best could,
and never thought it hardship on themselves to pinch a bit
that he might write and cipher beautiful, and I've his books
at home to show it!' (Dickens
232)
Bounderby is the opposite of the Gradgrind
children. Growing up, he had no parental expectation over his
head save their love for him—in fact, his parents were willing
to be controlled by him. Yet in the end he turns to the same
self-destructing path. He falls victim to the expectations of
his education and later society, becoming devoid of proper human
compassion or geniality. More importantly, he becomes a liar
so that he may fulfill society's expectations. It is perhaps
easier to shrug off a childhood of abuse and emerge the hero
than to admit to having a common life. After all, there is no
glory in being average. Bounderby is a self-made man, though
with an ordinary, sweet past that he scorns for its simplicity.
Through his lies, he comes to embody the prejudices of his age
against the working man—in short, an aristocratic hypocrite—saying
at one point, "' . . . You are such a waspish, raspish,
ill-conditioned chap, you see,' said Mr. Bounderby, 'that even
your own Union, the men who know you best, will have nothing
to do with you'" (Dickens 140). He chooses to forget the
sacrifices and love that brought him success. He feels little
gratitude for the woman who made him, though he does financially
support her.
Bounderby is the perfect friend for Thomas Gradgrind, Sr., because
both are so overly dominated by their society. However, Gradgrind
eventually is able to recognize his erroneous philosophy and
see the pain he has inflicted on his children. He undergoes
an education all his own, one that Bounderby, in his haze of
fact and bluff, can never achieve. This is a painful education,
involving a detachment from comforting theories and beliefs
and seeing reality for what it is. As Dickens says of Gradgrind,
"Aged and bent he looked, and quite bowed down; and yet
he looked a wiser man, and a better man, than in the days when
in his life he wanted nothing but Facts" (Dickens 244).
In this realization, Gradgrind is finally able to help his children
and separate himself from Bounderby. Bounderby remains a lost
cause, a total victim to the education so lovingly sacrificed
for. The ability to acknowledge one's own mistakes, the humility
it entails, and the ability to allow for change must all come
from the individual—as they do in Thomas Gradgrind (though ideally
in one whose soul has not been so twisted and tortured as a
child, or one who loves enough to recognize true pain in the
people around him).
For Edmund Gosse, the ability to recognize
his inner self and its faults saves him from a form of parental
"enslavement." Like the Gradgrind children, Gosse,
too, is born into a system:
The peculiarities of a family life, founded
upon such principles, are in relation to a little child, obvious;
but I may be permitted to recapitulate them. Here was perfect
purity, perfect intrepidity, perfect abnegation; yet there
was also narrowness, isolation, an absence of perspective,
let it be boldly admitted, an absence of humanity. And there
was a curious mixture of humbleness and arrogance; entire
resignation to the will of God and not less entire disdain
of the judgement and opinion of man (Gosse
43)
Throughout much of his early life, Gosse is
isolated from all human contact, save that of his parents and
house staff. He is meant to be like the Biblical Samuel and
is expected to die in childhood. These last two factors have
the greatest impact on his childhood, in both his personal development
and his education. From his birth, Gosse is the sole student
of both his parents, two people who have submitted their own
wills to the religious order of the Plymouth Brethren. Ironically,
in choosing this life, Gosse's parents commit their son to a
religious life that they themselves made the choice to adopt.
And as with Louisa Gradgrind, Gosse eventually rebels:
Jack the Giant-Killer, Rumpelstiltskin and
Robin Hood were not of my acquaintance, and though I understood
about wolves, Little Red Ridinghood was a stranger even by
name. So far as my 'dedication' was concerned, I can but think
that my parents were in error thus to exclude the imaginary
from my outlook upon facts. They desired to make me truthful,
the tendency was to make me positive and sceptical. Had they
wrapped me in the soft folds of supernatural fancy, my mind
might have been longer content to follow their traditions
in an unquestioning spirit (Gosse
50)
Gosse's parents do not allow their expectations
of his intellect to become exceedingly high: "This my Father
did not encourage, remarking, with great affection, and chucking
me under the chin, that I was 'a nice ordinary boy'" (Gosse
52). Their whole expectations for him are religious in origin,
becoming more exaggerated after his mother's death:
‘Take our lamb, and walk with me!' Then my
Father comprehended, and pressed me forward; her hand fell
softly upon mine and she seemed contented. Thus was my dedication,
that had begun in my cradle, sealed with the most solemn,
the most poignant and irresistible insistence, at the death-bed
of the holiest and purest of women. But what a weight, intolerable
as the burden of Atlas, to lay on the shoulders of a little
fragile child! (Gosse 81)
From this time forward, even after Edmund eventually
moves out on his own, the state of his religiosity is of prime
concern for his father. This is perhaps the driving force behind
Edmund's later individualism. Throughout the book, Gosse remembers
many instances in which his will runs counter to that of the
religion he is supposed to believe in. In one instance, he describes:
"I knelt down on the carpet in front of the table and looking
up I said my daily prayer in a loud voice, only substituting
the address 'O Chair!' for the habitual one" (Gosse 66).
These are the memories he shares with the world, the most definitive
of his existence:
Presently I was quite sure that nothing would
happen. I had committed idolatry, flagrantly and deliberately,
and God did not care. The Result of this ridiculous act was
not to make me question the existence and power of God; those
were forces which I did not dream of ignoring. But what it
did was to lessen still further my confidence in my Father's
knowledge of the Divine mind. (Gosse
67)
Gosse understands that his destiny is decided:
he will be dedicated to God in service, either on Earth or in
Heaven. Ironically, this allows him the freedom to explore within
himself and develop his individuality. Throughout his formative
years, he does not have to dwell on the possibilities of his
future self, but only on his present, because of his anticipated
death: "I was roused to a consciousness that I was not
considered well by the fact that my Father prayed publicly at
morning and evening 'worship' that if it was the Lord's will
to take me to himself there might be no doubt whatsoever about
my being a sealed child of God and an inheritor of glory"
(Gosse 110). His childhood isolation allows him to become very
much attuned to his own being, and later on to his Father, as
evidenced by his observations within the book:
[Gosse's father] did indeed possess this
saving faith, which could move mountains of evidence and suffer
no diminution under the action of failure or disappointment.
I, on the other hand—as I began to feel dimly then, and see
luminously now—had only acquired the habit of giving the Archbishop
means by 'a kind of natural credit' to the doctrine so persistently
impressed upon my conscience. (Gosse
169)
All these factors drive the young Edmund against
his father's teachings. By adolescence and his admittance to
the outside world at boarding school, the foundations of his
own self-development are already in place. Unlike other adolescents,
who are only beginning to discover themselves, Gosse is already
articulating his childhood discoveries as a mature young man.
His father's continual "education" in matters of faith
is superfluous and only serves to drive Edmund away from his
faith faster: "I was docile, I was plausible, I was anything
but combative; if my father could have persuaded himself to
let me alone, if he could merely have been willing to leave
my subterfuges and my explanations unanalysed, all would have
been well" (Gosse 246). Edmund's individuality eventually
triumphs, though painfully. As in Hard Times, his education
is undermined by the fanaticism with which it is administered.
In contrast to both Hard Times and
Father and Son is News from Nowhere, Morris’
surreal world of self-regulation, useful and pleasurable work,
and social stagnation. In the state of Nowhere there is no private
property or money, and all the people are stronger, prettier,
and happier for it. While these characteristics are common for
a Victorian utopia, Morris’ ideals regarding education are distinctive.
As explained in the text:
Morris once expressed his hope that education
in a socialist society would be 'both more liberal, and wiser
for all, than it is today for a few; and that it will be its
function to develop any gifts which children or older people
may have towards science, literature, the handicrafts, or
the higher arts, or anything which may be useful or desirable
to the community.'
Morris completely disregards any Victorian
notion of education in his novel, and thus there are no preconceived
'expectations' for the children in that respect. Instead of
a system of education, there is something quite the opposite:
You expected to see children thrust into
schools when they had reached an age conventionally supposed
to be the due age, whatever their varying faculties and dispossessions
might be, and when there, with like disregard to facts to
be subjected to a certain conventional course of 'learning.'
My friend, can't you see that such a proceeding means ignoring
the fact of growth, bodily and mental? (Morris
55)
Morris recognizes what Dickens and Gosse both
imply, and is the only one of the three to express it so explicitly:
"No one would come out of such a mill uninjured; and those
only would avoid being crushed by it would have the spirit of
rebellion strong in them" (Gosse 55). Children here are
to learn what they wish, through a virtual osmosis process:
"Most children, seeing books lying about, manage to read
by the time they are four years old . . . You see, children
are mostly given to imitating their elders, and when they see
most people about them engaged in genuinely amusing work . .
. that is what they want to be doing" (Morris 25, 27).
In Nowhere, "girl number twenty" (Dickens 6) does
not exist, nor is there "another Infant Samuel" (Gosse
153) to be offered to heaven by his parent. The children of
Nowhere are "especially fine specimens of their race, and
were clearly enjoying themselves to the utmost" (Morris
25).
However, Nowhere still has a certain fragility
in its foundation. Though there are no expectations regarding
education, the entire society is based on self-regulation:
'Yet you must understand,' said the old man,
'that when any violence is committed, we expect the transgressor
to make any atonement possible to him, and he himself expects
it.
. . . If in addition we torture the man,
we turn his grief into anger, and the humiliation he would
otherwise feel for his wronGodoing is swallowed up by a hope
of revenge for our wronGodoing to him. He has paid the legal
penalty, and can 'go and sin again' with comfort. (Morris
71, 72)
Should this system crumble, even within a minority
of the population, Nowhere might fall into utter chaos. The
‘Nowhere’ presented in the novel is in an age of stagnation
(hence the variant title: An Epoch of Rest), as Morris
writes: "'You see, guest, this is not an age of inventions.
The last epoch did all that for us, and we are now content to
use such of its inventions as we find handy, and leaving those
alone which we don't want'" (Morris 146). There seems to
be an inherent danger in this epoch: that it could collapse
without remedy, because the education here is not forward-moving,
and there are no new ideas being proposed.
The expectation within Victorian society and
education was for a better future. Public education began in
the Victorian age in response to the increasing pressures and
ills of urbanization and the Industrial Revolution. It became
a way to train the masses in necessary skills for a future time,
and a way to improve the world in getting there. Morris’ utopia
lacks this expectation and the desire to better the future.
It is thus a dangerous place, where people live in perceived
perfection, but which could easily turn into anarchy without
warning. Education, for all of its faults and harm, has benefits
that Morris’ proposed plan does not—namely, the ability to teach
students to look forward. The education in Nowhere is not truly
education, but rather a learning of necessary life skills. Though
tempting, it is an unattainable solution. Perhaps this is why
the name of the utopia reflects its nonexistence.
The word "education" comes from the
Latin educere, meaning "to lead forth." However,
during the Victorian era, education became a system in which
pupils were not led, but rather molded and made to follow. The
harm that emerged from education is exaggerated in novels such
as Dickens’ Hard Times, but these novels are based
in truth. Expectation controlled society, and children could
not escape it. Speech, dress, manner—all were regulated by the
realities of one's place in society. Society failed to allow
for the expectations of the individual to be expressed. The
poor were born into poverty, with virtually no means of lifting
themselves out of it. Faith was dictated from the parent to
the child. Children had to fulfill expectation upon expectation
as a measure of self-worth. Yet the individual in Hard Times
and Father and Son manages to triumph, partly due to his inner
strength and partly due to the conformity to which he is subjected.
In that sense, education serves to push the individual forward,
more out of utter frustration and a desire to escape than because
it truly educates anyone. The individual thus moves forth into
the world, standing on the piled accumulation of the past, to
build a future with hopes and desires for something better than
what they have known. This is the essence of true education,
and the hope of all frustrated students throughout time. TBJ
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