Victorianarama!

Queen Victoria's black and white enamel ring, with a microphotograph (reversed) of Prince Albert, whose death in 1861 devastated the Queen and drove her into full mourning for nearly a decade. According to the Royal Collection, this gold mourning ring's bezelfeatures the portrait image attributed to John Jabez Edwin Mayall, the acclaimed Victorian photographer. 

Celebrating International Women’s Day (March 8), we’ve got a handful of 19th century (and one 20th century) literary quotations by, for, and about the position and power of women:

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" —George Eliot (Marian Evans, 1819-1880), Middlemarch (1872)

"It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.  Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot.  Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth.  Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.  It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex." —Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), Jane Eyre (1847)

“‘I am sure I am,’ said Margaret, in a firm, decided tone. ‘Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used-not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.’” —Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865), North and South (1855)

"Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything." —Jane Austen (1775-1817), Persuasion (1817)

"The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them." —Queen Victoria (1819-1901) [source unknown]

"Give us back our suffering, we cry to Heaven in our hearts — suffering rather than indifferentism; for out of nothing comes nothing. But out of suffering may come the cure. Better have pain than paralysis! A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore!" —Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), Cassandra (written 1860; published posthumously)

“‘What help?’ I asked. 'You'd scorn my help,–as Nature's self, you say, Has scorned to put her music in my mouth, Because a woman’s. Do you now turn round And ask for what a woman cannot give? […] –am I proved too weak To stand alone, yet strong enough to bear Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think, Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought? Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can, Yet competent to love, like [GOD]?’”  —Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Aurora Leigh (1856)

 ” As all virtues nourish each other, and can no otherwise be nourished, the consequence of the admitted fallacy is that men are, after all, not nearly so brave as they ought to be; nor women so gentle. But what is the manly character till it be gentle? The very word magnanimity cannot be thought of in relation to it till it becomes mild, Christ-like. Again, what can a woman be, or do, without bravery? Has she not to struggle with the toils and difficulties which follow upon the mere possession of a mind ? Must she not face physical and moral pain, physical and moral danger ? Is there a day of her life in which there are not conflicts wherein no one can help her— perilous work to be done, in which she can have neither sympathy nor aid? Let her lean upon man as much as he will, how much is it that he can do for her ? from how much can he protect her ? From a few physical perils, and from a very few social evils. This is all.” —Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), “WOMAN. General Treatise on the Education, Morals, Religion, and Overprotection of Women." (1834-7)

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.” —Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Portrait of a Girl (Sophie Gray), 1857. Sir John Everett Millais (English, 1829-1896). Oil on mounted paper.

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863. Vanity fair : a novel without a hero, 1848.

*EC85 T3255 848vb

The Romantic idea of the hero, derived from the concept of the sublime, stands in contradiction to the classical epic notion of the hero as one devoted to the welfare of his family and people. The Romantic hero is individual, alone against the world, self-assertive, ambitious, powerful, and liberator in rebellion against the society that blocks the way of progress toward liberty, beauty, and love; the Romantics read these qualities into Milton’s Satan.

VICTORIAN HISTORY MEME: events [6/9]

The Morant Bay Rebellion, and Governor Eyre Controversy (Oct. 11, 1865)

Though slavery had officially been abolished across the British Empire in 1838 — ostensibly freeing over 700,000 enslaved people in the British caribbean —, racial inequality continued into the next generation in Jamaica. Before the Morant Bay Rebellion, the island population of nearly 500,000 teemed with social, religious, and political tensions. After the uprising of 1865, Jamaica became a British Crown Colony (under direct colonial rule) until 1962. As late scholar Professor Stuart Hall glosses,

It’s the end of an era. Morant Bay occurs after the dream — the post-abolitionist dream in Britain — […] that it would be possible, once slavery was abolished, to construct in the Colonies, in places like Jamaica, a sort of society in which the freed slaves and their families would have an opportunity to develop and live something like a satisfying life, and in their view, become more and more like black Englishmen. That was the aim, the ambition, of the anti-slavery lobby. And I think Morant Bay signals that that is not going to happen. [x]

Well into the 1860s (at the same moment as the American Civil War), blacks struggled to find, purchase, and cultivate land of their own. Moreover, the Jamaican court system was dominated by whites, who often (according to scholar Dr. Clinton Hutton) adjudicated cases involving allegations against their own employees.

These and numerous other injustices were among the grievances of Revivalist Baptist preacher Paul Bogle, a landowner (and thus eligible voter) in St. Thomas Parish and now one of Jamaica’s seven national heroes.

[♪ Songs referencing Bogle: Third World’s ‘96 Degrees in the Shade’, and Bob Marley’s ‘So Much Things to Say’. ♪]

Bogle, encouraged by friend and local politician George William Gordon, marched to Morant Bay to seek reparations from Governor Edward Eyre.Arriving at the governor’s house, however, Bogle and his fellows were turned away. (Eyre had previously been a colonial public servant in Australia, where he wrote a favorable account of his attempts to co-exist on tolerant terms with Aboriginal peoples; and as lieutenant-governor of New Zealand, where his awkward personality, fierce Anglican and Euro-centric beliefs, and poor relationship with Governor Grey made his term an unpopular one.)

Matters escalated on Oct. 7, when a court case against a black defendant (tried for trespassing on an abandoned plantation) was interruptedby a black audience member, who was forcibly removed from the courtroom, provoking Bogle and at least twenty others to ‘rescue’ man in a scene which quickly became a melee between citizens and state troops. Warrants were issued for Bogle and his men’s arrests, forcing events to escalate further, including Bogle’s letter delivered to the Governor’s house on the morning of Oct. 11 [sic]:

We, the petitioners of St. Thomas in the East, send to inform your Excellency of the mean advantages that has been taken of us from time to time, and more especially the present time, when on Saturday, 7th of this month, an outrageous assault was committed upon us by the policemen of this parish, by order of the justices, which occasion an outbreaking, for which warrants have been issues against innocent person[s], of which we were compelled to resist. We therefore call upon your Excellency for protection, seeing we are Her Majesty’s loyal subjects, which protection, if refused to will be compelled to put our shoulders to the wheel, as we have been imposed upon for a period of 27 years, with due obeisance to the laws of our Queen and country, and we can no longer endure… [x]

More than three hundred people, including Bogle,turned out on Oct. 11, and raided the unloaded guns of the police station; meanwhile, the Governor had already assembled dozens (possibly over a hundred) troops. Magistrate and German-born Baron von Ketelhodt emerged from within the court house (where a vestry meeting was taking place to discuss the ‘rebel’ uprising), read the Riot Act, and — when the angered mob did not disperse — ordered his troops to fire, killing eight men. After the smoke cleared and a stunned pause, the rioters ‘rushed furiously… [o]ver the railing’ [NYT], attacking the soldiers, magistrates, and building. By the end of the day, eighteen whites were dead (including von Ketelhodt) and the courthouse was burned to the ground.

Governor Eyre’s reaction to the bloody but contained incidents was swift and brutal: over the next fortnight, troops targeted any black civilian who was perceived as a threat. Of those arrested, at least 439, including Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, were killed (eithershot or hanged after illegal convictions on little or no evidence), while a further 600+ were viciously flogged, and hundreds of homes were razed. (Scholar Dr. Clinton Hutton estimates that, since — after the native group, the Maroons, allied with the Governor’s martial forces — untold numbers of people were killed in their homes: possibly ‘1,500 people were killed within two weeks of the rebellion… Over one thousand houses were burned to the ground — entire villages were wiped off the face of the earth.’ [x]) 

When news reached Britain, public outcry was vociferous, particularly among scientists and social reformers, including John Stuart Mill (who founded the Jamaica Committee for the purpose and would attempt multiple times over the next ten years to have Eyre tried for murder, high crimes and misdemeanors), radical politician John Bright, philosopher Herbert Spencer, T.H. Huxley, and Charles Darwin [x]. Somewhat surprisingly, many notable figures came out in support of Eyre, claiming his handling was the only possible method of dealing with an outbreak of native populations by a colonial power in order to avoid complete anarchy: these included Thomas Carlyle 'whose views,'  Hoppen reminds us, 'on the “nigger question” were of old vintage' [224]; authors Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, and Charles Kingsley, and reformer John Ruskin. In 1866, a special royal commission was convened to investigate the matter, but Eyre was never tried (though recalled from his position), and was in fact given a pension by the British government until his death in 1901.

Paul Bogle, as well as George William Gordon, is considered one of Jamaica’s ‘seven national heroes’, memorialized alongside activist Marcus Garvey as a key figure in Jamaica’s long struggle for ‘black determination’ and equality [x]. For the Victorians, however as Stuart Hall argues, 

Public opinion in Britain had been riveted by the question of whether they could make abolition work. And what I think happens in the aftermath of Bogle and Morant Bay is that you begin to get the ascendancy of the view that blacks are a completely different.[…] “They are different: they are differently born, differently made; the difference is in their genes, the difference is in their biology, the difference is in the shape and size of their heads, the difference is in their hearts.” And this view really lasts throughout this period, to the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. It is the view that really pioneers the high period of imperialism, the scramble for Africa. The burgeoning of the colonial powers is really under the egis of a scientific racist view. [x]

"Vanity Fair" playing cards, United States Card Co., 1895.

MS Am 2204 (17)