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Saw a thing on TikTok and I have to agree:
The more you learn about history, and the more you study the period, the more any rational and decent person should ***loathe*** the Victorian era, anything from it, and anything that calls back to it.
Truly the nadir of human civilization.
They ruined historical artifacts of every possible variety, wiped out scores of civilizations, did monstrous things to their own fucking children--there is literally not a single thing from the Victorian era that is an unmitigated good.
No, not that thing.
Yes, including literature.
And before you ask:
Yes, I studied this dumpster fire of an era at the doctoral level. Specifically, my specialization in lit was the Enlightenment (which was also awful, but has A FEW decent things, such as the Irish independence movement), and the frickin MOMENT that The Castle of Otronto appears is the end of anything remotely redeemable about England especially and the entirety of Europe for the most part for a good century or so.
The volume of what was annihilated by the Victorians as immoral, and which are now lost forever, with only references in biography and journals and history, is truly beyond measuring.
So, like... Keep that in mind when you watch a costume drama next time, okay? Because all those pretty gowns and tasteful parties only existed because they gave little boys scrotal cancer at 7 from chimneysweeping so the houses wouldn't burn down and little girls dying from mercury poisoning for making the hats they wore.
And before someone calls toward the birth of modern feminist literature in the era:
Go read the Xtian Mystics. Seriously. Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen (who was sainted!), and dozens of others who came centuries earlier--that feminist lit only had to premiere because IT HAD BEEN WIPED OUT! BY THE VICTORIANS!!
Even the worst of the women Mystics were vastly more feminist than the costume fiction authors in the Victorian era, and they wrote CENTURIES before it.
Also also, personal gripe:
Boarding schools, which only became common in the Vic era, are one of the most horrific commonplace forms of child abuse and, I believe, is responsible for much of the worst of toxic masculinity and patriarchy we deal with today.
So like
That's why I hate boarding school dramas and novels and refuse to read themmmmm.
And if I try it and your novel has even mild boarding school abuse I will almost for sure DNF it regardless of what else is going on.
Eveb college-age stuff I'm touchy on, if there's frequent abusive acts.
The only one I can think of that did it well is The Magicians, where the very plot of the book and setting is that magic comes *from* trauma and abuse, and which made the entire series into a critique of boarding schools and holding trauma close instead of working to heal it.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15533198/
@Impossible_PhD have you read Caliban And The Witch? it's not directly about the Victorian era but it does chart a path from the middle ages through to the modern era, and how society regressed in many respects due to the imposed morality of the upper class through capitalism
@AmyZenunim I have not.
@Impossible_PhD Shout out also to the Scholomance series, whose premise is basically "what if boarding school was a literal nightmare dimension and the suffering therein was the literal foundation for the safety of the rich and powerful, whose homes should be burned down"
it’s so good, and genuinely scary, and also mordantly funny. IIRC it’s by Naomi Novik, who doesn’t miss
Oh, it’s very much the vibe RN. Time for a re-read
@Impossible_PhD not even Dead Poets Society?
@twipped I've seen it. And good god does it whitewash the abuse of those settings.
Put another way: Williams is only notable as a teacher in that setting *because of how monstrously abusive it was as a default*.
@Impossible_PhD see that’s exactly why I thought it would be an exception. The abuse was so bad in the school that a a child killed themselves, and his teacher was fired for refusing to be complicit in the cycle of harm. My entire takeaway from the film was that boarding schools are violent places of systemic abuse, employed by terrible people.
@Impossible_PhD @twipped I've seen a meme recently about the Polish literature. For every Polish book there is a suffering. Either suffers the autor, the main character, or the reader. And if all of them are suffering, we have a masterpiece of a world literature. From my meagre knowledge I would say it applies to Russian literature as well.
But from what you wrote it seems it might be enhanced as a world standard.
@Impossible_PhD I was almost sent to one of those. -.-
@Impossible_PhD Went to boarding school. Would not argue.
@Impossible_PhD I can understand where you're coming from. But for me, and the majority of ordinary people in the UK, boarding school fiction doesn't really resonate because it is so alien to the sort of schooling they had. I'm sure that it only exists now because there's enough moneyed people to write or promote the stuff because they aren't ordinary people. It was a lot more prevalent when I was younger, because the upper middle class authors of the time and the literary critics were like that
@Impossible_PhD My own experience as a weekly boarder at a special school in the 90s was slightly more complex, but it was definitely a case of least bad option.
From the inside, it's tricky to capture the idea that whatever else they do right, you're institutionalised there with everything that implies. The bit you do know is if it's not the staff, there's always at least one kid.
Most people have no idea what it is to have to share a room with your school bully.
@Impossible_PhD I was sent to a small 1879 US parochial boarding school atheist parents. By design it mixed wealthy & middle class students. It turned out to be a good education despite the religion instruction. Cruelty came from other students not the institution.
@Impossible_PhD
*points silently at the Harry Potter series*
@ninedragons That and everything like it is a quiet apologia for a whole mountain of horrors.
Kids being bullied is not suddenly cool or romantic, just because you add magic.
@Impossible_PhD my dad was raised in the British boarding school system from the age of nine, and modelled his entire philosophy of behaviour and child-raising technique on what he learnt therein.
...
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
"My son turned out fine!"
"Sir, your daughter identifies as a potato on the internet/ is dedicating the rest of her life to helping to undo the trauma inflicted on British and global psyches by Victorian colonial attitudes."
@Impossible_PhD Let me me also bring up "Stalky & Co." (Kipling) that is quite a graphic picture of the main goal of boarding school process: formation of the Imperial Men, forging their bonds and making them an efficient whip in the hands of the rulers.
As @stevewfolds wrote, the main cruelty - the driving force of the whole process - came from other victims, set to perpetuate whatever was done to them.
The officials were there to curb (steer) the violence, solve minor glitches, and - theoretically - to remove those permanently unfit (this way or another).
Today we call it socialisation and peer pressure. We see it daily, performed under watchful eye of professionals - directly and indirectly.
I read it in high school and paid more attention to protagonists camaraderie, their antics and transgressions. Now, I see that it is probably the most frank analysis of the process, perhaps because Kipling (almost unfit himself) internalised it in full and did not try to hide anything.
@8petros @Impossible_PhD Kipling has a Vermont hook. I was read Kipling’s “Just So Stories” in dramatic voicing at bedtime as a child.
https://vtdigger.org/2017/12/31/kiplings-brief-stormy-stay-vermont/
