Victorian Social Reform

My history professor was right when she told me she has noticed a theme amongst my research papers.  I do admit that I enjoy researching events that launched social reforms, including Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and the sinking of the Titanic.  It should come to no surprise then that I was inspired to write a blog entry about Charles Dickens’ short work, “Gin Shops.”  In this piece, Dickens describes the gin shops in the slums of St. Giles frequented by the London poor.  It was originally published in The Evening Chronicle on February 19, 1835.  Dickens was angry at the people who condemned the symptoms of poverty without addressing its cause.  This is supported in the following quotation from the story:

“Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater; and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendor.”

Dickens’ argument is that in order to end the drinking problem, society needs to stop the source of the misery.  With cleaner streets and better housing conditions, people living in the “slums” would not spread sicknesses as often, young children would not die, and fathers or mothers would not consider drinking away their problems when they have families to take care of.  Essentially, these “peasants” go to the gin shops in order to escape reality, which oftentimes is too horrible for them to face.  They do not have anything to look forward to when they go home, except for filth and misery.  Something as eye-opening as this short sketch published in a newspaper would probably have elicited some sort of reform or at least an investigation into the truths of Dickens' descriptions.

How Do I Love Thee?

What exactly is love?  This is a question I believe has existed in civilization ever since man and woman were brought together on this earth.  There are terms that can be applied to love in general, such as trust, responsibility, and appreciation, but love is defined differently be each couple.  Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, Robert Browning, both Victorian poets of the 19^th century, are perfect examples for this quest to discover what love is.  Elizabeth loved her husband so much that she wrote 44 sonnets contained in the Sonnets from the Portuguese collection, as a personal dedication of love to Robert. That is 616 lines of poetry expressing love; wow!  Perhaps the culmination of these sonnets is sonnet 43, often referred to as “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints.  I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth uses the Italian Petrarchan sonnet form to structure her poem.  This style divides the fourteen-line sonnet into two parts – the octave (the first 8 lines) and the sestet (the final six lines).  This is different from the famous style of the Shakespearean sonnet that features three quatrains of four lines each, ending with a two line couplet.  Another technical aspect of this poem is its rhythm, which is iambic pentameter (five iams per line – da-DUM).  An example of this is the following line “How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.”

A unique quality of this sonnet is the way Elizabeth wrote it, leaving the gender of both the speaker and the beloved ambiguous.  This is perhaps what makes it such a well-known poem – because it can be exchanged between man to woman or vice versa.  Elizabeth begins her sonnet with the question, “How do I love thee?”  She then spends the rest of the sonnet explaining to her beloved how much she loves him.  The turn of the poem occurs at the beginning of the sestet, when Elizabeth tells her beloved that she has been hurt in the past and that has affected how she feels love.  I remember reading this poem several times in high school, but re-reading it for this class has had a greater impact on me now, as I am preparing to marry my high school sweetheart of three and a half years this May.  I am even considering reading this poem during the ceremony – a true testament of how well Elizabeth Barrett Browning captured what it means to love someone.