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GLOBAL VICTORIANS, Who is telling the story?, The Wonderful Adventures of…

- - - - This image, mirrored after the popular Wedgwood Medallion was on the cover of The History of Mary Prince. This image was widely circulated throughout abolitionist movement.
        
        The original Wedgwood Medallion eventually turned into a print. Prints had the ability to be easily reprinted and shared throughout communities, which is why this specific image was used on the cover of The History of Mary Prince.
        
        The Wedgwood Medallion functioned as an image to try and get peoples attention. There is a specific duality found within the medallion. A side that fights for the abolition of slavery and a side that perpetuates British sentiments of racial hierarchy. On the bottom of the print is the phrase "Am I not a woman and a sister" emphasizing the humanity of enslaved persons. The verbiage "brother" and "sister" construct the idea that all humans are related under God and in Christian ideals. Therefore, it is wrong to enslave your brothers and sisters. The other side of the discourse surrounding the visual elements of the image is focused on the perpetuation of the British racial hierarchy. The image depicts someone on their knees, from the perspective of looking down on the enslaved persons. White Europeans looking at this image experience a sense of power based off of the position they are inherently put in, ultimately taking the agency away from the enslaved person depicted.
    - - Abolition of Slavery
        
        J. M. W Turner The Slave Ship.
        
        John Ruskin, “The Slave Ship”
        
        Laura Brace, “The Fallacies of Hope: Contesting Narratives of Abolition in Turner’s The Slave Ship
        
        Brace attempts to answer questions regarding the reception and interpretation of The Slave Ship. The complexity of the painting makes it hard for audiences to fully grasp both sides of its history.
        
        Visual symbols and art are difficult to be received by viewers as they can be misconstrued in many different ways.
        
        In the case of The Slave Ship the history of the Zong should not be divorced from the composition. In fact, it should be at the forefront of those studying the work.
        
        Call to action for fully comprehending visual literacy skills within the Victorian Era
        
        The traditional reading of the painting excludes the nuances present within the composition.
        
        John Ruskin examines the two narratives of the painting. By only focusing on the beauty of the work, the specific visual elements are ignored.
        
        John Oldfield, “Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery in Britain”
        
        Oldfield delves into the Abolition movement and the efforts taken by society and the visual elements employed by their actions, referencing the Wedgwood Medallion
        
        The Slave Ship depicts the historical event where in which members of the Zong had thrown overboard sick enslaved peoples. This painting was created by Turner and displayed at the Royal Salon, an elite gallery exhibition. The painting portrays a horrific moment in history yet has been masked as a beautiful, wondrous painting with its inherent message lost-- the abolition of slavery.
        
        The Slave Ship and The Wedgwood Medallion both retain abolitionist sentiments, were widely circulated, and are heavily studied not only in Victorian literature but the history of art. They are lenses in which culture and history can be viewed through.
      - Aviva Briefel, “On the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition”
        
        “A Walk Round the ‘Colonies’: A Show and a Revelation” (report on the Indian and Colonial Exhibition from the Pall Mall Gazette, 1886)
        
        T.N. Mukharji's "A Visit to Europe"
        
        Visitors of the exhibition " would frequently ask us home, get up private parties and arrange for all sorts of amusements" (Mukharji 1628). Mukharji became an object of fascination in society outside of the exhibition.
        
        "They were as much astonished to see the Indians produce works of art with the aid of rude apparatus they themselves had discarded long ago, as a Hindu would be to see a chimpanzee officiating as a priest in a funeral ceremony and reading out Sanskrit texts from a palm leaf book spread out before him" (Mukharji 1627). The general audience was in awe of what was before them. Mukharji here is explaining the overall wonder museum goers felt when viewing what was on display- in a fetishizing way.
        
        A primary source recounting the experience of The Great Exhibition.
        
        “A Walk Round the ‘Colonies’: A Show and a Revelation” is a colonial perspective when comparing it to perspective of T.N Murkharji's. These visual symbols and art objects had retained the ability to showcase the strength of the British army yet also the horrors and objectification of imperialism.
        
        William Howard Russell, from "My Diary in India, In the Year" 1858-9”
        
        Russell's description of his time in India documenting the consequences of Imperialism.
        
        Contextualizes the strife taking place during the process of collecting the culture, people, and land the British Empire desperately needed to have.
        
        Newspaper clipping documenting the Indian and Colonial Exhibition.
        
        aim to unify the colonies and highlight the success of the empire.
        
        bring the "East" to the "West" and spread Nationalist rhetoric
        
        Waldo's appreciation for "primitive" and "exotic" art is mirrored through a similar representation of objects displayed at the Great Exhibition.
        
        curation of objects from British colonies that are "foreign" and "exotic" to the Western world.
        
        way for England to display their dominance and inflict their racial superiority over the West
        
        Was a way for England to portray the conquest of lands yet to be "civilized"
        
        the British praised their country for displaying these objects and their role as conquerors
        
        spread political sentiment about how imperialist rule is right and just as the British are seen as "helping" the East.
        
        The Great Exhibition was "instrumental in associating Indian artifacts with the type of ideal craftsmanship that England had supposedly lost to the machine" (Briefel)
        
        This idea that England had "lost to the machine" is paralleled in Waldo's obsession with "primitive" art in collaboration with his own invention of the sheep shearing machine
      - The Story of an African Farm* By Olive Schreiner
        
        Waldo
        
        Waldo as a character is fascinated by cave paintings and questioning the prehistoric nature of those who came before him.
        
        He idealizes the “primitive” nature of the cave in the midst of the technological and industrial advances of the world.
        
        Schreiner employs the barren landscape of South Africa to juxtapose the modernizing world.
        
        The British Museum
        
        -Location in which a majority of these "conquered" objects are still housed today.
        
        The Story of an African Farm follows the story of a family living on a South African farm, alluding to themes of industrialization and modernity.
    - - Laurie Penny, “Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness”
        
        TV, movies, music, and museums are all critical to the culture of Britain. Not all of these elements began as of late, in fact, they were very much present during the Victorian Era.
        
        Most of societies engagement with England is through the entertainment industry. Penny discusses how Britain was kept out of recession solely based off of the entertainment industry.
        
        Works of art, such as the cover of The History of Mary Prince and the painting The Slave Ship are two examples of the weight visual symbols carried throughout the time period.
- - - - “repeatedly in monologues by white writers spoken in black voices, including dying slaves, pathetic child slaves, grateful slaves, and angry enslaved mothers” (Gregory 215).
        
        Dramatic monologues are a form of minstrelsy as they were considered to be a “theatrical tradition in which white actors regularly performed black characters onstage, a tradition that extends back into early modern culture with dramatic performances” (Gregory 216).
        
        Minstrelsy is another form of visual symbolism in which audiences receive a racist politically charged message. In the case of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, both narrators have been seen to adopt a persona in which they attempt to convey a specific message. In the case of Mrs. Seacole, a woman from Jamaica plays into the "minstrel" trope as seen in Poon's reading, and for Browning, a white woman narrating the life of an enslaved person.
        
        Angelia Poon, “Comic Acts of (Be)Longing”
        
        also a form of narration, important to know who is telling the story.
        
        Typically in dramatic monologues, the speaker is an explicitly made-up fictional character. In most cases the speaker is an unreliable narrator and audiences are meant to believe everything the narrator says.
    - - "I am black, I am black, and yet God made me, they say:" (Barrett 160). Barrett in this quotes is not a black woman, yet readers are able to assume the author is the speaker.
- - - - European Modernity
        
        The British Identity
        
        Rudyard Kipling, biographical headnote, “Recessional” (1897), “The White Man’s Burden” (1899), “If” (1895)
        
        Kipling, an Anglo-Indian who believed in white racial superiority and innate differences between the races. Despite this, Kipling preferred life in India as opposed to England, sharing the life of New Imperialism.
        
        "Recessional" was written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, similar to that of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition.
        
        "The White Man's Burden" addressed to the United States when it encountered resistance to its colonial rule in the Philippines stationed a nationalist and imperialist sentiment.
        
        Poem exaggerates the power of whiteness and the burdens associated with it.
        
        "If" establishes virtues and morals within young children. All three of these poems justify the "whiteness" associated with imperialism.
        
        Simon Gikandi, from "Maps of Englishness"
        
        “Seacole lives in and out of Englishness, attracted by its culture and civilizational authority but haunted by its exclusive racialism” (Gikandi 126). No matter the effort and strife Seacole uses, she will never fit into the exclusivity of he English world and idenity.
        
        The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Mary Seacole, is her attempt to gain her englishness, painting her “self-portrait- as a form of self-wiled entry into the social codes that define the proper Englishwoman” (Gikandi 127).
        
        Mary Seacole can be British, but only through the notion of Imperialism.
        
        Carolyn Burdett, “Post Darwin: Social Darwinism, Degeneration, Eugenics”
        
        Burdett interprets Eugenics in a way that connects it to the New Woman movement and emancipation.
        
        Darwinism existed within a capitalistic framework alluding to the belief that the weakest in society are those that are poor. Therefore, they will die before they ever have children, whereas the rich will be able to procreate and create ideal citizens.
        
        Darwinism was viewed through the lens of competition. The theory believed that as time passes, the strong (the British) will bypass the weak (those of other races) and assume their role as biologically superior.
        
        "Modern" way of thought propelling the strength of white people above other races who are considered weak.
        
        Joseph Bristow, “Introduction” to Story of an African Farm
        
        Bristow emphasizes the way in which readers are able to gain a form of escapism to unknown lands, providing a lens to lands that haven't been traversed.
        
        Olive Schreiner's The Story oof An African Farm situates colonialism and imperialism in a different light with its location being set in South Africa, a colony of England. Scheriner as an author has the ability to display the "exoticism" of the South African landscape as a colony of England as her text "Stretches out towards the horizon, Africa exceeds the explanations offered by the world-view brought by those invaders who have settled there'" (Bristow 15).
        
        Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen” (1886) (C)
        
        Lord Tennyson celebrates the opening of the Great Exhibition, performing this poem. Speaking to the greatness of the British empire. He consistently repeats the line "One with Britain" urging the colonies and citizens of England to support the cause. He concludes the poem with the line, "One with Britain, heart and soul! One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne! Britons, hold your own!" (Tennyson).
        
        Ryan Fong, “The Stories Outside the African Farm: Indigeneity, Orality, and Unsettling the Victorian”
        
        Fong emphasizes how Schreiner objectifies the culture of the aboriginal South African community as “Khoisan culture became a point of fascination for numerous Victorian-era scholars who were collecting and translating stories from the Khoisan and printing them in European-language anthologies. For many of these early linguists and ethnologists, the purpose for recording these oral texts was to “save” them from supposed extinction” (Fong 425). The way the text is utilized is similar to that of the visual curation of the British colonies, to capture the "primitive" "exotic" nature of the environment.
        
        Schreiner's Story of an African Farm“ uses Aboriginal narratives "as colonial objects” (Fong 425). Reading as a text that gives readers a taste of the world outside of the direct British Empire.
        
        Nathan Hensley, “Empire”
        
        The glory and globalization of the British Empire is what makes the Victorian Era so appealing. “Victorian rhetoric often understood England’s worldmaking project in the nature of a gift: British influence would bring light into the dark corners of the earth, liberate peoples enslaved by customary prejudice, and inaugurate a new era of enlightened modernity” (Hensley 3).
        
        Through the Empires imperialism it was “a sweeping-away of traditional social forms in favor of the economic individualism, companionate marriage, secular reason, and capitalist enterprise arriving under the British flag” (Hensley 3).
        
        Hensley's scholarship establishes the reign of the British Empire through modernity describing “this kind of imposed change toward a predetermined goal as “modernization”; postcolonial scholars have referred to it more critically as cultural imperialism” (Hensley 4).
        
        Can Englishness be achieved?
        
        Throughout these texts the British Identity is a coveted trope.
        
        Whiteness in Victorian Literature
        
        Writings on the New Woman (1894-1898)
        
        connected to Darwinism
        
        "‘New Woman’ heroines were prepared to deny love rather than risk having a child with an unsuitable husband. This ‘New Woman’ puts eugenic social duty before her own feelings and desires, proving as a consequence that she is fit to be man’s equal." (Burdett). Greater emphasis was placed on a woman finding a suitable husband to raise children with as opposed to settling down with the first person seen.
        
        There was discourse surrounding Positive Eugenics versus Negative Eugenics, "So-called ‘positive’ eugenics tried to encourage middle-class women to have more children. ‘Negative’ eugenics, however, was targeted at the poor, and suggested policies to prevent them from having children" (Burdett).
        
        Texts recognizing the emerging narrative of The New Woman within Victorian Era
        
        Women had the desire to be more educated, adopt the social and cultural norms often attributed to men.
        
        Provides discourse on ideas surrounding the line of thinking and how it wasn't necessarily a collective thought.
        
        Text centered around how The New Woman efforts primarily focused around white women.
        
        Altered the production of texts and what was being written about during the time period.
        
        Melissa Shaub, “The Margins of the Dramatic Monologue”
        
        Centers on the idea of whiteness, focuses on the experience of the white reader.
        
        Role of the educator to make the distinction between the author and narrator clear.
        
        Can be interpreted as a way to engage white people to join the abolitionist movement.
        
        Lafcadio Hearn, selections from Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904)
        
        Horror and ghost stories similar to that of The Beetle, emerged from Japan as opposed to The West. Stories are an alternative to stories produced in England during the Victorian Era.
        
        Discourse surrounding the translation of text looses somewhat of its inherent meaning. Translation of the text into English is another way in which story has been "Westernized" and a product of England.
        
        Way to explore the differences in genre writing between Japan and The West.
        
        Antoinette Burton, “The Politics of Recovery: Historicizing Imperial Feminism, 1865- 1915”
        
        The New Woman movement was still closely linked to British nationalism.
        
        Being white was very much a part of the New Woman movement and in fact functioned as a limitation for Brown Romanticism.
        
        Classified non white women as the "other", upholding a similar racial hierarchy and sense of imperialism women were "attempting" to deconstruct- but not actually. They were just pushing themselves above non-white females.
        
        Unifying the Empire even more by elevating the status of white women.
        
        Naomi Charlotte Fukuzawa, “Autoexotic Literary Encounters between Meiji Japan and the West”
        
        Discusses autoexoticism found within Japan and Soseki Natsume’s “The Tower of London”.
        
        “Autoexoticism, of Japan through the Western gaze, is constitutive of the reflected narration of modern Japan, a understood here as the internalization of the aesthetic exoticization narration that is not explicitly postcolonial but still a product of the forced encounter with European modernity” (Fukuzawa 448).
        
        To progress there was pressure to modernize even if people physically didn't step foot on their soil it was still something they had to confront
        
        Stories were intertwined with major themes found within the traditional European literary canon.
        
        Manu Chander, from "Brown Romantics"
        
        The binary present between white romantic poets and “brown”
        
        Romantic poets especially European ones are complicit in imperialism. And brown romantics are seen as outsides and not allowed to set the norms of romanticism. Exclusive inclusion.
        
        “they aren’t marginalized bc they are brown, they are brown bc they are marginalized” i.e british and European poets need an other
        
        Dichotomy of colonizer versus colonized, anglo centric lens
        
        Christopher Herbert, “Introduction” to War of No Pity
        
        National Revolt or Mutiny?
        
        Herbert identifies the failure of the British Empire to properly address the Indian Mutiny and the events following it.
        
        Another example of England choosing whiteness, as a result of imperialism.
        
        “It is only very recently that British historians and writers assessing the event have chosen words other than ‘mutiny’ to describe the uprising (Judd 67-68)” (Herbert 8).
        
        Most recounts of historical events surrounding the Indian Mutiny solely focus on the British perspective as opposed to remaining an unbiased source repeating the voice of Indians.
        
        Challenge identity of whiteness and the "white experience" that is circulated throughout texts.
        
        The construct of modernity justified the majority of the imperialistic decisions made by the British Empire. What defines "modernity" is there such a thing?
      - The Beetle is an example of modern text as it maintains an underlying queer narrative proposing a different way to interpret Victorian literature and horror.
        
        The horror novel intertwines motifs of the Atavistic Egyptian cult and reverse colonialism to question the role of women within society.
        
        The novel challenges ideas of the new woman and social, cultural norms.
        
        Has similar visual symbolism to "exoticism" incorporated to that of Story of an African Farm