Sentimental novels, also referred to as novels of sensibility, emerged as a genre in the second half of the 18 th century. This was a reaction against the Age of Reason and focused more on the emotional effect of works. Although this relates to the 19 th century period of sentimentality in America, this wave of literature focused less on domesticity and more on moral refinement, tenderness, and the promotion of emotion over reason.
Many of the satirists of the past continued their trend in longer works. Gulliver travels to Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and an unknown land of the Yahoos. Each of these lands symbolizes a different lesson and ideal that Swift meant to satirize. Satire also found a home in literary feuds like the one between Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding.
When she resists the attempts at seduction, her virtue is rewarded with a proper marriage proposal from Mr. Fielding, a rival of Richardson, attacked this novel in several of his own including Shamela and Joseph Andrews Along with Richardson, Daniel Defoe is considered a pioneer of the English novel.
His first novel, Robinson Crusoe , is his most well known. During his second voyage his ship is seized and although he escapes, he later finds himself shipwrecked once again.
This time he is alone on a tropical island and must build shelter and collect food. After befriending a local who is brought to the island by cannibals, whom he names Friday, he is able to escape from the island and return to England. More significant than this look to the future was the introduction of the dictionary by Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson was a poet, essayist, and lexicographer who made lasting impacts on English literature and language.
After dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the time, Johnson was contracted to write a more complete version. After nine years, A Dictionary of the English Language was published with definitions and images to accompany several of the words.
The end of the period saw the rise of sentimental novels and a turn away from the industrial ideals that had been popular throughout the 18 th century. Emotions, nature, and man as an individual became increasingly important as the French Revolution had profound effects on the culture of England and the literature it produced. Religious Writing After the restoration of Charles II many religious groups were forced into silence. Restoration Comedy Once the theatre re-opened in , English drama was able to thrive once again.
Satire Although satire had been present during the Restoration, it increased in popularity during the Augustan Age. The Dictionary Samuel Johnson was a poet, essayist, and lexicographer who made lasting impacts on English literature and language. In the historical scholarship of recent decades, there has been a marked focus on continuity. Its features were aristocratic dominance, monarchism, political deference, social continuity, and a confessional state controlled by the Anglican church.
In short, Clark denied that a new, liberal, industrial, and pluralistic England had emerged before the Victorian decades. There was therefore no new era whose start needed to be identified somewhere around This suggests the core mentalities English society were set in the sixteenth century, and changed very little before the nineteenth.
Typical of this sort of scholarship has been my own work on the persistence of providence and anti-popery as central concepts in political and cultural discourse. This is the idea, not of a long eighteenth century, but of a long seventeenth century. To understand this, it is important to realise how great a break in periodisation the English civil war traditionally was.
The conflicts of the s were seen as transforming England, and the years before and after them were studied by two completely separate groups of historians. People who dealt with the causes of the civil war almost never ventured forward to the Restoration; those working on the decades after , almost never ventured back.
In recent decades however, some scholars, and particularly Jonathan Scott, have attempted to join the two halves of the seventeenth century together. Scott argued that the political history of Restoration England was essentially a double repeat of the s and s. These crises were closely comparable to the catastrophe of the early s: the only factors that prevented an absolutely faithful repeat were the memory of the earlier tensions, and Dutch intervention in This idea gels neatly with the last historiographic trend I want to survey.
This is the new stress on the radicalism of the Glorious Revolution. Particularly associated with Steven Pincus, the radical interpretation of the revolution has portrayed it as the birth of modernity. For Pincus, was a profound victory for progressive forces. English nationalism flexed its muscles for the first time, and there were triumphs for a dynamic economic doctrine, placing value in exchange rather than land; a far more open and flexible view of institutional religion; and the notion that state structures were most effectively upgraded through consent rather than royal will.
Such a cataclysmic event, within 12 years of , would make a fitting start for a new era. Disputes between them may therefore be disputes about what the United Kingdom has been, and is today. Arguing for as the start of the eighteenth century, suggests Britain is an essentially dynastic and monarchical entity. Stressing reminds us that the United Kingdom is a composite state.
Meanwhile the long reformation underlines the role of Protestantism in national character and constitution; whilst the long seventeenth century can stress the revolutionary heritage of Britain. Finally, the more recent suggestion that was a turning point hints at a Britain that was the first modern society. In all of this, there are many different Britains. They are, however, all recognisable from political and cultural debates in the twenty-first century: so we see what might be at stake in deciding when the eighteenth century began.
I am a historian of political and religious discourse, so it is in this area I will outline what I think changed between the two ages. This may mean, of course, that historians of the economy, or law, or wider culture, or society might have different, but perfectly valid answers. However, I suggest that political discourse certainly reflects, and may well shape, perceptions of these other dimensions of human experience —so examining discourse will cast significant light on other areas.
First concerns shifted from popish plot to social corruption. In the earlier Stuart age, it seems to me, an Antichristian conspiracy, aimed at the destruction of godly Protestantism, was seen at the root of everything that went wrong. This is the only way to understand the forces that led to the tensions of the s, the English civil war, the exclusion crisis, and the revolution. People became convinced that popery had become ensconced near the centre of power, and so were prepared to challenge rulers they would otherwise have though too divine to question.
In the high eighteenth century, by contrast, the characteristic mode of opposition discourse was not accusation of popery, but the argument that rulers were using patronage, credit, luxury and dependence to create a supine populace with neither the courage nor the patriotism to object to corruption. Reference was overwhelmingly to the ethical collapse of the Roman republic, rather than to a false church; and remedies were sought in the reconstruction of political virtue, rather than godly renewal.
Kings, they feared, might ignore the common law, tax without consent, or attempt to legislate without parliament. In the eighteenth century, by contrast, few writers thought rulers would risk such a direct assault on liberties.
Instead, they would build their power, and eventually overawe others, by enhancing the infrastructure of the state. By taxing, borrowing, and employing armies of civil servants and soldiers, they would create a vast government machine.
This would become so influential in society that formal checks on its power would no longer matter. It was not the language of Coke or Pym in the early Stuart era. Both Puritans and Laudians in the early seventeenth century had deplored anyone who had left the church, and very few people had in fact departed.
After the Restoration, a dissenting community had begun to worship outside church of England, but it was utterly condemned by those who remained within, and the dissenters themselves tended to support the idea of an all-encompassing national establishment, which they claimed they would re-join as soon as it had purged its satanic features.
Debate was not about the basic religious rights of those who wished to worship outside the establishment. The question was whether they could they be safely admitted to full citizenship and participation in government, and whether dissenters were encouraging heterodox ideas, especially about the Trinity, within the church of England.
Here I align with the historians who see a radical Glorious Revolution. However, I temper this with the views of those who have stressed it was the effects of , rather than the events of that winter itself, that truly worked the change.
Labor In agricultural families, men, for the most part, took care of the majority of the household income. Households were first and foremost a patriarch; they controlled every aspect of the house. Women were to act as subordinates. Men did the most tiring labor in the field such as clearing, plowing, sowing seed, harvesting, and threshing.
This was also with the help of their sons and hired laborers. Women were helped by their daughters or servants in everything from knitting; to cleaning; to tending to the animals; to teaching the children. In shopkeeping families, the men and women both worked in the shop. In artisanal families, the wife was still responsible for housecleaning but she sometimes oversaw the workers.
As with the more personal family life, life in the public spectrum was often defined by social class. The more wealthy groups were able to send their children to private school, something that most people still could not afford to do at this time.
This made the education gap significant during the period, and made it difficult for the poorer people of Britain to move up the social ladder. Some things permeated the entire society without regard to class, however; both the theater and, later, the increasing role of organized sports were both things that were available and enjoyed by everybody. This hierarchy determined everything about society and etched their fate eternally in stone.
Among the differences in these classes were the attitudes that each one exhibited. No matter the pigeonholes that were set on those of poorer status, there was still a pecking order and sense of loyalty to social superiors. The one way to move up in this time period was to own land.
Landowners held power and influence. This made it difficult to move up the social ranks, seeing as how buying land was considered a luxury even in those days. Social Class Structure Wealthy Landowners This was the most powerful group, which made up the smallest amount of the population. It included the most important of the aristocracy and squires. Gentry This included those who received a high standard of upbringing but were not as important as the upper echelon of wealth.
This included: gentlemen, merchants, wealthy tradesmen, and well-off manufacturers. Yeoman Yeoman were those who owned and worked their own land. The upper middle class included certain professionals and merchants. The lower middle class included artisans, shopkeepers, and tradesmen. Black Britons Though they made up a small portion of the population, black slaves existed and were a hot issue during the early half of the century. Their labor made commodities available and cheap, but the idea of slavery as wrong was extremely prevalent.
No matter the protest, though, the labor and trade continued until its abolition in Though this class structure was almost always set from birth and heavily protected by those were already inducted into high social standing, it was not impossible for those of lower status to break through. Everyone was mainly subject to the same body of law as everyone else and certain privileges for ruling classes only went so far. Property was the key to wealth and power, and property could be purchased.
So, any man could amass a fortune and land, and begin to climb the social ladder; and any family could lose all of its estate and see their social standing vanish. London and the Job Market. London was the biggest and most commercialized and industrialized city in England at the time. It was home to roughly half a million citizens at the beginning of the century and would only grow from there.
One could come across any business from merchant shops to ale houses and the people were as eclectic as the commerce with numerous faces, such as: the wealthy and their servants, inn keepers, beggars, doctors, prostitutes and pickpockets. The noble and the lowly all walked the same streets painting a great picture of social life in the 18th century.
Unfortunately for the better half of the century, the streets they walked on were atrociously covered in filth and dirty water that had been dumped from upper windows. Horse manure and human waste were also common to come across on the street. New foods were eaten like bananas, pineapples, and chocolate for the upper class.
Tea and coffee were also introduced as exciting new drinks and coffee shops were up and coming, helping with the economy and job market. Education Rich children, both boys and girls, were sent to petty school, like a preschool.
However, only boys went to elementary school or grammar school, while upper class girls were tutored. Some mothers taught their daughters in the middle class until boarding schools began to take place. These girls were often taught writing, music, and needlework. While boys studied more academic subjects, girls were believed to only need to be taught subjects that were more on the line of abilities.
At the grammar schools, boys attended school from about 6 or 7 in the morning until around 5 at night. They were allowed some breaks for meals, but if they acted out of hand they would be punished with a smack on their bare butt with birch twigs. For the better part of the century, these suffocating devices were thought a necessity for good posture. There were both arguments for and against these dress contraptions. Nay-sayers complained that they made women struggle to get around and ruined comfort, but those in support insisted it ke.
Caps were immensely popular for the majority of women and embraced a lace around the brim. And not as uncommon as today, fashionable women were many accessories that interchanged between different gloves, watches, masks, and jewelry. Men wore mostly bland haircuts while some wore wigs which at the beginning of the century tended to be long.
Hats varied in width and were comm only worn among these wigs. Three piece suits also ruled the male fashion scene, containing a jacket, vest, and pants as the essentials.
With these suits, men wore black leather shoes with stockings underneath. Coats appeared as longer waist coats with the rich showing off many different features while the working class displayed much simpler details. When outdoors, a gentleman wore cloaks, which later became highly unfashionable. Below all of this, a man wore breaches. Dating and Social Interactions Dating life for women in the 18th century had started to change as they had more of a say in their marriages and weddings.
It was at this time the idea of marrying because of who your parents arranged had died, and the idea of marrying on the basis of personal affection and started taking its place. The average age women had started to marry was 22 compared to decades before when the age was much younger.
The husband also needed to not only pay a dowry to the brides family, but have an allotment of things lined up for the happy couple.
Things such as: housing, clothing, prospect of decent income and savings.
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