Alan Campbell's Blackmail

             In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian’s old associate, Alan Campbell, was called to “clean up” the mess which was Basil Hallward’s death. We know little of Alan Campbell, other than he no longer associates Dorian due to the former seeking to salvage whatever reputation he had left. He was also a chemist and it was this talent that Dorian called on to hide Basil’s death and to remove evidence.

            Alan of course refused to do as his former acquaintance requested, stating “I entirely decline to be mixed up in your life. Keep your horrible secrets to yourself.” In the end, Dorian sought to blackmail him in order to get the chemist to comply. The audience never finds out exactly what Dorian had blackmailed him with, but it made him become “…ghastly pale, and he fell back in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. He felt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some empty hollow.” The secret that Alan Campbell kept was horrible to his character and would have ruined him. He did whatever it took for Dorian Gray to keep it a secret. Though his secret is never revealed, we are made aware of how important it was that this secret was to never have been revealed. In the end, “Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know.”

            Wilde had written Alan Campbell’s blackmail in possible reference to what became known as the “blackmailer’s charter” in response to the Labouchere Amendment. The Labouchere Amendment in 1885 was a law that made “gross indecency”, or homosexuality, a criminal act punishable by time in prison. Because of this law, many male prostitute sought to blackmail their male customers into paying them money to keep their identities hidden from society. This certainly ties in with Alan Campbell and the secret that he so desperately tries to keep. 

Victorian Etiquette Lessons

            http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/games/17

            Do you think you know enough Victorian Etiquette in order to avoid becoming a social faux pas? During the Victorian Era, social etiquette was of highest importance. Victorians were quite the social butterflies, holding balls, dinners and gatherings for different occasions. An individual’s reputation was dependent upon how they acted in these social situations.

            The McCord Museum’s interactive online game tests your knowledge of Victorian Social etiquette. It takes you through 4 different social scenarios and asks you questions depending on your gender. Here we can see the differences in the social expectations of men and women of that time period.

            The Four scenarios in this interactive game are An Evening Dinner at Home, A Fancy Ball, A Voyage By Train and depending on the gender chosen, A Promanade In the Park for females or At the Gentleman’s Club for males. Each scenario begins by asking what the appropriate dress for the occasion is. If you pick the correct answer, the people in the questions move and do the correct action. If you pick the wrong answer, the people in the game do humorous things. You cannot move on to the next question until you answer it correctly.

            After you have chosen the appropriate clothing for your scenario, you are given scenarios in which you must pick the right social action. For women, their behavior is dependent to their relationship with men. If they wanted to greet others in society, they could not do so without the proper introduction or escort by their husbands or an appropriate gentleman. They were also to be modest in clothing and supposed to excel in the art of listening, conversation and entertain guests by playing on the piano. They were to be polite and altruistic to others in society.

            Men were expected to behave in a different way. They were to be chivalrous in their relation to women. If a woman requested something of a man that was within reason, he should be able to comply. If a woman were to politely decline his invitation, he would take the rejection and not hold any ill will towards her. Men had a bit more freedom than women in terms of being able to do things on their own. However, if they were guests, they were still subject to their host’s prompts. For example, if they wished to smoke a cigar in the parlor, they would have to wait for the hostess to take them there.

Final Pros and Cons

Pros: Educational, Humorous, Accurate portrayals of social etiquette for each gender, Portrays how the genders are dependent upon each other, Gives reason for why a question is wrong.

Cons: Flash player constantly crashes

The Importance of Religion in the Victorian Era

I think that in order to have a full understand of the material we have been reading, and to be able to get a good grasp in order for analysis, we must take a step back and come to a realized understand of the day to day life of those who not only wrote the works we are studying, but the lives of those that these works were made for.

The Victorian Era was marked by the Church of England, first brought about by King Henry VIII in order to gain more political power. The Church has continued to grow, and now is in a position of power that can not be separated from it original religious role and its new political role. The Church began to be viewed as tyrannical, and many smaller churches began to form in a sort of rebellion against the high church. Thus, the Church was plunged deeper into politics, waging a a war via campaign against the proper English church, and the havoc being caused to the immortal soul by the smaller churches.

Funding for the High Church of England came from wealthy families who would buy into the church, which only led to the more political standing of the church. With such an indistinguishable role in society, no one could get away from the Church. The Church was in politics, in the palace, and in the homes of every British citizen. One must take this into consideration when reading.

"A Shroud as well as a Shirt": An outcry against Victorian working conditions

Victorian working conditions were brutal. This is a point that is rarely debated, as we can easily see in history books the horrors the workers had to endure to survive. But during this time, it was expected. Not accepted, but expected. There was intense outcry against the working conditions from those who were employed in factories and such, but their protests were drowned out by the money of consumers. In Thomas Hood's "The Song of the Shirt," the reader is presented with a song sung by a worker in a factory; a song that is overheard, yet directed at the male consumers that they supplied with shirts.
The entire poem is a blatant cry for help from the woman singing, but she realizes the futility of her calls. She provides the reader with passages describing the intense, mind-numbing work and the harsh reality of the poverty that she lives in, even though she's always working.
She describes her harsh hours, working "While the cock is crowing aloof" until "the stars shine through the roof!" (Lines 10 and 12). This is implicating the length of the workday, essentially sunrise to even after sunset, leading the reader to believe 12-16 hour work days (potentially even more!). With such a long work day, I wouldn't be too surprised if people fell asleep or passed out from exhaustion, which the singer hints at:


"Work — work — work,
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work — work — work,
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!

                                                       (16-19)

The work is mind-numbing and lures the worker into a lethargic state. But not only is there danger from accidents through this, but from crippling exhaustion. The singer is close to death; she does not fear it. In fact, she actually compares herself to the haggard shape of death saying that "[she] hardly fear[s] its terrible shape, / It seems so like [her] own (35-36). And for what? Why does she put herself in such a position where she works so close to death? 

And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread — and rags.
That shattered roof — this naked floor — 
A table — a broken chair — 
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!

                                                (43-48)

She works for practically nothing beyond her own means of survival. The prospect of Victorian factories is dreary - there is no chance of any sort of upward mobility for her. But I don't think she actually is looking for that sort of upward mobility, she just wants a chance to breathe, relax, and eat a little more than the scraps she's given. She's extremely practical and easy to please.

The most compelling part of the poem is when the singer turns away from describing her conditions and addresses an invisible audience: the men who purchase the shirts she makes.

"Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh, men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out, 

But human creatures' lives!

                               (25-28)

She's directly addressing the men who have the ability and money to indulge themselves on the shirts she makes. She's inviting them to imagine that she was some sort of familial relation to them - if she was, would they stand the condition that she was in? Would they accept the horror of her work day? They aren't just shirts that they're wearing, but the lives of the women who poured themselves into the creation of it. If the men were related to the women working, they wouldn't have allowed it; why do they allow it in the circumstance that it is in? She's protesting for the humanity of herself and her fellow women. It's inhumane. She's trying to invoke the feelings of men needing to protect vulnerable women through her song.

Granted, the song goes unheard, but Hood's poem did not. He drew the eyes of many people to the conditions of the women in factories and hopefully made a difference in their lives with his poetry.

Rejoice! VictorianWeb.org has the answers!

Alright, so maybe not in this second half of the semester, but certainly in the first, we came across many poems that were not as clear as we would have hoped. Well, there is now a solution! www.Victorianweb.org is filled with a seemingly endless glossary of scholarly analysis on Victorian poems, literature, and life. There are also sections for readers to sumbit evidence that would dispute the article they read, making the entire experience well rounded. The articles follow not only well known analysis of pieces, but often shed new light on the subject matter. A few great articles to read that pertain to this course are:


http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/scholl.html - A different look on Goblin Market and just why the fruit was forbidden, and by whom.


and


http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/porphyria/best1.html- A striking essay that attempts to prove that, had Porphyria paid attention to the warning signs, she may still be alive today.

The Dangerous of Beauty- Lessons to be learned from Porphyria's Lover

 Robert Browning's poem “Porphyria's Lover” is often analyzed and understood to be a poem about a man and his domination of his lover, which is the rightful opposition for male and female relationships of the time. ( Although the dominance in everyday Victorian life was no where near as extreme as the dominance portrayed in Browning's poem. )

However, there is another message that is often over looked, which is a simple message of social cometary, meant to be viewed as warning to all females of the time: Your sexuality will be your downfall.

From the very beginning we are introduced to a woman who is, surprise surprise, NOT afraid of her sexuality. She freely lets down her hair and approaches her lover, and is even forward enough to take his hand and put it on her waist. It is Porphyria's confidence and familiarity with her won sexuality that leads her to Death's door in the form of ultimate dominance at the hands of her secret lover. But the warning lies within how he chose to assert himself.

I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,

Yes folks, you read it right. He strangles his lover with her own hair! The epitome of female sexuality, the purest symbol of femininity is what is used to kill Porphyria. It is in this simple act, these four simple lines, that Browning reveals his warning: Your sexuality will be your downfall.

But, we have to ask ourselves why this is? Why was female sexuality so frowned upon? Was it because we as females are too simpleminded to know the dangers our own bodies can cause? Or is it because men are too weak to withstand the sight of something to simple as a woman's golden locks? Perhaps it is because our strength lies in what makes us feminine;our beauty, and men know that they stand no chance against us should we decide to use it against them. So, they try to make us fear ourselves, otherwise, the world as men knew it, the world of male dominance they were so accustomed to, would crumble at our dainty little feet.

Victorian Gender Roles as seen through Porphyria's Lover

Robert Browning's Porphyria's Lover is a rather morbid tale of a woman who rides in late at night to her lover, who she is possibly living with at this point.
Immediately, we can see the issue quite clearly; she's out late at night attending to her own business, independent of her lover/husband, and quite free to do whatever she likes, whereas the man is at home, tending the hearth, eagerly awaiting her return. This seems as if it's a flip-flop of what was generally expected in Victorian society's social spheres. The man is supposed to be the dominant figure, while the woman is submissive to her man's will. Browning makes the swapped roles quite clear when the woman arrives home (if her being out by herself wasn't enough):

She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

                                     (16-19)

In these lines, we can see how dominant she is; she's controlling his body and making him do things. He's showing his submission to her by allowing her to place his arm around her waist and making his cheek lie on her shoulder. This is the exact opposite of what one would expect to see in the typical Victorian home. And we can implicitly feel how sullen the narrator is that she's so independent and in control of the situation.
Once Porphyria confesses her love for the narrator, she finally expresses the kind of dependence the narrator desires. In this moment, the narrator decides that he wants to maintain that sort of dependence forever. He strangles her, effectively freezing her in time. After this, we can see the reestablishment of the social norms:

I propp'd her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore	50
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorn'd at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gain'd instead!	55

In this scenario, the narrator is making her head lie upon his shoulder, the direct opposite of what was previously made. She, now, was reliant on him, and he was in control of her. This, according to the narrator, is how the relationship between and a man and woman should be. There is not a mutual domination; only the man has the power to decide what happens. He reinforces his belief that what he did was right, ending the poem with a reference to a power higher than social influences: God. He says that, "God has not said a word!"(60), effectively providing proof that this is what God wants. He didn't object to what the man did because it was right. And if it's good enough for God, it's good enough for him.