‘Anticipations of What’s to Come’ is explored via cultural critics through fiction and satirical images. Societal analyst, Jack London, experienced a trepidation regarding the uprising of the impoverished. London’s inquiries into the destitute laid the groundwork for his narrative of capitalism subjugating the public in The Iron Heel. Historiography indicates a division in whether The Iron Heel communicates a utopian or dystopian perspective.
Alessandro Portelli postulates that London channelled the utopian aspirations of the emerging labor movement; whereas Francis Shore articulated that London’s emphasis was on “dystopian actualities rather than utopian prospects”. Industrial expansion and city growth played a significant part in individuals’ reaction to the advancement of modern times. In 1886, reports of a “Panic in London” recounted ‘significant throngs’ confronting ‘social authority’ in the guise of unprepared police. ‘The Police of the Future’ comic strip underscored the amalgamation of police and armed forces, answering to the charge of being unprepared. The cartoon was published after the London “Black Monday” disturbance, which The Times portrayed as the “most frightening and ruinous…within the memory of the living”.
To societal elites, a heavy police armory was required to subdue rebellion. To the outcasts, the representation was of state marionettes with their tools of subjugation. William Morris employed societal reviewers and legitimate happenings to project his ‘anticipation of the future’. With News from Nowhere, Morris drew on his role in Black Monday, contending it was a battle against state enforcers. He envisioned the path to utopia through a journey amidst dystopian chapters. During another upheaval in November 1887, known as “Bloody Sunday”, William Morris was an observer to the “appalling ruthlessness” of troops and constables.
Phillippa Bennett referred to ‘Black Monday’ as the preliminary and Bloody Sunday as the practice for a revolution. Jack London also drew parallels, stating that “the First Revolt was ahead of its time…the Second Revolt…was destined to equal futility”. These portrayals of the ‘Police’, Iron Heel, and News from Nowhere serve as a reflective surface to the years between 1880 and 1914, displaying dystopia whilst occasionally masked by utopian illusions.
Regarding ‘Social Decay’, Victorians perceived “segments of the populace as gradually inheriting detrimental traits or ostensible illnesses which they transmitted to progeny”. In William Booth’s 1890 work In Darkest England and the Way Out, he depicted London’s impoverished quarters as “soaked in liquor, immersed in misconduct” and called them “inhabitants of the gloomiest England”. These individuals were regarded as the “vulnerable point of a quest for advancement”. Without intervention, society was feared to degrade and revert to primitive configurations. Cultural observers like H.G. Wells utilized these sentiments, displaying them to a broader demographic.
Wells’ The Time Machine provided an in-depth dissection of a prospective society rooted in the class divisions of the Victorian era. Wells warned that ignorance of such issues would only doom humanity to a regressive fate of “predatory Morlocks”. He reflected the views of early societal examiners who saw the East End’s labor class as merely brutal, deviant, and bizarre creatures, “similar to those in the African wilderness”. A dystopian future loomed over Victorian culture with Wells’ prognoses intertwined with the portrayals by societal analysts of his time.
Learned individuals such as Edwin Lankester and Max Nordau applied a context of scientific validation to the prevailing distress regarding societal decline. Lankester warned of “the dimming of the Caucasian races towards parasitism, and in his 1880 publication Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism, he insisted that measures must be taken to “safeguard this English lineage from regression and deterioration”. Societal reviewers like Booth and Mayhew questioned whether
The decline of London’s societal structure raised alarms among analysts, who broadcasted these apprehensions to a broader demographic. Influential figures like Darwin, Lankester, and Nordau lent these concerns legitimate scientific credence. Without interventions to curb this decline, a bleak dystopian prospect threatened to engulf Victorian civilization.
A Victorian ‘Apprehension of Technology’ is noticeable in how technological advancements and cultural shifts spawned novel modes of reasoning. Stephen Kern suggests that the Austro-Hungarian nobility viewed innovations like the telephone as erasers of distance — both in terms of geography and societal hierarchy — enabling every location to be perceived as equidistant from power corridors. This sparked concerns among the upper class that technology might empower the lower classes, as Jack London noted.
Technologies such as the bicycle reduced social distances and offered economical travel options. The cinema industry, with its approachable ticket prices and communal seating, extended theatrical culture to the laboring class, posing another perceived risk. Academic examination of dystopian and utopian literature unveils a prevalent cultural despondency characterizing this era. Gregory Claeys notes the surge of dystopian literature beginning in 1890, indicative of an ingrained scepticism toward utopianism. Zoltán Kádár and Janos I. Tóth submit that “technological progression is a primary motif” and that such literature evolved into its own genre by the late 19th century.
Gorman Beauchamp asserts that this technophobia “shapes the dystopian novel, a distinctly fresh narrative form that arose alongside, mirrors, and cautions about the escalating dangers of modern technology.” Conversely, Michael Paris asserts that technologies like submarines, advanced warships, tanks, and wireless telegraphy became regular elements within polemical authors’ works, who pressed their administrations to consider the potential of these inventions for forthcoming global conflicts.
In the era stretching from 1880 to 1914, there was a marked increase in dystopian sentiment, reflecting responses to the swiftly evolving social, industrial, and techno-scientific factors. Deep-seated concerns of societal downfall and technophobia bled into prophetic insights, influencing the narrative of a ‘fin de siècle’ opposition to, and dread of, the arrival of the modern age. A downward trajectory, societal atrophy, emergent political perspectives, scientific breakthroughs, examinations into impoverished communities, illnesses, and general insecurity stoked the flames of dystopian trepidation that infiltrated news, arts, literature, philosophy, and even propagated mutual suspicion through eugenics and Social Darwinism.
Visions of what lay ahead were captured by societal critiques in dystopian novels and broad-ranging contemplations in the press. Research into metropolitan decay highlighted the perils of granting dark elements a stronghold within civilized domains, sending a stark, foreboding message that civilization was veering off course. Concomitantly, advances in science and technology purportedly aimed to point the path toward a utopian realm filled with machinery to spare human labor, improved transit systems, and bright living conditions, yet apprehensions regarding the ‘new’ smothered any hopeful prospects. Any utopian dreams were eventually shattered with the breakout of World War I. The barbarity, technological weaponry, and the mobilization of state-enlisted militaries substantiated the social critics’ dystopian prophecies.
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