Industrial Revolution: Evolution or Devolution?

"Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man,
had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of
time Necessity had come home to him" (52).

Points for Reflection

E. B. Browning's "The Cry of the Children" (1843)

1. to whom is this narrator addressing herself, and does her message call for a change in action as well as perspective?
2. why do these children welcome death?
3. do these children's imaginations help them escape their unhealthy environment?
4. do the sounds which surround these children soothe them? Do they grow accustomed to and comfortable with the machinery's steady noise?
5. is the narrator serious or sarcastic when she calls on her "brothers" to encourage the children to pray to God for help? Why?
6. what factors complicate the children's understanding of God?
7. does E. B. B.'s "The Cry of the Children" rely too much on pathos to be convincing, or does this very reliance on her reader's emotions ensure her poem's rhetorical success?

F. Engels's The Condition of the Working Class, excerpts from chp. "The Great Towns"

1. consider ways in which this graphic description of inequality in Victorian England intersects with EBB's poem and Wells's novel.

H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895), chps. 5-8

1. humankind's mental gymnastics and scientific prowess have landed the time traveler in "the most hopeless trap that ever a man deviseds" (33). Do his powers of reason provide ample tools for getting him out of this situation?
   • do the time traveler's powers of reason effectively control his emotions across today's reading?
   • does his intellect provide effective solutions to the problems he faces, and valid answers to the questions he asks?
   • which of the theories he creates to explain what he sees proves viable? Do any of them?
   • is his mind powerful enough to ward off the threat of madness?
   • what silly mistakes does the Time Traveller make?
   • does the time traveler succeed in his attempts to reason his way past the Morlocks' eating habits?
2. does Nature’s beauty impact the Time Traveller’s thought processes?
3. what about the little creatures’ life cycles is the Time Traveller able to figure out?
4. does the Time Traveller indirectly counter, or perpetuate, any of the racially infused assumptions of his own era? [sec 01: Michelle L]
5. in the last reading, the time traveler began employing some of Darwin's ideas. Do these ideas gain credence in today's reading, or are they rejected as irrelevant?
6. what of Engel's ideas concerning society and capitalism? Do the time traveler's surroundings give the lie to Engel's theories, or demonstrate their merit?
7. to what does the Time Traveller attribute his inability to just sit down and wait for the Sphinx to regurgitate his time machine?
8. what factor, ultimately, matters more to the time traveler in determining with whom his sympathies will lie—the varying qualities of mind he finds in the inhabitants of the future, or their physical qualities?
9. what kind of relationship develops between Weena and the Time Traveller? [sec 01: Ella M]
10. is the Eloi language more or less complex than our own? [sec 02: Shruthi N]
11. what proof does the Time Traveller provide of his travels?
12. do either the Arts or the Sciences make an appearance, in an immediate and tangible way?
    
    
    
    Iron and Coal (1861)
    William Bell Scott
    

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu