Cultural Movements of the Second Industrial Revolution

LIFE AND LABOR IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD HIST 1301 | History Cultural Movements of the Second Industrial Revolution The industrial city served as more than just a location for people to live, work, and have fun. Literature and art from the late nineteenth century also addressed it. Industrialization had a similar impact on historical cultural productions as it did on manufacturing and transportation techniques. The romantic movement, which emphasised emotion and imagination and featured themes of nature, the common person, the exotic, the ancient, and the supernatural, was the first notable cultural reaction against industrialization, emerging in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Romantic authors and painters emphasised the wonder and inspirational force of nature while criticising the negative effects of industrial growth and urbanisation on both the natural environment and human population. William Blake's portrayal of England's industries as "dark satanic mills" encapsulated the romantics' outlook on contemporary existence. Realisticism was a significant literary and artistic trend of the nineteenth century. Unlike romanticism, which placed more emphasis on the exotic, the old, and the distant, realism concentrated on daily life in the modern world. Although some realism artists, like Rosa Bonheur and Jean-François Millet, opted to represent life in the countryside and painted rural horse fairs, oxen straining at the plough, and farmers sowing fields, realists often depicted reality as it was, even if that meant exposing pictures of its darker side. Many others, like John Sloan and George Luks, who depicted the interiors of barrooms and the bustling streets of working-class neighbourhoods, focused on modern cities and their residents. The city was a popular subject for writers as well. Charles Dickens, a British author, was one of the finest realist authors of the nineteenth century. Dickens illustrated the hardscrabble lives of poor, working-class, and middle-class urban inhabitants in several of his widely read works. He put scenes in foundling homes, jails, destitute neighbourhoods, and dimly lit city streets. Though some detractors criticised him for portraying the virtuous poor in an unrealistic way, his advocacy and depictions helped bring about some social change and increase awareness of many issues, particularly the situation of children. Even more writers concentrated on the less desirable aspects of life. Novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote of the impoverished living in dilapidated areas in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the inexpensive saloons where they may find solace. French writer Honoré de Balzac typically focused on crime novels to portray the gritty aspect of French city life. Another French author, Gustave Flaubert, described the young wife of a country doctor in Madame Bovary, whose infatuation with materialism and city life brings her to destruction. American author Kate Chopin also addressed the issue of women feeling constrained by marriage and prevailing societal norms. Naturalism, a style that emphasised impersonal and detached portrayals of people whose behaviour was frequently shaped by their surroundings beyond their control, joined and overtook realism in the late nineteenth century. The father of naturalism, Émile Zola, was a French author whose many works show characters who are forced to act in ways for which they are not entirely accountable by their circumstances or genetic makeup. For instance, the title character of Zola's first naturalistic novel, Thérèse Raquin, which he published in installments in the magazine L'Artiste in 1867, is an orphan compelled to marry her sick son by her mother, a man Thérèse does not love and ultimately kills with the aid of a cruel man who she finds herself drawn to by irresistible sexual impulses. Literary reviewers criticised Thérèse Raquin for being immoral and were astounded by her as they were by later works of naturalism. Frank Norris's McTeague (1899) stunned American readers in a same way. In this tale, dentist McTeague weds Trina, the woman his buddy fell in love with. After robbing Trina of her money, McTeague's buddy exacts revenge by demolishing his dentist office, forcing McTeague to flee. After spending what he had taken, Trina declines to assist him when he returns, and he ends up beating her to death. After that, he flees from the law as his old friend follows after him. McTeague is left bound to his dead friend's body in the desert at the end of the story. In McTeague's universe, there is no way out of the hardships of existence and individuals are aggressive, avaricious, and unfaithful.