[Jane Eyre - Mia Wasikowska (2011)]
"The conversations the period started have not yet ended." The ideas of order, hierarchy, liberty and rights, sentiment and sympathy established the foundation for which a diverse population could reside and thrive in society. Numerous religious and power changes paved the way for two schools of thought that writers adhered. One being the old way in which traditions, obligations and self-sufficiency was explored, and the other which encompassed the new school of thought that was forming, in which writers wrote of liberty, the rule of reason and human rights.
As trade and commerce became the norm, people began to realize that experiencing the culture of other people helped them to examine their own culture. Science influenced thought too, as did religion, which was transforming in some circles to embrace a new thought know as Deism. Which is, "the doctrine that religion need not depend on mystery or biblical truths and could rely on reason alone, which recognized the goodness and wisdom of natural law and its creator." (Greenblatt, p. 858)
The development of Empiricism brought about by Locke, et al, makes me wonder how much further ahead we, as a human race would be if we did not always relate our thoughts to coincide with religious doctrine. That aside, sentimentalism began to flourish. As pagan thought gave way to Christianity, so to did Christianity give way to sentimentality, which brings a woman's instinct into the open, rather than relying strictly on "sanctioned moral codes." (p. 861)
Keeping journals and writing letters began to flourish, as did the Liberty of the Press. Which led to the "Stamp Act," that placed upon written newspapers and periodicals , a tax for anything under 100 pages in length. This caused a number of "irresponsible and ephemeral newspapers to go out of business." (p. 863)
Women and the poor who were denied an education decided that if they wanted to thrive they would need to become educated, and in order to do so, often taught themselves. Many of whom became great poets and writers. Poetry gave way to longer novels, many of which were inspired by nature: Human nature and external nature (the landscape).
External nature, time spent in the country, and studying the landscape touched the poets and writers in such a way that they "came back feeling that they had been touched by something beyond the life they knew, by something that could hardly be expressed," and this led to the sublime Romantic age, medieval revival and Gothic romances. (p. 873)
"The history of the 18th century literature was first composed by the Romantics who wrote it to serve their own interests. prizing originality, they preferred to stress how different they were from the previous age." Moreover, "the age of enlightenment was also, In England, an age that insisted on holding fast to older beliefs and customs; the age of populations explosion also was an age of individualism." It was also an age when women seriously began to write and think for themselves and thus, sensibility flourished. (p. 876.
Women and the poor who were denied an education decided that if they wanted to thrive they would need to become educated, and in order to do so, often taught themselves. Many of whom became great poets and writers. Poetry gave way to longer novels, many of which were inspired by nature: Human nature and external nature (the landscape).
External nature, time spent in the country, and studying the landscape touched the poets and writers in such a way that they "came back feeling that they had been touched by something beyond the life they knew, by something that could hardly be expressed," and this led to the sublime Romantic age, medieval revival and Gothic romances. (p. 873)
"The history of the 18th century literature was first composed by the Romantics who wrote it to serve their own interests. prizing originality, they preferred to stress how different they were from the previous age." Moreover, "the age of enlightenment was also, In England, an age that insisted on holding fast to older beliefs and customs; the age of populations explosion also was an age of individualism." It was also an age when women seriously began to write and think for themselves and thus, sensibility flourished. (p. 876.
Work Cited:
Greenblatt, S. et al. (Eds.) The Norton Anthology of American Literature: The Romantic Period through the twentieth Century and After. (8th ed., Vol. B). pp. 888-76. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.