Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T00:25:33.695Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THOMAS HOOD, EARLY VICTORIAN CHRISTIAN SOCIAL CRITICISM, AND THE HOODIAN HERO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2011

Robert D. Butterworth
Robert D. Butterworth*
Affiliation:
Bolton, Lancashire
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The criticisms of society made by Thomas Hood in the poems he wrote in the years immediately prior to his death in 1845 are from a very particular stance. The poems specifically measure society against Christian values. Thus, Hood bewails how “Christian charity” should “hang your head” (“The Workhouse Clock” 63), or on its “rarity” (“The Bridge of Sighs” 43).The seamstress in “The Song of the Shirt” expresses disbelief that “this is Christian work” (16). The pauper in “A Pauper's Christmas Carol” muses over his treatment on “our Saviour's natal day” (2). The gin to which the beleaguered are driven is the “dram of Satan” and is drunk, “While Angels sorrow, and Demons grin” (“A Drop of Gin” 11, 72). In “The Lady's Dream” the neglectful attitude shown by society to its suffering members is damningly put alongside the Biblical reassurance that, “even the sparrow falls / Not unmarked of God” (“The Lady's Dream” 77–78). “The Lay of the Labourer,” as we shall see, also makes play with Scriptural references. In this Christian analysis of society's ills, the suffering and going wrong of society are the product of setting aside God's wisdom in the decrees He gives about how to organise human dealings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , September 2011 , pp. 427 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Annual Register for 1839. London, 1840. Print.Google Scholar
Ashforth, David. “The Urban Poor Law.” The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Fraser, Derek. London: Macmillan, 1976. 128–48. Print.Google Scholar
Bready, J. Wesley. Lord Shaftesbury and Social-Industrial Progress. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1926. Print.Google Scholar
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. “The Cry of the Children.” Aurora Leigh and Other Poems. Ed. Bolton, John Robert Glorney and Holloway, Julia Bolton. London: Penguin, 1995. 315–19. Print.Google Scholar
Chadwick, Owen. The Victorian Church, Part I: 1829–1848. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1966. Print.Google Scholar
Cole, G. D. H.Chartist Portraits. 1989. London: Cassell, 1941. Print.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. London: Oxford UP, 1949. Print.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. “The Chimes.” Christmas Books. London: Oxford UP, 1954. 77–154. Print.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. “The Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers.” Miscellaneous Papers II. Geneva: Edito-Service S.A., n.d. 479–80. Print.Google Scholar
Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. A Self-Divided Poet: Form and Texture in the Verse of Thomas Hood. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Edsall, Nicholas. The Anti-Poor Law Movement 1834–44. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1971.Google Scholar
Engels, Frederick. Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Ed. Henderson, W. O. and Chaloner, W. H.. 2nd ed.Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Englander, David. Poverty and Poor Law Reform in 19th century Britain 1834 – 1914: From Chadwick to Booth. Harlow: Longman, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
“Famine and Fashion.” Punch 5 (1843): 203. Print.Google Scholar
Hammond, J. L. and Hammond, Barbara. Lord Shaftesbury. 4th ed.London: Frank Cass, 1969. Print.Google Scholar
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Idea of Poverty: England in the Industrial Age. 1985. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Hood, Thomas. The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hood. Ed. Jerrold, Walter. London: Henry Frowde, 1906. Print.Google Scholar
Kitson-Clark, George. Churchmen and the Condition of England 1832–1885: A study in the development of social ideas and practice from the Old Regime to the Modern State. London: Methuen, 1973. Print.Google Scholar
Leeds Mercury 30 Oct. 1830. Print.Google Scholar
Lodge, Sara. Thomas Hood and Nineteenth Century Poetry: Work, Play and Politics. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Lyon, Eileen Groth. “Stephens, Joseph Rayner (1805–1879).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Matthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, Brian. Oxford: Oxford UP. 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2008. 29 May 2008. <http//www.oxford.com/view/article/26389>. Web.Google Scholar
McCord, Norman. “The Poor Law and Philanthropy.” The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Fraser, Derek. London: Macmillan, 1976. 87–110. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, Peter. Poverty and Welfare 1830–1914. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Northern Star 25 Nov. 1843; 21 Aug. 1844. Print.Google Scholar
Parsons, Gerald, “Social Control to Social Gospel: Victorian Christian Social Attitudes.” Religion in Victorian Britain II: Controversies. Ed. Parsons, Gerald. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1988. 39–62. Print.Google Scholar
Shelden, Michael. “Dickens, The Chimes and the Anti-Corn Law League.” Victorian Studies 25 (1982): 328–53. Print.Google Scholar
Times 17 Mar. 1832; 27 Dec. 1838; 8 Jan. 1839; 14 Oct. 1840; 22 Dec. 1840; 27 Oct. 1843; 31 Oct. 1843; 28 Feb. 1844; 12 Mar. 1844. Print.Google Scholar
Whitley, Alvin. “Thomas Hood and ‘The Times’.” TLS 17 (1957): 509. Print.Google Scholar
Wood, Peter. Poverty and the Workhouse in Victorian Britain. Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991. Print.Google Scholar