Paper Example on Modernization and The Human Culture in the 19th Century

Introduction

One thing that summarizes the 19th century is the technological advancement. Technological changes were the order of the day as there were many inventions that were witnessed in this period. It should also be remembered that it was an era that was characterized by great intellectual spirits. This period saw the introduction of among others automobiles, airplanes, sophisticated weapons as well as luxury lines.

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With this advancement, it was believed that the machines were going to overtake humans and that the inventions meant people would work less and most of the work will be taken by the machines. The believe at that time was that the humanistic culture was going to be overtaken by the advancement.

The beloved humanistic culture had no place in the machine full world. Movements such as Futurism or Vorticism were there to spearhead the advancements and were those that were believed to have been celebrating the end of the humanistic culture. The literary people were not left behind in making sure that they provided commentary that was coming to the universe.

Literary experts such as Hardy were not left behind in the commentary of the modern era that had befallen the universe. The coming of the modern civilization was meant to come and wipe out the humanistic culture and machines could take over. "...modernization is a never-ending process. Yet it had a beginning; and Victorian Britain was where it began. The Eminent Victorians were the first of the moderns" (Hardy, 46). Hardy as a writer lived in the Victorian age and he witnessed the great transformations where even the rural areas were transformed into modern areas and machines were the order of the day.

The scientific inventions and every day discoveries were coming and altering the way things were done, they changed the manners, the ideas as well as the landscapes. There was rapid transformation that was being witnessed right across the globe. The rapid change from Agriculture into industrial revolution was felt by many and it had.

Thomas Hardy is very pessimistic about the industrial revolution because he knows that it will eliminate jobs and will also go ahead to change the tenor of the farming quality. Many of the families experienced displacement and this was because with industrial revolution then it meant that the family farms were bought and turned into large commercial farms for the purpose of big harvests.

""Hardy saw a direct relationship between historical processes and individual lives: both, like natural processes, were evolutionary; human character evolves history evolved" (4. This meant that the industrial revolution affected even the education as well as the social systems at that time. This can be summarized to mean that the influence was more that people could have imagined and that it came in the wake where there was the humanistic culture.

With these writings, it shows that Hardy was very pessimistic about the Industrial revolution. This was something that was coming to change the way things were done in the society and to make matters worse it was going to make the human culture go away. The machines would be the ideal "people" to work in the factories and replace humans. The plight that was being witnessed was the plight of landlessness and houselessness for the poor as it is depicted in some of the settings of the books.

In general, we can see that there was fear of the technology as it can be seen in the Dystopian literature. This indicates that the machines were coming to mimic the roles that human beings were carrying out and with so doing the humans could lose their jobs because if the machines could do what humans could do then one had to leave and go.

In one of Hardy's book Tess of the d'Urbervilles we see that the effect of the introduction of machinery is being felt. The machinery that was seen in Flint comb-Ash has been portrayed in a way that we see the infernal imagery and that even the milk factories started adding water in milk because the town people could not take whole milk. There were two major ways in which the author, Hardy showed in a symbolic way the negative consequences that had happened as a result of the industrial revolution.

From Hardy's point of view, the England in the Victorian time had some echoes especially in the Romantic view of the nature and many writers had already sounded warnings concerning the influence of industrial revolution. This plight made many of those people poor and they could not do anything as concerning this. The industrial revolution proved more evil top the people than they had imagined when it was taking shape.

Hardy also depicts the era of industrial revolution as times that robbed the countryside people of their manpower. There was the development of railway that connected the town people with the rural areas. The rural areas began becoming isolated and more connections to the town were developed.

As a contrast to the many opportunities that came with the industrial revolution, m,any jobs were lost and the saddest thing is that these jobs were lost to machines. Human beings could not rival machines in terms of production. So the job that required like ten people could now be done by only one machine and it could be done faster and more precisely. This meant that no more manpower was required as the machines did everything.

Even someone like E.M. Forster was also at the forefront in making sure that he talked about industrial revolution. When he wrote the book about "who will inherit England?" as a mockery. In Forester's novel the aspect about industrial revolution and modernity was well represented in a way that we can understand the pessimistic view of the writers.

The representation was not only in terms of the fast pace that life was being accelerated but also in terms of the how it was perceived to be dangerous especially in terms of alienation of those who worked in the urban areas. This has been represented by those who had their 'hands on the ropes' of business and manufacture (the Wilcoxes) and those who read, reflect, discuss and feel (the Schlegels); and this was judged by the erosion and spoiling of the values that were humanly and in them they favored the brash and brittle manners. This was seen in the book Howard's End by the author E M Forster.

The question that arose in this book was the place of the society in the rapidly changing world. The world was changing fast as a result of the industrial revolution . "The Wilcoxes represented those that were like conventional social morality and they were materialistic, moralists and chauvinists whereas the Schlegels represented the learned lot that was just not practical but their work was to discuss theories, they were intellectual and talkative.

At the end we can say that the Schlegels inherited England as modernization kicked those who did jobs with their hands and replaced them with the machines that were doing more work and faster than the human beings" (Forster 36). Forster presents the question of comparison between the two families and that what united them was the love for money at that time. They were both families that represented the upper classes.

These two authors as seen in the two books represent the attitudes that the industrial revolution brought. To be fair the attitudes were pessimistic in nature and that the revolution or advancement was seen as a way that was coming to wipe out the humanistic cultures and that the machines could replace the human beings. This could mean that it was as a way of making the human beings miss the jobs.

The jobs were missed because most of the small family farms were taken and large farms were developed and in the place of human beings machines were brought. For ma writer like Thomas Hardy who saw the whole revolution it was felt like a change to erase the human beings was on its way. This is the reason that there was pessimism in terms of looking at the industrial revolution. The revolution never meant any good for the human beings and that the effects could be felt, loss of jobs and loss of the human culture was so serious and unavoidable.

Works Cited

Forster, Edward Morgan. Howards end. Macmillan, 1997Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Oxford University press, 2008

Williams, Merryn. Thomas Hardy and Rural England. Springer, 1972

Wotton, George. Thomas Hardy, Towards a Materialistic Criticism. Rowman & Littlefield, 1985.