Industrialism was a time filled with great change that most were not ready for. Society had experienced little change for the last thousand years and all of a sudden industrialism began. One aspect of industrialism that was rejected at first was the moving in of the railways. People saw these as disrupting their community and did not want to see them. In Charles Dickens, “The Coming of the Railway” from Dombey and Son, the railway coming is described in a negative manner and the negative tone of the community is displayed as well.
The passage opens up comparing the railroad coming in like the aftermath of an earthquake.
“The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent the whole neighborhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood”
The railway is splitting the community and damaging everything in its path just as an earthquake would do if it were to tear through a city. It is not something the community asked for, it is just something that came all of a sudden without warning. The people’s reactions to the earthquake are described as “hotsprings and fiery eruptions.” He then says, “the usual attendants upon earthquakes lent their contributions of confusion to the scene.” The people of the community not accepting the railway did not help the situation. The anger and fury with the situation only further confused everything and made it worse. The city seemed to be heating up as the railway made its way through. “Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls” and “the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth.”
The previous paragraph is then summarized in the next paragraph briefly.
“In Short, the yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was in progress, and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away, upon its mighty course of civilization and improvement.”
The railroad is not described as something here as something that tears a community, but more something that takes over and is “mighty.” Even as the railroad was coming in inevitably, people were still nervous to own the railroad. A tavern that took its sign to be “Railway Arms” is described as being “rash enterprise.” Societies rarely accept change and harshly rejected this change.
“nothing was the better for it, or thought of being so. If the miserable waster ground lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like many of the miserable neighbours.”
No one gave the railroad a chance and allowed themselves be open to a new possibility of change. Change can be very good, but it is rarely openly accepted with open arms at first. As seen with the railway, people rejected it, but they could not stop it. Society quickly changed after the railroads came in and so did the views of the people.
1 comment:
Andrew,
Good exploration of Dickens's account of the destructive approach of the railway. I wish the anthology had included a later chapter from that same novel, though; in it, the railway as brought prosperity and comfort to that wretched and overturned neighborhood. I think Dickens appreciated both the good and bad of the new technology more than our book seems to give him credit for.
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