One area of connection (through disconnection) that interests me is the setting in William Blake’s “London” and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Insomuch as how these two interact, I find it necessary to note a major difference between the London citizenry and the rural genteel. As it goes then, the London citizenry (of the distinctly lower classes) were unable to own land nor were they able to access natural relief, while the rural English genteel were afforded large swaths of land (of which they derived much of their income). In the face of this then, the way each piece of literature explores poverty become distinctly different. With Blake, his exploration concerns the unnamed mass of desperation, and in generalizing the sufferings of starvation and suffering, it loses its emotional weight. In contrast, Bronte is able to distill the observations of Blake into Heathcliff; however, Heathcliff gains an element not achieved by Blake in that he is often described in terms offensive to Romani people. Thus, and to me, the settings definitively impact the way in which poverty is illustrated by both authors, with Blake’s claustrophobic depiction of London rendering the impoverished to be a mass (which is distinctly hard to empathize with), and Bronte’s expanse of land (but sparsely populated land) allowing for a more personal description of the impoverished child. Moreover, the house servant, Nelly, is given the role of narration in Wuthering Heights, which allows for more perspective into the minds of working class people during Victorian England, and more specifically, how they themselves view the landed gentry. As a conclusion, the role of setting, with special attention to how setting influences depiction of character and archetype, appears an interesting angle to take when trying to understand why Blake and Bronte take such different approaches to characterizing the lower classes.

One intersection of Carlyle and Eliot’s text I find particularly interesting is their discussion of virtue. Yet, their discussions of virtue are not linked in agreement, but rather disagreement, with Eliot’s text allowing for an expansion of how to read Carlyle’s virtue. To wit, Carlyle’s conceptualization of virtue should be read as ‘virtue to exist’ while Eliot’s conceptualization is that of ‘virtue to subsist.’ In characterizing Carlyle’s ‘virtue to exist,’ this quote from paragraph 10 serves nicely as he notes, “All human interests, combined human endeavours [sic], and social growths in this world, have…required organising: and Work, the grandest of human interests, does now require it.” This quote is in direct reference to what Carlyle’s virtuous men must do, and that is to aspire and achieve. In contrast, Eliot’s conceptualization is colored by female disenfranchisement as she notes in paragraph 16 that the prescribed virtue to women (from the overarching masculine structure of Victorian England) is one of idleness. In other terms, the masculine conceptualization of virtue for women is pure subsistence, and only off of the most dominant male figure in their lives. This dichotomy of virtue in both the male and female conceptualization is important as the masculine reading (from the Victorian elite) of virtue lends men as aspiring to be leaders, whereas the female reading of virtue designates women as followers. Indeed, this unpacking of gendered virtues shows how patriarchal Victorian England subsists as women are either complacent within the system and retaining their virtue, or cast out and placed firmly as an enemy of structural normalcy.