Working-Class+Poetry

The Industrial Revolution and consequent social restructuring of the Victorian period created new opportunities for literary expression, including poetry written by and for the working class. “Moved by the terrible suffering of the workers, which was intensified by a severe depression in the early 1840s, writers and legislators drew increasingly urgent attention to the condition of the working class” and often did so through poetry (//Norton Anthology// 1556). The popularization of print media as well as increased literacy gave rise to working-class poets, and working-class literature both embraced tradition and grappled with the 19th century’s new industrial society (Vicinus 549).

Victorian working-class poetry explored various themes and engaged with multiple forms. For example, the poetry comprised “religious, instructive, humorous, meditative, reflective, and reflexive” themes and used forms such as “‘traditional’ and narrative ballads, urban broadsides, regional satire, and political protests (Boos, “Poetics” 104). Facing “stultifying obstacles to publication and a near-universal absence of formal education beyond the earliest years until after the passage of the [|Education Acts of 1870 and 1872],” working-class poets nonetheless produced complex and powerful poetry (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry” 204).

“‘Working-class poetry’ was a preferred literary form for the expression of collective protest as well as oral narration, humour, satire and individual inspiration” (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry”204). During the Victorian period, divisions between working- and middle-class poetry became less pronounced and the two often overlapped (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry”205). For example, “writers of middle-class origins could face distinctly ‘proletarian’ ends, and, conversely, rich, poor and middle class alike heard and transmitted rural and ‘folk’ ballads (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry” 205). However, different types of poems had different purposes and implications for the lives of the working class. “Some poems were purely escapist, others reflected current values, and others spoke of individual aspirations for improvement” (Vicinus 549).

While some working-class poetry managed to reach and resonate with a higher-class audience, other poems detailed a class or geographical experience too specific to transcend class boundaries. For example, some dialect lyricists who “limit[ed] themselves to a particular kind of poetry and language that could express only a limited range of subjects and emotions […] could not reach beyond the local” (Vicinus 555). In spite of sometimes limiting audience, working-class poets continued to write in their local dialects “partly because these were the natural vehicles of their everyday speech, and partly because they saw in them threatened embodiments of the independent cultures and intrinsic values of the working poor” (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry”208). [|Edwin Waugh] was one such poet who wrote in his local Lancashire dialect yet managed to capture a significant audience, particularly among mill workers (Vicinus 552). On the other hand, “urban ballads, hymns and music-hall songs had an especially complex class audience” as did [|Chartist] works that found audiences with both the working-class, who imbibed them in newspapers, and the middle class, who read the poems in books (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry”205).

In spite of its regional variations, working-class poetry often addressed topics that concerned readers regardless of their geographies. Authors attempted to voice concerns “for the hardships and beleaguered ideals of working-class life, battered and eroded in a new industrialized environment of alcoholism, unemployment, destitution and the gradual obliteration of family structures” (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry” 208). For example, Scottish working-class poet [|Janet Hamilton] confronted the harsh realities facing working-class labourers while also condemning alcoholism and other unbecoming behaviour (“Scottish Poetry Library”). These themes are seen in many of her poems, including one of her most popular, “Oor Location”:

A hunner funnels bleezin', reekin', Coal an' ironstane, charrin', smeekin'; Navvies, miners, keepers, fillers, Puddlers, rollers, iron millers; Reestit, reekit, raggit laddies, Firemen, enginemen, an' Paddies; Boatmen, banksmen, rough an' rattlin', 'Bout the wecht wi' colliers battlin', Sweatin', swearin', fechtin', drinkin'; (Hamilton 1-9)

This passage begins Hamilton’s poem by presenting the working-class as the chief subjects and examining the plight that drink has placed upon the town, resulting in a poem that “canvass[es] a grittily detailed cityscape of roiling workers and tavern-frequenters in a brilliant set piece of Doric rant” (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry” 212).

Hamilton’s popularity as a working-class author, in addition to that of some of her female peers, including Mary MacPherson, Eliza Cook, and Ruth Willis, shows that the poetry of the working classes saw both male and female authorship (Boos, //Working-Class Women Poets// 18). These working-class women expanded upon themes explored by their male counterparts in addition to voicing their own specific concerns, including “pointed preoccupations with the problems of children, the poor, and suffering of animals” (Boos, //Working-Class Women Poets// 18-19). Oftentimes working-class women shared concerns with their middle-class counterparts, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rosetti, and both groups addressed in their poetry issues such as education and the treatment of women (Boos, //Working-Class Women Poets// 25).

However, both male and female working-class poets contributed to poetry that explored social injustice for their working-class compatriots. For example, lauded Chartist poet [|Thomas Cooper] wrote about the poverty and class-exploitation characteristic of working-class life (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry 218). Yet “women were categorically barred from positions of active engagement or leadership in the Chartist movement, as they were from any such roles in the mass political movements of mid-nineteenth-century Britain” but their poetry proved that they were not politically ignorant (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry” 219). Consequently, the poetry of female working-class poets protested against social inequities related to education, violence, and temperance (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry” 220).

Working-class poetry was produced for entertainment, consolation, and social commentary, and its multiple forms “responded in revealing ways to the conditions of its time” (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry” 225). Unfortunately, however, as the twentieth century approached, working-class poetry was enveloped by mass media publications until it was nearly impossible to identify “a working class poetry separate from popular verse” (Vicinus 561).

Victorian working-class poetry was “a repository of anger, humour and utopian hopes” and effectively established a form and voice that resonated and captivated an entire class of people (Boos, “Working-Class Poetry” 226). What remains of working class poetry from the Victorian period has provided singular insight into the lives and preoccupations of the working class, during a time that was marked by change for all classes of society.

LMD/ENGL386/UVic/Spring2015