Southwell Workhouse and Newstead Abbey

Our first stop on Friday to the Southwell Workhouse was extremely thorough, and I now feel I am much more knowledgeable about the socioeconomic state of Britain in the 1830s-40s and the working conditions of the poor. I learned that the establishment of the Poor Law of 1834 aimed at insuring paupers housing and food in exchange for their labor. Though these houses meant to reduce the cost of caring for the poor while providing them with means to live, it was obvious that workhouses were purposefully structured to be a last resort option. Reading a portion of Dickens’ Oliver Twist made me expect a grungy, dilapidated factory building where the poor slept on the bare floor when they weren’t slavishly working. However, our tour guide at Southwell described the conditions to be almost favorable; it honestly made me feel uncomfortable to hear her praise again and again the workhouses. With these conflicts, it seems the workhouses could not wholly fall into the category of good or bad—they were certainly good for the masters of the houses—but must be judged individually.
I very much enjoyed our next trip to Newstead Abbey, residence of the famous poet Lord Byron. It’s hard to imagine that in the early 1800s, as the poor and homeless were numerous (Byron and his single mother were counted among them,) the rich lived lavishly at Newstead Abbey, located only a few miles from the Southwell Workhouse. This really brought to focus the financial and social gaps between classes in Britain at this time. We learned, too, that Byron was hardly financially able to keep the house since he was a young boy living in Southwell at the time he inherited the house. The curious stories we heard of one Lord’s fascination firing cannons at small wooden boats driven by servants and Byron’s likelihood of having target practice in the great hall of the Abbey made life for the rich seem reckless and for some unfulfilling. It was a stark difference between this and the workhouse—one life was frivolous while the other was tedious and rough —and I think, given a choice (which never would have occurred), I would choose neither.

Haworth and the Bronte Parsonage

Up and out again at 8:30 this morning, our class traveled via mini-coach to Haworth, location of the Bronte Parsonage. Our reading of the novel Wuthering Heights had made me greatly anticipate this trip, so I could learn more about the Bronte family and about the setting in which Emily lived at the time she wrote the novel. We walked through the main town shops of Haworth, past the church that the Brontes attended, and finally reached the Bronte homestead.
The entire atmosphere of Haworth combined with the history of the Brontes, I felt, gave me a better understanding of Emily, Charlotte, and Ann—and they didn’t just skim over the other Brontes as well. I liked that they gave a complete history of their lives, making sure to give the most honest portrayal of the family to dispel the curious buzz that surrounded them for a while after their deaths. My own idea of the sisters as lonely, uneducated but somehow brilliant women was altered after hearing about their childhood education and encouragement by their father, Patrick Bronte. His pushing inspired their perseverance and skill; Patrick Bronte himself stated that if he had been a calm, serene man, his life would have been different and his children would not have been as successful as they were. The graveyard that holds an estimated 66,000 bodies to this day sits directly in front of the house, and the Brontes had to constantly pass this whenever they went out of the house. Personally, I didn’t think much of the graveyard, and I don’t think it would have bothered me. But it made me wonder how the sisters would have been affected when writing their stories—was Emily a true believer in spirits herself, or was the ghostly paranoia in Wuthering Heights only inserted to add ambiguity to the novel?
The moors, though, were the highlight of my trip—the views were extraordinary. I could see miles of endless heath stretching on all sides, dotted every now and then with crammed but still somehow quaint villages. I felt that I could really imagine Catherine and Heathcliff climb out of Wuthering Heights and into the tall grasses tinged with purple flowers where they spent all their lives. I could see too how the moors could become dangerous if a snowstorm or heavy rain happened to fall and how an unfamiliar traveler could get off course and travel for miles in the wrong direction. Using my imagination in this way made me feel particularly more in the mindset of the sisters as they sat down to their quill pens and portable wooden desks to write their famously incredible stories. Logically, though, I tried to find any direct connection between the people Emily knew and the characters in Wuthering Heights. It seems Branwell Bronte’s alcoholism later in life was mirrored in Hindley Earnshaw, and the deaths of parents and young people in the novel Emily would have experience firsthand, but then conceivably she could have been using generalities in both cases, and not basing anything on personal experience. I’d like to imagine the former.

Coventry Cathedral and Warwick Castle

After approximately 10 hours of straight travel (and a 2 hour stay in the immigration check at Heathrow) our English 399: British Literary Landscapes group arrived at Harlaxton College in Lincolnshire, England. The informative and interesting tour of Harlaxton complete, our very much sleep-deprived class headed to bed; not a one of us, I think, slept badly. This Wednesday morning we boarded the bus at 8:30 a.m. and set off for Coventry Cathedral and Warwick Castle.
Our class first traveled via minibus about two hours to Coventry, in a town for noted its almost complete destruction during WWII , where we visited the standing ruins of a 14th century Cathedral. There is a new and modernized Cathedral beside older one, which we also visited as part of the self-guided tour. The atmosphere was quiet, solemn, and serene in both the modern building and the old. The stained-glass windows were a beautifully stunning feature of the new church, and appropriately in the brochure they are described as a “link between old and new Cathedrals, and a symbol of resurrection.” In effect, these two sites served as a continuous reminder of the destructiveness of war and the parallel Christian theme of forgiveness. The World War II museum underneath the remains was a powerful perspective of the war that provided much insight into the history of the attack as well as the general conditions of wartime. Hearing Wilfred Owen’s poem describing the harrowing affects of war added to the respect I felt for the site and the effectiveness of its anti-war message.
I greatly anticipated our next visit to Warwick Castle, imagining a medieval time capsule rich with history and asking for exploration. In actuality, it is the British version of Disneyland, with a playground, costumed actors, and a full gift shop. This atmosphere made it difficult to even imagine life mid-eleventh century, soon after the arrival of the Normans to Britain. For me, it was heartbreaking to see such a lasting historical structure, once a symbol of enormous wealth and power, degraded to a money-swindling amusement park. The only solace I found, ironically, was on top of Guy’s Tower where I could enjoy the wonderful views, stretching for perhaps hundreds of miles, and in the gaols, the dark and eerie tower dungeon where prisoners were stretched, hung from chains, and left for years, forgotten. These places were the ones that seemed most authentic to medieval times.
The difference between the treatment of these two sites by both visitors and the administration comments on the air of inconsistency and conflict of modern humanity. Both sites were medieval structures with historical significance in Britain, where many people for hundreds of years sought solace and protection. The Coventry Cathedral, one of the only surviving structures of the air raid, is a British revered landmark that reminds visitors of human destructiveness and power in the face of it. Warwick Castle, on the other hand, purposefully distracts from any historic relevance in favor of escapism and entertainment with the hopes, undoubtedly, of financial gain. Needless to say, there were much more people at Warwick castle, making me ask why it was okay to sort of shuffle over the lives and history associated with this site but not so with the Coventry. It must be, I think, the closeness of WWII to today’s culture and the fact that there are many alive who experience the war firsthand. It’s too impossible for some to imagine the medieval fortress roaring with life since it was about 900 years ago that it flourished. Indeed, it is quite difficult for me to picture as well. Is the time gap too large for the average person to really understand life in that time, and similarly, what determines how long is too long? Currently, I couldn’t imagine children playing in the ruins of the Cathedral, vendors selling burgers, and men dressed as soldiers with children dressed in miniature gas masks—maybe give it a few hundred years.