Victorian and Gothic art: Also witches and the Midwest”

“Victorian and Gothic art: Also witches and the Midwest”

There is no god but this mirror that thou seest, for this is the Mirror of Wisdom. And it reflecteth all things that are in heaven and on earth, save only the face of him who looketh into it. This it reflecteth not, so that he who looketh into it may be wise. —Oscar Wilde, “The Fisherman and His Soul”. [ Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Horror) (p. xi). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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This man was famously imprisoned for his homosexuality and was the writer of great novels such as “The Canterville ghost” And ‘The picture of Dorian Grey’, a popular literary figure of Victorian England. Wilde especially admired Whitman. "There is no one in this wide great world of America whom I love and honor so much,'' he later wrote to his idol.[ Wilde, Oscar . The Canterville Ghost : With original illustrations (p. 4). Kindle Edition.

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Through his lectures, as well as his early poetry, Wilde established himself as a leading proponent of the aesthetic movement, a theory of art and literature that emphasized the pursuit of beauty for its own sake, rather than to promote any political or social viewpoint.[ Wilde, Oscar . The Canterville Ghost : With original illustrations (p. 4). Kindle Edition.

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The Haunted house genre was enjoyed and continues to be appreciated by viewers of Hanna-Barberras Scooby-Doo cartoons which ironically the setting is usually exploring the haunts of Victorian styled areas. The haunted house genre would be considered Gothic to some people of this era like Jackson's hill house inspired Netflix adaptation or Wednesday things that take on a 30 days of Halloween nature.

Back in the 1700’s however Handel being patronized by people whom were of royal parentage found much success producing upwards of 300 musical pieces and delighted many who would fill the booths to see his amazing plays and sonnets. Sometime afterwords he was buried in Westminster abbey.

Germany, to reverse the current appraisal of Gothic, the philosophes never permitted themselves to see what the new defenders of Gothic saw—lightness, boldness, inventiveness, and, hidden behind fantastic incrustations, a splendid order. Ironically enough, then, their philosophical radicalism seduced the philosophes into aesthetic conservatism. It never occurred to them that one might appreciate the art of Christians without surrendering to their myth. The Enlightenment’s incurable aversion to Gothic, therefore, illustrates not the connection between art and enlightenment but the baleful influence of dogmatism on taste. Handel composed his music in the confident spirit of the secular craftsman, As remote from religious fervor as any Philosophe; he preferred pagan to christian, worldly to religious subjects.”[ Gay, Peter. Enlightenment Volume 2: 002 (Enlightenment: An Interpretation) (p. 218). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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Handel was one of the few artists to benefit from the taste of the Hanoverian kings. And Franz Joseph Haydn was handed from one princely Esterhazy to another almost as though he had been a favorite horse—and was, for the most part, happy and prolific. It was only when he first visited London, a free man and a social lion, that an alternative presented itself to him: “How sweet is some degree of liberty!” he wrote from England in 1791. “I had a kind prince, but was obliged at times to be dependent on base souls. I often sighed for release and now I have it in some measure.… The consciousness of being no longer a bond servant sweetens all my toil.” [ Gay, Peter. Enlightenment Volume 2: 002 (Enlightenment: An Interpretation) (p. 226). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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This rebellious pagan spirit dominates the philosophes’ proud declarations of man’s dignity. Even Christian pessimists, of course, had asserted that dignity: if man was now corrupt, he was still the son of God, and it was a matter of great moment that Christ, God’s only begotten son, should have come to earth to rescue man from himself. [ Gay, Peter. Enlightenment Volume 2: 002 (Enlightenment: An Interpretation) (p. 171). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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“The devils loose in Salem Mr. Proctor; we must discover where hes hiding”. [ Arthur Miller, The crucible, Penguin books 1976, page 40.

]The witch-hunt trials in Salem left a lasting impression, the names of the people burned all those years ago are still remembered and appear in history magazines and plays. The haunted history of New England is a long one that stretches back far into colonial times where the new found settlers looked to make something in the new world. Christchurch England is where the proprietors of the mayflower compact took their faith from the old patriarchal World into new world. Evidently there are various plays depicting the conditions of these people at the time the historical account of Cotton Mather bears the most fruit in showing what the ordeal was about in his Account “The invisible World.” An Observation, or I had almost said, an Inspiration, very dismally now verify'd upon us! It has been affirm'd by some who best knew New-England, That the World will do New-England a great piece of Injustice, if it acknowledge not a measure of Religion, Loyalty, Honesty, and Industry, in the People there, beyond what is to be found with any other People for the Number of them. When I did a few years ago, publish a Book, which mentioned a few memorable Witchcrafts, committed in this country; the excellent Baxter, graced the Second Edition of that Book, with a kind Preface, wherein he sees cause to say, If any are Scandalized, that New-England, a place of as serious Piety, as any I can hear of, under Heaven, should be troubled so much with Witches; I think, 'tis no wonder: Where will the Devil show most Malice, but where he is hated, and hateth most: And I hope, the Country will still deserve and answer the Charity so expressed by that Reverend Man of God. [ The Mythology and History of Witchcraft: 25 Books of Sorcery, Demonology & Supernatural: The Wonders of the Invisible World, Salem Witchcraft, Lives of the Necromancers, Modern Magic, Witch Stories… (pp. 4888-4889). e-artnow. Kindle Edition.

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While drafting the constitution in the summer of 1778 congress busied themselves in New York drafting the North-west ordinance secretly designing a statue to govern the future Midwest. The late nineteenth-century Victorian era was “a time when improving one’s mind by reading and participating in group programs was considered the responsibility of all right-thinking Christian people of good will.” Common conduct and character books focused on “citizenship, duty, democracy, work, building, conquest, honor, reputation, morals, manners, integrity” and especially manhood. [ Lauck, Jon K.. The Good Country (p. 53). University of Oklahoma Press.

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Libraries were foundational to this culture of books. In early Ames County, Ohio, local leaders, believing in the “many beneficial effects” of libraries and viewing them as a “source of rational entertainment and instruction,” agreed to trap and hunt during the winter and use the pelt proceeds to buy books. In 1804 they took their $70 in earnings to Boston and bought fifty-one books to launch what they dubbed the Coonskin Library. [ Lauck, Jon K.. The Good Country (p. 55). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition.

] I guess back in the day coming by that amount of books is a hard thing to do while in today’s era a person can get many more than that for much cheaper.

Growing up in Wisconsin, Hamlin Garland learned from his “bookish” paternal grandmother “to love the poems of Whittier and Longfellow,” and his maternal grandfather was an “intensive reader of the Old Testament.” Garland loved his extra reading time in the winter, when he would eagerly consume piles of newspapers and such books as Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, Jane Porter’s Scottish Chiefs, Emerson Bennett’s The Female Spy (about the Civil War), and Milton’s Paradise Lost. [ Lauck, Jon K.. The Good Country (p. 55). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition.

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The civil war was a bloody war, one that Abraham Lincoln would have to contend with. It’s supposed that some civil war spirits still haunt the battlefields of Gettysburg. Midwestern towns were emptied of fighting aged men. Hills-dale college in Michigan saw it’s entire student body march off to war, along with a quarter of the men in Michigan. [ Lauck, Jon K.. The Good Country (p. 72). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition.

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Such midwesterners as Abraham Lincoln were strong advocates of a basic education so a person could be an active citizen and would be “enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions.”[ Lauck, Jon K.. The Good Country (p. 22). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition.

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