Just watched the film “Topsy Turvy” (about Gilbert & Sullivan and the Mikado). I was struck by Gilbert’s use of language, and his extensive vocabulary (one scene spends time on the pronunciation of “corroborative”). Which started me to wondering…did Victorian audiences have better vocabularies than we do?
Theory #1. Yes, they did. Civilization is going to hell in a handbasket.
#2. No, they didn’t–Gilbert was just messing with their heads. (Partially supported by a scene in HMS Pinafore, in which the hero launches into a particularly sesquipedalian oration, to which the heroine asides “his simple eloquence goes to my heart”).
#3. Yes, but on the whole, 20th century Americans are better educated than 19th Brits. Quantity over quality.
Hah. Try reading A MAN WITH A MAID, by Anonymous. Yummy. Although you have to make the pictures with your brain, you VCR-addicted perv.
As for the OP, I would tend to say that people WERE smarter back then in some ways…to earn my Bachelor’s degree a hundred years ago, I would have had to have read the classics in the original Latin and Greek, and have studied chemistry, two things that sure as hell didn’t happen to ME at college in the 1970s-80s.
my WAG, you ask, here it is:
1 we have more to learn in all subjects so English is not a primary concern
and
2 the old victorian stories, plays, ect. were written for the elite and the common poor could not afford to see them or to buy manuscripts.
and
3 the language changed, and common used words of that time are not so any more.
thank you
Did you see that Ken Burns Civil War documentary on TV a few years ago? They quoted letters from ordinary soldiers, using language and phrasing which even the best-educated modern people would be hard to match.
People learned different things back then, and one of 'em was how to read and write well, because those were the primary means of communication and entertainment. No TV or movies, so you sat there and damn well enjoyed the English language.
On the other hand, a lot of people had NO education, too, hadda go right to work at the age of 12.
What you had in the Victorian era was a much more ‘elite’ version of schooling- attending college was the mark of the very bright (and/or from very rich families), and the studies there were much more rigorous and defined. Most children, however, left school after only a short time to go off and work in the fields/factories/shops. G&S’ operas, like most works of the time, were written for that elite which could be assumed to be well versed in English vocabulary, as well as literary allusions to famous and obscure works, the Greek and Latin languages, etc. However, for the average Victorian-era citizen, such schooling was well beyond their means and station. So what you had was a very high top level of literacy, and a very low bottom level of literacy.
Conversely, the education reforms of the early 20th century brought the idea that all children should be educated to a certain level. To an extent, this led to the ‘dumbing down’ of higher level institutions- as Ike said, he didn’t need to study chemistry or Latin and Greek in order to get his degree. Instead, though, one could count upon a general basic literacy in all subjects from the entire population.
Does this mean the Victorians were smarter? Not really. While the top level of Victorian education was much better than the top level of modern education, the average level of Victorian education was far inferior to the average level of modern education.
Well, so we’re not really asking about being Smarter, just better educated…
It may seem so, on the surface, but there were a lot more subjects that were ignored then that we know about now…
I think it’s more of a different type of education…
Thanks, JC…a much better thought-out post than I managed to conjure up.
Which leads me to a question about what Eve brought up. Were all those letters that were read on Burns’ program written by Harvard (and Duke) men who were out slumming in uniform? Did they screen out the ones that read “Dear Maw and Paw: Caught me a lode of Rebel buckshot in the ass whilst I was fucking the company mule” ?
Hmmm . . . I hadn’t really thought of that. I guess there WERE a lot on the lines of “Dear Dollink—I be on der onion side; iss dat der blue odder der grey? Iss ve fer er agin der slaves?”
Would have made great tee-vee, but not quite what Burns was looking for.
Urban Legend has it that one of General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s reports to his superiors at Ft. Pillow read:
“my troops has follud the negras into the wuds and is akillunem where they stand.”
Horrible man, horrible action, but “akillenum” is a great word.
As for the rest of the letters- it’s often said that the Civil War was the first literate war, that is the first war where the average soldier actually was able to write down his (or her, that did happen) experiences in letters and diaries. That’s also one of the reasons it’s one of the most written-about wars- it’s one of the first wars we have a lot of documentary evidence from.
I’d imagine that Burns had tens, in not hundreds, of thousands of letters to choose from for reading. Even given the generally poor quality of literacy for the common man, there were still plenty of educated folk- either drafted in or who joined out of a sense of destiny, ideology, or comraderie- that served and could have written quite eloquently.
I think the question has been answered. The plays were written for the educated rich, and you are defining smart as “educated.” MY relatives from Victorian times were lucks to have a junior high education, but they all spoke multiple languages and played musical instruments. There was little need for the greek and latin texts in a cotton field.
Despite what most consider to be a woeful standard of education today, I imagine that there is a higher literacy level today than in the Victorian era.
Also today in school we are taught much different things. If we took a chemistry in Victorian times, we probably wouldn’t do well mainly because we wouldn’t know what the heck anyone was talking about. Similarly biology classes would be odd and most likely useless as no one would bring up things like DNA.
As for language, it changes all the time. Just because the words are different, it doesn’t mean that those people are smarter.
And how many Victorians would be able to operate a modern computer? How many of them ever learned to type on a QWERTY keyboard?
First, as OP’er, let me make clear that I used “smarter” as a shorthand for “better educated, or at least holding a larger vocabulary”.
I don’t think it’s fair to compare science and technology across eras. Of course, Victorians couldn’t type. But then how many of us can light a wood stove?
Language changes; but I think the language used in G&S’s operettas isn’t archaic; it’s just…arcane.
I’d say in summary that universal education has taken hold; there are fewer illiterates today than there were then. But those of us with high-school or higher educations are not as learned in classics, literature, language and history as our great-grandparents with corresponding levels of learning. Makes me feel stupid.
I think powers of concentration must have been greater in Victorian times. For example, typical political speeches were hours in length. The guy just before Lincoln at Gettysburg spoke for several hours and most listeners (including Lincoln himself) thought his immortal speech was a disappointment. Compare this to the importance of today’s political sound bites. I think this is a recent phenomenon. Listening to Shakespeare’s plays, written for the common man of 1600, requires a great deal of concentration to follow the dialog as opposed to today’s movies. Maybe our entire culture has an attention deficit disorder.
But with the dizzying changes in technology, it requires that everybody now be somewhat educated. Most of us on this board can probably adapt to technological changes better than others. However, there is a large segment of the population that can’t because their education isn’t as strong as those of us participating in this thread.
This is a parallel to the Victorian era. It’s likely that our Victorian-era counterparts had the same sort of divide between “education haves” and “education have nots”. The differences would show up in other aspects of our education.
Today we are probably better in math and science skills than our Victorian counterparts. However, our Victorian counterparts probably had a larger vocabulary and were more well-read. However, today good math and science skills are given more import than they were in Victorian times. In Victorian times, though, if you wanted to communicate with someone, you almost always had to write a letter. Hence, it served you well to become a skilled writer.
Main Entry: ses.qui.pe.da.lian
Pronunciation: "ses-kw&-p&-'dAl-y&n
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin sesquipedalis, literally, a foot and a half long, from sesqui- + ped-, pes foot – more at FOOT
Date: 1656
1 : having many syllables : LONG
2 : given to or characterized by the use of long words
But now that I’ve seen it, I must tell you – I love it. It’s one of the most sesquipedalic words I’ve ever encountered.
