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Just some thoughts on the Five and Victorian/Edwardian Society that I wanted to get down somewhere. Borrows heavily on ep 3x08 'For King and Country'
Victorian/Edwardian Society and The Five
I've been promising myself for days now that I'll get these thoughts down somewhere, in something approaching order. I think I've had ... somewhat questionable success, but howandever ...
It's worth bearing in mind that my knowledge of the Victorian era comes primarily from literature (ie fiction - though Flashman straddles the line a bit for sheer level of research), both of and about the time, and from some studies of history relating mostly to Ireland's past as a British colony (which automatically puts a certain slant on my views). Beware, da?
In Sanctuary, I've been sort of fascinated recently with fitting the Five (plus Adam) into the society of their time. And, as more or less everyone would have at the time, including the Five themselves, I've been trying to sort of ... rank them by social class. It's sort of fascinating for the interplay of power between them.
Also, looking at the differences between their initial relative ranks in the 1880s, and in 1910 as we see in 'For King and Country'. It's interesting how they change ...
So. For the 1880s, from what I can tell they were ranked in terms of social acceptability thusly:
- James & John the most respectable, for being upper middle class at the lowest (John definitely, according to his historical bio, James I'm guessing mostly based on his status as a Doctor), for being British, and for being male. They have class, patriarchy and imperialism firmly on their side.
James is an interesting case if you speculate on his sexuality (I am firmly convinced he loved John Druitt, by the by, though I vary on whether John ever actually knew), where if he was queer and it was known, he'd have taken a straight dive down into the criminal classes. But James being as good as he is, if he was, it was never seen, so he was definitely among the most respectable of the Five at the time, if not the most. John seems to have had ... something of a reputation, even then.
- Nigel and Helen, then. I have trouble with these two largely from a lack of knowledge on my part. With Nigel, it depends on his class. He does give the impression of being lower in class than either James or John (robbing banks not usually being a career option picked up by people with disposable income - though that could have been just for the fun of his powers, too - there's also the accent, and a certain ... edge to his views ... I'll get back to that one).
Helen, of course, is a woman. A woman of seemingly relatively good class, mind, but still a woman. In terms of class, she may be higher than Nigel for what she is, but in terms of her gender and the kinds of things she does, she's way down. In terms of what was respectable in a woman at the time, Helen fails on so many, many levels, just for daring to be something more. She may have the edge of class, but Nigel has the edge for the pure fact of being male. (Though I must admit that gender politics of the late 19th C are not my strong suit, so I don't know if she edges over him - feel free to correct me)
- Nikola. Automatically lowest on the pole largely for the dual facts that he is foreign, and of lower social class (I'm guessing coming from a village in Croatia is not something that impresses British society of the time). But mostly, it can be summed up in Nigel's throwaway little line about Adam: "At least he's British." For imperial Victorian society, that was paramount. Even the lowest of British low counted themselves in some indefinable way superior to everyone else (which was echoed by most of Europe, mind - nationalism and imperialism were the names of the game). Not only is Nikola a colonial subject, he's someone else's colonial subject (Austro-Hungarian Empire - but my knowledge of their relationship with Croatia is shaky at best - if anyone can clarify that for me, that'd be awesome -_-;). That puts him automatically at the bottom of the pile. (It would have been different in America, I think, if only in degree, though judging by Edison there are always people willing to knock you wholesale for the crime of being foreign).
Adam, too, is fascinating. Maybe more so to me, mind, because his accent is distinctly Irish. Which puts him at an interesting place in the hierarchy. He's above Nikola, but depending on the rabidity of the contemporary onlooker's views on Ireland, he's above Nikola in the same way British criminals are above Nikola. He's British (by colonial default), but that's about all he has going for him. Views on Ireland towards the end of the 19th century were ... strained, shall we say. I'm guessing he's of relatively affluent Anglo-Irish stock, based on the fact that he's allowed into Oxford and has an education (yes, things were that bad here at the time, for people of gaelic catholic stock), so he's not as bad as he could have been, but ... to a British onlooker, he wouldn't have been that far above Nikola at all.
Part of what fascinates me about that little exchange in 'For King and Country' is that it does, whether by accident or on purpose, throw some of that up into the light. Nigel, coming off as mildly (very mildly, by Victorian standards) racist, but in part that could be simply because, if he is of lower class than James, John and Helen, that means there is someone in the group of lower standing than him. And Adam, being at least British, would have edged over Nikola too, which may have been part of the reason Nikola is the first to categorically dismiss him and argue that the group is enough as it stands. (An interesting side note, James' comment of 'excitable little fellow', though not much in and of itself, actually echoes contemporary 'soft' stereotypes of the Irish rather well, and might actually have been just a better-bred class of racism than Nigel's - mind you, Irish, here, so possibly I'm reading too much in).
The Five are fascinating to me in part because of their status as outsiders, how astoundingly tolerant and prejudice-busting they were for their day, but as shown in James' later lingering sexism, and Nigel's at-the-time racism, even they were not above the society that made them. Though they did their damnedest to be. They really, really did. The Five chose an ideal to base their own values on (intelligence, science, the future), and tailored many of their actions and views accordingly, and for the time they were living in, that makes them something astounding. And very, very suspect, in the eyes of society at large ...
It's interesting to see how that apparently changes by 1910. Some of that would have been the political and cultural changes of the time, though in some ways that would actually have intensified some of the above views about them. But:
- Helen and James. Now at the top of the pole simply because they're the only still-respectable British citizens among the Five. Helen still has major problems because of her gender (hello, PM and casual dropping of 'doctor' because a woman doesn't usually fit the title), but herself and James are the only two still non-criminal, non-foreign members, and that puts them on top. It's interesting that James, despite his willingly immersing himself in a criminal world as a detective (a very strange thing to do for a gentleman at the time), and despite the company he keeps, is the most consistently respectable of the Five to outside eyes. *smiles* This, a man who shot up on vampire blood, who quite probably is hiding more than a few little peccadillos from the world ...
- Nigel and John. Having both taken a nose-dive into the criminal classes (which even in Edwardian society were sometimes viewed as near-subhuman, again depending on the strength of the bias of the onlooker in question). John's dive is more spectacular, but Nigel is coming from a lower starting point. Nigel edges out over him, as relatively genteel bank robber is still far more respectable than the kind of animal people viewed the Ripper as, but it's a nearer run than modern people would believe, really. Class was HUGE, then.
Adam, too, by this stage has fallen right into this trap, and the 'criminal Irish' were a huge issue then (keeping in mind we're in the run-up to the War of Independence, here, and Irish voices have been increasingly politically dissenting over the past twenty years). Given that he's not acting for political reasons, and given the nature of the threat he poses, it's not going to be the main problem, but the fact of his nationality would have put a certain slant on how he was viewed. As essentially an Irish terrorist, and added to the sheer scale of the threat he posed, it might go some way towards explaining why the British government is willing to offer a pardon, even unofficial, to Jack the Ripper himself for bringing him down.
- Nikola. Slightly different now, in that he's in some ways above the John and Adam now, though probably not Nigel. He's still a foreigner. He's also a foreigner well on his way to being called a mad scientist, by 1910, presuming Sanctuary!Nikola's experiments proceeded apace with his real life ones. Nikola would have been the quintessential British stereotype of the crazy foreigner, and the knowledge in some circles that he was a vampire on top of it ... Way, way down the scale of respectability. Heh.
As a group, the ideals of the Five that they had in college have largely foundered, and it's interesting to see who's grown in respectability and who's faltered. John, huge fall. Nigel, lesser but still there. James, more or less stable. Helen, slowly on the rise as mores change. Nikola, on the rise in some ways by sheer force of genius and the fact that he more or less single handedly changes the modern world, but with declining respectability as he becomes increasingly visibly eccentric. And yet, even still ... for three of them at least the old dreams still continue. And all of them still gleefully defy conventional social wisdom for the times, even if only in their continuing to associate with each other.
*tilts head* I suppose, in some ways, what amuses me about the Five is that, to us, they're weird and strange because they include, among other things, a teleporting serial killer, a megalomaniac vampire, and what amounts to a Victorian cyborg. But to their original society, they would have been strange simply because they were a group of people willfully associating with each other and doing things that defied all social convention for the time. The revelations, in government circles anyway, that they were Abnormal on top of it, would only have been an addition to their strangeness, not it's fundamental cause. The Five flew in the face of everything, not because of what they were, but because of who they were, and what they chose to do about it, and for that I can't help but find them somewhat impressive, and terribly fascinating.
*grins a bit* As I said. I may be a little obsessed. Or, you know, a lot obsessed.
I've been promising myself for days now that I'll get these thoughts down somewhere, in something approaching order. I think I've had ... somewhat questionable success, but howandever ...
It's worth bearing in mind that my knowledge of the Victorian era comes primarily from literature (ie fiction - though Flashman straddles the line a bit for sheer level of research), both of and about the time, and from some studies of history relating mostly to Ireland's past as a British colony (which automatically puts a certain slant on my views). Beware, da?
In Sanctuary, I've been sort of fascinated recently with fitting the Five (plus Adam) into the society of their time. And, as more or less everyone would have at the time, including the Five themselves, I've been trying to sort of ... rank them by social class. It's sort of fascinating for the interplay of power between them.
Also, looking at the differences between their initial relative ranks in the 1880s, and in 1910 as we see in 'For King and Country'. It's interesting how they change ...
So. For the 1880s, from what I can tell they were ranked in terms of social acceptability thusly:
- James & John the most respectable, for being upper middle class at the lowest (John definitely, according to his historical bio, James I'm guessing mostly based on his status as a Doctor), for being British, and for being male. They have class, patriarchy and imperialism firmly on their side.
James is an interesting case if you speculate on his sexuality (I am firmly convinced he loved John Druitt, by the by, though I vary on whether John ever actually knew), where if he was queer and it was known, he'd have taken a straight dive down into the criminal classes. But James being as good as he is, if he was, it was never seen, so he was definitely among the most respectable of the Five at the time, if not the most. John seems to have had ... something of a reputation, even then.
- Nigel and Helen, then. I have trouble with these two largely from a lack of knowledge on my part. With Nigel, it depends on his class. He does give the impression of being lower in class than either James or John (robbing banks not usually being a career option picked up by people with disposable income - though that could have been just for the fun of his powers, too - there's also the accent, and a certain ... edge to his views ... I'll get back to that one).
Helen, of course, is a woman. A woman of seemingly relatively good class, mind, but still a woman. In terms of class, she may be higher than Nigel for what she is, but in terms of her gender and the kinds of things she does, she's way down. In terms of what was respectable in a woman at the time, Helen fails on so many, many levels, just for daring to be something more. She may have the edge of class, but Nigel has the edge for the pure fact of being male. (Though I must admit that gender politics of the late 19th C are not my strong suit, so I don't know if she edges over him - feel free to correct me)
- Nikola. Automatically lowest on the pole largely for the dual facts that he is foreign, and of lower social class (I'm guessing coming from a village in Croatia is not something that impresses British society of the time). But mostly, it can be summed up in Nigel's throwaway little line about Adam: "At least he's British." For imperial Victorian society, that was paramount. Even the lowest of British low counted themselves in some indefinable way superior to everyone else (which was echoed by most of Europe, mind - nationalism and imperialism were the names of the game). Not only is Nikola a colonial subject, he's someone else's colonial subject (Austro-Hungarian Empire - but my knowledge of their relationship with Croatia is shaky at best - if anyone can clarify that for me, that'd be awesome -_-;). That puts him automatically at the bottom of the pile. (It would have been different in America, I think, if only in degree, though judging by Edison there are always people willing to knock you wholesale for the crime of being foreign).
Adam, too, is fascinating. Maybe more so to me, mind, because his accent is distinctly Irish. Which puts him at an interesting place in the hierarchy. He's above Nikola, but depending on the rabidity of the contemporary onlooker's views on Ireland, he's above Nikola in the same way British criminals are above Nikola. He's British (by colonial default), but that's about all he has going for him. Views on Ireland towards the end of the 19th century were ... strained, shall we say. I'm guessing he's of relatively affluent Anglo-Irish stock, based on the fact that he's allowed into Oxford and has an education (yes, things were that bad here at the time, for people of gaelic catholic stock), so he's not as bad as he could have been, but ... to a British onlooker, he wouldn't have been that far above Nikola at all.
Part of what fascinates me about that little exchange in 'For King and Country' is that it does, whether by accident or on purpose, throw some of that up into the light. Nigel, coming off as mildly (very mildly, by Victorian standards) racist, but in part that could be simply because, if he is of lower class than James, John and Helen, that means there is someone in the group of lower standing than him. And Adam, being at least British, would have edged over Nikola too, which may have been part of the reason Nikola is the first to categorically dismiss him and argue that the group is enough as it stands. (An interesting side note, James' comment of 'excitable little fellow', though not much in and of itself, actually echoes contemporary 'soft' stereotypes of the Irish rather well, and might actually have been just a better-bred class of racism than Nigel's - mind you, Irish, here, so possibly I'm reading too much in).
The Five are fascinating to me in part because of their status as outsiders, how astoundingly tolerant and prejudice-busting they were for their day, but as shown in James' later lingering sexism, and Nigel's at-the-time racism, even they were not above the society that made them. Though they did their damnedest to be. They really, really did. The Five chose an ideal to base their own values on (intelligence, science, the future), and tailored many of their actions and views accordingly, and for the time they were living in, that makes them something astounding. And very, very suspect, in the eyes of society at large ...
It's interesting to see how that apparently changes by 1910. Some of that would have been the political and cultural changes of the time, though in some ways that would actually have intensified some of the above views about them. But:
- Helen and James. Now at the top of the pole simply because they're the only still-respectable British citizens among the Five. Helen still has major problems because of her gender (hello, PM and casual dropping of 'doctor' because a woman doesn't usually fit the title), but herself and James are the only two still non-criminal, non-foreign members, and that puts them on top. It's interesting that James, despite his willingly immersing himself in a criminal world as a detective (a very strange thing to do for a gentleman at the time), and despite the company he keeps, is the most consistently respectable of the Five to outside eyes. *smiles* This, a man who shot up on vampire blood, who quite probably is hiding more than a few little peccadillos from the world ...
- Nigel and John. Having both taken a nose-dive into the criminal classes (which even in Edwardian society were sometimes viewed as near-subhuman, again depending on the strength of the bias of the onlooker in question). John's dive is more spectacular, but Nigel is coming from a lower starting point. Nigel edges out over him, as relatively genteel bank robber is still far more respectable than the kind of animal people viewed the Ripper as, but it's a nearer run than modern people would believe, really. Class was HUGE, then.
Adam, too, by this stage has fallen right into this trap, and the 'criminal Irish' were a huge issue then (keeping in mind we're in the run-up to the War of Independence, here, and Irish voices have been increasingly politically dissenting over the past twenty years). Given that he's not acting for political reasons, and given the nature of the threat he poses, it's not going to be the main problem, but the fact of his nationality would have put a certain slant on how he was viewed. As essentially an Irish terrorist, and added to the sheer scale of the threat he posed, it might go some way towards explaining why the British government is willing to offer a pardon, even unofficial, to Jack the Ripper himself for bringing him down.
- Nikola. Slightly different now, in that he's in some ways above the John and Adam now, though probably not Nigel. He's still a foreigner. He's also a foreigner well on his way to being called a mad scientist, by 1910, presuming Sanctuary!Nikola's experiments proceeded apace with his real life ones. Nikola would have been the quintessential British stereotype of the crazy foreigner, and the knowledge in some circles that he was a vampire on top of it ... Way, way down the scale of respectability. Heh.
As a group, the ideals of the Five that they had in college have largely foundered, and it's interesting to see who's grown in respectability and who's faltered. John, huge fall. Nigel, lesser but still there. James, more or less stable. Helen, slowly on the rise as mores change. Nikola, on the rise in some ways by sheer force of genius and the fact that he more or less single handedly changes the modern world, but with declining respectability as he becomes increasingly visibly eccentric. And yet, even still ... for three of them at least the old dreams still continue. And all of them still gleefully defy conventional social wisdom for the times, even if only in their continuing to associate with each other.
*tilts head* I suppose, in some ways, what amuses me about the Five is that, to us, they're weird and strange because they include, among other things, a teleporting serial killer, a megalomaniac vampire, and what amounts to a Victorian cyborg. But to their original society, they would have been strange simply because they were a group of people willfully associating with each other and doing things that defied all social convention for the time. The revelations, in government circles anyway, that they were Abnormal on top of it, would only have been an addition to their strangeness, not it's fundamental cause. The Five flew in the face of everything, not because of what they were, but because of who they were, and what they chose to do about it, and for that I can't help but find them somewhat impressive, and terribly fascinating.
*grins a bit* As I said. I may be a little obsessed. Or, you know, a lot obsessed.
