Holly Hechel Final Draft
Time Change: Victorian Students and Us
As my college career continues, I discover things about myself that I didn’t know. At times, I’d like to run away from whom I am becoming and feel much like Alice sitting in the hallway, confused as to how she would enter the white rabbit’s garden: “ ‘Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here [at UT] till I’m somebody else’”.[1] College today is a time for learning about oneself, but this hasn’t always been the case. My college experience has been beneficial, though quite different from that of an average Victorian as a result of the societal and institutional changes that our country and universities have undergone in the last century.
School wasn’t the same kind of social instructor in the Victorian era. Jude, the main character in Jude the Obscure didn’t specifically express a desire to meet other Oxford students with whom he could check out the local bar scene (though he found friends who fulfilled this requirement, they were less than scholarly). College was mainly a social elevator;
Social Elevator[2]
a means of looking more important and useful, and as a way to gain more income. Today, college is this to a small degree, but to a larger extent it is a rite of passage, something we are assumed to do. Then, it was for the studious men who couldn’t find worthwhile friends or suitable and satisfying work in their village. We decided in class that it was the goal of the Victorians, at least those in Jude, to use other people to make them happy. But I would argue that Jude started out as the nerd who wanted to be happy with an education and books, but got distracted by the “lusts of the flesh.” After meeting Arabella, a strange force comes over him: “In short, as if materially, a compelling arm of extraordinary muscular power seized hold of him…This…moved him along, as a violent schoolmaster
Victorian Schoolmaster[3]
a schoolboy he has seized by the collar, in a direction which tended towards the embrace of a woman for whom he had no respect and whose life had nothing in common with his own except locality”.[4] Some people today come to college ready to study and then end up drinking, partying, and burning through relationships for the entirety of their schooling, thus losing their scholarships and nerd reputation. Sometimes this is beneficial, as the tireless student comes to realize the truth in the old adage, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” By the same token, however, this change to a more carefree lifestyle may push him deeper into his vices until he is living on the street and begging for money, not living the life of prestige and wealth he could have gained by being more focused on school. This is a common occurrence today, but it was not in Newman’s Victorian ideal of the preeminent university. To Newman, a university was: “…a place of education. An assemblage of learned men, zealous for their own sciences, and rivals of each other, are brought [there], by familiar intercourse and for the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust together the claims and relations of their respective subjects of investigation”.[5] Competition was there. Today we still have competition in the job market, but people no longer sit around smoking pipes and discussing or competing intellectually until they are blue in the face.
Victorian Students[6]
Another major difference between my college experience and that of Jude or any other Victorian student are the amount of resources available to me on campus. If I don’t know how to do my homework or if I want advice as to which classes to take, I can ask someone who is paid to help me. I also know that no matter how inadequate I may feel I could go to the Life Science Library and get help researching the physiology of the kidney and no one would look down on me. These kinds of resources weren’t available in the Victorian era. As Jude finds out, you’re out of luck if you don’t exactly fit the criteria; there isn’t the CAP (Coordinated Admission Program) to save you; a program which sends you to a smaller university or community college until you’re “ready” for the “real” university. Rejection letters today still hurt, but they aren’t nearly as blunt as the one Jude receives from Biblioll College: “ ‘Sir, I have read your letter with interest; and, judging from your description of yourself as a working-man, I venture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade than by adopting any other course”.[7] Ouch. You were at the mercy of the university, for if you didn’t make it in, your chance of being successful, wealthy, and highly revered was slim. We know examples of highly successful people today who didn’t finish or go to college, such as Michael Dell or your average celebrity, but that was a rarity in Jude’s day.
Social class was a huge part of being able to go to university. If your family was poor (like Jude’s) then you probably didn’t even go to grade school, much less dream about college. Scholarships these days allow students from every background, whether poor or a minority, to go to many universities around the country and increasingly more schools are opening their doors to the underprivileged. Physically and mentally disabled students can go to class with regular students and get the extra help they need at no cost to them, but at great cost to the university. There was a place for those people in Jude’s day, but it wasn’t a remedial school: it was an insane asylum. We wouldn’t even think of treating handicapped people like mentally disturbed patients today, at least not in your average college town.
Obviously, the most glaring difference between a university in the Victorian era and a university now is that women are able to experience higher education. We even have entire colleges devoted to women’s studies, and more and more female professors are teaching courses formerly taken only by men such as engineering or philosophy. Women can choose just about any career they wish and are no longer relegated to being stay-at-home moms (or nuns, prostitutes, and old maids leeching off their parents as in Jude’s day). Victorians placed great emphasis on the capability of men and men only to acquire an education: “…the more that men’s minds are cleared, the more that the results of science are frankly accepted, the more that poetry and eloquence come to be received and studied as what in truth they really are,--the criticism of life by gifted men, alive and active…”.[8] (emphasis mine) They didn’t realize (or want to realize) that women could be just as competent, if not more so, in the fields they held to be only a man’s work.
I came in believing college would be horrifyingly difficult. I was excited for the change, yes, but I didn’t really expect to do much other than study. And, oddly enough, that is how it has turned out. Newman says that, “any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward”.[9] I wholeheartedly agree. I go to school because it is the best thing for me by society’s standards. I need to know more about the world in order to be a better inhabitant of it. My personal version of the college experience is a bit different than other UT students because the side benefits I most enjoy about college are a bit, shall we say, obscure. I enjoy the freedom to run my own schedule, as well as spending time exploring interesting buildings without holding anyone up. My favorite social pastimes are going to events with free food, and finding awesome things that people throw in the trash.
Dumpster Diving[10]
I don’t spend lots of time with friends, and I don’t party. I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, and heck yes, I’m a virgin. I am not ashamed of any of those things.
In order to
connect my college experience with the experiences of Alice in Wonderland, I formulated my own
Parent Yelling at College Student[11]
Most of us are
here for just four years, some longer as we struggle to find our identity or at
least find our way around the university as a metaphor for finding our way
around life beyond the 40 acres. This is our last chance to be kids, to do
stupid things, and to make a name for ourselves in a small community. After
this, we’re public. We’re out there, and people will have to know who we are
and what we’re all about. Some of us pay thousands of dollars to socialize;
others pay nothing to study hard. Either way, we’ve been handed a golden
opportunity for success, and to skip out on it would be treason. We were raised
to believe that we are entitled to a college education, but Jude dared to dream
of the possibility in his day and failed miserably. As liberal arts students,
our college experience doesn’t have to be stuffy and boring without enjoyable
social events and clubs, yet sometimes we act like we’re those stereotypical
Total Word Count: 1,888
Word Count of Quotes: 248
Word Count Less Quotes and Captions: 1,640
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