The Victorian Era, following the wake of the Industrial Revolution, was a time of immense ideological change. Those who lived during this period were still some of the first generations to live during the time of the invention of the steam powered engine, and subsequently all of the development it instigated. The ushering in of the Mechanical Era left an indelible mark on people’s perception of good versus evil. At play in many minds was a complex take on the simple adage (or proverb): “idle hands are the Devil’s play ground.” To others, “The Mechanical Age” represented a shift in morality by way of enabling the idiom “a means to an end” (Carlyle, 442).
These two aforementioned ideas corroborate and fall in line with many religious tenets, specifically those of Christianity. Where the adage of idle hands is self-explanatory when linked with fears about machines, the idea of machines being a means to an end requires some further explanation. The dawn of the machine age as the harbinger of capitalism is one of the most potent examples of the means to an end idiom.
With the benefit of modern day knowledge, hindsight is 20/20. Although it may seem anachronistic, religion, back in early post-industrial revolution England was, in a sense, still an unsophisticated system of classification for the “unknown” or the “unexplained.” This much is supported by (at least) the example of the Catholic Church’s stance towards science and the figures therein, such as Galileo, who tried to validate the empirical method. (However, this is not to discount the value of faith, etc.)
Post industrialist England’s (as well as Ireland and Scotland’s) constituents were predominantly of the Christian faith, belonging to one of its three major divisions: Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism (Britannica). Many of the ideological and philosophical shifts that happened as a result of the industrial revolution and eventual acceptance of technology and machinery presented valid fears for the religious populace. In a way, machinery and technology was another unknown variable threatening the status quo. That which is unknown is easily sensationalized, and technology in the Victorian era was still unfledged.
Enter Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle rebelled against sensationalism while (ironically) taking part of it himself, in one of his treatises: Signs of the Times he railed against mass printing technology:
The king has virtually abdicated; the church is a widow without jointure; public principle is gone, private honesty is going; society, in short, is falling fast in pieces and a time of unmixed evil is come upon us. (Carlyle, 441)
The same technology that enabled Carlyle to print his treatise also enabled the mass production of monthly, weekly and daily journals, as well as newspapers, etc. In Carlyle’s view this capability to print on a mass scale facilitated dissemination of, at times, erroneous or sensationalist material (440).
Carlyle, as an educated man, is clearly in a superior economic position to the rest of the British populace, and it is evident from the reading of Signs of the Times that he does not trust the average working man’s intelligence to accurately discern fact from sensationalism one hundred percent of the time. The subtext of Carlyle’s essay is twofold; he sees problems with the rise of machines—specifically with how this relates to the loss of faith, and the new allowances made for Catholicism in England. The Catholic Emancipation Act was no doubt influenced by the proliferation of written material. The populace could now form their own opinions and make better-educated choices.
For Carlyle, the loss of arts and crafts inspired work and a turn to more assembly line type of work is correlated to a loss, and then a misappropriation and mis-association of faith. “No individual now hopes to accomplish the poorest enterprise single-handed and without mechanical aids; he must make interest with some existing corporation…” (Carlyle, 443) Carlyle is under the impression that if people put their faith in technology and machinery they are not leaving enough faith for Christianity, as if faith were a finite resource. Carlyle’s essay also illustrates a fear of the shift of faith from one form of Christianity to another (497). In the essay, Carlyle sees Christianity as the “crowning glory of life, soul and modern culture” (450) he espouses a Protestant view of religion and Christianity by talking about it in terms of simplicity and as faith starting within a “man’s soul” and by natural efforts, (a view very in line with Protestantism).
Carlyle observes, “Men have lost their belief in the Invisible, and believe, and hope, and work only in the Visible…” (452). Carlyle’s hypothesis of the shift in faith and beliefs was prevalent during the Victorian era. The discourse of this issue, as well as the issue of ideologically conflicting sects of Christianity eventually made its way into some of the fiction of the time. An example of this type of discourse takes place in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Stoker’s novel brings together three major issues that were commonplace during the Victorian Era, the discourse of Protestantism versus Catholicism and the way it relates to reverse colonialism (which, for the sake of being concise, will not be discussed here at length), the sinister implications of the loss of faith, and finally, the way in which technology manifests itself in Victorian Era Europe.
Looking back through time, specifically following the notion of how technology and machinery influenced the way of life following the industrial revolution, it is clear that there is an ongoing subtext pertaining to the uses and attitudes towards it within Dracula. Two compelling challenges within the text are: Where is the discourse regarding the two sects of religion leading, and how is it related to the idea or metaphor of machinery and technology? This paper proposes that if looked at retrospectively, Dracula is actually a text that espouses modern views toward technology and machinery. It does this by simultaneously comparing and contrasting two sects of a faith, while assigning each a positive and negative value. Furthermore, Stoker aligns specific technological elements and characteristics with characters within the text. These characters, then pitted against each other, through close examination are revealed as associated with specific faiths, ultimately affirming two things. Dracula effectively confirms the idea that technology and machinery is beneficial for humanity, and, secondly, that it does not have to interfere with humanity’s attitude toward faith.
