Sir James Matthew Barrie, Romantic Philosopher in Modern Realistic Drama

Abstract

The industrial revolution blessed and cursed the English Victorian age. Blessed was the progress of invention and manufacture; cursed was the rugged individualism of selfish men. During this revolution, three great Victorian authors—Arnold, Ruskin, and Carlyle— rose to criticize England’s shallow middle class, smug aristocracy, and the newly-rich. Arnold fought the growing chaos by teaching that only education will produce sell-culture; Ruskin spent a huge fortune in the social and moral improvement of the working man; Carlyle thundered criticisms upon the social and economic evils rampant and offered remedies based on the principles of the Christian Church. Contemporaneously, two giants of musical verse, Tennyson and Browning, sang of the spirituality and consequent dignity of man, thus reviving the old Wordsworthian ideal. But with the advent of the twentieth century again came doubt and denial, and man found himself in a disillusioned world—a world of material progress and of spiritual decay.