Thomas Carlyle

After reading Thomas Carlyle’s works provided and listening to the podcast, I found it very interesting that there was such a gray period between the Romantic and Victorian ages. In the podcast it mentions that Keats and Carlyle were born the same year but since Keats died at the age of 26 he is seen as a Romantic writer and Carlyle is seen as a Victorian writer because he died at 86. The first thing that came to mind after hearing such a statement was, if Keats had lived as long as Carlyle would he still be considered a Romantic or would he be considered a Victorian?

But now I want to focus more on Carlyle’s work. I enjoyed reading Carlyle because I found it was very easy to understand what his position was and how he felt about certain things. I felt I did less digging to find meaning in his works than I had done in previous authors’ works. One of his works that I truly enjoyed reading was The Irish Widow from Gospel of Mammonism. The widow and her children were refused help and referred to others. Each person asked refused to help and eventually the widow died from typhus-fever which also infected 17 others on her lane that had refused her help. Carlyle writes:

“Behold I am sinking, bare of help: ye must help me! I am your sister, bone of your bone; one God made us: ye must help me! They answered, No, impossible; thou art no sister of ours. But she proves her sisterhood; her typhus-fever kills them: they actually were her brothers, though denying it!” (480-481).

When I read this I understood that people were too selfish to help this widow and her children. They prove that the “money-safes are ours, and you to have no business with them” (481). The widow was seen as someone that did not have as much matter as themselves. I believe that this expresses Carlyle’s beliefs very well. Carlyle believed that during the Industrial period and after, people began to lose their communal responsibility of taking care of each other and started focusing on only themselves.