Dissertation
“The steam that is to work the engines”: women’s writing and the rise of steam power in Victorian Britain
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2021
DOI: 10.17077/etd.005852
Abstract
In 1825, a nearly seven-foot-tall marble statue was erected in St Paul's Chapel in Westminster Abbey to memorialize James Watt, the Scottish engineer who perfected and manufactured what may be the most influential invention of our contemporary age: the steam engine. Victorian steam technologies harnessed the power of nature to create and expand energy systems, effectively ushering in an age of innovation and invention that boasted developments such as the spinning jenny, the power loom, the railway system, and the mechanized printing press. While impressive, such technologies were also instrumental in producing environmental destruction and industrial violence. As the nineteenth century progressed, it became clear to all – from the Luddite machine breakers of the early 1800s to the compilers of the Parliamentary Blue Books in the 1830s to Queen Victoria, who refused to visit London when the “sea-coale” was too thick – that steam technologies were creating immense environmental and social upheavals. While British historians have widely documented women’s involvement in the rise of steam power, literary critics have largely neglected women writers’ responses to steam technologies. Moreover, the contribution of working-class women to steam energy systems has been almost completely ignored. This exclusion is ironic considering that women’s employment rates reached a peak during the Industrial Revolution when women made up 60-80% of the workforce. Clearly, women had an enormous role in the transformation and dissemination of energy in Victorian Britain; yet, few of these women’s narratives were told in the literature of the period. My dissertation, “The steam that is to work the engines:” Women’s Writing and the Rise of Steam Power in Victorian Britain, seeks to fill this gap. The title of my dissertation, a reference to George Eliot’s Felix Holt (1866), expresses a commitment to unearthing submerged literary histories and signifies that Victorian women’s labor, both on and off the page, can be understood as a force of energy that simultaneously fueled and resisted the Industrial Revolution. Thus, my work reveals an expansive range of middle- and working-class women’s literary contributions from the nineteenth century. Although considerable criticism exists on the early Victorian industrial novel, literary scholarship has repeatedly overlooked women’s responses to the Industrial Revolution more broadly throughout the century and has generally neglected the link between women and steam energy systems. I propose that, by concentrating on an expansive archive of nineteenth-century women’s writing, we might better understand steam energy as a foundation for issues of labor, environmental change, and women’s rights. In turning to the literary, this dissertation seeks to answer three questions: 1.) What does Victorian women’s writing reveal about the production, implementation, and dissemination of steam power? 2.) To what extent do Victorian women writers participate in an emerging nineteenth-century energy science? and 3.) How can nineteenth-century women’s writing help us to understand how steam power and energy science affect vulnerable groups, especially women? In answering these questions, this dissertation seeks to analyze how women’s writing intervened (on the level of content as well as form) in conversations about steam energy and the emerging energy science that accompanied steam technologies. In turning to middle- and laboring-class women authors, I intend to show that, when it came to the Age of Steam, literary women were far from silent.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- “The steam that is to work the engines”: women’s writing and the rise of steam power in Victorian Britain
- Creators
- Heidi Renée Aijala
- Contributors
- Florence Boos (Advisor)Barbara Eckstein (Committee Member)Eric Gidal (Committee Member)Teresa Mangum (Committee Member)Tyler Priest (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- English
- Date degree season
- Spring 2021
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.005852
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xiii, 228 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2021 Heidi Renée Aijala
- Language
- English
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 208-228)
- Public Abstract (ETD)
In 1825, a marble statue was erected in St Paul's Chapel to memorialize James Watt, the Scottish engineer who manufactured what may be the most influential invention of our contemporary age: the steam engine. Victorian steam technologies ushered in an age of innovation boasting developments such as the spinning jenny, power loom, and railway system. While impressive, such technologies were also instrumental in producing environmental destruction and industrial violence. Eventually, it became clear to all that steam technologies were creating immense environmental and social upheavals. While literary critics have widely documented men’s involvement in the rise of steam power, they have largely neglected women writers’ responses to steam technologies.
My dissertation seeks to fill this gap. I assert that Victorian women’s labor, both on and off the page, can be understood as a force of energy that simultaneously fueled and resisted the Industrial Revolution. In turning to the literary, this dissertation seeks to answer three questions: 1.) What does Victorian women’s writing reveal about the production, implementation, and dissemination of steam power? 2.) To what extent do Victorian women writers participate in an emerging nineteenth-century energy science? and 3.) How can nineteenth-century women’s writing help us to understand how steam power and energy science affect vulnerable groups, especially women? In answering these questions, I analyze how women’s writing intervened (on the level of content as well as form) in conversations about steam energy.
- Academic Unit
- English
- Record Identifier
- 9984097477402771
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