Despite its Romantic lineage, the Victorian age failed to emulate Romanticism's revolutionary exploration of imagination and feelings. Instead, the period promoted a strict utilitarian ideology, which replaced the ideals of creativity and affection, with fact (Wwnorton). Due to this, iconic novelist Charles Dickens, argued that the reformed condition of England, critically underestimated the value of "Fancy" (Dickens Kaplan and Monod 9) within modern life (Dixon 278). Therefore, his ambiguous term, reveals more about Victorian society than just a lack of creativity (Pollatschek 278). It implicitly references the neglect of fables, compassion and religious belief from within the period's domestic and educational sectors (Pollatschek 278). …show more content…
This is portrayed throughout, the disillusionment of his female protagonist, Louisa Gradgrind, who symbolises "the dire consequences of excluding emotion and imagination from the classroom [and household]" (Dixon 481). This is evident as her discontent in adult life, assumedly originates from her pragmatic upbringing. Where, "the [traditional] dreams of childhood" (Dickens Kaplan and Monod 149) were replaced with the ironically, loaded image, of the Gradgrind's "lecturing castle" (11). As a result, the "airy fables" (Dickens Kaplan and Monod 149) that were usually, "so good to be believed in once, [and] so good to be remembered when outgrown" (149), could not aid her acceptance of her mother's declining health. Nor, could the belief in an omnipresent entity, as her secularist household, distanced her from a "beneficent God" (Dickens Kaplan and Monod 149). That was only accessible through "the tender light of Fancy" (149). Therefore, the narrator rhetorically questions: "what had she to do with these" (Dickens Kaplan and Monod 149) fanciful manifestations? Evidently, the answer is nothing, as her only connection to the Sublime, is through an accumulative description of a "cruel and cold... grim Idol" (150). Rather than, the "Christian fellow feeling" (Pollatschek 278) which provides comfort to all of "Adam's children" (Dickens Kaplan and Monod 149) in times