The Deserted Village - Grade: 70 PDF

Preview

Summary

Essay on Oliver Goldsmith's 'The Deserted Village'....

Description

Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘The Deserted Village’ is as much a piece of descriptive poetry as a strongly politicized essay, warning against the perils of wealth and greed, whilst empathizing with the hard working class of the time. He deals with the dissolution of a rural community due to factors such as modernization, emigration and the rise of capitalism. His critique of luxury and the monopolizing wealth that helped cause the deserting of Auburn, the rural village in which the poem is set is of ‘deliberately precise obscurity’ (129) as Sebastian Mitchell has described it, is nicely summated by the lines, ‘Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay’ (51-52). He talks of a land which has negative happenings hurtling towards it, where although wealth is increasing both the number and class of the people in the area, it is in his eyes rapidly decaying. This quote encapsulates the theme of the struggles of the laboring class against the growth of luxury, wealth and capitalism at the time, and the injustice he feels for the peasantry of Britain and the manner in which their land had been usurped by the aristocracy

To better understand this theme and just how Auburn came to be this way one must first understand the socioeconomic and sociopolitical landscape of the time. The Industrial Revolution of the mid-to-late 1700’s marked a transition to new manufacturing processes, the introduction of steam powered machinery and as a result less physical labour, and a growth in commerce which began to rival agriculture. It overlapped with the time of writing in 1770. The introduction of numerous ‘Inclosure acts’ from 1760 onwards took previously common land used by the working classes and created legal property rights for certain enclosed areas of land. As many wealthy landowners increased the rent to promote more efficient farming it forced many small farmers to become laborers, look for factory work, or in many cases emigrate.

The latter two outcomes resulted in many people leaving rural areas. Louise Pound believes that the migration was a sign of growing population and that ‘the country was erroneously believed to be depopulating’ (2) as although rural areas became more sparsely populated, it was simply as they moved to the cities. Despite the claims that Goldsmith’s estimation of depopulation had been greatly exaggerated (countrywide it had not, but perhaps rurally) he responded by saying that it was down the change in mindset of the country from traditional values to a state of mind more focused on attaining wealth. In an essay called ‘Dedication of The Deserted Village’ he wrote ‘In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the encrease of our luxurie’ and that the luxuries he referred to were the ones ‘by which many vices are introduced, and so many kingdoms have been undone’ (857).

Goldsmith did not elaborate on the luxuries he spoke of, leading Howard J. Bell to assume that he was referring to any, if not all three, of the following; "the change in British life which we have since learned to call the beginning of the Industrial Era, with its coal and machinery and factory hands; "the rapid progress of the English agricultural revolution in the 'sixties and 'seventies of the eighteenth century"; "the economic changes in landownership and agriculture through the shifting of population from country to city." (748).

The avarice that overcomes the peasantry nature of Auburn which Goldsmith attacks is never specified in character, rather by a series of general descriptions. For example, ‘the tyrant’s hand’ (37), ‘the man of wealth and pride’ (275) and ‘sons of wealth divide’ (307). It is suggested that it particularly landlords who had let their lust for money overcome the feudalistic systems of the past but they also represent on a larger scale the growth of capitalism in Britain. As Fulford see it, ‘the traditional social structure of country seemed to have been destroyed, the semi-feudal relationships of squire and tenant to have been supplanted by a cash economy’ (121). The ‘man of wealth and pride’ had taken the land ‘that

many poor supplied’ (276) beforehand with their agriculture, and used this space for their large landscape gardens. Goldsmith’s use of pride in this line could be seen to allude to where he thinks the current state of affairs will take the country. Although now it had wealth, pride comes before a fall.

The expression of taste and display of wealth from ‘his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds’ (277-278) may have created artificial beauty, but takes away from Goldsmith’s idyllic, nostalgic view of a traditionally beautiful, pastoral countryside. And metaphorically, the wealth and opulence which sits there now has replaced the old fashioned traditional values and traits of the working class. Bell endorses Goldsmith’s idea that although cosmetically this may make the country look great it is actually taking away from the values that made it great in the first place, saying ‘This great luxury of the rich makes the kingdom seem prosperous, but actually the oppression of the poor people and the extension of the nation’s boundaries (by colonies) resulting from the greed of the luxurious rich threaten to destroy-nay even now have half destroyed the nation’ (749). Goldsmith has much disdain for the new wealth of the country, calling it ‘A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe’ (392), whereas many might instead see the abject poverty faced by the working classes as the real woe, Goldsmith feels the aristocracy have been infected with this.

Goldsmith feels the usurpation of his fictional village of Auburn, and all the British countryside locations it represents is as artificial as the landscape gardens being planted upon them. As Richard J. Jaarsma puts it ‘The relationship between "land" and a "bold peasantry" on the one hand and "rural virtues" and "order" on the other is seen by Goldsmith as organic rather than imposed’ (452) unlike the current set up imposed by a greedy aristocracy, leaning away from feudalism in favour of capitalism.

The pressure from the aristocracy on the peasantry forces them to migrate, although they are in Goldsmith’s eyes the backbone of what made the country great through their hard work and traditional values. As he says they are ‘trembling, shrinking from the spoiler’s hand, Far, far away, thy children leave the land.’ (49-50). Could this lead to the collapse that Goldsmith seems to think is inevitable despite the apparent prosperity of the time? The land may be cosmetically beautiful and financially prosperous but the people who made the country this way are being forced to migrate and now the greed and immoral values of the aristocracy may not be able to keep the country running steadily. He feels the new artificial beauty of the countryside masking a lack of ‘a bold peasantry, their country’s pride’ (55) to maintain this prosperity.

Goldsmith tells us how Auburn used to be with the singing on the milk-maid, the sound of geese, and ‘playful children just let loose from school’ (120). Although now, ‘the sounds of population fail’ (125) as so many have been forced to leave. He tells us of the water-cress lady, those who migrated to an America which at the time was colonised by Britain, specifically mentioning ‘wild Altama’ (344), a river in Georgia. He condemns the fate of a young girl who was forced to migrate to the city. Less spacious and far more industrial, the girl struggled to survive. She has lost all she ever had ‘Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled’ (331) and to add to her woes ‘Near her betrayer's door she lays her head’ (332) as she is forced to sleep on the doorsteps of city men whose greed and desire for great wealth is what tore her village apart, and forced her into this dire state of affairs.

At the end, Goldsmith leaves us with at least some positivity in the hope that the beauty of poetry can give some hope to ‘redress the rigours of the inclement clime’ (422) and to use their ‘voice, prevailing over time’ (421) to fight against this injustice with words, since they cannot match it with money. He hopes to ‘teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain’ (424)

through poetry, as Goldsmith himself does in this text. He feels the genuine beauty of poetry can fight the cosmetic or artificial beauty of wealth seen in the country through its landscape gardens and newly made lakes, and as a result help shed light on the corruption of capitalism that helped create said artificial beauty. The loss of the people that helped the land gain prosperity to migration, and in turn their loss and hardship, can be fought with the power of words.

He urges those who have faced this injustice and poverty to maintain their ‘native strength possessed’ (425), the values that he so endorses throughout the poem, to remain strong despite their situation. In the final lines he almost mirrors the quote previously chosen for the purpose of this argument (‘Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay’) with the lines ‘trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away’ (427-428). He does this very purposefully to imply that although this newfound wealth and particularly greed of the nation has lead to a decay in the situation and number of the working class, in turn the lack of working class characteristics will bring a decay to the wealth and state of the nation, in a cyclical nature of sorts. By doing this he reinforces his theory that the loss of the labouring class and their hard working traits and honest values will eventually see the failure of this new cash-minded empire, thus ending his critique of greed, luxury and capitalism summated by the quote chosen here.

Bibliography Bell, Howard J. “The Deserted Village and Goldsmith's Social Doctrines”. PMLA 59.3 (1944): JSTOR. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Fulford, Tim. ""Nature" Poetry." The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-century Poetry. Comp. John E. Sitter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001. Google Books. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Goldsmith, Oliver. "Dedication of The Deserted Village." English Prose: Selections with Critical Introductions by Various Writers and General Introductions to Each Period. Ed. Henry Craik. Vol. 4. Macmillan, 1916; Bartleby.com, 2010. www.bartleby.com/209/. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Deserted Village. Charlottesville, Va.: U of Virginia Library, 1996. Print.

Jaarsma, Richard J. “Ethics in the Wasteland: Image and Structure in Goldsmith's the Deserted Village”. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 13.3 (1971): 447–459. JSTOR. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Mitchell, Sebastian. “Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village: Past, Present, and Future” English: The Journal of the English Association; Summer2006, Vol. 55 Issue 212. www.english.oxfordjournals.org/. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Pound, Louise. "The Times." www.aughty.org. 1906. Web. 27 Oct. 2015....