Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867, and: 'More than Mere Amusement': Working-class Women's Leisure in England, 1750-1914, and: The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London (review)

From Jane Austen to Salman Rushdie, from Yeats to the media coverage of the Gulf War, this is an account of the roots of imperialism in European culture. While many historians and commentators have analyzed the phenomenon of the imperial power wielded by Britain (and France) in the 19th century, this book analyzes its impact on the culture of the period. The author focusses on the way this cultural legacy has embedded itself in the Western view of the East, and affects our relationship with the formerly colonized world at every level, both social and political. The author also wrote "Orientalism".

文化與帝國主義 = Culture and imperialism

Christmas in Australia

The oratorio genre was regarded amongst the most edifying and instructive artforms of the Victorian era, and it was to these lofty ideals that George Tolhurst (1827–1877) aspired when composing his 1864 oratorio Ruth . The first work of its kind written in the British colony of Victoria, Australia, Ruth received an initially favourable local reception; Tolhurst was urged by the Melbourne press to aim higher and present his work to a wider and more discerning audience. Consequently, he took his work to London where it was roundly criticized, widely mocked and eventually dubbed ‘the worst oratorio ever’. It might be assumed that a work so poorly received in the cultural metropolis of London would be, like so much other Victorian music, immediately forgotten. However, through its notoriously bad reception, Ruth – in what Percy Scholes describes as a ‘succes de ridicule’ – found a cult following that has spanned from the nineteenth century to the present day. This article examines the critical reception of Ruth through the lens of colonial social relations, arguing that the treatment of Ruth in both London and Melbourne is emblematic of broader trends in the nineteenth-century relationship between parent state and settler colony. It also explores the surprising phenomenon of twentieth- and twenty-first-century consumption of Ruth in Britain, questioning whether the legacies of certain Victorian social and cultural prejudices relating to the artistic products of the colonies have been mitigated. Aesthetic and representational decisions made in recent revivals of Ruth suggest that cultural hierarchies forged during the Victorian era continue to be reinforced in the present day.

‘The Worst Oratorio Ever!’: Colonialist Condescension in the Critical Reception of George Tolhurst’s Ruth (1864)


 The 1880s saw a burgeoning of exhibitions of ‘Women’s Work’ across the world. These events focused on the artistic and industrial abilities of women, signifying an unprecedented shift away from the emphasis usually placed on maleness and masculinized technology in contemporary exhibition culture. The first Exhibition, held in Bristol in 1885, included a musical novelty: a concert entirely of works composed by women. The next, in Sydney in 1888, included a whole series of such concerts. These concerts—containing works by Kate Loder, Clara Wieck, Fanny Hensel, Agnes Zimmermann, and Maude Valérie White—were extraordinarily well received, applauded in both concept and execution. Yet, their reception appears paradoxical against the contemporary critical climate. In both Britain and Australia, the ‘question’ of women composers was widely debated, and works met with condescension or hostility. By exploring the expectations surrounding displays of ‘women’s work’, I argue that it was the exhibition context itself that influenced the reception of this music. While Exhibitions were conventionally seen as male-gendered events, ‘Women’s’ Exhibitions allowed organizers to blur the distinctions between private and public space. Similarly, while women composers were criticized for their encroachment in the male concert sphere, these Exhibitions also blurred these boundaries and gave critics an appropriate ‘feminine’ framework through which to view and critique the works.

Sarah Kirby

Papers

‘The Worst Oratorio Ever!’: Colonialist Condescension in the Critical Reception of George Tolhurst’s Ruth (1864)

'The Only Thing "Womanish" is the Composer': Music at Nineteenth-Century Exhibitions of Women's Work