Utilitarianism in Victorian Literature
Utilitarianism is a big name, but it's got an easy definition. The whole thing boils down to asking one question to make decisions: "What will make the most people the most happy?"
Seems simple, until you try to get through a day of using it to determine everything you do. Sure, choose that hamburger for lunch, if that's what will make you happy. But what about after school—should you watch TV because it makes you happy, or should you volunteer at the community center because you'll maybe improve other kids' days? Or should you make your own family happy and go home to bake cookies?
Not surprisingly, this philosophy was super attractive to some people (Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill were big proponents). But others found it limiting and soulless: can we really reason our way into being happy? And what about the people who aren't in the majority? Is it okay to sacrifice the happiness of a couple of people if it makes a whole crowd happy? (It's another version of the classic ethical dilemma: would you kill one person to save four?) And how are we supposed to get beyond playing favorites, and just making our loved ones and ourselves happy?
Victorians and their literature were asking ethical questions in a lot of different ways, but utilitarianism was one popular lens through which to do it. The philosophy relies on math and stats—it's hyper-rational and logical. But some writers, like Gaskell and Dickens, wanted to show the other side: what happens to the "few" who get sacrificed for the happiness of the many?
Chew on This:
Hard Times is Dickens's manifesto against Utilitarianism. What do you make of the Gradgrind philosophy vs. the circus philosophy?
George Eliot's novels often boil down to choices—what to do, why to do it, and for whose happiness? Daniel Deronda has a lot of tough choices. How do the characters measure happiness?