Michael Thomas Harbuck						English 1201-SCC
17-01-2008								Essay 01
Ambrose								Sanford, Florida

The High Industrial Man

	"What more is there to do, than to bring this new world of technology and 

growth forward?"  Perhaps this sentence would summarize the feelings and intension 

of man in the late eighteen hundreds, or as it is also known, the late Victorian Period. 

 This intense period of growth, to which many of the ideas of our age are attributed, 

would have afforded the utmost dedication within the ranks of the industrial families as 

well as sacrifice of attributes of the foretime, which had to be replaced by the 

implementation of more appropriate pursuits.   The face of the family was changing 

rapidly,  but the remnants of the aristocracy of the earlier ages, however, was still 

present as a contributing factor. 
   
	 The short story The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is an 

account of a woman, who describes her life within the confines of herself, and her 

family.  Many references are made to her husband within the story.  Although the 

preface to the short story within the literature book, within which the story is reprinted 

as a collection, contends the generalization that the men of the Victorian Age were 

neither affectionate, nor truly living in manor, this is represented to the contrary in 

many lines within the story.  Contrary to the prejudice toward the Victorian man, the 

relationship between the woman and her husband, whose name is John, can be 

described as nothing but loving.  

	Women have struggled to climb the social ladder through many means 

throughout time as we know it.  The prominent man, with his knowledge, and power, 

and especially wealth, is the target of many women in this world.  Women strive to 

overcome the social boundaries which pervade every society.  Some succeed, and are 

vaulted into the ranks of the elite, whereby they obtain the wealth and prestige they 

have sought.  The large vacation house, with many amenities that the woman 

describes with delight and enjoyment, the nanny and caretakers, all are a direct 

provision of the man who she has chosen to love.  Still today, more than one hundred 

years later, objects within the relationship have been viewed as a ranking tool for the 

amount of love between an man and a women.  Thus, the most critical of the visually 

perceptive indicators regarding the amount of love a man of the Victorian Age has, for 

his wife, been more than successfully fulfilled.  

	Perhaps one of the strangest customs as seen in our day and age, country and 

culture, is the fact that many husbands and wives of the Victorian Era slept in separate 

beds.  Generally known, to those who have maintained reading and literacy for a 

period of time, would be the presumption, that affection, especially physical affection, 

towards a wife or husband was unheard of, and actually never occurred.  That there 

are three separate instances where physical affection plays a role in the story is 

astounding.  

On three separate occasions, John takes the woman, his wife, into his 

arms, and consoles her.  On one of these occasions, he amortizes her with sweet 

names.  At another, John talks to her sweetly while giving her a hug.  The third and 

most compelling warms the cold of the Victorian fog victoriously as the woman is 

carried by her husband up the stairs of their place of her reconvalescence, where she is 

read to by him until she is tired (of it).  The sentence which epitomizes the relationship 

states thusly: "It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and 

because he loves me so." (line 124) 

	One cannot fully comprehend or predict the outcome of how a man and a 

woman who come together as a family will change, grow, or develop in the following 

years.  Analogies can however, be drawn from the known characteristics of human 

behavior, which will most likely remain in the genes of mankind for many generations 

into the future, just as the traits of relationships can be compared with relative equality 

backwards to the beginning of civilized man, and before.  

The times of Queen Victoria  and the Industrial Era demanded that the men of 

The family were considered to be stern, and dominating;  as hard as the iron which 

was forging the future of mankind, and as acrid as the coal which smelted this metal of

change.  However, the tone of the dialogue demands that one read the true aura of

human love that prevails.