Useful Knowledge: The Victorians, Morality, and the March of Intellect (review)

This interesting and informative book suffers from a misleading title, a problem which may be more the fault of the publisher than of the author. The title leads the reader to expect a study about the various Victorian avenues to the useful knowledge so memorably deplored by John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University (l852). Rather, Alan Rauch's volume opens with a genuinely well-informed chapter on the dissemination of knowledge in early Victorian England followed by chapters on five novels, Jane Webb Loudon's The Mummy! (1827), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Charlotte Brontë's The Professor (1857), Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke (1850), and George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860). Thus a book that commences as cultural history continues as historically based literary criticism.

Rauch is interested first in establishing the vast outpouring of early Victorian "knowledge texts" (2) which included encyclopedias as well as works on popular science, didactic instruction, and self-help. His chapter on this vast literature is the best available and should be consulted by both scholars and teachers who wish a textured introductory survey to the remarkable world of early Victorian popular publication and diffusion of knowledge as well as museums and public exhibitions. His treatment of this subject is especially valuable because of the rich program of illustrations that fill the book. Throughout this excellent chapter Rauch assiduously refrains from imposing any hierarchy on the various volumes of information and misinformation but considers them in their collectivity as a fundamental element of early Victorian cultural, literary, and intellectual life.

Once Rauch turns to his novelists, his narrative becomes less certain and less confident. The exploration of novels and other materials regarded as non-canonical has become so commonplace that it does not require Rauch's extensive defense of the lesser- known works by Loudon, Brontë, and Kingsley he has chosen to analyze. These chapters, which are filled with far too many qualifying remarks, are much more interesting and original than those devoted to Mary Shelley and George Eliot. Indeed, one wishes that Rauch had chosen to explore other less known authors or less familiar works by well- known authors. His argument would have been strengthened for example by a chapter on the didactic novels of Mrs. Marcet or Harriet Martineau. He might also then have speculated on the possible gendered character of the impact of useful knowledge in the novel.

With far too much apology Rauch uses his novels to conduct a literary and cultural archaeology of how the dissemination of popularized knowledge found its way, often unexpectedly, into fiction. There are at least two issues at stake. First, there is the substantive content of popular knowledge and its appearance in novels where it may not have previously been recognized or properly evaluated. Here he is quite persuasive in regard to the role of phrenology in Brontë's The Professor. Second, there is the issue of whether the new knowledge and that of science most particularly is dangerous or threatening. He takes on this subject most directly, but least successfully and originally, in his discussions of Shelley and Eliot. The literature on both authors is now so vast that authors must be very sure they have something original to say before addressing them.

Where Rauch is most original and interesting is with Loudon, Brontë, and Kingsley. Here he leads the reader with a sure hand and quite importantly demonstrates how each author drew upon popularizations of knowledge. He makes the reader genuinely wish to know much more about the mania over things Egyptian during the l820s and l830s. At the same time he makes the reader wish that he had commented more fulsomely about similarities between the fictional treatments of ancient Egypt and modern India, both of which...