ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses utopianism and the philosophy of human happiness, citing Alfred Tennyson and Matthew Arnold. A growth of utopian fiction in the nineteenth century indicates a desire for a better world; it also indicates a rejection of the world of industrialisation, rapid urban expansion and social divisions. Utopia has two meanings: from eutopia it denotes a happy place; and from outopia, it means no-place. If utopia is a foil to the unhappiness of real conditions it is a diversion. Utopia, then, is a realm of ideas and ideals, conveyed in literature rather than in the crude reforms of material conditions which benefitted urban populations considerably by the 1860s but which constitute quantitative changes compared to Arnold's qualitative shift of consciousness. Arnold begins, however, from his fear of social collapse; like those liberal reformers whose efforts he calls crude he, sees culture as instrumental in preventing chaos.