From a Strict Education to the Education of Imagination and Feelings

Abstract

The lack of balance between the rational side of human beings and their emotional part is an issue which characterises a considerable part of the British nineteenth-century literature and culture. Both the rise of technology and the spreading of Utilitarian theories managed to produce a generalised disproportion between intellect and emotions. Furthermore, an additional chief cause of such imbalance was an unsound and strict education based exclusively on the development of the rational faculties of the child. Therefore, by neglecting the development of the emotional and imaginative side, both the domestic and formal strict upbringing tended to erase the human part of the individual. Hence, the underdevelopment of imagination and feelings became an important theme for the British nineteenth-century novelists and essayists. In particular, Charles Dickens analysed the problem and its multiple consequences both in his fiction and in his articles. Furthermore, the English philosopher John Stuart Mill provides a clear example of a strict domestic education in his Autobiography, thus demonstrating that the imbalance between mind and feelings was a real cultural and social issue. Moreover, John Ruskin and George Eliot and analysed such cultural issue in their non-fictional works. The chief solution to this problem is a sound an balanced education which cherishes the development of both the intellectual and emotional side of the individual. Furthermore, a fundamental support to correct the imbalance is provided by the education to art and literature. Hence, the aim of this dissertation is to investigate how the role of a correct education and the role of art came to be considered crucial in the solution to the cultural and social problem of the disproportion between feelings and imagination on the one side and intellect on the other side.