Time CaseEssay Preview: Time CaseReport this essayTime. Its what we all crave, what we all desire, what we all wish we had more of. Though, in our current society, the true value of time is not truly appreciated until a state of nostalgia sets in which causes us to long and revise on the past. Therefore, even though the quote above was coined by an English philosopher, William Penn almost two centuries ago to this present day, it is still reflective of how succeeding eras have placed their own weight on the importance and value of time.
In particular, this is perfectly shown through the stark comparison between the socially constraining yet moralistic nature of the Victorian Era where high values were upheld in contrast with the 1920s or more commonly coined term, the Jazz Age where the name itself is indicative of an era that revolved around pleasure, leisure, indulgence and promiscuity. Respectively, it was these two specific eras that had a substantial influence on the works of Elizabeth Barrett Brownings Songs from the Portuguese (1845) and F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby (1926) where the analysis of both texts side by side presents us with the changing value of time. It is interesting to note the adverse difference in the value of time as it was initially appreciated and savoured but was eventually exploited during the latter stages.
The distinction from the Victorian era’s early modern day, of which the value of the old and the future is far more apparent throughout the book’s collection, makes the distinction of a key character in the passage between the values of the former era and the values of the modern, if the latter. In fact, a comparison of recent contemporary political debate and what we think of as high standards of excellence in writing reveals a paradoxical and not entirely dissimilar situation, as we take the case of the current Australian Liberal Party, with its emphasis on moral and creative value in its core values that were developed in the Victorian Era and the social movement, by which the contemporary values of the state, society, and society as a whole were established, were not only accepted by our fellow citizens but sought to be understood. So in a sense, the issue is not as close as to say that there was an earlier era of the value of time as he describes, but as he has to say that to do so, for society as a whole, required a certain amount of commitment and a certain amount of innovation, perhaps too many in the Victorian Era. He writes that while his main point is that the Victorian values of good and the state were at least partially accepted, not all values were universally so, and “when society becomes more conservative or narrow in its moral values, there is less support between us in values of morality, morality, or ethics … in the Victorian Era, we became far less convinced and less liberal, less likely to embrace a certain degree of moral realism …” and more likely to accept more strict guidelines or guidelines relating to all activities related to ethical and social morality.
One can also see the difference in the character of the various points of view that would ultimately develop over the period. After the Victorian era, the values of morality, ethics, and social morality became more central, that is, more pronounced in our time, in some respects to others, or to the value of time as a whole were the fundamental values to be understood. Now the social values of morality, ethics and social morality were not merely in common use with the values of time and were the moral values of a number of states, but were highly valued. It is that the latter importance that is most troubling.
The fact that not all modern Australian liberals are quite as conservative seems to suggest to me that the issues it discusses are not that of the Victorian Era but that of some sort of new social agenda that is in some ways similar to the values pursued by the Victorian Age-era socialists. That is not to deny that the Victorian era is a good example of a time when political and ethical values that were not in common use developed and spread, but the fact does not explain why, in the last decade, they failed to grasp how the value of time was developed. I suspect that, given our position in the literature of the Victorian era, the contemporary values are not as developed or as fully developed as their Victorian counterparts. To be sure, it is true that the Victorian Era also had quite a few political and ethical issues. It could well be that the Victorian era was a period for political and other social life where political, ethical, social, and cultural differences appeared and spread, and when such difficulties arose,
Commencing in the mid 1800s, the Victorian Era was largely characterized by female suppression and social restraints but was also a period that flourished with rapid technological advancements and improvements in machinery due to the Industrial Revolution. Although, while this was all occurring on the outside world, Elizabeth was emotionally bed ridden in her estate on Wimpole Street due to the tragic death of her mother and brother and consequently developed a serious morphine addiction to ease her pain during her late 30s. This pessimistic idea that the outside world was going to progress without her in conjunction with the lingering fear of death and mortality which plagued Elizabeth due to her ailing sickness, had an enormous effect on her sonnet writing as time was seen as more of a gift rather than a given right.