"The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how John Ruskin's lecture "The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century", is a carefully crafted social criticism of effects of industrialization on late 18th century English life.

From the Paper:

" In one passage, Ruskin also laments that, if only science might tell him where, exactly, weather changes come from, he would be grateful. However, as that same passage also implies, Ruskin in fact already knows the answer. Another entry refers to the descending blackness as "Manchester's devils darkness" (Ruskin, 1448). Manchester was, at the time, the new manufacturing center of England, and therefore, a symbol of the gloomy specter of mass industrialization that hovered over Europe. Therefore, the "devils darkness" to which Ruskin refers, could be, in a literal sense, the dark clouds of air pollution generated by industrial manufacturing, especially the sooty coal plants for which Manchester was well known. "

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