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.There was another sense in which the 'experiential' nature of literaturewas ideologically convenient.For 'experience' is not only the homeland ofideology, the place where it takes root most effectively; it is also in its literaryform a kind of vicarious self-fulfilment.If you do not have the money andleisure to visit the Far East, except perhaps as a soldier in the pay of Britishimperialism, then you can always 'experience' it at second hand by readingConrad or Kipling.Indeed according to some literary theories this is evenmore real than strolling round Bangkok.The actually impoverished experi-ence of the mass of people, an impoverishment bred by their social condi-tions, can be supplemented by literature: instead of working to change suchconditions (which Arnold, to his credit, did more thoroughly than almostany of those who sought to inherit his mantle), you can vicariously fulfilsomeone's desire for a fuller life by handing them Pride and Prejudice.It is significant, then, that 'English' as an academic subject was firstinstitutionalized not in the Universities, but in the Mechanics' Institutes,working men's colleges and extension lecturing circuits.II English was liter-ally the poor man's Classics a way of providing a cheapish 'liberal' educa-tion for those beyond the charmed circles of public school and Oxbridge.From the outset, in the work of 'English' pioneers like F.D.Maurice andCharles Kingsley, the emphasis was on solidarity between the social classes,the cultivation of 'larger sympathies', the instillation of national prideand the transmission of 'moral' values.This last concern still the distinc-tive hallmark of literary studies in England, and a frequent source ofbemusement to intellectuals from other cultures was an essential part ofthe ideological project; indeed the rise of 'English' is more or less concomi-tant with an historic shift in the very meaning of the term 'moral', of which 24 The Rise ofEnglishArnold, Henry James and F.R.Leavis are the major critical exponents.Morality is no longer to be grasped as a formulated code or explicit ethicalsystem: it is rather a sensitive preoccupation with the whole quality of lifeitself, with the oblique, nuanced particulars of human experience.Some-what rephrased, this can be taken as meaning that the old religious ideologieshave lost their force, and that a more subtle communication of moral values"one which works by 'dramatic enactment' rather than rebarbative abstrac-tion, is thus in order.Since such values are nowhere more vividly drama-tized than in literature, brought home to 'felt experience' with all theunquestionable reality of a blow on the head, literature becomes more thanjust a handmaiden ofmoral ideology: it ismoral ideology for the modern age,as the work of F.R.Leavis was most graphically to evince.The working class was not the only oppressed layer of Victorian society atwhom 'English' was specificallybeamed.English literature, reflected a RoyalCommission witness in 1877, might be considered a suitable subjectfor 'women.and the second- and third-rate men who.become school-masters.T The 'softening' and 'humanizing' effects ofEnglish, terms recur-rently used by its early proponents, are within the existing ideologicalstereotypes of gender clearly feminine.The rise of English in England ranparallel to the gradual, grudging admission of women to the institutions ofhigher education; and since English was an untaxing sort of affair, concernedwith the finer feelings rather than with the more virile topics of bona fideacademic 'disciplines', it seemed a convenient sort of non-subject to palm offon the ladies, who were in any case excluded from science and the profes-sions.Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, first Professor of English at CambridgeUniversity, would open with the word 'Gentlemen' lectures addressed to ahall filled largely with women.Though modern male lecturers may havechanged their manners, the ideological conditions which make English apopular University subject for women to read have not.If English had its feminine aspect, however, it also acquired a masculineone as the century drew on.The era of the academic establishment ofEnglish is also the era of high imperialism in England.As British capitalismbecame threatened and progressively outstripped by its younger Germanand American rivals, the squalid, undignified scramble of too much capitalchasing too few overseas territories, which was to culminate in 1914 in thefirst imperialist world war, created the urgent need for a sense of nationalmission and identity
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