British Attitudes Towards Polish Migrants and Workers in the 'Yellow Nineties'
Karolina Fedorcio
Ryerson University
2317
“Wladislaw’s beautiful … pure forehead … long sorrowful eyes, he stood up a gloriously simple realisation of Christ” (Dowie 93)
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D owie’s positive sentiment towards immigrant Poles is likely to have been a rare opinion among her fellow Englishmen. Her story Wladislaw’s Advent was featured in the fourth volume of the avant-garde periodical The Yellow Book. This periodical, a representative of the 1890s “fin de siècle,” was classified as charming, daring, and an attempt to depart from old traditions (Weintraub 139-140). And that is precisely what Dowie did. Given its cost, the main audience of The Yellow Book were members of Britain’s upper class. These people were known for valuing an “authentic” national identity, an identity coincidentally associated with high wealth. Those who did not fit within the parameters of the “British us,” were perceived as lesser (Speigelman 99). Among those excluded were immigrants and low income workers. The stratification which stems from lineage and net worth causes immigrants such as Wladislaw to be deemed as abominations and for street workers like lamplighters to be suspected of anarchic activity. Dowie is not the only artist who chooses to write about a scorned member of society. The second volume of The Yellow Book features illustrator A.S Hartrick’s work entitled The Lamplighter, which depicts a low income worker. Both artists attempt to shift away the negative stigma which surrounds their characters, and instead replace it with admirable awe. Instead of conforming to the popular discourse present in their society, they bring to light the positive characteristics of people who are disliked, or at the very least ignored in British society. By using clues from Dowie’s personal commentary on a nationalistic 1890s Britain and by analyzing modern data which concerns working immigrant Poles in 21st century United Kingdom, it can be inferred that Menie Muriel Dowie’s story Wladislaw’s Advent and A.S Hartrick’s image The Lamplighter succeed in being avant-garde publications by the Yellow Nineties’ standards, for they provoke positive sentiments about their lower class subjects in a time where admiring immigrants and street workers was considered out of place. |
Cover of Yellow Book Volume IV
Source: The Yellow Nineties Online
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Wladislaw – Who is he? And why is he important?
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Wladislaw's Advent: Page from the Yellow Book
Source: The Yellow Nineties Online
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Wladislaw is the protagonist of Menie Muriel Dowie's Wladislaw’s Advent,
a story published in the fourth volume of The Yellow Book.
The story follows the struggles of a Polish immigrant living in Paris. He has aspirations of becoming an artist, although he is poor and isolated by his fellow French peers. It is likely that Wladislaw is part of the cohort of immigrants which fled to France following the November Uprising of 1830. This is because he sings Chopin’s “The Dirge of Poland” (Dowie 104), a song created after the tragic event. He also gets beaten by a Russian classmate (103) – Poland’s enemy during the uprising. The curiosity which surrounds this text, is Dowie’s choice of presenting a meager European immigrant as a pure and ethereal Jesus incarnate. In her article, Wanda Krajewska reveals Dowie’s true intentions behind presenting her protagonist in such way. Dowie views Wladislaw’s Advent as a symbol of her times, where the meeting of crude animalistic people with a pure person induces fear and the desire to conquer (307). Dowie’s statement reveals the cold nature of English people during her times – a nature which prevented them from being accepting of “others,” and instead likely led to the formulation of prejudiced beliefs. |
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