Reasons to be cheerful?
The publication of a new economic study claiming that the Victorian era was the “happiest” in history left many feeling baffled. ANNA WHITELOCK assesses the reaction on Twitter
Wherever we stand on the political W debates that are currently consuming our national consciousness, we can all agree that historians of the future won’t look back and conclude that we are living through halcyon days. Yet perhaps those living in Victorian Britain might have thought something similar.
Or perhaps they would have had a much brighter outlook. That’s certainly the claim of a new study reported in The Times in October. The headline was stark: “Victorian times were happiest, study of the national mood finds.” Researchers from the universities of Warwick and Glasgow and the Alan Turing Institute tracked the nation’s happiness by analysing the tone of the language used in millions of titles contained in the Google Books corpus. From this, they concluded that, despite the era being noted for its high rates of disease, child labour and inequality, Victorian spirits were generally high.
If Twitter is the database for future historical study, then scepticism might have been the prevailing mood of the month.
Martin Belam (@MartinBelam) observed: “It’s just a theory, but maybe – just maybe – an analysis of the tone of books and newspapers from the 1880s didn’t actually capture the mood of all of society? I’m not sure how many child labourers wrote novels?” As Tessa Dunlop (@Tessadunlop) added:
“The ‘emotional tone’ used in books and newspapers in Victorian Britain? That was deference, NOT happiness.”
Other historians, such as Hannah Greig (@Hannah_Greig), saw the study slightly differently – mainly because of the opportunity it presented. “I know all the historians hated it… But I’d still like an excuse to come at it fresh and then take it to pieces with my students… Sometimes dodgy research makes for good seminar discussions.”
In response to queries she had received on Twitter, one of the study’s authors, Chanuki Seresinhe (@thoughtssymmetry), sought to explain the methodology. “We didn’t just presume it correlates with happiness. There is a robust econometrics analysis which shows that it does correlate with wellbeing taking as the ground truth the life satisfaction average per year and per country taken from the Eurobarometer survey.”
But overall, the consensus from historians was perhaps best summed up by Guy Walters (@guywalters), who simply retweeted the article with the comment “Hmmmm.”
I’m not sure how many child labourers wrote novels?