Tales of the Sea: Meaning in Victorian Parlor Aquariums

Abstract

Tales of the Sea: Meaning in Victorian Parlor Aquariums Marilyn Casto T he nineteenth century's obsession with the natural world prompted individuals to pursue nature-oriented art, literature and scientific investigation. That home-absorbed era spared no effort to integrate these various interests into family life. The cultural ambiance encouraged mothers to assume responsibility for educating their families about the world around them. Inspired by a newly awakened interest in exercise and fresh air, pundits advised natural history study as an excuse to venture outdoors. Abundant literature, from books to newspapers, magazines, and natural history pamphlets, inundated the Victorian world with natural history information, instructing readers in what to see and how to see it. Nature found its way inside buildings in forms ranging from pinecone picture frames to stuffed owls. Philosophical Background Of the many ways that Victorians carried nature indoors, aquariums offered the most direct and broadest representation of the living outdoor environment (fig. I). In those liquid cabinets of curiosities homeowners sought to create full ecosystems for the purposes of education, moral instruction, self-improvement, aesthetic appreciation and entertainment. The result strongly resembled in intent and purpose the parlors in which aquariums were located. Like parlor accessories, aquariums nonverbally engaged in preaching, teaching and amusing. In an age that saw nature as a mix of imagination, romanticism and scientific fact, aquariums veered among those various ways of seeing the world. Prevailing aesthetic theories promulgated by William Gilpin, Edmund Burke, John Ruskin, and others influenced attitudes toward aquariums , as they did many aspects of Victorian life. Fig. r. Conservatory and aquarium, from Cassell's Household Guide. ca. I87o. (Courtesy ofThe Winterthur Library: Printed Book and Periodical Collection) ARRIS 61 MARILYN CASTO Perceptions of the ocean drew heavily from the sublime, while the picturesque affected its presentation . The sublime demanded greater scale than could be achieved in any indoor space, let alone home aquariums, but the mental associations promoted by numerous writers might still result in a reminder of sublimity. Writers of literature, aesthetic philosophy, domestic advice manuals, and aquarium books utilized a common language in describing reactions to the sea. Authors of aquarium books frequently echoed the phrasing of popular writers, with both categories of publications using a consistent emotional approach that developed in the rSsos and continued through the r88os. Writing on the sublime, Edmund Burke referred to the ocean as "an object of no small terror." To Uvedale Price "no one can view the foam, the gulphs [sic], the impetuous motion [of the sea] without a deep impression of its destructive and irresistible power" and "the boundless ocean ...inspires awful sensations: to give it picturesqueness, you must destroy that cause of its sublimity." For Victor Hugo, "To look into the depth of the sea is to behold the imagination of the Unknown. It is to see it from the terrible side... things sometimes have a sombre [sic] and hostile ostentation in the face of man." Ocean Gardens, an aquarium instruction manual, referred to "the sublime aspects of the ocean...vast moving surface of fathomless deep, and which seems muttering its mysteries." Philip Gosse, author of popular aquarium publications, decreed that he "could scarcely look down into the abyss without a shuddering dread...the various effects of the light struggling with the gloom in these caves are the most picturesque imaginable." Shirley Hibberd in The Book ofthe Marine Aquarium cited the ocean's "awful darkness" and "the sublime muttering of the surfalong the shore in its expansive vastness."r That layering of mystery and fear into perceptions of the ocean is at odds with the bourgeois parlor atmosphere into which aquariums were normally placed. To appreciate the sea's grander aspects while gazing at a home aquarium, the observer was obliged to remember visits to the shore or passages read in books that instructed people in how to perceive the world around them. Mental associations aside, picturesque effects were more readily achieved than sublimity at the small scale of home aquariums. When authors suggested use of contrasting shapes and colors to create a varied effect they promoted picturesque characteristics.2 The manner in which aquarium design appealed to picturesque sensibilities is discussed later in this article...