Annihilation of time

In an age marked by invention, one of the most important from Victorian England was the railroad. One of the first engines built was the Rocket by the Stephensons, a prominent engineering family, in 1829 for the Rainhill trials. Railways are seen as a symbol of progress and a symbol of mechanical triumph bringing people one step closer to having power over the Earth. It can be taken so far as to be seen as a cultural metaphor of the Victorian era because it embodied everything the Victorians wished to portray: progress, power, innovation, pride, and strength. The railroad changed the landscape of the earth and changed the way people lived and their concept of travel. Before the railroad, methods of transportation had remained unchanged for centuries: the only possibilities for travel were with some sort of draft animal, walking, or by boat.

One consequence of railroads was standardization of time. Before the invention of the railroad, time was dictated by local areas and varied from town to town. With the standardization of time, the pace of life sped up. People could now travel greater distances relatively easy and the idea of commuting from town to the city became a feasible idea. This also brought about a preoccupation with time and punctuality. One example of Victorian’s preoccupation with time is Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days in which the protagonist, Phileas Fogg plans an entire trip according to a basic understanding of train time tables and an obsession with punctuality. Another important aspect of Around the World in 80 Days is its use of technology, particularly trains and how they seem ubiquitous by the time Verne writes, although they had not even been around for 50 years. Did the increased preoccupation with time lead to more psychiatric problems, anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder? If people were constantly worrying about time and their lives sped up, would this, along with the disruption of their way of life have caused for more anxiety problems? Did technology, specifically the train, with its prosperity bring about more mental illness because people had more things to worry about and more time on their hands? Would the idea of “the annihilation of space by time” have helped bring about the loss of regional identities and specific traditions because people were so able to travel?