Chapter I - RDU - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

8of Europe after the Second World War. Modernity was one of the richest and mostcreative ages that humans have seen. It brought progress and wealth to many; scienceand technological advancements were supposed to conquer happiness for all men;however, the price to pay, were two world wars, Afro-American poverty, socialexclusion, partition of the world in the hands of financial groups, among other things.Modernity used reason as its critical instrument and through reason it validated nature,man and society, it exalted the idea of the human subject and of reason. Science becamesecular and, undoubtedly, the French Revolution with its ideals of freedom, fraternityand equality was one of its major achievements. It is also during Modernity thatliberalism is inaugurated. Nevertheless, Modernity failed to perceive that, even if manwas placed at the highest position thanks to the value granted to reason, it was going tobe this same reason that would end up murdering him in his race for developmentaccompanied by an unrestrained idea of progress.I have mentioned all these aspects in order to complete the description ofModernism which is, strictly speaking, the cultural trend that interests us and whichcomes at the end of Modernity as a historical period.What was people’s discontent based upon in those days? What traditions orhistorical ties did they want to break with? Certainly, the ones that originated,developed and were nurtured within the above described frame.I would also like to make reference to the historical context of the novels whichis of paramount importance to understand them in greater depth. In the early years of thetwentieth century, Europe was a leading force in the world: Britain, Germany andFrance together commanded 60% of the world market for manufactured goods, theBritish empire covered in 1900, a quarter of the land surface of the globe and numberedfour hundred million people. In Modernism: A Guide to European Literature (1976),Allan Bullock, English Historian, asserts that: “this was the great age of imperialismbased on material superiority but also on the widespread belief on the racial and culturalsuperiority of the white races of European stock.” (60). Queen Victoria died in 1901,her son Edward VII followed her and reigned over Britain and the Empire only for nineyears. When the war broke up, King George V was on the throne. He was King of theUnited Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India. Socially, Europeremained a “society governed by class distinction, with undisguised inequality betweenrich and poor” (60) where the poor, says Bullock, were a “lower order of humanity andtreated as such, valued only as the vast pool of surplus labour on which the social as