The Victorian ideal of rational recreation

There is apparently a ideal of self-improvement called "rational recreation" (Beaven, 2005; Harrison, 2022), which looks like it arose out of that very Victorian and Edwardian do-gooding streak that we would get into mischief if we weren't kept busy, and the Protestant work ethic of making every minute of our lives count towards something.

The Victorian era and the lead-up to the first World War seems to have benefitted young working men with a significant amount of spare time due to changes in legislation, and a bewildering array things to take that time up with, such as "the traditional ‘spit and sawdust’ public house to the new and lavish music hall" and created "Britain’s mass ‘pleasure seekers’" (Beaven, 2005, p. 16). When we stop to think about it: we have only had these entertainments for a bit over a century, along with the wherewithal to pay to participate. How quickly the world has changed in just four short generations! 

As we got more time off work, those Victorian do-gooders I mentioned earlier - "urban and rural elites of social reformers and philanthropists - started organising our time off, creating "civilising recreation for the masses" (Beaven, 2005, p. 16), by way of "clubs, societies and leisure activities", "known collectively as rational recreation".

Even more judgy were the do-gooders that thought "that young working-class women’s recreation was ‘work of supreme importance both for the present and for the future welfare of [the] nation’, [...with] the ‘leisure problem ha[ving] become a national problem’, stressing that ‘the absence of opportunity and reasonable means for recreation and innocent amusement’ was responsible for young people’s ‘indulgence in low forms of amusement and the various grades of human animalism’" (Harrison, 2022, p. 64). No drama there, then. Obviously the working classes will be seduced into gambling, drink and other vices unless we fill up their plebeian time with worthy pursuits, eh.

Because, you know, "leisure activities should promote moral values and teach good character", like going along to those moralising quasi-religious groups such as the "uniformed youth movements". Just imagine growing veg in your allotment, raising pigeons, or climbing: "trivial at best, and at worst, damaging to both individual and society" (p. 64). Those "moral reformers, religious groups and other commentators who argued that young working people were not using their leisure time profitably" really were focused on "‘rescue work’ to [..] inculcate [young people] with particular morals" (p. 65); and probably to encourage them to be happy with their lot, and to not riot for better wages.

Creating a docile body of workers. 

Sam

References:

Beaven, B. (2005). Chapter 1 Rational recreation and the creation of the model citizen, c. 1850–1914. In Leisure, citizenship and working–class men in Britain, 1850-1975 (pp. 16-43). Manchester University Press.

Harrison, L. (2022). Chapter 2 ‘The need for wholesome influences is great’: Rational recreation. In Dangerous Amusements: Leisure, the young working class and urban space in Britain, c. 1870-1939 (pp. 64-96). Manchester University Press.