Victorian Literature
Overview
The literature of the Victorian age (1837 – 1901, named for the reign of Queen Victoria) entered
in a new period after the romantic revival. During this period, Britain became the wealthiest
nation in the world, due to the rapid and widespread expansion of the British Empire. In addition,
the Victorians made the first real attempts to fix the massive social problems caused by the
industrial and democratic revolutions of the Romantic period.
The term “Victorian” is still used as a synonym for “prude” today, a term that reflects the
extreme repression of the age. However, a huge segment of society was engaged in the
discussion and debate of new ideas and theories, almost everyone was a voracious reader, and
intellectual seriousness and liveliness formed the basis for the larger process of growth, change,
and adjustment through the era. The Victorian Age was a time of huge social and political
development and it was characterized by the following traits:
- Placed high value on honor, duty, moral seriousness, and decency.
- Still have brutal factory conditions, low wages, and crowded cities, but the 1830s mark the
beginning of political and social reform acts.
- Shift from agrarian society to industrial society creates a middle class (neither rich nor poor).
Power and Empire
• Richest nation (first industrialized nation)
– Unchallenged military supremacy
– Empire covers ¼ of earth’s surface
- 18 major territories added including India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, most of East
Africa and the Caribbean
- Colonial domination rationalized by pseudoscience purporting to demonstrate inferiority of
dark-skinned people by a felt sense of racial and cultural superiority of the white race.
• “The relation of a civilized to an uncivilized race, over which it rules, is exactly that of a parent
to child, or generally adults to infants.” --Alfred Russel Wallace, evolutionary theorist
• Despite wealth created by industrialization and colonization, millions still suffer from poverty.
– Inadequate housing/overcrowding leads to illness and disease
– Unregulated factories subject workers to dangerous conditions
Utilitarianism
• A philosophy developed in the late 18th century which stated “it is the greatest happiness of the
greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”
– the central guiding principal of social morality should be the pursuit of what is good for all
members of society, with no one person or group’s interests given special weight
Society, Values, and Culture
• Rise of secularism and religious skepticism; the divinity of Jesus Christ, the literal truth of the
Bible, man’s creation, the existence of God
• Caused by evidence of the fossil record and the theories of evolution and natural selection in
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871)
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- Domesticity: the home and family were the center of British religious, cultural, and emotional
life.
– Industrialization transformed the household from a “work space” into its opposite—reinforces
prescribed gender roles.
– Man becomes the breadwinner who deals in the public sphere of the workplace
– Woman becomes the care-taker and spiritual guide for family in the private sphere of the
home.
– Middle class lifestyle becomes the ideal to which all aspired (working-class women still
worked, however)
• Based on middle class lifestyle, woman’s role is to be an icon for femininity, an “Angel in the
House”: good manners, restraint, moral uprightness, purity, devotion, selflessness.
The Literature
The literature of this era expressed the fusion of pure romance to gross realism. Though the
Victorian Age produced great poets, the age is also remarkable for the excellence of its prose.
The discoveries of science have particular effects upon the literature of the age.
1. Literature of this age tends to come closer to daily life which reflects its practical problems
and interests. It becomes a powerful instrument for human progress. Socially & economically,
Industrialism was on the rise and various reform movements like emancipation, child labor,
women’s rights, and evolution.
2. Moral Purpose: The Victorian literature seems to deviate from "art for art's sake" and asserts
its moral purpose. Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin - all were the teachers of England with
the faith in their moral message to instruct the world.
4. Although the age is characterized by practicality and materialism, most of the writers exalt a
purely ideal life. It is an idealistic age where the great ideals like truth, justice, love, brotherhood
are emphasized by poets, essayists and novelists of the age.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
An immensely popular author during the Victorian era, Charles Dickens also was a social
reformer as well as a critic and satirist in his literary works. In fact, Dickens was himself
influential in the modification of the Poor Laws, an underlying subject of his novels Oliver Twist
and his novella, A Christmas Carol in which Dickens describes the squalid, dirty conditions of
London in vivid detail. In his novel Hard Times, Dickens sharply criticizes utilitarianism,
pointing to the difference between the ideal and the reality. He believed that in practical terms,
the pursuit of an unimaginative, totally rationalized society led to misery. His character Mr.
Gradgind speaks the beginning words of the novel, "Now what I want is facts"; however, his
own daughter, Louisa Gradgind, given a practical education without imagination or any artistic
endeavors, has a life that parallels the real-life advocate of utilitarianism, John Stuart Mills.
Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854)
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Book One
CHAPTER V - THE KEYNOTE
COKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was
a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike
the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had
allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of
a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of
smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and
a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where
there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine
worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy
madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still
more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at
the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to
whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the
last and the next. [page 33]
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was
sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life which found their way all over the
world, and elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could
scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were
these. [page 34]
Jane Eyre
"Jane Eyre" is a novel by Charlotte Bronte, published in 1847. The narrative centers on Jane
Eyre, a young woman who was abandoned as a kid and was raised by her vile aunt and cousins.
She is taken to a strict boarding school where she gains brains and a sense of independence.
After finishing school, Jane works as a governess for Mr. Rochester, a wealthy man, and
develops feelings for him. But, the disclosure of a sinister past secret of Mr. Rochester strains
their friendship. Jane finally departs from him and begins a new life, but destiny unexpectedly
brings them back together. The book examines issues including socioeconomic class, gender
roles, and uniqueness via the story of Jane.
Many of the social, cultural, and political ideals of England's Victorian era are reflected in the
novel Jane Eyre. The novel depicts the Victorian era in the following ways:
Social class and hierarchy: In the tight social hierarchy of the Victorian era, a person's social
standing governed many elements of their life. The class system is a major issue in "Jane Eyre,"
as Jane was born into a lesser social class than her Thornfield Hall employers. The rigid social
order of the era is also shown by her role as a governess.
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Gender roles: Women were expected to be humble and obedient to males during the Victorian
era, which was marked by rigid gender norms. These gender norms are contested by Jane Eyre's
fight for autonomy and agency in the face of society expectations.
Excerpt:
Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and then, when I took a walk
by myself in the grounds; when I went down to the gates and looked through them along the
road; or when, while Adele played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the
storeroom, I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having reached the
leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and hill, and along dim sky-line — that then I
longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world,
towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen — that then I desired more of practical
experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of
character, than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was
good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and
what I believed in I wished to behold.
Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the
restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk
along the corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of
the spot, and allow my mind's eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it — and,
certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement,
which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear
to a tale that was never ended — a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously;
quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence.
It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action;
and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine,
and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides
political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be
very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a
field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too
absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more
privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and
knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn
them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced
necessary for their sex. [CHAPTER XII]
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