Victorian Literature – An Overview
VICTORIAN LITERATURE is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) and
corresponds to the Victorian era. It forms a link and transition between the writers of the Romantic
period and the very different literature of the 20th century.
The 19th century saw the novel become the leading form of literature in English. The works by preVictorian writers such as Jane Austen and Walter Scott had perfected both closely-observed social satire
and adventure stories. Popular works opened a market for the novel amongst a reading public. The 19th
century is often regarded as a high point in British literature as well as in other countries such as France,
the United States, and Russia. Books, and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the “Victorian
novelist” created legacy works with continuing appeal.
write.
Queen Victoria
Away from the big cities and the literary society, Haworth in
West Yorkshire held a powerhouse of novel writing: the home of
the Brontë family. Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë had time in
their short lives to produce masterpieces of fiction although these
were not immediately appreciated by Victorian critics. Wuthering
Heights, Emily’s only work, in particular has violence, passion, the
supernatural, heightened emotion and emotional distance, an
unusual mix for any novel but particularly at this time. It is a
prime example of Gothic Romanticism from a woman’s point of
view during this period of time, examining class, myth, and
gender. Another important writer of the period was George Eliot,
a pseudonym which concealed a woman, Mary Ann Evans, who
wished to write novels which would be taken seriously rather
than the romances which women of the time were supposed to
The style of the Victorian novel
Virginia Woolf in her series of essays The Common Reader called George Eliot's Middlemarch “one of
the few English novels written for grown-up people.” This criticism, although rather broadly covering as it
does all English literature, is rather a fair comment on much of the fiction of the Victorian Era. Influenced
as they were by the large sprawling novels of sensibility of the preceding age they tended to be idealized
portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck win out in the end; virtue would
be rewarded and wrong-doers are suitably punished. They tended to be of an improving nature with a
central moral lesson at heart, informing the reader how to be a good Victorian. This formula was the basis
for much of earlier Victorian fiction but as the century progressed the plot thickened.
Eliot in particular strove for realism in her fiction and tried to
banish the picturesque (focusing on scenic pleasure) and the
burlesque (parody and grotesque exaggeration) from her work.
Another woman writer Elizabeth Gaskell wrote even grimmer,
grittier books about the poor in the north of England, but even
these usually had happy endings. After the death of Dickens in 1870
happy endings became less common. Such a major literary figure as
Charles Dickens tended to dictate the direction of all literature of
the era, not least because he edited All the Year Round, a literary
journal of the time. His fondness for a happy ending with all the
loose ends neatly tied up is clear and although he is well known for
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Charles Dickens
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writing about the lives of the poor, they are sentimentalized portraits, made acceptable for people of
character to read; to be shocked but not disgusted. The more unpleasant underworld of Victorian city life
was revealed by Henry Mayhew in his articles and book London Labour and the London Poor.
This change in style in Victorian fiction was slow coming but clear by the end of the century, with the
books in the 1880s and 90s more realistic and often grimmer. Even writers of the high Victorian age were
censured for their plots attacking the conventions of the day with Adam Bede being called “the vile
outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind” and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall “utterly unfit to be put into the
hands of girls.” The disgust of the reading audience perhaps reached a peak with Thomas Hardy's Jude the
Obscure which was reportedly burnt by an outraged bishop of Wakefield. The cause of such fury was
Hardy’s frank treatment of religion and his disregard for the subject of marriage; a subject close to the
Victorians’ heart, with the prevailing plot of the Victorian novel sometimes being described as a search for
a correct marriage.
Hardy had started his career as seemingly a rather safe novelist writing bucolic scenes of rural life,
but his disaffection with some of the institutions of Victorian Britain was present as well as an underlying
sorrow for the changing nature of the English countryside. The hostile reception to Jude in 1895 meant
that it was his last novel, but he continued writing poetry into the mid 1920’s. Other authors such as
Samuel Butler and George Gissing confronted their antipathies to certain aspects of marriage, religion or
Victorian morality and peppered their fiction with controversial anti-heros. Butler's Erewhon, for one, is a
utopian novel satirizing many aspects of Victorian society with Butler’s particular dislike of the religious
hypocrisy attracting scorn and being depicted as “Musical Banks.”
The Victorians are sometimes credited with “inventing childhood,” partly via their efforts to stop
child labor and the introduction of compulsory education. As children began to be able to read, literature
for young people became a growth industry, with not only established writers producing works for
children (such as Dickens' A Child's History of England) but also a new group of dedicated children’s
authors. Writers like Lewis Carroll, R. M. Ballantyne and Anna Sewell wrote mainly for children, although
they had an adult following. Other authors such as Anthony Hope and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote
mainly for adults, but their adventure novels are now generally classified as for children. Other genres
include nonsense verse, poetry which required a child-like interest (e.g. Edward Lear). School stories
flourished: Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown's Schooldays and Rudyard Kipling's Stalky and Co. are classics.
The Victorian Bildungsroman
Generally speaking Great Expectations, like Jane Eyre, fits the Victorian version of the bildungsroman, a
term adopted from the genre of novel that arose during the German Enlightenment. It generally has many
of the following characteristics
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The protagonist grows from child to adult.
The protagonist must have a reason to embark upon his or her journey. A loss or discontent must,
at an early stage, jar him or her away from their home or family setting.
The process of maturation is long, arduous and gradual, involving repeated clashes between the
hero’s needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order.
Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is
ultimately incorporated into the society. The novel ends with the protagonist’s assessment of
himself and his new place in that society.
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Emily Brontë – Biographical Sketch
Emily Brontë was born at her father’s parsonage at Thornton in the parish of Bradford in 1818. She was
the fifth child in a family whose eldest was only four years and three months old. Close as they were in
ages, it proved a happy thing for Emily when yet another sister, Anne, was born in 1820, for Anne became
her lifelong confidante and friend.
Of all the influences on Emily’s life, the landscape of the home at Haworth had the greatest
effect in quickening her mind and in shaping her character. Of human influences, there can be no doubt,
her father was the most lasting; a countryman born with a keen love of nature, he eagerly opened her
eyes to the natural world lying at her door. Echoes of the little moorland birds, of the invisible larks, of the
linnets chattering in the eaves of the houses, are a feature of that region; Emily grew up on the sound.
While material prosperity was never the prime consideration of their home it is not true to say
that the children lacked the things that mattered to their happiness. They had love; they had security;
they had toys, marionettes, ninepins, bricks; they had successive boxes of soldiers which in time fired
their imagination to become adventurers, epic writers, chroniclers; above all, they had books, as they
grew. Reading came to them like an epidemic; as soon as one could read they were all infected.
Mr. Bronte had been happy indeed in marrying an intrepid young woman with high ideals who
regarded poverty as a positive advantage in the pursuit of perfection. Her courage was, unfortunately,
not equaled by her health, and within eighteen months of the family settling at Haworth she died of
cancer, at age 38. Mr. Bronte at the age of 44 was left without a wife, to his lasting misery and increasing
oddity, and the children were subjected to the authoritarian rule of a maiden aunt. She was their
mother’s elder sister, Miss Elizabeth Barnwell, who came north from Penzance to keep house for her
brother-in-law and bring up his children. Two of Emily’s sisters died of tuberculosis within the next few
years.
From 1825 to 1831 the remaining Brontës – Papa, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, Anne – and their
aunt Miss Branwell, lived together in Haworth Parsonage. These six years when they were all at home
together were an extremely important formative period in the young Brontë’s lives. They roamed in the
moors. They cherished pets. But the important point is that during these six years they began to create, to
invent, and to write their inventions down in fictitious forms.
In 1837 Emily took a post as governess in a girls’ boarding school of forty pupils, known as Law
Hill, on one of the many Pennine hills surrounding the town of Halifan. The most interesting feature of her
stay is that Law Hill is not far from High Sunderland and Shibeden Hall, two fine old houses that served as
the inspiration for Wuthering Heights and Thrushcroft Grange. Charlotte held her job for three years. In
the may of 1830 Charlotte left the school. Her health and spirits had utterly failed her, and the doctor
consulted and advised her that if she values her life, she must return home. She did so, and was slowly
restored to tranquility. She was twenty-two.
In 1845 the young Brontës were all at home together, living in domestic misery and regarding
themselves as failures. Then an event occurred which changed the course of their lives and added riches
to English literature: Emily had been copying her poems into two notebooks, when Charlotte accidentally
lighted upon one notebook and read it contents. Honor must always be paid to Charlotte for her instant
conviction that these poems were quite out of the ordinary: terse, vigorous, and genuine, with a peculiar
music. The Brontes decided to bring out a volume of poems by all three sisters and got them published
under the male names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
After they saw their poetry in print, the three sisters each began to write and finished a novel.
Charlotte’s novel was called Jane Eyre, Emily’s novel was called Wuthering Heights and Anne’s novel was
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called Agnes Grey. They were refused by publisher after publisher until Smith Elder and Company,
accepted Jane Eyre. Not long after that Wuthering Heights was published, followed by Anne’s Agnes Gray.
Though the reviews of Jane Eyre were not particularly good, readers liked it and it became a best seller.
Curiously readers believed that all three novels were written by the same person – Curer Bell, the pen
name for Charlotte.
Introduction to Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell. Emily Bronte
probably began writing this novel towards the end of 1845, though it is possible that she may have
conceived the story earlier. The early reviews of this novel were a mixture of approval and disapproval.
More than one commentator expressed in the same breath his condemnation of the subject matter of
Wuthering Heights and his recognition of its originality and genius. Wuthering Heights is the story of two
families and an outsider. The two families are the Earnshaw family living at a place called Wuthering
Heights, and the Linton family residing at a place called Thrushcross Grange, which is situated, in the
Valley at a distance of about four miles from Wuthering Heights which is situated on a hill. Moors and hills
separate the two abodes from each other. At a small distance from Thrushcross Grange lies the village of
Gimmerton with its church.
The story covers almost three generations. Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw, living at Wuthering Heights,
have two children, Hindley and Catherine. Mr. and Mrs. Linton, living at Thrushcross Grange, have
likewise two children, Edgar and Isabella. Subsequently, after their respective marriages, Hindley
Earnshaw begets a son who is named Hareton while Cathy gives birth to a girl who is also named
Catherine. Isabella, the daughter of the Lintons marries Heathcliff, an outsider who came to live with the
Earnshaws when he was a boy. Of this marriage is born a son who gets the name Linton. Towards the
close of the novel, Hareton and the younger Catherine are preparing to get married. It is in this way that
he novel deals with three generations.
The novel is dominated by the figure of Heathcliff. His personality and actions constitute the real
substance of the book. Heathcliff dominates the plot like a colossus, and he largely determines the course
of the story. Though not a traditional protagonist, Heathcliff is the central character of the novel. Around
him, the story revolves, and he imparts to the book its real interest. If we take away Heathcliff from the
novel, the story falls to pieces. The leading theme of Wuthering Heights may be stated as Heathcliff’s love
for Cathy and the revenge he takes upon various persons, the revenge being prompted by the frustration
of his love and by the social contempt heaped upon him by Hindley Earnshaw and Edgar Linton.
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