The Victorian Age (1837-1901)
Queen Victoria was often compared with Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1693), the former on the throne
for over sixty years while the latter for over forty years. Under Elizabeth, England became a naval
power by defeating Spain in 1588; under Victoria, England became the richest industrial country in
the world. Drama flourished under Elizabeth while novel did so under Victoria.
The Victorian age can be divided into three periods, the early one from 1832-1848, a time of
social unrest, the first Reform Bill of 1832 gave all men of property worth ten pounds or more the
right to vote, and extended the influence of the bourgeoisie over the old aristocrats. Industrialization
brought great wealth to the middle class but great misery to the working class, and thus social
unrest. Workers’ demonstrations led in 1867 to the second Reform Bill which gave all men the right
to vote. Women did not get the full vote until 1928. Second stage 1848-1879, a time of economic
prosperity and religious controversy. The heyday of the Victorian age. Great industrial inventions,
labor conditions improved, train replaced stage wagons, the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in
1851 a big success. England became the world’s workshop and banker, the factory being the focal
point of the nation’s life. A time of complacency, stability and optimism. The last stage1870-1901, by
1890 the British Empire owned more than a quarter of all land on earth, on which the sun never sets.
Crises began to surface. Rivalry from other powers like Germany, US, Japan, Russia.
Philosophy and Ideas:
Utilitarianism by Bentham and John Stuart Mill: the value of any institution depends on whether it
is useful as judged by human reason, whether it contributes to the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. In the interests of the bourgeoisie, led to the economic policy of laissez faire.
Against this tide, thinkers and writers exposed the cruel and darker side of life, inequality, lack of
social justice, condemned industrialization, longed for rural life. The end of century produced the
aesthetic school of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, art for art’s sake, fin-de-siecle decadence and
depression.
Religion:
Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) shook the foundation of Christianity; worship of
science, skepticism, religious uncertainty, spiritual unrest and inquiry, and interest in other
non-Christian religions.
The rise of the Novel:
1. The growth of urban population led to a new reading public. The Education Acts of 1870 made
rudimentary education compulsory.
2. great innovation in method of printing and paper-making, book prices dropped, serial publications
began to appear, libraries set up by philanthropists.
3. Writing is possible as a profession. Dickens a very rich author in the end.
4. as middle class got rich, large number of people lived an idle life of leisure, especially middle
class women. Novel met their need for recreation. The Victorian novel was to a great extent female,
many female writers, depicting women’s struggles for equality and better life.
5. As religion declined, the novel became a powerful secular form to reflect life.
Victorian Prose:
The Prophets of Progress.
Thomas Macaulay (historian and essayist),
John Stuart Mill (eldest son of James Mill, most representative thinker of his age and greatest
proponent of English empiricism. Faithful to utilitarianism (agnostic in faith, positivistic toward
science), he modifies the rigid views of Bentham by being more sympathetic and values spiritual
and philosophical cultivation, a wide liberalism.
Culture critics: Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Professor of poetry at Oxford from 1857-67. A poet and a literary critic. Reflects the doubt and
spiritual search of his age, and the conflict between religion and science. Essays in Criticism his
most important criticism. Attacked the barbarians, referring aristocrats essentially crude in soul
despite their grace and good clothes. Also attacked the philistines, the middle class, narrow-minded,
self-conceited. The rule of these two classes, and the rise of individualism and democracy led to a
state of anarchy. Poetry should be a “criticism of life” and should replace religion as moral guide.
Only through culture can anarchy be avoided. “Dover Beach” reflects the spiritual unrest of the time.
The flinging in and out of the pebbles –the rise and fall of human faith. Often seen as the one perfect
poem by Arnold, in which, instead of mere thinking aloud, he combines melodic lyric and sharp
visual symbols into a sad and gripping depiction of the modern dilemma.
Arnold (in opposition to Mill):
literature as a criticism of life. Tries to reconcile faith with rationalism, poetic imagination with
objective fact. “Preface” his most famous prose work, attacking the philistine middle class for their
narrow utilitarianism and provincialism, and praises disinterested search for truth and the high place
of university. Poetry will replace religion. Hebraism and Hellenism sum up Western culture, the first
is to concerned with conduct and obedience, and the second with seeing things as they really are,
the will of God. Only with a balance will a harmonious and enlightened culture be born. The
Philistine middle class (prejudice, provincialism, materialistic) overemphasized the first.
John Ruskin:
art must be moral. Art must be an essential part of meaningful culture. The rise and fall of art
depends on the moral or immoral temper of the state. Never demand an exact finish to art for its
own sake; never encourage imitation or copying of any kind.
Thomas Carlyle:
Essayist, historian, philosopher. One of the most influential man of letters in the mid-Victorian time.
Famous for his furious diatribes against the conditions in England. Disregards rationality and logic,
uses powerful intuitive force, exclamations and shock methods. Attacked mercantalism, called for
spiritual force to revitalize man, the spirit of renunciation, duty, work and reverence, heroes to
reorganize society.
The Pre-Raphaelites:
Emulate medieval art before Raphael for individuality, imagination and rich color, while Raphael
(1483-1520) is too conventional and sentimental. alliance of painting and poetry, compose verse
comment on their painting which emphasizes dreaminess, sensuousness, decorative medievalism.
Their poetry: simplicity of manner, archaic vocabulary, visual detail, ballad or other “medieval” verse
form, twilight and autumn scene. Dante Rossetti, William Morris, A. Swinburne.
The Aesthetes (a bit later) cult of beauty, art for art’s sake; has Ernest Dowson as the
representative poet, but Walter Pater is the leader. Influenced Wilde. The aesthetic movement had
as its predecessor the Pre-Raphaelists, opposed to the materialism of the age, late Victorian
reaction against everything social, political, moral and Victorian. Aesthetics show the influence of
French symbolism of Baudelaire; less for their literary achievement than for their capturing the fin de
siecle mood.
Walter Pater:
Leader of aestheticism. Denying the utility of art and ignoring morality, Advocates: hedonism as the
object of life, the sole duty of an aesthete is to develop his aesthetic sensibility and enjoy all
possible varieties of artistic and sensuous experiences; art should capture the fleeting moment, the
present; art as the only true basis for unity in life; art as artist’s pure subjectivity; art for art’s sake.
Oscar Wilde (1845-1900)
Witty description of an elegant fin de siècle society, famous epigrams. The Importance of Being
Earnest is the most famous English drama of the 19th century, with the most brilliant dialogue.
Beneath a surface of triviality and luxury, is an implied critique of a frivolous and vacuous society.
The Victorian well-made play:
- First created by the French playwright Augustin Scribe in 1815 in reaction against the
formlessness of romantic drama.
- characters from the upper middle class. Four to eight characters, each with equal number of lines.
- simple plot focused on one problem, usually love and marriage. Logic of events in which a
hopeless knot is finally smoothly resolved. Full of coincidence, mistaken identity and incredible
endings
- realism in stage setting and costume, convincing the audience it is about their own life
- smooth dialogue
George Bernard Shaw: Draw of Ideas. Social problem drams of Ibsen: surprising audience into
thinking about themselves, fusing ideas into the well-made play, realistic portrayal of characters and
events. He added wit and humor.
Victorian Poetry:
Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
Lived almost through the Victorian age, leading Victorian poet. 1832 to 1892 the “age of Tennyson”.
1850 poet laureate; champion of bourgeois orthodoxy and ethos;
“Ulysses”: instead of Dante’s condemnation of the ancient voyager for daring beyond the limits
ordained by God, T sees the forward-looking spirit of Ulysses as the 19th-century drive for fullest
achievement and experience regardless of age and physical weakness. The dynamic force makes it
the most popular poem. blank verse.
“In Memoriam A. H. H.”: 131 short poems in iambic tetrameter (4-feet), riming abba, infrequently
used in English poetry but made famous by Tennyson, called the In Memoriam stanza. Full of
different poetic effects, from meditations on death and on scientific fact to the gaiety of wedding and
New year parties. IT is the “way of the soul”, progress from bitter grief and doubt to acceptance,
from a fear that the universe is governed by indifference to the certainty that it is by love. Gradual
rise of spirit with the Christmas seasons. Valued for its portrayal of tortured soul.
“Break, Break, Break”: a cry for Hallam in his great sorrow. Use of three accents to the line, very
daring and effective.
Robert Browning:
Browning was bold and unconventional, famous for dramatic monologue, a poem where there is an
imaginary speaker addressing an imaginary audience. He is against any interpretation of the poet
himself through poetry (like Tennyson’s moody monologues) but for the unbiased, objective
portrayal of the psychological states in his characters.
“My Last Duchess” among his early monologues. “Andrea del Sarto” among his mature
monologues. The painter del Sarto is neither loved nor honorable (his house is built with money
from the King for art purchases). His craftsmanship is faultless but he lacks the soul for great art.
Arnold:
preeminent university poet in England. Withdrawal from chaotic world into intellectual thought and
feelings. Now valued in our own troubled time more than the complacent Tennyson and Browning.
Gerard Hopkins:
forerunner of modern poetry, colloquial mingled with the unusual to make a poem “explode”;
extreme density in words and feelings, no superfluities; multiple meaning and ambiguity; leaps from
image to image to show the inner mind and inner division. Famous for his “sprung
rhythm”—measures a line of verse solely by stress, and the number of unaccented syllables is not
important, close to the old Anglo-Saxon verse. “The Windhover” (1877) is one of the most discussed
poem in the 20th century along with The Waste Land. Most daring sprung-rhythm sonnet by
Hopkins; the most commonplace things of Nature can suddenly flash out their own peculiar beauty
and symbolization of Christ’s wounds and suffering.
Victorian Fiction:
Characteristics of the Victorian novel:
- a broader social background, complex human relations in the novel reflect a rapidly changing
society.
- Use of “linear causation” in plot structure, a motive gives rise to an event which leads to an effect
on a character, prompting him to do something which leads on to another event. The cause-effect
sequence is more obvious, making the novel better constructed than before.
- Often published in serial form, by installments, before full publication in a single book. Allow the
author to respond immediately to the reader’s reaction in order to keep them interested.
- Influenced by Victorian puritanism and moral values, the key to success is in being earnest,
hardworking, and innocent. Novel is to educate the reader and bring about reforms.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Father a clerk, grandparents servants. Father in debtor’s prison when Charles only 11 years old. A
child worker in a shoe factory for six months.. when 15, a clerk in a lawyer’s office. Later a
parliamentary reporter.
- a tendency to describe the grotesque, the odd and unusual, the ugly or absurd, characters and
events. The influence of Ben Johnson’s comedies of manners, and characters each have their own
peculiar habit, or catch phrase.
- Sentimentalism and pathos a distinct quality. describe sad scenes to appeal to reader’s emotion.
Melodrama was popular at that time. Characters with excessive virtue or evil.
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
A humorist and satirical critic of English society, graceful 18th century style of prose, fluent and lucid.
Theme: contrast between human pretensions/vanity and human weaknesses. like Dickens, but
different:
- T describes the upper and middle classes while D focuses on the underdogs and the unprivileged.
- D a sentimentalist, while T a cynic who say no good in anything and doubted the goodness of
human nature. Also detached from his fictional world, and under control. A classicist. D an
enthusiastic crusader for good causes and social changes.
- D a romantic, full of imagination, T restraint. Characters always come in pairs and contrasts.
Convincing, faithful to life, good together with bad, more round. Vanity Fair, everything is sold in
terms of money.
George Eliot:
Influenced by Comte’s positivism, religious belief should give way to a religion of humanity, love and
compassion for all mankind should triumph. No villains in her work, all acting with the influences
upon them. Middlemarch her masterpiece.
Mill on the Floss:
Unsentimental portrait of childhood a renovation in Victorian novels. The Tullivers stand for the inner
life, passion and bonds with a pre-industrial life, while the Dodsons stand for commerce and
pragmatism. Maggie’s father lost out in a commercial age and the mill, standing for childhood
harmony and unified consciousness to Maggie, is gone. Tom and Maggie set out for their individual
quests. Tom submits himself completely and at great emotional cost to the commercial system
which defeated his father, to focus on getting the mill back (family duty). Maggie is torn by this
passion and inner life that is rejected by Tom, the dreams and demands of the self (individual
passion), reconciled to the world through a reciprocated love (first in Philip, then Stephen, finally
and always Tom and in the mill). Looking for love to fill a torn self. With the incident with Stephen,
she recognizes the duties to others and thinks of others like Lucy’s feelings. Tom is the means, the
other complementary half, to the pastoral holism of childhood. The first separation comes when Tom
goes away for school. They drift increasingly apart, with only the final flood bringing them finally
together, unified and restored to harmony. Two lines here: Childhood as pastoral harmony and
adulthood as separation and alienation; self and concern for others should go together, just as
spiritual life and pragmatism should go together.
The Brontës Emergence of female writers. Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey
Difference from other Victorian writers:
- strong romantic elements, unlike the strong moral concerns of others. Not about social problems
but about their private passions. Byronic hero; the Gothic; role of nature especially important.
Nature offers comfort and peace.
- Women characters of strength and passion. While Jane Austen epitomized the decorous
femininity to which manners are all important, the Brontës epitomize passionate femininity to which
love is all important. Never before does an English novel trumpet that a woman’s passion can equal
or exceed a man’s. Jane’s words; Wuthering Heights: primitive vitality v. cultured gentility, a struggle
of archetypes representing universal forces. Women’s colleges established in Cambridge in 1869
and Oxford in 1879, women could not take degrees until 1920. The problem of woman. Currer, Ellis,
Acton Bell.
Mid-Victorian novels:
- questions middle-class ethics, yet still very moral, concerned with the right moral choice.
- individual self realization against conventions and social pressures; women characters take the
central stage;
- psychological inner states of characters more than social behaviour
Thomas Hardy:
Achieves the tragic intensity of Shakespeare, ancient Greek dramatists. The tragic flaws in men as
built in by natural forces that compel them irrevocably to pain and defeat. Yet man still achieves
dignity and integrity in their doomed struggle against fate, the immanent will. Everything in the
universe is determined by the Immanent Will, which is impartially hostile toward human beings’
desire for joy and happiness. In Tess, natural law (more real, everlasting) v. human moral law
(temporary, hypocritical). Example of people’s fate determined by their inner nature (Tess’s heredity
and her passion) and external hostile fate. Alec as the body and Angel as the spiritual in Tess. Tess
herself as limited by education to forsake the body in her, though she is very much of the body
herself. She is pure because she did not commit the crime of rape (Hardy does not think sex is
wrong, though violence in sex is). Society (her mother) expects her to marry her rapist in order to
stay pure, which is actually impure, but she refuses because she doesn’t love Alec, which is really
pure. She has pride and would not beg Angel’s parents for help. It is only after she despairs of
Angel’s love that she agrees to be with Alec again. Angel is imprisoned by his ideas and spirituality
(more so than Tess) and only loves the idea of Tess as a pure country girl, not as a living woman.
The priest’s struggle between human sympathy and rigid Christian morality another example of the
contrast between natural law and human moral law. Nature (setting) as a character in the novel.
Unlike other Victorian novels with middle-class people’s social relationships (in towns), Hardy is with
elemental man-nature relationships set in remote, rural countryside.
Late Victorian popular novels:
Literature divided into high art and mass art (best-seller). Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventure in
Wonderland (1865), imperial adventure novels by Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island;
sentimental novels. Detective stories. Science fiction of H. G. Wells The Invisible Man (1897)
Conrad:
More cosmopolitan; bold experiments in form and language; themes of honor, guilt, moral alienation,
different from traditional themes. Not interested in characters succeeding in life, but in man’s
responsibility to himself. Use locales and conflicts alien to everyday society in order to lead men to
ultimate judgment of their nature and moral duties. Lord Jim (1900), an early work, is the first
important English experimental novel of the modern era, with unusual chronology, imagistic detail
and symbol. Nostromo (1904), Heart of Darkness