Constructing the Victorians
HUM 2212: British and American
Literature I
Fall 2012
Dr. Perdigao
October 3, 2012
Secrets and Lies
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese
“43”
Love for Robert Browning
Love, conventional style
Secret under surface
“Secret” relationship, marriage, nickname
Feigned translations, “too personal” for Robert Browning
Sleeping Beauty, fairy tale
Poem 43 out of 44 in collection
Italian, Petrarchan sonnet, 8 lines, 6 lines
abbaabba; cdcdcd
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Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”
Reconstructing Italian Renaissance
Religion, morality, ethics—as central concerns for the Victorians
Transgressions with “My Last Duchess”
Grotesque, Gothic
As more consistent with Victorian prose (Oscar Wilde) than poetry
Facebook: A Cautionary Tale
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Couplets, iambic pentameter
Dramatic monologue
Reader puts together the story, inside speaker’s thoughts
Persona poem
Enjambment
Loss of control within the poem
Reveals secret
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Disclosure, enclosures
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“Rappaccini’s Daughter”: control of sexuality
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s father
Male crisis, lack of control, over female “other”
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Painting’s story, like The Castle of Otranto, The Fall of the House of Usher, The
Picture of Dorian Gray
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Assessments
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www.victorianweb.org
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Influence of Romanticism, questioning of the tradition
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Bridging binary oppositions: self and society, personal and political, subjective
and objective
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Developing dramatic monologues, autobiography, autobiographical fictions
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Individuality, originality, intensity, sincerity of Romantics but also social
consciousness
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(http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/abrams1.html)
Assessments
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Victorian period, representative of the queen: earnestness, moral responsibility,
domestic propriety (1019)
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Poetry versus fiction as defining the period
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Henry James’ characterization of the novel: “Large loose baggy monsters”
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Many characters, worlds, plotlines
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Poetry argued by others to be the high form
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Story-telling in verse with long poems
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Twentieth century assessments and characterizations of the Victorian—
antiquated, removed, distant
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Critics argue that the period shows the transition to the modern
Modernity
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http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16424
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“Dover Beach”
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Modernity
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Sense of the past, fleeting time
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Loss of faith, poetical crisis
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Loss of centers: religion, science, politics
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Elegy
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
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Modern industrial society
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Periods of writing: 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s
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Criticism and poetry
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Wordsworth as influence
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His lines about his poetry, indicative of changing world
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Sense of being a “troubled individual in a troubled society”
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Ideas about poetry from classical models, to bring joy (1371)
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Unadorned poetry
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Literary criticism and literature—making of a civilized society (1372)
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Education and reform in his prose (1373)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
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Reassessment of Tennyson’s life and character
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Fourth of twelve children, family riddled by problems: institutionalization, drug
and alcohol addiction
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Undergraduates at Cambridge, “The Apostles”
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Connection to Arthur Hallam, engaged to Tennyson’s sister, died in 1833; elegy
in In Memoriam (1850)
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As “character,” like Whitman, cloak and hat
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The Idylls of the King—Arthurian legend, historical change, civilization’s rise and
fall
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Influence of science, questions about religion
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Ideas of human progress vs. regression—barbarity, poverty
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“poet of the countryside”: rural rather than urban life, poet of the past
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
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“The Lotos-Eaters”
Choric song—2, 6 (change)
8—meaning
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“Ulysses” last lines
No longer golden age of men
Pre-Raphaelitism
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Cultural attitude—taste, style, belief
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Movement of young artists studying painting at Royal Academy in late 1840s
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Breaking form study of Renaissance painter Raphael (1483-1520)—secret society
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, signing work PRB
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti as 1 of 3 founders
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Bright colors, foreshortened perspective, medieval subjects—new ideal of
naturalism
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Raphael—rejected because of conventional perspectives
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Paint from nature, in open air, photographic quality
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Questions about representing sacred subjects with naturalistic models
Pre-Raphaelitism
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Reconceiving artists’ relationship to society
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Connecting paintings and poetry
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Literary subjects for paintings
Christina Rossetti(1830-1894)
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Period of Victoria’s reign
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Father, exiled Italian patriot, wrote poetry and commentaries on Dante
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Deterioration of family: father’s health, economic situation, her health
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Involvement in Anglo-Catholic movement in Church of England
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Religion—discipline, broken engagements
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Goblin Market: lyric, narrative fable, ballad, devotional verse (1489)
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Moral fable for children
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Connection to Coleridge’s Rime
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Temptation, sin, redemption
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Poetry of deferral, deflection, negation, denials, constraints
Christina Rossetti(1830-1894)
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Like Dickinson, secret inner space in writing
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“Song”
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“The Solitary Reaper”
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“In an Artist’s Studio”—about Dante Gabriel’s work
Victorianisms
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1830: Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, first steam-powered, public
railway in the world
1832: The First Reform Bill
1837: Victoria becomes queen
1838: “People’s Charter” issued by Chartist Movement
1846: Corn Laws repealed (abolition of high tariffs on imported grains)
1850: Tennyson succeeds Wordsworth as poet laureate
1851: The Great Exhibition in London
1859: Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species published
1861: Death of Prince Albert
1901: Death of Victoria
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First Reform Bill—changed class structure, extending right to vote to all males
owning property worth 1- pounds or more in annual rent
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Rights to middle class, not working class
Changing Cultures
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1830s, 1840s—Time of Troubles
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1837 crash
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Corn Laws—led to exorbitant price of bread, scarcity of food Unemployment,
poverty, rioting
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Chartist movement—extension of right to vote, secret balloting, reforms
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Social and economic problems due to rapid and unregulated industrialization
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Working conditions
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Reactions to changes within the writing
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Ideas about civilization
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Optimism about changes as well as anxieties about displacement (1018)
Prosperity
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Time of prosperity under Queen Victoria and Prince Albert—“models of
middle-class domesticity and devotion to duty” (1024)
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Factory Acts—restricted child labor and limited hours of employment
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“The Age of Improvement”
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Crystal Palace: modern architectural principles—functionality rather than
ornamentation
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Technological progress and prosperity
The Great Exhibition, London, 1851
The Crystal Palace
The “Woman Question”
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Limitations to women—could not vote or hold political office
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Petitions for women’s suffrage introduced in early 1840s but not given right to
vote until 1918
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Until Married Women’s Property Acts (1870-1908), married women could not
own or handle their own property (1031-1032)
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Could divorce only if adultery as well as cruelty, bigamy, incest, or bestiality
were present
The “Woman Question”
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The “Woman Question”—concerning inequalities
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Educational and employment opportunities limited
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Texts—novels and prose—advocating women’s new roles: Thomas Hardy’s Jude
the Obscure (1895), drawing on Mill’s On Liberty (1859), ideas consistent with
Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
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The Custody Act of 1839 gave mother the right to petition the court for access to
minor children and custody of children under 7 (raised to 16 in 1878)
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The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857: civil divorce court, protection
order for wife to allow rights to her property
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Still only utilized by upper class due to expenses but changed laws concerning
women’s rights (1032)
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Factory Acts (1802-1878): regulated conditions of labor in mines and factories,
reducing the 16 hour day and banning women from mine work
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Prostitution, for some, only means, “The Great Social Evil,” “fallen woman”
Dualisms
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Works as governess, popularity in fiction—Jane Eyre (1847)
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“New Woman” by the 1890s
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Emancipation of women
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Changing ideas about the family—traditional roles of women as wives, mothers,
and daughters (1607)
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Characterizations of women: tenderness of understanding, unworldliness and
innocence, domestic affection, submissiveness (1608)
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The “angel in the house”(1854-1862): women’s purity and selflessness
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John Ruskin’s “Of Queens’ Gardens” (1865), divisions between genders,
difference
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Mona Caird—marriage as socially constructed, could be reinvented to guarantee
equality and freedom for both man and woman
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Marriage as “Utopian impossibility” (1631); importance of economical
independence (1631)
Bicyling into Oblivion
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Mid-Victorian period—1/4 women in England had jobs; others worked as
prostitutes
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Domestics, seamstresses, factory workers, farm laborers, prostitutes
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“New Woman” satirized as bicycle-riding, cigarette-smoking, mannish creature;
“Gibson Girl” (Charles Dana Gibson)
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Walter Besant in The Queen’s Reign, changing roles of women
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Girls “go off by themselves on their bicycles” (1636)
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Bicycles manufactured in late 1880s
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No longer “a creature of sweet emotions and pure aspirations, coupled with a
complete ignorance of the world, because she already knows all that she wants
to know” (1636)