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 worlds workshop and banker, the factory being the focal point of the nations 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 arts sake, fin-de-siecle decadence and depression. Religion: Charles Darwins The Origin of Species (1859) shook the foundation of Christianity; worship of science, skepticism, religious uncertainty, spiritual unrest and inquiry, and interest in other nonChristian 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 womens 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, narrowminded, 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 arts 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 artists pure subjectivity; art for arts sake. Oscar Wilde (1845-1900) Witty description of an elegant fin de sicle 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 Dantes 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 Tennysons 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 Christs 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 readers 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 debtors prison when Charles only 11 years old. A child worker in a shoe factory for six months.. when 15, a clerk in a lawyers 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 Johnsons 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 readers 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 Comtes 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. Maggies 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 Lucys 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 Bronts 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 Bronts epitomize passionate femininity to which love is all important. Never before does an English novel trumpet that a womans passion can equal or exceed a mans. Janes words; Wuthering Heights: primitive vitality v. cultured gentility, a struggle of archetypes representing universal forces. Womens 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 peoples fate determined by their inner nature (Tesss 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 doesnt love Alec, which is really pure. She has pride and would not beg Angels parents for help. It is only after she despairs of Angels 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 priests 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 peoples 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 Carrolls Alices 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 mans 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