The Late Victorian and Edwardian periods

1. Historical background:

Queen Victoria (1837 1901)

Edward VII (1901 1910)
George V (1910 -1936)

2. Socio-historical background Victorian legacy

growing democratisation, Reform Acts (of 1832, 1867, and 1884, all extended voting rights to
previously excluded citizens)
improvement in womens legal position, Married Womens Property Act & Matrimonial Causes
Acts
Elementary Education Act (compulsory education for children aged 5-12)
imperialism: Berlin Conference (division of Africa), Scramble for Africa
industrialisation
urbanisation
huge social stratification but the living standard of all the classes gradually improves

3. Development in sciences and technology

natural sciences: Charles Darwin theories of evolution, the idea of progress and adaptation
influences not only science, but also the way of thinking about society
sociology: Herbert Spencer survival of the fittest, affected by natural sciences
anthropology: John Beddoe The Races of Man, concerned very much with the superior/inferior
race
psychology

4. Literary conventions

continuities - Victorian realist novel the representation of social reality, moral & didactic aspects
a challenge to Victorian novel conventions;
o naturalism
o aestheticism
o late-Victorian romance(quest romance, scientific romance, detective fiction)

Naturalism
extreme form of realism
1. Major characteristics:
connections to science, analogies between biological and social evolution
Darwin - people determined by nature,
Hippolyte Taine race, environment, and its influence on the society
Comte positivist ideas, society operates according to the same laws which govern the
natural world, natural laws
a response to social changes (urbanisation, consumer culture, moral complexity)
methods of writing characteristic for natural sciences

natural world vs social world, clash between the code of conduct imposed on an individual by
the society and human nature
rejection of sentimentalism and false idealism (false idealism Dickens in his novels,
glorification of lower class characters), motifs of degeneration
construction of characters determined by heredity, biological motivation, their values being
tested by experience
the role of the environment often hostile, seamy aspect of life, lower classes presented
realistically (changed by the poverty, often immoral)
chance and coincidence rather than Providence and predetermined pattern

2. Naturalism in fiction:
French origins: Gustave Flaubert, brothers Goncourt, Emil Zola (Le Roman Experimental)
English:
Thomas Hardy1
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the
dUbervilles,Jude the Obscure
motifs: complexities of social class and cross-class relations, upwards mobility; tragic
characters (Jude, Henchard, Tess), caught between Victorian and modern worlds;
criticism of Victorian moral values representation of women, marriage, double moral
standard, understanding of virtue)
George Gissing

New Grub Street, The Odd Women

motifs: representation of the lowest strata of the society without sentimental touch, the
world governed by competition, money, and the market, challenging Victorian moral
values, construction of female characters
Aestheticism
the idea of art as self-sufficient, having no utilitarian purpose, but serving its own ends, judged only by
aesthetic criteria. Stress on visual arts and visual experience.
1. Sources:
Plato - relationship between art and reality, Platos cave humanity perceives only reflection,
art is then a reflection of a reflection
the Romantics, e.g. John Keats Endymion - A thing of beauty is a joy for ever
Ode on a Grecian Urn Beauty is truth, truth is
beauty that is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to
know
Victorian roots:
Pre-Raphaelites a challenge of classical rules of painting;
literature- oriented (Arthurian, Shakespearean motifs)
the meticulous attention to detail and indifference to perspective
sensual aspect, the fleshy school of poetry
attracting attention to art as art
John Ruskin emphasis on the connections between nature, art and society, moral
validation of art, perception of beauty as in relationship to mans moral or religious
nature
Walter Pater

Coleridge an essay, relativism of moral rules, the idea that

circumstances alter cases

Thomas Hardy (BBC programme) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vrbr6

Studies in the History of the Renaissance

an attempt to define Renaissance sensibility
Hellenistic tradition (aestheticism, homoeroticism)
sensuousness vs. Christian asceticism
rejection of John Ruskins idea of moral education I art
movement from impersonal objectivity to the practice of personal aesthetical
impression, subjective experience celebration of beauty as the most important
experience
Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the
definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To
define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, to find,
not a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or
that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.
What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new
impressions.
2. Oscar Wilde and his writing as an expression of aesthetic ideals:

works:
An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest, Salome, The Ballad of Reading
Gaol,
De Profundis (written after his imprisonment), The Picture of Dorian Gray(published in
original, uncensored way after 120 years)

influenced by: Walter Pater (art as an extreme experience), John Ruskin (contradict his
theories)

"The Decay of Lying" (selected quotations)

To pass from the art of a time to the time itself is the great mistake that all historians
commit."
Life and Nature may sometimes be used as part of Art's rough material, but before
they are of any real service to art they must be translated into artistic conventions.
As a method Realism is a complete failure, and the two things that every artist should
avoid are modernity of form and modernity of subject-matter.
The only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us.
"Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.
"Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art."

Late-Victorian Romance
1. The romance:
the medieval origins, subsequent transformations,
blurring the boundary between the romance and the novel
medievalism, growing popularity of the romance in the romantic & the Victorian period

2. The romance revival context:

the empire and colonialism; geographical discoveries provide new ideas for quests
confirmation and celebration of imperial success, strengthening the might of empire by
denying the validity of other cultures (Edward Said)

changes in the publication market

growing popularity of shorter forms of fiction, cheaper editions rebellion against the
triple-decker domestic novels (3 volumes bigger profit)

mens literary revolution; reorientation from heterosexual marriage (the specialty of women
writers) to masculine and homosocial romance of adventure and quest
descended from Arthurian epic
form of escapism a quest is a yearning for escape from a confining society, rigidly
structured in terms of gender, class and race, to a mythological space where men can be
freed from the constraints of Victorian morality (Elaine Showalter)

3. Quest romance
boys novels
plot -> distant danger, male companions determined to pursue it, undergo a journey, reach
the goal and withdraw
motifs: travelling to remote places, male friendship, exploration and adventure
didactic potential (chivalry, forbearance, virility, male bonding)
the new hero a new knight, superior to natives, an explorer or a missionary
Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island, Kidnapped historical adventure novel,

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a gothic
novel

Henry Rider Haggard

Kind Solomons Mines, She, Allan Quatermain

(the lost world genre discovery of a new world, out of time
and space)

Rudyard Kipling

Plain Tales from the Hills, The Jungle Book, Kim

1907 Nobel Prize

works not really quest romances, just set in foreign lands because of his Indian
roots
The White Mans Burden a poem - the mission of whites to enlighten the less
advanced nations, glorification of imperialism, ideological celebration

4. Science fiction scientific romance

Hubert George Walls
The Time Machine inspired by Darwin, division into two races (aristocracy
-infantile / working classes cruel, feed on the former class, cannibalism)
The Island of Doctor Moreau genetic engineering
War of the Worlds prophetic, in a sense, total war, WWII similarities
A Modern Utopia
the hero a scientist, travel in time

5. Detective fiction
Arthur Conan Doyle

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

the hero eccentric, above an average person, highly intelligent (see Dr House)

The New Woman and feminist literature

1. Social, legal, and political situation of women:

the law coverture; limiting womens legal rights, behind every woman there is a man who is
responsible for her, representing her
double standards supported by the law
gradual improvement;
Married Women Property Act 1870, 1882 until this act women couldnt hold
any possessions, their earnings belonged to a man (husband/father)
Matrimonial Causes Acts 1878 possible separation, 1890 divorce
limited educational possibilities
Girton College first residential college for women, Emily Davies, Barbara
Bodichan, Lady Stanley of Alderly
Ladies College
1876 universities opened for women (without the option of obtaining a degree)
1948 Cambridge women can get a degree on equal terms with men
1880s Kings College Ladies Departament established in Kennington Square
(women separate for men, notion of inequality)

2. Womens suffrage

mostly connected to the right of vote (choose a representative in the government gradually
change the position)
English Womens Journal (1858)
the editors: Bessie Rayner Parkes, Matilda Hays, Emily Davies
womens education, suffrage, employment opportunities
meeting place offices on 19 Langham Place a committee room, reading room
and a coffee shop thus: Langham Place Group]
suffrage committee created a petition for womens suffrage (supported by
John Stuart Mill), extending right to vote. The bill was rejected and the
committee split (peaceful/radical fraction)
two major groups:
a. suffragists 1897 the National Union of Women
Suffrage peaceful methods Millicent Fawcett
b. suffragettes 1903 the Womens Social and Political
Union more violent (window smashing, hunger strikes,
arson; challenging the idea of a fragile women)
- Emmeline Pankhurst
1918 the Representation of the People Act women over 30, fulfilling
property qualification = right to vote
1926 the Representation of the People Act extension of franchise to all
women over the age of 21

3. Odd Women and New Women as a social phenomenon

Odd Women as in not paired, couldnt marry because of various reasons;

New Women refused to marry
attracting attention to womens position, especially the paternalistic family system (spinsters,
divorced women)
the institution of marriage, double moral standards, sexual corruption, venereal disease no
more marriage idealisation
questioning womens dependence on men, a challenge to male supremacy
women education, proffesions
W. Greg on Odd Women
increasing number of single women is abnormal, women earning her living is
outrageous, incomplete, unwholesome perpetuating the myth of an angelic women
G.S. Hall
a woman loses mammary functions, is functionally castrated, being single is seen as a
medical issue
W.W. Moore

We need and claim to have the best mothers of men

= the phenomenon of Odd Women will lead to degeneration of the whole society

4. New women writers

Olive Schreiner
Story of an African Farm:
motifs: agnosticism, gender roles, gender identity, racial issues, featuring a strong heroine who
wants to shape her life

Sarah Grand (Frances Elisabeth Clarke Ideala, The Heavenly Twins, The Beth Book
politically engaged; criticism of marriage, female sexual ignorance, male promiscuity, gender
roles and identity

Mona Caird (Allison)

The Daughters of Danaus, The Wing of Azrael
marriage (source of unhappiness, marital rape), families restricting talented daughters lifes

George Egerton (Mary Chavalita Dunne)

Keynotes, Discords - collection of short

series

womens autonomy, sexual freedom, marriage

Celtic Twilight
1. Historical background:

1800 Act of Union = United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

1845-49 the Great Famine, potato crop failure, 20-25% of population either died of hunger or
emigrated
Home Rule the struggle for Irish self-government
1886-1893 home- rule bills introduced by Gladstone, later on abolished

Charles Stewart Parnell a statesman devoted to idea of home rule unsuccessful because
of lack of support from the Church (had an affair with a married women)
1914 the House of Commons passes the Home Rule Act, but the outbreak of war
interrupts its implementation, the act is suspended
1916 Easter Rising very unsuccessful, badly organised, people were uninformed about
it, the organisers were executed
1920 the Government of Ireland
1921 the Irish Free State (excluding Northern Ireland)
the Irish split roughly into two groups some accepted the division, some wanted Ireland united as
a whole

2. Celtic Twilight

roots 1860s, influenced by the writers of legends

Sir Samuel Fergusson
Lays of the Western Gael
a poet, linguist and historian, wrote an adaptation of ancient Irish legends
Standish James OGrady Finn and his Companions, The Coming of Cuchulain
discussed Irish lit., published translations, focused on Irish culture and its importance since
Middle Ages, wrote legends and historical novels
Douglas Hyde
The Literary History of Ireland
st
1 history of Irish literature directed at an English reader, wrote also a collection of folk
stories and their adaptations
end of the 19th century, dated from the publication of Yeats Wandering of Oisin and Other
Poems, 1898, the volume included The Stolen Child
Celtic Twilight = Celtic Revival = Celtic Renaissance
growing interest in Irish folklore, myths; dreamy and romantic atmosphere
an attempt at a revival of the Irish culture

3. Characteristics of poetry of the Celtic Twilight

subject matter Celtic myths and folklore, reviving the imaginative heritage of the Irish
Celtic quality found in landscape and atmosphere (vague term), vaporous and watery, misty and
mysterious
Celtic element in mood or setoff emotions, supposedly reflects the genuine emotion of the Irish race
(19th century growth of nationalism)
the expression of Urvolk, in which the racial identity has been preserved in purest forms,
the search for the typical Irish identity
political aspect uniting the people

4. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

born into an Anglo-Irish family (these were often the most wealthy, e.g. absentee lords owning
a property in Ireland, but living in England), land-owning family of artistic tradition,
brought up in County Silgo, idealised childhood country, and in London
collection of essays The Celtic Twilight shows the face of Ireland in a vision
influenced by Maude Gonne, his muse (political engagement)
No Second Troy
WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

influenced by George Hyde-Lees, his wife (fascinated with occult, practised automatic writing)
major motifs: the Irish themes, folklore, politically engaged poetry, later disillusionment with the
Irish for their narrow-mindedness, the occult and theosophy (stress on the imagination), recreation
of Irish spirits, comments on the contemporary political situation
Windering of Oisin, The Countess Kathleen, Cathleen Ni Houlihan
1923 Nobel Prize for literature, conveyed the spirit of the whole nation
The Abbey Theatre National Theatre of Ireland- founded in 1904 by Yeats, Edward Martyns
and Lady Gregory, Irish plays on Irish subjects performed by Irish actors