Pessimism in Victorian Poetry

Intrduction:
In the texture of Victorian poetry there runs a noticeable strand of pessimism,
mostly the work of the group of poets consisting chiefly of Arnold, Arthur Hugh Clough,
James Thomson, and Edward Fitzgerald. By pessimism we mean, if not a philosophy of
life, at least a well reasoned-out attitude towards life based on a temper of mind that looks
on the dark side of things. To feel or express melancholy is not necessarily to be a
pessimist unless this melancholy is well thought-out.
The Origin of Pessimism:
Victorian pessimism, in most cases, is the outcome of a deep-seated spiritual
disturbance to which the sensitive poets of the age were eminently prone. The age
experienced a protracted battle between the advancing forces of science and agnosticism
and the retreating forces of Christianity and faith which had been holding the fort for
times immemorial. While the tremendous advance of science destroyed much of the
existing faith, it could not provide another spiritual anchor. Many thinkers and poets,
then, felt lost, without moorings.
Some attempted some sort of compromise, and failed; others were knocked about
on the flood of doubt and despair and ensuing melancholy which settled into pessimism.
Some like Thomas Henry Huxley went over to open agnosticism and started singing
paeans of the powers of science. Some, like Macaulay, dazzled by the material splendour
and prosperity ushered in by the development of science, gravitated towards a posture of
smug, “Victorian” complacency. Robert Browning kept his chin above the commotion of
all doubts, and complacently believed:
God’s in His Heaven–
All’s right with the world.
But such optimism was essentially alien to Victorian spirit, and it is not surprising
that he was taken to task by a number of his contemporaries and a still larger number of
his successors.
From what has been said it should be clear that pessimism of (some of) the
Victorians arose from impersonal grounds, not subjective experience. The only possible
exception is, perhaps, James Thomson whose life was, indeed, far from happy—though it
was he himself (and not his circumstances) who was to blame for it. All Victorian
pessimistic poets were endowed with the following two qualities:
(i) A sensitive, acutely impressionable mind, with a tendency towards self-introspection.
(ii) A searching intellect.
Their poetry reflects both of them quite abundantly. It was their tendency to be too
intellectual and to subject everything to a searching intellect that was perhaps responsible
for much of their pessimism. Compton-Rickett observes in A History of English
Literature.
“It was the endeavour to intellectualise the visions of imaginative life that
led Arnold, Clough, Fitzgerald, and James Thomson into that mood of
wistful melancholy, that crystallised soon into a more or less pessimistic
criticism of life.”
Tennyson (1809-1892):
To include Tennyson among the Victorian pessimists is, on the face of it, as
egregious a solecism as to include Hercules among the fair sex! Tennyson is usually
considered a sleek optimist with a certain irritating cocksureness regarding the
transcendent power of God. He is not a pessimist; but there are melancholy and
pessimistic moods which he gives expression to now and then-though only to sweep them
aside soon after. “For me”, says Harold Nicholson,
“the essential Tennyson is a morbid and unhappy mystic.'”
 Tennyson’s In Memoriam, one of his major works, is an elegy which contain not
only the expression of the poet’s personal grief at the death of his friend Arthur Hallam
but also grapples with the ultimate issue of human predicament. Life, death, and the
whole creation are discussed with recurring references to the evolutionary theory which,
even before Darwin, had started rocking the times. At moments the poet’s faith wavers
and he is inclined to be pessimistic, but all doubts are ultimately cleared with a reassert!on
of faith in God and man— His favoured creature.
Queen Victoria said about Tennyson:
“Next to the Bible In-Memoriam is my comfort.”
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888):
Arnold is the most consistently pessimistic of all the major victorian poets.
According to Middleton Murry;
“Arnold’s most consistent achievement was in the kind which we call
elegiac.”
Garrod observes,
““He is the greatest elegiac poet in our language not by virtue
merely of Thyrsis but by virtue of the whole temper of his Muse”.
Thyrsis is, of course, a formal elegy written by Arnold at the death of his friend
Arthur Hugh Clough. But almost all the rest of Arnold’s poems are also characterised by
a sort of elegiac tone, melancholy brooding, and Stoic resignation. Much of his pessimism
comes from his ill-adjustment to the changing conditions of his times. In Dover
Beach he observes that “the Sea of Faith” has now withdrawn and the world as he sees it
Hath really neither joy, nor light, nor love,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,
And we are here as on a darkling plain

Arnold’s attitude to life is, mostly, of pessimistic resignation. He believes that life
is a thing to suffer rather than to enjoy. But resignation is also of two kinds : one escapist,
and the other, Stoic. Arnold’s pessimism is yet of a manly character and singularly free
from the weakness of sentimentalism or excessive self-pity or clever attitudinisation.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861):

Clough was a lifelong friend of Arnold and his death was the subject of Arnold’s
elegy Thyrsis. He resembles his friend a great deal, provided we ignore the very obvious
points of contrast. F. L. Lucas calls him “a half-hewn Matthew Arnold, left lying in the
quarry.” We have in Clough the same brooding melancholy, spiritual unrest, and
disturbing introspection as we find in Arnold. Clough’s mind was deeply exercised by the
Science-Faith conflict which influenced Victorian thought and poetry. However, in his
inquiries and analyses he does not approach the dignity and stature of Arnold. G. D.
Klingopulos observes:
“Clough’s work is not by any means entirely sombre, much ;s
humorous and faintly satirical.”
Clough’s Dipsychus is a good example of the Victorian conflict between two
spiritual voices.
James Thomson (1834-1882):
James Thomson in The city of Dreadful Night and the shorterInsomnia struck a
note of the intensest, nightmarish pessimism. As a young boy he had been fed on
Calvinistic doctrines which he later found to be inadequate in the changing context of the
times. Absolute despair, unrelieved by any “silver lining,” was the outcome. He himself
was subject to insomnia and at night he nsed to feel lonely and gloomy. This personal
experience gives a touch of reality to the ghoulish pictures he draws in the poems
mentioned above. His pessimism does not have the brooding energy or Stoic fortitude of
Arnold’s or Clough’s.
Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1888):
Edward Fitzgerald is chiefly known for his verse translation of the
Persian Rubaiyaat of Omar Khayyam. David Daiches says,
“This work puts an altogether more attractive face on pessimism”.
Fitzgerald’s pessimism is inherent in his acceptance of the evanescence of life and
its purposelessness. His pessimism is of the Epicurean kind. His paradise is earthly,
somewhat drugged, but overflowing with Oriental splendor and luxury. Wine, women and
verse are its chief features.
Fatalism is an important ingredient in Fitzgerald’s pessimism.

Later Pessimistic Poets:

The pessimism of some later Victorian poets is more “modern” than “Victorian.”
Such poets include Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), John Davidson (1857-1905), Ernest
Dowson (1867-1900), A. E. Housman (1859-1936), with some lesser ones who may not
detain us here.
After the adverse reception to his last novel Jude the Obscure, Hardy gave up the
rest of his life to poetry. His Wessex Poems appeared in 1898, but his highest poetical
achievement, The Dynasts, came only after the end of the Victorian era.
Legouis, says, “Hardy was the poet of disillusionment.”
Davidson’s Fleet Street Eclogues and Ballads and Songs are also charged with
pessimism. Housman’s Shropshire Lad came out in 1896.