VICTORIANISM:

CONTEXTO GENERAL
The poem that I am going to analyse belongs to the second half of the 19th Century, the
Victorian Era, and it was written by Robert Browning in 1836

Regarding the historical context of the poem, it is from the Victorianism. This is a period with a
strong faith in progress and reforms, there are advances in science, trade, finances, industry,
business and transportation which place Great Britain as the workshop of the world and the
world’s banker (Thornley and Roberts, 272). This progress is beneficial because it brings
material wealth and prosperity, that only higher classes can enjoy, but it also causes an
increasing poverty of the working class that has to live and work in inhuman conditions. This
creates a conflict about whether the economic success is worth all the social problems it is
causing.

The Victorian Era was named after Queen Victoria, who started to reign in 1837, when she was
18. The parliament and council pressured her to get married, she fallen in love with his cousin
(Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha), and they get married in 1840, they had 9 children. In 1861, he
died. A few years later, in 1876, she decided that England was little, so she started the Exotic
places colonization, she was converted in the Empress of India. In 1901, she died with 81 years
and was succeeded by her son Edward VII.

British Empire was large and wealthy, in part because of its degree of industrialization and its
imperial holdings and in spite of the fact that three-fourths or more of its population was
working class (Steinbach). Victoria’s reign can be seen as the Golden Age of the Empire
although there were conflicts in many of the colonies (“The Victorian Age and the British
Empire”)

In this period there were public school system reforms and school was extended to the middle-
classes. Moreover, there were new universities and polytechnic schools. People read for self-
improvement. The 1880 saw the emergence of “the New Journalism”, which drew in readers
with pieces of violent crimes and scandals in high society. Novels were also a key feature of
Victorian print culture. Everyone could afford and read novels, which were published in
installments (Steinbach). The Victorian Values were very rigorous; the virtues of family life are
emphasized but there are also challenging views: the emerging women's movements view the
family as a source of oppression and there are "challenging" practices such as widespread
prostitution in the cities Christianity was considered as a personal commitment to one’s
community and charity.

Regarding the literature features of the poem, in this period, the function of Literature is to
present an optimistic and public-spirited view of the age. But the abuses of society cannot be
denied and it would be morally dishonest to write about it pretending it is perfect. There were
three alternatives: one was to present an optimistic view through “good” characters that
triumph in spite of the adverse social conditions, another one was to adopt a preaching tone
advocating older, “truer” ideals or presenting an optimistic belief in reform, and the last one
was to ignore the present society and resort to imaginative writing, creating unreal situations.
These are the Victorian fantasists.

Perhaps, the single most enduring Victorian innovation was the dramatic monologue, also
known as a persona poem. It shares many characteristics with a theatrical monologue. A single
person, who is patently not the poet (it is a fictional identity or a persona), utters the speech
that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment. This persona
addresses and interacts with one or more other people; but we know of the auditors’
presence, and what they say and do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker.

WOMAN’S QUESTION:
There was also an obsession for the definition of the femininity and men were fearing the
invasion of women into the male world (workplace, institutions, parliament…) so there was a
big propaganda of the domestic femininity: women were angels when they were in the house.
They were seeing as “waiters” who patiently waited for their husbands to return home. The
woman of the 19th Century was seen as fragile, men die but they never get sick, while women
languish and linger with consumption, fainting, nervous disorder and general malaise. Their
bodies were seen as aberrant, weak, even as they are displayed as erotic objects in their
paleness. It was very known the term of “Female Hysteria”

We can distinguish a few types of woman:

Fallen Woman: They have the abilitiy to ruin a whole life of a man and they’re producto of
masculine fantasies and social misogyny, the devil is her symbol and they are often described
as vampire.

High- class woman and Low class woman

Suffragettes: The WSPU was created and its purpose was fighting for women’s rights to vote in
England and more work opportunities

ANALYSIS OF A FRAGMENT FROM PORPHYRIA’S LOVER

The author was a poet and a playwright known for his irony, social commentary and
challenging syntax. He used the dramatic monologue and mimics of natural speech. The poem
is about a girl who comes into a cabin in the woods, she comes wet because it is raining
outside. This gave her the opportunity to undress herself in front of her lover, making the
scene more sexual. She even lets her hair free, something that women only do when they are
alone or in intimacy.

The man does not seem to give a step further, it is her who guides him, putting his hand on her
wrist (line 16) or his head on her shoulder, moving her enchanted hair to the side first (lines
17-19). All of this while letting the man knows how much she loves him, but despite of this she
know that something bad happens. The scene turns violent when is the same hair of the lady
that the man uses to strangulate her, the man has kind of fetish with her hair. Once the lady is
dead, he continues treating her like she is alive, looking deep in her eyes, pretending she is still
warm and just sleeping.

We can see the dementia the man is carrying along the poem, at first is not notable but later
on it is more visible, for example in the line of “mine, mine, fair”. He treats her like an object,
like if she belonged to him.

The scene where the woman takes the man’s head and put it on her shoulder might seem as
something lovely until this same scene is recreated at the end but with roles changed. It
doesn’t have the same meaning because once this is done, the lady was dead, but he is acting
like she is not, which only makes the scene more bizarre and horrific, related to necrophilia.
The lady’s name, Porphyria, is the name of a blood disease. Perhaps, this is why the man killed
her, to save her from that disease. He did not want her to suffer. He asks God at the end of the
poem if what he had done was right, he doesn’t receive an answer and he interprets that it is
because what he has done is something good, he has freed the lady and sent her to a better
place with God. The last sentence of this poem is a Victorian phrase which means that God is
already not relevant, because according to Victorianism values God is dead.

As literary features we can point alliteration(“blushed bright”), imagery(“So she was come
through wind and rain-”)

The themes represented in this poem are the love and death, both visible with the lady, God,
that is represented at the end of the poem and the sexual obsession.

ANALYSIS OF A FRAGMENT FROM “LADY OF SHALOTT”

“The Lady of Shalott” is a ballad based on the Maid of Astolat (Malory’s Morte d’Arthur) and
set in the idyllic Medieval England. It was originally written in 1832 but it was published in
1842 and it has four parts, I am going to analyse the first one. This poem is about a woman, the
Lady of Shalott, who lives isolated in a tower far from what she wants to live and experience.
She lives a life imprisoned by a curse she knows no consequence for and so hesitates to live
her life the way she would have liked. She has a mirror through which she sees the future, and
weaves everything she sees.She sees that something bad is gonna happen to Lancelot so she
tries to save him and she goes out from the castle and catch a boat, but at the end she dies
before she gets to Camelot looking for Lancelot.

It is a poem about women (they should stay at home, safe, and observe the word indirectly
through a mirror), purity and the artist isolated (“The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord
Tennyson”). In it, there is a conflicto between art and life, the artista is isolated. Artist= the
woman, who being isolated still creating artist. It’s rhyme scheme is AAAABCCCB. This part
from the poem is a description of where she is and how it is. It’s a poem with many
alliterations and it reflects a conflicto between art and life and it presents a medieval visión. It
is divided in 4 parts.

The first stanza introduces two places, Camelot and Shalott. On one hand, a vivid image of the
beautiful mainland of Camelot, full of natural beauty and the constant flow of people traveling
in and out. Shalott, on the other hand, is portrayed as just a place that is merely noticed by
people on their journey to and from Camelot (“The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord Tennyson”).
It is really pastoral.As literary features we can point topography(“Round about Shalott”)

In the second stanza he is still describing the scenery with a river that flows down to Camelot.
There are four grey walls and four grey towers surrounded by flowers and the view of Camelot,
there is a high contrast with the flowers and the grey towers and walls. This silent lifeless
island is where the Lady of Shalott is. As literary features we can point(“Willows whiten”) and
(“Sunbeam showers”)

The third stanza is about the people who work near the tower hear the Lady singing cheerily
and happily, like an angel, but they have never seen her. This is why they call her a fairy, she is
a mysterious being for all those who are outside her tower (“The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord
Tennyson”). As literary features we can point (“reape,reaping late and early”) and (“chanting
cheerly”)

In the last stanza we finally see the Lady of Shalott for the first time from a small boat, she is
lying in a velvet bed.

This poem is a perfect representation of what a woman in the 19th Century was for men. They
were supposed to stay at home where they were safe, see the world from there but not taking
part of it and wait for their husbands to arrive home

IRISH’S QUESTION:
ANALYSIS OF “EASTER,1916”
In this poem it is necessary talk about the Irish’s Question to understand the poem. In 1297 the
1st Irish Parliament was created. During the kingdom of Elizabeth I, in 1594, the Nine Year’s
war exploded against her in which Irish alliance and English rule in Ireland fought the winner
wasin the British through This war was a response to the Tudor dynasty's conquest of Ireland.
In 1609, the Plantation of Ulster was formed, it was during the James I’s kingdom, which
consisted in encourage English and Scottish people to move to Northern Ireland.

In 1798, it was the Irish Rebellion, in it a republican group called “The Society of United
Irishmen” provoked an uprising against British control in Ireland.

In 1801 was the Act of Union in which the Irish parliament was abolished and Irland started to
be a colony in the British Isles.

In the 19th century nationalists in the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) demand Home Rule.
Radical organizations like the ‘Sinn Féin’ (Ourselves Alone) started to demand the founding of
an Irish Republic.

The Easter Rising 1916, Dublin. Their aim was to end the British rile in Ireland and establishing
the Irish Republic. The revolutionaries attacked the British government police in Ireland. In this
uprising the humanities people participated and many women participated, they were not
arrested so she continued with the fight.

In 1919 the First independent Irish Parliament The First Dáil Éireann was founded. In the same
day that Dáil Éirean reaffirmed the Republic from 1916, some participants of the IRA shot two
high commands, therefore the Irish War of Independence exploded (1919-1921). The IRA
became the Irish National Revolutionary Army. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was in 1921, in it King
George V and Prime Minister Lloyd George (Liberal party) negotiated with the Irish
republicans, the treaty was signed in 1922 and a second Dáil Éireann was called in 1922. The
Irish Civil War was between 1922-1923, in it the people who supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty
fought against who do not support it.

The Irish Literary Revival It’s also known as Celtic Twilight; and it is related with Irish
Nationalism. W.B.Yeats highlights, who created the first Irish national theater or ABBEY
THEATRE, due to his wish to revive literary environment of his country, in 1888 he wrote Fairy
and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. He also founded the National Literary Society in 1892 in
London along other people, this supposed the Irish literary revival. In this stage of Irish
literature is searched a new identity, the rural life is idealized and the writers were the
revolutionaries. Due to the revival of Irish literary revive the interest for the Irish history,
literature and language (Gaelic). The authors are inspired in the mythologic and folklore
tradition.

In this stage the author presents an optimistic and public-spirited view of the age, but he also
shows the abuses of society, but to present an optimistic view of the society he/she has to be
dishonest, so the author has three options: he /she presents an optimistic view and his/her
characters win although their conditions were not good; he/she adopts a preaching tone or
he/she ignores the present society and creates a fantasy world

The author of this poem is W.B. Yeats, who was born in Dublin (1856-1939), he was Anglo-
Irish. He defended the independence and Irish literary Revival.

The fragment that I am going to analyze is from Easter,1916, in it there is a depiction of 1916
Easter Rising and there are significant questions about the Rising. It’s a poem which has 4
stanzas (a Stanza is a group of verse lines with a rhyme pattern such as quatrain) with 24 lines,
this was something searched, I mean, 24 lines represent the day 24 and the four stanzas
represent the fourth month and this symbolizes the April 24th that was when was the Easter
Rising day. This work was written for the people who died in the Easter Rising and he asks
through a rhetorical question, which is a question that consist in questions that do not expect
answers, if that was really worth it.

The fragment that I am going to analyze is the last stanza and it starts with a hyperbaton,
between the lines 1-2 (“Too long[...] the heart”), which is a figure of speech in which the
normal order of words is reversed. In the line 3(“o when […] suffice”) there is a rhetorical
question in which he wonders, when will the day come when they stop killing people for
fighting for their freedom.

Between the lines 4-6(“To murmur[...]child”) he says that there is part on the heaven reserved
to the people who are dying fighting for their freedom and he calls them and he says how he
does it through a comparation, in the same way that a mother would (line 6“As a[..] child”). In
this line there is also a personification, the “mother” represents two things: on the one hand it
is just a mother, but also is used to refers to Ireland (personification, which is a figure of
speech in which the poet describes a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person.

Between the lines 7-11("When sleep […] after all”), he says that their deaths cannot be
covered up and he wonders through a rhetorical question (“Was it[...]nightfall”) if all them was
really worth it. At the end of the line 13 (“Done and said”) he refers to the people who died.

Between the lines 14-20 (“We know [...]pearse”) when he mentions “a dream”, he refers to
the dream to conquer Ireland. Between the lines 16 – 17(“and what if [...]they died”) there is
another rhetorical question as can be seen throughout this stanza and the poem in general
there are many of them. He also says that the only thing he can do for Ireland is remember the
people who fought for through his poems and at the end he names presidents of the Republic.

Between the lines 21-24(“Now and […] born”), he says that since this moment every time that
they see the color green, they are going to remembered them, but in a sad way, because since
this moment something terrible was born. In the last line there is an oxymoron (“terrible
beauty”), which is a figure of speech which combine contradictory words with opposing
meanings