Victorian Age (1830-

1901)
 City of
18th cent. Paris Western later 19th cent. London
civilization

Living 300 years in 30: Thomas Arnold on early industrialization

Shift from landownership to urban modern economy (trade/ manufacturing)

Full exploitation of steam power for fast railways, iron ships, printing presses.
Introduction of telegraph, intercontinental cable
Photography, compulsory education
Walter Besant on late Victorians: radical transformation
“ he would not, could he see him, recognize his grandfather”

England: the first country to be industrialized

consequence

Unregulated industrialization economic and social problems

Enormous increase in wealth
Gaining global market ( manufacturing and exporting cotton)
The trade profit capital investment in all continents

graining profit from development of its colonies

1/4th of earth
The reaction of Victorian writers to fast-
paced expansion
u The Jingoist and the self-complacent vs the critical
u Babington Macaulay’s essay: showing stats of growth & a Hymn to progress
u Tennyson: Sporadic relishing in industrial changes& pointing out the cost of
industrialization
Mathew Arnold: roller-coaster ride

Victorians simultaneous sense of satisfaction and discontent

Different critical reaction to the Victorian
age
u Disassociation with Victorian earnestness and complacence
u Virginia Woolf’s Orlando:
Ivy grew in unparalleled profusion. Houses that had been of bare stone were
smothered by greenery…
Death of the father: removal of an overshadowing tower

Ford Madox Ford: found Carlyle & Ruskin’s work terrifying

“childish nightmare”
Victorian: a pejorative term denoting prudishness & datedness
But to contemporary critics:
Victorian period= richly complex society dealing with issues of
Modernism

Victorian moral virtue and national pride

3 Subdivisions of Victorian Age

u Early (1830-1848): A time of Troubles

u Mid (1848-1870): Economic Prosperity & religious
controversy
u Late: (1870-1901): Decay of Victorian values
u 1890s: a period of transition
Early (1830-1848): A time of Troubles

u 1830: opening of Liverpool & Manchester railways

u 1832: first reform Bill

No radical change Extension of the right

Working class still excluded to vote to all males
owing 10 Pounds
Women excluded worth of property.
Lower Middle-class
Time of discord
enfranchisement
Abolition of the
archaic electoral
system
u 1840s: Severe depression, Unemployment rioting
u Problematic employment: dire working conditions
u Workers and their families residence in slums of cities like Manchester
u Elizabeth Barret’s poem The Cry of Children: indicative of the reality of the time
u Life of miners: Hobbesian state of living

u Factory and Mind Owners: enjoying Laissez-Faire

u Charles Greville ( Carlyle’s contemporary): an account of appalin conditions of
the North
Many Remedies Pointed out

1. Chartists: Large organization of Workingmen

1838: advocated extension of right to vote, use of secrete balloting

Ignored by parliament for ten years

2. Abolishing the high Tariffs on Imported grains (Corn Law)

Landowners reaction to abolishment
The rest of the populations’ reaction
 1845:
the year of serious crop failure in England
Potato blight in Ireland
Tory prime
Minister Sir Peel
persuaded of
failure of the
traditional ways

1846:
England started to feel an economic relief

But slums remained uneradicated

The next two decades: relatively calm except for the chartist
demonstration
 Early Victorian literature:
A literature symptomatic of the time of
trouble
“insurrectionis most sad necessity”/ “ getting into the fatalist courses”
Carlyle in Past and Present
French Revolution

The most Marked response to political / industrial scene: Novelists of 40s

&50s
Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Benjamin Disraeli
Sybil (1845): “the two nations”

u The England of the rich vs England of the poor

Mid (1848-1870): Economic Prosperity
& religious controversy
Authors such as Dickens continued the attack on Victorian social
scene
: more critical than Dickens
Anthony Trollope: characteristic of Mid
Victorian Period

“ his books are Solidly put together, as benefits the world of

fixed values and stable institutions that he describes;”
Mid-Victorian Period: Age of
Improvement
u The second phase: harassing problems+ prosperitythe institutions
worked
u Monarchy proved worthy: epitome of Middle class values
u Aristocracy became aware of free trades benefit
u Agriculture flourished
u Passing of factory act: restriction on child labor, working
hours.improvement in conditions of working class
1851: the great exhibition in Hyde
Park
u Cristal palace displaying modern science and technology
u The building: a symbol of feats of Victorian technology
u Pride in Victorian progress

u New conflict between religion and science

Tennyson’s In Memorium continued the previous debate between
Utilitarian's and conservatives
Jeremy Bentham Vs Coleridge
 Testing all institutions in light of
reason
u How does it work for religion

u “There is no theory of a God, of an author of nature, of an origin of

the universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties, which is
not (to my feelings) so irrelevant as to make me blush, so misleading
as to make me mourn”
“Harriet Martineou
 Religion or an outdated
superstition?
u Coleridge's opposing view: Utilitarian's views are unrealistically narrow
u Faith: food for soul

u 2 groups of Anti-Utilitarians :
1. Abandoned institutionalized Christianity sought a substitute. Carlyle in Sartor
Resartus
2. Sought a powerful, dogmatic religious institution to withstand attacks. John
Henry Newman
 Newman’s views continue as Oxford
Movement and Tractarianism
u Controversies continued into mid Victorian time intensified

u Anticlerical, utilitarian position passed to men f science.

Two effects of the damage

1. application of scientific attitude of mind to the study of the bible

u Higher criticism: Germany

Treating it as a composition/ a text of history

e.g. Friedreich Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu
Translated as the life of Jesus by George Eliot in 1846
2. View of humanity reduced
Science in Mid-Victorian period: The
conflicts and anxieties underneath the
progress
Geology “gives one the same sort of bewildering view of
abysmal extent of time that Astronomy gives about space”
John Sterling

Biology: Man’s further reduction into nothingness

Darwin’s The Origin of Species natural selection
The Descent of Man survival of the fittest
Late: (1870-1901): Decay of Victorian
values
Age of serenity and security
“London the center of civilization, the queen city of the world without a peer in
multitude of its attractions, as superior to Paris as Paris is to New York”
My Life and Loves by Frank Harris

Mathew Arnold: pointing out anomalies post-1860

Inside: The Irish Question

Outside: developments challenging the Victorian security
Emergence of Bismarck's Germany after the defeat of France in 1871 (naval military threat/
included in the trade and industry)

US’s recovery post civil war: competition in agriculture and industry

Expansion of railroads to US & Canada vast prairies problem for English farmers

severe economic depression rising rate of emigration in 1873-4

Growth of labor party 1867: Disraeli’s guidance second reform bill (extension of vote
to working class)
+ development of trade unions the labor party: presenting shades of socialism
2 Kinds of Labor Leaders & Disciples

1. Tory-socialism of Ruskin
2. Revolutionary theories of Marx and Engels in Communist Manifesto and Marx’s
Capital
William Morris: poet/ painter associated with Marxism

Literature of the final phase: changed attitude attacking Mid-Victorian Idols

e.g.
The way of the Flesh: Butler’s satire of family life (tyrannical Victorian father figure)

Problems are not to be found, carpe diem

Edward FitzGerald’s translation of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam
Melancholy theme of insolubleness of life problems

Expansion of railways to Africa, India in the same mid-Victorian manner

e.g. Stories of Kipling and those of Conrad

Inside England: break-down of Victorian Values

 Earnestness, respectability &
Evangelicals
Earnestness or eagerness?

“There never was a period so capable of laughing at

itself” Peter Ackroyd
Humor in works of Thackeray, Dickens, Browning &
Carlyle
Romantics and Victorians

u Age of dis/continuity of values

Wordsworth Mathew Arnold
Keats Tennyson
Influences of the Romanics on Victorians
Continuity of religious concerns
Dividing point: Earnestness

“ we are all on a wrong track […] our successors

will have to go back to riding schools… and learn
to ride the great horse” Byron
“close thy Byron; open thy Goethe” Carlyle
2 interpretation of Carlyle’s quote

Persistence of romantic energy

Channeling it to disciplined forms
Influential poet of the Victorian time: John Keats
Form-consciousness
“Stop moping. There is work to be done, work that requires the earnest
effort of all of us” Carlyle

“When Byron Passed away, […] we turned to the actual and

practical career of life: we awoke from the morbid, the
dreaming, ‘the moonlight and dimness of the mind’, and by
natural reaction addressed ourselves to the active and daily
objects which lay before us” Edward Lytton
Different lifestyle: more serious as opposed to the previous
happy-go-lucky-ness
Evangelical tone in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus
Low church advocates of strict puritan codes of morality
Zealously dedicated to good causes
Emancipation of slaves
Powerful minority: nonconformist
Evangelicalism: any enthusiastic
concern for reform
Earnestness could have religious or social roots both

George Eliot as an evangelical in a loose sense: novels concerned with

problems of conscience and moral choice
Joyous Victorian Sunday: a symbol of evangelicalism
Repressive puritan standards of sexual behavior
Insistence on female innocence or female ignorance?
Pornography beneath prudeness
 Fallen woman vs the innocent
maiden
u Significant growth in prostitution

The roots of Middle-class puritan codes

1. Old testament
2. The commercial experience in society

Freedom and liberty in Victorian period

“England is unquestionably the freest – that is the least unfree-
country in the world” Engels
Problem of liberty according to Mill:
Tyranny and entrenched religion no longer a threat to
individuality
Middle-class convention: the real threat
The role of Women

John Stuart Mill’s Subjection of Women (1869) : a challenge to prescribed role of

women

Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

What is the cause change in women’s position: industrial as well as political

Women working in factories e.g. textile in grueling conditions
A challenge to family life
Differently affected the middle-class: further separation
Woman Question

Sexual inequality in , , & Social

intercourse
Thus the problem of “surplus”, or “abundant” Women
Solution?

Emigration?
Not enough to strike a balance
Consequence?
Bad working-condition leading to prostitution
Unmarried women: prostitute or governess?
Depicting governesses: popular genre e.g. Jane Eyre & Vanity Fair
Nature of Woman???

“What is now called the nature of woman as an eminently artificial

thing -- the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural
stimulation in others”
John Stuart Mill
A traditional view of woman an the two separate spheres:
“Man for the field and Woman for the Hearth
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and women with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey”
From The Princess
Coventry Patmore’s the Angel in The House

John Ruskin’s Of Queen’s Garden:

“This is the true nature of Home- it is the place of Peace; the shelter from not only
all injury, but from all terror, doubt and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not
home […]”
Exalted perception of home
Oppressiveness
Irony:
the image used by feminists and anti-feminists alike
 Diversity of Victoria Literature

u Early & Mid-Victorian Puritan Literature

u Novels read aloud in family gathering Imposition of restrictions and taboos
u Protests against such limitation by such figures as Thackeray
u Real change around the End of the period and later
u Poets & essayists faring better
e.g. Browning’s the Ring and the Book & Swinburne's Poems and Ballads:
unperturbed by the blushes and prudishness

The desire of Victorian readers to which authors complied: being guided and edified
Carlyle in On Heroes:
Elevating Shakespeare’s Status to that of Muhammd
Poet as a seer not just man of letters

Mathew Arnold’s substitution of Literature for religion

Non-fiction prose of those like Carlyle and Ruskin: Victorian didactic prose
The dilemma of the Artist: the public or the art?

Variety in Style and Subject matter both

Experimentation par excellence among poets
Though also using traditional forms like sonnet, focused on new forms
Swinburne, Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins & Thomas Hardy
The development of poetic narrative in novels
Tennyson’s Maud and Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book

Diversity of Style in Poetry: Tennyson’s Tithonus like grand English Poetry and
Browning’s Bishop Orders His Tomb colloquial tone

But what s the Temper of Victorian Literature?

Eagerness/ earnestness of response to the expanding of of the period
Recurring topics: humanities relationship to God & an acute time-awareness among
poets
Victorian Prose
q Love and personal relationship: the major thematic concern

q Nonfictional prose: relative subordination of the major themes

q Walter Pater in his essay Style

Prose: “the special and opportune art of modern world”

The best medium to convey “the chaotic variety and complexity” of

modern life

v Prose: primarily an instrument of persuasion

Different Modes of Persuasion

• Reasoning and logical argument: Mill & Huxley (like 18th cent.)
• Polyphonic style: Carlyle & Ruskin (similar too 17th cent.)
• Poetic passages: Arnold & Newman ( less mannered & More straightforward)

v Overall, all concerned with fate of humanity in a secular society

Victorian Theater

u Less fortunate fate of playwriting

u Exception: the final decade
u Theater as an institution flourished (both conventional and
nonconventional performances, entertainment)
u Failed attempts of likes of Tennyson at playwriting
u Final decade: George Bernard Shaw & Oscar Wilde
Victorian Novel

u Charles Dickens (Pickwick Papers)

u Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D’Urberville)
u Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre)
u Emily Bronte (Wuthering Height)
u William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)
u George Eliot (Middlemarch)
u Elizabeth Gaskell
u Wilkie Collins
Stylistic and thematic similarities
Dickens and Browning
Novelists’ concern Vs. poets’ and essayists’
People in society and aspects of experience such as morals and manners

Male of female protagonist struggles to find themselves in relation to others regarding

marriage, family
Quasi-religious dimension of George Eliot, Emily Bronte and Hardy’s novels

Peoples relation with People as opposed to with God

Continuity of Historical novels established by Sir Walter Scott by lesser writers:

Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last days of Pompeii
u Major Novelists: local color, contemporary historical fiction
u Eliot’s Warwickshire & Hardy’s Wessex Dicken’s Fogbound London: realistic

“the art of novel” “is to represent nature; to convey as strongly as possible the sentiment
of reality.” Thackeray

Dickens’ stagey writing criticized

George Eliot’s reaction to novelistic theatricalism: exploration of characters’ inner lives