Victorian Literature

Essay Writers and Victorian Social

Commentary
John Stuart Mill and other writers of his time were well
known for their social essays, as they would respond to their
society

They were interested in the condition and future of

humankind in a society that was becoming increasingly
industrialized, and where religion was changing

They would debate about education, leadership, science

and religion
Essay Writers (cont)
C.F. Harrold (a specialist of Victorian literature) says:

‘What they wrote constitutes a fascinating chapter in the

history of the English mind, and also provides a perspective
for viewing much that continues to perplex the world."
Victorian Theatre
One expert says Victorian theatre for Victorians was like
television is for our society today

Victorians would often go to the theatre, sometimes to high

quality theatre, and sometimes also burlesques, extravaganzas,
scenic and modified versions of Shakespeare’s plays, melodramas,
pantomimes, and musicals

The number of theatres doubled from 1850-1860

Many writers also wrote plays, but there were different ranges in
the quality of their writings
Victorian Writers and the novel
The novel was the most popular genre at the time
(even poets tended to try to tell stories in verse form)
Prominent Novelists included:
Charles Dickens (Great
Expectations (1860-61)
(Bildungsroman)
William Thackeray (Vanity Fair
(1848)) (satire of British society)
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans),
The Mill on the Floss (1860) and
Middlemarch (1872). She used the
pseudonym of a man to publish
Thomas Hardy (considered one
of the most important) Famous
works include Tess of the
d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the
Obscure (1895).
The Brontë Sisters
 Anne, Emily and Charlotte
Brontë
 Charlotte: Jane Eyre (1847)
 Emily: Wuthering Heights
(1847)
 Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell
Hall (1848)
Other novelists of this age include George Gissing (1857-1903),
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65), Anthony Trollope (1815-82)
The Victorian Novel
Victorian novels tended to focus on social relationships
Many novels from this time often have a strong historical relationship
because of their clear representation of British society in the Victorian era
They are often aimed at realist representation
Poetry: Time: past, present, future
There was a preoccupation with the relationship between
humans and God and spiritual matters during the Victorian
age

There was also a strong sense of the importance of time,

past, present, and future

Love is also a predominant theme

Victorian Values and self censorship
Victorian values were particularly strict, as mentioned
above, and writers had to adjust to the limitations imposed by
predominant values

There was a tension between these values and the freedom

given by writing that affected much of the writing of the time

There was also social pressure on writers who had a strong

social role as “seers” who had a responsibility to propose
forms of instruction in their writing, yet there was little
consensus as to the exact nature of this instruction
Earnestness in the Victorian Age
The spirit of the time, or what Jerome Buckley calls the
“temper” of Victorian literature is a a state of mind that has
been described as “an eager or earnest response to the
expanding horizons of nineteenth-century literature”
earnest = serieux/fervent
Consider the title of Victorian writer Oscar Wilde’s play
from the late Victorian period: The Importance of Being
Earnest (1895) (in which he makes fun of Victorian society)
The Complexity of Victorian Literature
However, keep in mind that although we are able to identify a few
typical attributes of this period, the literature of this vast time period
cannot be reduced to a few simple concepts.
Victorian literature was rich and complex
Children’s Literature in Victorian Times:
“The Golden Age”

 The Victorian age from the 1860s (mid-late Victorian period)

onwards is generally considered to be the first ‘Golden Age’ of
children’s literature
Expansion of Literacy and a Changing
Readership
 The expansion of literacy in this period (Education Act 1870), and the
development of print and publishing practices, led to more accessible books
 IMG_0153.JPG

Pleasure or Moral Instruction?

 Books during this time were
more often illustrated and by the
1850s they proposed pleasures
beyond the usual Victorian
dictates of morality and
repression.
 There was a tension between the
goal of pleasure and the goal of
religious and moral instruction.
 This is one of the many debates
of the Victorian “Golden” age of
Children’s literature: instruct or
entertain.
 There was much controversy over
what the ‘purpose’ of children’s
literature was.
 (This controversy continues
today!)
 The Religious Tract Society was an organization, for example, that focused on
‘improving’ children’s books
 And there was censorship of ‘disreputable books’
 Yet there were also writers, such as John Ruskin who in “Fairy Stories” (1868)
spoke of the importance of liberating children’s literature from an overtly
didactic focus in order to privilege what he referred to as
 “the sweet peace of youth”. …. In which “a child should not need to choose
between right and wrong” …
 Children so trained have no need of moral fairy tales;
but they will find in the apparently vain and fitful
courses of any tradition of old time, honestly
delivered to them, a teaching for which no other can
be substituted, and of which the power cannot be
measured; animating for them the material world
with inextinguishable life, fortifying them against the
glacial cold of selfish science, and preparing them
submissively, and with no bitterness of astonishment,
to behold, in later years, the mystery--divinely
appointed to remain such to all human thought--of
the fates that happen alike to the evil and the good.
 In 1844 Eilizabeth Rigby said that the essence of a good book for children lies in
being “true to nature” as this reflects the “natural” side of children themselves
 Similarly Charles Dickens in an article “Frauds on the
Fairies” (1853) argued that in a “utilitarian age” it was
important to see the useful dimension of fairy tales, but also
to see their “simplicity, and purity, and innocent
extravagance”
The Fairy Tale
 The fairy tale was central to Victorian literature for
children and variations of this genre were collected,
edited, adapted, re-written, and created.

 Fairy tales, folklore, fables, nursery rhymes and legends

were all popular with children throughout the nineteenth
century.
 Edited collections of fairy
tales such as those of the
Brothers Grimm, Perrault
and Hans Christian Andersen
were translated into English
by 1823 and 1846.
 This made many traditional
fairy tales accessible to a
wide audience and motivated
many writers to read fairy
tales and adapt them.
Some famous Victorian writers of
children’s literature…
Catherine Sinclair

 Holiday House (1839)

 Proposes gentle critiques of

naughty children
Novelists Turning to Children’s
literature
During this time, many “adult” oriented novelists also began to write for
children:
John Ruskin-- “The King of the Golden River” (1850)
William Makepeace Thackeray’s fairy tale of Christmas “The Rose and
the Ring” (1855)
Christina Rossetti -- “Goblin Market” (1862)
Charles Kingsley -- “The Water Babies” (1863)
Oscar Wilde – The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888)
John Ruskin
 The King of the Golden
River (1841, 1850)
 A Literary fairy tale that
tells the story of two
brothers, Hans and
Schwartz, whose
selfishness and greed
makes them lose the
Edenic Treasure Valley
and then their lives. A
third brother, Gluck,
who is generous and
selfless, helps recreate
the valley’s fertility.
William Makepeace Thackeray
 “The Rose and the
Ring” (1855)
 A fairy tale of
Christmas: A satire of
Victorian Society in the
form of a tale. It
involves four young
royal cousins,
Princesses Angelica and
Rosalba, and Princes
Bulbo and Giglio. It
mainly criticizes the
monarchy and ideas
Christina Rossetti
 Goblin Market (1862)
 a fairy tale poem about two
sisters (who are very close) and
their relationship to goblins
who sell fruit by the river.
 Some critics say it is about sex
and temptation, and a rejection
of Victorian morality
 Illustrated by Rossetti’s brother,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Pre-
Raphaelite artist (illustrations
were an important part of
Victorian literature for children)
Charles Kingsley
 The Water Babies (1863)
 Satire of Darwinian ideas
 Tells the story of Tom, a
young chimney sweep, who
is thrown out of a girl’s
house (Ellie—from a higher
social class). He falls in a
river and drowns and
becomes a "water baby.”
The story describes themes
of Christian redemption and
shows how poor children are
treated in Victorian society.
 Charles Dickens
 Dickens published tales in a
holiday magazine for children,
Holiday Romance: adventure
stories, fairy tales, pirate
stories, romance
 In “The Magic Fishbone”
(1868) a 7 year old narrator
tells the story about the power
of magic and reinforces
themes of innocence and hope
 Dickens uses the logic of a
child’s mind to criticize the
conventional standards of
society and celebrate the
creativity of the young.
Mary de Morgan
 On a Pincushion and Other
Tales (1877)
 “A Toy Princess” (1877), for
example, reflects on women's
issues of the Victorian period.
De Morgan emphasized human
compassion and utopian quests.
She portrayed rebellion against
mindless rulers
 Her writing includes strong
female characters
 George Macdonald
 A leading writer of the Victorian
period who published many
works.
 Liked German transcendentalism
and mysticism
 Believed all earthly creatures
could discover the essence of
divinity in themselves by
perceiving God’s truth in nature
 Thus salvation could be obtained
by everybody
 He is especially known for his
fairy tales for children and his
rebellion against the strict
Victorian code of puritan,
Oscar Wilde
 The Happy Prince and Other Tales
(1888)
 A collection of sentimental fairy tales
 Wilde says the tales were written ‘not
for children, but for childlike people
from eighteen to eighty’
 This is an example of what we call
today, “crossover” fiction, that is fiction
for both children and adults
 The Victorian age was also an age of exploration and collection.
 Editors such as Andrew Lang created series such as his “Fairy
Books,” otherwise known as Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books
or Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors.
 These books proposed translations and adaptations of fairy tales from
all over the world.
Andrew Lang’s “Blue Fairy Book” was published in 1889 and was
followed by:
 The Red Fairy Book (1890)
 The Green Fairy Book (1892)
 The Yellow Fairy Book (1894)
 The Pink Fairy Book (1897)
 The Grey Fairy Book (1900)
 The Crimson Fairy Book (1903)
 The Violet Fairy Book (1901)
 The Brown Fairy Book (1904)
 The Orange Fairy Book (1906)
 The Olive Fairy Book (1907)
 The Lilac Fairy Book (1910)
Nonsense literature

 Towards the middle

of the century, there
was a movement
towards nonsensical,
slightly anarchic
children’s literature
 Edward Lear’s
popular limerick
collection, A Book of
Nonsense, was
published in 1846
 There was an Old
Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just
as I feared!
Two Owls (hiboux)
and a Hen (poule),
Four Larks (alouette)
and a Wren (roitelet),
Have all built their
nests in my beard!'
 There was a Young
Lady whose bonnet,
Came untied
(denoué) when the
birds sate upon it;
But she said: 'I don't
care!
All the birds in the
air
Are welcome to sit
on my bonnet!'
And of course…..
Lewis Carroll

 The 1860s are indeed

called the “Golden
Age” of children’s
literature, the decade
of Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland (1865)
 These books
confirmed a
movement away from
realism into fantasy.
 Lewis Carroll  It is a world in which
proposed an the reader, along with
alternative, Alice, struggles to
underground work understand, and where
that is simultaneously the logic and truth of
very Victorian and un- adult life and
Victorian in that it principles become
puts order and chaos meaningless.
together  We will study this
 Rationalism vs. work in more
fantasy detail….
Authors on the border of the Victorian
period and Modernity

 Many preoccupations of
Victorian times appear in
these works…
Frances Hodgson Burnett

 Little Lord Fauntleroy

(1886) and A Little Princess
(1905), The Secret Garden
(1911)
Beatrix Potter
 Especially well-known for her “Peter
Rabbit” books.
 Beatrix Potter was especially
interested in the natural sciences.
 Her tales often had a moral dimension,
suggesting the dangers of disobedience
while also portraying the appeal of
trouble-making
J.M. Barrie

 Peter Pan and Wendy (1911)

(performed as a play in
1904--Peter Pan, or The Boy
Who Wouldn't Grow Up)
 It is a well-known tale that
tells the story of a little boy
who does not want to grow
up
 Kenneth Graham
 "The Reluctant Dragon“ (1898)
 The Wind in the Willows (1908) (Le Vent
dans les saules)
Rudyard Kipling

 An Indian author who was

educated in England. His
works are known for their
imperialist themes.
 Best known works are:
 The Jungle Book (1894),
 Just So Stories (1902)
 Kim (1901)
 E. Nesbit
 Married Name: Edith Bland --Published
under the name of E. Nesbit
 She wrote over 60 works for children
 The Story of the Treasure Seekers—1899
 Five Children and It—1902 (about five
children who find a strange creature who
grants their wishes)
The fairy tale (and children’s literature) as
a social and political tool

 Jack Zipes underlines two different tendencies in the

Victorian use of the fairy tale:
 1. For Conventional goals: The fairies and and fantasy
world are a short break from reality, and the overall
objective is to reinforce conventional values
 2. Utopian goals: The fairy tale genre is used as a means by
which to liberate the imagination from conventional
thinking.
 Much writing seems to be caught between these tendencies.
Victorian children’s literature and social
values

 Overall, Victorian literature for children showed

a preoccupation with future of Great Britain and
its children
 There was a strong reappearance of the fairies in Victorian literature
(fairies had often been rejected in previous centuries because of
puritan values)
 These fairies appeared during a time when British society, and the place of
children, were changing at a rapid rate.
 Fairies were a means to protest the conditions in England during
and after the industrial revolution
 (Fairy Tales have always been in some way connected to social
issues (think of Perrault and his “moralités” )
 TheVictorians used and amplified this social dimension.
 Many Victorian fairy tales were contradictory, but they allowed writers to ask
new questions about social views, religion, authority, sexual identity, and the role
of art (particularly art for children)
 For late Victorian writers for children, fairy tales allowed them to create other,
more utopian, worlds.
 This allowed them to critique reality while celebrating utopian visions.
 The force behind fairy tales in Victorian times comes from a desire to engage
with social issues through the imagination.
 The literature was often aimed at both child and adult readers