Chapter IV The Victorian Period (1836-1901)

The early years of the Victorian England was a time of rapid economic development as well as serious social problems. For a time England was the workshop of the world. Toward the midcentury, England had reached its highest point of development as a world power. And yet beneath the great prosperity and richness, there existed widespread poverty and wretchedness among the working class. Ideologically, the Victorians experienced fundamental changes. The rapid development of science and technology, new inventions and discoveries in geology, astronomy, biology and anthropology drastically shook peoples religious convictions. The religious collision that started from the early nineteenth century continued and was intensified by the disputes over evolutionary science. In this period, the novel became the most widely read and the most vital and challenging expression of progressive thought. Among the famous novelists of the time were the critical realists like Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and Anthony Trollope. While sticking to the principle of faithful representation of the 18 th-century realist novel, they carried their duty forward to the criticism of the society and the defence of the mass. Although writing from different points of view and with different techniques, they shared one thing in common, that is, they were all concerned about the fate of the common people. They were angry with the inhuman social institutions, the decaying social morality as represented by the moneyworship and Utilitarianism, and the widespread misery, poverty and injustice. Their truthful picture of peoples life and bitter and strong criticism of the society had done much in awakening the public consciousness to the social problems and in the actual improvement of the society. And in the last few decades there were also George Eliot, the pioneering woman who, according to D.H. Lawrence, was the first novelist that started putting all the actions inside, and Thomas Hardy, that Wessex man who not only continued to expose and criticize all sorts of social iniquities, but finally came to question and attack the Victorian convention and morals. The Victorian age also produced a host of great prose writers: Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Babington Cacaulay, Matthew Arnold, John Henry Newman, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin and Thomas Henry Huxley. The poetry of this period was mainly characterized by experiments with new styles and new ways of expression. Among those famous experimental poets was Robert Browning who created the verse novel by adopting the novelistic presentation of characters. Other poets like Alfred Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Edward Fitzgerald, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his talented sister Christina, Gerald Manley Hopkins and Algernon Charles Swinburne all made their respective attempts at poetic innovations and helped open up new ways for the twentieth-century modern poetry. Victorian literature, in general, truthfully represents the reality and spirit of the age. The highspirited vitality, the down-to-earth earnestness, the good-natured humor and unbounded imagination are all unprecedented. In almost every genre it paved the way for the coming century, where its spirits, values and experiments are to witness their bumper harvest. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Dickens is one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age. It is his serious

intention to expose and criticize in his works all the poverty, injustice, hypocrisy and corruptness he sees all around him. But his social attitudes are very complicated. He hates the state apparatus, especially the Parliament, but as a bourgeois writer, he can in no way supply any fundamental solution to the social plights. His works: Oliver Twist; Nicholas Nickleby; David Copperfield; Dombey and Son; A Tale of Two Cities; Little Dorrit; Hard Times; Great Expectations; Our Mutual Friend His best-depicted characters are those innocent, virtuous, persecuted, helpless child characters such as Oliver Twist, Little Nell, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit. Dickens writes best when he writes from the childs point of view. And he is also famous for the depiction of those horrible and grotesque character like Fagin, Bill Sikes, and Quilp, and those broadly humorous or comical ones like Mr. Micawber, Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp. Dickens work are also characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos. He seems to believe that life is itself a mixture of joy and grief. Life is delightful because it is at once comic and tragic. He is a humorist. Whether he exaggerates a persons physical traits to achieve a dramatic effect or to ridicule his personal defects, whether he means to be light-heartedly jocular or bitterly satirical, he is sure to produce roaring laughter or understanding smiles. To match his humorous genius, Dickens is also noted for his pictures of pathos. No one who has ever read the death-bed scenes of little Nell (The Old Curiosity Shop) and Little Paul (Dombey and Son) can forget them. The pain strikes people to the heart. Selected Reading: Oliver Twist (Chapter III) The novel is famous for its vivid descriptions of the workhouse and life of the underworld in the 19th-century London. The authors intimate knowledge of people of the lowest order and of the city itself apparently comes from his journalistic years. Here the novel also presents Oliver Twist as Dickens first child hero and Fagin the first grotesque figure. This section of the novel is a detailed account of how he is punished for that impious and profane offence of asking for more and how he is to be sold, at three pound ten, to Mr. Gamfield, the notorious chimney-sweeper. Though we can afford a smile now and then, we feel more pitiable state of the orphan boy and the cruelty and hypocrisy of the workhouse board. The Bronte Sisters: Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855); Emily Bronte (1818-1848) Her works: The Professor; Villette; Jane Eyre Charlottes works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards selfrealization, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happy life. But brought up with strict orthodoxy, Charlotte would usually stick to the Puritanical dode. She loves the beauty of nature but despises worldly ambition and success. In her mind, mans life is composed of perpetual battle between sin and virtue, good and evil. All her heroines highest joy arises from some sacrifice of self or some human weakness overcome. Besides, she is a writer of realism combined with romanticism. On one hand, she presents a vivid realistic picture of the English society by exposing the cruelty, hypocrisy and other evils of the upper classes, and by showing the misery and suffering of the poor. Her works are marked throughout by an intensity of vision and of passion. By writing from an individual point of view, by creating characters who are possessed of strong feelings, fiery passions and some

extraordinary personalities, by resorting to some elements of horror, mystery and prophesy, she is able to recreate life in a wondrously romantic way. So, whatever weakness her work may have, the vividness of her subjective narration, the intensely achieved characterization, especially those heroines who are totally contrary to the public expectations, and the most truthful presentation of the economical, moral, social life of the time---all this renders her works a never dying popularity. Selected Readings: I Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Chapter XXIII) The work is one of the most popular and important novels of the Victorian age. It is noted for its sharp criticism of the existing society, e.g. the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions such as Lowood School where poor girls are trained, through constant starvation and humiliation, to be humble slaves, the social discrimination Jane experiences first as a dependent at her aunts house and later as a governess at Thornfield, and the false social convention as concerning love and marriage. At the same time, it is an intense moral fable. Jane, Like Mr. Rochester, has to undergo a series of physical and moral tests to grow up and achieve her final happiness. The success of the novel is also due to its introduction to the English novel the first governess heroine. Jane Eyre, an orphan child with a fiery spirit and a longing to love and be loved, a poor plain, little governess who dares to love her master, a man superior to her in many ways, and even is brave enough to declare to the man her love for him, cuts a completely new woman image. She represents those middle-class working women who are struggling for recognition of their basic rights and equality as a human being. The vivid description of her intense feelings and her thought and inner conflicts brings her to the heart of the audience. Selected Reading: II Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Wuthering heights is the story about two families and an intruding stranger. (The Earnshaw family and Linton family) One day, Mr. Earnshaw brings home a sallow, rugged foundling he has picked up in the streets of a city. He calls the boy Heathcliff. The children grow up together; Catherine comes to love Heathcliff while Hindley hates him out of jealousy of his fathers fondness for the waif. When the parents die, Hindley degrades Heathcliff in every way he can, and the lad grows brutal and sullen. Whats more, Heathcliff one day overhears part of the speech by Catherine that she intends to marry the handsome and mild Edgar. He runs away. Five years later, he returns to take his revenge on Hindley. But now, Catherine has become Mrs. Linton. Tormented by her love for her husband and her overwhelming passion for Heathcliff, Catherine grows sick and dies in giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. Heathcliff, driven mad at her death, hastens his revenge on people of both houses who he thinks have hindered his union with Catherine. First, he reduces Hindley to a gambler and a drunkard and takes possession of Wuthering Heights. Then he takes possession of Thrushcross Grange by marrying Edgars sister Isabella and later by marrying little Cathy to his sickly son Linton. In due time, he drives Hindley, Isabella and Edgar to death and has Hindleys son Hareton and Cathy at his mercy. But at this time, events take another turn. Now 18 years after Catherines death, Heathcliff begins to see her ghost. He forgets his revenge, forgets even to eat and to sleep. With eyes fixed on his supernatural visitor, he starves himself to death. Meanwhile, little Catherine is able to change the savage Hareton and the two fall in love with each other. At Heathcliffs death, the young couple retire to Thrushcross Grange, leaving the

spirits of Heathcliff and the first Catherine, united at last, in possession of Wuthering Heights. The novel is a riddle which means different things to different people. From the social point of view, it is a story about a poor abused, betrayed and distorted by his social betters because he is a poor nobody. As a love story, this is one of the most moving: the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine proves the intense, the most beautiful and at the same time the most horrible passion ever to be found possible in human beings. The story is told mainly by Nelly, Catherines old nurse, to Mr. Lockwood, a temporary tenant at Grange. The latter too gives an account of what he sees at Wuthering Heights. And part of the story is told through Isabellas letters to Nelly. While the central interest is maintained, the sequence of its development is constantly disordered by flashbacks. This makes the story all the more enticing and genuine. The excerpt taken here is from Chapter XV, the death scene of Catherine, narrated by Nelly to Mr. Lockwood. When Edgar is away at church, Heathcliff seizes the chance to see the dying Catherine. The intense love between the two is fully shown in this agonizing scene. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) Alfred is certainly the most representative Victorian poet. His poetry voices the doubt and the faith, the grief and the joy of the English people in an age of fast social changes. The year of 1850 was an important one in Tennysons life, for this year, he was appointed the Poet Laureate. His works: the dramatic monologue Ulysses, the epic narrative Morte dArthur, the exquisite idylls Dora and The Gardeners Daughter Idylls of the King, his most ambitious work which took him over 30 years to complete. Tennyson is a real artist. He has the natural power of linking visual pictures with musical expressions, and these two with the feelings. He has perfect control of the sound of English, and a sensitive ear, an excellent choice and taste of words. His poetry is rich in poetic images and melodious language, and noted for its lyrical beauty and metrical charm. His works are not only the products of the creative imagination of a poetic genius but also products of a long and rich English heritage. His wonderful works manifest all the qualities of England s great poets. The dreaminess of Spenser, the majesty of Milton, the natural simplicity of Wordsworth, the fantasy of Blake and Coleridge, the melody of Keats and Shelley, and the narrative vigor of Scott and Byron,--- all these striking qualities are evident on successive pages Tennysons poetry. Selected Readings: 1. Break, Break, Break (1) This short lyric is written in memory of Tennysons best friend, Arthur Hallam, whose death has a lifelong influence on the poet. Here, the poets own feelings of sadness are contrasted with the carefree, innocent joys of the children and the unfeeling movement of the ship and the sea waves. The beauty of the lyric is to be found in the musical language and in the association of sound and images with feelings and emotions. The poem contains four quatrains, with combined iambic and anapaestic feet. Most lines have three feet and some four. The rhyme scheme is a b c b. 2. Crossing the Bar (1) This poem was written in the later years of Tennysons life. We can feel his fearlessness

towards death, his faith in God and an afterlife. Bar: a bank of sand or stones under the water as in a river, parallel to the shore, at the entrance to a harbor. Crossing the bar means leaving this world and entering the next world. 3. Ulysses (1) In Greek mythology, Ulysses is the king of the Ithaca island. He is the hero in many literary classics. In Homers Odessey ( the Greek name for Ulysses), Ulysses eventually arrives home after the ten-year Trojan war and another ten years adventures at sea. However, according to Dante, Ulysses never returns to his home place, Ithaca, but urges his men to on exploring westward. Tennyson combines these two versions. In this poem, Ulysses is now three years back in his homeland, reunited with his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, and resumes his rule over the land. But he will not endure the peaceful commonplace everyday life. Old as he is, he persuades his old followers to go with him and to set sail again to pursue a new world and new knowledge. Written in the form of dramatic monologue, the poem not only expresses, through the mouth of the heroic Ulysses, Tennysons own determination and courage to brave the struggle of life but also reflects the restlessness and aspiration of the age. Robert Browning (1812-1889) The name of Browning is often associated with the term: dramatic monologue. His works: Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, Bells and Pomegranates, Men and Women, Dramatic Personae, The Ring and the Book (his masterpiece) and Dramatic Idylls. In these poems, Browning chooses a dramatic moment or a crisis, in which his characters are made to talk about their lives, and about their minds and hearts. In listening to those one-sided talks, readers can form their own opinions and judgments about the speakers personality and about what has really happened. For example, in My Last Duchess, the Duke, as he talks about the portrait of his last Duchess, reveals bit by bit his cruelty and possessiveness. We gather the truth about the death of the unfortunate wife. It is ironical that the Dukes own defensive words should betray and condemn himself. To Browning, the dramatic monologue is an ingenious means to exploit his literary gift without getting too personal. In fact, he keeps a good distance from his characters. They always belong to the remote history, or just the fantastic world. They are either the early Christians, the medieval knights, the family tyrants, the Arab horsemen, or the Italian bishops. They share nothing with him both in personality and in attitudes toward life. Nonetheless, Brownings spirit, his vigor and energy are put into these characters. This cant be done successfully unless the poet possesses powerful imagination and creativity as well as a good knowledge about mans psychology and nature. But Brownings poetry is not easy to read. His rhythms are often too fast, too rough and unmusical. The syntax is usually clipped and highly compressed. The similes and illustrations appear too profusely. The allusions and implications are sometimes odd and farfetched. All this makes up his obscurity. Perhaps it is his illusion that everybody should know and understand what he says. On the whole, Brownings style is very different from that of any other Victorian poets. If we compare him with Tennyson, his idiosyncrasy may be more clearly seen. Tennyson, like a professional sculptor, works on his marble most diligently and patiently. His accomplishment is almost perfect. On the contrary, Browning is like a weather-beaten pioneer, bravely and vigorously

trying to beat a track through the jungle. His poetic style belongs to the twentieth century rather than to the Victorian age. The rough, grotesque and disproportionate appearance, the non-poetic jarring diction and the clumsy rhythms fit marvelously a life that is just as imperfect and incongruous. In general, Brownings poems are not meant to entertain the readers with the usual acoustic and visual pleasures: they are supposed to keep them alert, thoughtful and enlightened. Selected Readings: 1. My Last Duchess My Last Duchess is Brownings best-known dramatic monologue. The poem takes its sources from the life of Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara of the 16 th-century Italy, whose young wife died suspiciously after three years of marriage. Not long after her death, the duke managed to arrange a marriage with the niece of another noble man. This dramatic monologue is the dukes speech addressed to the agent who comes to negotiate the marriage. In his talk about his last duchess, the duke reveals himself as a self-conceited, cruel and tyrannical man. the poem is written in heroic couplets, but with no regular metrical system. In reading, it sounds like blank verse. 2. Meeting at Night This poem and the one that follows it appeared originally under the single title Night and Morning. The speaker in both is a man. In this one, the man, a lover, describes the whereabouts of their meeting place. 3. Parting at Morning Here in the description of sun-rise, the poet unconsciously expresses his helplessness in having to face up his duty as a man. George Eliot ( Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880) Her major works: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Middlemarch, a panoramic book considered today by many to be George Eliots greatest achievement. Writing at the latter half of the 19 th century and closely following the critical realist writers, George Eliot was working at something new. By joining the worlds of inward propensity and outward circumstances and showing them both operating in the lives of her characters, she initiates a new type of realism and sets into motion a variety of developments, leading in the direction of both the naturalistic and psychological novel. She is deeply concerned with the depiction of the people and life of her time; moreover, her mind is always active, instinctively analyzing and generalizing to discover the fundamental truth about human life. In her works, she seeks to present the inner struggle of a soul and to reveal the motives, impulses and hereditary influences which govern human action. She is interested in the development of a soul, the slow growth or decline of moral power of the character. And in her effort to harmonize a sense of human dignity with a sense of human limitations, she shows that the need of the individual for expansion and growth has to be brought into harmony with a sense of social responsibility. She never loses sight of the limits to the exercise of individual power and always insists on the need to cultivate the strength of will and the necessity to return to the routine of life. As a woman of exceptional intelligence and life experience, George Eliot shows a particular concern for the destiny of women, especially those with great intelligence, potential and social

aspirations, such as Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, Dorothea in Middlemarch, the titular heroine in Romola and Gwendolen in Daniel Deronda. In her mind, the pathetic tragedy of women lies in their very birth. Their inferior education and limited social life determine that they must depend on men for sustenance and realization of their goals, and they have only to fulfill the domestic duties expected of them by the society. Their opportunities of success are not even increased by wealth. Selected Reading Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life, one of the most mature work in English literary history. The book provides a panoramic vie of life in a small English town, Middlemarch, and its surrounding countryside in the mid-nineteenth century. It is mainly centered on the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, both of whom are shown to have great potentials and ambitions, but both fail in achieving their goals owing to the social environment as well as their own vulnerabilities. Dorothea Brooke is a beautiful, intelligent young lady of an ardent and theoretic nature. She isnt satisfied with the common fate of gentle-women. She is full of manly, lofty ideas and wants to do something great for Middlemarch. First she devotes herself to the improvement of the cottages of the farmers and then, when she sees the elderly pedant Casaubon, she decides to marry the man so as to be able to realize her ideal by helping him in his lofty pursuit of the fundamental truth about Christianity. Soon after her marriage, however, she finds herself totally disillusioned as to both the character of Casaubon and to that ambitious work of his. In the end she is able to retrieve her error and find a new way of life by marrying Will Ladislaw, the man she loves, and is content with giving him her wifely help and exercising a diffusive influence upon those around. The failure of the proud, ambitious young doctor Lydgate is mainly due to his own spot of commonness which induces him to marry the beautiful, accomplished flower, Rosamond Vincy. The seemingly perfect lady turns out a destroyer of men. Her extravagant way of life costs him not only a promising career as a great scientist but also loss of his professional conscience. The excerpt begins from Dorothea and Casaubons return from their honeymoon in Rome, where Mr. Casaubon buries himself in the library, ignoring the bride and leaving her very much alone. This is but the first taste of bitterness and disappointment for the youthful and hopeful Dorothea. Now back at home, she finds herself shut up in the cold, lifeless Lowick Manor and begins to see the impossibility of her hope. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) His major works: The Return of the Native, The Trumpet Major, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, Tess of the DUrbervilles and Jude the Obscure, known as novels of character and environment Living at the turn of the century, Hardy is often regarded as a transitional writer. In him we see the influence from both the past and the modern. As some people put it, he is intellectually advanced and emotionally traditional. In his Wessex novels there is an apparent nostalgic touch in his description of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life, which was gradually declining and disappearing as England marched into an industrial country. And with those traditional characters he is always sympathetic. On the other hand, the immense impact of

scientific discoveries and modern philosophic thought upon the man is quite obvious, too. In his works, man is shown inevitably bound by his own inherent nature and hereditary traits which prompt him to go and search for some specific happiness or success and set him in conflict with the environment. The outside nature---the natural environment or Nature herself---is shown as some mysterious supernatural force, very powerful but half-blind, impulsive and uncaring to the individuals will, hope, passion or suffering. It likes to play practical jokes upon human beings by producing a series of mistimed actions and unfortunate coincidences. Man proves impotent before Fate, however he tries, and he seldom escapes his ordained destiny. This pessimistic view of life predominates most of Hardys later works and earns him a reputation as a naturalistic writer.