The Victorian Age

Key points of the period:

- Morality: moral was such an important value through the 800, that everything was filled with it: literature, art, education, social life. Every moment of the middle class life was linked with moral. - Respectability: another fundamental point for the middle class: it was the distinction between people from the middle classes and poor people. - Philanthropy: it was caused for two main reason: gain a certain role in the society by showing good manners and good deeds, and actually help the others. This help was addressed to every kind of poverty from fallen women to drunk men. - Family FATHER as a figure sent by God to guide the family and provide money and respectability. He guaranted the wellness of the family and was a source of authority. MOTHER and women in general were relied to the education of children and managing the home and the servants. - Repression of sexuality: sex was almost banished from the every day dictionary, and in the same way all the references to sexual subjects were banished from being published and there was the denunciation of the nudity in art and literature. - Patriotism: a strong feeling of patriotism was growing in England such as in the other countries of Europe, although it was filled with a strong idea of racial superiority. There emerged a powerful belief that there was races in the world, divided by physical and intellectual differences and some was better than the other. This idea became powerful with the imperialistic politic and colonial power that England got in this period. There was a sort of code of value, which embodied the most important movements in that time. The most important credence were Evangelism and Utilitarianism, really different one from the other: the former brought a strong enthusiasm in the church, a dedication to humanitarian and social reforms, importance of Bible reading at home; the latter was based on Benthams principles, who thought that every problem could be overcome through reason and everything had to be done in the interest of the middle class. But the INDIFFERENCE that this vision promoted was widely criticized by many intellectuals, including Charles Dickens. They believed that happiness was a state of mind and soul, that the society was a large group of people and that progress became by a strong mental energy. In this period was destroyed a lot of scientific and religious truth by new science discoveries: uncertainty arose in a new view of universe. Darwin, with his work On the origin of the species discarded the vision of the Christian creationism and gives the possibility to read his studies in a social way: the strongest survive and the weakest deserves to fall. This conception was borrowed by Spencer who, with Maltus, applied it to the social life, and his idea was known as Social Darwinism. There was a lot of changing also in the economic world: Marx with his Capital did a lot of researches about the new industrialism, which oppressed the workers and tore them apart from the society.

The Victorian novel

Between the Victorian age there was a communion of interest between the writers and their readers: at frt, because they all were from middle class, so they shared a lot of interests; also, the writers were in a direct connection with the audience, because the most of the stories were published on the tabloids and periodicals that filled those years. So the intellectuals could always alter the story, according to his success or failure, because of this strict link with the readers. The most important genre was the prose: the greatest literary achievement in the age is to be found in the novel, which became more realistic and

analytical, social and humanitarian. The writers aim was also to reflect in their novels the social changes that had been in progress. The voice of the omniscient narrator allowed them to describe the good and the evil in the society, and to build a sort of wall between what was needed to be done and what was to avoid. The setting was the city and they were focused on the creation of the character. There were a lot of types of novel, but the most diffused was the humanitarian novel, which could be realistic or fantastic and can be mostly found between Dickens works. Also, the largest part of readers was formed by women, because had a lot of free time and red more than men. Altought they were forbidden to write and publish books, women usually used a pen name to have their works published. Throughout the 19th century, novelists cultivated the so called cinematic technique, that someway was a anticipated cinema: they renounced to some of the freedom they had to express their stories with a visual effect: they used the aerial view, the zooming in, the close up and the panoramic view. This technique was clearly shown in Thomas Hardys works.

Charles Dickens
Born: 1812, in Portsmouth. Died: 1870 Studies: none, he begun to work when he was 12. Work: he begun to write for some papers and he signed his articles with the pen name Boz. Than he became the editor of a few magazines, on which he published his and others novels. Novels: Oliver Twist (1838), David Copperfield (1849-50), Hard Times (1854). Dickens novels were influenced by Bible, fairy tales, fables and nursery rhymes. His plots are well planned even if sometimes are a bit artificial and episodic; that happened because weekly instalments discouraged unified plotting and created pressure on Dickens. He based the creation of his character on the middle class, tough often satirized. He wrote about the social and moral corruption of his time and underlined the public abuses that happened in the city describing the evil and the misery of London and then suddenly an amusing sketch of the town. He was always on the side of the poor and the outcast; he exaggerated the peculiar social characteristics of all the classes, using their own voices and dialogues. The most important characters in his novels were children: they were the moral teachers in a world in which adults were mean and corrupted. The children were the example, and their parents or the adults around them needed to imitate them. His task was never to induce revolution, he only wanted to alleviate sufferings and spread common intelligence in the country, in all different classes alike.

Oliver Twist (1838)

The plot is quite simple: Oliver is a poor boy from unknown parents, who is raised in a workhouse and passes through many adventures implicating burglary, unhappiness, fights and eventually kidnapping. He is surrounded by people who dont care about him at first, like the people who sell him, or his master who is cruel with him; or the gang of nasty boys who force him to pickpocket and eventually his half-brother and the people who kidnap him. But he also meets good people: for example the old gentleman who helps him with the gang, or the family that adopts and loves him in the end. There is a happy ending, but the story (well described by the surname of the boy, twist) is filled with scary and unhappy moments.

The main setting is London, which is described in many different ways: there is the parochial world of the workhouse, then the criminal world and finally the respectable world. The first one is filled with people who belong to the lower middle class, cruel and insensible; the second is ruled from poverty and misery; the last one in the world of the Victorian middle-class, where reign moral values and human dignity. (t 90 91). David Copperfield (1849-50) This novel is the narration in his maturity of David himself, who remembers his life and recollects different moments, which can be divided in three different parts: - childhood and young age, his birth and early studies; - later youth and early manhood, from looking for a job to the death of his first wife Dora; - his maturity and the new marriage with Agnes. The first years of his life were happy and filled with tranquility, but as his stepfather came into his life, everything got destroyed. His mother was led to death and he was sent away to Salem House. Than he is consigned to a wine warehouse, where he worked in horrible conditions. He ran away from his destiny, going to his aunts house, in Dover. Here he concluded his education and started working, at first as a secretary, than as a successful writer. He married Dora Spenlow, but the marriage was a failure. He lost his entire inheritance from his aunt, and his friends betrayed him. Then he married his predestinate love, Agnes, after his firsts wife death and his own symbolical death and rebirth. This kind of novel is defined Bildungsroman, a novel in which is described the life of the main character from childhood to maturity, through a quest for identity. The character represents the author itself, who put a lot of his past in this work. David is always one stage, so every scene is proposed through his consciousness and presence. All the characters are described in a realistc and romantic way: everyone has a particular trait, and all the behaviours are exaggerated. The themes in this novel are introduced in the main 3 chapters: - the struggling for the weak in the society: he is an orphan, a victim; he suffers for loneliness and poverty; - the cruelty from adults to children; - bad living condition for the poor; - importance of social status, which David will finally gain in his maturity; - love and affection, that led to marriage. The figure of David is very controversial, because he cant be defined as a classic neither as a modern hero, because he has not a strong morality, nor a great soul, but he is firmely determined to reach his objectives. But we can see that he improves his beahviors by living all the circumstances that happen to him. In this novel there is a mix of realism and enchantment: people and places seem to be really realistic and material too, but everything is pervaded by a sort of magic, like in a fairy tale. We can see that the aunt assumed a sort of godmother role, by giving David everything he needs; on the contrary, his stepfather and his daughter are depicted as ogres; Heep, Wickfields clerk, is the embodiment of the devil, and David is attracted by him, because represents the human attraction to evil. In fact, difficulties and dangers just fade away and disappear like mist, and this miraculous removal is followed by a quick sense of peace and tranquility. (t 92 93 )

Hard Times (1854)

The novel is set in an imaginary town, called Coketown. The main character is Thomas Gradgrind, who raises two children basing their education on his theories about facts and statistics, and repressing their feelings. He marries his daughter to Bounderby, in whose bank Tom is assumed as an employer. But he is selfish and lazy, and after a robbery he is sent in exile from the country. The novel is divided in 3 books, each one presenting a different aspect of the story. This work is in fact a critique of the materialism and the Utilitarianism, because he said that the Europe of the 19th century was turning men into robots.

Thomas Hardy
Born: 1840, in Dorchester. Died: 1928 Studies: he dropped studies at first, but then he started to study architecture in London. Work: He started to work while he was studying and published his first novel in 1872. He tried to write any sort of genre, but at the end of his life he chose poetry. Novels: Far From the Madding crowd (1874), Tess DUbervilles (1891), Jude the Obscure (1895). All his works are filled of considerations about life, men and universe, expressed in a deterministic way. He was, at least at the beginning of his life, a Christian just like as the rest of his familys members, but in his adulthood and maturity he started to deny the existence of God, because of his readings (Greek tragedies and classics) and because of the new way of thinking that was largely diffused in the late 18th. In particular, he started questioning himself when he first red The origin of species in 1860: he could see no intelligence direction of the Universe and he thought that everything was only controlled by the INSENSIBLE CHANCE. So, humans had no power and human life was only tragedy. Hardys Wessex its a semi-fictional region of the south-west corner of England, but it transcends the topographical limits representing a sort of ideal place for the man in the universe. Difficulty of being alive Its the man theme we can find in Hardys works. Being alive involves being an existence, a passion, a structure of sensations and being part of something: live among the others, in a world, surrounded by other men, with different circumstances that modify our way of thinking. Nature Nature in a co-protagonist with the characters: it is indifferent to human sufferings, but it also implies regeneration, rebirth and new life. A character absolutely complementary and with a huge affinity with nature is Tess. She has a urge to live really similar to the animals one. Christianity Hardy thinks that religion is no longer able to fulfill mens life and needs. Hardys language is rich, detailed and controlled: is aboundant in symbolism. He uses a lot of metaphors and personifications, to express Nature. The language of senses has an important role in art: things are descripted through shape, touch, smell, color, sound. The most powerful sense is sight: the characters watch each other and nature, to discover something, and they are watched in return. His style is strict and rigorous, with a large use of symmetry and a blend of dialogue, description and narration. He always uses the Victorian omniscient narrator, and usually also a hypothetical observer, with whom the reader is invited to identify himself. He anticipates the cinema using the zooming in and the camera eye.

Tess DUberville (1891)

Tess is a girl who starts to work in the DUbervilles estate to amend the financial situation. She is secretely a descendant of this family, but none knows it. Her master, Alec DUberville tries to seduce her: she refuses, but a night he takes advantage on her. She finds herself pregnant, so she runs away. The child dies soon after the birth. Tess leaves her fathers house and accepts another job as a milkmaid. In this new village she meets Angel, a clergymans son; they fall in love and get married. She wants to tell him about her past, but with no results. When he finds out, he leaves her and goes to Brazil. She finds another job and finally agrees to marry Alec; in the meantime Angel comes back from Brazil and finds her, saying hes forgiven her. So, she kills Alec and flees with Angel. In the end, police finds her, and she is arrested and finally executed. Morality a) changes according to time and place b) is distorted in the Victorian frame of mind c) opposition between mens and natures laws. Moral issues with Tess pregnancy: shes not an outcast, shes still a member of the community, but Tess fells guilty. Religious belief is always questioned: Hardy thinks that man has a spirituality hopeless state. (t 102 103)

Jude the Obscure (1895)

Jude Fawley is a guy from a poor village and his dream is to study at the University of Christminster, based on the Oxford experience of the author. His marriage ends disastrously and he goes to Christminster; there she meets his cousin, and they fall in love. They build a new family, with the child of Jude and Arabella, called Father Time, and other two children of the new couple. They refuse marriage, but still live togheter, until they are oppressed by poverty and by the disapproval of the people of the village. The family is tore apart by poverty: the mother and the children live toghether in a room, Jude in a tavern. The worst situation is reached with the death of the children. Jude the Obscure Jude is called this way because he is always obscure for the society, because he does not exist for the others, hes ever seen by them. He is a self-spectre, yet during the studies and his career. He is the typical figure of the orphan, he is forbidden to reach his goals, and all his hopes and dreams are disappointed. Sue Bridehead She is the ideal of New Woman, the woman who struggles for independency. She shares the sensibility of Jude and his ideals, but in the end all the freedom and strength she promised crumbled into the acceptance of the society. This work represents a departure from the Victorianism, and by eliminating the omniscient narrator with the huge amount of dialogue between the character, Hardy is able to show the character without judging them or giving the readers a different version of the story, seen through a wall of Victorian prejudices. (t 104 105).

Oscar Wilde
Born: 1854, in Dublin. Died: 1900 Studies: Trinity College in Dublin, then he was in Oxford and he gained a first class degree in Classic distinguished himself for his eccentricity. Works: Poems (1881), published at his own expense, an American tour, few stories for children, like The Canterville Ghost (1880s), and his only and famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). He developed an interest in drama and rediscovered the comedy of manners, with his masterpiece The Importance of being Earnest. Wilde was known as a dandy, an eccentric man, who spreads all around him the new ideas he learned and bore: he accepted the theory Art for Arts sake, which derived from the Aesthetic theory. Wilde used to explain the Aestheticism as a search for the beautiful, a science that bounded together paintings, sculpture, and poetry, different forms of the same truth. After the U.S tour, Wilde married Constance Lloyd, who bore him two children: at this point he was noted as a great talker and his presence became a social event. In the 1891 he met the young Lord Alfred Douglas. This relationship signed the end of his literary and social life: because of this homosexual affair, he was sent in prison for two years; during his years in prison he wrote De Profundis, a letter published posthumously. His last work, The Ballad of reading Gaol was published under his prison name C.3.3, while he was in exile in France. He was a dandy and a rebel: the figure of the dandy has to be distinguished from the bohemian artist: the bohemians were artist who wanted to feel themselves near the people of the rural proletariat; on the contrary, Wilde was a member of the middle class, he was a bourgeois author. He remains a member of the class and expresses his individualism through beauty and clothes. His elegance was a symbol of superiority of spirit; he is an individualist, he demands for freedom. He is a rebel because he says that there is no moral or immoral books, because as he says in the Preface of his novel a book can be well written or badly written. This is a rejection of the didacticism that characterized the Victorian novel of the first half of the century. The Art for Arts sake was a sort of moral imperative, because only in this way can be prevented the murder of the soul. The artist is an alien in the materialistic world, his pursuit is beauty. Eventually, his ostentation of superiority turned him into an outcast. The picture of Dorian Gray (1891) The novel is set in the late 19th century, and the protagonist is Dorian Gray, a young handsome guy, who fascinates a painter, Basl Hallaward, who paints a beautiful portrait, his masterpiece. Dorian, in this way, gains the eternal youth and the sings of the age appears on the portrait. He lives only for pleasure and makes use of everybody to obtain everything that he wanted. At the end, Basil finds out the secret of Dorian and is scared: so Dorian kills him and tries to stab the portrait to free himself, but mysteriously kills himself. At the very moment of the death, the young man begins to turn older, and the portrait suddenly becomes young and new. Dorians face is eventually described as withered, wrinkled, and loathsome. The story is told by an unobtrusive narrator, and the perspective adopted allows the reader to identify himself with the character. The settings are well described through the senses and each character reveals himself through its actions and dialogues.

This is a profoundly allegorical novel: its a rendition in th 19th century of the story of Faust, a man who sold his soul to the devil to accomplish his own desires. As well as Faust, Dorian is full of dreams to satisfy, and he relies on art. But, in this story the man de and the art survive, a demonstration of all the theories proposed by Wilde. The conception of the body as a reflection of the soul is reverted: once a moral man was beautiful and an ugly man had to be bad, too; in this novel a beautiful and young man is mean and cruel. But the moral is that Dorian has to face his destiny: he cant avoid Death forever, and eventually he dies and the portrait stays alive, sign of the immortality of the art. (t 111 112 113 114) The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) This is Wildes most famous play: its about two young men, Earnest Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. The first one is actually called Jack, and was adopted by a man who made him the guardian of his grand daughter Cecily Cardew. He invented the character of Earnest to facilitate his social life: he goes in the city to meet Gwendolen Fairfax, the girl whom he wants to marry. The other one, Algernon, wants to marry Cecily and invented the character of an invalid friend, to meet the girl he wants to date. They presented each other with the name of Earnest, so both girls find out that they seem to be engaged with the same man, called Earnest. At the end everything is solved with the help of Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism. This plays represents an aristocratic world in which the best kept secrets are the ones that everyone knows. Everything is fiction and everyone knows it: the character here depicted are typical members of the Victorian society, they are middle classes arrogant men and women, concerned with money and fake. Lady Bracknell embodies the perfect stereotype of the Victorian aristocrat: the only thing that matters is marriage, and Wilde makes fun of this, because he conceived it as a practise surrounded by hypocrisy and absurdity. The play has a happy ending, but the reader is able to see that marriage and values are here tied up together in a destructive way. The main feature of the play is wit: Wilde built everything on it, the dialogues, the facts, the entire story. The title is a pun itself, because the wrong name Earnest evokes the adjective earnest, honest and truthful but none of the character embodies these aspects. The most important part of the story are the dialogues: a character does not exist if he does not talk. Its not important what they say, bout how. Imagination is another important element. (t 115) The Ballad of Reading Gaol(1898) He signed at first this poem with his prison reference number: C.3.3. This poem is the end of his career, started 20 years before. It is made up of 109 stanzas, grouped into six sections, and described a hanging which took place in 1896 and which Wilde himself witnessed. (t 116)

The Modern Age

In the first decades of the 20th century, artist developed a movement called Modernism. It was a new way to mean the words art, and the world itself: this term embodies a lot of new way of thinking, from painting to literature. Main feature: - intentional distortion of shapes; - breaking down of limitations; - uncertainty of the perception of reality; - absence of the old omniscient narrator, and large use of the stream of consciousness; - distinction between genre blurred; - a lot of importance given to the sound of the words; - a tendency toward reflection and self-consciousness; - minimalism; - no distinction between high and low culture.

The War Poets