Paper-105 Assignment: Victorian Era

  Name: Drashti Joshi

Batch: M.A. Sem.1 (2022-2024)

Enrollment N/o.: 4069206420220016

Roll N/o.: 06

Subject code & Paper N/o.: 22395- Paper 105: History of English Literature- From- 1350 to 1900

E-mail Address: drashtijoshi582@gmail.com

Submitted to: Smt. S.B. Gardi Department of English- M.K.B.U.

Date of submission: 7th November, 2022

Victorian Era:

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the first English monarch to see her name given to the period of her reign whilst still living. The Victorian Age was characterized by rapid change and developments in nearly every sphere - from advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge to changes in population growth and location. Over time, this rapid transformation deeply affected the country's mood: an age that began with a confidence and optimism leading to economic boom and prosperity eventually gave way to uncertainty and doubt regarding Britain's place in the world. Today we associate the nineteenth century with the Protestant work ethic, family values, religious observation and institutional faith.

For the most part, nineteenth century families were large and patriarchal. They encouraged hard work, respectability, social deference and religious conformity. While this view of nineteenth century life was valid, it was frequently challenged by contemporaries. Women were often portrayed as either Madonna's or whores, yet increasing educational and employment opportunities gave many a role outside the family.

Politics were important to the Victorians; they believed in the perfection of their evolved representative government, and in exporting it throughout the British Empire. This age saw the birth and spread of political movements, most notably socialism, liberalism and organized feminism. British Victorians were excited by geographical exploration, by the opening up of Africa and Asia to the West, yet were troubled by the intractable Irish situation and humiliated by the failures of the Boer War. At sea, British supremacy remained largely unchallenged throughout the century.

During the Victorian heyday, work and play expanded dramatically. The national railway network stimulated travel and leisure opportunities for all, so that by the 1870s, visits to seaside resorts, race meetings and football matches could be enjoyed by many of this now largely urban society. Increasing literacy stimulated growth in popular journalism and the ascendancy of the novel as the most powerful popular icon.

The progress of scientific thought led to significant changes in medicine during the nineteenth century, with increased specialization and developments in surgery and hospital building. There were notable medical breakthroughs in an aesthetics - famously publicized by Queen Victoria taking chloroform for the birth of her son in 1853 - and in antiseptics, pioneered by Joseph Lister (1827-1912). The public's faith in institutions was evident not only in the growth of hospitals but was also seen in the erection of specialized workhouses and asylums for the most vulnerable members of society.

Whilst this brief overview can only partially summarize some characteristics of the nineteenth century, it does illustrate that society was disparate and that no one feature can serve to give a definitive view of what it meant to be "Victorian". Rather, it is better perhaps to consider the multifarious and diverse research that has evolved in recent years and make up your own mind. This History in Focus may serve to begin that process.(Shepherd)

From 1887 onward there followed a rapid consolidation of the Empire. The work of Seeley and Froude in one sphere of literary activity, of Kipling in another, and the strong personality of Mr. Chamberlain, backed by his indefatigable labour, combined to draw the outposts of the realm into a closer union. "The sense of possession," said Mr. Chamberlain in 1897, "has now given place to the sentiment of kinship. We think and speak of them as part of ourselves, as part of the British Empire, united to us, although they may be dispersed throughout the world, by ties of kindred, religion, of history and of language, and joined to us by the seas that formerly seemed to divide us." In recent years, two events have brought the people of Great and Great Britain even closer together. One was the Queen's Diamond Jubilee of 1897, which united the Empire in one vast pageantry in honor of its beloved Mistress. Another was the South African War, which so completely falsified the opinion of Mr. John Morley, who, seeking some years ago for a simile of the utterly impossible, said (I quote from memory) : "As well might one believe that New Zealand would spend her blood and treasure to uphold British supremacy in South Africa."* If the war has disclosed many defects in the British system, it has shown also that, when the British Empire goes to war, its sons are but sorry pupils for those who write patriotism a crime. There is not a single British land from the St. Lawrence to the Hugli, from Carlisle Bay to Spencer's Gulf, but has offered its best blood to the cause. The Canadian farmer, the West Indian planter, the Australian station-hand, English Earl and Indian Prince have nobly fulfilled the poet's challenge:

"Shedders of blood! When has our own been spared? (Ireland )

EXPLOSIVE FORCES:

When the 18-year-old Victoria came to the throne in 1837, victories over Revolutionary and Napoleonic France had increased Britain’s influence and standing abroad.

But there were intense pressures too. A rising population, rural unemployment, and migration to the towns, together with the horrendous conditions in which many people lived and worked, meant that the country’s often archaic political system and ways of organizing itself were coming under immense strain.

This conflict between a small, conservative state and the explosive forces of change unleashed by the Industrial Revolution, continued throughout Victoria’s reign.

POLITICAL CHANGE:

England was already in the throes of limited reform: of Parliament, the treatment of Catholics, the way poverty was dealt with, and how the Church was run. To survive, the Tories reinvented themselves as Conservatives under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel. The Liberals gradually emerged from the old aristocratic Whig Party. For both parties, low taxation and minimal state interference were the watchwords.

Ever pragmatic, England thus avoided the turbulence that swept over the Continent during the ‘age of reform’ that culminated in the year of revolutions, 1848. By contrast, England saw only the Chartist movement – democratic in its aims for reforms to the electoral system, peaceable and moderate in its approach. Nevertheless it was ruthlessly quashed, and the extension of the right to vote beyond a small élite was achieved only slowly.

FAMINE AND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION:

The 1840s, which saw years of poor harvests, were known as the Hungry Forties. Most catastrophic of all was the Irish Famine of 1845–9, during which well over a million people died and some two million emigrated. Initially caused by potato blight, the famine was exacerbated by the British government’s laissez-faire policy of economic non-interference.

It was particularly shocking that this could occur in a land governed by Britain, supposedly the most progressive and prosperous nation in the world.

At the same time the pace of change, already fast, was quickening thanks to a revolutionary expansion in communications. The growth, from the 1840s onwards, of railway and steamship networks – combined with the invention of the electric telegraph – underpinned Britain’s economic success.

In 1851 the Great Exhibition was held in London. The next two decades and beyond saw a tremendous economic upswing. For the first time in history, population growth and economic expansion went hand in hand.

EMPIRE:

The idea that Britain’s foreign policy during the period was one of isolation is often misunderstood or overestimated. As the empire expanded, British soldiers in fact fought wars in almost every year of Victoria’s reign.

The empire over which the sun never set consisted not only of the colonies of conquest and settlement – with India the jewel in the imperial crown – but also of a vast informal empire of free trade, within which British investors and traders dominated foreign markets.

By the 1880s, when Britain responded to international competition by scrambling for new colonies in Africa alongside its European rivals, imperialism had become a matter of national policy. In 1901 the British Empire extended over about one-fifth of the earth’s land surface.

At the same time, empire had become a source of pride for most British people, and its influence was felt in daily life in numerous ways: the increasing range of raw materials and foods available; the prevalence of members of the armed forces and colonial service in Victorian society; and the great many people who went to sea, emigrated, or had relations who did. (“An Introduction to Victorian England”)

POETRY:

Poetry was one of the most popular genres of the Victorian period. The Romantic poets, particularly William Wordsworth (who lived through the beginning of the period, dying in 1850) were revered and widely quoted. The Victorians experimented with narrative poetry, which tells a story to its audience, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856), an entire novel written in verse. The poem tells the story of Aurora Leigh, a woman who seeks a career as a poet after rejecting an inheritance and a male suitor, and so tells, in part, the story of Barrett Browning’s own struggles to make her poetic way in the world. Narrative poetry could also be much shorter, like Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” (1862), which recounts how a woman is seduced into eating beautiful fruit sold by goblins and how her sister saves her after she sickens.

Victorian poets also developed a new form called the dramatic monologue, in which a speaker recites the substance of the poem to an audience within the poem itself. Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” (1842), in which the Duke of Ferrara describes how he (probably) killed his last wife to the man who is arranging his next marriage, is one of the most famous examples of a dramatic monologue. Alfred, Lord Tennyson also used the form in “Ulysses” (1842), in which Ulysses recounts his reasons for setting out on a last voyage to the men with whom he will sail.

Tennyson also wrote lyric, or non-narrative poetry, including what is perhaps the most famous poem of the Victorian era, In Memoriam A. H. H. (1849). Tennyson wrote this book-length sequence of verses to commemorate the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam. The poem contains some of the most famous lines in literature, including “’This better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all,” and was widely quoted in the Victorian period.

Poets like Tennyson, the Browning's, and Rossetti frequently wrote poetry in order to create a powerful emotional effect on the reader, but some Victorian poets also wrote simply to entertain. Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear wrote nonsense or light verse, a genre that plays with sounds and rhythm in melodious ways. Famous examples include Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” (1871), a poem that uses many invented words to narrate the killing of a monster called the Jabberwock, and Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat” (1871), which describes the adventures of the title characters.

THE GOTHIC, SENSATION FICTION, AND MELODRAMA:

Although different kinds of realism (see below) dominated the novel in the Victorian period, the eighteenth-century tradition of the Gothic lived on, particularly in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). Jane Eyre uses many Gothic conventions: a young, pure female heroine; a sinister house filled with mysteries; and a handsome, brooding older man – but within a Victorian frame. Jane Eyre must make her own way in the world as a governess, and must also pursue what is right for her despite Victorian gender and class conventions.

Jane Eyre uses some Gothic tropes, but sensation fiction (so named because its suspenseful plots inspired dangerous “sensations” in readers) more fully embraced the surprise and horror typical of the Gothic. Sensation fiction typically centers on deception and bigamy, in which men or women are lured into fake marriages – and worse. Willkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1859), which tells the story of two women who look strangely alike and are substituted for each other at various points, is perhaps the most famous example. Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), in which a supposedly deranged woman tries to kill her husband after he realizes that she has married another man, also shocked Victorian readers.

One of the aims of sensation fiction was to surprise and trouble readers by challenging social conventions, but another Victorian genre, melodrama, achieved popularity by upholding popular values. Melodramas divide characters starkly into those who are vicious and those who are virtuous. They evoke emotion in readers and viewers by making virtuous characters the subject of vicious plots. These were some of the most popular theatrical productions of the period.

NOVELS AND DIFFERENT KINDS OF REALISM:

Although poetry and plays were important in Victorian cultural life, the period is known as the great age of the novel. The serial form of publishing, in which instalments of a novel were released at regular intervals, encouraged engaged audiences. Victorian books are also famously long. In part, this was because improvements in papermaking and printing technology made printing books much cheaper. The rise of lending libraries, which would individually lend out volumes of a book (a book like Jane Eyre was a “triple decker,” or had three volumes) also contributed to the great length of Victorian novels. A three-volume book could be read by three readers at the same time, while a one-volume book could only be read by one. Lending libraries made more money on triple deckers, and their encouragement helped that form become dominant in the Victorian marketplace.

Realism, which aims to portray realistic events happening to realistic people in a realistic way, was the dominant narrative mode of the Victorian novel – but it had many variants.

Satirical realism:

William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847-48) best exemplifies satirical realism, a mode that emphasises the worst qualities of each character and suggests that the world, or “Vanity Fair,” is a dark and unfair place. The novel follows the adventures of Becky Sharpe, a scheming and amoral heroine who manipulates all those around her (and does very well for herself), in contrast to Amelia Sedley, a trusting and virtuous young woman who struggles to find happiness.

Psychological realism:

Psychological realism emphasizes portraying the rich inner life of characters – their thoughts, feelings, motivations, anxieties, etc. In George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-72) for instance, she portrays the progress of several marriages in a small provincial town. Dorothea Brooke, the heroine, is an idealist who marries an elderly scholar, Casaubon, in the hopes of helping him with his work. But she becomes disillusioned and finds herself attracted to his nephew Will Ladislaw.

Social realism:

Social realism focuses on the foibles, eccentricities, and remarkable characteristics of people, who are frequently caricatured. Often comic (and sometimes tragicomic), it is best exemplified by the work of Charles Dickens. In novels like Oliver Twist (1837-39) in which Dickens uses the plight of the orphan Oliver to critique a heartless orphanage overseen by eccentric bumblers, Dickens both criticised the social system and created a vibrant world of memorable characters. In his masterpiece Bleak House (1852-53) Dickens takes aim at the bureaucratic excesses of the court system as seen in the never-ending court case Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.

Industrial novels:

The rapid transformation of Britain into an industrial society prompted some writers to write novels which exposed the difficult plight of the working class. In Dickens’ Hard Times (1854), the millworker hero, Stephen Blackpool, faces ostracism after his refusal to join the millworkers’ union. Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855) uses the viewpoint of Margaret Hale, an emigrant from southern England to a northern industrial city, to address the plight of millworkers.

The novel and empire:

As Dickens and Gaskell focused on important domestic issues, other writers turned their attention to Britain’s rapidly-expanding empire, which they took as a subject for novels and poetry. Rudyard Kipling celebrated British rule in India with his novel Kim (1901), in which the young Kim becomes a British spy in India. Joseph Conrad took a more skeptical stance toward imperialism in Heart of Darkness (1899), in which the sailor Marlow journeys through the Belgian Congo. Although ostensibly about the Belgians rather than the British Empire, Marlow informs his fellow sailors that his tale applies to Britain as well.

JOURNALISM AND PERIODICAL WRITING:

With the cheaper price of printing, British journalism and periodical writing flourished and formed a significant part of Victorian literary production. Essayists like John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Babington Macauley, John Stuart Mill, and Matthew Arnold all wrote famous works of nonfiction prose that analyzed British history and critiqued current trends in British society. Professional female journalists like Harriet Martineau and prominent reformers like Florence Nightingale also used the periodical press to raise awareness about important issues in British society. Finally, important figures in British literature were also frequent contributors to the periodical press. Dickens ran a literary magazine called Household Words, while Eliot edited the Westminster Review for several years.

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE:

The nineteenth century is frequently seen as the golden age of children’s literature. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) narrate the story of Alice, who finds herself in a place called “Wonderland” populated by grinning cats, mad hatters, and an evil queen. J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911) similarly imagines a fantastical place of mermaid lagoons, evil pirates, and fairy magic.

THE FIN DE SIÈCLE (End of the century):

The last part of the Victorian period, roughly 1880-1900, is referred to as the “fin de siècle,” a French term that means “end of the century.” Novels from this period tend to be more melancholy and bleak than earlier Victorian works, which conventionally had happy endings. Thomas Hardy’s famously depressing novels Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1892) and Jude the Obscure (1895), for instance, describe how their protagonists’ lives are ruined by social forces. Tess gives birth to a child out of wedlock, which causes the husband she later married to shun her when he finds out. Jude Fawley’s dreams of becoming a student at an elite university are destroyed both by his low social status as a stoneworker and by a disastrous early marriage.

Fin de siècle literature is also characterized by a move away from the forms of realism that had dominated the earlier part of the century and into genre fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, made his first appearance in 1886. Science fiction also became popular in the fin de siècle, as H. G. Wells imagined future worlds in The Time Machine (1895) and an alien invasion in The War of the Worlds (1897).

At the same time that Hardy envisioned bleak outcomes of human striving and Doyle and Wells developed new genres, Oscar Wilde wrote hilariously witty plays like The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) which describes the comic endeavors of two men who are trying to marry two women, both of whom are determined to marry men named Ernest. Although Wilde was the toast of the literary town at the time of the play’s production, he was soon prosecuted for sodomy and thrown into jail. His “Ballad of Reading Gaol” (1897) is a mournful evocation of prison life and the death of dreams, as the refrain reiterates: “all men kill the thing they love.”

Work cited: 

Adams, James Eli. A History of Victorian Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012.

“An Introduction to Victorian England.” English Heritage, https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/victorian/. Accessed 6 November 2022.

Ireland, Alleyne. “The Victorian Era of British Expansion.” The North American Review, vol. 172, no. 533, 1901, pp. 560–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25105153. Accessed 6 Nov. 2022.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age. Ed. Carol T. Christ and Catherine Robson. New York: Norton, 2006.

Shepherd, Anne. “The Victorian Era.” History in Focus: Overview of The Victorian Era (article), April 2001, https://archives.history.ac.uk/history-in-focus/Victorians/article.html#one. Accessed 6 November 2022.

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