The Victorian Age

(a Second Wave of Romanticism)

and Fin de siecle

Historical Background
New material developments Advancement in commercegrowth of markets, new mechanical devices Great Exhibition1851, era of prosperity Evils of Industrial Revolnslums, exploitation of labour (esp. children) Painful fight of the enlightened few for social reform

Historical Background
Intellectual developments Impatience with new ideas on the one hand; numerous intellectual activities on the other Science & religionDarwin (Origin of Species 1859) Socio-pol. theoryHerbert Spencer, JS Mill (utilitarianismBentham, grtst happiness of the grtst number, poetry is misreprnsn)

Literary Features
Morality, proprietyrevolt against the grossness of the earlier age, deference to convention (Tennyson and Dickens best examples) Revolt against convention (Carlyle, Arnold, Thackeray, Browning). Strengthened with age: Pre-Raphaelites (no morality except the authors regard for his art)

Literary Features
New ideas in science, religion, politics scepticism in In Memoriam, Arnolds meditative poetry & Carlyle New religious and ethical thought Oxford Movement (Newman) marked widespread discontent with Church of England

Literary Features
Educationcompulsory, enormous reading public, cheap printing and paperdemand for the novel International influencesAmericanBritish writers interaction, German influence (Carlyle, Arnold), Italian (Browning, Swinburne, Morris, Meredith)

Alfred Tennyson
Early poemsTimbuctoo The Lady of Shalott, The Lotos-Eaters Morte dArthur, Ulysses, Locksley Hall The Princesstheme of the new woman (ladies academy & a mutinously intellectual princess at the head) In Memoriam (1850)long series of meditations on life & death Maud

Alfred Tennyson
Idylls of the Kingtales of King Arthur and the Round Table Enoch Ardenseaman, supposedly drowned, returns to find wife married, regretfully retires without making himself known Drama in later years (e.g. Becket) Later poemssharper tone; discontent with the artifices of his time

Tennysons Style
Subjectearlier, lyric and legendary narrative; later ethical interest. No deep thinker; content to mirror the feelings / aspirations of the time CraftGreat care and skill. Mix of sound and sense (great musical quality) Keatsian descriptive power. Ornate description, pictorial effect, sumptuous imagery (created a lovely image by carefully amassing detail)

Robert Browning
Pauline introspective poem, influence of Shelley Paracelsus heros unquenchable thirst for that breadth of knowledge which is beyond the grasp of one man
Brownings predominant ideas: life without love a failure; Gods will, more than human conjecture, is behind everything

Robert Browning
Straffordplay Sordelloobscurerelationship between art and life (hero a Mantuan troubadour) Bells & Pomegranates poems & plays includg Pippa Passes (play) Group of dramatic poems where he perfected the dramatic monologue
Men & Women, Dramatis Personae Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, Caliban Upon Setebos, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Abt Vogler

Robert Browning
The Ring & the Bookdiscursive story of the murder of a young wife Pompilia by her worthless husband, told by nine different people Asolando last work
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.

Brownings Style
Obscurity; sometimes rugged, angular style At its best, noble dignity & verbal music Variety of metrical forms Cleverly manipulated rhythmic effects Didnt care for beauty of description for its own sake; beauty of expression often captured in a single image

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Woman of acute sensibilities Fervent supporter of noble causes (like Italian independence)
Prometheus Bound The Seraphim & Other Poems Sonnets from the Portuguese Aurora Leigh

Matthew Arnold
Son of the famous headmaster of Rugby School, Thomas Arnold (poem Rugby Chapel) Poems not numerous, not of high quality Classical themes in meditative & even melancholy cast (this is a modernist strain) Alienation, stoicism, despair, spiritual emptiness Apostle of sanity & culture

Arnold: Poetry
Lyrics
Marguerite poems, The Forsaken Merman, Dover Beach, Scholar Gipsy

Poetic dramas
Empedocles on Etna, Merope

Narrative poems
Tristram & Iseult, Sohrab & Rustum

Elegies
Thyrsis, Scholar Gipsy

Matthew Arnold: Prose

Prosecritical essaysare of greater value Essays in Criticism best prose (includes The Function of Criticism at the Present Time) Advocates a broad, cosmopolitan view of European literature as a basis for comparative judgements Attacks provincialism & lack of real knowledge Develops idea of criticism as a disinterested & flexible mode of thought that has application outside literature

Matthew Arnold: Prose

Wrote freely on theological & political themes
Culture & Anarchy (consideration of the dilemmas of English society. Culture as pursuit of perfection, getting to know . . . the best which has been thought and said in the world) Literature & Dogma

Wandering between two worlds, One dead, the other powerless to be born.

Other Poets
Edward Fitzgerald best-known for translation of the Rubaiyats of Persian poet Omar Khayyam Arthur Hugh Clough poems charged with the deep-seated despair & despondency of Arnolds works Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Am.) wrote too much over wide variety of topics, general standard low Whitman

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
1848painter poets like D. G. Rossetti, W. H. Hunt & John Millais formed PRB To return to the truthfulness, simplicity & spirit of devotion of Italian painting before Raphael & Italian Renaissance Others Ch. Rossetti, William Morris, Swinburne
DG Rossettis poem The Blessed Damozel
Medievalism Pictorial realism & Symbolic overtones Union of flesh & spirit Sensuousness & religiousness Robert Buchanan: Fleshly School of Poetry

Charles Dickens
early reading interest in theatre familys poor financial conditions Sketches by Boz series about London life First novel The Pickwick Papers serialized (1836) (illustrator: Seymour, then Hablot K. Browne Phiz)
Boz-Phiz tie up; explains Dickenss caricatures Enormous popularity

Oliver Twist (1837, serialized in Bentleys Magazine) Nicholas Nickleby (1838)

Charles Dickens
Master Humphreys Clock The Old Curiosity Shop Barnaby Rudge (historical) American Notes & Martin Chuzzlewit (unpopular in US) Christmas Carol Dombey & Son (Autobiography of a Steam Engine) David Copperfield (after this, decline in his art) Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, The Mystery of Edwin Drood

 Popularity

Dickens : Features of Novels

large number of novels, hasty & ill-considered work staginess of plot, unreality of characters, loose style yet rich & enduring tales

Social Reform
no systematic social or political theory aroused public interest in contemporary evils
Boarding schoolsNicholas N; WorkhousesOliver T New manufacturing systemHard Times Court of ChanceryBleak House

Spread of benevolence rather than politicl upheaval Contrived poetic justice Exaggerated characters like the Gradgrinds

 Imagination
Multiplicity of characters & situations Lower & middle classes esp. in & around London

Humour & pathos

Broad, humane, creative humour
Not subtle humour; Sometimes boisterous Satire sometimes develops into burlesque

Pathos often cheap & third-rate

Depended on devices such as elaborate descriptions of the death of children Described the horrible as in the death of Bill Sykes Painfully melodramatic as in Madame Defarge

Mannerisms
Flat characters representing one mood or one phrase
Uriah Heep (umble) Barkis (willing)

 Born in Calcutta Contributions to Punch & Frazers Magazine Vanity Fair (satire, adventures of Becky Sharp) The Yellowplush Correspondence

William Makepeace Thackeray

The Book of Snobs (Snobs Thackerays pet abhorrence) Fitzboodle Papers (biting observations of human weakness) The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon (picaresque novel) Pendennis (partly autobiographical, satire, moralizing) Henry Esmond (historical), The Newcomes, The Virginians (sequel to Henry Esmond) Poetry

William Makepeace Thackeray

Debt to Fielding Early neglect; genius blossomed slowly, as Fielding Reacting against popular novel of the day, esp. against romanticizing of rogues Adopted Fieldings method To view his characters steadily & fearlessly To record their failures as well as merits Characters rounded but no flattery (clever people are rogues; virtuous are fools) Humour & Pathos
Sneering cynicism; satire potent method of revealing truth Quiet & effective pathos, seldom sentimental

Brontes
Charlotte, Emily, Anne (Currer, Ellis, Acton Bell) Charlotte Bronte 1st novel: The Professor Jane Eyre
Love story of the plain, vital heroine told with frankness Weak, improbable plot Main characters conceived deeply

Shirley, Villette Plots largely restricted to authors own experiences High seriousness, no humour The wonder & beauty of the romantic world

Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights (1847)

The very spirit of the wild, desolate moors Chief characters conceived in gigantic proportions Passions have an elemental, poetic force Series of climaxes, sustained intensity of the novel carried to unbelievable peaks of passion Stark, unflinching realism

Poems
No Coward Soul is Mine Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee

Anne Bronte Agnes Grey The Tenant of Windfell Hall

Brontes: Their Importance

The romantic movement in poetry felt in the novel as against the detached observation of Jane Austen Brontes painted sufferings of the individual New conception of the heroine as a woman of vital strength & passionate feelings Emotion, imagination, intellect Poetic language, lyrical tone Concern with human soul (later followed by G. Eliot
& Meredith)

George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans Serious moralist
duty is the supreme law of life humble life is interesting and exalted daily choices have moral significance there is no escape from reward / punishment due to ones action)

Association with Herbert Spencer, J. S. Mill and other liberals Life-partnership with George Henry Lewes (so morally defensive??)

George Eliot
Early novels fresh
1st Adam Bede Scenes of Clerical Life

Later turned to scientific and conscious art

Romola (historical) Felix Holt (social revolt) Daniel Deronda (Hebrew race)

Later successes
Mill on the Floss Silas Marner

Characters not individual, but typical; under the same universal moral law

Thomas Hardy
Trained as architect Problematic religiosity (agnostic and belief in absence of God?) Novels set in partly real, partly dream county of Wessex The epoch just before the railways and industrial revolution Pessimistic and bitterly ironic tone Eye for poignant detail; real newspaper events used as detail Himself called his finest novels, Novels of Character and Environment Emphasis on impersonal & negative power of Fate over working class people

 Desperate Remedies; Under the Greenwood Tree (Wessex); A Pair of Blue Eyes 1st success: Far From the Madding Crowd (Wessex; title from Grays Elegy; not tragic; Bathsheba Everdene tries to manage farm herself, marries wrong person, finally marries Gabriel Oak) The Return of the Native (Clym Yeobright returns from Paris to Egdon Heath; marries Eustacia Vye; tragedies)
modernist elements: nature/society battle (Eustacia wants to leave the Heath, defy Fate, and drowns), social commentary, failure and ambition themes

 The Mayor of Casterbridge (tragedy; Wessex; The Life and Death of a Man of Character; drunkard Michael Henchard auctions off his wife and daughter; 18 yrs later he is Mayor; reunited with wife and daughter who falls in love with Donald Farfrae; decline in fortunes) The Woodlanders Tess of the dUrbervilles (controversial for it challenged the sexual mores of the day) Jude the Obscure (Jude a lower-class young man dreams of becoming a scholar. Themes -class, scholarship, religion, marriage, and the modernization of thought and society)

Tess of the dUrbervilles

The title character is a beautiful country girl, Teresa "Tess" Durbeyfield, the daughter of uneducated (and rather shiftless) peasants. During a chance encounter with an amateur genealogist (the local parson), Tess's father, John Durbeyfield, learns that he is descended from a medieval noble family, the d'Urbervilles. The elder Durbeyfields, looking for a way to wring an advantage from their illustrious ancestry, decide to send a very reluctant Tess to "claim kin" with the local nouveau-riche d'Urberville family (who in fact have no connection to the original d'Urbervilles, having appended the ancient name to their real surname of "Stoke" to create the illusion of "old" connections). Tess begins working at the d'Urberville house, and attracts the unwanted attentions of the playboy son of the household, Alec d'Urberville. In a rape or seduction (the scene is open to interpretation), Tess becomes pregnant. She returns home shortly afterward, against Alec's wishes, and bears a child whom she names "Sorrow." The baby, however, soon dies, freeing Tess to make a new start. In hopes of leaving her disgrace behind, she takes a job at a dairy forty miles away. While employed as a milkmaid, Tess meets Angel Clare, the virtuous younger son of a minister. Although the two are from different social classes, they fall in love, and Angel repeatedly urges Tess to marry him. Tess knows he perceives her as an innocent country maiden but, afraid of losing his love and admiration, finds it extraordinarily difficult to tell him her secret. At length, she agrees to the marriage. On the wedding night, after Angel asks forgiveness for a past sexual indiscretion of his own, she finally finds the courage to make her confession, thinking her "offense" to be exactly the same as his. To her horror, Angel is so deeply mortified that his attitude toward her changes completely. When she protests "I thought you loved me, my very self!" he declares "The woman I have been loving is not you" but "another woman in your shape." At this stage, certain he has been deceived by an artful hussy, Angel is completely unable to reconcile his love for Tess with his changed perception of her. The two separate a few days later; Angel tells Tess he will come to her if he decides he can endure living with her. Tess briefly returns to her family, but, finding this unbearable, she goes to work again as a day laborer on other farms. During these months, Alec d'Urberville re-enters her life, claiming to be a reformed sinner and begging her to marry him. Tess rebuffs him with loathing and continues her difficult, lonely existence, performing backbreaking field work all winter and waiting for Angel to relent. In the spring, John Durbeyfield dies. The family then loses the lease on their cottage and is made homeless, forced to travel the countryside with all their possessions searching for lodgings and employment. At this point, Alec d'Urberville re-appears and a desperate Tess finally agrees to become his mistress so that she can support her family. Angel Clare, meanwhile, has been in Brazil, where a disease nearly kills him. After much thought, he returns to England to find Tess and renew their love. He discovers her living in a seaside hotel with Alec d'Urberville, beautifully dressed but miserable. Tess, in despair, sends Angel away, and goes back to her room, weeping. When Alec scoffs at her misery and insults her husband, she stabs him to death, then forms the wild hope that the murder will somehow purify her in Angel's eyes. She goes after him and they flee together, finally consummating their marriage while hiding in a guest house. Spied by the cleaning woman, they are forced to move on, eventually reaching Stonehenge. Here, Tess asks Angel to take care of her younger sister, 'Liza-'Lu, who is "a spiritualized image of Tess." Soon after, the police arrive to make their arrest. In the last scene, as Angel and 'Liza-'Lu watch outside the walls of a prison, a black flag ascends a flagpole, signalling the completion of Tess's execution. In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, through the central themes of sex, class perceptions, material longing and family betrayal, Hardy manages to suggest the ambiguities of time and change and divine power versus human reason.

 Wessex Poems Poems about Emma (guilt at his neglect of his wife) War poems (second Boer War 1899-1902, and First World War); diversity of attitude; no clearcut opinion of war; related specific historical conflicts to a wider historical scheme, esp. in The Dynasts (epic closet drama of the Napoleonic Wars)
The Going of the Battery; Drummer Hodge; The Man He Killed

Hardy: Modernism
Class-inflected, skeptical, self-implicating tendencies Highly ambiguous language Resistance to conventional attitudes Insistence on the possibility of achieving a defiant freedom to choose and refuse Doubt, pessimism, intellectual crisis Denial of resolution, closure Unusual distortion and simplification characteristic of expressionism Tendency to mix sharply contrsting artistic modes in a single work

Prose Writers

Macaulay
Writing for recreation Balladic poems French and English history
History of England
No accuracy of fact Immensely pleasurable style

Essays on Bunyan, Addison, Bacon, Johnson, Goldsmith, Byron One-sided criticism Brilliant style and wealth of allusion

Carlyle
Scottish; German influence Connections in the US; friendship with Emerson Time of industrial revolution; but transcendental, not materialistic view of the world Heroes and Hero Worship
Leaders in religion, poetry, war and politicsDivinity (Odin), Prophet (Mahomet), Poet (Dante, Shakespeare), Priest (Luther, Knox), Man of Letters (Johnson, Rousseau, Burns), King (Cromwell, Napoleon) development of human intellect History as the biography of a few heroes; heroism as a matter of power, not of physical or moral courage

The French Revolution

Not historical in the modern sense; pictorial and dramatic

 Sartor Resartus
tailor repatched commentary on the thought and life of a German philosopher Teufelsdrckh, author of Clothes: their Origin and Influence.

Simultaneously factual and fictional, serious and satirical, speculative and historical. Ironically metafictional. Where can one find truth? The imaginary "Philosophy of Clothes" -- meaning is to be derived from phenomena, continually shifting over history, as cultures reconstruct themselves in changing fashions, power-structures, and faith-systems.

Ruskin
Social reformer; but not very successful at that Sensitiveness and sincerity Art criticisms
Seven Lamps of Architecture Modern Painters (Ruskins admiration of Turner) Stones of Venice

Political economy
Unto This Last (political economy is merely commercial; detailed plan to make a nation wealthy by increasing the health and happiness of human beings)

Sesame and Lilies (on books & womanly character)