A TWO FACED REALITY

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

During the reign of Queen Victoria, Great Britain was brought in contact with various cultures.
In the last decades of the 19th century, the British Empire occupied an area of 4 million square miles and more than
400 million people were ruled by the British.
It may be said that Britain's imperial activity begun during the second half of 16th century. This was the time when
Queen Elizabeth I, and later James I, encouraged 'plantations' - the settling of English and Scottish people in Ireland
on land forcibly taken from the native Irish. In 1600, Elizabeth I also founded the British East India Company, a
trading business that was eventually to rule over much of today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
After the 1857 Indian Mutiny, India came under direct rule by Britain, and Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of
India, in 1877.
During the Victorian Age, the British also occupied Australia, New Zealand, some parts of China and expanded their
possessions in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Expansionist activity reached a crescendo with the 'scramble for Africa'. This was a race among European powers to
establish territorial rights to those parts of the continent as yet unclaimed. Britain took over Egypt, to protect its
routes to India through Suez Canal, and then Sudan.
Because the British came into contact with different areas at different times, they were able to shape imperial and
colonial policy gradually, adapting to different realities and producing an empire united in name but varied in fact.
In the late 19th century civic pride and national fervor were frequent in Britain. Patriotism was influenced by ideas of
racial superiority. The British had only to look at their empire, at the variety of races and peoples they governed, to
find confermation on this view.
During this period there was a belief that the 'races' of the world were divided by fundamental physical and
intellectual differences: that someone were destinated to be led by others. It was thus an obligation imposed by God
on the British to impose their superior way of life, their institutions, laws and politics on native peoples throughout
the world ('the white man's burden').

1877, QUEEN VICTORIA BECOMES EMPRESS OF INDIA

The title of Empress of India was given to Queen Victoria in 1877 when India was incorporated into the British
Empire.
When Victoria died and her son Edward VII ascended the throne, his title became Emperor of India. The title
continued until India became independent from the United Kingdom.

CHARLES DARWIN AND EVOLUTION

In the second half of the 19th century, Britain reached the peak of its power abroad, however some changes,
regarding fields such as scientific achievements, industrialization, sexuality and religion, and a growing pessimism
began to affect the Victorian Age people’s mind.
In 1859, Charles Darwin published his radical evolutionary theory of “natural selection” and in “On the Origin of
Species”.
According to his theory, the Bible version was wrong and the strongest survived while the weakest deserved to be
defeated.

DARWIN’S “THE DESCENT OF MAN AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX”

In this work he developed the theory of evolution and natural selection according to which:
- All living creatures in existence have taken their forms through a slow process of change and adaption;
- Favorable physical conditions determine the survival of a species, unfavorable ones its extinction;
- Man evolved, like any other animal, from less highly organized forms, namely from a monkey.

DARWIN VS GOD
Darwin wasn’t the first man who found a connection between men and monkeys/apes; but he was the first who
answered to the questions “How were new species formed?”, “Where do they come from?”, “What’s their origin?”.
Furthermore, it’s not true that his book caused protests and a historic clash between science and religion, since the
people who read it weren’t almost at all biblical literalists.
Darwin affirmed that new species were not somehow created in each new geological age to fit the new conditions;
instead, they were the lineal descendants of earlier species, that gradually changed as the environment changed
around them. Thus all living and extinct species were related on a single genealogical family tree, the tree of life.
Darwin’s wide variety of arguments and evidence persuaded many that he had found the hidden bond that
naturalists had been seeking which explained how all the different genera and species were related.
Others thought that his view was an attack to God.
As the years passed, the fact of Darwinian evolution (the common descent of species) became increasingly
recognized. Yet, his natural selection idea was much less welcome; many suggested instead, that the variations that
natural selection picked out were themselves divinely guided or caused. According to Darwin there were only natural
reasons.
Within 10 to 15 years, his ideas were largely accepted and countless confirmations and refinements were published.

THOMAS HARDY AND INSENSIBLE CHANCE

The concept of evolution influenced almost every important theme and issue associated with the Victorians: class,
race, gender, sexuality, the body and the nature of the individual in society.
Major late-Victorian work reflected this new outlook. For instance, in Thomas Hardy's novels, those protagonists less
adaptable to society tend to fade and die.
THOMAS HARDY'S LIFE
Thomas Hardy was born of humble parents in Higher Bockhampton, in 1840. As a boy, he learnt to play the violin,
and he always loved music and dancing. He was a voracious reader, and when he left school, he was apprenticed to a
local architect and church restorer.
He started working and studying architecture in London, and he began to write poetry at the same time. He was
influenced a lot by Darwin, August Comte and John Stuart Mill.
In 1872, he published a novel, "Under the Greenwood Tree", but he gained fame later thanks to "Far from the
Madding Crowd". After this he devoted his life to writing.
His second great work of fiction was "The Return of the Native", followed by a sequence of four tragic novels: "The
Mayor of Casterbridge", "The Woodlanders", "Tess of the D'Ubervilles" and "Jude the Obscure". This book
scandalized Victorian public opinion with his pessimism and immorality. Hardy then decided to give up fiction and to
turn to poetry with the publication of "Wessex Poems". He died in 1928 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
HARDY'S DETERMINISTIC VIEW
Hardy's works are full of considerations about life, death, man and the universe; they express a deterministic view,
deprived of the consolation of the divine order. From Greek tragedies, he derived the notions of cruel gods,
indifferent nature and hostile fate. After reading Darwin's book, he denied the existence of God. He thought that
human life was a purely tragic process upon which man had no power. Under the influence of Mill and Comte, he
advocated the need for altruism through cooperation and loving kindness and the application of science knowledge.
HARDY'S WESSEX
Most od Hardy's stories are set in a very circumscribed area, the southwest corn of England and his native county of
Dorset. In "Far from the Madding Crowd", he called this area "Wessex".
MAIN THEMES
Hardy develops one main theme: the difficulty of being alive. Being alive involves being 'an existence, an experience,
a passion, a structure of sensations'. But it also involves being in a place, an environment, and surrounded by a set of
circumstances which modify and partly determine the individual's existence.
Another important theme is nature, presented as co-protagonist with the characters. Indifferent to man's destiny,
nature sets the pattern of growth and decay which characterizes human life. In his novels, he exposes the exposes
the most conventional, moralistic, hypocritical aspects of Victorian society. Also his attitude to religion his critical: he
believes Christianity is no longer capable of fulfilling the needs of modern man. Difficulty or failure of communication
is another theme and it frequently leads to tragedy.
STRUCTURE AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
Hardy wrote his later novels in a period of experimentation in narrative technique. He continued to employ the
Victorian omniscient narrator, who is always present and sometimes comments on the action or introduces his
opinions and his view of life. He often presents action through the eyes of a hypothetical observer, with whom the
reader is invited to identify himself.
JUDE THE OBSCURE (1895)-STORY
Jude Fawley, a poor boy, wants to become a student of an Oxford college, University of Christminster.
He works as a stonemason and studies in his free time.
After his marriage with Arabella Donn ends disastrously, he moves to Christminster where he meets his cousin Sue
Bridehead. They fall in love and decide to live together, refusing the institution of marriage. They have a son, a
daughter and Sue takes in the son that was born from Jude’s first marriage, called ‘Father Time’. This scandalous
relationship causes the disapproval of the narrow minded people of the university town. Jude loses his job so he
moves to his tavern while Sue and the children live in a room, because they can’t find lodging. The climax is reached
with the death of the children.

JUDE’S OBSCURITY
Hardy follows the Victorian convention of placing an orphan at the centre of the story but denies him to fulfil his
hopes. Instead, he takes him from defeat to defeat to the denial of any form of life, love and peace. The tragedy of
Jude is mainly of frustration and loneliness. Jude is ‘obscure’ because he does not ‘exist’ for others; he is never ‘seen’
by them. In his experience at Christminister, he becomes a self-spectre, and this experience is repeated in all his life;
in fact, at the end of the story, he declares: ‘I’m neither a dweller among men nor ghosts’. Jude’s attempt to improve
himself fails, because of all the class prejudices.
Jude the Obscure represents a departure from Victorianism in a bleak urban setting deprived of dynamism and
characterized by a sense of anxiety and self-destruction. Hardy denies the narrator to the possibility to explain and
interpret things, by focusing on the relationship between Jude and Sue.
In this tragedy, we can see some main features of Hardy:
 He is pessimistic;
 His novels end with death most of the times;
 He criticizes Victorian society; he doesn’t accept the values and the strict moral code.

STEVENSON
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850; because of his poor health he spent most of his childhood in
bed, griwing afraid of dark; these things, with his calvinist family, may have influenced his writings.
He was in conflict with his social environment of the respectable Victorian world; he grew his hair long, had eccentric
manners and became one of the first examples of Bohemian, openly rejecting Victorian respectability, Calvinism and
moral code.
He graduated in law, got marriedx moved to Tahiti and died of brain haemorrhage in 1894. He became a popular
novelist in 1880s, when he published Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and The
Master of Ballantrae.

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

Stevenson expressed the moral dichotomy between good and evil in his classic psicologichal novel The Strange Case
of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in which hypocrisy is embodied by the double; the double, or doppelgänger, is a second
self or alter ego which appears as a distinct and separate being, perceived by the physical senses, but actually
dependent to the original. In Victorian age psichological novels were common and they often had difficult plots and
subplots.
The protagonist of the novel is Dr Jekyll, a respectable man, living at the daight, entering in his beautiful mansion
from the main big door, facing on the main street. His alter ego is Mr Hyde, an evil and ugly man, always described in
the dark, who uses the back door that faces a little and dark street.
Once Hyde is released from hiding, he can dominate over the Jekyll aspect, so that the individual only has two
choices: he can choose a life of crime and depravity, or Jekyll must eliminate Hyde by killing himself. So Jekyll’s
suicide is the only solution.
Only at the very end the reader can realize that the 2 characters are actually the same person.

NEW AESTHETIC THEORIES

The aesthetic movement was born in France with Gautier, spread in Europe and developed in universities and
intellectuals circles in the last decades of the 19th century. It reflected the sense of frustration and uncertainty of the
artist, his reaction against the materialism and restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie and his need to re-define
the role of art; Goutier defined art as “Art for Art’s Sake”. In the same way, Gabriele D’Annunzio was part of this
movement because he believed that art didn’t require an aim.
Bohemians and Dandies* were considered part of this movement as well. Bohemians embodied their protests
against the monotony and vulgarity of bourgeois life, leading an unconventional existence, pursuing sensation and
excess, and cultivating art and beauty. For artists, these elements represent a problem as well; for example in The
Picture of Dorian Grey, the excess of the main character leads him to his death.
Dandies and Bohemians were both rebelled against the bourgeois model, but dandies were generally wealthier.
*modern dandies can be Renato Zero, Elton John, Andy Warhol, Lady Gaga etc.
Walter Pater can be defined the theorist of the Aesthetic Movement in England. He rejected religious faith, thought
that art was the only certainty and that life should be lived in the spirit of art, filling each passing moment with
intense experience, feeling all kinds of sensations. In art there were no aims, limits or morality; the artist only had to
feel sensations and transcribe them into art. Pater’s works had a deep influence on the poets and writers of the
1890s, especially Oscar Wilde, who was an exemplary Aesthete.
The main features of Aestheticism were:
- Evocative use of the language of the senses;
- Excessive attention to the self;
- A hedonistic attitude;
- Perversity in subject matter;
- Disenchantment with contemporary society;
- Absence of any didactic aim.

WHO’S A DANDY?
The origin of the world “Dandy” probably came from the abbreviation of the name “Andrew”; the term means
someone who dresses extravagantly and is vain about their appearance. Dandyism was connected to artistic
movements in France; Oscar Wilde affected dandyism because was responsible for its becoming fashionable again in
England. George Bryan Brummell had a lot of influence as well because he had beautiful manners and good fashion
sense.

OSCAR WILDE
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He first attended Trinity College in Dublin, and then he was sent to Oxford.
He became a disciple of Walter Pater, accepting the theory “Art for Art’s Sake”. After his graduation, he settled in
London, where he became a dandy because of his eccentric way of dressing and of living. He thought that
Aestheticism was a search for the beautiful, a science through which men looked for the relationship existing
between painting, sculpture and poetry, which were different forms of the same truth.
He married Constance Lloyd, who gave him two children, but he soon became tired of his marriage. At this point of
his career, he was invited to all the social events, and he was considered an important person.
In the late 1880s, Wilde’s literary talent was revealed by a series of short stories, such as ‘The Canterville Ghost’ or
‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’, and the novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’. After his first and only novel, he developed
an interest in drama; in fact, he produced a series of plays, such as ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’. However, both
the novel and the tragedy damaged the writer’s reputation: the first was considered immoral and the second was
prevented from appearing on the London stage due to its presumed obscenity.
In 1891, he met a young nobleman Lord Alfred Douglas, with whom he had a homosexual affair. Wilde was convicted
of homosexual practices and subsequently sentenced to two years of hard labour. After Wilde was released from
prison, he lived in France under a pseudonym. He died of meningitis in Paris in 1900.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

THE STORY
The novel is set in London at the end of the 19th century. The protagonist is Dorian Gray, a young man. Dorian’s
beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward, who decides to paint his portrait. After he sees the painting, he desires to
be always as it, to be always young. So he sells his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal youth. The signs of
experience and vice will appear on the portrait. Dorian starts living only for pleasure, making use of everybody and
letting people die because of his insensibility. When the painter sees the corrupted image of the portrait, Dorian kills
him. Later, Dorian wants to free himself of the portrait, he stabs it, but in doing so he kills himself. In the very
moment of his death, the picture returns to its original purity, and Dorian’s face becomes wrinkled and loathsome.
THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
The story is told by an unobtrusive third-person narrator (un narratore esterno che non fa critiche). The perspective
adopted is internal, and this allows a process of identification between the reader and the character. The settings
are vividly describes with words appealing to the senses. The characters reveal themselves through what they say or
what other people say of them.
TIMELESS BEAUTY
The story is profoundly allegorical; it is a 19th century version of the myth of Faust, the story of a man that sells his
soul to the devil so that his desires might be satisfied. In the novel, this soul, that Faust sells to the devil, is the
portrait, which records the signs of time, the corruption, the horror and the sins concealed under the mask of
Dorian’s timeless beauty. During the novel it is shown the idea of Wilde: beautiful people are moral people; ugly
people are immoral people. The picture represents the dark side of Dorian’s personality, his double, which he tries to
hide by locking it in a room.
The moral of the novel is that every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped. When Dorian destroys
the picture, he can’t avoid the punishment of all his sins, that is death.
The portrait, when it becomes horrible, can be seen as a symbol of immorality and bad conscience of the Victorian
middle class, while Dorian and his pure, innocent appearance are symbols of hypocrisy. The picture, when Dorian
dies, is restored to its original beauty; this part illustrates Wilde’s theories of art: art survives people, art is eternal.