The Victorian
Age
-The first half
of the 19th century
The reforms
introduced by William IV (1830-1837) are: the Reform Act, abolished bad
boroughs and granted the middle-class the right to vote; the Factory Act,
prevented children from being exploited; and the Poor Law Amendment Act, took
the poor off the streets into workhouses. During Victoria’s reign (1837-1901),
there was a period of unprecedented material progress, imperial expansion and
also political and constitutional developments, with many reforms and acts that
made England’s efficient during and after her reign. The Queen was able to
consolidate a firm democracy and efficient system of government. The first part
of the Victorian age was dominated by two important political tendencies: the
liberal campaign for free trade and the birth of Chartism, a six-point
programme which gave universal suffrage to adult male, equal electoral
districts, the right to be an MP, secret ballot, annual general election and
payment of MPs. One great Liberal politician, Palmerston believed that free
trade was blocked by tyrannies, but Britain had nothing to lose and benefited
by free trade. With the repeal of the Corn Laws, Britain was able to avoid the
storm of revolution that was sweeping over Europe in 1848.
-The later years
of Queen Victoria’s reign
Gladstone, a
Liberal Minister, tried to find a solution to the Irish question by sanctioning
the equality of all religions present in Ireland and facilitating the creation
of a system of peasant proprietorship in order to present an agrarian revolt.
During the later years of Queen Victoria’s reign was introduced the Elementary
Education Act recognizing the need for public schooling. The Ballot Act secured
secret vote at elections and other reforms cleared the slums and improved
public health care and facilitated trade unions. There were different types of
associations that were established: the Fabian society, for middle-class
intellectuals; the Labour Representation Conference of 1900 permitted Labour
members to Parliament; the Women’s Social and Political Union.
-The British
Empire
After the 1830s
Britain based its foreign policy on fighting wars in order to protect its trade
rates against other nations. In the 1850s Britain was threatened by the Russian
expansion in Asia after the fall of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey and Arab
countries). British’s support of Turkey led to the outbreak of the Crimean War
(Britain, France, Turkey and Sardinia vs. Russia). In the end Russia was
defeated. There was fear of a revolt of British rule in India, but Queen
Victoria obtained the title of “empress of India”. Britain also tried to
protect its routes to India with the Suez Canal. There was expansion of the
British empire also in Africa. Most British believed that imperial expansion
would absorb excess gods, capital and population. But Britain soon learned that
area conquered brought on new dangers which had to be controlled. The Empire
collapsed in the 20th century.
During this
period there was also a rise in the population and many people became town
dwellers (not in major cities). Because for much of the century the city was
considered an area of filth, disease, smells and noise. Another problem was the
expansion of the industrial system and international trade which brought wealth
to the upper and middle classes while the lower middle classes had low income
salaries. (descriptions of the conditions of these classes are in Dicken’s
novels: living in slums characterized by squalor, disease and crime.)
Overcrowding was another problem in Victorian towns. But new services were
introduced during this period: lighting, paved roads, places of entertainment,
parks, stadiums, major shops and new institutions like: prisons, police
stations (Bobbies), boarding schools and town halls. There was an urge to
impose “respectable” behaviour, for example drunks, prostitutes and young
criminals were arrested. This is a period were women had more rights like the
Divorce Act (1857) and Women’s Property Act. Darwin’s “The Descent of Man”
expounds his theory of evolution as a result of accidental mutations in the
species and wards off possible objections.
-“Education in
Victorian Britain”
During
Victoria’s reign a major transformation came over the education of the British
people. With the maturing economy which demanded basic literacy, the
technological revolution in printing, transportation and news-gathering all
crated a different society. Publishing became a big business and books were in
abundance. The important Education Act of 1870 established the right of all
children to schooling, offering even grants. The school became compulsory some
years later, the teaching profession became a highly trained occupation and the
syllabus was slowly reformed. There was a boom of public schools which offered
industrial and commercial classes. Sporting games, like football, cricket,
rugby and rowing, were introduced in school, to teach how to play a game and
not to worry about who won or lost. At Victoria’s death, her subjects were an
educated people, fit to their social and sexual rank.
-The Victorian
compromise
The word
Victorian was used like Puritan, to describe a set or moral and sexual values.
Victorians were great moralisers and they did not reflect the world around them
but the way they would have liked it to be.
The
Victorian values were: social and economic progress, for their hard work;
colonial power through the war; diligence and punctuality, from their
schooling; the sense of respectability, good manners and conformity to social
standards, like regular attendance at church; the role of the father in the
family, who was the breadwinner; patriotism, because they believed to be of
racial superiority; sexuality was repressed, denunciation of nudity; the
contradictions between science and belief.
-The Victorian
frame of mind
The Victorian
age is a complex one. It was based on doubts, scepticism about the spiritual
and cultural values and faith and discovery about new scientific theories by Darwin
which opposed social morality which considered the universe as something
stable. Instead the universe and the individual was subject to a slow progress
of chance and evolution where the strong physical condition survived. While
others extinguished the strongest individual adapted to the environment in the
struggle for survival. So man was able to evolve to a more organized form. All
these reasons that man was conditioned by the environment.
-A window
looking into reality (Victorian literature)
During this
period there was a growth of the middle class and they borrowed books from
circulating libraries and read various periodicals. Writers wrote in a way to
maintain the interest of their stories. There was a marked interest in prose
and the novel became a popular form of writing. The spread of scientific
knowledge made the novel realistic and the spread of democracy made it social
and humanitarian, while the spirit off moral unrest made it inquisitive and
critical. During the 18th century, novels dealt with the adventures
of a social outcast or a virtuous hero, like in Defoe and Richardson’s works.
Austen’s theme of a girl’s choice of a husband was also popular. They aimed to
reflect the social changes in progress, like the Industrial Revolution, the
struggle for democracy and the growth of towns.
The novelists of
the first part of the Victorian period wrote about society as they saw it: the
evils of society, the conditions of the industrialized city, conditions of
manual workers and the exploitation of children. Now the voice of the
omniscient narrator was able to provide a comment on the plot and erect a
barrier between “right” and “wrong”. The “novel of manners” was very close to
the 18th century models, dealing with the economic and social
problems of a particular class or situation. Dicken’s novels combined humour
with a sentimental plea for the reform of the poor. His novels were considered
the “humanitarian novel or the novel of purpose”. The naturalistic novels
centred on the isolation of the individual living, physiologically and morally,
in a world of rural passions. There was also “nonsense” literature, like
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
The detective
story is a narrative involving a murder case of mystery that is successfully solved
or given a rational explanation by a detective. It is sometimes called a
“whodunnit”. Most famous writers are Sir Arthur Canon Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes;
Agatha’s Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple; and American writers like
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.
-The
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (a movement of painters and poets)
The term
“Pre-Raphaelite” comes from young painters who rejected the critics of
Raphael’s “Transfiguration”. They praised the purity and simplicity of 13th
and 14th century Italian art. They based their works on the return
of decorative neo-medievalism, subjectivity, dreaminess, and the morbid and
languid sensuousness. They turned away from the contemporary industrial and
urban world. This term refers to a group of painters and poets, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, his sister Christina and William Morris. They were also founders of
Socialism in Great Britain. Some features of their works contain: a simple use
of numbers; sensory detail; a taste for decoration; moods associated with
seasons; use of religious language; unreal atmosphere, like dreams.
-Aestheticism
and Decadence (Art for Art’s Sake)
The Aesthetic
Movement developed in intellectual circles and universities in the last decades
if the 19th century. Originating in France with Gautier, it
reflected the sense of frustration and uncertainty of the artist, his reaction
against the materialism and the restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie, the
need to re-define the role of art , defining it “Art for Art’s Sake”. The theme
of the “bohemian” was very strong ( the bohemian allies himself to the masses,
the urban proletariat). It was brought to England by an American painter
Whistler, but we can see this movement also in Romantic poet Keats and D.G.
Rossetti. Walter Pater is regarded the theorist of the Aesthetic Movement in
England. His masterpiece “Marius the Epicurean” was a study of the ideas and
sensations of a young Roman confronting the spread of Christianity. He rejected
religious faith and said that art was the only means to stop time. Life should
be lived “as a work of art”. This new aesthetic position was that art had no
reference to life and nothing to do with morality.
Oscar Wilde was
greatly influenced by Pater’s works. He took part in the Rhymer’s Club and
reflected the “decadent” taste in its sensational subjects. The features of the
decadent artists were: excessive attention to the self; hedonistic and sensuous
attitude; perversity in subject matter; disenchantment with contemporary
society; and evocative use of language. Decadence was a European movement and a
group of French writers of the 1880s contributed to the journal “La Decadent”: Rimbaud,
Verlain, Baudelaire, etc. Huysmans’ hero, Des Esseintes, created in an entirely
artificial life in his search for unusual sensations, was the model for Wilde’s
dandy (which came from an American song which mocked the way a man boasted
about his appearance even though wearing odd and ordinary clothes, he is a
bourgeois artist who remains a member of his class even if uneasy). In Italy,
D’Annunzio and Pascoli were the main representative of Decadence.
-The rebirth of the Theatre
It has been said
that there was always a gap between the 18th century and 19th
century, apart from William Congreve (“The Way of the World” 1700 a difficult plot to
follow – the main theme is marriage showing the relation between passion and
social conventions in a witty way that of Restoration comedy), and Elizabethan
theatre. Maybe because of the flourishing novel and the middle class considered
actors and actresses vagabonds or of little respectability. But during the Victorian
age different types of theatres flourished: music hall, pantomime (silent
narration only through gestures and movement) and farce (stereotyping
characters in complicate situations revolving around the limitations and
liberties of the human body) and melodrama. The plot was a heroine and a
villain with a happy ending triumph of true love and punishment of villain. Oscar
Wile and George Bernard Shaw are the greatest playwrights of this time. Shaw
used drama to show his views of social institutions and human experience in the
provocative form. (Influenced by Ibsen’s plays dealing with social and domestic
problems.) Developments in stage techniques meant theatre productions far more
complicated and more stage directions were given in plays representation of the
reality of life.
What are the values of the Victorian age?
- The myth of
reason and science as instruments of knowledge and of reality.
-The concept of
Empire as a statement of colonial English exploitation of uncivilized people
with less cultures.
-Wars as an
instrument of imposition of English power.
-Success of
money and of progress, based on materialistic values.
Why can we consider the Victorian Age a complex age?
It was based on
scepticism, doubts about the spiritual and cultural values and faith. There was
pessimism about the new scientific and philosophical theories based by Darwin
which opposed social morality and the consideration that the universe was
something stable. Instead the universe and man were subject to a progress of
chance and evolution where the strong physical condition survived, while the
other extinguished. The strongest individual adapted to the environment in the struggle
of surviving. He evolved from less organized forms of living to more organized
forms. Man was conditioned by the environment, heredity and historical
situation of his time.
Why did these new theories reflect a new pessimistic and fatalistic vision?
Man was subject
to different fates which were presented to him to reach that of happiness. But
he was compelled to isolation in a hostile world. So the individual was
considered as a creature conditioned by his environment, heredity and history.
Therefore, there was a psychological and moral crisis of the individual at that
time: God, free will and the immorality of the soul were all illusions.
What was the
intellectual feeling in the second half of the 19th century?
The intellectual
feeling at this time was a sense of uneasiness, dissatisfaction in a society
based on scepticism, doubts of spiritual
values. The individual no longer believed in the values of art and poetry and
the bad use of progress had transformed the beauty of the countryside. The
intellectuals did not manage to express the materialism of modern life in
poetry, so they did not manage to reconcile the progress with their spiritual
values. So they searched for faith as a sort of moral guide in themselves and
no longer in nature to find a sort of moral guide and interior peace.
What did some artists affirm against the Victorian materialism?
They affirmed
that the supremacy of art and poetry was an expression of the spirituality of
man. Art generated the secrets of things and made them feel what was hidden and
mysterious inside them. They emphasized the purity, the spirituality and the
simplicity of Italian art, which from Raphael onwards, had generated into
conventionalism and imitation, not creativity and intuition. All the artists
were influenced by Ruskin’s principles, so they thought that the creativity of
beauty was as a sort of duty of society. These artists addressed their
attention far from the individual world based on alienation and mechanization,
they spoke about a distorted realty with a fantastic, unreal and vocative
aspect. Other characteristics were subjectivity and passionate sensuality and
an interest in the detail and precision (they were obsessed with the detailed
reconstruction of reality to exaltation).
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
was born in Porsmouth in 1812. He had to work after his father was imprisoned
for debt. When he realized he was able to write he became a newspaper reporter.
He used the pen name “Boz”, and revealed his humoristic and satirical qualities
when describing London people and scenes. His greatest success were
autobiographical novel like, “Oliver Twist”, “David Copperfield” and other
works like “Bleak House”, “Hard Times” and “Great Expectations” dealing with
social issues like the conditions of the poor and the working class. He died in
1870 and is buried in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey.
The plots of his
novels are mostly set in London under the spiritual and material corruption of
present-day reality influenced by industrialism. His characters were often the
very lowest classes in modern London, the poor, the outcast and the working
class. He portrayed several children making them the moral teachers instead of
the taught. His descriptive style in using a careful choice of adjectives,
repetitions of words, juxtaposition of images and ideas and ironic remarks was
able to give the powerful description of life and character.
Dicken’s
characters often reflect the aspects of the social situation in terms of human
habits and weaknesses through the demands made by Victorian social conventions
(The Victorian values were: social and economic progress, for their hard work;
colonial power through the war; diligence and punctuality, from their
schooling; the sense of respectability, good manners and conformity to social
standards, like regular attendance at church; the role of the father in the
family, who was the breadwinner; patriotism, because they believed to be of
racial superiority; sexuality was repressed, denunciation of nudity; the
contradictions between science and belief.) Dickens shows the relation between
the social and economic structure of society and the strengths and
vulnerabilities of these individuals. Furthermore, he takes his characters
through various parts of England, giving a sense of the nineteenth century
social scene of the English town and country. Dickens, a great Victorian
novelist, often created complexes of symbolic meaning, full of symbolic images
and situations that suggested the desperate isolation of the individual (the
grotesque and the eccentric). From his own circumstances and experiences, he
combines an extraordinary pleasure for the odd, the colourful, and the dramatic
in urban life and in human character with a keen eye for the changes which the
Industrial Revolution brought into England in his lifetime, and the acute
consciousness of his own lower-middle-class origins and unhappy childhood with
a sentimentally humanitarian attitude toward human problems.
Dickens’
melodrama: “Oliver Twist”
In “Oliver
Twist”, Dickens was able to mix the sentimental and melodramatic story of an
orphan exploited by thieves with social satire and realism. This novel was also
considered a novel of the “Newgate School” novels – named after a London
prison. He attacked the new Poor Law which forced people to work in the poor
conditions of the workhouses which resembled prisons. Dickens was able to
create memorable lively characters, like Mr. Bumble or Mrs. Mann, combining
pathetic with comic.
Settings of
Dickens’s novels
The settings of
Dickens’s novels vary from the countryside and merry old England (“The Pickwick
Papers”) and provincial towns to industrial settlements in the North (“Hard
Times”). But most of his plots are set in London and the life of a metropolis,
a crowded city where different classes lived and didn’t communicate with each other.
Characters and
plots
His characters
represent a variety of people of Victorian Age, for example, eccentrics,
vagabonds, criminals and orphans. But the main characters are from the lower or
middle class well-described in physical appearance. His aristocratic or upper
class characters fall into stereotypes. All these characters can be divided
into good or bad and contain parallel stories with some incredible
coincidences.
Dialogue and
humour
Children play an
important part in his novels, especially in “Hard Times” and “Oliver Twist”.
The dialogue and humour used enforce his ideas giving melodramatic or openly
didactic passages.
The novelist’s
reputation
Dickens
influenced many of writers of his time and his successors. His works are
considered a combination of social realism with poetical devices of metaphor
and symbolism. He explored the power of the human psyche and represented the
social conflict and evil of his time.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was
born in Dublin in 1854. After Trinity College, he attended Oxford. He became a
disciple of Walter Pater, accepting the theory of “Art for Art’s Sake”. He
published Poems and went on a tour in the U.S.A. and held lectures on the
Pre-Raphaelites and the Aesthetes. He married and had two children. He wrote
tales for children and his great work “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. He produced
a series of plays including his masterpiece “The Importance of Being Earnest”.
He was then imprisoned for homosexual offences. Once released he moved to
France where he died of meningitis in 1900.
Wilde adopted
“the aesthetic ideal”, he once stated, “My life is like a work of art”. He
lived the role of rebel and dandy. The
Wildean dandy is an aristocrat whose elegance is a symbol of the superiority of
his spirit. He uses his wit to shock and is an individualist who demands
absolute freedom. Life was meant for pleasure which was an indulgence in
beauty. He believed “Art as the cult of Beauty” could prevent the murder of the
soul. The artist was an alien in the materialistic world.
“The picture of Dorian Gray” (Dorian’s death)
This story is
told by an unobtrusive third-person narrator with the perspective of Dorian’s
internal point of view. The settings are vividly described and the characters
reveal themselves with what they say. Dorian is the typical dandy thinking of
realizing his dreams and wishes. Youth is a synonym with beauty and happiness.
This story has an allegorical meaning because Dorian’s soul becomes the picture
which records the signs of experience, the corruption, the horror and the sins
concealed under the mask of his beauty. The picture stands for the dark side of
Dorian’s personality. The moral of the story is that his sins must be punished
and when he destroys the picture it is his death. The horrible, corrupting
picture could be seen as a symbol of the immoral conscience of the Victorian
middle-class, while Dorian’s innocent appearance symbolizes the bourgeois
hypocrisy. In the end, when the picture is restored to its original beauty,
illustrates Wilde’s idea that art survives people, that it is eternal.
Dorian Gray is a
young man whose beauty fascinates an artist who decided to paint him. But on
the portrait, the signs of age, experience and vice appear. Dorian lives only
for pleasure. When the painter sees the corrupted picture, Dorian kills him.
Then tries to stab the portrait but mysteriously kills himself. At the moment
of his death, the picture returns to its original purity while Dorian’s face
becomes “withered, wrinkled, and loathsome”. The passage “Dorian’s Death” is
from the final chapter of the novel when the story reached its climax in an
unexpected and dramatic way with Dorian’s dreadful metamorphosis. While Dorian
Gray looks at the picture, he admits his guilt and he feels disgusted with his
behaviour. He is aware of his sins and crimes, which are reflected in the
picture, as well as the fact that it is impossible to escape old age and death.
In the attempt to change his reality, he looks back at his “unstained” boyhood
with a sort of nostalgia and wonders if it is possible to destroy his maturity,
which has become hideous to him, and to put an end to his life of corruption.
“The importance of being Earnest” (Deceits, tea and muffins)
The tone of this
comedy is satirical but the clichés and stereotypes of high society are the
style of the “comedy of manners” by
Congreve and Wycherley. This play presents an aristocratic society rather than
the middle class, inverting the traditional values, morality and criticising
the hypocrisy of his own society. The play is concerned with money and food. He
uses witty dialogues and it is not important what the characters say but how
they say it. Amusing puns and misunderstandings, paradoxes and ironic remarks
help in making this play very comical. Even the name “Ernest” misspelled
“Earnest” evokes the adjectives “earnest, honest and sincere” while none of the
characters in the play are truthful. “The importance of Being Earnest” is about
two young aristocratic men: Ernest Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. It turns
out that Ernest is actually called Jack who had been adopted. In order to
facilitate his social mobility Jack has invented an alter ego, a younger,
wicked brother called Ernest who lives in the City. The story develops around
the two young men’s attempts to marry Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew.
After Algernon’s pretending to be Ernest and flirting with Cecily, Jack
announces his brother’s death. A comic situation is created when Algernon and
Jack face each other. Even Gwendolen is jealous and curious to find more about
Jack who is Ernest. In the end, Jack discovers to be Algernon’s brother and
they both marry their girls. “Deceits, Tea and Muffins” is the comic climax of
the play: Jack has just entered dressed in mourning and has announced the death
of his brother in Paris, ignorant of the fact that Algernon, masquerading as
Ernest, has got into the house with
Cecily. Gwendolen arrives, too, and suddenly there are two men pretending to be
Ernest Worthing and two women determined to marry a man called Ernest.
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