The Victorian period. (About 1830- 1901)

Introduction:

The last completed period of English literature, coinciding with the rule of the queen Victoria, (1837-1901), stands nearly beside The Elizabethan period, in the significance and interest of its work. The Elizabethan literature was a glorious one, in its imaginative and spiritual enthusiasm. It was the expression of a period greater than the Victorian period. But the Victorian literature is rich and varied in its personal quality. It speaks for an age which witnessed incomparably greater changes than any that had gone before in all the conditions of life--material comforts, scientific knowledge, and, absolutely speaking, in intellectual and spiritual enlightenment.

The Reform Bill of 1832 gave the middle class the political power it needed to consolidate—and to hold—the economic position it had already achieved. Industry and commerce prospered. While the wealth of the middle class increased, the lower classes, thrown off their land and into the cities to form the great urban working class, lived ever more miserably. The social changes were fast and brutal. The new economic and urban conditions were not idealistic. The intellectuals and artists of the age had to deal with the surprising changes along many lines.

Two main currents of movements were Progress of Democracy in the political and social spheres and Progress of Science in the intellectual sphere. The excitement and conservative reaction of the French Revolution had already spent itself. The Reform Bill had destroyed the supremacy of the aristocratic class. Even though power was in the hands of the greater sections of the labor class, it still left larger section unsatisfied. They did not get the radical power they had hoped for. Political unrest kept the first decade of the Queen’s rule anxious.

ENERAL CONDITIONS:

Social and intellectual changes were vital and more significant to Victorian period.It were an age of social interests and practical ideals and it was by these that much of its literature was inspired and fed. Meanwhile progress of Democracy kept pace with Progress of Democracy. Hence Victorian age was marked throughout by the spirit of enquiry, and criticism, by doubt and uncertainty, by spiritual struggle and unrest, and these are among the most persistent and characteristic notes of is higher literature. At the same time the analytical and critical habit of mind developed by science, profoundly affected literature, and marked development of realism as one prominent result. Moreover, to twentieth century students the Victorian literature makes a especially strong appeal because it is in part the literature of our own time and its ideas and point of view are in large measure ours, and we may naturally begin with the merely material ones.

Before the accession of Queen Victoria the 'industrial revolution,' the vast development of manufacturing made possible in the latter part of the eighteenth century by the introduction of coal and the steam engine, had rendered England the richest nation in the world, and the movement continued with steadily accelerating momentum throughout the period. Hand in hand with it went the increase of population from less than thirteen millions in England in 1825 to nearly three times as many at the end of the period. The introduction of the steam railway and the steamship, at the beginning of the period, in place of the lumbering stagecoach and the sailing vessel, broke up the old stagnant and stationary habits of life and increased the amount of travel at least a thousand times. The discovery of the electric telegraph in 1844 brought almost every important part of Europe, and eventually of the world, nearer to every town dweller than the nearest county had been in the eighteenth century; and the development of the modern newspaper out of the few feeble sheets of 1825 (dailies and weeklies in London, only weeklies elsewhere), carried full accounts of the doings of the whole world, in place of long-delayed fragmentary rumors, to every door within a few hours. No less striking was the progress in public health and the increase in human happiness due to the enormous advance in the sciences of medicine, surgery, and hygiene.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

He was one of the chief Victorian poets... Up to 1867 his literary production consisted chiefly of poetry, very carefully composed and very limited in amount, and for two five-year terms, from 1857 to 1867, he held the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. Later he turned from poetry to prose essays, because he felt that through the latter medium he could render necessary public service. As a poet Arnold is generally admitted to rank among the Victorians next after Tennyson and Browning. The criticism, partly true, that He was not a poet by by Nature but made himself one by hard work rests on his intensely cold, intellectual and moral temperament. He himself, in modified Puritan spirit, defined poetry as a criticism of life; his mind was philosophic; and in his own verse, inspired by Greek poetry, by Goethe and Wordsworth, he realized his definition. In his work, therefore, a high moral sense was greatly developed to finest effect. In form and spirit his poetry is one of the very best dominated by thought, dignified, and polished with the utmost care. 'Sohrab and Rustum,' his most ambitious and greatest single poem, is a very close and admirable imitation of 'The Iliad. It in fact, is a striking example of classical form and spirit united with the deep, self-conscious, meditative feeling of modern Romanticism.

In substance Arnold's poetry is the expression of his long and tragic spiritual struggle. To him religion is a devotion to Divine things. It was the most important element in life, and his love of pure truth was absolute. He held that modern knowledge had entirely disproved Christianity and that a new spiritual revelation was necessary. But mere knowledge and mere modern science, which their followers were so confidently praising, was not adequate to the purpose as it did not stimulate the emotions and increase spiritual life. He found all modern life, as he says in 'The Scholar-Gypsy,' a 'strange disease,' in which men hurry wildly about in a mad activity which they mistake for achievement. In Romantic melancholy he looked wistfully back to periods when 'life was fresh and young' and could express itself vigorously and with no torturing introspection. The exaggerated pessimism in this part of his outburst is explained by his own statement, that he lived in a transition time, when the old faith he held was dead, and the new one yet 'powerless to be born.' Arnold's poetry, therefore, is to be viewed as largely the expression, monotonous but often sadly beautiful, of a temporary mood of questioning protest. There is a striking contrast between the manner of Arnold's poetry and that of his prose. In the latter he entirely abandons the complaining note and assumes instead a tone of easy assurance

ALFRED TENNYSON.

In poetry, apart from the drama, the Victorian period is the greatest in English literature. Its most representative, though not its greatest, poet is Alfred Tennyson. From childhood the poet, though physically strong, was moody and given to solitary dreaming; from early childhood also he composed poetry, and when he was seventeen he and one of his elder brothers brought out a volume of verse, immature, but of distinct poetic feeling and promise. He decided, as Milton had done, and as Browning was even then doing, to devote himself to his art; but, like Milton, he equipped himself, throughout his life, by hard and systematic study of, many of the chief branches of knowledge, including the sciences. His next twenty years were filled with difficulty and sorrow. Two volumes of poems which he published in 1830 and 1832 were greeted by the critics with their usual harshness, are among his chief lyric triumphs. In 1833 his warm friend Arthur Hallam,  died suddenly without warning. Tennyson's grief, was a main factor in his life and during many years found slow artistic expression in 'In Memoriam' and other poems. In 1842 Tennyson published two volumes of poems, including the earlier ones revised; in 1847 he published the strange but delightful 'Princess.' The year 1850 marked the decisive turning point of his career. On the death of Wordsworth he was appointed Poet Laureate.

His production of poetry was steady and its variety great. The largest of all his single achievements was the famous series of 'Idylls of the King,' which formed a part of his occupation for many years. In much of his later work there is a marked change from his earlier elaborate decorativeness to a style of vigorous strength. The chief traits of his poetry in form and substance are his appreciation for sensuous beauty, his scientific habit of mind ,insistence on the greatest accuracy, his allusions to Nature, his introduction of scientific facts in a novel and poetic way. He combines in his poetry classic perfection and romantic feeling.

The variety of his poetic forms is probably greater than that of any other English poet.: lyrics,; ballads;; descriptive poems; sentimental reveries, and idylls; long narratives, meditative poems, The ideas of his poetry are noble and on the whole clear. He was an independent thinker, though not an innovator, a conservative liberal, and was so widely popular because he expressed in frank but reverent fashion the moderately advanced convictions of his time. The best final expression of his spirit is the lyric 'Crossing the Bar,' which every one knows and which at his own request is printed last in all editions of his works.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING AND ROBERT BROWNING.

Browning is the most thoroughly vigorous and dramatic of all great poets of the Victorian period Browning is decidedly one of those who hold the poet to be a teacher, and much, indeed most, of his poetry is occupied rather directly with the questions of religion and the deeper meanings of life. Taken all together, that is, his poetry constitutes a much extended statement of his philosophy of life. Man should accept life with gratitude and enjoy to the full all its possibilities. Evil exists only to demonstrate the value of Good and to develop character, which can be produced only by hard and sincere struggle. Unlike Tennyson, therefore, Browning has full confidence in present reality--he believes that life on earth is predominantly good. In his social theory Browning differs not only from Tennyson but from the prevailing thought of his age, differs in that his emphasis is individualistic. Like all the other Victorians he dwells on the importance of individual devotion to the service of others, but he believes that the chief results of such effort must be in the development of the individual's character, not greatly in the actual betterment of the worldly

Of his hundreds of poems the great majority set before the reader a glimpse of actual life and human personalities--an action, a situation, characters, or a character--in the clearest and most vivid possible way. His idea of giving his readers a sudden vivid understanding of life’s main forces and conditions is noteworthy. To portray and interpret life in this way may be called the first obvious purpose, or perhaps rather instinct, of Browning and his poetry.

The dramatic economy of space which he generally attains in his monologues is marvelous. In 'My Last Duchess' sixty lines suffice to understand the two striking characters, an interesting situation, and the whole of a life's tragedy. Despite his power over external details it is in the human characters, as the really significant and permanent elements of life, that Browning is chiefly interested; indeed he once declared directly that the only thing that seemed to him worth while was the study of souls. The number and range of characters that he has portrayed are unprecedented, and so are the keenness, intenseness, and subtlety of the analysis. Andrea Del Sarto, Fra Lippo Lippi, Cleon, Karshish, Balaustion, and many scores of others, make of his poems a great gallery of portraits unsurpassed in interest by those of any author whatever except Shakespeare. Equally striking, perhaps, is his frequent choice of subject and in treatment, which seems to result chiefly from his wish to portray the world as it actually is, keeping in close touch with genuine everyday reality; partly also from his instinct to break away from placid conventionality.

ELIZABETH ROBERT BROWNING:

She was born in 1806. At seventeen she published, a volume of immature poems. The appearance of her poems in two volumes in 1844 gave her a place among the chief living poets and led to her acquaintance with Browning. .. The record of the courtship is given in Mrs. Browning's 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' which is one of the finest of English sonnet-sequences. Their chief works during this period were Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh' (1856), a long 'poetic novel' in blank verse dealing with the relative claims of Art and Social Service and with woman's place in the world; and Browning's most important single publication, his two volumes of 'Men and Women' (1855), containing fifty poems, many of them among his very best.

In 1868-9 Robert Browning brought out his characteristic masterpiece, 'The Ring and the Book,' a huge psychological epic, which proved the turning point in his reputation Some of his best short poems date from these years, such as 'My Last Duchess' and 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb'; but his chief effort went into a series of seven or eight poetic dramas, of which 'Pippa Passes' is best known and least dramatic. They are noble poetry, but display in marked degree the psychological subtlety which in part of his poetry demands unusually close attention from the reader.

In considering the poetry of Robert Browning the inevitable first general point is the nearly complete contrast with Tennyson. For the melody and exquisite beauty of phrase and description which make so large a part of Tennyson's charm, Browning cares very little; his chief merits as an artist lie mostly where Tennyson is least strong; and he is a much more independent and original thinker than Tennyson. This will become more evident in a survey of his main characteristics. Robert Browning, Tennyson's chief poetic contemporary, stands in striking artistic contrast to Tennyson--a contrast which perhaps serves to enhance the reputation of both. Browning's life, if not his poetry, must naturally be considered in connection with that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with whom he was united in what appears the most ideal marriage of two important writers in the history of literature.  

WILLIAM MORRIS.

Morris' shorter poems are strikingly dramatic and picturesque, and his longer narrations are remarkably easy to read and often highly pleasing. His ease however, is his undoing. He sometimes wrote as much as eight hundred lines in a day. In reading his work one always feels that there is the material of greatness, but perhaps nothing that he wrote is strictly great. His prose will certainly prove less permanent than his verse. Meanwhile Morris had turned to the writing of long narrative poems, which he composed with remarkable fluency. The most important is the series of versions of Greek and Norse myths and legends which appeared in 1868-70 as 'The Earthly Paradise.'

SWINBURNE.

A younger disciple of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement but also a strongly original artist was Algernon Charles Swinburne. During the next fifteen years he was partly occupied with a huge poetic trilogy in blank verse on Mary Queen of Scots, He produced also some long narrative poems, of which the chief is 'Tristram of Lyonesse.' His chief importance is as a lyric poet, and his lyric production was large. His earlier poems in this category are for the most part highly controversial in substance or sentiment. Many of his poems are dedicated to the cause of Italian independence or to liberty in general. His poetry is notable chiefly for its artistry, especially for its magnificent melody, proportion and restraint. From the intellectual and spiritual point of view his work is negligible, but as a musician in words he has no superior, not even Shelley.

MINOR VICTORIAN POETS.

Among the other Victorian poets, three, at least, must be mentioned. Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), a tutor at Oxford and later examiner in the government education office, expresses the spiritual doubt and struggle of the period in noble poems similar to those of Matthew Arnold, whose fine elegy 'Thyrsis' honours him. Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883), Irish by birth, an eccentric though kind-hearted recluse, and a friend of Tennyson, is known solely for his masterly paraphrase (1859) of some of the Quatrains of the eleventh-century Persian astronomer-poet Omar Khayyam. The similarity of temper between the medieval oriental scholar and the questioning phase of the Victorian period is striking and no poetry is more poignantly beautiful than the best of this. Christina Rossetti (1830-94), the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, wrote poetry, composition, prose articles and short stories. Her poetry is limited almost entirely to the lyrical expression of her spiritual experiences, much of it is explicitly religious, and all of it is religious in feeling. It is tinged with the Pre-Raphaelite mystic medievalism; and a quiet and most affecting sadness is its dominant trait; but the power and beauty of a certain small part of it perhaps entitle her to be called the chief of English poetesses.

Conclusion:

The preeminent poet of the Victorian age was Alfred, Lord Tennyson Although romantic in subject matter, his poetry was tempered by personal melancholy; in its mixture of social certitude and religious doubt it reflected the age. The poetry of Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barret Browning, was immensely popular, though Elizabeth's was more venerated during their lifetimes. Browning is best remembered for his superb dramatic monologues. Rudyard Kipling, the poet of the empire triumphant, captured the quality of the life of the soldiers of British expansion. Some fine religious poetry was produced by Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, Christina Rossetti, and Lionel Johnson.

In the middle of the 19th cent the so-called Pre-Raphaelites, led by the painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, sought to revive what they judged to be the simple, natural values and techniques of medieval life and art. Their quest for a rich symbolic art led them away, however, from the mainstream. William Morris—designer, inventor, printer, poet, and social philosopher—was the most versatile of the group, which included the poets Christina Rossetti and Coventry Patmore.

Algernon Charles Swinburne began as a Pre-Raphaelite but soon developed his own classically influenced, sometimes florid style. A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy, Victorian figures who lived on into the 20th cent., share a pessimistic view in their poetry, but Housman's well-constructed verse is rather more superficial. The great innovator among the late Victorian poets was the Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. The concentration and originality of his imagery, as well as his jolting meter (“sprung rhythm”), had a profound effect on 20th-century poetry.

During the 1890s the most conspicuous figures on the English literary scene were the decadents. The 

principal figures in the group were Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson, and, first among them in both notoriety and talent, Oscar Wilde. The Decadents' disgust with bourgeois complacency led them to extremes of behavior and expression. However limited their accomplishments, they pointed out the hypocrisies in Victorian values and institutions. The sparkling, witty comedies of Oscar Wilde, W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan were perhaps the brightest achievements.