The victorian Literature

                 Study of Victorian Age

                The Victorian era was age full of changes; the most important was the supremacy of Queen Victoria, who ascended the throne in 1837 and ruled the British Empire, restoring strength to the crown. Her control is considered one of the most wealthy in her time, which finally became this symbol of a period that took its name, "the Victorian Era".

     Napoleonic Wars completed in 1815, and meanwhile France and the

Revolution changed Europe; Great Britain became the main power of the World. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Britain would stay as the leading world power, far above any other. Britain controlled so many areasaround the world that the sun always shown in one of them.

       Victoria reigned this great and open kingdom during sixty-three years. She was only eighteen years old when she was crowned. Victoria sheltered the cosmopolitan interests that predominate the era and cultivatedinternational relationships between various dynastic families of Europe.

The British pound became the currency par brilliance in world markets; the British fleet was the maximum authority in overseas; factories and the numerous railroad tracks were the example to follow for all the other powers that imitated the British Industrial Revolution.

      The transform in the way of production (before with peasants and craftsmen and now with workmen) shortly revolutionized the society and the economy of the world. for the moment the development of the railway and other industries promoted the new way of production; Queen Victoria governed her monarchy bravely influencing the entire world.

Her period of influence, became a symbol of the consolidation of the British Empire, was see of the rise of the middle-class and characterized by a morality deeply conservative. With Queen’s Victoria reign, England agreed out a process of electoral and social reforms.

            Major Victorian literature in any suitable and complete manner has proven difficult for critics ever while the nineteenth century came to a close. The movement generally comprises the years from 1830 to 1900, still there is full deviation about even this simple point. The name given to the period is borrowed from the royal matriarch of England, Queen Victoria, who sat on throne from 1837 to 1901. One has difficulty determining with any truth where the Romantic Movement of the early nineteenth century leaves off and the Victorian Period begins because these traditions have so many aspects in general. The same, identifying the point where Victorianism gives way completely to Modernism is no simple task. Literary periods are never the separate, self-contained realms which the anthologies so suggest. Rather, a literary period more closely resembles a rope that is frayed at both ends. Many threads make up the rope and work mutually to form the whole artistic and cultural setting. The Victorian writers exhibited some well-established behavior from previous eras, while at the same time almost arts and letters in new and interesting direction. Certainly, some of the later Victorian novelists and poets are nearly indistinguishable from the Modernists who followed shortly after that. In spite of the hesitation of terminology, there are some actual statements that one can make as regards the nature of Victorian literature and the intellectual world which nurtured to literature.

             In this age also material development  .It was an age living with new activities .There was a revolution in commercial enterprise ,owing to the grand increase of available markets , and as a result of this  huge advance in the use of mechanical device .On the other side of this picture of commercial extension we see the dreadful social condition of the new industrial cities, the squalid slums, and the development few to cheap labor , the painful fight by the progressive few to introduce social legislation and the slow expansion of the authorization .

             Here also comes intellectual development .There can be little hesitation that in many cases material wealth produced a hardness of irritation and an impatience of projects and ideas that brought no return in hard cash , Yet it is to the credit of this age that intellectual activities were so different .In addition, popular education became a practical object  .This is its turn produced a new hunger for intellectual food and resulted in a great amplify in the production of the press and of other more strong species of literature .

In the Victorian age present many features ,yet in numerous we can specify.

           Its Morality- practically all observers of the Victorian age are struck by this severe deference to the conventions .To a later age these seem ridiculous .To a great extent the new morality was a natural revolt against the grossness of the later Regency and the influence of the Victorian court was all in its favour .In literature it is sufficiently reflected .Tennyson is the most conspicuous example in poetry , crating the priggishly complacent Sir Galahad and King Arthur ,Dickenson ,possibly the most representative of the Victorian novelists took for his model the old picaresque novel ,but it is almost laughable to observe his anxiety to be moral .

      The Revolt –Many writers protested against the deadening effects of the conventions .carlyle and Matthew Arnold in their different accents ,were loud in their denunciations Thackeray never tried of satirizing the snobbishness of the age and Borrowing’s and the smooth self- satisfaction of the Tennysonian school .As the age proceeded the response strengthened .In the poetry pre-Raphaelites ,led by Swinburne and William Morris ,proclaimed no maarlity but that of the artist’s consider for his art .By the vigour of his methods Swinburne horrified the timorous and made himself rather ridiculous in the eyes of sensible people .

       Intellectual Developments – The literary invention was certainly affected by the new idea in science ,religion and politics .we can identify the influence of such a work in Tennyson’s In Memoriam ,in Matthew arnold’s meditative poetry and in the works of Carlyle .In religious and ethical thought the ‘Oxford Movement’ as it was called was the most noteworthy advance .This movement had its resource among the young and eager thinkers of the old university and was headed by the great Newman  ,who finally joined the church of Rome .As religious indication it marked the extensive discontent with the existing bailiffs of the Church of England . 

         The New Education – The instruction Acts, making a sure measure of instruction compulsory, quickly produced an huge rading public. The cheapening of printing and paper improved the demand for books , so that the production was multiplied .The most popular form of literature was the novel ,and the novelists responded with a will .Much of their work was of a high standard , so much so that it has been asserted by competent critics that the middle years of the 19^th century were the richest in the full history of the novel .        

            International Influences – Through the 19^th century the whole interaction among American and European writers was remarkably fresh and strong .subject nations in particular the Italians, were a sympathetic theme for prose and verse .

         The Achievement of the age – With all its immense production ,the age produced no supreme writer .It exposed no Shakespeare ,no Shelly ,nor a Byron or Scott .The common literary level was nevertheless, very high and it was an age moreover , of large intellectual horizons  ,noble endeavour and brilliant aspirations .

The poets of The Victorian Age:

Alfred Lord Tennyson:

    Tennyson was English poet often regarded as the leader representative of the Victorian age in poetry. When Tennyson was seventeen years old he collaborated with his elder brother Charles in poems by ‘Two Brothers ‘.The volume is  a minor one , but in the light of his later work we can already recognize a little of the Tennysonian  metrical ability and expressive power .In this contains such notable poems as’ The Lady of Shalott’ ,The Lotus _Easter and The Place of Art in which we see the Tennyson system approaching perfection .In 1842 he produced two volumes of poetry that position him once and for all among the grater poets of his day .

His career are marked primarily by much longer poems .The Princess is a serio comic effort to handle the theme that was then famous as the ‘new woman’ .for the sake of his story Tennyson imagines a ladies academy with a defiantly intellectual princess at the head of it .For a space a tragedy seems imminent, but in the end all is well, for the princess in married to the innocent hero . The poem is in blank verse  , but interspersed are several singularly beautiful lyrics . The humour is serious, but many of the imagery are as rich and wonderful as any Tennyson ever attempted.

In poem ‘In Memoriam ‘caused a great strit when it first appeared .It is a very long series of meditations upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam  .Tennyson brooded over the subject for years and upon this elegiac theme  he imposed many meditation on life and death  ,showing how these subject were affected by the new theories of the day .For the first and possibly the only  ,time Tennyson feelings were moved and troubled .The result was the  most deeply emotional ,and probably the greatest  ,poetry he ever produced .The poem is adorned with many beautiful sketches of English scenery and the metre now called the in this poem –and which is quite rare is deftly managed .

              With faith that comes of self-control,

              The truths that never can be proved

              Until we close with all we loved,

              And all we flow from soul in soul.

Tennyson issued a severe of Idylls of the King . Many doting admirers saw in the Idylls an allegory of the soul of man. These Idylls are sacred in tears and are dedicated to the memory of one who loved them as if he had seen his own picture in them. He was a man who seemed in all his qualities and fine behavior to be none other than Arthur's ideal knight. Now he is gone, and England prays that his sons will be as noble as he was and will be worthy of their father, Albert the Good. The queen should reign alone, in brilliance and in solitude, for he is gone, but she is royal and will suffer. In his closing lines to the queen, the poet writes:
                      His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow thee,                       The love of all thy sons encompass thee,                       The love of all thy daughters cherish thee,                       The love of all thy people comfort thee,                       Till God's love set thee at his side again!

The other poem of any length is Enoch Arden  , which became the most popular of all and create its way in translation into foreign language .The plot is cheap enough , dealing with a seaman  ,who returns and finding his wife happily married another man sorrowfully retires without making  himself known .

With the shorter poems like ,’Locksley Hall Sixty Years After’ and’ The Death of Enone’ .But in poem ‘Break ,Break ,Break ‘lyrical quality is rather uneven .Here he provide a background for the true lyrical strength of emotion .

Robert Browning :

                Robert Browning was English playwright and master of dramatic dialogue poetry .the future poet was educated semi-privately and from an early age he was free to follow his inclination toward studing unusual subjects. But in his work chief difficulty to reading him, because the obscurity of his style , which the critics of half a century ago held up to ridicule . He is led from one thing to another by his own mental associations, and forgets that the reader’s association may be of an entirely different kind. Browning is careless in his English and frequently clips his speech, giving us a serious of ejaculations .as we do not quite understand his processes of thought , we must stop between the ejaculations to trace out the connections . His allusions are often farfetched refer , ring to some odd scrap of information which he has picked up in his wide reading ,and the ordinary reader find it difficult to trace and understand them .His first famous work is ‘Pauline’ , an introspective . poem Pauline is a fragmentary poem about the unnamed narrator's inability to commit himself to poetry. His conception of poetry is vastly ambitious, its blueprint an apotheosized Shelley. Perhaps the very ambition makes failure inevitable, or perhaps he is right to analyze traits of vacillating weakness, vanity, over-egocentrism, over-self-analysis, insincere religiosity, insufficient love for others, and the rest.      
I have no confidence,                   So I will sing on—fast as fancies come                   Rudely—the verse being as the mood it paints.Pippa passes  of  Bowing’s simple but beautiful lyrics. The language is
Uncomplicated, simple descriptive statements unadorned by comparison andunveiled in allusion, yet dense with imagery and wonderfully evocation .

The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his Heaven - All's right with the world! His method is to take a character at a moment of crisis and , by allowing him to talk , to reveal not only his present thoughts and feelings but his past history .dramatic Lyrics and dramatic Romance and Lyrics show this faculty being directed into the channel in which it was to achieve perfection that of the dramatic monologue .He produced his some of best work in ‘Men and Women’. .In 1864 saw the publication of his last really great volume, Dramatis personae.The remaining years of Browning ‘s long life saw the production of numerous further volumes of verse like ,’The Inn Album’ , ‘Fifine at the fair’, ‘The Two Poets of Croisic’, ‘Jocoseria’ .

Elizabeth Barrett Browning :

     

Elizabeth was  English poet  and her famous Sonnets ‘ The Portuguese ‘ .In 1844 Miss Barrett published her poems , which idea extraordinary public favor .Such poems as ‘The Cry of the Children’ ,which voice the objection of humanity against  child labor ,appealed tremendously to the readers of the age ,and this young woman’s fame as a poet temporarily overshadowed that of Tennyson and Browning .Her works are ‘The Seraphim and other Poems’ , sonnets from the ‘Portuguese’ ,. She also wrote many of her shorter pieces for magazines  ,the most important contributions being ‘The cry of the Cornhill’ .As a narrative poet Browning is a comparative failure for the in way , but she has power of a  sweet ,lucid and frequently passionate style .

Matthew Arnold :

        In the literature Arnold has occupied for many years an authoritative situation as critic and teacher, related to that held by Ruskin in the world of art .In his poetry he reflects the doubt of an age which witnessed the conflict between science and exposed faith  , but this men so different in sprit and methods , confronted the similar problems ,sought the equal ends ,and were dominated by the same moral honesty . Arnold’s literary work divides itself into three periods, which we may call the poetical , the critical and the practical .He had written poetry since  his school days, and his first volume ,’ The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems’. His chief works in critical period are the ‘Lectures On Translating Homer’ and the two volumes of ‘Essays in Criticism’ , which made Arnold one of the best known literary men in England .His well famous narrative poems ‘balder dead’ and ‘Sohrab and Rustum’.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

          Rossetti was painter and poet .He was also leader in the pre Raphaelite movement .He published his first work ‘ Hand and Soul’. In 1881 he published his Ballads and Sonnets , a remarkable volume containing with other poems ,’The Confession’, ‘The King Tragedy’ a masterwork of dramatic narrative and ‘The House of life’ ‘ a collection of one hundred  and one sonnets reflecting the poet’s love and loss.

William Morris:

         He created a great amount of poetry , and was one of the most conspicuous figures in mid- Victorian literature. Upon art, education , political, and social problems his great energy and powerful mind led him to take very decided views, amazing of an original nature .The bulk of Morries’s  poetry was during the first 45 years of his life .’The Defence of Guenevere’ and other poems shoes his love of beauty of colour, sound and scenery and his passion for the medieval .In structure the poems of this volume are often imperfect and in way they have an sudden roughness which is not seen in his later work .’The Life and Death of Jason’ a heroic poem on the familiar theme , is told in smooth, easy couplets and has the melancholy tone so ordinary  in Morris .The literary production of the second part of Morris’s life consisted mainly of prose romance, lecture, and articles. The best of his lectures are ‘Hopes and fears for art and ‘Signs of Change’.

Algernon Charles Swinburne:

               Swinburne is chronologically , the last of Victorian poets , an artistic technique having ideal command of all old English verse forms and a remarkable facility for inventing new he seems at the present time to rank  among the best in our literature .Here his poetical work  can be mentioned here ‘Songs beforeSunrise’, acollection of poems chiefly in praise of Italian liberty , a more and less successful attempt at Greek tragedy and ‘Tristram and Other Poems , anarrative of much passion and force, collected in the heroic couplet.

The Novelist  of the Victorian Age:

Charles Dickens:

               

Here Dickens ‘s life and work in contrast with that of the two great poets Tennyson and Browning were being educated for the life of literature and defended most kindly from the hardships of the world. In 1836 her ‘Pickwick’ was published , and life was changed as if a magician had waved his wand over him .Dickens was intense enough to understand his danger and his next novel ‘Oliver Twist’ had serious purpose of justifying the evils under which the poor were suffering. His next novel ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ and indeed in most of his remaining works. He presents different types of characteristics like blameless little child like Oliver’ than the horrible or grotesque foil like Squeers and the grandiloquent or broadly humours fellow like Sam weller.

William Makepeace Thackeray:

             In life of Thackeray number of years was investigative for a means of expression and wavered between verse and periodicals .The most significant of these are ‘The Yellowplush Corrspondence’ , contributed to ’Fraser’s Magazine’ and dealing with philosophy and experiences ‘The Book of Snobs’ which firstly appeared in punch as ‘The Snobs of England’.’The Memoirs of Barry’ Lyndon is a distinct advance  .’In Vanity Fair’ the genius of Thackeray reaches high water mark .

George Eliot:

           

She is more observably, more intentionally a preacher and moralizer than any of her great generation .All her novels try  ,  to show in individual the play of universal moral force .’Adam Bede’ was a full length novel. ’The Mill on the Floss’, the partly autobiographical story of ‘Maggie and Tom Tulliver’ is a affecting tragedy set in an authentic rural background .’Silas Marner: the Weaver of Raveloe’ is a shorter novel, which once more gives excellent pictures of village life .’Middle March ‘ , a study of provincial life , in which Eliot built up from the life of a great number of deeply studied characters suffer through their own blindness and folly and the theme is treated with a powerful and inevitable realism .Her last novel ‘Daniel Deronda’ is still more strongly colored by her preoccupation by moral problems.

Conclusion:

         

              Historically the age is extraordinary for the increase of democracy following the reform of 1832, for the spread of education among all classes, for the express development of the arts and science, for important mechanical creation, and for the enormous extension of the bounds of human knowledge by the discoveries of science .

So, on the one side it emphasizes truth as the only object of human effort and on the other side  , its first effect seems to be to discourage works of the imagination.