sem-2 paper-6 assignment

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Name: Kajal Keraliya

Topic: Characteristic of Victorian Age

Roll no.: 18

Paper no 6: Victorian Literature

M.A: Sem-2

Enrolment no.:2069108420180030

Year: 2017-19

E-mail: Www.kajalk1@gmail.com

Submitted to:

Smt. S.B. Gardi Department Of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji

Introduction     

The queen Victoria rules England from 1837 to 1901. This period is considered as Victorian age in the history of english literature. It was the age of peace and prosperity and also the age of prose and novel. The literature of Victorian age was influenced by three different factors which are industrial revolution, scientific inventions and political freedom.

Characteristic of Victorian Age

Ø An age of Prose and Novel:-

  The Victorian age was essentially the age of prose and novel W.J.Long in his book history of English literature says Though the age produced many poets nevertheless this is emphatically an age of prose and novel. (The novel in this age fill a place which the drama held in the days of Elizabethan).
The novels were looking like the bright stars in the sky of england during the Victorian era. The great novelists like:- Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, William Thackeray, GeorgeEliot, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte and Anne Bronte filled the sky of the Victorian era with their novels.
Some important novels are:-

Thomas Hardy:- 1). Oliver Twists
                            2). Hard Time
                            3). A Tale Of Two cities

                           4). Great Expectation.

Emily Bronte:- 1). Wuthering Heights.

George Eliot:- 1). Middle March.

These novels are just an ice-berg in the ocean of the Victorian novels.

Ø Deep Moral Note

The Victorian literature was marked by a deep moral note. In literature this tendency is reflected in the early poetry of Tennyson and in the novel of Charles Dickens. Dickens novels show great respect for tradition and morality. Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle and Ruskin were interested in spreading their message and moral philosophy to their country men.

Ø Literature

The Victorian age was essentially the age of prose and novel. We found development of prose and novels on this age. “Thought the age produced many poets, and two who deserve to rank among the greatest,” says W.J. Long, “nevertheless this is emphatically an age of prose and novel. The novel in this age fills a place which the drama held in the day of Elizabeth; and never before, in any age, or language, has the novel appeared in such numbers and in such perfection.”

           Literature of this age tends to come closer to daily life which reflects its practical problems and interests. It becomes a powerful instrument for human progress. Socially and economically, Industrialism was on the rise and various reform movements like emancipation, child labor, women’s rights, and evolution.

We found that there is no progress of ‘drama’ in the Victorian age. Victorian writer put weight only on prose and novel. We can see that many writer write novels and other but we rarely found a person write drama or play.

Ø  Moral Purpose

Victorian literature in its varied aspects was marked by a deep moral note. “the second marked characteristic of the age is that literature, both in prose and poetry, seems to depart from the purely artistic standard of art’s sake and to be actuated by a definite moral purpose.” Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin were primarily interested in their message to their countrymen. They were teacher of England and were inspired by a conscious moral purpose to uplift and instruct their fellow man. Behind the fun and sentiment of Dickens, the social miniatures of Thackeray, the psychological studies of George Eliot, lay hidden a definite moral purpose to sweep away error and to bring out vividly in unmistakable terms the underlying truth of human life. We found good example in ‘The Mill on the Floss’ by Eliot. We found many of the writers write about family and morality in their literary work.

           The Victorian literature seems to deviate from “art for art’s sake” and asserts its moral purpose. Many of the writer gives the moral message to the world.

Ø Pessimism

A note of pessimism, doubt and despair runs through Victorian literature and is noticed especially in the poetry of Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough. Though a note of pessimism runs through the literature of the age, it cannot be dubbed as a literature of bleak pessimism and dark despair. A note of idealism and optimism is also struck by poets like Browning and prose writers like Ruskin. Rabbi Ben Ezra brings out the courageous optimism of the age. Stedman’s Victorian Anthology is, on the whole, a most inspiring book of poetry. Great essayists like Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and great novelists like Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot inspire us with their faith in humanity and uplift us by their buoyancy and large charity.

                    The literature of the age is considerably modified by the impact of science. “It is the scientific spirit, and all that the scientific spirit  implied, its certain doubt, its care for minuteness and truth of observation, its growing interest in social processes, and the conditions under which life is lived that is the central fact in Victorian literature.”

           The questioning spirit in lough, the pessimism of James Thomson, the melancholy of Matthew Arnold, the fatalism of Fitzgerald, are all the outcome of the skeptical tendencies evoked by scientific research. Tennyson’s poetry is also considerably influenced by the advancement of science in the age, and the undertones of scientific researchers can be heard in ‘In Memoriam’.

Ø Patriotism

A note of patriotism runs through Victorian literature. Tennyson, Dickens and Disraeli are inspired by a national pride and a sense of greatness in their country’s superiority over nations. Tennyson strikes the patriotic note in the following lines

                              It is the land that freemen till

                              That sober-suited freedom chose

                              A land of settled government,

                              A land of just and old renown,

                              Where freedom slowly broadens down

                              From precedent to precedent.

In one direction the literature of the Victorian age achieved a salient and momentous advance over the lecture of the Romantic Revival. The poets of the Romantic were interested in nature, in the past, and in a lesser degree in art, but they were not intensively interested in men and women.

           To Wordsworth the dalesmen of the lakes were a part of the scenery they moved in. He treated human being as natural objects and divested them of the complexities and passions of life as it is lived. The Victorian poets and novelists laid emphasis on men and women and imparted to them the same warmth and glow which the Romantic poets had given to nature. “The Victorian age extended to the complexities of human life, the imaginative sensibility which its predecessor had brought to bear on nature and history. The Victorian poets and novelists added humanity to nature and art as the subject matter of literature.”

                    We can say that in the literature the effect of patriotism. The writer focuses on national identity and patriotism in Victorian age.

Ø Victorian Realism

Coming down to the history of English Literature from the  to the Victorian era of Realism, one experiences the feeling of a return from solitude to society, from nature to industry, from concepts to issues, from spiritualism to pragmatism, from optimism to agnosticism, from lyricism to criticism and from organicism to compromise.
A large part of the complex of change that comes about in English Literature from early 19^th century to the later 19^th century can be measured from the kind of the change, the images of the ocean undergo when we move from Byron to Arnold. The movement of Realism is generally a minor movement in the later 19^th century, which began in France and was later, followed by England.

Ø Victorian Compromise

In terms of philosophical ideas, the Victorian period, unlike the earlier periods of literary history in England, was marked by conflicting movement carried on through crusades and counter-crusades, attacks and counter-attacks. The Victorian Compromise was a combination of the positive and negative aspects of the Victorian Age:

1.    The expansion, great technology, communication and colonial empire (Middle Class).

2.    Poverty, injustices, starvation, slums (working class).

Whereas, the Romantics could afford to withdraw from the town in the initial stages of the Industrialisation, the Victorians, facing the flowering of the Industrial Revolution had no such soft option available to them.Therefore rather than living in solitude, writers of the Victorian Age had to cope with the process of change in which the old agrarian way of life had to make the place for the new individual civilisation.

Ø Utilitarianism 

Against the chain of thinkers, including Newman, Arnold and Ruskin, who were essentially religious, was the formidable force of utilitarian thinkers, continued by J.S. Mill and agnostic scientists like Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, etc. Although utilitarianism was propounded by Jeremy Bentham, the philosophy came into operation during the Victorian era. Both the state and the industry came under the heavy influence of this mechanical approach to matters of the human soul. The celebrated principle, “the greatest good of the greatest number” was the governing rule of the utilitarian thought on morals, law, politics and administration.

Ø Agnosticism

Agnosticism is defined as the belief, “that nothing is known or can be known of immaterial things, especially of existence or “existence or nature of god”. The term “anostic” was coined by T.H. Huxley in 1869 A.D. The realisation that God’s existence is neither observable nor provable drove society into a state of uncertainty.
People of the Victorian Era sought to explore and understand questions about the metaphysical world, but ultimately found no answers and were left in doubt. Agnosticism was a means of identifying the scepticism that stemmed from the inability to logically support the existence of the spiritual beings.

Conclusion

Thus the Victorian era was peaceful reign Englisn people made a remarkeble progress in industrial, commercial and social life. This age witnessed a variety of tendencies in literature.

Works Cite

Www.scribed.com

Articlejar.com