The Victorian Age in Literature Essay Example for Free

The Victorian Age in Literature Essay The Victorian Age is roughly delimited by the reign of Queen Victoria, who ascended the throne of Great Britain on 1937, and died in 1901. For the sake of convenience the Victorian age of literature is bracketed by the period 1830 to 1901. Both in terms of literature and culture the Victorian period is highly distinctive. For such a characteristic period to correspond to the reign of a monarch, and considering the inordinate length of it, suggests somehow that the character of the monarch has left its imprint therein. But this is very far from being the case. In theory Britain was a constitutional monarchy, which meant that the queen was supreme ruler, and was aided by an executive arm, which was a Parliament that is democratically elected. This was, however, only on paper. In practice the bourgeoisie were entrenched in the Parliament and ruled the land as an oligarchy. The entrenchment of the middle classes in England was a process begun with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, in which the nobles wrenched significant powers from the crown, then in the form of the unpopular King John. Both the nobles and the crown, however, met a new challenge in the form of the merchant and middle classes after the Protestant Reformation, which was the basis of the English Civil War, fought in the seventeenth century. The result of this war was a monarchy thoroughly emasculated and in the hands of the bourgeoisie, who began to appoint their kings from abroad, beginning with William of Orange, from Holland, who ascended the British throne as William III in the â€Å"Glorious Revolution† of 1688. In 1714 George Louis, Elector of Hanover, was invited to sit on the British throne, which began the long lineage of the House of Hanover, of which Queen Victoria was descended. In this wise the queen was barely English, and had hardly any inclination to become one, evidenced by the links continued to be held with the continent. She became merely a sentimentalized figurehead, as Britain forged ahead, during her reign, to become the economic and imperial power of world. She was ultimately conferred the title of Empress of India, at the time when India was the Jewel in the Crown of a world empire. But she identified little with the aspirations of the age that she labeled. The emancipation of woman was a central tenet of Victorianism, which she opposed vehemently. She called it â€Å"mad, wicked folly†, and thought that these ladies â€Å"ought to get a good whipping† (qtd. in Strachey 409). The advance of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution forms the backdrop to the Victorian age. The prelude to this was the rise of science and rationalism at the expense of faith. The Enlightenment is the name given to this movement in the initial phase, especially in relation to the conscious intellectual movement in this direction inspired by the likes of Bayle and Voltaire in France. It venerated reason, the experimental method of Bacon, the mechanics of Newton, and the ideals of the Classical world of ancient Rome and Greece. This movement eventually bred a reaction in Germany, through the likes of Herder, Schiller and Goethe, who emphasized passion and spontaneity, as against cold reason. The movement came to be labeled Romanticism, and found a vigorous growth on English soil too through Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats and others. Many have characterized the Victorian ethos as a compromise between these two extremes, and found expression in a philosophy known as Utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham and James Mill were the advocates of this philosophy. Bentham coined the motto â€Å"the greatest good of the greatest number† to encapsulate the philosophy (qtd. in Parekh 62). It is what Chesterton describes as the â€Å"great Victorian compromise†. But Victorian literature, as a whole, is not a reflection of Utilitarianism, but is rather a protest against it. Chesterton compares such a protest with the popular uprising of the French Revolution. If the stifling effects of science and industry caused the people to revolt in France, in Britain it was the poets and wordsmiths who did so. In fact this was the only avenue of protest left open in Britain, where the captains of industry has already seized all other social institutions, which is the very reason why the Industrial Revolution took place in Britain and not anywhere else. The â€Å"enclosures† had taken land away from the people, leaving them just as powerless as the queen on her throne. Industry herded them into the cities and made them captive to Smith’s â€Å"division of labor†. Literature was the means to revolution, according to Chesterton, on which he elaborates: This trend of the English Romantics to carry out the revolutionary idea not savagely in works, but very wildly indeed in words, had several results; the most important of which was this. It started English literature after the Revolution with a sort of bent towards independence and eccentricity, which in the brighter wits became individuality, and in the duller ones, Individualism. (5) In this way the revolution is said to have succeeded, because it was able to mould the modern character so that it is able to deal with modernity. This is a triumph not to be belittled, and so, continues Chesterton, â€Å"Verbally considered, Carlyles French Revolution was more revolutionary than the real French Revolution† (Ibid). EARLY PERIOD (1830-1848) Though coming well before the Victorian period, the novels of Jane Austen must be considered as a beginning, and a forerunner to proper Victorian literature. They seem to be merely unassuming domestic dramas, written from the very limited perspective of a provincial lady. In fact, Jane Austen had very little experience of life beyond the confines of rural England, and her works are unencumbered by the great philosophies that were then vying with each other for the domination of the world. She was neither a rationalist, nor a Romanticist. For her heroines, life’s one concern is to secure a good match, one that combines a good income with social esteem. The overriding message of her novels seems to be that to obtain the ideal match the woman must possess both sense and sensibility, i. e. both reason and passion. In fact, Sense and Sensibility is the title of her first novel, establishing her mode. As such we are able to identify it as a precursor to the Victorian compromise. This is not to call her heroines Utilitarian, in the sense of being scheming social climbers. Austen’s novels must be seen as celebration of domestic life, as standing opposed to the insidious infiltration of ideas, in which sense both the rationalists and the Romanticists are guilty. Such a resistance to rational frameworks characterizes nearly all of Victorian literature, and Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetes were still engaged in the same towards the end of the Victorian period. From another point of view, it is the imposition of the woman’s perspective into a world that is otherwise overburdened with the male. Austen must also be credited with inventing the modern novel, which Chesterton describes as a â€Å"feminine art†, and the function of which is to distinguish character, rather than tell a story (39). All the great Victorian novelists follow Austen in this sense. Thomas Babbington Macaulay is another writer who cannot be left out in any consideration of Victorian literature, even though he clearly comes before. He is the true prophet of progress, and thus the harbinger of the Victorian ethos. As a historian the overriding task of Macaulay is to delineate â€Å"progress†. He tackles history with an overwhelming bias towards the Whiggish faction, the party that upheld the liberal tradition and allied itself to the moneyed middle classes. He upheld Bentham’s Utilitarianism, but was by no means cold and calculating. Instead he promoted a vision that is broad, captivating and awe-inspiring. He is the undeniable single influence behind Victorian literature, even though not all his influence was wholesome. Of him Chesterton says: The chief tragedy in the trend of later literature may be expressed by saying that the smaller Macaulay conquered the larger. Later men had less and less of that hot love of history he had inherited from Scott. They had more and more of that cold science of self-interests which he had learnt from Bentham. (12) Those who practiced the hard school of science, and advocated Utilitarianism, were usually beyond the fray of literature. The leading light among them, John Stuart Mill, was an exception among them, however. He championed Smithsonian economics, and attempted to provide polish to the philosophy of Utilitarianism, yet he did so as an artist, and with profound common sense. His father was one of the founders of Utilitarianism, and Bentham was his godfather. He was educated at home under his father’s punishing regime, one that was cause of a near breakdown of the youthful Mill. It was meant that he imbibe as much classical and scientific education as possible, and Bentham was also instrumental towards this end. Mill, however, survived and went on to redefine the philosophy of Utilitarianism in a more human way. It was the wont of the Utilitarians to circumvent the truism that the freedom of one comes in the way of that of the other. If they did consider it, it was only in the larger numbers, along the principle of â€Å"the greatest good of the greatest number†. But, in his seminal essay â€Å"On Liberty†, Mill advanced the â€Å"harm principle†, in which the act of liberty is said to be virtuous only when there is no immediate harem discernable to the next: The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. (28) The philosophy of Mill was suspect. Nevertheless, he is heartfelt and genuine, and therefore he succeeds as a writer, and his works succeed as literature, which was highly influential in taming the hard edges of Utilitarianism. He meant it that the philosophy be not cold-headed, but warm-hearted. He points out that there is a difference between ‘happiness’ and ‘contentment’, and that Bentham confused the latter with the former. One may be content with numbers, but not happy with a guilty conscience. It is happiness that is to be sought, and cannot be had with numbers. So he says: It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. (Mill, Utilitarianism, 281) Many commentators tend to classify Thomas Carlyle as a Romanticist, and indeed his introduction to the world of letters is through his translations of Goethe, whose Romantic ideals he championed. But Carlyle will be found to be eminently Victorian, and should indeed serve as the ideal representative of Victorianism in its early phase. The most marked characteristic of a Victorian author is that he knows instinctively something to be wrong, and gives vent to this mood in his writing. It is a remark that wholly applies to Carlyle. He is never as logical as Goethe and the Romantics. He does not insist on passion, he is merely passionate. The things that he is passionate about are derived, as if, from the sixth sense. He was impatient of all forms of speculation. â€Å"Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance,† he says, â€Å"but to do what lies clearly at hand† (Carlyle, Critical, 462). He distrusts history in any form whatsoever, which might seem hypocritical seeing that his major works are predominantly history. But reading the French Revolution does not give us the impression of having read history. It is narrated as if the events were in the present, and we are supposed to be moved as if the revolution is happening, not as a report of a past occurrence. He had no rapport with the mob: â€Å"Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero† (Carlyle, Chartism, 33). Neither the mob, nor the ossified â€Å"isms† of the philosophers partake in history. Instead it is the heroic individual, moved by the immediacy of duty, who is the real author of history. â€Å"The history of the world is but the biography of great men,† he avers in On Heroes and Hero Worship (29).