Characteristics of Victorian Age
Introduction
Queen Victoria at the age of 18 become the Queen. She as a queen was simply an ideal who personally agreed with the practices and ideas of new commercial upper middle class and of England. England had taken immense stride in the industrial and scientific fields. The Nation was prospering and growing richer and richer every day, money values provided and as a result of increased materialism of the age, art and culture suffered. It was an era of rising imperialism, an era of prosperity and aggressive nationalism. The industrial revolution gradually destroyed old agriculture England. It shook the supremacy of the aristocratic class and landed gentry and brought into being a new merchant class.
The age in which Tennyson matured and produced was an era of social change. Men were caught behind two worlds with the old one crumbling down and the new one not yet formed. The chief disintegrating forces of the Victorian age were the three – (1) The industrial revolution resulting in the rise of a new rich and prosperous merchant class (2) The rise of a democracy and (3) The rise of evolution evolutionary science. All these forces tended towards the breakdown of the existing order. Hence, an effort was made to reconcile and old and new to bring about a compromise between science and religion between the demand for progress and the need of stability ordinary and peace.
Characteristics
(1)Abundance of output
With the region
of Queen Victoria there began the new and golden age in the history of England.
There were publications of Tennyson ‘Maud’ Robert Browning’s ‘Men and Women’,
Dickens’s so ‘Little Dorrit’, Thackeray’s ‘New Comes’. Mrs.Qaskell’s ‘North and
South’ and Macaulay’s ‘History’. There were eminent writers such as Rossetti,
Fitzerland, Bronte sisters, George Eliot and George Meredith and in the world
of Criticism Ruskin, Carlyle, Mill and Newman. It was the golden age of
literature.
(2) Literature and Social Criticism
Literature of
the period is critical of the age of rather than representative of it. The
popular philosophy of the time was Utilitarianism, It was the philosophy of
commercial people whose chief aim and achievement was material progress
everywhere, in the poetry of Tennyson and Arnold, in the novels of Dickens and
Thackeray, in the art criticism of Ruskin and literary criticism of Carlyle, we
get the same note of social criticism, mental struggle and spiritual dissatisfaction
are the key notes of its literature.
(3) Impact of science
The literature
of the Victorian age is considerably influenced by the impact of science, the
questioning note in clough, the pessimism of James Thomson, The wistful
melancholy of Arnold, the fatalism of Fitzgerald, all testifies to the skeptical
tendencies evoked by scientific research. In fiction the scientific spirit he
is no less discernible, the problems of heredity and environment pre occupying
the attention of the novelists. Victorian poetry and fiction was a patriotic
and nationalistic in the tone, we find the tone in the works of Tennyson and
Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.
(4) Poetry and Novel
The Victorian age was
essentially the age of prose and Novel, Though the age produced many poets and two
who deserve to rank among the greatest say are W.J Long says “nevertheless this
is empathetically and age of prose and novel the novel is in this age fills a
place which the drama held in the days of Elizabeth and never before in any age
or language has the novel appeared in such numbers and in such perfection.
Victorian literature in its varied aspect was marked by a
deep model note then second marked characteristic of this age is that
literature both in prose and poetry seems to depart from the purely artistic
standard of “arts for the arts sake” actuateded by a definite moral purpose.
In the
Victorian age prose fiction is very important. Poetry during the period is
chiefly lyrical or Episodic in character. There are few great constructive
literary work. The Victorian age is essentially the age of prose and the novel.
The novel in this age feels place which the drama held in the days of Elizabeth
and never before in any age of language has the novel appeared in such
perfection. Scott with enormous success made the novel a vehicle of a Romantic
spirit. The Victorian novel gives a panoramic view of the life of this time; it
is a social document of great value and significance.
(5) The Collapse of Drama
The only rival of the novel is the drama and for some reason or other the Victorian age was a singularly poor in this branch of literature. A number of poets wrote poetic Dramas which had literary value but were unsuited for the stage of commercially successful dramatists of this age. Bulwer Lytton and Charles Reade have a place in Literature but as novelists rather than dramatist. The revival of drama came only with the last few years of this century.
(6) Note of individuality
The note of individuality was the
hill mark of Victorian age literature. In Dickens’s books there are perhaps
more originals than those of any other novelist in the world, Carlyle and
Browning cultivated manner of full of eccentricity.
(7) Old romantic thirst
In spite of the growing tendency of the writers to be in interested in social and political life of the time, there was in a Victorian literature a continuation of the old romantic thirst for beauty, love art. Literature of this time continued to be romantic in the novelty and variety of its form, in its emotional and imaginative intensity. It is somewhat customary to regard this age as an age of pessimism. The essayists like Carlyle, Ruskin show us deeper faith in humanity.
This age
produced no supreme writers like William Shakespeare or Lord Baron but it was
an age of intellectual Horizons, noble endeavor and bright aspirations.
(8) Note of 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. Through the
note of pessimism runs through literature of the age, it cannot be dubbed as
bleak pessimism and dark despair. A note of idealism and optimism is also
struck by force poets like Browning and prose writers like Ruskin bring out the
courage is optimism of the age.
(9) 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 other nations. Tennyson strikes the patriotic note in the
following lines:
Conclusion
The
poets of the Romantic Revival 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 ‘dales men of the lakes’ were a part of the scenery
they moved in, He treated human beings 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.
