In its origination, the Victorian Period was principally regarded as a reaction against the Romantic era’s culture, aesthetic, and literature. Fundamentally, the Victorian Period revolved around Queen Victoria’s political career and because England underwent significant change during this turbulent, albeit transcendent period, it’s not surprising that Victorian literature encircles social reform. Although the Victorian Period and Romantic era lie on separate spectrums, both periods shared sentiments on how the Industrial Revolution ignored addressing growing and pressing social problems. Nonetheless, the Victorian Period bore witness to a time of cultural and literary development in which writers’ tones shifted from the Romantic period’s undertones of flouting religion and embracing nature, freedom, and creativity to pragmatically charged voices. Ushering in quintessential literature and poetry from writers including Joseph Conrad, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Rudyard Kipling, Victorian literature emphasized a significantly different consciousness from that of the Romantic era in that Victorian literature idealized a sober philosophy of utilitarianism.
While the Romantic era championed self-worth by way of individualism, hearty imagination, and uninhibited emotion, the Victorian Period hailed nationalism and realism. Morality became Victorian literature’s defining trait. By frequently referencing the downtrodden and being equated with prudishness and associated with a Victorian Period persuasion of moral righteousness and public decorum, Victorian literature has also been associated with the classic Victorian fiction formula in which virtue would receive reward and alternately, wrongdoing would be a punishable offense. Like its predecessor, the Victorian Period was a powerhouse of literature — most notably, Charles Dickens’ popular novels of social commentary criticizing the Industrial Revolution’s storehouse of problems, social stratification included. Regarding poetry, the Victorian age’s foremost poet was Alfred, Lord Tennyson whose poetry that combined the then-popular mode of thought of social rectitude and religious incertitude doubtlessly mirrored the seemingly puritanical and moralistic Victorian age. In retrospect, the Victorian era maintains its foothold as a testament to the blossoming of the English novel that transformed to portray raw, real-life paintings of contemporary Victorian life.
Wyl.P1.T4 Edward Tyler, Claire West, Danny Shapiro, Ivy Arbolado
ReplyDeleteWe found your synthesis an organized, well-written overview identifying important factors and forces in the Victorian reaction to the Romantic’s passionate abandon and idiosyncratic individualism. Focusing on Queen Victoria as the figure defining the period of her reign and the massive changes for England that revolved around her “political career” is a supportable point. You also touched on the importance of the call for social reform. We learned that though reform was halting, such as one case where an early unionizing labor action meant arrest and deportation, but later change resulted; it proved protest within the political structure was productive. The allowance for struggle and the strides achieved are arguably the reasons England could enjoy stability while Europe experienced more rebellion. As you say, the social struggle is reflected directly in literature such as Charles Dickens. Did his tales of Oliver Twist and Hard Times record the times or did they serve to raise this awareness for change?
You may consider to include in you reflection dichotomies we noted under the façade of the Victorian Era. Amid burgeoning prosperity that made England the “Workshop of the World” surprisingly to us, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels composed their Communist manifesto observing the ills of industrialization in Manchester. Darwin’s radical discoveries in the Origin of the Species were becoming accepted but any animalistic elements within man became more repellant. In the era dominated by men, where women demurred and were corseted in by clothing and by society, how did the fact play out that Victoria was a woman, and only 18 when she ascended to the height of the English throne? Yet, ironically, Britain would gain the greatest dominance ever as the world leader? What role did her German Prince, her husband and Royal Consort play? Was she a good model as a Victorian wife? As a complex time, many contradictory elements emerge as we look closely at the Victorians.