Victorian Literature

Defining Victorian literature in any satisfactory and comprehensive manner has proven
troublesome for critics ever since the nineteenth century came to a close. The movement
roughly comprises the years from 1830 to 1900, though there is ample disagreement
regarding 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 accuracy where the Romantic Movement of the early
nineteenth century leaves off and the Victorian Period begins because these traditions have so
many aspects in common. Likewise, identifying the point where Victorianism gives way
completely to Modernism is no easy task. Literary periods are never the discrete, 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
together to form the whole artistic and cultural milieu. The Victorian writers exhibited some
well-established habits from previous eras, while at the same time pushing arts and letters in
new and interesting directions. Indeed, some of the later Victorian novelists and poets are
nearly indistinguishable from the Modernists who followed shortly thereafter. In spite of the
uncertainty of terminology, there are some concrete statements that one can make regarding
the nature of Victorian literature, and the intellectual world which nurtured that literature.

If there is one transcending aspect to Victorian England life and society, that aspect is change
– or, more accurately, upheaval. Everything that the previous centuries had held as sacred and
indisputable truth came under assault during the middle and latter parts of the nineteenth
century. Nearly every institution of society was shaken by rapid and unpredictable change.
Improvements to steam engine technology led to increased factory production. More
manufacturing required more coal to be mined from the ground. The economies of Europe
expanded and accelerated, as the foundations of a completely global economy were laid.
Huge amounts of wealth were created, and the spirit of the times discouraged the regulation
of business practices. Today, this is called laissez-faire economics. This generation of wealth
was to the sole benefit of the newly risen “middle class,” an urbane, entrepreneurial segment
of society which saw itself as the natural successor to the noble’s former position of
influence. At the same time, scientific advancements were undermining the position of the
Church in daily life. Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection brought
humanity down to the level of the animal, and seemingly reduced the meaning of life to a
bloody struggle for survival. Rather than a benign Creator, the world was dominated and
steered by strength alone. In the general population, the ever-present gap between the haves
and have-nots widened significantly during the Victorian period. The poorest of their poor
found their lot in life to be worse than it had ever been, as the new market economy favored
industry over agriculture. Large numbers of dispossessed farmers and peasants migrated from
the countryside to the cities, seeking work in the factories. The effects of that demographic
shift can still be observed. Conditions in the overwhelmed, sprawling cities degenerated as
the infrastructure simply could not handle the influx of new workers. Slums and shantytowns
became the norm, and depredation was a fact of life for the majority of the working class.

For some, the fundamental changes taking place in the world meant progress, and were a
source of hope and optimism. For the majority of writers and thinkers, however, the
inequality present in Victorian society was a kind of illness that would sooner or later come
to a tipping point. Many intellectuals saw it as their duty to speak out against the injustices of
this new and frightening world. Essayists like Thomas Carlyle railed against the systematic
abuse he saw happening all around him. He saw machinery and the Industrial Revolution as
engines of destruction, stripping people of their very humanity. The level of social
consciousness and immediate relevancy one finds in much of Victorian writing was
something not witnessed before in English letters. Rather than turning inside or escaping into
fantasy, essayists and novelists chose to directly address the pressing social problems of the
day. These problems ranged from atrocious labor conditions and rampant poverty to the issue
of women’s place in the world – what contemporaries referred to as “The Woman Question.”
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s long-form poem “The Cry of the Children” represents an attack
on mining practices in England, specifically the employment of young children to work deep
in the mines. Barrett-Browning had been outraged by a report she read detailing the practice
and felt compelled to make her voice heard on the issue. She was certainly not alone in this
feeling. Novelist Charles Dickens made a cottage industry out of addressing social ills in a
light-hearted, optimistic tone. Each of his many novels called attention to real-world
problems that others might just as soon have swept under the rug. Dickens is also noteworthy
for his “rock star” status, attaining popularity that would not have been possible in the
previous generation. He wrote with a voice that was very accessible to the ordinary reader of
the time, and yet couched within his fiction were essential questions that society would
sooner or later be forced to confront. One cannot say exactly how much influence Dickens
and others had on their society, but the fact that they tried to change their world is what is
important. Writers of the preceding era did not speak to a popular audience nearly as much as
the Victorians, or at least not as self-consciously. The Romantic Movement was marked by
introversion and abstraction; they were much less interested in commenting on, much less
altering the course of world events. Furthermore, the Romantics did not see leadership as a
primary objective for art. Victorians, on the other hand, tacitly agreed that encouraging
society toward a higher good was a righteous, noble occupation for any artist.

Not surprisingly, women in the Victorian world held very little power and had to fight hard
for the change they wanted in their lives. What one thinks of as feminism today had not yet
taken form in the Victorian period. The philosophy of female emancipation, however,
became a rallying point for many female Victorian writers and thinkers. Though their
philosophies and methods were often quite divergent, the ultimate goal of intellectual women
in the nineteenth century was largely the same. Poets and novelists frequently had to be coy
when addressing their status in society. Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” combines early
feminist imagery with many other concepts in a fairy-tale like world of imagination. Her use
of religious symbolism is especially fascinating. Though not as highly regarded, Letitia
Elizabeth Landon was also an accomplished and popular female poet. Charlotte and Emily
Brontë crafted novels that have stood the test of time and taken their place as literary classics.
These women were exceptions to the rule. Patriarchy had been firmly entrenched in Western
society for so long that women writers faced an uphill climb to gain any level recognition and
acceptance. Some authors, like Mary Ann Evans, felt the need to work under a male
pseudonym in order to receive recognition. Evans published her first two novels, Adam Bede
and Scenes of Clerical Life, under the false name of George Eliot. Interestingly, even today
Evans is more commonly known by her pseudonym than her real name.

In the early years of the Victorian Period, poetry was still the most visible of literary forms.
Like everything else, poetry and poetics underwent an evolution during the nineteenth
century. Both the purpose of poetry and its basic style and tone changed drastically during the
Victorian Period. In the first half of the nineteenth century, poetry was still mired in the
escapist, abstract imagery and themes of the earlier generation. While essayists and novelists
were confronting social issues head-on, poets for their part remained ambivalent at best. This
self-induced coma gradually lifted, and by mid-century most poets had moved away from the
abstractions and metaphysical tropes of the Romantics and fashioned a more down-to-earth,
realistic kind of verse. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the master of simple, earthy lyricism to
which everyone could relate. His In Memoriam shows off this simplicity and economy of
verse, while remaining an effective and moving elegy for his deceased friend Arthur Hallam.
The obsession with the natural world and the imagination that so clearly distinguished the
Romantic poets was supplanted during the Victorian Period by a clear-headed, almost
utilitarian kind of poetics. The subject matter of Victorian poetry was quite often socially-
oriented, but this was by no means set in stone. Victorian poets were nothing if not masters of
variety and inventiveness. Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, for example, covered a
wide array of subjects, from lucid dreams to the nature of art and even the meaning of
existence. Throughout his various aesthetic experiments, Browning never failed to inject
humanity into his subject matter. “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church,” one
of Browning’s most famous poems, demonstrates the intensity and psychological realism he
was able to portray in the space of a few hundred lines.

At some point in the Victorian era, the novel replaced the poem as the most fashionable
vehicle for the transmission of literature. This fundamental shift in popular taste has remained
to the present day. Serial publications in magazines and journals became more and more
popular, and soon these pieces were being bound and sold in their complete forms. Dickens
made full use of the serial format, and his novels betray the episodic arrangement of their
original publication method. He was the first great popular novelist in England, and was the
forerunner of the artist-celebrity figure which in the twentieth century would become the
norm. The influence of Dickens was so severe that every novelist who came after him had to
work under his aesthetic shadow. Part of his appeal certainly owed to the fact that his literary
style, while always entertaining, put the ills of society under the microscope for everyone to
see. His Hard Times was a condemning portrait of society’s obsession with logic and
scientific advancement at the expanse of the imagination. Until the Victorian Period, the
novel had been frowned upon as a lesser form of writing, incapable of the sublime reaches of
lyric poetry. Critics saw that the novel appealed to a popular, often female readership, and
therefore dismissed it as artless and dull. The later Victorian novelists, however, proved that
the form could attain heights of artistic achievement previously reserved only for poetry.
Thomas Hardy, for example, pushed the novel to its limits, significantly expanding the
possibilities of the form. Although he thought of himself more as a poet, his first best talent
lay in constructing detailed, fatalistic plot-structures that still captivate readers. Novels like
Jude the Obscure share many qualities with Greek tragedy, of which Hardy was quite fond,
but they also contain psychologically sophisticated, realistic characterizations. His gift for
characterization would influence an entire generation of writers.

Thomas Hardy must be regarded as a key forerunner of the Modernist Movement in

literature. His novels and poetry all display tendencies that would reach their apex in the early
twentieth century. Hardy often created desolate, hopeless worlds where life had very little
meaning. He also actively questioned the relevance of modern institutions, in particular
organized religion. Sentiments like these would find accomplished spokespersons in poets
like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Another skilled poet who is often considered a precursor to
Modernism is Gerard Manley Hopkins. Though he never published in his lifetime, his work
was greatly received after his death. His unusual use of language set him apart from virtually
every other poet of his day. Hopkins was very much concerned with religion and the nature
of Creation. However, he still preserved a healthy quantity of skepticism. It is this existential
doubt that, like Hardy, made Hopkins a favorite among the Modernist writers who would
later discover his work.
For many, the word “Victorian” conjures up images of over-dressed ladies and snooty
gentlemen gathered in parlors and reading rooms. The idea of “manners” essentially sums up
the social climate of middle-class England in the nineteenth century. Rules of personal
conduct were in fact so inflexible that the Victorians garnered a reputation for saying one
thing while doing another – an attack that the next generation of writers would take up with
vigor. In the world at large, change was happening faster than many people could
comprehend. A surging global economy was orchestrated by the might of the British Empire.
The nobility, formerly at the top of the pyramid in society, found their status reduced as
agriculture lost its preeminence in the now industrial economy. Mechanization and steam
power led to ruthless efficiency, while more often than not the poor suffered under the weight
of the capitalist middle class. Being impoverished in Victorian England was unpleasant to say
the least, but there were efforts underway to improve the lot of the poor. The Reform Bills of
the nineteenth century extended voting rights to men who were previously disenfranchised –
but not, of course, to women. That would require years more of struggle. For all of the social
inequalities which still persisted, the Victorians successfully undermined some of humanity’s
most time-honored institutions. Some writers greeted these changes with fear, and wanted
desperately for society to check its relentless pace. Others embraced the new world that was
coming into being, thrilled at the progress of science and society. Together, these voices
comprise an important and sometimes overlooked era in English literary history.

Major Writers of the Victorian Period

 Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)
 Brontë, Charlotte (1816-1855)
 Brontë, Emily (1818-1848)
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861)
 Browning, Robert (1812-1889)
 Carroll, Lewis (1832-1898)
 Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881)
 Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
 Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)
 Eliot, George (1819-1880)
 Hardy, Thomas (1840-1928)
 Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-1889)
 Housman, A. E. (1859-1936)
 Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936)
 Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1802-1838)
 Rossetti, Christina (1830-1894)
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)
 Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909)
 Tennyson, Alfred (Lord) (1809-1892)
 Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-1863)
 Wells, H.G. (1866-1946)
 Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900)
 Yeats, William Butler (1865-1939)

This article is copyrighted © 2011 by Jalic Inc. Do not reprint it without permission. Written
by Josh Rahn. Josh holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from Morehead State
University, and a Master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Kentucky.