Chapter 7 The Victorian Era

Queen Victoria

The last seventy years of the 19th century were named for the long-reigning Queen Victoria. The beginning of the Victorian Era may be rounded off to 1830 although many scholars mark the beginning from the passage of the first Reform Bill in 1832 or Victoria’s accession to the throne in 1837.

Victoria was only eighteen when her uncle William IV died and, having no surviving legitimate children, left the crown to his niece.

Victoria receives the news that she is Queen. Engraved by Emery Walker (1851–1933), from the picture by Henry Tanworth Wells (1828–1903) at Buckingham Palace.

Although by the 19th century Britain was a constitutional monarchy and the queen held little governing power, Victoria set the moral and political tone of her century. She became a symbol of decency, decorum, and duty.

Three years into her reign, Victoria married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a region in what is now Germany. Prince Albert (given the title “Prince” by Victoria), although he had no actual power in the government, became one of Victoria’s chief advisors and a proponent of technological development in Britain. Together the couple had nine children who married into many of Europe’s royal and noble families. Victoria and Albert were considered the model of morality and respectable family life.

Balmoral Castle, the royal residence in Scotland.

Osborne House, the royal residence on the Isle of Wight.

When Prince Albert died in 1861, Victoria retired from public view, spending time in her Balmoral Castle in Scotland or Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Public opinion of the queen waned as years passed without her resuming her official duties. Even when she conceded to her advisors’ urging to return to London and to honor her public obligations, she continued to wear mourning until her own death. She also commissioned many public memorials to Prince Albert, including the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park (near the original location of the Crystal Palace), Royal Albert Hall, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The Albert Memorial, Hyde Park, London.

Royal Albert Hall, London.

The ornamental dome on the Victoria & Albert Museum was modeled after Queen Victoria’s favorite crown, visible in the portrait below, now on display with the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London.

Photograph by Alexander Bassano 1829–1913.

Queen Victoria reigned as Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India until her death in 1901.

Victorian Conflicts

The Victorian Era was, in many ways, paradoxically “the best times” and “the worst of times.”

Conflicts of Technology and Industry

As an advocate of Victorian progress in science and industry, Prince Albert commissioned the Great Exhibition of 1851, a type of world’s fair where all the countries in the British Empire had displays and Britain could show off its prosperity to the rest of the world. Albert had the Crystal Palace, a huge, modern building of glass and iron, built in Hyde Park to house the exhibition. After the Great Exhibition ended, the building was dismantled and moved and in its new location was destroyed by fire in 1936.

Video Clip 1

The Albert Memorial Symbol of the Victorian Age

(click to see video)

View a video lecture about the Albert Memorial.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 held in the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, London.

Source: Exterior: from Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851, 1854 interior: William Simpson (lithographer), Ackermann & Co. (publisher), 1851, V&A.

The Albert Memorial commemorated all the same things the Great Exhibition vaunted. The four arms extending from the main statue represent four continents on which the British Empire had holdings: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas—the sun literally never set on the British Empire. The figures on the frieze are great painters, poets, sculptors, musicians, and architects, representatives of the world’s accomplishments which culminated in the British Victorian culture. The mosaics on the canopy represent manufacturing, commerce, agriculture, and engineering—the foundations of British prosperity. And, of course, in the center, is the gilded figure of Albert himself.

Arm representing Africa.

Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 focused attention on the technological advances made during the Industrial Revolution. Although achievements such as the building of the railroad system and the implementation of mechanized factories produced great prosperity for some, others suffered. Even before the Victorian Era, writers drew attention to these problems. Wordsworth’s “Michael,” for example, portrays a man whose family had made their living from their land for many generations. With the advent of machines to weave woolen cloth, their livelihood, their way of life, was lost. Blake’s “Chimney Sweeper” poems illustrate how children suffered in the industrial age.

A girl pulling a coal tub in a mine.

Source: Parliamentary Papers 1842.

In addition, working conditions in factories were deplorable. With no safety regulations and no laws limiting either the number of hours people could be required to work or the age of factory workers, some factory owners were willing to sacrifice the well-being of their employees for greater profit. Children as young as five worked in factories and mines. Shelley’s “Men of England” and Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” are two examples of poems written specifically to address these problems.

The 1833 Factory Act outlawed the employment of people under age eighteen at night, from 8:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. and limited the number of hours those under eighteen could work to twelve hours a day. For the first time, textile factory owners were forbidden to employ children under the age of nine. Children under age eleven could not work more than nine hours a day. The 1833 Factory Act also stipulated that children working in factories attend some type of school.

The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited females and boys under ten from working below ground in mines.

While these provisions hardly seem protective according to modern standards, the resulting conditions greatly improved life for many children. Throughout Victoria’s reign, other parliamentary acts continued to alleviate working conditions in the ever-expanding Victorian industrial age.

Conflicts over Women’s Rights

“The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Woman’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.”Queen Victoria, 1870

quoted in Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria)

Ironically, as seen in this passage from a letter written in the royal third person by Queen Victoria, even the Queen opposed women’s rights. Nonetheless, the Victorian Era did see advancement in women’s political rights. The Married Woman’s Property Act of 1870 gave married women the right to own property they earned or acquired by inheritance. The upper classes were, of course, primarily concerned with inheritances. Before the passage of this act, money or property left to a married woman immediately belonged to her husband. By the late 19th century, women had some rights to their children and the right to leave their husbands because of physical abuse.

Education for women also improved. The idea Mary Wollstonecraft expressed in her “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792 very gradually, over more than 100 years, became a reality.

The first schools for the lower classes, girls or boys, were Sunday schools organized by churches to teach children basic literacy as well as religious lessons on the only day they were not working full time. Not until the Education Act of 1870 were public schools in all areas of the country provided by law. Even then, attendance was not made compulsory for another ten years and then only for children aged five to ten.

A 19th century Sunday school.

Girls from the lower classes were included in the first public schools; however, girls from the upper classes continued to receive their basic education primarily in the home and in finishing schools for young ladies. Cambridge University and Oxford University established the first colleges for women in the latter half of the 19th century. Women were not allowed to attend the existing colleges for men and were not considered full members of the universities until the 20th century.

Although there was an active woman’s suffrage movement during the Victorian Era, women did not receive the right to vote until the 20th century.

Take the Women’s Rights Quiz on the BBC website to see how much you know about the rights of Victorian women.

Language

The major change in the English language during the 19th century was the introduction of vocabulary to communicate new innovations, inventions, and concepts that resulted from the Industrial Age. Language mirrored class distinctions in both vocabulary and accents. The well educated upper classes were distinguished by their speech. Slang and an entirely differently accented English were the marks of the lower classes.

Forms of Literature

Resources

Biography

Dickens’s birthplace in Portsmouth.

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, a major port city in England. Although Dickens’s father worked as a clerk in a Navy office, he accrued debt and was imprisoned in Marshalsea Prison in London. Dickens’s mother and siblings joined him in prison, but at age twelve, Dickens went to work in a boot blacking factory in London to help support his family. The experiences he had there provided material for many of his novels that depict the working poor of London.

Forty-eight Doughty Street, the only surviving London house Dickens lived in. He was living here when he wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

When his father was released from prison, Dickens was able to attend school and eventually worked as an office assistant for an attorney, a position which led to his becoming a court reporter, a reporter in Parliament, and eventually a journalist. With the success of his first serialized novel, Pickwick Papers, Dickens became a full-time novelist. His novels quickly achieved mass popularity, audiences eagerly awaiting new installments of the serial novels. Always interested in the theatre, Dickens conducted a series of public readings of his novels, drawing large enthusiastic audiences in England, on the continent, and in America. The readings added to his fame but later in life proved harmful to his health. Against his doctor’s advice, he completed a final reading tour in America and several more readings in England until he died of a stroke in 1870. Not surprisingly for a writer of his prominence, he was buried in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Text

• Dickens, Charles, 1812–1870. A Tale of Two Cities. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library.
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Project Gutenberg.
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. A. L. Burt Company, Publishers, New York. 1890. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

A Tale of Two Cities

Background

Published in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities is an example of a serial novel, a novel published in installments over a period of time. The novel was first published in weekly installments and again later in monthly installments.

Cover of the serial volume of A Tale of Two Cities with artwork by Hablot Knight Browne, known as Phiz, who illustrated many of Dickens’s works.

Fears that England might be heading toward a revolution like the French Revolution persisted into the Victorian Era. Literary references to these fears appear in many 19th-century works including Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest; Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children,” Shelley’s “Men of England,” and Byron’s Don Juan.

The passage of Reform Bills in 1832, 1867, and 1884 to extend voting rights evidences the discontent of the previously disenfranchised working class and the unease of the upper classes who feared open rebellion.

Themes

• Threads of destiny. The weaving or knitting motif serves as an archetypeAn image or symbol embedded in the collective unconsciousness of people from all cultures, an idea based on the psychological theory of Carl Jung., an image or symbol embedded in the collective unconscious of people from all cultures, an idea based on the psychological theory of Carl Jung. In mythology, the Fates weave, representing fate determining human destiny, gradually revealing the pattern of one’s life in their tapestry.
• Guilt and retribution. The French aristocracy is personified in St. Evrémondes, who in turn personifies guilt. Darnay is inextricably connected to the guilt as surely as he is related to St. Evrémondes, an example of the weaving together of various threads to form one’s destiny. Retribution is embodied in Madame DeFarge.
• Retribution and redemption. The contrast of retribution and redemption form a major theme of the novel, a theme in which almost all the characters play a role.
• The doppelganger. The word doppelganger, translated from German, literally means ‘double walker” or “double goer.” In folklore, the doppelganger is often a harbinger of death or an ill omen, not necessarily a physical double. Elements of the doppelganger in both senses function in A Tale of Two Cities.

Key Takeaways

• Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities was published as a serial novel, a popular form of publication in the Victorian Era.
• The novel is structured in three parts, each part with a title that helps to convey theme.
• In the well-known opening lines, Dickens uses literary devices such as anaphora, asyndeton, parallelism, and paradox.
• The novel’s characters include both developing and static characters, both types contributing to the development of theme.
• Major themes of the novel are threads of destiny, guilt and retribution, and retribution and redemption.

Exercises

Structure and Theme

Consider the themes conveyed by the three-part structure.

• Part I Recalled to Life

  1. Who is recalled to life? Consider the following characters:

     • Dr. Manette
     • Charles Darnay
     • Sydney Carton
     • Jarvis Lorry
     • Miss Pross
  2. How are these characters “recalled to life”?
  3. What is the purpose of Cruncher and his occupation, “resurrection man”?

• Part II The Golden Thread

  1. How does Lucie function as a “golden thread,” weaving the events?
  2. Could Madame DeFarge function as a “golden thread”?
  3. What are the literal and figurative purposes of Madame DeFarge’s knitting?

• Part III The Track of a Storm

  1. What personal “storms” erupt in Part III?
  2. What public “storms”?

Characters

1. Trace the development of Sydney Carton’s character from his dissipated state to his redemption. What forces affect his developing character?
2. Compare Lucie, the stereotypical Victorian upper class woman, with Miss Pross, the stereotypical Victorian lower class woman.
3. Why doesn’t Madame DeFarge anticipate Carton’s action?
4. What explanation does the novel provide for Madame DeFarge’s evil? After learning the explanation, do her actions seem justified?
5. In what ways and why is The Vengeance different from Madame DeFarge?
6. In what ways do the two cities represent “poetic justice,” with the “good guys” ending up in England and the “bad guys” ending up in France?
7. Compare and contrast Dickens’s portrayal of London and Paris with the Romantic poets’ depiction of the pastoral countryside and the industrialized city.

Images

1. Identify images of light and dark throughout the novel. What themes do these images support?
2. Locate references to footsteps throughout the novel. What is the purpose of these references? Also consider Dr. Manette’s shoemaking; explain how it symbolizes the path he makes for his own and Lucie’s fate.
3. List instances of the spilling of wine throughout the novel. How do these incidents function literally in the plot and figuratively in reinforcing theme?

Themes

1. How do references to Lucie’s hair connect to the “threads of destiny” motif?
2. How and why is Darnay different from his relative St. Evrémondes? How do his decisions and actions contribute to a destiny different from his uncle’s?
3. What role does Dr. Manette’s letter play in the theme of guilt and retribution?

4. Almost all the characters in the novel play a role in developing the theme of retribution and redemption. Identify which of the following characters represent retribution and which represent redemption. After compiling this initial list, reconsider each character to determine those who are more complex, who embody elements of both retribution and redemption.

   • Darnay
   • Carton
   • Dr. Manette
   • Lorry
   • Minor characters: Cruncher, Barsad

5. Identify examples of the doppelganger and describe their function in the novel. Include the following examples:

   • London-Paris
   • Darnay-Carton
   • Lucie-Madame DeFarge and/or Miss Pross-Madame DeFarge

Resources

Biography

The village of Haworth website offers virtual tours of the interior of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Text

• Wuthering Heights. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library.
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Project Gutenberg.
• Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. The Haworth Edition. New York and London. Harper & Brothers Publishers. 1900. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

Wuthering Heights (1846)

A novel, according to Holman and Harmon’s standard definition is an “extended fictional prose narrative.” A novel’s components include character, plot, structure, setting, and theme.

An 1846 edition of Poems showing the use of pen names, Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

Emily Brontë’s drawing of herself and Anne writing at a table in the Bronté parsonage in Haworth. This sketch is on display in the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth.

As in most novels, in Wuthering Heights character, plot, and structure are tightly interwoven; one element drives the others. Particularly significant in Wuthering Heights is setting, which Brontë uses to reflect character.

• Character: While contemporary audiences tend to read Wuthering Heights with a sympathetic view of Heathcliff and Catherine, Victorian audiences would have agreed that Edgar was the appropriate choice of a husband for Catherine. We may think that couples should follow their hearts, but a Victorian audience, particularly an upper or middle class audience, would have believed that Catherine had a duty to marry her social equal—Edgar. The conflict within Catherine as she feels torn between Heathcliff and Edgar is a focal point of the novel. Her death marks the transition between the two parts of the story. Of course, Wuthering Heights is largely Heathcliff’s story; his desire for revenge drives the plot.
• Plot: The main story is told as a flashbackThe insertion of an event from earlier in the natural chronology that interrupts the narrative., the insertion of an event from earlier in the natural chronology that interrupts the narrative. The story opens with the arrival of Lockwood at Wuthering Heights. After his nightmarish encounter with the apparition of Catherine, Nelly Dean begins to tell Lockwood the story of the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Most of the book, then, is her narration of events that have already happened. The final chapters return to the novel’s present, the time of Lockwood, as the conflicts are resolved.
• Structure: The structure of Wuthering Heights is built on the three generations of characters in the story: the older generation (who set in motion the conflicts); their children (who comprise the conflicts of the novel); and the youngest generation (who resolve the conflicts). Through these three layers of characters runs a connecting thread in the character of Heathcliff. Providing a framework for this structure are the narrations of Nelly and Lockwood.
• Setting: The characteristics of the two families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, are reflected in their homes, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Even the weather is used to mirror the emotions of the characters.

A structural diagram of Wuthering Heights.

Resources

Biography

Texts

• “The Cry of the Children.” Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. Bartleby.com.
• “The Cry of the Children” in The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London: Oxford University Press, 1920. Hathi Trust Digital Library.
• “The Cry of the Children” in The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Project Gutenberg.
• Sonnets from the Portuguese. London: George Bell and Sons, 1900. Google Books.
• Sonnets from the Portuguese. Project Gutenberg.
• Sonnets from the Portuguese in The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London: Oxford University Press, 1920. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

Sonnets from the Portuguese

Barrett Browning’s sonnets were written to express her feelings for her husband Robert Browning. She never intended that they be published but acquiesced to her husband’s opinion that the poems were too good to keep from the world. Various biographers have attempted to explain the title: “Portuguese” was supposedly a pet name Browning had for his wife. Or the title may have been intended to disguise the biographical nature of the poems by suggesting that they were translated from the Portuguese language.

Sonnets from the Portuguese form a sonnet sequenceA group of sonnets exploring all aspects of a topic., a group of sonnets exploring all aspects of a topic, a form of literature that had reached its height of popularity in the 16th century. Barrett Browning uses the form to trace the growth of a love, at first tentative, then more self-assured as the sequence progresses.

Sonnet 43 is one of the world’s best known poems. The first line, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” surely figures in the most often quoted poetic lines.

The poet recounts eight ways in which she loves:

1. Her love is as expansive as the space her soul is capable of reaching.
2. Her love encompasses everyday moments, by night and day, in contrast to the expansive metaphor of the first “way of loving.”
3. Her love is freely given. She compares this gift of love to the way men voluntarily strive for the things they believe in.
4. Her love is pure as the men fighting for their beliefs do so from pure motives, not for glory or honor.
5. Her love is as intense as the passions she felt in her childhood.
6. Her love is as intense as the love she thought she’d lost when she lost her childhood “saints,” perhaps a reference to loved ones she lost through death, or perhaps a reference to disillusionment—learning that people she considered “saints” are not perfect.
7. Her love lasts through “smiles” and “tears,” good and bad experiences.
8. Her love will last even after death.

“The Cry of the Children”

The epigraph to Barrett Browning’s poem from Euripides’s Greek tragedy Medea may be translated, “Woe, woe, why do you look at me with your eyes, children?” Stanzas 1 and 2 begin with questions for Barrett Browning’s readers, directing their attention to the children’s tears. The suffering and sorrow felt by the children is to be expected only in a much older person, one who has lived long enough to experience life’s hardships.

Stanza 4 relates the children’s reactions to the death of Alice, one of the children. The children peer into her grave, noting that there is no room for her to do the work she’s been used to. Alice will never again hear someone calling her from her bed at dawn to resume her work, and the children do not hear her crying from her grave. Based on these observations, in their childish reasoning, they conclude that death is preferable to life.

Stanzas 5 and following address the children’s relationship to nature and to God while always pleading with the reader to recognize the children’s plight. The last stanza addresses the reader directly with a condemnation of a society that allows this situation to exist.

Resources

Biography

Robert Browning was born in 1812, the son of a prosperous bank clerk and a nonconformist, musical mother. His father collected a voluminous library, and, disliking school, Browning grew up largely self educated in his father’s library, both he and his sister Sarianna immersed in a household filled with music, art, and literature. His early poems, such as Pauline and Paracelsus, attracted little attention. Encouraged by an actor friend, William Macready, Browning attempted to write several plays, none of which was particularly successful on stage. His next published long poem Sordello was ravaged by critics and popular writers of the time, such as Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle, and earned Browning a reputation for “obscurity” which persists to the present.

Browning’s attempts at writing plays did lead him to develop a form for which he is most well-known, the dramatic monologue, a poem spoken by a single speaker to a recognizable but silent audience at a critical moment in the speaker’s life. Although he did not invent the dramatic monologue form, he perfected it and used it so well that it has come to be closely associated with Browning.

The negative critical reception much of Browning’s early work received may account for the exceptional notice he took of Elizabeth Barrett’s mention of him in her poem “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”:

Or from Browning some “Pomegranate,” which, if cut deep down the middle, shows a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity.

Feeling as if he’d found someone who understood his poetry, Browning began corresponding with Barrett and, through mutual friend John Kenyon, one of London’s literati, arranged to meet her. After their marriage and move to Florence, Italy, the most productive period of Browning’s life began with the publication of Men and Women in 1855.

Browning’s magnum opus The Ring and the Book is a verse novel consisting of twelve books, ten books presenting ten dramatic monologues recounting a sensational murder trial that took place in Italy in 1698. In the introductory Book I, Browning describes walking through a street market in Florence and purchasing what he called The Old Yellow Book, a compilation of documents pertaining to the trial from which he drew the story conveyed in The Ring and the Book. This is the “Book” of the title. The “Ring” of the title may refer to an actual ring or to the ring of stories which attempt to arrive at the truth of the murder case. The verse novel is an experiment in dialectical writing, a story told through nine different filters (one character, the murderer Guido Franceschini, speaks two books), nine characters with their own preconceptions and circumstances which color their versions of the truth. The speakers of the monologues reveal as much about themselves as they do about the murder—which is the main purpose of a dramatic monologue: to reveal the character of the speaker.

The Old Yellow Book on display in the Browning Room at Balliol College, Oxford.

By the time of his death in 1889, Browning had become a major figure in England’s literary scene. He was buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets Corner although he had expressed to his son his desire to be buried next to his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Florence, Italy.

Texts

• “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church Rome, 15—.” Representative Poetry Online. Ian Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto. University of Toronto Libraries.
• “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church, 15—.” The Victorian Web. Dr. George Landow, Brown University.
• “Home Thoughts from Abroad.” Representative Poetry Online. Ian Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto. University of Toronto Libraries.
• “My Last Duchess.” Representative Poetry Online. Ian Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto. University of Toronto Libraries.
• “My Last Duchess.” The Victorian Web. Dr. George Landow, Brown University.
• “Porphyria’s Lover.” Representative Poetry Online. Ian Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto. University of Toronto Libraries.
• “Porphyria’s Lover.” The Victorian Web. Dr. George Landow, Brown University.
• “Prospice.” Representative Poetry Online. Ian Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto. University of Toronto Libraries.

The Dramatic Monologue

From John Donne in the 17th century to Robert Burns in the late 18th century, poets wrote dramatic monologues. Browning, however, is most often associated with the form, and his dramatic monologues are considered his best poems.

Although the dramas that Browning wrote early in his career were not successful as theater productions, they reveal a gift for creating fictional characters and presenting them through their speeches. While this made “talky,” uninteresting stage presentations, it created dynamic poetry.

A dramatic monologue has the following four characteristics:

1. a fictional speaker
2. a speech made at a dramatic moment in the speaker’s life
3. a silent but identifiable listener
4. a revelation of the speaker’s character

Think of a dramatic monologue as a scene in a play, but a scene in which only one of the characters on stage speaks. The “I” of a dramatic monologue is not the poet; the poet makes up a character who delivers the speech. It is this fictional character whose life and thoughts we hear about.

The speech that is the dramatic monologue is given at a dramatic moment in the speaker’s life; some significant event has or is about to occur.

The existence of a silent but identifiable listener means that the speaker is not the only character present in this scene. We can tell from the speaker’s comments that another person (or persons) is present, but the poem contains only the words of the speaker.

A dramatic monologue reveals the character of the speaker. By hearing what s/he says, we know what kind of person s/he is.

Robert Browning was interested in psychology; his dramatic monologues give us insight into a variety of people—some good, some evil. In “Porphyria’s Lover,” for example, Browning takes his audience into the mind of a psychotic man. We wonder how someone could commit such a violent act, and Browning’s poem attempts to let us see how this criminally insane mind works.

“My Last Duchess” is based on an historical incident involving the Duke of Ferrara, Italy during the Renaissance.

“The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church” also takes place in Renaissance Italy. The Bishop is on his deathbed and addresses “Nephews—sons mine…ah, God I know not!” In the next line he refers to his long-ago mistress. The implication of calling the priests gathered around his bed first nephews then sons followed immediately by a reference to his mistress is that he has fathered them but, as a priest, has pretended they are his nephews for so long that now, in the confusion of his mind as he faces death, he is not sure of the truth himself. The Bishop continues throughout his monologue to reveal that he is far from a devout clergyman.

His purpose in calling his sons/nephews to his deathbed is, as the title states, to order his tomb, to give them instructions for constructing his monument in the church. He compares himself and the tomb he wants to that of his rival in life, Gandalf. We learn that they were rivals for everything from position in the church to the mistress that bore his children.

The Bishop orders the finest, most expensive of materials and the most elaborate of ornamentation. The extent of the Bishop’s depravity is revealed in lines such as these when he describes the items he wants carved on his tomb:

The sacrilegious combination of Christ, Moses, and a saint with the mythological Pan taking off a girl’s clothes represents the combination of sacred and profane that has been his life. Overall, the audience is struck foremost by the fact that in the Bishop’s last moments of life, his thoughts are not of his God and the state of his immortal soul but of material and worldly matters.

Lyric Poems

Although Browning is known primarily for his dramatic monologues, he also wrote lyric poetryA brief poem, expressing emotion, imagination, and meditative thought, usually stanzaic in form., brief poems expressing emotion, imagination, and meditative thought, usually stanzaic in form such as “Home Thoughts from Abroad” and “Prospice.”

In “Home Thoughts” the speaker longs nostalgically to be back in his home country of England. The reference to the “gaudy melon flower” represents Italy and contrasts with the delicate beauties of England in spring.

“Prospice,” written months after Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s death, expresses courage and faith in the face of death. The last lines are considered a statement of Browning’s personal belief that he will be reunited with his wife after death:

Resources

Biography

Alfred Tennyson was born into a middle class family in Lincolnshire, the son of a clergyman. Tennyson attended Trinity College, Cambridge where he published his first collection of poetry written with his two older brothers, both already students at Cambridge. The volume was called Poems by Two Brothers although all three collaborated on the work. Also while at Cambridge Tennyson became close friends with Arthur Henry Hallam. While visiting Tennyson’s family, Hallam met and later became engaged to one of Tennyson’s sisters. Before the marriage could take place, Hallam died. Tennyson’s devastation over Hallam’s death led him to write one of his greatest poems, the elegy In Memoriam A.H.H. The following verses from In Memoriam record a visit made to Trinity College after Tennyson’s student days; he describes walking through the campus to visit Hallam’s old rooms:

After his father’s death, Tennyson left Cambridge before graduating to assist his family. His 1833 volume of poems, which included “The Lady of Shalott,” received poor reviews. Discouraged by the criticism, he didn’t publish another volume until 1842. That volume, including “Ulysses,” was extremely popular with the public and was quickly followed by his long poems The Princess and In Memoriam A.H.H. When the Poet Laureate William Wordsworth died in 1850, Tennyson’s popularity led to his being appointed to the post. In addition, Queen Victorian, who admired Tennyson’s poetry, offered him a title and estate.

Tennyson, now Lord Tennyson, moved to his Farringford estate on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England.

Farringford, Lord Tennyson’s home on the Isle of Wight.

While living at Farringford, Tennyson, a favorite of Queen Victoria, visited her at her Isle of Wight home, Osborne House. Tennyson took long rambling walks over the downs of the Isle of Wight, an area now known as Tennyson Down.

Tennyson Monument on Tennyson Down, Isle of Wight.

Tennyson’s study at Farringford.

When Tennyson died at age 83, he was buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets Corner, next to Robert Browning.

Texts

• “Crossing the Bar.” rpt. from English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. Bartleby.com.
• “Crossing the Bar.” The Victorian Web. Dr. George Landow, Brown University.
• Idylls of the King. A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication. Jim Manis, Faculty Editor.
• Idylls of the King. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Idylls of the King, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• In Memoriam. Ed. W. J. Rolfe. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1895. University of Toronto, Robarts Library. Internet Archives.
• In Memoriam. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865. Hathi Trust Digital Library.
• “The Lady of Shalott.” The Camelot Project at The Rochester University. comparison of 1833 and 1842 versions.
• “The Lady of Shalott.” The Victorian Web. Dr. George Landow, Brown University.
• “Ulysses.” rpt. from Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. Bartleby.com.
• “Ulysses.” The Victorian Web. Dr. George Landow, Brown University.

In Memoriam

Published at mid-century, 1850, the poem’s publication date symbolizes its philosophy, half-way between the mysticism of Coleridge’s “Eolian Harp” and Hardy’s “strings of a broken lyre.” In contrast with the Romantic view of nature as a spiritual or intellectual force, In Memoriam’s first six sections picture nature as an indifferent force and then, in section 130, the speaker recognizes Hallam’s essence in nature.

Tracing the speaker’s journey through grief, from despair to doubt and eventually to a reaffirmation of faith, In Memoriam embodies the Victorian conflict of faith and doubt. Rather than a stabilizing, constant force, faith appears to crumble in the midst of personal and social disorder.

In the Prologue, the speaker affirms faith in God in the famous first stanza:

In stanza 5 of the Prologue, the speaker acknowledges that “our little systems”—which may refer to organized religion, to social structures, to governments, to scientific theories, to any systems resulting from human endeavors to impose order and certainty on the world—eventually fail.

The structure and unity of the poem hinge on time, the three Christmas Eves described in the poem. Otherwise the progression of ideas seems to wander from despair to hope and faith and back to despondency, perhaps a realistic picture of a journey through personal grief.

In Memoriam consists of 131 sections plus a prologue and an epilogue, all of varying numbers of stanzas composed of 4 lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming ABBA.

“The Lady of Shalott”

In “The Lady of Shalott,” Tennyson draws on the Arthurian legends, the stories of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, which he also uses in his major work, Idylls of the King.

While writing about the mythical medieval world of Camelot, Tennyson poses questions about his Victorian world: were Victorians, especially the upper classes, becoming complacent and self-satisfied; what is the relationship of the artist and the world?

The Lady of Shalott lives shut away in a tower on an island near Camelot. Note the description of her island in stanzas 1 and 2. Words such as “lilies” (which usually are white), “willows whiten,” “aspens” (which have whitish bark), “gray walls,” “gray towers,” and “silent” all add up to a picture of a drab, colorless world inhabited by the Lady.

Part 2 informs us that the Lady of Shalott spends her life weaving in her tower. Because of a curse that has been put on her, she cannot even look out the window, certainly not go outside the tower into the world. She can see the world only through her weaver’s mirror which reflects the events going on outside her window. Tennyson does not give us any information about the “curse”; we don’t know who cursed the Lady or why. Apparently Tennyson considers these details unimportant; we accept the curse as a supernatural, fairy tale element. The focus, instead, is on the Lady’s reaction to her banishment from being involved in the world. Notice the last two lines of Part 2.

In Part 3, attention shifts to the world outside the tower as Sir Lancelot rides by. In contrast to the pale, colorless description of the Lady’s world, Sir Lancelot is described in bright, colorful terms: “dazzling,” “flamed,” “sparkled,” “glittered,” “golden,” “blazoned,” “jeweled,” “glowed,” “burnished,” “flashed.” The last stanza of Part 3 relates the Lady’s reaction to seeing Sir Lancelot in her mirror.

Part 4 concludes the story. As soon as the Lady looks out the window and directly at the world, the curse comes upon her. Her weaving, her art, flies out the window. She leaves her tower, climbs into a boat, and dies as the boat drifts toward Camelot. Ironically, Sir Lancelot voices a final blessing on the Lady of Shalott.

Many artists have painted their impressions of Tennyson’s poem. One of the most well-known is this painting by John William Waterhouse.

The Lady of Shalott, based on Tennyson’s poem.

Source: John William Waterhouse 1888.

Idylls of the King

At Farringford Tennyson finished one of his major works, the long poem Idylls of the King, a series of twelve narrative poems based on the Arthurian legends.

The first four Idylls, published in 1856, were “Enid,” “Vivien,” “Elaine,” and “Guinevere.” As suggested by the title Tennyson originally planned, The True and the False, these four idylls place four women characters on a spectrum of good and evil, fidelity and betrayal, idealism and reality. The rejection of The True and the False as a title in favor of The Idylls of the King shifts the focus to Arthur. Rather than standing individually, the four women in the completed work serve as pivotal points in a schema dominated by the king. Although revised and fitted into this more expansive plan, the four poems are still the cornerstones of The Idylls, their stories functioning as vehicles for the presentation of theme. The complexity of theme is reflected in the complexity of the characters’ dilemmas, and is played out, not among the four women or in an attempt to place them on a spectrum, but in each individual’s effort to deal with the real and the ideal. In each idyll, Arthur’s standards, his values, his vision are the controls which govern the action and the result.

In 1862, Tennyson dedicated the expanded work to the memory of Prince Albert, much to the pleasure of the widowed Queen Victoria. In the epilogue “To the Queen,” Tennyson describes his work as “shadowing Sense at war with Soul,” an expression of the faith and doubt conflict of the Victorian Age. In this war of Sense and Soul, Arthur’s stance is the touchstone and Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere, the tokens of the battle.

The Idylls of the King may be read as Tennyson’s commentary on problems he recognized in Victorian society, including loss of religious faith, the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, complacency among the upper classes, and the active versus the inactive life.

“Ulysses”

For the dramatic monologue, “Ulysses,” Tennyson borrows a character from classical Greek literature, the Odyssey. Tennyson portrays the main character Ulysses (the Latin version of the Greek name Odysseus) after he has returned home from his 20-year voyage following the Trojan War.

Because this poem is a dramatic monologue, we can identify the four characteristics of that form. The fictional speaker of the poem is, of course, Ulysses. The dramatic moment is a moment of choice in his life: he has to decide whether to stay at home to rule his kingdom or to return to the sea for more adventures (see line 6). The silent but identifiable listeners are his mariners, the sailors whom he tries to convince to accompany him on one more great voyage (see lines 45–46). The entire poem provides a vivid picture of Ulysses as a man not content to sit at home but who wants to cram as much experience as possible into his life.

In the first stanza, Ulysses speaks disparagingly of his people, referring to them in animal terms (lines 4–5). He complains about the idleness of his life and how old his wife has become (apparently not realizing that she is also stuck with an old husband).

Stanza 2 proclaims Ulysses’s desire to live life to the fullest. In the well-known lines 22–26 he complains about the dullness of retiring from an active life and expresses his wish to live as fully as possible in the time remaining.

In stanza 3, Ulysses turns to his son Telemachus, expressing his intent to leave him in charge of ruling Ithaca. A question raised in these lines is if Ulysses thinks less of his son for staying at home instead of seeking new experiences like his father. Consider lines 39–40.

In stanza 4, Ulysses addresses his mariners, urging them to accompany him. He concedes that they are old, yet convinces them that even in old age “some work of noble note” may still be accomplished. See lines 49–57. The last line of the poem is a famous one that expresses Ulysses’s determination to keep trying, to keep accomplishing, rather than to be satisfied with past accomplishments.

Both of these poems, “The Lady of Shalott” and “Ulysses,” employ a common theme in Tennyson’s work: the active life versus the inactive life. Both poems portray characters who make a decision to become actively involved in life when they might more safely sit on the sidelines. Tennyson includes in these works a message for his Victorian society; he fears that they, too, may become complacent. In a century pleased with its expansive empire, its technological and industrial progress, and its scientific advances, Tennyson reminds readers that there are always new horizons to explore.

“Crossing the Bar”

Tennyson stated that he composed “Crossing the Bar” while sailing from the Isle of Wight to the mainland at Lymington. Composed in 1889, the poem is often considered an elegy for Tennyson himself. Before his death in 1892, Tennyson requested that “Crossing the Bar” be placed last in every collection of his poetry.

View from a ferry crossing the Isle of Wight to Lymington.

Resources

Biography

From a family of educators, Matthew Arnold was well educated and widely read even before he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford University. For a time, his family lived in the Lake District, where Arnold met William Wordsworth. Arnold worked as a teacher, a fellow at Oriel College Oxford, a school inspector, and finally Professor of Poetry at Oxford. His poetry includes Thyrsis, an elegy to his friend Arthur Clough, considered along with Milton’s Lycidas, Shelley’s Adonais, and Tennyson’s In Memoriam to be the great pastoral elegies of British literature. Other of Arnold’s major poems include “The Scholar Gipsy,” “Tristram and Iseult,” and “Sohrab and Rustum.”

In addition to his poetry, Arnold wrote prose works addressing literature (Essays in Criticism), cultural and class issues (Culture and Anarchy) and religious issues (Literature and Dogma) in Victorian England. Throughout much of the 20th century, the reputation of Arnold’s prose works overshadowed that of his poetry.

Text

• “Dover Beach.” rpt. in Edmund Clarence Stedman. ed. A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. Bartleby.com.
• “Dover Beach.” The Victorian Web. Dr. George Landow, Brown University.

“Dover Beach”

Resources

Biography

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, moved to England to attend Oxford University, and then moved to London. Wilde had been rejected by his first love, but in London met and married Constance Lloyd, with whom he had two children.

Wilde is considered one of the founders of the aesthetic movementThe theory of “art for art’s sake” that places the pursuit of beauty as the highest purpose of art., the theory of “art for art’s sake” that places the pursuit of beauty as the highest purpose of art. Aestheticism, with its ideals of beauty and the belief that art and morality are not connected, spread throughout Europe in the late 19th century. The aesthetic philosophy contrasted with the Victorian ideals of duty, decorum, and decency represented by Queen Victoria and perceived in the works of Victorian writers such as Browning and Tennyson. In addition to literature, aestheticism influenced visual and decorative arts. From aestheticism grew the concept of the alienated artist, divorced from mainstream society, isolated from a middle class who cannot understand his/her work, an individual of more sensitive perception, more refined sensibilities than the ordinary person.

Wilde wrote children’s books, the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and, most famously, a series of satirical plays, the last and most well known The Importance of Being Earnest.

In the 1890s, Wilde’s scandalous court trials all but overshadowed his literary accomplishments. When the Marquis of Queensberry accused Wilde of homosexuality, Wilde sued him for libel. During the trial, witnesses testified that Wilde was guilty of homosexual activity, and even though Wilde dropped his suit against the Marquis, the government issued a warrant for Wilde’s arrest on charges of homosexual activity. Found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison, Wilde suffered declining health throughout his imprisonment. After his release, he moved to France and died there in 1900.

A contemporary bench commemorating Oscar Wilde near St. Martin’s in the Field, London.

Text

• The Importance of Being Earnest. CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts. University College Cork, Ireland.
• The Importance of Being Earnest. Project Gutenberg.
• The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. London: Methuen & Co., 1919. Hathi Trust Digital Library.

Comedy of Manners

First produced in 1895, Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest abounds in witticisms and sly criticism of late Victorian society.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners, a type of play popularized in the late 17th and 18th centuries. A comedy of mannersA witty, satirical play which mocks aristocratic society. is a witty, satirical play which mocks aristocratic society. Wilde revived the comedy of manners, which had its zenith in the Restoration comedies of Sheridan and Goldsmith, to write an immensely popular, funny criticism of Victorian aristocracy. In the play, Wilde attacks Victorian complacency, as did Tennyson, but in a very different manner. Wilde displays the foibles of society for ridicule and for his audience’s amusement.

A statue of Edward VII at Holy Rood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Warwick castle.

Daisy, Countess of Warwick.

Resources