Victorian Novel and Poetry: Authors and Themes

Posted on Mar 17, 2025 in English Studies

The Victorian Novel

Main Literary Trends: Realism, Didacticism: Poetry as a criticism of life. Aestheticism: “art for art’s sake”. Decadence.

The Novel

Authors, readers, and publishers. Formal features: Narrators, Plots, Characters.

The Novel Variety

The “Condition of England Question”: Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens. The satirists. William Thackeray: Vanity Fair. Romanticism revisited. Emily and Charlotte Brontë: Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre. The intellectual/psychological novel. George Eliot: Silas Marner, Middlemarch. Tragic vision and the regional novel. Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Lewis Carroll and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Decadence and horror. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray. Bram Stoker: Dracula.

Charles Dickens (1812-70)

Relevance of his biographical background. Recurrent themes: prisons (both literally and symbolically), attacks on the injustice of social institutions, and the inequalities between the rich and the poor.

First Novels (Light-Hearted Phase: Comedy and Melodrama)

  • The Pickwick Papers (1836-7): The story follows Samuel Pickwick and three other members of The Pickwick Club as they travel throughout the English countryside by coach, observing the phenomena of life and human nature and recording their experiences for the other members of The Pickwick Club.
  • Oliver Twist (1837-8)
  • Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9)
  • The Old Curiosity Shop; Barnaby Rudge (1840-1)

Middle Phase

Comedy and melodrama deepen into a new intensity.

  • Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4)
  • Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol (1843), The Cricket on the Hearth (1846)

Mature Works

  • Dombey and Son (1846-8)
  • David Copperfield (1849-50)
  • Bleak House (1852-3)
  • Hard Times (1854)
  • Little Dorrit (1855-7)
  • A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
  • Great Expectations (1860-1)
  • Our Mutual Friend (1864-5)

Hard Times For These Times (1854)

Weekly serialized from April 1 to August 12, 1854, in Household Words (Dickens’s own magazine). Model: Mrs. Gaskell’s Ruth (1853). Setting: Coketown = Preston (Lancashire).

Main Characters

  • Thomas Gradgrind (utilitarianism-positivism)
  • Josiah Bounderby (social mobility)
  • Louisa Gradgrind; Tom Gradgrind / Cecilia Jupe: childhood & education
  • Stephen Blackpool (honesty and integrity)
  • Rachael (moral purity)
  • Bitzer (perfect product of the utilitarian-positivistic system)

Structure

Sowing, reaping & garnering: Biological metaphor. Opposition between clock/mechanical time and the progress of the seasons – natural time.

Themes

  • Rationalistic system of education that produces machines rather than human beings.
  • Utilitarianism applied to education. Failures: Louisa, Tom, and Bitzer.
  • The Industrial Revolution: social inequalities, towns, factories, working conditions, trade unions.
  • The mechanization of human beings by industrialization: Factories, employers, and employees.
  • Opposition fact/fancy: Coketown and the circus: Importance for the development of the human being.
  • Importance of artistic endeavor: role of fiction.
  • The Woman Question: The status of women. Compassion, moral purity, and emotional sensitivity as ways of counteracting the mechanizing effects of industrialization. Unhappy marriages & divorce (autobiographical element).

Unit 3: Victorian Poetry

Aestheticism: art for art’s sake. Melancholy and elegiac mood: Alfred Tennyson: “The Lady of Shalott”, The Pre-Raphaelites: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Decadent Movement: Charles Algernon Swinburne. Genre experimentation. The dramatic monologue: Robert Browning. Experimentation with metrics: Gerard Manley Hopkins. The female voice: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti.

Poetic Genres

  • Elegy
  • Sonnet
  • Narrative poetry
  • Dramatic monologue
  • Other

Topics

  • Death
  • The past
  • The Arthurian myth
  • Love
  • Woman
  • Religion

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

Poet Laureate (1850). Baron (1884). Influence of Romantic poets. Classical learning. Technical perfection. Narrative poetry.

Works

  • 1830, 1832, 1842: Marianna, The Lady of Shalott, Morte d’Arthur, The Lotos-Eaters
  • In Memoriam (1833, 1850)
  • The Princess (1850)
  • Ode on the Death of Wellington (1854); Charge of the Light Brigade
  • Maud (1854)
  • Idylls of the King (1859-72): 12 narrative poems on the Arthurian myth. Blank verse

Elegiac tone. Allegory of contemporary conflicts. The Lady of Shalott (1832, 1842): Medieval revival. Sources. “Elaine the fair maid of Astolat” from Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. Italian story. Platonic background. The artist and society.