1 1 The Bayswater Omnibus, 1895. George William Joy. Oil on canvas, 47 /2 x 78 /4 in. of .

906 George William Joy/Museum of London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 906906 11/29/07/29/07 12:52:4912:52:49 PMPM UNIT FIVE The Victorian Age 1837–1901

Looking Ahead During the sixty-four-year reign of Queen Victoria, Britain experienced unprecedented economic and technological growth and dramatic political and social change. Britain became “the workshop of the world.” About a quarter of the world’s people lived within the British Empire. A growing social consciousness stirred reforms. Some Victorian writers felt an optimistic promise in the era; others saw the menace of a world driven by inhuman forces.

Keep the following questions in mind as you read: How were Britain and the British Empire changing during the Victorian age? What conditions helped stimulate Victorian optimism? How did the mood of later Victorian writers change?

OBJECTIVES In learning about the Victorian age, you will focus on the following: • analyzing the characteristics of Victorian literature and how issues of the period influenced writers • evaluating the influences of the historical period that shaped literary characters, plots, settings, and themes in Victorian literature • connecting Victorian literature to historical contexts, current events, and your own experiences

907

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 907907 11/10/07/10/07 9:01:509:01:50 AMAM Timeline 1837–1901

BRITISH LITERATURE Charles Darwin 1835 1865

1841 1850 1861 1865 Humorous weekly Punch Alfred Tennyson becomes Charles Dickens publishes Lewis Carroll publishes is founded poet laureate Great Expectations Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 1847 1859 1862 Emily Brontë publishes Charles Darwin publishes Christina Rossetti publishes 1866 Wuthering Heights On the Origin of Species Goblin Market ▼ Gerard Manley Hopkins becomes a Roman Catholic 1847 1859 Charlotte Brontë publishes Edward FitzGerald publishes 1867 Jane Eyre Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Matthew Arnold publishes New Poems

BRITISH EVENTS 1835 1865

1837 1840 1851 Victoria is crowned queen Queen Victoria marries Great Exhibition is held Prince Albert 1838 1854 Chartists demand political 1841 Britain enters Crimean War reforms Hong Kong comes under 1857 British sovereignty Crystal Palace 1839 Indian Mutiny breaks out First real bicycle is invented 1845 1861 1865 in Scotland Irish Potato Famine begins Prince Albert dies Joseph Lister initiates antiseptic surgery 1862 John Hanning Speke identifies source of the Nile WORLD EVENTS 1835 1865

1837 1856 1865 John Deere invents the Remains of Neanderthal American Civil War ends steel plow in the U.S. man are discovered 1866 in Germany 1848 Alfred Nobel invents Revolutions break out 1861 dynamite in Europe Alexander II 1868 emancipates Russian serfs 1848 Meiji restoration occurs German philosophers Marx in Japan and Engels write Communist Manifesto

Timeline Visit www.glencoe.com for an interactive timeline.

908 UNIT 5 THE VICTORIAN AGE (t)Mary Evans Picture Library, (tc)The Art Archive/ Eileen Tweedy, (bc)CORBIS, (b)Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 908908 11/29/07/29/07 12:53:0812:53:08 PMPM The Mad Tea Party, John Tenniel. The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

1885

1878 1894 1897 Thomas Hardy publishes First issue of The Yellow Book Bram Stoker publishes The Return of the Native is published Dracula 1882 1895 1898 Robert Louis Stevenson The Importance of Being H. G. Wells publishes publishes Treasure Island Earnest by Oscar Wilde The War of the Worlds is produced 1884 First volume of 1896 Oxford English Dictionary A. E. Housman publishes is published A Shropshire Lad

1885

1866 1885 1901 Great Eastern lays first General Gordon is killed Commonwealth of Australia successful transatlantic cable at Khartoum established 1869 1897 1901 Debtors’ prisons abolished Queen Victoria celebrates Queen Victoria dies; Edward her Diamond Jubilee VII becomes king 1876 Queen Victoria is 1899 proclaimed Empress Boer War begins of India in South Africa

1885

1874 1885 1895 ▲ 1900 First Impressionist Leopold II of Belgium German physicist Wilhelm Boxer Rebellion breaks out exhibition is held in acquires Congo in Africa Röntgen discovers X rays in China 1876 1888 1899 1901 Alexander Graham Bell Wilhelm II becomes emperor Austrian psychoanalyst First Nobel Prizes are invents the telephone of Germany Sigmund Freud publishes awarded in the U.S. ▼ The Interpretation of Dreams 1895 Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi invents wireless telegraphy Reading Check Analyzing Graphic Information For how many years was Queen Victoria a widow?

INTRODUCTION 909 (cw from top)The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY, Bettmann/CORBIS, Mary Evans Picture Library, Getty Images, Giraudon/Art Resource, NY

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 909909 11/29/07/29/07 12:53:1612:53:16 PMPM By the Numbers Growth in the British Electorate, 1832–1884 Through a series of reform bills, the ELIGIBLE VOTERS number of male voters in Britain 5,000,000 greatly increased during the 5 million Victorian age. Women would have to wait until the twentieth century 4 million to win the right to vote. 3 million 2,520,000 2 million 717,000 440,000 1 million Number of People 2 ct ct ct THE GREAT EXHIBITION 83 A A A 1 rm 2) rm rm 4) re fo 3 fo 67) fo 8 OF 1851 fo 8 8 8 t Re (1 Re (1 Re (1 Be nd ird Queen Victoria officially opened Firs co Th Se the “Great Exhibition of the Works Source British Parliamentary Reform in the 19th Century of Industry of All Nations”—the first world’s fair—at noon on May 1, 1851, in the mammoth Crystal Palace erected in London’s Hyde Park. SETTLING AUSTRALIA SERVANTS The Crystal Palace was 1,848 • Between 1788 and 1868, Britain In Victorian Britain, having at feet long and 408 feet wide. sent more than 160,000 convicts least one servant was a mark of The central transept was to Australia. The First Fleet con- middle-class respectability. In 108 feet high. sisted of 11 small ships carrying 1891 servants made up 16 per- • Built of prefabricated sections, 736 criminals. Their average age cent of the British work force. the building’s iron frame held was 27. The oldest male was in 896,000 square feet of glass. his sixties; the youngest was 9. EDUCATION The youngest female was 13; the More than half of the almost Elementary education was not • oldest, 84. 14,000 exhibitors at the Great compulsory in Britain until 1880. In 1871 more than 19 percent of Exhibition were from Britain HOME LIGHTING and the British Empire. the men and 26 percent of the Before the electric light was women getting married could More than 6,200,000 visitors • invented, candles and oil lamps not sign their names in their par- attended the exhibition— lighted homes. Both needed ish register. Twenty years later, 478,773 in the last week constant attention. One estate both of these figures had alone—before it closed on employed 3 or more men cutting dropped to around 7 percent. October 11, 1851. candlewicks, removing wax drips, • Entrance fees alone brought in cleaning glass lamp chimneys, HUNTING 424,418 pounds, 15 shillings. and filling lamps. Even a modest The Victorian upper class spent a As a result, the Great Exhibition home could have some 20 or lot of time shooting game ani- made a large profit. more lamps. mals on their estates. During a Among the displays on the three-day period in 1864, hunt- • CHILD MORTALITY grounds of the Great Exhibition ers at one estate killed 4,045 were the first life-size models In 1839 nearly half the funerals pheasants, 3,902 rabbits, 860 of extinct creatures that scien- in London were for children hares, 59 woodcocks, and 28 tists had only named a few younger than 10 years old. creatures described as “various.” years earlier: dinosaurs.

910 UNIT 5 THE VICTORIAN AGE

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 910910 11/29/07/29/07 12:53:2912:53:29 PMPM Being There

The Victorian age was a period of great expansion for the British Empire. Along with other European powers, the British engaged in a fierce competition for African colonies. The vast Indian subcontinent became “the Jewel in the Crown” of Queen Victoria, who was declared Empress of India in 1876. Britain’s annexation of Australia continued throughout the Victorian age, until the entire B The Last of England, Ford Madox Brown, 1852– island continent was part of the British Empire. 1855. Oil on panel. Birmingham and Art Gallery, United Kingdom. View of Harbour Street, Kingston, Jamaica, after James A The British Raj Great Indian Peninsular Terminus, Hakewill, nineteenth century. Engraving. Private collection. C unknown artist, nineteenth century. Watercolor on paper. British Library, London, United Kingdom.

UNITED CANADA KINGDOM B

NEWFOUNDLAND CYPRUS

BURMA MALTA BAHAMAS EGYPT C INDIA BR. WEST INDIES A OMAN HONG KONG NIGERIA SUDAN JAMAICA BARBADOS ADEN BRITISH GAMBIA BRITISH TRINIDAD HONDURAS SIERRA SOMALILAND MALAYA KIRIBATI LEONE SARAWAK MALDIVES CEYLON GOLD UGANDA BRITISH COAST BRITISH EAST AFRICA SOLOMON GUIANA ZANZIBAR IS. SEYCHELLES SINGAPORE RHODESIA BRITISH MAURITIUS GUINEA BECHUANALAND FIJI TONGA AUSTRALIA IS. CAPE COLONY

British Empire NEW FALKLAND ZEALAND IS.

Reading Check Analyzing Graphic Information: 3. On what continent did the British Empire have 1. About how many times greater was the British elec- the smallest amount of territory? torate after 1884 than it had been before 1832?

2. Approximately how many exhibitors at the Great Maps in Motion Visit Exhibition were from Britain and the British Empire? www.glencoe.com for an interactive map.

INTRODUCTION 911 (t)Ford Madox Brown/Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery/Bridgeman Art Library, (bl)James Hakewill/Private Collection, Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Art Library, (br)British Library, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 911911 77/10/06/10/06 9:31:179:31:17 AMAM The Victorian Age 1837–1901

Historical, Social, and Cultural Forces Queen Victoria and Her Empire Many nineteenth-century inventions similarly changed the fabric and structure of daily life. Cast Victoria came to the British throne in 1837 as a girl iron and elevators enabled people to build taller of eighteen; at her death in 1901, most of her subjects buildings; transatlantic telegraph wires and tele- had never known any other ruler. Personally, Victoria phones meant people communicated more quickly was most interested in her own family—her husband, and widely; the new aniline dyes meant people Prince Albert, and their nine children. As “mother of dressed more brightly. Electric light made streets the empire,” however, she also played a major sym- safer and theatrical performances more thrilling. bolic role in unifying Britain’s widespread colonies. The discovery of vaccines and the pasteurization of The British had begun to settle Australia in 1788. milk improved health. Canned food fed soldiers and Britain was also a major player in the European arctic explorers while bringing variety to the limita- scramble to colonize Africa. Above all, in India, tions of locally produced, seasonal diets. For the Britain consolidated and expanded its rule in what first time, photographs preserved memories. To the had begun as a privately funded enterprise under the Victorians, speed and other technological innovations East India Company. By Queen Victoria’s sixtieth seemed to promise a better world in many respects. anniversary Diamond Jubilee in 1897, she ruled one- As the Victorian historian Thomas Babington quarter of the world’s population. Macaulay wrote, “every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellec- tually as well as materially.” “The British Empire is under Providence the greatest instrument for good that the Marxism and Darwinism The stunning changes of Victorian life came at a world has seen.” price. The visible signs of material progress seemed to —Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India many contemporaries to underscore the lack of prog- ress on other fronts. Governmental committees pub- lished reports on such subjects as child labor laws, conditions in mines, and sewer projects. Many of Technological Advances these reports, known as Blue Books because of the color of their covers, had real effects on public opin- Britain’s imperial success was aided by technological ion and the laws. Despite mountains of data, how- strength. Victorian life literally sped up. For untold ever, many people felt the lack of an overarching centuries, the fastest speeds possible—and then only theory to make sense of the huge changes they had for the rich—were achieved with horses and sailing witnessed. In this cultural climate, two men provided ships. Steam power democratized speed. By the end of theories that continue to influence us today. the century, locomotives could reach fifty miles per hour and steamships, fifteen knots. Both provided German-born philosopher Karl Marx moved to regular and relatively inexpensive transportation. London in 1849 after being exiled from Paris for his

912 UNIT 5 THE VICTORIAN AGE

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 912912 11/29/07/29/07 12:53:3812:53:38 PMPM political radicalism. In Britain, he drew on the information contained in the Blue Books to write his most famous and influential book, Das Kapital (“Capital”), which first began to appear in English in 1886. Marx believed that class warfare was inevitable. According to Marx, all property and the means of pro- duction should be held in common, and all means of subsistence should be shared out equally: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Marx intended his ideas to have earth- shaking political and social consequences; Postcard illustrating the British Empire, c. 1919. Rykoff Collection. the British naturalist Charles Darwin did not. He published his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, but the seeds of it had behind the changes and no intended goal. By the end been planted more than twenty years earlier on an of the century, contemporary interpreters of Darwin expedition to gather biological specimens. Darwin’s claimed evolution implied progress. They used biolog- long-term observations and speculations led him to ical notions of “the survival of the fittest” (not view all living organisms—from pine trees and cod- Darwin’s words) to justify the power of the rich, an fish to human beings—as governed by the same natu- application known as Social Darwinism. Darwin him- ral laws. For Darwin, the mechanism of evolution was self loathed controversy, however, and was not inter- controlled by blind chance; there was no agent ested in applying his theories to human social policy.

PREVIEW Big Ideas of the Victorian Age

Optimism and Disillusionment The Emergence the Belief and Darker 1 2 of Realism 3 in Progress Visions

During the Victorian era, In the mid-1800s, a reaction By the late 1800s, a move- Britain developed a huge to Romanticism began to ment called Naturalism empire. The resulting material appear in both art and litera- developed out of Realism. success, coupled with tech- ture. Known as Realism, this Like Realists, Naturalists pre- nological advances and social new movement aimed to sented contemporary people reforms, encouraged an opti- explore contemporary life and their problems as accu- mistic belief in progress that and ordinary experience. rately as possible. However, was reflected in some Focusing on individuals deal- Naturalists tended toward Victorian literature. ing with everyday problems, extreme pessimism, suggest- See pages 914–915. Victorian Realist writers often ing that fate was predeter- sought to reform society. mined and meaningless. See pages 916–917. See pages 918–919.

INTRODUCTION 913 Rykoff Collection/CORBIS

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 913913 77/10/06/10/06 9:31:389:31:38 AMAM Big Idea 1 Optimism and the Belief in Progress

ust like styles of clothing, beliefs and ideals The Expansion of Democracy go out of fashion—and then often come back Many British workers were literate and—thanks to in again. Victorian values have been sneered cheaper books, municipally funded lending libraries, at off and on for more than a century, but J and Mechanics’ Institutes (workingmen’s colleges)— they show no sign of disappearing. were exposed to new ideas. During this period, conti- nental Europe experienced many violent political Victorian Values upheavals, coups, and revolutions, but Britain did Three of the most typical Victorian ideals were self- not. One reason for this lies in the greater ability of improvement, moral earnestness, and the value of the British to change through political means in work. In the bestselling Self-Help, published in 1859, response to pressures from below. Samuel Smiles preached a gospel of thrift, hard work, Although Victorian Britain was officially a representa- and patience: “Honorable industry travels the same tive democracy, the right to vote at the beginning of road with duty; and Providence has closely linked the queen’s reign was very limited. Nonetheless, there both with happiness.” Moral earnestness defined the was a marked trend toward increasing representation work of Queen Victoria’s favorite contemporary and social mobility. In 1832 the First Reform Bill writer, her poet laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson brought the vote to middle-class men. In 1867 the (see page 922). After the death of her husband Prince Second Reform Bill enfranchised many workingmen, Albert in 1861, the queen cherished Tennyson’s doubling the electorate. By the end of the nineteenth long, thoughtful poem In Memoriam, which struggles century, women could vote in most local elections. It to affirm the survival of love despite death and was not until the end of World War I, however, that religious doubts. all men over twenty-one and women over thirty could vote. Many people felt that real economic, social, and political mobility was increasingly possible. These signs of hope spread throughout the empire. “Not what I have, . . . but what I do is my kingdom.” Imperialism —Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus Britain gained its empire more through commercial expansion than through military conquest. British colonial rule did not aim at centralized control, and there could be considerable variation in local govern- The Middle-Class Public ment. Colonial New Zealand, for example, in 1893 The middle-class virtues of Victorian individualism became the first country in the world to give the vote seemed to define a new aristocracy of merit. Making to all adults regardless of sex or race. British institu- something of oneself required guidance and effort. tions—including the army, the civil service, and the The well-to-do middle classes spent a lot of money on law—offered some inclusion and mobility to colo- reading for self-improvement—and there was much nials. Mohandas Gandhi, for example, was born in new material for them to read. Periodicals were India and admitted to the British bar in London in crammed with serialized novels, book reviews, travel 1889. His legal work to end discrimination against writing, current events, and other educational pieces. Indians in South Africa, another British colony, Several Victorian novelists, including Charles started him on his path to become the leader of the Dickens (see page 984) and William Makepeace movement for Indian independence. There is no Thackeray, edited their own journals that also pub- doubt that British colonial rule could be officious and lished their work, ridding themselves of the burdens insensitive. But many people in Victorian Britain of patronage. truly believed they were bringing their colonial sub- jects the benefits of Western civilization.

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00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 914914 11/29/07/29/07 12:53:4612:53:46 PMPM Queen Victoria Opening the 1862 Exhibition after Crystal Palace Moved to Sydenham. Joseph Nash. Private collection.

One of the most influential critics of Victorian culture was the essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle. from Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle

All true Work is sacred; in all true Work, were it but true if this is not “worship,” then I say, the more pity for wor- hand-labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide ship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the God’s sky. Who art thou that complainest of thy life of brow; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see thy the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton fellow Workmen there, in God’s Eternity; surviving there, meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted they alone surviving: sacred Band of the Immortals, Heroisms, Martyrdoms,—up to that “Agony of bloody celestial Bodyguard of the Empire of Mankind. sweat,” which all men have called divine! O brother,

Reading Check Interpreting Why did Victorians such as Carlyle value work?

INTRODUCTION 915 Joseph Nash/Private Collection, Bonhams, London, UK/ Bridgeman Art Library

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 915915 11/29/07/29/07 12:53:5412:53:54 PMPM Big Idea 2 The Emergence of Realism

or the Victorians, in an age of transition capable of producing something beneficial for society. where all the old values seemed in the Social Darwinists, erroneously believing they were process of being demolished, life was lived supported by Charles Darwin’s writings on evolution, amid a babble of conflicting opinions. claimed that aid to the unfit was, in fact, unnatural. F Whom should they trust? Artificially prolonging the life of the unfit, they believed, weakened a whole society. The Road to Wealth At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the Voices of Reform British economic theorist Adam Smith put forward Equally determined Victorian voices spoke out on the idea that a nation of individuals free to pursue behalf of the poor and helpless. Carlyle, for example, their own economic self-interest without governmen- passionately exposed the underlying flaws in Victorian tal interference would ultimately produce a stronger, society, warning of Britain’s moral, as well as literal, wealthier nation. To give moral justification to such starvation. His writings inspired many writers and self-interest, the Victorian thinkers Jeremy Bentham reformers, including Karl Marx and the novelist and John Stuart Mill came up with the theory of Charles Dickens. Utilitarianism—the view that the ethical value of an Doctors, ministers, journalists, and private philan- activity is measured by the extent of its usefulness. thropists organized many charitable organizations, Utilitarianism strongly influenced the ethical deci- including the Ladies’ Society for the Education and sions that Victorians made in political and economic Employment of the Female Poor, the Society for the life. Many factory owners and businessmen, particu- Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Young larly in the industrial north of Britain, became strong Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Reformers advocates for putting free-market and Utilitarian within Parliament used Blue Book reports to educate doctrines into practice. the well-to-do middle class about the poor. Reports on, for example, child labor in coal mines, were widely read, leading to reform laws. “The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals The Novel and the Condition and legislation.” of England In 1845 Benjamin Disraeli chose to write a novel to —Jeremy Bentham persuade the wealthy to unite “the two nations” of England—the rich and the poor. In her novel North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell used Britain’s geography Free-market economic policy had visible conse- to explain its economic divisions. Many other authors quences. Victorian Britain, whose population doubled wrote novels to represent, in a socially realistic way, during the first half of the 1800s, had more money the “Condition of England.” They set their novels in than ever before, and more poor people than ever factory towns. Their characters were working-class before. Did a forward-moving nation have a responsi- mill-hands, clerks, seamstresses—or lower-class peo- bility to help the poorest people among them, who ple, such as paupers. Plots partially depended on produced no wealth but consumed resources? Quite romance but also included riots among workers and a few people argued that the answer was no. Propo - meetings to discuss working conditions. Victorian nents of self-help thought it was self-evident that novels proved to be powerful instruments for instruct- it was one’s own fault if one was poor. Extreme ing middle-class readers. As they sat in their parlors, Utilitarians argued that one poor person’s starvation these readers began to imagine the humanity of those was more than offset by the full stomach of a person whom they might never meet.

916 UNIT 5 THE VICTORIAN AGE

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 916916 66/22/06/22/06 2:01:022:01:02 PMPM The Docks at Cardiff, 1894. Lionel Walden. Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room else will ever be of any service to them. This is the princi- for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate ple on which I bring up my own children, and this is the carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with Facts, Sir!” an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a was,—all helped the emphasis. school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger empha- “In this life, we want nothing but Facts, Sir; nothing sized his observations by underscoring every sentence but Facts!” with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, over- there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of shadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped Reading Check Analyzing Cause and Effect Why did Victorian writers move in the direction of Realism?

INTRODUCTION 917 Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 917917 11/29/07/29/07 12:54:0812:54:08 PMPM Big Idea 3 Disillusionment and Darker Visions

ne of the most admirable characteris- lowing in the path of Zola, clinical knowledge of the tics of the Victorians was their capac- human condition replaced teary sympathy. ity for self-criticism. Even at the Other writers who did not identify themselves with height of Victorian optimism—when Naturalism nonetheless shared a tendency toward a technological and material progress O somber realization of life’s randomness. The late seemed to many people to be limitless—doubting Victorian writer Thomas Hardy (see page 1003) voices already were heard. wrote many poems as “Satires of Circumstance.” We could not, he believed, even flatter ourselves Pessimism and Naturalism that gods cared about us enough to torment us; our The young Thomas Carlyle worried that, in an age life here was merely a cosmic joke of happenstance. that worshiped machinery, people too would grow “mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.” Carlyle’s fellow cultural critic John Ruskin, in a series “How arrives it joy lies slain, of letters addressed to British “workmen and labor- ers,” looked around and saw a savage world: a “yelp- And why unblooms the best hope ing, carnivorous crowd, mad for money and lust, ever sown?” tearing each other to pieces, and starving each other to death.” The ugliness and brutality of the Victorian —Thomas Hardy, “Hap” age prompted many painful questions: What could replace traditions as they disappeared? What would unify the country when religious feeling weakened? Could human nature and society improve indefi- Decadent Literature nitely? Could they, in fact, change at all? As the nineteenth century drew to a close, a new mood arose in Victorian culture. Referred to as deca- The Realist novel, which had proved itself so effec- dence (meaning “decline” or “decay”), this new cul- tive in rousing emotion, began to seem too good at tural spirit was, like Naturalism, a reaction to the raising falsely comforting feelings such as sentimen- prevailing optimism of the Victorian age. Naturalist tality or smugness. A new generation of novelists writers, however, had hoped that their literary works were influenced in part by Darwinism to look for could influence people’s opinions. By contrast, inevitable natural, rather than spiritual, forces guid- Decadent writers rejected the idea that works of art ing the course of human life. In France, for example, had to serve any useful purpose. Among the most the novelist Émile Zola wrote novels according to a notorious of the Decadents was Oscar Wilde, an Irish- set of beliefs called Naturalism. Naturalistic novels, born comic genius who enjoyed upending Victorian plays, and poems tend to present a grim, almost fatal- values—but always with a subversively serious intent. istic view of the world, in which mostly lower-class As Wilde wrote, “There is no such thing as a moral characters are trapped by circumstances beyond their or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly control for reasons that they cannot determine. Zola’s written. That is all.” Partaking in the growing disillu- goal was to use the novel almost as a scientific instru- sionment at the end of the Victorian age, Decadent ment. He observed that he was subjecting his fic- writers disdained and despised the consolations of tional characters to “the same analytical examination religion and bourgeois life. They embraced life’s futil- that surgeons perform on corpses.” For novelists fol- ity through extremes of style, whether in dress, behavior, or their literary work.

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00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 918918 11/29/07/29/07 12:54:1912:54:19 PMPM In the following poem, Thomas Hardy compares nature’s dark forces to subalterns, a term for junior officers in the British army.

“The Subalterns” by Thomas Hardy

I “Poor wanderer,” said the leaden sky, “I fain would lighten thee, But there be laws in force on high Which say it must not be.” II —“I would not freeze thee, shorn one,” cried The North, “knew I but how To warm my breath, to slack my stride; But I am ruled as thou.” III —“To-morrow I attack thee, wight,” Said Sickness. “Yet I swear I bear thy little ark no spite, But am bid enter there.” IV —“Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say; “I did not will a grave Should end thy pilgrimage to-day, But I, too, am a slave!” V We smiled upon each other then, The Doubt: “Can These Drying Bones Live?”, c. 1855. Henry And life to me wore less Alexander Bowler. Tate Gallery, London. Of that fell look it wore ere when They owned their passiveness.

Reading Check Comparing and Contrasting How did Naturalism differ from Realism?

INTRODUCTION 919 Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY

00906-0920906-0920 UOU5-845482.inddUOU5-845482.indd 919919 11/29/07/29/07 12:54:2812:54:28 PMPM Wrap–Up

Why It Matters Cultural Links The fundamental problems and questions that The Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins Victorians faced, and the solutions they attempted, became an important influence on modern litera- are still with us. Most visible are the material ture in English after an edition of his works was changes; for example, the ways in which nineteenth- first published in 1918. century cities were organized. Like us, the Victorians Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre inspired Jean Rhys’s were consumers with an enormous appetite for novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which tells the story of innovations and material goods—often absurd Mr. Rochester’s first wife. Jack Maggs, a novel by and unnecessary. the contemporary Australian writer Peter Carey, The newly complicated nineteenth-century world retells Dickens’s Great Expectations. made more evident the need for educated and Lewis Carroll has had a large influence on modern involved citizens. Social reforms and increasing culture, including words he coined (such as chortle), democratization are two important trends of the and on literary works, such as the fiction of the Victorian age. We still puzzle over how large a role Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. government should have in helping the poor. Darwinism is still hotly debated today. You might try using this study organizer to take notes on the people, settings, and events you read about in this unit. Above all, we have inherited from the Victorians an uneasy faith in ourselves. We share both their hope- THREE-TAB BOOK fulness about progress and their doubts about ever achieving it.

Big Idea1 Big Idea2 Big Idea3

Big Ideas Link to Web resources to further explore the Big Ideas at www.glencoe.com.

Use what you have learned about the Connect to Today period to do one of these activities.

1. Speaking/Listening Select one of the important questions that the Victorians debated (for exam- ple: Is the purpose of art to be beautiful or useful? What is the responsibility of the government toward the underprivileged?). Hold a panel discussion in which you and your fellow students explore your own attitudes about this question. 2. Visual Literacy Beginning with Lewis Carroll’s own drawings and the famous illustrations by the Victorian cartoonist John Tenniel, Carroll’s Alice books have been very popular with artists. Create a visual display of different treatments of Carroll’s books and discuss with other students the effects of differences in culture and medium.

OBJECTIVES • Conduct a debate. Study Central Visit www.glencoe.com • Create a visual display. and click on Study Central to review the Victorian age.

920 UNIT 5 THE VICTORIAN AGE

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