ch. 1 conceptual approaches on victorian age.docx

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Ch. 1 conceptual approaches on Victorian age

1.1. Historical and cultural aspects of the timeQueen Victoria and the Empire Queen Victoria was only eighteen when she

ascended the throne, and she ruled not only the world's most powerful nation but also

an empire extending to Canada, Australia, India, and parts of Africa. After the death

of her uncle, William IV, the young Princess Victoria was awakened from a sound

sleep and brought down stairs in her dressing gown. Her diary forth at day records

that on the staircase that morning she had felt quite prepared to be queen. She

remained queen until her death sixty-four years late rat the age of eighty-two. Her

long reign was a period of progress and prosperity forth en ation. Victoria's personal

life was richal so She married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (an

amen that their successors would eventually change to the more British-sounding

Windsor).Victoria and Albert ad happy family life with four sons and five daughters,

and they traveled of ten to visit royal relative son the Continent, especially in

Germany. The queen's exemplary personal life, along with her famous honesty, sense

of morality, and propriety, won a new respect for the monarchy. The Victorian Age

did contain conflict, inevitable in an empire that can ned the globe, an empire upon

which the sun literally never set.

No matter how controversial the issues relating to the Victorian age may have

been when the term Victorianism imposed itself as indispensable to the history of

culture and civilisation in the nineteenth century, consensus has been reached that this

period was one of unprecedented development in all the fields of Englands

economic, social and political life. Referred to from the standpoint of the twentiethcentury, Queen Victorias age is undoubtedly perceived as a period of stability and

equilibrium underlain by a solid and reliable value system, with the idea of God

looming large at its centre. Far from being a period of perfect harmony, free of any

conflicting states, Victorianism still enjoys the benefits of some strongholds on whose

unquestionable stability one is invited to rely. The most important one is the figure of

Queen Victoria herself and the institution the queen represented - the monarchy.

The historical terms, Victorian Age or Victorian Era, referred to the things and

the events that happened during the reign of Queen Victoria in England from 1837 to


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1901. Some adjectives to describe the people and things of this period would be

prudish, strait-laced, and old-fashioned. Another characteristic of the Victorian

society was that many of the upper class individuals were snobbish and that they

looked down upon others, especially the lower class individuals. In addition, this era

came before the Womens Suffrage Movement in the 1920s. Many women were still

thought of as being inferior to their male counterparts, even if they were

wealthy. Two examples of literary works that show some of the characteristics of the

Victorian age are The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde and The Old

Nurses Story by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Queen Victoria was the longest reigning monarch in English history and she is

primarily remembered for her having established the monarchy as a respected and

popular institution. The monarchy the apex of the court and of polite society

generally 1 flourished under Queen Victoria. The monarchy represented the

timeless quality of what was taken to be a pre-industrial order. In an increasingly

urbanised society, it balanced the Industrial revolution: the more urban Britain

became, the more stylised, ritualised, and popular became its monarchy, for the values

which it claimed to personify stood outside the competitive egalitarianism of capitalist

society.2

Victoria gained enormous popular esteem for supporting the imperialistic policies

and, in 1876, she also became Empress of India. Great Britain turned into one of the

worlds most extended empires. It occupied a position in the world that engendered a

feeling of self-confidence, of trust in the individuals power and in an unlimited

possibility of progress, all the more so for Britain also being the cradle of the

Industrial Revolution. Dictated by a tough competition with other European nations,

the British Empire expanded with a view to establishing new spheres of influence and

gaining control over previously unexplored areas that represented fresh opportunities

for trade and new sources of wealth. A feeling of national pride was also associated

with Britains expansionistic tendencies in the nineteenth century, which undoubtedly

accounts for part of the apparent stability of the Victorian society. The Empire was,

thus, another stronghold of the Victorian age, on whose strength much of the spirit of

the period depended.

1

Morgan , Kenneth O. (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Oxford University Press, 2000,p.4932ibidem., p.496


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On the occasion of the Great Exhibition of 1851, proudly opened by Queen

Victoria and Prince Albert in London, E. P. Hood, the inventor of the term Victorian

stated with immeasurable pride. The Englishman lives to move and to struggle, to

conquer and to build; to visit all seas, to diffuse the genius of his character over all

nations. Industry, Protestantism, Liberty seem born of the Teutonic racethat race to

whom God has committed the conservation as well as the spread of Truth and on

whom mainly depend the civilisation and progress of the world.3

The boom in wealth generated a boom in birth rate. In the public opinion, the

traditional picture of the family reigned supreme. The large family was the rule in the

Victorian society. Many children, gathered under the protective wing of a caring

mother, materially depended on the effort, and consequent success, of the father, who

could be seen as a dignified epitome of God on earth.

Much of the stability and solidity of the Victorian age were given by peoples

perceiving the family, the monarchy and the empire as solid, incontestable and wealth

providing institutions. Although the Victorian prosperity was only one side of the

coin, the other being the victims, the multitude of the crushed and the oppressed, few

Victorian people ever seriously thought of contesting the beneficial role of these

institutions in the Victorian society. Dissatisfaction may have been formulated with

any other social, economic or political aspects. The monarch and the institution she

led, the imperialist expansionism and the family as the basic social unit of the society

were never questioned.

Literature, and especially fiction, reflects the reality in a certain period of time.

The Victorian novel, constructed according to the conventions of realism is, thus,

expected to be in various ways a reflection, or better said, a representation of the

Victorian society, with all its underlying values. Yet, one and the same cultural,

ideological and axiological background will generate different distinct individual

works. The main condition of existence of fiction is that it establishes a necessary

relationship with the external referent. When a mimetic attitude to literature is

adopted, the fictional work will create an illusion of reality, which can go from an

apparent total overlap between fiction and reality, to subtly or maybe strikingly

3Hood, E.P., The Age and Its Architects quoted in Bedarida, F., A Social History of England 1851-

1990, Routledge, 1994


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divergent paths of the two. No matter which type of illusion it creates, the work

always is an original processing of the same material. It is the form and the choice of

method and technique that gives the work uniqueness and differentiates it from any

other individual work, even if the latter is inspired from the same referent.

Starting from the historical delimitation of the Victorian period, it is interesting to

see how different Victorian writers, or writers creating in the Victorian age,

formulated their own standpoint and related themselves to the Victorian values and

conventions. The paper will try to demonstrate that there is a clear relationship

between the particular standpoint that a writer chooses to express and the technique

that he opts for in order to carry into effect the intended representation. To this end, I

have chosen for exemplification three novels by three novelists whose work displays a

fairly wide range of references to the Victorian period, but which, by a different

option in point of technique, produced a different representation of reality. The

specific moment of time when the three novels I selected were published is also

relevant. Charles Dickens Bleak House came out in 1852-1853, i.e. about the same

time the Great Exhibition took place in London. The Great Exhibition marked a

turning point in the history of the nineteenth century, delimiting the Hungry Forties

from the Fabulous Fifties. Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderlandappeared in 1865, i.e. a moment when the Victorian values indicative of wealth and

prosperity, success and self-confidence became the standard of the Victorian

organisation. Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness was written in 1899 and published

only three years later in 1902, i.e. in a period when the Victorian system, the Empire

included, underwent a process of decline, when mans value system got relative under

the influence of the turn-of-the-century scientific and technological discoveries. I will

approach the three novels, starting from some textual instances that I consider

relevant to the purpose of this paper. The three writers work will be dealt with in

succession, given the fact that the view of the world and the modifications of

technique can be also interpreted as time-dependent.

Dickens confronts his reader with an image of the Victorian society rendered in the

conventions of the realist novel. Without claiming that he would reform manners and

morals, or that he would repair social injustice, Dickens constitutes himself, however,

into a spokesperson of the realities of his time. He has a view of both sides of the

Victorian coin, but he chooses to emphasise more the bad side of it, focusing on the


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deficiencies of the legal, social and political system. Dickens is a keen observer of

reality and he decides to present it as truthfully and as accurately as possible. He

chooses thus the narrative technique that could provide the proper birds-eye view of

the Victorian panorama. The point of view that Dickens uses is the omniscient, which

means that, no matter how sceptical about the values underlying the Victorian system

he may be, he is not ready to essentially question these values. The omniscient

narrator is a God-like presence in the narrative that parallels Gods central position to

the Victorian mans system of values. Consequently, critical as Dickens is of

Englands situation, the values underlying his thinking coincide to a certain extent

with those underlying the thinking of any Victorian individual. Dickens may criticise

the organisation of his contemporary England, but he will seldom, if ever, question

the validity of this organisation, in a subversive way. Dickens criticism can be

effected in tones ranging from mild irony, through satire to bitter sarcasm, but

ultimately he will acknowledge the system as system, and thus his novel will be an

artistic representation of a society which is, after all, stable and solid.

Although England and the English political system are not too often the subject

matter of Dickens novels in explicit terms, the chapter National and Domestic in

Bleak House offers the reader an almost straightforward representation of the

countrys political deficiencies. There is one ingredient that is purposefully avoided in

the constitution of England the Queen. One may easily refer the two fictional

characters in the fragment to the historical personages Benjamin Disraeli and William

Gladstone, both Prime Ministers having played a significant part during Queen

Victorias reign. Yet the monarch does not appear, although Dickens openly satirises

the performance of the two politicians, the former a Conservative, the latter a Liberal.

Dickens message is that all political alternatives are reduced to mere irrelevance

when the judicial system is so ineffective and so negatively reflected in the peoples

life. Yet, the taboo subject of the queen, and implicitly of the monarchy, is not

tackled, which is clearly indicative of Dickens essential standpoint.

England had been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle would go

out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldnt come in, and there being nobody in Great

Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there has been no

Government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting between the two great

men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did not come off; because if both


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pistols had taken effect, and Coodle and Doodle had killed each other, it is

to be presumed that England must have waited to be governed until young

Coodle and young Doodle, now in frocks and long stockings, were grown

up. This stupendous national calamity, however, was averted by Lord

Coodles making the timely discovery that, if in the heat of debate he had

said that he scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas

Doodle, he had merely meant to say that party difference should never

induce him to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while it

as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas Doodle had in

his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down to posterity as the

mirror of virtue and honour. Still England has been some weeks in the

dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well observed by Sir Leicester

Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the marvellous part of the matter is, that

England has not appeared to care very much about it, but has gone on

eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, as the old world

did in the days before the flood.4

The irony underlying the text is evident. The names of the two great men come

into derisive discrepancy with their indispensability to the fate of Britannia, asEngland is referred to some lines downwards by Dickens, in remembrance of the

heroic days of the Roman province. The common noun doodle5 turned into a proper

one and, more importantly, assigned to a person on whose shoulders the responsibility

of a country lies suggests Dickens clear intention of mocking at the whole political

system that both Conservatives and Liberals represented. The name Coodle is

only an invention to make political irresponsibility rhyme. Dickens has the same

critical attitude when he considers the political discourse in the Victorian period. He

points to the ambiguity and lack of coherence of this discourse, which may be mildly

termed diplomatic, but which shows nothing but the indifference, lack of consistency,

even rude manners of the politicians at that, and other coming, time. Similarly, he

questions, by attacking it, the hereditary right of the aristocratic class to the

government of the country. Yet what the reader discovers, in surprise is that, in the

Victorian writers opinion, the country could manage without the two, which

4

Dickens, Ch.,Bleak House, Penguin Books, 1994, pp.5165doodle: meaningless scrawls and scribbles, while one is or ought to be paying attention to something

else


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indicates, in an implicit way that the structure was seen as stable and strong enough to

resist in absence of government. This is the reason why the Queen is not held

responsible. She was a guarantee to the countrys stability and prosperity. Her

privileged place in the Victorian mentality prevented Dickens from having her

artistically involved. The Queen, just like the other institutions mentioned in the

beginning of this paper, was a taboo subject. Adopting an omniscient narrators

perspective, it would have been unlikely that Dickens should diverge from the main

line of thought and mentality of the Victorian age. He formulated an individual

viewpoint, without taking the risk of offending the public one.

Just a few years later, Lewis Carroll represented the same Victorian period, but in

a moment when Victorian issues had, in a way, ceased to be seen as points of

controversy. Things had started to change for the better, and the Reform Bills relieved

Great Britains political system. Under the form of a nonsensical story, anticipating

the twentieth-century literature of the absurd, Lewis Carroll enlarges upon various

Victorian topics, in a joking and apparently superficial way. The form he adopts and

the technique that he decides onselective omniscience- indicate more than a change

in the tenets of literature. It was certainly difficult for Carroll to give an unbiased view

of his times society unless he decided to free his reader from a too strict control onthe part of the omniscient narrator. To be able to express a personal standpoint, he had

to sacrifice the privilege of omniscience to the freer perspective of a character who

should not necessarily hold the systems values in reverence. Alice is indeed a

dignified representative of the Victorian society, but she is a child, so she has an

incomplete and imperfect view of the society she was born in and educated to. For

this reason, the action being filtered through her eyes, she has the capacity of coping

with the topical issues of the Victorian age in a freer manner and thus formulating a

viewpoint different from that of Dickens. Alices eye functions as a mirror, but due to

the incompleteness of her knowledge, as an imperfect, sometimes distorted mirror.

The impression of distortion is accentuated further more by the story being transferred

to a realm of dream. Beside the narrative precautions that Carroll took to enable him

to move more freely within the established value system, cherished by the Victorian

public opinion, he also resorted to a method of demonstration borrowed from

mathematics, the reductio ad absurdum one6. Thus all Carrolls story acquires an in-

6

reductio ad absurdum: the disproof of a proposition by showing that its conclusion can be only absurd


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the-mirror quality. The imperfect and distorted mirror reflects the image of the

Victorian society, without the writer committing himself to the sense and value of the

mirror reflections.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Alice admits the court and the

queen in her representations of the Victorian society. She had had access to the

incontestable meaning of this institution only through books, that is her discourse

becomes a second degree one, and for this much less implicating. What Alice does in

the encounter with the underground dream world is nothing but to assign appropriate

roles, whose knowledge and linguistic labels she had acquired from books, to beings

she meets. It is only through language that Alices whole world is constructed, which

is not different from how fiction linguistically constructs itself starting from facts of

the real. Due to this strategy, Carrolls criticism, if there is any at all, and his

representation of the Victorian society are liberated from the constraints of the

Victorian mentality.

The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they

arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them [].

Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read aboutthem in books, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew the name of

nearly everything there. Thats the judge, she said to herself, because of

his great wig.

The judge, by the way, was the King; and as he wore his crown over the wig,

(look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it,) he did not look at

all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming.

And thats the jury-box, thought Alice, and those twelve creatures, (she

was obliged to say creatures, you see, because some of them were animals,

and some were birds.) I suppose they are the jurors. She said this last word

two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it: for she thought,

and rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it

all. However, jury-men would have done just as well.7

7Carroll, L.,Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Penguin Books, 1994, pp. 128-129


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In Conrads case, the representation strategies are more complicated. Conrad is a

turn-of-the-century writer. The Victorian value system starts to give way under the

pressure of a new, not yet definite, one. Conrads works faces the crisis of the

Victorian value system and so it represents a Victorian society that strives to preserve

their feeling of self-confidence by giving prominence to the imperialistic values. The

British Empire reached its climax in the last years of the nineteenth century and, as a

matter of fact, its supremacy had never been contested before in the Victorian

literature. It seems that it was only an exile, such as Conrad was, a man of Europe and

not a British subject, to come to grips with the obvious controversial aspects of

Britains imperialistic experience. The imperial idea, which reached its zenith

between 1880 and 1914, was a strange compound of widely different ingredients: the

will to power, the profit motive, national pride, Christian zeal, humanitarian feeling

an extraordinary mixture of cold calculation and passion, reason and sentiment, all

combined in one irresistible thrust.8

For all its civilising dimensions, the springs of the imperialistic experience were

mainly material. However, the moral aspect had been always seen as inherent in the

mechanisms and ideologies of the empire. Thus many considered it the duty and

obligation of the whites to civilise the savages, to impart their knowledge to theuncultured brutes, to pass on the European cultural standards to the native inhabitants.

With all this moral camouflage, it is not surprising that the imperialistic ideas were

more often than not perceived as positive within the general framework of the

Victorian value system.

Dealing with such delicate issues in an age which had already announced its

relativity, Conrad needed, from a narrative as well as from an ideological point of

view, the proper detachment that could permit him to investigate the imperialistic

discourse and to subversively assert his own standpoint. Both the narrative and the

ideological detachment are ensured in Conrads novels by the adoption of a technique

of indirectness, with Marlow as a narrator, observer, interpreter and experiencer of the

story.

References to the empire, a taboo subject in the Victorian novels, are always veiled

and subtle. Meanings of the empire are interwoven with a deeper meaning of mans

8Bedarida, F.,A Social History of England 1851-1990, 1994, p.145


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investigation of the self. There are, however, portions in Heart of Darkness, where

ideas relating to the empire are clearly stated, although dealt with quite

diplomatically. Conrad does not aim at shocking his audiences. He simply wants to

question and subvert the existing value system, which he manages to do by an artful

combination of acknowledged truths and ironically questioned ones. This flexibility

of approach would have never been possible without his eye witness narrators

mediation.

As compared to his predecessors direct reference to Victorian aspects, in a more or

less ironic tone, Conrad handles topics relating to the empire more subtly and with

much more insight. He is more interested in the philosophy and ideology of the

empire and their relevance to mans existence than in the institution as such.

We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that

comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And

indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, followed

the sea with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the

past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro

in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had

borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and

served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to

Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitledthe great knights-errant

of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in

the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full

of treasure, to be visited by the Queens Highness and thus pass out of the

gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquestsand that

never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from

Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith the adventurers and the settlers;

kings ships and the ships of men on Change; captains, admirals, the dark

interlopers of the Eastern Trade, and the commissioned generals of East

India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on

that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might

within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had


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not floated in the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!

The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.9

The fragment synthesises Great Britains imperialistic experience from the times of

the Renaissance, to whose name much lustre was added by historians as regards the

exploits of brave lords-pirates such as Drake, to the modern times. Englands

imperialistic history does not confine itself to the Victorian times. The expansionist

tendencies of Britain are inherent in the medieval crusades, and the conquering of

Canada and America. What Conrad suggests, by the way in which he organises the

historical information and adds to it his subtle ironic comments, is that mans

propensity towards destruction and self-destruction, translated in expansion and

conquest, is inherent in human nature. What seems to be nothing but a sequence of

events praising Englands uninterrupted presence in the history of the world turns out

to be a subversive dismantling of the very building the text apparently puts up.

Conrad gallantly refers to the Queen and her reassuring presence, it is true that he

means Queen Elizabeth I, but he implies Victoria as well as any other monarch of

England, while disclosing the monarchs implication in the imperialistic

destructiveness. Conrads strategy is thus characterised by simultaneous assertion and

subversion of a value system, which is part of the modernity of his enterprise.

Nineteenth-century style is born after a lengthy and complicated process of

transition of the meanings attributed to almost every artist relationship with reality.

The ideal time to take Thomas Lawrence and William Etty vision of a conventional

beauty, superficial and David Wilkie from an anecdotal petty. Iamginea first-century

British art is a deterrent. Fusseli famous death and Blake (1920) and Constable's (the

year Queen Victoria ntronrii - 1837) Turner's create them isolated status, becomes a

kind decorative watercolor and only a few artists, such as Samuel Prout and Thomas

Shotter Boys extant, in a minor tonality, the virtues of evocation of the picturesque.

At this point, taste Victorians - insufficiently prepared to accept Turner's landscapes

glow - inclined to Clarkson Stanfield's navies. But his on, Ruskin remarked: "Any

painting of containing as many scientists focused on sea and sky, technical how-to

dilute his masters"10 . Now turns romantic themes, as in literary forms, the mannerist

forms. Exceptions are rare (eg Theodor von Holst).

9Conrad, J., Heart of Darkness, Penguin Books, 1994, pp. 6-7

10Dan Grigorescu, English Art (1989), Bucharest University, p.313


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Victorian taste in fine arts show more directly than any other area of British culture.

Is a dark period, driven by violent confrontation in order to obtain political rights for

the proletariat, held on the economic depression the country rocks. Depressing picture

of Victorian England's Elizabeth Gaskell's books pencil, the Bronte sisters or Dickens.

World perspective that emerges from their work is completed by the painter William

Bell Scott memoirs - a framework suffocating feeling of helplessness overwhelmed

by hypocrisy and lust hidden behind appearances pudice.Influena epigones on artists

from the Victorian is an obvious, even if at first is ideological rather than stylistic

order. An example is the "ideal community" (a phalanstery artists) created at

Shoreham, in 1826 by Samuel Palmer and a group of friends who call themselves "the

Ancients", whose enthusiasm was impelled by the ideas of Blake (whose disciple

Palmer was very enthusiastic), although so far not known but a fragment of Blake's

work - his woodcuts for Virgil's Eglogelor edition (published between 1820-1821).

Palmer himself will work towards the end of life, the illustrations for his own

translations of Eglogele vergiliene. He was attracted to the natural landscape,

especially the light of the world, twilight, forests, streams, trees with strange shapes,

delicate contrasts of light and shadow, geomerizate landscapes. Cycles of the

landscapes are small works, of deep poetic vibration (wind clouds roll, appleblossoms in the moonlight) but lacking depth. More contoured, George Richmond and

Edward Calvert (also "ancient") are deeply influenced by Blake and Palmer. Calvert's

art and the more direct heavenly perspective, pastoral engravings by Blake, Palmer's

youthful works and landscaping to Shoreham. But as he merged them, but betrays an

essentially pagan poetry (and not Blake's philosophy). Palmer differs from the "lyrical

erotic hunt" what works and crosses. Remarkably engraver, Calvert celebrates youth

in the 11 works (1825-1831) natural fertility myth. George Richmond is closer to the

style of Blake (Blake is said that some of the corrected drawings paintings), but lacks

febrile communion with nature, he was defining his vision of Palmer and Calvert.

Blake's influence extends the work of John Linnell. Student of humble but good

professor John Varley, Linnell was encouraged to identify the nature of art all that is

necessary. Together with his friend William Henry Hunt, Linnell noted dramatic

views of the solitary lands such as houses in ruins, river banks and trees store France

by storm. Realism landscapes in the first period of the nineteenth century collectors

call perceived as "too cruel" and no sense of beauty. However echo Blake's ideas are


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found in Linnell's paintings, landscapes are imbued with a spirit that is pastoral

associate with the strangely accurate representations of fragments of nature. Through

Linnell, the echo will reverberate until the end of century..

Turner's followers failed to go beyond the classical landscape forms taken as a

means of expression of romantic feeling. Among them stands John Martin (in the first

half of the nineteenth century - he had originally learned the art of painting on

porcelain and he will find the smoothness of lines, delicate tonal harmony of painting

in oil. Under the influence of romantic, his compositions apocalyptic air releases:

fantastic caves, flying demons and scenes of oriental stories. historical or biblical

themes (destruction of Pompeii, Flood, Osul of Balthazar) are treated with ease but

manierizare threatened, with the passage of time. popularity has increased through

engravings, and illustrations of the 24 (the technique mezzotintei) from Milton's

Paradise Lost, published in 1824.

Victorian art remain indifferent to all the great conflicts of the time, following a

quiet course, normal. Are characteristic topics John Frederick Lewis (with his harem

scenes) aimed at the kind of beauty found in the journals of the time fashion and

portraits of Thomas Lawrence. William Powell Frith, however, make exception

("Hogarth of the Victorian period") and its composition with scenes of life in time, it

includes many landscapes found in railway stations, racing or promenade

balneare.Dominant resorts in Victorian art, tend pictorial composition to make a

favorite fable with many celebrities opting for themes such as sin and punishment.

One of the most acclaimed artists of the time - Augustus Egg melodramas compresses

his compositions, in the spirit vitorian moralizing allegories, like Robert Braithwaite

Martineau.n '70s is prolific presentation of the emotional tone dezmoteniilor fate,

Luke, noting the ivory, very popular at that time.

Feature of this period is late review and ignoring the ideals of Classical Antiquity

shows the contemporary reality. Artists in the second half of re-discover the Elgin and

the regularity of classical Greek drapery robes composition and effect. Artists (Albert

Moore, Frederick Leighton, George Frederick Watts) but not exceeding a certain

didacticism.Printr-archaeological perspective rather than the classicist, the story with

contemporary subject is reduced to anecdote (Frederick Walker, Edward Poynter,

Alma-Tadema Lwrence - influential the mentality of the end is academist century


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and Alfred Stevens - furthers the "Grand Style" by Reynolds, extended until1875).

Another feature of the Victorian period is the strange isolation of British painters

of the world, content with the patronage of wealthy bourgeois. Becomes necessary to

renew the art of the continent, which is made by an American in London - Whistler.

He manages to recover, before long, the link between England and Europe.

The end of Victorian era England picture is confusing, insipid, more can inglorious

than other European powers. '80s And '90s brought the creation of various art

colonies, the French model of Pont-Aven: Newlyn in Cornwall (1884), from Staithes

in Yorkshire and in Scotland at Brig O'Turk (where are gathered so called "Glasgow

Boys"). publishers began to publish photo albums that often recorded patriarchal

endangered world. The new galleries promoting young work groups (The New

Gallery, The Grosvenor Gallery - which opened Ruskin attacked Whistler's

exhibition). In 1886 incurred Arts Club New English, an association aimed at

promoting the organization of exhibitions participating artists and anticonservatori

antiacademiti. In a short time but the club will betray the very least anticonservative

trends, which will lead to the creation, within it, in 1889, the organization's "core

Impressionist of NEAC (New English Art Club)", led by young Walter Richard

Sickert and Philip Wilson Steer. Influenced early Whisler (Sickert was a student),then the two embraced Impressionism, with art meeting different Impressionists

Degas and French. The most important work of Sickert's Impressionist Summer

evening. If we consider the connotation it has in England the term "impressionist"

painting that has the gift of new that surprised and irritated audience and critics, only

Steer can be considered an impressionist and only during 1887-1894, when he paints

scenes by the sea at Walberswick. Between Sickert and Impressionism on the

continent, the only link is to investigate the uncertain distribution of light and

shadows, while the delicate tone painting smooth surfaces rather claimed in Whistler.

Exhibition "London Impressionists' Paris of the Goupil Gallery in 1889, attended by

ten young people who form the core of the NEAC has puzzled French critics, for the

term" impressionism "had another meaning.

1.2. The literary scene in the Victorian age


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At the beginning of the Victorian era, about 80% was able to read. Even so, only a

small part had time to do so and the money to buy books, for many people in that

period buying a book was considerated a luxury. One reason for the expansion of the

readers was that people were motivated to fight for their rights, an example is creating

The Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, inn witch people had the privilege to

borrow books.

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 thewhole 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 literature11.

During the Victorian age, there were immense changes in society, advances in the

sciences, and it was also the beginning of the Industrial Age. A number of the

literature produced during this period reflected on these changes and celebrated

them. Some literary works criticized the changes being made and made a mockery of

them as well.

The literary genre, the novel, also came on the scene during the Victorian

11 Josh Rahn, Victorian literature, (1987), Morehead State University, p. 68


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Era. Some Victorian writers that also emerged are Charles Dickens, George Eliot,

Elizabeth Gaskell, and Oscar Wilde. Victorian writers always responded to the

conditions around them. Queen Victoria influenced her world and she also influenced

the literature that used conditions in the Victorian world as its subject.

The literature of the period reflects the wide horizons of the Empire. Among

historical writers, Parkman the American was one of the first and best to reflect the

imperial spirit. In such works asA Half-Century of ConflictandMontcalm and Wolfe

he portrayed the conflict not of one nation against another but rather of two

antagonistic types of civilization: the military and feudal system of France against the

democratic institutions of the Anglo-Saxons. Among the explorers, Mungo Park had

anticipated the Victorians in his Travels in the Interior of Africa (1799), a wonderful

book which set England to dreaming great dreams; but not until the heroic

Livingstones Missionary Travels and Research in South Africa, The Zambesi and its

Tributaries and Last Journals [Footnote: In connection with Livingstones works,

StanleysHow I Found Livingstone (1872) should also be read. Livingstone died in

Africa in 1873, and hisJournals were edited by another hand. For a summary of his

work and its continuation see Livingstone and the Exploration of Central Africa

(London, 1897).] appeared was the veil lifted from the Dark Continent. Beside suchworks should be placed numerous stirring journals of exploration in Canada, in India,

in Australia, in tropical or frozen seas,--wherever in the round world the colonizing

genius of England saw opportunity to extend the boundaries and institutions of the

Empire. Macaulays Warren Hastings, Edwin Arnolds Indian Idylls, Kiplings

Soldiers Three,--a few such works must be read if we are to appreciate the imperial

spirit of modern English history and literature.

Victorian literatures temper is described as am eager of earness response toexpanding horizon of nineteenth century life12. It reflected concerns about the effects

of the industrialization process and the fear of the alienation.

There also existed the desire of the part of readers to be guided and edified13.

Problems of the daily life and also society and religion needed to be discussed and

explained. 14

12Abrams, 1993, p.906

13Idem

11, p. 905


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Victorianism is understood that the image of British realism, bringing the same

level writers sequences showing specific life-nineteenth century England territory.

Dickens plays "Picture" universal child abandoned to their own devices, but finally

manages to keep their innocence, kindness and trust in people. An Oliver or Pip seem

to have been weird to find or maybe rather, to find the support just when are about to

(be) lost. Not strong and self-confidence will keep them within the property, but

rather agents destiny. Pip is "saved" the prisoner's confession time, the help given by

Miss Havisham, the Magwitch, Herbert and perhaps finally meeting with Estella. In

the case of Oliver scheme is almost the same, but backups are of two types: Rescue

the and save a life despicable.

Thackeray gives life to a powerful female Julien Sorel, Becky Sharp the image is

used for any climber to climb the social hierarchy. The writer acid which skillfully

manipulates his characters microcosm, whose center is snobbery, upstartism desire to

be sheltered by a coat of arms. Bronte sisters are those female characters bring

forward full force and determination. Is there growing heroine with each page of the

novel, most times managed to overcome hard lines (Jane Eyre) or pretend to not

understand the game of destiny, and finally be crushed by it (in crossroads of winds).

In Emily Bronte when the first attempts to hide the omniscience

15

by interferingdirectly in the text as a minor character (At the crossroads of winds).

Charlotte Bronte builds a character-narrator who is lost in moving scenery. Jane

Eyre is a Gothic boarding school where he completes the education, removed from

that environment, will become a gray spot color to Thornfield Manor or Marsh's

End16.

Thomas Hardy brings to the stage characters close to those of ancient tragedy by

placing into an implacable destiny and fatality. He manages to put character against a

given environment, so that eventually the reflector to be held on the internal structure

of the hero. Image realism with which Hardy plays hard life class bottom of British

society, work becomes a critique of it, especially the idea of British woman's purity.

Like Flaubert, seems to love the heroine. Despite the constant failure, the writer gives

14Kristin Simion, The diverisity of the Victorian literature, Seminar paper, Grin Publish & Find

knowledge, 2005, p. 315Olteanu, T. (1977).Morfologia romanului european n secolul al XIX-lea, Bucureti:Univers., p. 339

16Galea, I. (1996). Victorianism and Literature, Cluj-Napoca:Dacia


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the image of the pure woman, finally managed to rehabilitate the readers and turn it

into a woman who has the power to stand against games fate, even if defeated17.

Oscar Wilde and sequence depicts real life, harsh and oppressive

with those less fortunate. The Happy Prince is writing of extraordinary load, with

over-character generosity and magnanimity. Following the realist tradition, Wilde

succeeds in the few pages to give life to the story types and paint in dark colors

painting company end Victorian era. Flight brings the reader he-swallow a live picture

of the abundance realm of the rich and gloomy picture of the world poor.

Sorin Alexandrescu 18 if Henry James speaks of an American Victorianism a

extension of British Victorianism thus to the European canon. In this case, realism

equivalent to trying to give the canon, the tendency to lean on daily life through the

detail, the veracity of that reproduced or social biography of the character. It off both

the European models (Dickens, Thackeray), and the American Crane). in

aesthetic influence current (pre-Raphaelite painters, Wilde) becomes adept superiority

of art over

reality, taking it as a landmark on Flaubert.

1.3. The status of womenThe era of the Victorian women spanned 64 years and concluded several

changes in attitudes.

The status of women in Victorian Age is often seen as an illustration of striking

discrepancy between Englands national power and wealth and what many, and

now considered that is appalling social conditions. During the era symbolized by

the reigh of the British monarh Queen Victoria, difficulties escaladed for women

because of the vision of the ideal woman shared by the most in the society. The

legal rights of the married women were similar of those of children; they could not

vote or sue or even own property. Also, they were seen as pure and clean. Because

of this view, their bodies were seen as temples which should not be adorned with

17Christiansen, R. (2000). The Victorian Visitors: Culture Shock in the Nineteenth-Century Britain,

New York:Atlantic Monthly Press18Sorin Alexandrescu, Henry James or riddle poem, preface to H. James, Daisy Miller, for Ed. Lit.,

Pcs., 1968


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jewelry nor used for physical exertion or pleasurable sex. The role of women was

to have children and tend to house. They could not have a job unless it eas that of

a teacher or a domestic servant, nor they were allowed to have their own cheking

accounts.

The common thinking about women in the Victorian era was that a womans

position was limited to domestic work and the care for her children. The stereotype of

the distribution of roles was women staying by the hearth with their needles whilst

men wielded their swords.

Women had to bear a large family and to maintain a smooth family atmosphere

whereby men did not need to bother himself about domestic matters. A gentlewoman

ensured that the home was a place of comfort for her husband and family from the

stresses of Industrial Britain.

Victorian dresses show typical excessive style elements such as V-waists, layering

of trims and bell sleeves. The Victorian head of household dressed his woman to

show off family wealth. Additionally, there were great differences between members

of society by the end of the Queen Victorias reign but the most instantly apparent

difference was through the garments worn.

Not only the dress code symbolized the status of a Victorian woman but also thecircumstances she lived in. A wealthy wife was supposed to spend her time reading,

sewing, receiving guests, going visiting, letter writing, seeing to the servants and

dressing for the part as her husbands social representative.

In contrast, for the very poor of Britain society it was common to wear fifth hand

clothes and to eat the pickings left over in a rich household.

Whether married or single all Victorian women were expected to be weak and

helpless so that they looked like fragile delicate flowers incapable of making

decisions. Besides, if a woman took a lover it was not made public because if that

became the case she would be cut by society. Instead, men could amble along to one

of their gentlemens clubs and always find a warm welcome.

Relationships in 1887 were quite artificial. A married woman could not own

property and became a chattel of the man. A divorced woman had indeed no chance

of acceptance in society again.

Most women had little choice but to marry and upon doing so everything they

owned, inherited and earned automatically belonged to their husband. This meant that


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if an offence orfelony was committed against her, only her husband could prosecute.

Furthermore, rights to the woman personally - that is, access to her body - were his.

Not only was this assured by law, but the woman herself agreed to it verbally: written

into the marriage ceremony was a vow to obey her husband, which every woman had

to swear before God as well as earthly witnesses. Not until the late 20th century did

women obtain the right to omit that promise from their wedding vows.

In 1890, Florence Fenwick Miller (1854-1935), a midwife turned journalist,

described woman's position succinctly:

Under exclusively man-made laws women have been reduced to the most abject

condition of legal slavery in which it is possible for human beings to be held...under

the arbitrary domination of another's will, and dependent for decent treatment

exclusively on the goodness of heart of the individual master. (From a speech to the

National Liberal Club)19

Every man had the right to force his wife into sex and childbirth. He could

take her children without reason and send them to be raised elsewhere. He

could spend his wife's inheritance on a mistress or on prostitutes. Sometime,

somewhere, all these things - and a great many more - happened. To give but

one example, Susannah Palmer escaped from her adulterous husband in 1869

after suffering many years of brutal beatings, and made a new life. She

worked, saved, and created a new home for her children. Her husband found

her, stripped her of all her possessions and left her destitute, with the blessing

of the law. In a fury she stabbed him, and was immediately prosecuted.

If a woman was unhappy with her situation there was, almost without

exception, nothing she could do about it. Except in extremely rare cases, a

woman could not obtain a divorce and, until 1891, if she ran away from an

intolerable marriage the police could capture and return her, and her husband

could imprison her. All this was sanctioned by church, law, custom, history,

and approved of by society in general. Nor was it the result of ancient,

outdated laws: the new (1857) divorce act restated the moral inequality. Mere

adultery was not grounds for a woman to divorce a man; however, it was

sufficient grounds for a man to divorce his wife.

19Fenwick Miller (1890) cited in Wojtczak
http://www.hastingspress.co.uk/history/19/felony.htmhttp://www.hastingspress.co.uk/history/19/felony.htm


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Signs of rebellion were swiftly crushed by fathers, husbands, even brothers.

Judge William Blackstone had announced that husbands could administer

"moderate correction" to disobedient wives, and there were other means: as

late as 1895, Edith Lanchester's father had her kidnapped and committed to a

lunatic asylum for cohabiting with a man. As a Marxist and feminist, she was

morally and politically opposed to marriage.

Among the rich, family wealth automatically passed down the male line; if

a daughter got anything it was a small percentage. Only if she had no brothers,

came from a very wealthy family, and remained unmarried, could a woman

become independent. A very wealthy woman might make a premarital

agreement for her wealth to be held in a trust fund, but in the majority of cases

marriage stripped a woman of all her assets and handed them to her husband.

At the end of Victorian times things changed and many women adopted the tailor

made garment that showed their more serious concern to be recognized as thinking

beings with much to offer society beyond being a social asset for a husband.

New inventions such as sewing machine or railway and the capability to use those led

to new thinking and women of all classes felt the dynamic atmosphere of change as

much as men. Many women joined the Fabian Society, a group of non revolutionary

thinking socialists and others sought reform for more practical dress, better education,

the right to take up paid work and better employment prospects.

ch. 1 conceptual approaches on victorian age.docx

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