Victorian Literary Movements: Novel and Poetry Analysis

Victorian Novel: Context and Genres

Gothic and Sensation Fiction

• Elements of mystery, horror, and transgression (e.g., Wuthering Heights, later Wilkie Collins).

Typical Representatives vs. Exceptions

• Typical: Dickens (social realism), Trollope (political and clerical life), Eliot (moral and philosophical realism).
• Exceptions: The Brontës (passionate, Gothic, symbolic), late Hardy (pessimistic, tragic).

Historical and Intellectual Background

Understand the impact of:

• Industrialization: Class tension, urban poverty.
• Utilitarianism: Focus on practical outcomes.
• Darwinism: Crisis of faith and changing views of humanity.
• Gender Roles: "The Angel in the House" ideal.
• Social Reform: Movements addressing societal issues.

Charles Dickens: Great Expectations

Bildungsroman Conventions

Trace Pip's growth from childhood to adulthood, focusing on moral, social, and emotional education. His expectations (wealth, status, Estella) are the vehicle for this development.

Narration and Perspective

Older Pip narrates his younger self's life with irony and hindsight, creating a double perspective.

Parallels and Contrasts

• Satis House (decay, illusion) vs. the Forge (honest labor).
• Magwitch (coarse, loving) vs. Miss Havisham (wealthy, vengeful).
• Biddy (moral) vs. Estella (cold, unattainable).

Gothic Elements

Miss Havisham's decayed wedding feast, the haunting of Pip by his past, the atmospheric marsh settings, and the criminal underworld (Magwitch, Newgate).

The Ending

The original ending is melancholic and ambiguous, with Pip and Estella parting. The revised ending (published) suggests a possible, though uncertain, future together. Consider which better fits the novel's themes of lost innocence and tempered expectations.

Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights

Central Theme: Passion and Transgression

Central is the destructive yet transcendent passion of Catherine and Heathcliff, which challenges social, religious, and metaphysical boundaries (nature vs. culture, storm vs. calm, soul vs. body).

Genre Fusion

It is a Gothic romance (supernatural, tyranny, imprisonment) fused with a revenge tragedy (Heathcliff as a revenger).

Structure and Narration

It mirrors a classical tragedy in its five-act feel, with Lockwood as the chorus-like frame. The "Chinese-box" narration (Lockwood recounts Nelly's story, which contains others' accounts) creates layers of subjectivity, bias, and distance, making truth relative.

Departures from Realism

The intense, symbolic passions, the ghostly presence of Catherine, and the elemental, almost personified setting (the moors, the houses) move beyond strict realism.

Ideological Conflict

The wild, passionate, anarchic world of Wuthering Heights (Heathcliff, the Earnshaws) is pitted against the civilized, refined, but stifling world of Thrushcross Grange (the Lintons). The second generation (Cathy Linton and Hareton) achieves a tentative balance.

Realistic vs. Symbolic

The novel is both. Realistic in its detailed domestic and social observation, but profoundly symbolic in its setting, characters (Heathcliff as a force of nature), and central love story, which transcends ordinary life.

Victorian Poetry and the Dramatic Monologue

Alfred Tennyson: "Ulysses"

Form and Division

The poem shifts from a soliloquy (lines 1-32, where Ulysses reflects on his idle kingship) to a dramatic monologue (lines 33-70, where he addresses his mariners to urge them on a final voyage). The criteria: the presence of an explicit, silent audience.

Perspective and Victorian Spirit

Tennyson presents Ulysses as restlessly heroic, defining life through striving and knowledge, not passive rule. It is a Victorian celebration of the active, inquiring spirit, though tinged with melancholy.

The Voyage as Life Symbol

The journey itself, not the destination, is the meaning. It represents the unending human quest for experience and understanding.

Literary Echoes

Primarily from Dante's Inferno (Canto 26), where Ulysses is a doomed adventurer, but Tennyson transforms him into a hero. Also echoes of Byron's heroic figures and Milton's Satan.

Robert Browning: "My Last Duchess"

The Dramatic Monologue in Action

The Duke of Ferrara is speaking to the emissary of a Count, whose daughter he intends to marry. We know the context from the final lines ("Notice Neptune, though...") and his revelations about the Duchess's portrait. The occasion is a negotiation for a new wife.

Unconscious Self-Revelation

We understand the Duke through his unconscious self-revelation. His language reveals his arrogance, pride, possessiveness ("my last Duchess"), and cruelty (the chilling implication he gave commands to stop her smiles). The silent listener's reactions are implied by the Duke's speech ("Sir, 'twas not / Her husband's presence only...").

Renaissance Italy Context

The Duke embodies the Machiavellian Renaissance prince: powerful, amoral, treating people as art objects to be collected and controlled (like the statue of Neptune). The poem critiques the relationship between art, power, and gender.

D.G. Rossetti: "The Blessed Damozel" and Pre-Raphaelitism

The Pre-Raphaelite Program

Reacted against Victorian materialism and academic art conventions. They sought:

• In Painting: Vivid, jewel-like color, intense detail, naturalistic observation, and medieval or spiritual themes.
• In Poetry: Sensuous richness, pictorial detail, and a focus on medievalism and intense emotion.

Tension: Sensual vs. Mystic

The poem is the pinnacle of this tension. The damozel is in Heaven, yet described with palpable physicality. Heavenly love is expressed in deeply earthly, erotic terms, blurring the line between spiritual and physical longing.

Religious vs. Love Poem

It functions as both. Structurally, it is a religious vision of a soul in Heaven awaiting her beloved. In tone and imagery, it is a profoundly human, melancholic love poem about separation and longing, made more poignant by the earthly lover's interjections in parentheses.

Comparison with Hopkins

Both are religious poets obsessed with sensory detail. However, Hopkins's poetry (e.g., "Pied Beauty," "The Windhover") finds God in the physical world's unique particularity (inscape), celebrating divine creation. Rossetti uses the physical to envision a separate spiritual realm, imbuing it with a human, often melancholic, eroticism.