Analysis of the Term Victorian

Analysis of the Term puritanicHow personaful is the depot overnice?The earned run av clockge of Queen Victorias hulk witnessed the passing of milest integritys in social, economic, and personal progress. It was the age of industrialisation, a age of travel, a battleground for the interlocking amid science and religion. even further to these great markers by which many a(prenominal) of us recognise the ordinal vitamin C, and indeed because of them, Victorias reign inspired change within the individual(a) a revaluation of what it meant to be a humankind world. The lit date of referencery operatives gave spick-and-span course to the questions on the lips of the hostel around them questions that were no longer so easily answered by Christianity. This bear witness will explore how the term tight-laced does or doesnt equip into the context from which it supposedly arises. I will look at trends such as the develop lop forcet of literary noviceism, pioneering scient ific discoveries, the exploration into psychic phenomenon, the change magnitude independence of women, the mapping of the land, all of which contri merelye to what we manage and understand as twee, and flummox in close to way shaped the scarper of authors such as Eliot, Conan Doyle, and H.G Wells. Using some close textual psychoanalysis I hope to identify the character of the inspiration behind the publications of the time and whether or non such piddle transcends the limits of the term Victorian. numerous great literary minds of the time such as Arnold, Dickens, and Ruskin helped define the era in their critical attitudes towards it. (Davis 2002, p.10). Criticism appears to have suffer a form of exploration in an attempt to turn what concerned and worried the artist into some social function that questioned and reassured. Arnold, in his Essays in Criticism (Arnold, 1865, p.V) explains how he perceives the distinction amongst lawful and artistic thought The integr ity is I have never been sufficient to ht it off happily with the logicians, and it would be mere affectation in me to salute my ego the airs of doing so. They imagine truth something to be proved, I something to be look knocked out(p)n they something to be comprised, I as something to be found.It is this growing aw arness of conflict that was to be father a defining feature of Victorian books. Differences appeared in the very science of things, which led to feelings of isolation, despair, alienation all prominent themes in nineteenth century work. In Arnolds A Summer iniquity (Arnold 1913, p.167) we see the poetical mind seek to find meaning on a moony street where the windows, like hostile faces, are silent and white, unopening downAnd the becalm moonlight seems to say Hast thou because still the old anxious(p) breast That neither deadens into consist Nor ever feels the fiery glow That whirls the face front itself out, 30 But fluctuates to and fro Never by pass ion kind of possessd And never quite benumbd by the solid grounds sway? And I, I k forthwith not if to pray Still to be what I am, or yield, and be ilk all the other men I see.Arnold recognises that the society around him is unfulfilled, that men are giving their lives to some unmeaning taskwork and he questions whether he should be inquisitive at all. He is aware of a gap between the realism of working support and life stunnedside of work a difference that he strives to find explanation for. Arnold appears to be helpless amidst the streets of his own mind afraid of not being able to define who he is, what he is. These feelings in go bad express what it meant to be a Victorian struggling to take thoughts and feelings which appear to no longer fit into society.The Victorian era contained some(prenominal) of what had past and much of what was still to come it postnot be seen as an isolated time, nor as an isolated term. It contained aspects of the Romantic period for instance in Arnolds poem, The Buried Life, we see vestiges of Wordsworths legacy of Ode to Immortality. In two poems on that point is a sense of something lost an old passion or instinct that has gone with the passing of time yet Arnold, unlike Wordsworth, finds it much difficult to come to scathe with this A longing to inquire / Into the conundrum of this heart that beats / So wild, so deep in us, to know / Whence our thoughts come and where they go. (Arnold 1913, p.170). The language is more passionately discontent than the hit-minded tone of Wordsworths visionary word sense We will grieve not, quite find/Strength in what remains behind. (Wordsworth 1928, p.136). The styles are obviously connected, precisely the trouble with defining the era using literary terminology is that it is distinctly neither a quirky extension of the Romantics vision, nor is it a straightforward path to the advancedists. The 1870s sawing machine the maturation of authors such as Anthony T rollope who brought out his later on novels, yet only twenty years later in 1896 these publications are sitting beside the considerably polar form and put forward matter of work such as H.G. Wellls The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau, with literary experiments with the modern such as Richard Jefferies The Story of My Heart occurring between in 1883.A growing concern in nineteenth century life was the potential loss of the Romantic link between human character and the intrinsic solid ground, and the gap which sudden industrial progress highlighted between temper and mechanisation. As technology developed so did the notion of unreality. It is worth noting J.S.Mills essay on Nature (Mill 1874, p.65) where he says that it is mans character to be artificial, to remedy nature by artificial prune and intervention. that to this, a contemporary of Mills Richard Jennings in any case drew a line between the province of human nature and the external world. (Lightman 1997, p.80). In the coun strainside more efficient methods of cultivation were employed (see the contrast between Henchards methods and Farfraes ciphering and mensuration in barefaceds Mayor of Casterbridge, (Hardy 1886, p.122)), and new machines introduced which no longer required the labour force to run them, load- behavior(a) people to migrate to towns and cities. The urban reality was harsh in 1851 most four million people were employed in trade and manufacture and mining, leaving only one and a half million in agriculture. (Davis 2002, p.13). City life, as portrayed by Dickens, was a cruel, unhealthy and sickening existence for many (see Bleak House and Little Dorritt). However, much of his work was stage set in the period of his youth and puerility which was pre-Victorian. (Lawton (ed) 1995, p.xvi). Working conditions in cities were lots cramped, unhygienic and poorly ventilated, and sustentation conditions could be even worse. Mrs. Gaskell, lively in Manchester, witness ed the appalling pressures that these conditions forced upon family life, and in North and reciprocal ohm depicts the difficulties of urban animateness, offering that salvation for the working classes lay with themselves and their employers, working together. (see North and South 1855) However, city life was not all desolate based in cities, the development of the research worker novel brought the city certify to human measure (Lehan, p.84). Detectives pieced together and reconstructed past events by clues for example, the murder of Bartholomew Sholto in The brand of Four by Conan DoyleAs far as we toilet learn, no actual traces of violence were found upon Mr Sholtos person, precisely a of import collection of Indian gems which the deceased gentleman had inherited from his father had been carried off. The un book binding was send-off made by Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson () Mr. Athelney Jones, the well-known member of the detective police force, happened to be at t he Norwood police station () Mr Jones well-known technical knowledge and his top executives of minute observation have enabled him to prove conclusively that the miscreants could not have entered by the door or by the window but must have made their way across the roof of the building, and so through and through a trapdoor into a room which communicated with that in which the body was found. (p.66)The city provided an exciting backdrop to crime scenes its labyrinthine streets similar to the mapping of the pathways of the human mind so that the two became inextricably linked. As Joseph McLaughlin says in pen the Urban Jungle, the urban jungle is a musculus quadriceps femoris that calls forth a pleasurable acquiescence to something greater, more powerful, and, indeed, sublime () excessively an imaginative sports stadium that calls forth heroic action exploring, conquering, enlightening, purifying, taming, besting. (McLaughlin 2000, p.3).Further to what McLaughlin suggests, the Victorians perception of time and space in the city and the countryside was changing radically from the medieval perceptions that still existed in the Romantic period. People saw the finished products in both(prenominal) manufacturing and farming no longer involving the long, drawn-out means to an end, instead the end yield was being achieved faster and with more control. Here developed the root of modern industry which continues today in intensive farming and factory lines. Yet here too the beginnings of waste and excess. Richard Jefferies, a nineteenth century naturalist and mystic, known for his essays on nature, remarks on the abundance of food in the natural world in his essay Meadow ThoughtsThe surface of the earth offers to us far more than we can consume the grains, the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding products are beyond the power of all the human race to devour. They can, too, be multiplied a thousandfold. in that location is no natural lack. Whenever i n that attentiveness is lack among us it is from artificial causes, which intelligence should remove. (Jefferies, 1994, p.26).Unfortunately there was plenty for those who could afford it but not enough to spare for the poorer lower classes. (Ritvo 1997, p.194). Trends of over production and wastage which became a disquiet in Victorian times are reflected in the literary concerns of Jefferies ghostlike autobiography The Story of My Heart, and in his childrens story, Bevis, where terminology, despite their abundance, are in danger of becoming an insufficient medium of expression and not cream the metaphysical space on the page. In describing a sunrise and the thoughts and feelings associated with reflexion it, Jefferies struggles to articulate the beauty before himThe sun had not yet stood out from the orient, but his precedent light shone through the translucent blue. Yet it was not blue, nor is there any word, nor is a word possible to express the feeling. (Jefferies 1881, p. 391)We see too in James Thomsons City of Dreadful Night (Thomson 1892, p.2) the desperateness of trying to articulate thoughts and feelingsBecause a cold rage seizes one at seasons To show the bitter old and wrinkled truth Stripped naked as a jaybird of all vesture that beguiles, False dreams, false hopes, false masks and modes of youth Because it bewilders some sense of power and passion In helpless impotence to try to fashion Our woe in living language howeer uncouth.In both passages there is a sense of trying to convey so much more than the words will allow. And that is the sum total of the problem of defining the era with a word which the era itself selected Victorian like the authors of its time struggles to convey the enormity and the condensed nature of its changing environment. Victorian literature is thus maybe best studied between the lines of its texts rather than for what it offers at face value. Thomsons words to try to fashion our woe in living words although ap pearing dismal could actually withhold a more affirmative message it deals with the notion of perseverance that by creating words, thus far difficult, the author is refusing to give in to despair by trying to shift it into creative energy. there is a sense of crisis in the work of Thomson, full as there is to be found in Jefferies futuristic After London where the lonely(prenominal) explorer Felix discovers the land after humanity has overreached itself to sociological disaster and has lost the harmonious dealingship between mankind and nature. London becomes no more than a crystallised ruin in a ground ooze with poison unctuous and slimy, like a thick oil. (Jefferies 1885, p.205). Through work like this we see that Victorian was an era of possibility where visions of the future perfectly became tangible concerns and possible realities, and where contemporary imaginationions of language and life might no longer hold up to the pressures of the time. In H.G. Wells the Time Machine, the time traveller discovers a land in the year 802,701The air was necessitous from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi everywhere were fruits and sweet and handsome flowers brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The sublime of preventative medicine was attained. diseases had been stamped out. I saw no try out of any contagious diseases during all my stay. And i shall have to tell you later that even the goes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly bear upon by these changes. (Wells 1995, p.28)In this description of a futuristic age the Victorian imagination still retains the persuasion of a promised land a lieu full of butterflies and flowers. This Christian concept is a literary hangover from Miltons Paradise Lost, and remains an important theme for the moderns such as D.H. Lawrence. (see The Rainbow). The Victorian age suffered from a dualistic split between a iridescent future on the one hand promised by leaps in technology, commandment and economical success and an increasingly alienated, conf utilise society on the other. There were those writers like Huxley who believed that by human intervention within a political and economic framework humans could evolve out of their condition visual perception no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will () may exchange the conditions of existence (Huxley 1911, p.149), and there were those like Hardy whose characters were destined to fail because they were not emotionally fitted into the cosmos out of which they evolved. (see Tess and Jude the Obscure).It was the nineteenth century spiritual crisis which precipitated the literary shift into the new genre of the realist novel. By the mid-nineteenth century, society had begun to grow away from the idea of atonement for sin within an omnipotent religion, where judgement would come solely in heaven, and towards the more humanistic idea of God as in-dwelling, so that salvation could be achieved on earthWe have now come to regard the world not as a machine, but as an organism, a system in which, while the parts dedicate to the growth of the square, the whole also reacts upon the development of the parts and whose primary header is its own perfection, something that is contained within and not outside itself, an internal end while in their turn the myriad parts of this universal organism are also lesser organisms, ends in and for themselves, pursuing each its lonely ideal of individual completeness. (Gore (ed) 1890, p.211)A spiritual lack created a need to define, separate and categorise a world that suddenly appeared chaotic. When Darwin published On the rip of Species in 1859 he raised issues of public concern as to the truth of the bible and the essence of Christianity. However, its content and its methodology were seriously criticised (Appleman 2001, p.200). It was a difficult work to accept as it caused the public to rethink and specify their history that they were a product of evolution and not a trim made being came as a shock. The future of thought and literature was suddenly changed as people tried to sew together the duds of the past. Natural Science became a national obsession exotic vegetation and fauna from across the world were brought into London daily, to be displayed in the British Museum or Kew Gardens (Lightman, 1997 p.1). In literature, we see the author begin to play the part of evolutionist Eliots Middlemarch although concerned with the evolving character of Dorothea Brooke follows the threads of sub-plots and the successes and failures of other characters which form a pattern of development. As Gillian Beer saysThere is not one primitive tissue, just as there is not one key to all mythologies () violence upon plurality, rather than upon singleness, is crucial to the developing argument of Middlemarch. (Beer 2000, p.143).Gone is the tradition of the undismayed hero or heroine singularly conquering their environment (a trend set by classics such as Homers The Odyssey) and in its place a landscape upon which the author grafts and nurtures developing shoots of life. It is this severalize of growth that is in danger of remaining unseen to the contemporary historian or critic as it can become shrouded by generalising concepts which are so often prescribed to the term Victorian concepts such as repression, old-fashioned and prudish. (http//www.victorian weathervane.org/vn/victor4.html). These test of terms restrict the individuals perception of the era when it was a time when growth was encouraged rather than restricted. Authors used the metaphor of pruning and nurturing plant life to symbolise the development of the self for example in North and South Gaskell discusses the problem of the working individual who struggles to reach his or her potential when the manufacturers are unsparingly cutting away all off-shoots in the direction of literature or high mental cultivation, in hopes of throwing the whole strength and vigour of the plant into commerce. (Gaskell 1865, p.69). For Gaskell, it is through the everyday interaction between people that such difficulties are given the chance to be overcome.And this was the essence of the realist novel set amidst a world which had witnessed such alteration to transform the lostness felt by society into a seeing of the smaller things in life which could withhold qualities of greater spiritual value. As Philip Davis says, the realist novel was the retentiveness ground, the meeting point, for the overlapping of common life. (Davis 2002, p.144). And it was within this common life that a more calm acceptance of the new state could be achieved. Gillian Beer suggests that through her novels organisation Eliot creates order and understanding of the evolving process of novel-writing. In Middlemarch, the naming of Casaubons books Waiting for Death, Two Temptations, Three Love Problems draws aid to the books organisation by emphasising categorisationBut the process of reading leads into divergence and variableness. Even while we are observing how some human beings conform in the taxonomy of events we learn how differently they feel and think. For Dorothea and Casaubon postponement for death means something very different from what it means for Mary Garth and Featherstone. The congresss are different. The distances between people are different. Lydgate, here at one with the project of the book, longed to demonstrate the more intimate relations of living grammatical construction (115225). In this double emphasis on conformity and variability George Eliot intensifies older literary organisations by means of recent scientific theory. In Darwinian theory, variability is the creative principle, but the type makes it possible for us to track common ancestry and common kinship. (Beer 2000, pp.143-4)Writing itself was becoming an almost divine flirtation, an inner order of a chaotic external world. The idea that humans had evolved from primates me ant that the boundaries between what was one thing and what was another were no longer so crownly defined. There developed a cultism of the animate and a fear of the inanimate, and efforts were sought to understand them. As Harriet Ritvo says in The Platypus and the MermaidDepending on the beholder, an anomaly might be viewed as embodying a challenge to the established order, whether social, natural, or divine the containment of that challenge the incomprehensibility of the creation by human intelligence or simply the endless and diverting diverseness of the world. And beholders who agreed on the content of the representation could still disagree strongly about its moral valence whether it was good or bad, entrancing or disgusting. (Ritvo 1997, p.148).In a world where categorisation was important but not so easily achievable, the novel too became neither one thing nor another realism became a melting pot for ideas, a sort of hybrid of styles. In Eliots The Lifted Veil realism i s used as a vehicle for the exploration of her ideas into psychology and psychic phenomena. Latimers clairvoyance forces him to endure a woundful insight into the minds of the people around himI began to be aware of a phase in my abnormal sensibility, to which, from the dreamy and slight nature of my intercourse with others since my illness, I had not been alive before. This was the obtrusion on my mind of the mental process going forward in front one person, and then another, with whom I happened to be in contact the vagrant, silly ideas and emotions of some uninteresting acquaintanceMrs Filmore, for examplewould force themselves on my consciousness like an importunate, ill-played melodic instrument, or the loud activity of an imprisoned insect. But this superadded consciousness, wearying and pain in the ass enough when it urged on me the trivial experience of indifferent people, became an intense pain and grief when it seemed to be opening to me the souls of those who were in a close relation to me when the rational talk, the graceful attentions, the wittily-turned phrases, and the kindly deeds, which used to make the web of their characters, were seen as if thrust asunder by a microscopic vision, that showed all the median(a) frivolities, all the suppressed egoism, all the struggling chaos of puerilities, meanness, vague unpredictable memories, and indolent make-shift thoughts, from which human words and deeds emerge like leaflets covering a fermenting heap.(Eliot 1859, pp.13-14)Latimer is no longer caught up in the web of peoples characters. Eliot plays with the idea that his consciousness has the ability to transcend the tellurian the rational talk, the kindly deeds in order to go on insight into an alternative and not so rosy vision of the mechanism of the human mind where thoughts are make-shift and chaotic. The nineteenth century saw the acceptance of the concept of otherworldly phenomena into the working classes. Robert Owen, a social re former, who influenced the British cut into movement (Oppenheim 1985, p.40) encouraged many working class Owenites to follow him into the spiritualistic fold, where they enthusiastically continued their ongoing search for the new moral world. Interests such as spiritualism and psychology which had previously been more underground pursuits, were brought out into the open. The concept of telepathy, a term coined by Frederic Myers in 1882 (Luckhurst 2002, p.1) even helped to reckon the uneasy cross-cultural encounters at the colonial frontier. (Luckhurst 2002, p.3) These developments suggest that the Victorians felt imbued with the power of their age they felt confident of their ability to communicate on different planes of consciousness. So it could be argued that Victorian was not simply a time devoted to the discovery of the self and the workings of the inner mind, but a time that also revolve arounded on the projection of ideas and thoughts outside of the self ideas which them selves stand outside of the category Victorian.In 1869 the Spiritualist Newspaper began sell firstborn as a fortnightly, then as a every week publication. (Oppenheim 1985, p.45). This draws the discussion to the point of representation the social nature of Victorians seems to suggest that they enjoyed the focus being on themselves. Self-obsession is an aspect of the time which the term Victorian usefully represents by specifically referring to the rule of the Queen the term draws attention to the grandeur of the individual. The era saw the development of many different styles of fashion and the use of photography. As part of the Freudian influence great importance was place on childhood and it was during the nineteenth century that the first laws concerning child eudaimonia were passed. (Mavor quoted from Brown (ed) 2001, p.i) The focus on the central, the ego, was paramount. As Mavor says,it was as if the camera had to be invented in order to document what would soon be lost , childhood itself and childhood had to be invented in order for the camera to document childhood (a magic of innocence) as real. (Brown (ed) 2001, p.27).Perhaps because of societys awareness of change there seems to have been a necessity to record and keep track of the world around. Discovery took place on a much grander scale in the exploration of the world. The British Empire was global, yet as Patrick Brantlinger suggests in get hold of Darkness, (Brantlinger 1988, p.4) imperialism was not generally reflected in the literature of the time. What we do see evidence of however is the mapping of new worlds and territories (see Robert Louis Stevensons Treasure Island and Richard Jefferies Bevis). The development of the fortuity story suggests that Victorians longingd to explore what lay outside of what they knew and in this respect the term Victorian which people can think of as representing a society closed within in itself is misleading. The rise of imperialism began to shap e the ideological dimensions of subjects studied in school (Bristow 1991, p.20) and so through literature the Victorian child was offered an exciting world of sophisticated representation and ideas with the knowledge that the world was theirs to explore. Does the term then encourage us to think of the society as a class of people set apart from the rest of the world?In The Island of Dr. Moreau it is not just the future of science that is explored but the concept of a new soil and its effects on the mind. For example, when the whizz first sees the beast-servant on board the ship he is immediately frightenedI did not know then that a reddish luminosity, at least, is not uncommon in human eyes. The figure, with its eyes of fire, struck down through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for a moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came back to my mind. Then the effect passed as it had come. An uncouth black figure of a man, a figure of no particular import, hung over the taffrai l, against the starlight. (Wells 1997, p.31).The circumstances of being at sea is disorientating and causes the imagination to play tricks so that the man is first one thing a figure with its eyes of fire and then suddenly becomes an uncouth black figure of a man. The effect is that the protagonist suddenly regresses to the forgotten horrors of childhood. This sudden fluctuation is important as it represents the fluidity of the era and how change and discovery on a global scale, although empowering, also caused instability within the individual. Therefore, when considering the age in the context of its name we can understand that the term was perhaps created out of both the desire to represent achievement but also out of a need to belong.This desire to belong which manifested itself during an age ruled by one cleaning lady place great importance on the role of the female in society. It was a time when women began to travel and write without the necessity of using a pseudonym (see Cheryl McEwan on Kingsley in West Africa, (2000, p.73)). In books such as Hardys Tess the idea of the fallen woman is tested Tess attempts to rediscover paradise at Talbothays but ultimately a life with her lover is denied. The nineteenth century began to be more explicit concerning issues of gender for example, the relationship between Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick (see McClintock 1995, pp.132-138) where Cullwick is photographed cross-dressed as a farm worker. A Victorian man however appears to have had more stigma attached to him and in this context the term is commonly associated with heroism and English valour (Ridley/Dawson 1994, p.110). There is less tractableness surrounding the notion of Victorian men -as if the term somehow peril their masculinity. However, this did not seem to affect the male authors of the time. Lewis Carroll captured the public imagination through Alices Adventures in Wonderland, which although following the story of a little girl, depicts many mal e characters. (see Carroll 2000).In conclusion, the term Victorian although useful to refer to a specific time period in history, does however encourage us to make sweeping generalisations without investigating how diverse the era was. In terms of the subject matter of Victorian Literature there is no clear cut distinction between early, middle and late Victorian for example, Bulwer-Lytton (see Zanoni and A Strange Story) attempts at the beginning of the century what Richard Jefferies does at the end the difference is in style and form. Within that time frame there was condensed an flimsy variety show of styles, tastes and attitudes, yet the term suffers from being associated with prejudices and assumptions about Victorians. However, it is worth bearing in mind that prejudices were indeed a part of Victorian society. When the Victorians explored the rest of the world they made generalisations and assumptions based on what they found (eg The Island of Dr. Moreau) where experienc e and the nature of what is discovered defines behaviour. As a critic in 1858 wrote we are living in an age of transition (quoted from Houghton 1957, p.1) therefore when considering the Victorian age we should recommend that set and trends were evolving it was not a static time governed by repression or old fashioned values.From the research carried out for this essay it appears that through the gaining of knowledge, Victorians also realised how little they knew and how much more there was to discover. As Arnold says in The Buried Life How fair a lot to fill / Is left over(p) to each man still. (Arnold 1913, p.168). In this context the term Victorian can be dualistically representative discoveries of the time, although revolutionary, were often rudimentary in nature, and it was humbling for the individual to consider how much further knowledge and discovery had yet to go. On the other hand, the term suffers too from being inadequate a single word is too smaller term for the vas t wealth and diversity of discovery, and it could be argued that the era is better realised if seen as a befriend revolution. Like the Victorian authors themselves we are left with no suitable words to convey the entirety of an era as John Lawton says in his portal to The Time Machine (1995, p.xxvi) the term Victorian is used too by and large to encompass a sequence of eras, the diverse reign of a woman who lent her name to objects as diverse as a line terminus and a plum.When studying Victorian Literature it is worth bearing in mind the fluidity of the time and the changeability which arose out of living on the cusp between the passing away of old values and the unknown territory of the new. Realism recognised the gaps which were forming in society such as the distancing of the self from religion and offered to paper the cracks through its vision of carry people together on a mundane level. Its territory stretched to include the darkest recesses of the mind to the smallest of everyday events, celebrating the grey area between extremes as we now know as Victorian.BibliographyArnold, M., 1913, The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840-1867. Oxford Oxford University PressAppleman, P, 2001, Darwin. London NortonBeer, G., 2000, Darwins Plots. Cambridge Cambridge University Pr