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The Victorian Age (1832-1900)

The Victorian Age in English literature began in

second quarter of the nineteenth century and ended
by 1900. Though strictly speaking, the Victorian age
ought to correspond with the reign of Queen Victoria,
which extended from 1837 to 1901, yet literary
movements rarely coincide with the exact year of
royal accession or death. From the year 1798 with the
publication of the Lyrical Ballads till the year 1820
there was the heyday of Romanticism in England, but
after that year there was a sudden decline.
Wordsworth who after his early effusion of
revolutionary principles had relapsed into
conservatism and positive opposition to social and
political reforms, produced nothing of importance
after the publication of his White Doe of Rylstone in
1815, though he lived till 1850. Coleridge wrote no
poem of merit after 1817. Scott was still writing after
1820, but his work lacked the fire and originality of
his early years. The Romantic poets of the younger
generation unfortunately all died youngKeats in
1820, Shelley in 1822, and Byron in 1824.
Though the Romantic Age in the real sense of the
term ended in 1820, the Victorian Age started from
1832 with the passing of the first Reform Act, 1832.
The years 1820-1832 were the years of suspended
animation in politics. It was a fact that England was
fast turning from an agricultural into a manufacturing
country, but it was only after the reform of the
Constitution which gave right of vote to the new
manufacturing centres, and gave power to the middle
classes, that the way was opened for new
experiments in constructive politics. The first Reform
Act of 1832 was followed by the Repeal of the Corn
Laws in 1846 which gave an immense advantage to
the manufacturing interests, and the Second Reform
Act of 1867. In the field of literature also the years
1820-1832 were singularly barren. As has already

been pointed out, there was sudden decline of

Romantic literature from the year 1820, but the new
literature of England, called the Victorian literature,
started from 1832 when Tennysons first important
volume, Poems, appeared. The following year saw
Carlyles Sartor Resartus, and Dickens earliest work,
Sketches by Boz. The literary career of Thackeray
began about 1837, and Browning published his
Dramatic Lyrics in 1842. Thus the Victorian period in
literature officially starts from 1832, though the
Romantic period ended in 1820, and Queen Victoria
ascended the throne in 1837.
The Victorian Age is so long and complicated and
the great writers who flourished in it are so many,
that for the sake of convenience it is often divided
into two periodsEarly Victorian Period and Later
Victorian Period. The earlier period which was the
period of middle class supremacy, the age of laissezfaire or free trade, and of unrestricted competition,
extended from 1832 to 1870. The great writers of this
period were Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold,
Carlyle, Ruskin, Dickens and Thackeray. All these
poets, novelists and prose-writers form, a certain
homogenous group, because in spite of individual
differences they exhibit the same approach to the
contemporary problems and the same literary, moral
and social values. But the later Victorian writers who
came into prominence after 1870Rossetti,
Swinburne, Morris, George Eliot, Meredith, Hardy,
Newman and Pater seem to belong to a different age.
In poetry Rossetti, Swinburne and Morris were the
protagonists of new movement called the PreRaphaelite Movement, which was followed by the
Aesthetic Movement. In the field of novel, George
Eliot is the pioneer of what is called the modern
psychological novel, followed by Meredith and Hardy.
In prose Newman tried to revolutionise Victorian
thought by turning it back to Catholicism, and Pater
came out with his purely aesthetic doctrine of Art for

Arts Sake, which was directly opposed to the

fundamentally moral approach of the prose-writers of
the earlier periodCarlyle Arnold and Ruskin. Thus
we see a clear demarcation between the two periods
of Victorian literaturethe early Victorian period
(1832-1870) and the later Victorian period (18701900).
But the difference between the writers of the two
periods is more apparent than real. Fundamentally
they belong to one group. They were all the children
of the new age of democracy, of individualism, of
rapid industrial development and material expansion,
the age of doubt and pessimism, following the new
conceptions of man which was formulated by science
under the name of Evolution. All of them were men
and women of marked originality in outlook and
character or style. All of them were the critics of their
age, and instead of being in sympathy with its spirit,
were its very severe critics. All of them were in search
of some sort of balance, stability, a rational
understanding, in the midst of the rapidly changing
times. Most of them favoured the return to precision
in form, to beauty within the limits of reason, and to
values which had received the stamp of universal
approval. It was in fact their insistence on the rational
elements of thought, which gave a distinctive
character to the writings of the great Victorians, and
which made them akin, to a certain extent, to the
great writers of the neo-Classical school. All the great
writers of the Victorian Age were actuated by a
definite moral purpose. Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle,
Ruskin, Arnold wrote with a superb faith in their
message, and with the conscious moral purpose to
uplift and to instruct. Even the novel broke away from
Scotts romantic influence. Dickens, Thackeray,
George Eliot wrote with a definite purpose to sweep
away error and reveal the underlying truth of
humanity. For this reason the Victorian Age was

fundamentally an age of realism rather than of

romance.
But from another point of view, the Victorian Age
in English literature was a continuation of the
Romantic Age, because the Romantic Age came to a
sudden and unnatural and mainly on account of the
premature deaths of Byron, Shelley and Keats. If they
had lived longer, the Age of Romanticism would have
extended further. But after their death the coherent
inspiration of romanticism disintegrated into separate
lines of development, just as in the seventeenth
century the single inspiration of the Renaissance
broke into different schools. The result was that the
spirit of Romanticism continued to influence the
innermost consciousness of Victorian Age. Its
influence is clearly visible on Tennyson, Browning,
Arnold, Dickens, Thackeray, Ruskin, Meredith,
Swinburne, Rossetti and others. Even its adversaries,
and those who would escape its spell, were
impregnated with it. While denouncing it, Carlyle
does so in a style which is intensely charged with
emotional fire and visionary colouring. In fact after
1870 we find that the romantic inspiration was again
in the ascendent in the shape of the Pre-Raphaelite
and Aesthetic movements.
There was also another reason of the continuation
of Romanticism in the Victorian Age. There is no
doubt that the Reform Act set at rest the political
disturbances by satisfying the impatient demand of
the middle classes, and seemed to inaugurate an age
of stability. After the crisis which followed the
struggle against the French Revolution and Napoleon,
England set about organizing herself with a view to
internal prosperity and progress. Moreover, with the
advent to power of a middle class largely imbued with
the spirit of Puritanism, and the accession of a queen
to the throne, an era of self-restraint and discipline
started. The English society accepted as its standard
a stricter conventional morality which was voiced by

writers like Carlyle. But no sooner had the political

disturbances subsided and a certain measure of
stability and balance had been achieved then there
was fresh and serious outbreak in the economic
world. The result was that the Victorian period, quiet
as it was, began to throb with the feverish tremors of
anxiety and trouble, and the whole order of the
nation was threatened with an upheaval. From 1840
to 1850 in particular, England seemed to be on the
verge of a social revolution, and its disturbed spirit
was reflected, especially in the novel with a purpose.
This special form of Romanticism which was fed by
the emotional unrest in the social sphere, therefore,
derived a renewed vitality from these sources. The
combined effect of all these causes was the survival
and prolongation of Romanticism in the Victorian Age
which was otherwise opposed to it.
Moreover, Romanticism not only continued during
the Victorian Age, but it appeared in new forms. The
very exercise of reason and the pursuit of scientific
studies which promoted the spirit of classicism,
stirred up a desire for compensation and led to a
reassertion of the imagination and the heart. The
representatives of the growing civilization of the day
economists, masters of industry, businessmen
were considered as the enemies of nobility and
beauty and the artisans of hopeless and joyless
materialism. This fear obsessed the minds of those
writers of the Victorian Age, to whom feelings and
imagination were essentials of life itself. Thus the
rationalistic age was rudely shaken by impassioned
protestations of writers like Newman, Carlyle and
Ruskin who were in conflict with the spirit of their
time.
The Victorian Age, therefore, exhibits a very
interesting and complex mixture of two opposing
elementsClassicism and Romanticism. Basically it
was inclined towards classicism on account of its
rational approach to the problems of life, a search for

balance and stability, and a deeply moral attitude;

but on account of its close proximity to the Romantic
Revival which had not completely exhausted itself,
but had come to a sudden end on account of the
premature deaths of Byron, Shelley and Keats, the
social and economic unrest, the disillusionment
caused by industrialization and material prosperity,
the spirit of Romanticism also survived and produced
counter currents.