Milquetoast

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Victorian Prose

The Victorian period was in the late 19th century spanning the years of 1830 to 1901, the years that Queen Victoria ruled over England. This was the time when industrial cities thrived and the basis of life shifted from land ownership to an urban economy of manufacturing. A mixing of social classes resulted through factory owner/worker relationships and social standing became more malleable than it was in previous periods. Monetarily the country thrived but socially problems arose. The conditions of factories were horrendous and workers, including children, were forced to work up to 20 hour shifts. Women struggled to find a place in Victorian society outside of the role of wife and mother. “The Woman Question,” as it was called, engaged Victorians of both sexes, and led later to women’s acceptability in scholarly and literary institutions. For Women Writers of 18th and 19th century visit; http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/019/2007/03/british_women_writers_18th_and_19th_centuries.html#more A conscious effort to improve education in children resulted in greater literacy, which in turn spread a wide array of ideas to the masses. The term “Victorian” has become an adjective that the Norton Anthology defines as referring to qualities of “earnestness, moral responsibility, [and] domestic propriety” (1044).

The literature of the Victorian can be split into two categories; the novel and other non-fiction writings.
The novel is represented by works written by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Elliot, and Charlotte Bronte. For an Overview of the British Novel visit: http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/013/2007/03/ The books are usually very long with intense physical descriptions of characters and places. A typical sentence of description is long and filled with both semicolons and commas. In The Woman in White, a mystery thriller of the time, Wilkie Collins describes the main character, Hartright’s first encounter with his pupil Marian:
Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat; her head set on her shoulders with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of a man, for it occupied its natural place, it filled out its natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully undeformed by stays. (34)
Wilkie Collins and other Victorian writers are part of what is called “Sensational Literature,” in which the author evokes the senses of his readers through writing with rich perceptual descriptions. Although there was mixing of social status most Victorian fiction deals with upper class or upper middleclass characters and plights. Charles Dickens’ Hard Times has an ironic title, given the main characters are rich factory owners and it is their workers who suffer the “hard times.” The novels present themselves as realistic with emphasis on the social structure as it actually stood in Victorian England. The Norton Anthology introduction to the Victorian period states that the novel was usually focused on “a protagonist whose effort to define his or her place in society is the main concern of the plot” 1059). The novel creates tension between thee hero/heroine and the surround social conditions, usually dealing with “the Woman Question” or Industrialization. Another interesting note that may help is the predominance of the color red or scarlet within texts.

Other Victorian Prose:
The growth of periodical literature made way for other more instructional ‘non-fictional prose.’ These pieces by writers such as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin, and Sarah Stickney Ellis reflect social struggle and often propose alternative options to current situations.
The Main topics of these works are The Woman Question, Industrialization, and the debate between Science and Religion.
Thomas Carlyle in “Captains of Industry” discusses problems of industrialization and the need or factory workers to stand up to factory owners and demand better working conditions. John Ruskin in “Stones of Venice” questions the single menial tasks that are repeated all day by a single factory worker. He claims that a whole thing built from a single builder is better and more meaningful than many things built in pieces by many workers.
“The Woman Question” arises often in Victorian Literature as shown in the fiction works of the Bronte sisters and George Elliot, but the social stance of women also held a place in non-fiction writings of the time. The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill was held in high regard by suffragists in both America and England. Victorian fiction often depicted women as “the Angel of the House,” whose sole role was to help her husband forget the tribulations of the reality that existed outside of the home. Non-fiction works, however, strove to unleash women from this role and create a place for them outside of the house. John Stuart Mill states in chapter one of his treatise, “Ever since there have been women able to make their sentiments known by their writings (the only mode of publicity which society permits to them), an increasing number of them have recorded protests against their present social condition” (1157). John Stuart Mill uses his influence to conquer the Victorian role of woman as simply wife and mother while Sarah Ellis uses her social influence to instill in her readers that women are to remain in the role of “Angel in the House” because that is how it was willed by god to be, in her essay “The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits.”
Another huge debate circulating through Victorian texts is the battle between Science and Religion which can also be linked to the argument of Fact vs. Fancy. Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species led to a questioning of Religion against Science that is unprecedented in times before. Victorian society became obsessed with Facts and began dismissing musings of the imagination as hindrances. Although a piece from The Origin of Species is unlikely to show up on the exam it is important to connect questions of evolution, scientific approaches to religion, and facts versus imaginative creativity to the Victorian period because this is when those discussions began.
So here is a list to study by because I love lists:
Themes:
The Woman Question
Industrialization
Movement in social class
Science vs. Religion
Fact vs. Fancy
Possible novels that may show up on the exam are:
Charles Dickens; Hard Times, A Tale of two Cities
Charlotte Bronte; Jane Eyre
Wilkie Collins; The Woman in White, The Moonstone
George Elliot; Adam Bede

Other possible works:
Thomas Carlyle; “The Captains of Industry”
John Ruskin; The Stones of Venice
Henry Mayhew; “London Labor and the London Poor”
John Stuart Mill; The Subjection of Women
Sarah Stickney Ellis; The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits

This period also overlaps the Romantic Period which can be found here: http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/008/2007/03/spring_blog_5_british_lit_stud.html

Victorian Poetry also shares common themes with Victorian Prose: http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/008/2007/03/spring_blog_9_british_lit_stud.html

Abrams, M.H., et al, eds The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age.. 7th ed., Vol. 2B. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000.
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
The Victorian Web. http://www.victorianweb.org/. 2007.

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Study Guide: Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau
Middle to end 19th century

Transcendentalism is the movement to which Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Throeau, and Walt Whitman belong. It is considered a philosophical standpoint by some, but is arguable since most of their works do not progress along in a logical fashion and often contradict. The Transcendentalists offered to followers a return to Nature during a time when industrialization was pulling masses into urban surroundings. Emerson was the leader of this movement and his teachings are expressed through the lifestyle of Thoreau and the poetry of Walt Whitman. This period corresponds with the Victorian Period in England and is a reaction to the industrialization that was occurring both in England and in the newly established United States.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Nature is a basic outline of Emerson’s transcendental philosophy. His chapter titles represent basic categories of experience like Beauty, Language, Idealism, and Spirit. He promotes Imaginative projection in which imaginings of the mind become scientific fact. His philosophy is not one of logistics but rather a lifestyle which is further explored in his speeches given throughout the 1830s.

“The American Scholar” is a speech that was given to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in 1837. It preaches for a new breed of scholar that will know and understand the past but change the future.

“The Divinity School Address” is another of Emerson’s speeches. The speeches are important because of the selection of words chosen by Emerson. Key words and phrases like ‘Moral Sentiment,’ ‘Perfection,’ ‘Affection,’ ‘Brave,’ ‘Free,’ and ‘Revelation’ are intended to grab the listeners attention. He also shows careful word choice that create patters in his work like the abundance of ‘con’ words in the “Divinity School Address” (convert, consequence, conviction, consolation, conformity, control).

Emerson’s essays are also important and have the possibility of being on the exam. “Self- Reliance” preaches for an aversion to conformity through a self-fashioned lifestyle. He says of the self fashioned life “It is harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion” (263). He allows for contradiction in this essay, and many other works, by saying “With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do,” and he encourages his readers to change their minds and opinions often. “Self-Reliance” ends with the statement “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles” (282).

For the American Literature Prose (1865-1914) Guide Visit: http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/011/2007/03/american_literature_prose_1865.html

Henry David Thoreau:
If Thoreau is going to show up on the exam it is most likely that it will be a passage from Walden. Although there is also the chance of a selection from “Civil Disobedience,” a text concerning anti-slavery sentiments and the need to end the war in Mexico. The American reaction to Slavery study can be found here: http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/010/2007/03/literary_reponses_to_american.html

Thoreau starts Walden “When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only” (5). Thoreau lived alone in the woods for two years and two months more or less according to Emerson’s doctrine of “Self-Reliance.” His text is instructional and criticizes current social conditions.
Following is a list of a few Thoreau passages, an attempt to provide an overall sense of his writing:
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. (58)

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. (105)

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. (260)

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. (263)

Walt Whitman:
Perhaps the most popular of Walt Whitman’s poems is “O Captain! My Captain!” Which is a reaction to President Lincoln’s assassination. “Beat! Beat! Drums!” reflects the effect of the Civil War on small town American life: “Beat! Beat! Drums!-blow! bugles! blow!/Through the windows-through doors-burst like a ruthless force,/Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,/Into the school where the scholar is studying”
The sentences are long and often Whitman’s poetry contains extensive listing. There are varied descriptions of Nature and often philosophical questions that are left open ended for the reader to discern.

Contradictions are a major theme of both Whitman and Emerson. “Song of Myself” a poem that appeared in Whitman’s book Leaves of Grass begins “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,/And what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (57). Whitman’s description of a continuity between humans and all things is evident also in Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” in which he says “All things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it” (77). “Song of Myself” contains many contradictions such as “My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,” which appears in section 43. In section 51 Whitman confronts his love of contradiction with lines 1325-1328: “Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself,/ (I am large, I contain multitudes.)/ I concentrate toward them that are night, I wait on the door-slab” (102). In “Self-Reliance” Emerson preaches for a similar stance: “Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day” (265).

Since most of the texts in this area are long I would suggest looking for themes such as the return to Nature, the self-fashioned simplistic lifestyle, and possibly Anti-Slavery sentiments. Words that evoke powerful emotion like Freedom and Understanding, Bravery and Conformity, can also be clues, as well as how words can be manipulated such as Respect in Emerson’s case sometimes meaning to re-spect (like re-inspect) or to look over again. Extensive lists are also characteristic of all three writers.

For other American Poetry 1820-1865 go to: http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu/blogs/0906N_1432/007/2007/03/american_poetry_18201865.html

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays and Poems. New York: Library of America, 1996.

McQuade, Donald, et al, eds. The Harper American Literature. Second edition Volume 2. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993.

Thoreau, Henry. Walden. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.