TIMELINE FOR VICTORIAN ERA

(1832-1900)
OTHER NAMES
 Age of Science
 Age of Popular Education, Religious Tolerance and Social Unrest.
 This is the Age of Novel and Noises.

BACKGROUND
The Victorian Age in English Literature began in the second quarter of the nineteenth century and ended
by 1900. In the year 1837, Queen Victoria ascended the throne of Great Britain and Ireland and
succeeded William the IV.

ABRUPT ENDING OF ROMANTIC AGE

From the year 1798 with the publication of Lyrical Ballads till the year 1820 there was the heyday of
Romanticism in England, but after that year there was sudden decline. In the field of Literature the years
1820-1832 were singularly barren.

Older generation of Romantic poets

 Wordsworth though he lived till 1850 produced nothing of importance after the publication of
his White Doe of Rylstone in 1815.
 Coleridge wrote no poem of merit after 1817.
 Scott was still writing after 1820, but his works lacked the fire and originality of his early years.

Younger generation of Romantic poets

The Romantic poets of the younger generation unfortunately all died young- Keats in 1820, Shelley in
1822, and Byron in 1824. William Wordsworth wrote a poem The Passing of the Elder Bards to express
his sorrow on the death of younger generation of Romantic poets.

Like clouds that rake the mountains summits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand,

How fast has brother followed brother?

From sunshine to the sunless land!

The years 1820-1832 were the years of suspended animation in politics.

Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a
sorrow which all have felt, and must feel?

Frankenstein 1818

BEGINNING OF VICTORIAN ERA IN 1832

There are two reasons Victorian Era is considered to be started in 1832.

1. With respect to Politics

The Victorian Age started in 1832 with the passing of the first Reform Act of 1832. This Act converted
England from an agricultural to a manufacturing country as the reforms in constitution gave the right of
vote to the middle class. This Reform Act of 1832 gave power to the middle class. This paved the way for
new experiments in constructive politics.

Second Reform Act was passed in 1867.

2. With respect to Literature

There was a sudden decline in Romantic Literature from year 1820 but the new Literature of England
called the Victorian Literature started from 1832 when Tennyson’s first important work Poems,
appeared.

CROWNING OF QUEEN VICTORIA

The coronation ceremony of Queen Victoria took place on 20th June 1837 at Westminster Abbey. She
served for a period of 64 years, till her death in 1901 and it is one of the longest reigns in the history of
England.

Major political movements

Socialism, Liberalism and Feminism are considered as the major Political movements of this age.

CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The publications of Marx’s Communist Manifesto in 1848 and Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859,
served as catalysts for political and religious controversy.

DARWIN THEORY OF EVOLUTION

Darwin gave his Theory of Evolution that stands for the hypothesis the man is an offshoot of
Chimpanzee. This led people to start questioning Bible.

This was the time of Science over Blind Faith so people started to doubt religion and were pessimist
about it. This time period is also considered as the Age of Doubt and Pessimism.

FIELD OF GEOLOGY
There came many theories that were in contrast with the Book of Genesis.

What a word is Truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable.

Lillian Hellman

OUTCOME OF THESE CONTROVERSIES

In this era people preferred a more empirical worldview than that of idealism that was prevailed in
Romantic Age.

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
The literature of this time period is an amalgamation of the both Romanticism and Classicism. The
genre of novel is tilted toward Classicism as there are themes of Social Realization in works of writers
like Charles Dickens.

George Landow argues that the Victorians wanted to escape what they saw as ‘the excessive subjectivity
of the Romantics’ while at the same time keeping their “individuality, originality, intensity, and, above
all, sincerity.” Thus Victorian literature tries to combine the use of Romantic subjectivity (~1798-1830)
with the objectivity of the Augustans (~1660-1798).

Landow argues that the birth of the dramatic monologue and autobiographical fiction were used to
bring personal experiences to literature without the author seeming self-obsessed.

A LITERATE SOCIETY
Many articles, newspapers were brought out in this time as the leisure time activity of this generation
was reading. Due to technological advancement the reading material was widely available that’s made
reading a leisure time activity for majority thus the literacy rate increased during the Victorian Era.

In the beginning of Victorian Era in 1837, it is estimated that approximately half of the adult male
population was literate to a certain degree. This era is characterized by the expanding horizons of
education and literacy and an increased desire of the people to question religion and politics.

CHARTISM
A major movement that came for the abolition of the Divine Right Theory. It was the time when
constitutional monarchy was there in England. A system of Government in which a country is ruled by a
king or a queen whose power is limited by constitution.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Victorian Era, spanning the duration of Queen Victoria’s rule from 1837 – 1901

TIME OF INDRUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The Victorian era also marks a time of great economic growth, technological discovery, and
industrialization. This technological and industrial progress helped Britain become the most powerful
country in the world. Many writers reacted to both the wonders of this Industrial Revolution as well as
to the troubles of an industrialized society.

Political Background
Following are important social and historical events that changed the British Nation as a whole

 The population nearly doubled

 A class-based society
 A growing number of people able to vote
 A growing state and economy
 Britain achieve the status of most powerful empire in the world
 Britain had a stable government, a growing state, and an expanding franchise
 British Empire expanded exponentially and achieved the status of the most powerful empire in the
world.
 Technological and industrial progress helped Britain become the most powerful country in the
world.

It also controlled a large empire, and it was wealthy, in part because of its degree of industrialization
and its imperial holdings and in spite of the fact that three-fourths or more of its population was
working-class.

BRITISH IMPERIALISM
At this time Britain was the sole Superpower of the world. There policy of ruling was Might is Right. This
time is considered as the Golden Period in the Politics of England.

Decline in the power of Britain

Late in the period, Britain began to decline as a global political and economic power relative to other
major powers, particularly the United States, but this decline was not acutely noticeable until
after World War II.

GOVERNMENT IN VICTORIAN ERA

CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY
The formal political system followed in England at that time was constitutional monarchy. It was in
practice dominated by aristocratic men. The British constitution was (and is) unwritten and consists of a
combination of written laws and unwritten conventions.

DIVISON OF GOVERNMENT
At the national level, government consisted of

 The monarch
 The two houses of Parliament (the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

MONARCHES
 King George IV (1820–30)
 King William IV (1830–37)
 Queen Victoria (1837–1901)
 King Edward VII (1901–10)
 King George V (1910–36)

The monarchy transformed into a symbol of the nation in that period.

HOUSE OF COMMON
During the Victorian period, the House of Commons became the center of government. The House of
Commons consisted of about 600 men called members of Parliament (MPs), who were elected to
represent the counties and boroughs of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.

England had many more representatives than the other three nations, by virtue of its status as first
among these four equals.

HOUSE OF LORDS
The upper house, the House of Lords, was populated principally by several hundred noblemen who had
life tenures. The House of Lords lost power (though it remained influential until the Parliament Act of
1911). Members of both houses were wealthy men.

NATIONAL POLITICAL PARTIES

Formal national politics was dominated by two major parties, the Liberal Party and the Conservative (or
Tory) Party.

VOTING SYSTEM
  At the beginning of Victorian Age MPs were elected by half-million property-owning
men who had the right to vote. However, the population at that time was 21 million.
 In 1829 the vote was granted to Catholic men and in 1832, to most middle-class men
 In 1867 and 1884 the franchise was extended to working-class men.
 Most women over age 30 got the right to vote in 1918.
 Full adult suffrage, with no property requirement, was achieved with the second
Representation of People Act in 1928.
People when they didn’t have access to voting system made their opinions through
demonstrations, petitions and pamphlets.

Chief Characteristics of Victorian Period

While the country saw economic progress, poverty and exploitation were also equally a part of it.

The gap between the rich and the poor increased significantly and the drive for material and commercial
success was seen to propagate a kind of moral decay in the society itself. The changing landscape of the
country was another concern.

While the earlier phase of Romanticism saw a celebration of the country side and the rich landscape of
the flora and fauna, the Victorian era saw a changing of the landscape to one of burgeoning industries
and factories. While the poor were exploited for their labor, the period witnessed the rise of the
bourgeoisie or the middle class due to increasing trade between Britain and its colonies and the Reform
Bill of 1832 strengthen their hold. There was also a shift from the Romantic ideals of the previous age
towards a more realistic acceptance and depiction of society.

STRESS ON MORALITY
One of the most important factors that defined the age was its stress on morality. Strict societal codes
were enforced and certain activities were openly looked down upon. These codes were even harsher for
women. A feminine code of conduct was levied on them which described every aspect of their being
from the proper apparel to how to converse, everything had rules.

The role of women was mostly that of being angels of the house and restricted to domestic confines.

LIMITED OPTIONS OF PROFESSIONS FOR FEMALES

Professionally very few options were available to them as a woman could either become a governess or
a teacher in rich households. Hence they were financially dependent on their husbands and fathers and
it led to a commercialization of the institution of marriage.

A New Split Between Science and Religion

The Crisis of Faith refers to an event in the Victorian era in which much of Europe’s middle class begins
to doubt what is written in the book of Genesis as a reliable source in accordance of how the universe
was created (Flynn).

NATURAL THEOLOGY
An important work to consider is written in 1802 by William Paley called Natural Theology: Or,
Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature.

Paley writes in the belief that God is the sole creator of the universe and that all existing species were
created by God perfectly for his intended universal balance. Needless to say, this ideology denounces
the possibility of evolution which would be suggested later by Charles Darwin in his work entitled On the
Origin of Species in 1859 (Fyfe, van Wyhe).

THEORY OF PALEY IS POLAR OPPOSITE OF ORIGIN OF SPECIES

A relatively new science, geology, becomes popular in the Victorian Age which, like Darwin, diverts
people’s opinions away from the ideologies of Paley. Geologists begin to discover concrete evidence of
earth’s processes which did not add up to the events written about in the book of Genesis. In particular,
there is a breakthrough in geology proving that the earth is at least a thousand years older than the
Bible suggests (Flynn).

Social Classes
Although it was a peaceful and prosperous time, there were still issues within the social structure. The
social classes of this era included the

 Upper class
 Middle class
 lower class

UPPER CLASS
Those who were fortunate enough to be in the Upper class did not usually perform manual labor.
Instead, they were landowners and hired lower class workers to work for them, or made investments to
create a profit.

This class was divided into three subcategories:

1. Royal, those who came from a royal family

2. Middle Upper, important officers and lords
3. Lower Upper, wealthy men and business owners

MIDDLE CLASS
The expansion of the Middle class during this time was due to the rapid growth of cities and the
economy.

 It was also referred to as the Bourgeoisie, and consisted of those who had skilled jobs to
support themselves and their families.
 Merchants and shopkeepers became popular occupations as trade, both domestic and overseas,
flourished.
 The large scale of new industries such as railroads, banks, and government meant that more
labor was needed to make sure the cities were able to function (Loftus). The white collar
professions had the ability to move up in the corporate rankings and earn a higher salary. It was
helpful to have connections to those in powerful positions as they were able to get jobs more
easily.

Moreover, the Middle class was also divided into two categories

 higher level
 lower level

People from the lower middle class typically worked for those in the Higher level.

LOWER CLASS
The Working class consisted of unskilled laborers who worked in brutal and unsanitary conditions

 They did not have access to clean water and food, education for their children, or proper
clothing.
 Often, they lived on the streets and were far from the work they could get, so they would have
to walk to where they needed to get to.

Unfortunately, many workers resorted to the use of drugs like opium and alcohol to cope with their
hardships (Thomas).

POOR AND YOUNG ORPHANS

The poor and young orphans relied on donations to survive (Victorian England Social Hierarchy).

WOMEN AS WORKERS
Some women who were unskilled and could not get any jobs became prostitutes in order to make a
living.

CONTAGIOUS DISEASE ACT

As they were extremely controversial, Parliament voted to pass the “Contagious Diseases Act” (1864,
1866, and 1869) which allowed prostitution in military towns, but meant the women had to be forcibly
checked for diseases. The act was meant to protect the men from contracting diseases; not the women
from being harmed.

REACTION LED TO FEMINIST MOVEMENT

This mistreatment created a strong feminist movement among Victorian women who yearned for fair
treatment.

CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT

Finally in 1885, Parliament passed the “Criminal Law Amendment Act”, which raised the age of consent
and prohibited the use of brothels (Landow).

GENDER AND CLASS IN VICTORIAN SOCIETY

Victorian society was organized hierarchically. While race, religion, region, and occupation were all
meaningful aspects of identity and status, the main organizing principles of Victorian society
were gender and class.

As is suggested by the sexual double standard, gender was considered to be biologically based and to
be determinative of almost every aspect of an individual’s potential and character.

Victorian gender ideology was premised on the “doctrine of separate spheres.”

 This stated that men and women were different and meant for different things.
 Men were physically strong, while women were weak.
 For men sex was central, and for women reproduction was central.
 Men were independent, while women were dependent.
 Men belonged in the public sphere, while women belonged in the private sphere.
 Men were meant to participate in politics and in paid work, while women were meant to run
households and raise families.
 Women were also thought to be naturally more religious and morally finer than men (who were
distracted by sexual passions by which women supposedly were untroubled).
 While most working-class families could not live out the doctrine of separate spheres, because
they could not survive on a single male wage, the ideology was influential across all classes.

AGE OF HYPOCRISY
RELIGIONS IN VICTORIAN SOCIETY
 Most Victorian Britons were Christian.
 THE ANGLICAN CHRUCH IS CONSIDERED AS THE STATE CHRUCH
 The Anglican churches of England, Wales, and Ireland were the state churches (of which the
monarch was the nominal head) and dominated the religious landscape (even though the
majority of Welsh and Irish people were members of other churches).
 The Church of Scotland was Presbyterian.

RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY

There was some religious diversity, as Britain also was home to

  other non-Anglican Protestants (notably Methodists)
 Roman Catholics
 Jews
 Muslims
 Hindus
 and others (at the end of the period there were even a few atheists

VICTORIAN LITERATURE
As reading became less of a privilege of the wealthy and more of a pastime of the common British
citizen, publications such as periodicals flourished. These magazines provided monthly installments of
news articles, satiric essays, poetry and fiction.

BENEFIT OF THE SERIALIZED PUBLICATIONS

These serial publications enabled many authors to easily share their work with the public and helped
launch the careers of prominent Victorian writers such as Dickens, Eliot, Tennyson, and the Brownings
(Norton).

LITERATURE AN IMPORTANT PART OF VICTORIAN SOCIETY

To understand the attitudes and concerns of people during the Victorian Era it is important to study
about the literature of that time as it was crucial part of that time.

Much of the writing during this time was a reaction to the rapidly changing notions of science, morality,
and society. Victorian writers also reacted to the writings of previous generations.

VICTORIAN POETRY
While the novel was the dominant form of literature during the Victorian era, poets continued to
experiment with style and methods of story-telling in their poems.

Examples of this experimentation include long narrative poems (epic poems) and the dramatic
monologue as seen primarily in the writing of Robert Browning.

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
Alfred Lord Tennyson, England’s poet laureate for a majority of the Victorian age, exemplified poetry of
this era with his use of the dramatic monologue, a more lyrical style and a poetic voice that can be
described as “picturesque” due to his use of description and mood-creating imagery.

MOVEMENTS OF POETRY
Two other minor movements, the Pre-Raphaelites (1848-1860) and the Aestheticism and Decadence
movement (1880-1900), developed in relation to one another during the Victorian era.

PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT
Pre-Raphaelitism was a countercultural movement that aimed to reform Victorian art
and writing.

It originated with the foundation, in 1848, of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB).

Members of this movement

The following artists joined this movement

 John Everett Millais

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti
 William Holman Hunt

Name of the Movement

The name Pre-Raphaelitism derives from these artists’ controversial admiration for painting before the
era of Raphael (b. 1483–d. 1520).

Principles this group followed

 The first developed when the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood wanted to create art for the modern
age by practicing techniques of precision and simplicity in their written work.
 Other principles they followed in their art included rejecting academicism, representing nature
faithfully, and stressing the interconnections between literature and painting.

REACTION TO THE MOVEMENT

The innovations championed by the Pre-Raphaelites immediately attracted widespread condemnation,
but they won the important support of John Ruskin, who played an important role in promoting the
movement. Together with Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites were instrumental in spreading a taste for
medievalism in evidence in several aspects of Victorian literature and arts.

AESTHETICISM
Aestheticism, late 19th-century European arts movement which centered on the
doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no
political, didactic, or other purpose.
The movement of Aestheticism and Decadence began as a reaction to the Pre-Raphaelites. The
members of this second movement believe, unlike the Pre-Raphaelites, that literature and poetry should
be more reflective. This movement influenced poets such as Yeats and Hopkins. (Landow).

VICTORIAN NOVEL
The genera of novel continued to develop and eventually became the prominent medium for written
expression.

CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTORIAN NOVEL

 In the framework of the novel, realism emerged as a notable literary characteristic of the period
and showcased this combination of Romantic subjectivity and Augustan objectivity.
 The novel as a genre rose to entertain the rising middle class and to depict the contemporary
life in a changing society.
 it was in this period that the novel got mass acceptance and readership.

MIXTURE OF REALISM AND OBSERVATION

In her work Adam Bede, George Eliot writes, “let us have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to
the faithful representing of commonplace things.”

As exemplified in this quotation, Eliot, and other realist writers like Dickens, held the belief that the
purpose of literature should be to accurately mirror the world and portray realistic scenes with complex,
life-like characters. This movement illustrates the return to Augustan objectivity through the use of
empiricism and observation of the surrounding world. (Landow) Yet, the influence of the Romantic
movement on Victorian writers is seen though the style in which they present these observations.

LINK BETWEEN TWO CENTURIES

Victorian Era is seen as the link between Romanticism of the 18th century and the realism of the 20th
century.

REASON FOR GROWTH OF NOVEL

Although the novel had been in development since the 18th century with the works of Daniel Defoe,
Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Samuel Richardson and the others, it was in this period that the novel
got mass acceptance and readership.

 Following reasons facilitated the growth of the novel as a form

 The growth of cities
 A ready domestic market and one in the oversea colonies
 An increase in printing and publishing houses
  In the year 1870, an Education Act was passed which made education an easy access to the
masses
 Increasing literacy rates among the population.
 Certain jobs required a certain level of reading ability and simple novels catered to this by
becoming a device to practice reading
 Also the time of the daily commute to work for men and the time alone at home for women
could be filled by reading which now became a leisure activity.

As a response to the latter, the demand for fiction, rose substantially.

THE FICTIONAL NOVELS

 The novels of the age mostly had a moral strain in them with a belief in the innate goodness of
human nature.
MORALITY…. INNATE GOODNESS OF HUMAN BEING

 The characters were well rounded and the protagonist usually belonged to a middle class society
who struggled to create a niche for himself in the industrial and mercantile world.
 The stress was on realism and an attempt to describe the daily struggles of ordinary men that
the middle class reader could associate with.
 The moral tangents were perhaps an attempt to rescue the moral degradation prevalent in the
society then and supplied the audience with hope and positivity.

These moral angles allowed for inclusion of larger debates in fiction like the ones surrounding “the
woman question”, marriage, progress, education, the Industrial Revolution.

NOVEL AS A MEDIUM FOR WOMEN QUESTION

New roles for women were created because of the resultant economic market and their voice which was
earlier not given cadence was now being spotted and recognized and novels became the means where
the domestic confinement of women was questioned. Novels reflecting the larger questions surrounding
women, like those of their roles and duties.

In the latter half of the century, Married Women’s Property Acts was passed, the women suffrage
became an important point of debate, and poverty and other economic reasons challenged the
traditional roles of women. The novel as a form became the medium where such concerns were raised.

CHARLES DICKENS
 He was a novelist, a fictional prose writer, a journalist and a literary critic.
 He started the trend of Serialized novel. His first serialized novel was David Copperfield and he
used a technique called Cliffhanger.
 It started the famous Victorian mode of serial novels which dominated the age till the end of the
century. It not only made the reader anxious for the next serial to come and spread the
 popularity of the book itself, but also gave the writer a chance to alter his work according to the
mood and expectation of his audience.
 His novel enters the world of the workhouses, the dens of thieves and the streets and highlights
that while there was economic prosperity on one side, there was poverty on the other and while
morality, virtue were championed, hypocrisy was equally a part of society. His social
commentary entered the world of his fiction
 His works enjoyed continuous popularity and acceptance and Dickens as a writer became
famous for his wit, satire, social commentary and his in depth characters.
 He had inspired multitude of writers both during his time and after ages.

OLIVER TWIST
In the same year that Queen Victoria ascended the throne, Charles Dickens published the first parts of
his novel Oliver Twist, a story of an orphan and his struggle with poverty in the early part of the
century.

Dickens was aware of the economic conditions of the country as he was a journalist and his own life and
autobiographical experiences entered the novel through Oliver Twist.

PICKWICK PAPERS AS A REASON OF HIS FAME

In 1836, before Oliver Twist, his serials of Pickwick Papers were published which led him to instant
recognition and popularity.

FAMOUS WORKS

 A Tale of Two Cities

 A Christmas Carroll
 David Copperfield
 Great Expectations

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERY

Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India and was also an important writer but one who expressed his age
very differently from Dickens and other writers.

Most famous work

He is most noted for his satirical work ‘Vanity Fair’ that portrays the many myriads of English society.

Different from other Victorian Writers

 Although he was seen as equally talented as Dickens, but his views were deemed old-fashioned
which hindered his popularity.
 He did not readily accept the changing values of the age.
 His work is seen almost as a reactionary voice.
Vanity Fair for example has the subtitle ‘A novel without a Hero’ and in a period where other writers
usually embarked on a portrayal of the coming of age of a hero, Thackeray himself very deliberately
opposes it.

 Thackeray did not identify with the middle class because hence his novels lack a middle class hero.
When novels were catering to reassure middle class self-worth, Thackeray denied to give that
assurance.
 Even, Dobbin, a middle class character in Vanity Fair, is not completely granted hero status and a
tone of criticism lingers on the character throughout the work.
 As a result of his strong opinions of his society and its issues, and a critical rejection of the dominant
concerns found in works of other writers of the same age, Thackeray stands in isolation as an
outsider to this circle due his skepticism of the changing Victorian society.
 His stand did not change with time and lends to a social criticism and commentary of a very different
sort in his works.

FAMOUS WORKS
 Catherine
 A Shabby Genteel Story
 The Book of Snobs

Women Novelists of the Victorian Era

The era saw a proliferation of women writers. The novel as a genre was initially seen as feminine
literature and as the literacy rate among women increased, a new need for women writers catering to
this segment was answered by these writers.

Mrs. Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell, popularly called Mrs. Gaskell wrote short stories and novels that dealt with presenting
a social picture of her society in the 1850s.

While it was a time when doubts about material progress reaching the actual lives of the ordinary man
were starting to be raised, Gaskell mostly gave an optimistic view of the time. Mary Barton was her first
novel, published in 1848 with a subtitle, ‘A Tale of Manchester Life’ and sticks to the Victorian concern
of presenting the daily life of the middle class.

George Eliot
 She is one of the most famous women writers in English Literature. She was a poet, translator,
journalist and a writer. She was inspired by the works of Scott.
 Her real name was Mary Ann Evans or Marian Evans and she adopted the pseudonym George
Eliot to escape the stereotype attached with women writers and successfully entered the
domain of ‘serious’ writing.
 She wrote against the Victorian Temper.
  She was famous for the psychoanalysis of her characters and the true description of the rural
and urban landscape.
 Her themes very much coincide with the Modern and the Contemporary Themes.

About personal life

She had a controversial personal life and there too was not hesitant to break the norms of societal
feminine boundaries.

First novel
Adam Bede was her first novel deals with a love rectangle. It received critical appreciation for its
psychological descriptions of the characters and a realistic description of rural life.

Mill on the Floss

 Mill on the Floss, 1860, revolves around the life of Tom and Maggie Tulliver and traces their life
as they grow up near the River Floss.
 Historical, political references to those of the Napoleonic Wars and the Reform Bill of 1832
inform the novel and lend it a more intellectual and serious strain.
 Autobiographical elements also form a part of the novel as George Eliot fuses herself partly with
Maggie, the protagonist of the book.

OTHER NOTABLE WORKS

 Silas Marner
 Romola
 Middlemarch

The novel revolves around the life of complex characters and the Reform Bill of 1832. This novel
presents a complex plot and complex characters with a true representation of the Urban and Rural
Victorian society.

BRONTE SISTERS
Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte were the three famous novelist daughters of Patrick Bronte, a well-
educated man and a writer himself; and Maria Bronte. The family together went through a series of
tragedies where Maria Bronte died very early and none of the three sisters could reach the age of 40.40.
Charlotte died at the age of just 39, Emily at 30 and Anne at 29. All three were educated by their father
at home and all of them were fond of storytelling since childhood.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE
Charlotte Bronte is famous for her novel Jane Eyre, published in 1847.
The novel explains the struggles of protagonist of the book, Jane Eyre, and love for Mr. Rochester along
with the process of her mental and spiritual growth. The novel is believed to have a feminist tone to it
and the famous ‘woman in the attic’ character of Bertha Mason raises several gender and feminist
issues.

EMILY BRONTE
Emily Bronte, the second of the trio, became famous for her novel Wuthering Heights, published in the
year 1847 and the only book written by her. Like George Eliot, Emily wrote under the pseudonym of
Ellis Bell but after her death Charlotte published the novel with her sister’s real name. The novel is the
love story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

ANNE BRONTE
Anne Bronte, the last of the three, wrote two novels: Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell
Hall (1848). The former was an autobiographical work and the latter is about a woman named Helen
Graham who transgresses marital and social boundaries to assert her freedom. It is seen a substantial
piece of feminist writing.

FAME OF BRONTE SISTERS

All three sisters hence raised larger societal questions through mostly women characters and the plot
focusses on their life with themes of love and passion. They hence enjoyed a large female readership
and have achieved status as classics of literature.

LATE VICTORIAN NOVELIST

THOMAS HARDY
Thomas Hardy was the most important writer in the later part of the Victorian Era. He was influenced by
both the romanticism of the earlier era and the social commentary of Dickens. He is famous for the
conception of the fictional town of Wessex.

 Far from the Madding Crowd published in 1874

 The Mayor of Casterbridge in 1886,
 Tess of the d’Urbervilles in 1891
 and Jude the Obscure in 1895

Hardy was also known for his poetry.

SENSATIONAL NOVELS
The late part of the period also saw the rise of the ‘sensational’ novels by writers like Wilkie Collins and
they too were based on the life of the middle class.

The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) are Collins famous sensational novels.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Anthony Trollope, another writer in the second half of the era, was himself from a middle class
background and wrote the Phineas Finn (1869) and The Way we Live (1874).

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

It was the time when Lewis Carroll wrote his famous Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland published in
1865 and stood very different from other because of the child fiction genre it became a classic of the
Carroll’s different dreamy world that stood in direct contrast with the realistic tone of novels that was at
its peak.

Overview of Victorian Period

 The age hence was important for the rise of the novel as a genre and form which itself saw
transformation within the period.
 From romanticism to realism, politics to passion, optimism to pessimism, the novel could
successfully deal with the changing mood of the society.
 Class, gender, individualism, society all were given space in the novel.
 The period was known to have witnessed the massive change of Britain from an agrarian to
industrial landscape. A
 ll concerns informed the novel and the novel was made into perhaps the most important genre
of the age and the ones that would follow.

Early Victorian Prose Writers

Conservative by temperament and religious by inheritance, most of the first generation Victorians were
against the new forces of industry, utilitarian ethics and political democracy. They fought these forces.

 Thomas Carlyle: Carlyle was the dominant figure of the Victorian Age. He is famous for his works
like Hero and Hero-Worship, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters, Speeches, Past and Present, Life of
Frederick he worked as teacher and prophet. There he was called “the Sage of Chelsa”.

 John Ruskin: He is known for his short works like Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Stones of
Venice, Unto the Last

 Lord B. Macaulay: He is mainly famous for his works History of England, Essays on Milton

Later Victorian Prose Writers

Like the second generation of fiction writers in the Victorian Age, the second generation of prose
writers was more conscious of the art of prose writing than their predecessors.
  They were rather indifferent to the theological, political and economic issues of their time;
unlike their predecessors, they made writing, the sole business of their life. “Art for Art’s Sake”
was their slogan.

 They reacted against ‘applied’ literature, or the prose of purpose, which debated current issues
or preached moral or political philosophies.

 There was a return of nature in English Prose of this age.

1. Walter Peter: He was the most significant prose writer of the later Victorian era. His important
works are The Renaissance, Imaginary Portraits.

2. R. L. Stevenson: Elements of Imagination in later Victorian age are best exemplified in Essays of
Stevenson.

Timeline
1837: Coronation of Victoria
1830: First Railroad operates between London and Manchester
1837: Registration Act required that all births, deaths, and marriages be recorded, this allowed
legislators to know the age of minors and restrict their working hours.
1838: First regular steamship service across the Atlantic begins
1840: The London Library opens
1848: Marx and Engles’ Communist Manifesto is published
1851: The Great Exhibition in London
1859: Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is published
1863: World’s first subway system, the London Underground, opens
1865: Transatlantic cable laid between London and New York
1871: The University Test Act abolished the law that all academics and students at Cambridge and
Oxford Universities had to be practicing members of the Anglican church. This opened the universities to
suitable people of all faith.
1876: Sandon’s Education Act created School Attendance Committees to encourage children to attend
school and parents were made responsible for ensuring that their children received basic instruction.
1891: Education is made free and compulsory for children under 13
1901:First radio broadcast
1901: Victoria dies