Literary Features of the Age


Privire generala asupra literaturii victoriene. Moralitatea si revolta, ca trasa
turi caracteristice. Dezvoltarea intelectualitatii, Noua Educatie, influentele s
traine. Dezvoltarea termenilor literari.
Poetii. I. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)
Biografie, incadrare in contextul istoric, analiza celor mai importante creatii
literare (Ullysses, In Memoriam, The Hesperides) Principalele trasaturi poetice,
teme preferate, performante literare, calitati lirice si imaginative, stil.
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
Date biografice, principalele creatii literare (Fra Lippo Lippi, My Last Duchess
). Principalele trasaturi poetice, teme preferate, performante literare, calitat
i lirice si imaginative, stil. Inovatii literare: monologul dramatic
5. V. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Date biografice, principalele creatii literare (The Wreck of the Deutchland ) Trasa
turile operei: dragostea pentru natura, folosirea limbajului, particularitati te
hnice, ritm, imagism, inovatii poetice.
6. Prozatori: Charles Dickens.
Date biografice, periodizarea operei literare. Perioada experimentala Sketches b
y Boz (1834-1836) The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Adventures of Oliv
er Twist (1837-1839), Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The
Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), Barnaby Rudge (1841). Perioada matura: Life and
Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844), Dombey and Son (1846-1848), David C
opperfield (1849-1853), Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorri
t (1855 - 1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1860 - 1861). Perioada finala: Great Expe
ctations (1860 - 1861), Our Mutual Friend (1864 - 1865), The Mystery of Edwin Dr
ood (1870)
7. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811

1863)

Opera si reputatia autorului, analiza romanului

stil

Vanity Fair , teme preferate, umor,

8. Surorile Bronte
Date biografice. Opere literare: Charlote Bronte (Jane Eyre - 1847), principale
le teme, notiuni de stil si tehnica a romanului, incadrarea operei in contextul
perioadei victoriene. Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights): tehnici narative, teme,
importanta in contextul literar.
9. George Eliot (1819-89)
Viata si opera, principalele realizarari literare, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Fl
oss, alegerea temelor, portrete literare, incadrare in contextul literaturii bri
tanice
10 Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)
Date biografice, trasaturi generale ale operei, principalele creatii literare Te
ss Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge

III. EVALUARE STUDENTILOR

Examen scris si referat.
BIBLIOGRAFIE
Allen Walter, The English Novel
Phoenix House
The Pelican Guide to English Literature From Dickens to Hardy
Baker, History of the Novel
Baum, The Victorian Poets
Bennett Joan, George Eliot, Her Mind and Art C.U.P. 1962
Briggs, A., Victorian People, 1954
Briggs, A., The Age of Improvement, 1959
Buckley, J. H., The Victorian Temper Vintage Books, Random House N.Y. 1964
Cambridge History of English Literature C.U.P.
Cazamian & Legouis History of English Literature
Cecil David, Early Victorian Novelists
Collins 1934 (1964)
Compton, Rickett, A Short History of English Literature
Cruse, A., The Victorians and Their Books, 1935
Ensor, R. C. K., England, 1870- 1914, Oxford, 1936
Evans, Ifor, English Poetry in the Later 19th Century-Methuen, 1966
Faverty, F.E., ed.., The Victorian Poets, A Guide to Research, 2nd edition, 1968
Fox, R., The Novel and the people
Holloway, J., The Victorian Sage, 1953
Houghton, W.E., The Victorian Frame of Mind, New Haven, 1957
Hutton, R. H., Essays on Some of the Modern Guides of English Thought, 1887
Jackson T. A., Dickens, The Progress of a Radical
Kitson Clark, G., The Making of Victorian England, 1962
Robertson, J. M., A History of Freethought in the Nineteenth Century, 1929
The Penguin History of Literature, the Victorians, vol. VI, 1993
Somervell, D. C., English Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 1929
Wellek, R., A History of Modern Criticism, vol. IV, 1966
Willey, B., Nineteenth Century Studies, 1949
Williams, R., Culture and Society, 1780- 1950, 1958
Woodward, E. L., The Age of Reform, 1815- 1870, 1938; with corrections 1946
Young , G. M., Victorian England: Portrait of An Age, 1937
Introduction to the Victorian Age (1830

1890)

QUEEN VICTORIA
Victoria, the daughter of the duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg,
was born in 1819. She inherited the throne of Great Britain at the age of eight
een, upon the death of her uncle, William IV in 1837, and reigned until 1901, be
stowing her name upon her age. She married her mother s nephew, Albert (1819-1861)
, prince of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, in 1840, and until his death he remained the foca
l point of her life (she bore him nine children). Albert replaced Lord Melbourne
, the Whig Prime Minister who had served her as her first personal and political
tutor and instructor, as Victoria s chief advisor. Albert was moralistic, conscie
ntious and progressive, if rather priggish, sanctimonious, and intellectually sh
allow, and with Victoria initiated various reforms and innovations; he organised
the Great Exhibition of 1851, for example which was responsible for a great dea
l of popularity later enjoyed by the British monarchy. (In contrast to the Great
Exhibition, housed in the Crystal Palace and viewed by proud Victorians as a mo
nument of their own cultural and technological achievements, however, we may rec
all that the government over which Victoria and Albert presided had, in the mids
t of the potato famine of 1845, continued to permit the export of grain and catt
le from Ireland to England while over a million Irish pessards starved to death)

.
After Albert s death in 1861 a desolate Victoria remained in self-imposed seclusio
n for ten years. Her genuine but obsessive mourning, which would occupy her for
the rest of her life, played an important role in the evolution of what would be
come the Victorian mentality. Thereafter she lived at Windsor or Balmoral, travell
ing abroad once a year, but making few public appearances in Britain itself. Alt
hough she maintained a careful policy of official political neutrality, she did
not get on at all well with Gladstone. Eventually, however, she succumbed to th
e flattery of Disraeli, and permitted him (in an act which was both symbolic and
theatrical) to have her crowned Empress of India in 1876. (As Punch noted at th
e time, one good turn deserves another and Victoria reciprocated by making Disrae
li Earl of Beacousfield). She tended as a rule to take an active dislike of Brit
ish politicians who criticised the conduct of the conservative regimes of Europe
, many of which were, after all, run by her relatives. By 1870 her popularity wa
s at its lowest ebb, (at the time the monarchy cost the nation L 400,000 per annu
m, and many wondered whether the largely symbolic institution was worth the expe
nse) but it increased steadily thereafter until her death. Her golden jubilee in
1887 was a grand national celebration, as was her diamond jubilee in 1897 (by t
hen, employing the imperial
we , she had long been Kipling s
Widow of Windsor , moth
er of the Empire). She died, a venerable old lady, at Osborne on January 22, 190
1, having reigned for sixty-four years.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
MAJOR HISTORICAL EVENTS. During the Victorian Age, England reached its pinnacle
of power and prestige. Not since ancient Rome had any nation so dominated Wester
n society and the entire world. The basis for this glory was England s economic pr
oductivity. As the inaugurator of the Industrial Revolution, England itself alon
g with the rest of the world marvelled at the grimy Midlands, Workshop of the wor
ld . Between 1839 and 1849 the West Riding of Yorkshire alone expanded its fabric
exports up to 2,400,000 yards. In 1848 Great Britain produced as much iron as al
l the rest of the world put together but, that figure was trebled by 1880. Betwe
en 1850 and 1872 the annual value of British exports soared from L 90,000,000 to
L 315,000,000. By the latter year the country s foreign trade exceeded that of Fr
ance, Germany and Italy combined and was almost four times that of the United St
ates.
Trade was the stimulus to the growth of the vast empire. The private mer
chant adventures of the East India Company had brought under British control an I
ndia that was thirty-four times the size of England in area and 15 times in popu
lation. The practically empty continent of Australia almost 40 times the size of
England was open to colonisation and commerce, as was Canada the 2-nd largest p
art of the world. Indeed English colonisation expanded in the 19th century with
almost the rapidity of the 20th century. No other country emerged as a rival of
England in territorial requisition until the century close and the relatively sm
all English armed forces who, able to conquer over a forth of the globe, althoug
h tombs and plaques in many a quiet English church commemorating a son who died
fighting, testify to the cost of empire building.
The economic power of England extended not merely within the empire but
throughout the earth. The pound sterling was the standard money exchange of the
globe, and world prices of all major commodities from grain to furs, and from co
tton to steel, were determined in London. Almost every country was a debtor to E
ngland: much of 19th century construction and development in the United States w
as financed from London and the British owned buildings in Shanghai, mines in Me
xico, and the entire railroad system of the Argentine. This wealth and imperial
grandeur mounted to unprecedented heights during the reign (1837-1901) of Queen
Victoria, and the English faculty for transforming institutions while maintainin
g their outward semblance is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the noble
lords of this era. For in the 19th century, peerages were no longer conferred on
the landed gentry as in the past but on the moguls of textile and railroad, ste

el and finance. Moreover, the reform spirit of the earlier 1830s continued under
Victoria. The Poor Law Bill of 1838 extended benefits to the Irish, and the Tit
he Law of the same year reduced the money sums paid by landowners to the Church
of England. The Municipal Act (1840) further extended voting privileges. But ref
orm had not kept pace with the discontent of workers. Britain s enormous productiv
ity had been achieved by a frightful exploitation of the labouring classes, whic
h were usually condemned to dire poverty, filthy conditions of work and living,
debility, and painfully short life spans. Popular resentment had caused a Workin
gmen s Association in London to submit a charter to parliament in 1836, calling fo
r universal manhood suffrage, vote by secret ballot, abolition of property quali
fications for members of parliament, payment of salaries to members of parliamen
t, equal electoral districts and annual parliaments. When the first national con
vention of the Chartists had its ham, Newport (Wales), and elsewhere, the second
national convention of the Chartists in 1842 again presented its petition in va
in, and the long-threatened turn-out followed. In the first great strike of modern
industrialism the vast machinery of the Midlands ground to a stop. The new rail
roads, however, quickly poured troops into the troubled Midlands and the insurre
ction petered out before armed might. The goals of the Chartists were to be obta
ined but not by violence.
The English genius for pragmatism and compromise turned what might have
become a bloody revolution into peaceful evolution. Moderate elements among the
workers in 1845 formed the National Association of the United Traders for the Pr
otection of Labour. This group was a revival of trade unionism, abandoning strik
es and violence in favour of conciliation and arbitration. Prime Minister Peel,
although a Conservative, in 1848 pushed through parliament the repeal of the Cor
n Laws. British agriculture thus lost its protectionist. Tariffs decreased and t
he workers were able to buy cheaper imported foodstuffs. Economic reality had co
mpelled England to a position it has maintained ever since: unable to feed its o
wn people, it must import food as well as raw materials to keep its industrial s
ystem functioning.
Crop failures in Ireland during the 1840s caused widespread suffering an
d forced multitudes of the Irish to emigrate to the Americas. The first great mo
dern figure in the struggle for Irish nationalism was the moderate Daniel O Connel
l, but after his death in 1847 radical groups stirred up an abortive rebellion t
he next year.
Chiefly at the urging of Prince Albert, the German husband of Victoria,
the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London lavishly displayed the riches of the worl
d. This was the prototype of all subsequent world s fairs . Prosperity was the keyno
te, and Victorian England saw the exhibition as the summit of human ingenuity an
d productivity. The breathtaking focus of the exhibition was the gigantic Crysta
l palace, fabricated from iron girders and vast expanses of glass.
The Crimean War (1854-1856) was the only European conflict directly invo
lving the British between the Napoleonic period and World War I. Although Russia
was not a major military power, the Allies (England, France, Turkey, Sardinia)
fought against her inconclusively .The British army showed itself tragically out
moded and inadequate; the famous Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava demons
trating incredible courage and incredible administrative bungling. The horrible
suffering of the troops due to unsatisfactory supplies was only partly alleviate
d by the Herculean nursing efforts of Florence Nightingale.
The Sepoy Rebellion of native Indian troops in 1857 impelled the British
government in the next year to remove India from the political jurisdiction of
the East India Company and place it under the crown. England s war with China (185
7-1858) was part of the European manoeuvres for power in a rich but weakly gover
ned land. General Charles George Gordon led the Ever-Victorious Army of Chinese
against the T ai P ing rebels, finally crushing them by 1863.
The Companies Act of 1862 has been termed as momentous as any parliamenta
ry measure in history. This act permitted the formation of corporate entities wi
th limited liability of stockholders (hence the Ltd.- limited - after the title of
most English business firms). Previously a share-holder in a firm was entitled t
o his proportion of a company s profits and was also obligated to his proportion o

f its liabilities. When the City of Glasgow Bank (not Ltd) failed in 1879, share
holders were called upon to meet obligations hundreds of times greater than the
value of their shares. Under limited liability a shareholder can lose no more th
an his initial investment. Limited liability therefore encouraged fantastic crea
tion and expansion of concerns and produced the modern phenomenon of the multitu
des of shareholders completely ignorant of the business in which they have inves
ted and for all practical purposes excluded or self-excluded from the operation
of the business. The modern corporation thus developed as an enterprise conducte
d by salaried executives and financed by vast sales of stock to many investors.
Benjamin Disraeli emerged as the dominant Conservative politician, but h
e surprisingly dished the Whigs by the Second Reform Bill (1867), which doubled th
e number of eligible voters and reapportioned more equitably the seats in parlia
ment. With the triumph of the Liberal Party under William Gladstone, the reform
movement continued: the Disestablishment Act of 1869, removing government suppor
t from the Church of Ireland (Protestant); the Irish Land Act of 1870, mollifyin
g some of the evils of Irish land tenure; the Education Act of the same year, pr
oviding minimum essential education for all English children for the first time
in history; the introduction in 1870 of competitive examinations for civil servi
ce posts; the University Tests Act of 1871, removing most of the religious restr
ictions upon students and faculty at Oxford and Cambridge; the Army Regulation B
ill of the same year, reorganizing the military largely in the light of deficien
cies revealed by the Crimean War; and the Ballot Act of 1872, first introducing
the secret ballot. Under Gladstone the government followed chiefly a Little Engla
nd policy, seeking to avoid foreign entanglements.
Disraeli returned to office in 1874 avowing a Big England policy to furthe
r British prestige and interest throughout the world. By purchase of Suez Canal
shares in 1875 Disraeli established English dominance of the link between East a
nd West and initiated English penetration of Egypt. In the next year, Disraeli b
y the Royal Titles Bill had Victoria proclaimed Empress of India. Domestic measu
res during the second Disraeli ministry included: the Public Health Act (1875),
still the backbone of English sanitary law; the Artisans Dwelling Act (1875), the
first real attempt of the government to improve housing of the poor; and the Me
rchant Shipping Act (1876) to regulate seaworthiness and loading of vessels. Unp
opular colonial wars against the Afghans in Central Asia and the Zulus in South
Africa, coupled with the poorest harvest of the century in 1879 caused Disraeli s
ministry to fall.
The second Gladstone ministry, starting in 1880, was highlighted by two spectacu
lar personalities. Pious Victorians were shocked at the 1880 election to parliam
ent of the militant atheist Charles Bradlaugh. The long quarrel about his taking
of the oath (including So help me God ) finally resulted in his seating in 1886 an
d the passage under his sponsorship of the Affirmation Bill of 1888, removing al
l religious qualifications for membership in parliament. Charles Parnell, though
a Protestant led the Home Rule for Ireland Party in repeated and eloquent deman
ds for a separate legislature for Ireland. Parnell suffered political disaster i
n 1890, when named as co-respondent in a divorce suit and he died the next year.
Under Gladstone the Employer s Liability Act (1880) for the first time ass
ured compensation for workers injured at their employment, and the Corrupt and I
llegal Practices Act (1883) limited the expenditures of political parties in cam
paigning. Gladstone s Franchise Bill of 1884 virtually provided manhood suffrage,
excluding only domestic servants, bachelors living with their families, and men
of no fixed abode.
As the century neared conclusion, England s dominance of the world was bei
ng challenged. Industrialization of continental nations was belatedly catching u
p with England s production, and Gemany, united for the first time in 1870, was ri
sing with the greatest rapidity. A worried Conservative administration, led by L
ord Salisbury after Disraeli s death in 1881, saw the key to global power in the B
ritish fleet. The Naval Defense Act of 1889 stipulated that Britain should maint
ain a navy equal to the combined fleets of the next two strongest powers; this p
olicy was followed until World War I.
Further to worry the Conservatives was the rising tide of English social

ism. In 1883 the Fabian Society (named for the ancient Roman conqueror of Hannib
al, Fabius the delayer ) was founded, sparked by Sidney and Beatrice Webb along wit
h George Bernard Shaw. The group believed that universal suffrage and fully repr
esentational government would eventually insure socialism. Labour showed its mou
nting strength and self-awareness with the London dock strike of 1889. The Indep
endent Labour Party, frankly socialistic, was founded in 1893; by 1906 it had tw
enty-nine members in parliament.
In the Diamond Jubilee of 1897 the British empire and the entire world l
avishly celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of Victoria s accession, and Kipling s w
ords of warning in the Recessional sounded hollow to an England intoxicated with m
ajestic power and world dominance. Sobering was the onset in 1899 of the Boer Wa
r in South Africa, where a small number of resolute white Afrikanders fought the
empire almost to a stand-still. The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 deeply affe
cted the empire. Hardly any of her subjects could remember a previous English mo
narch, for her reign was the longest in European history, except for that of Lou
is XIV. During her reign England had achieved prosperity and power previously un
paralleled in human history, but England s star, almost imperceptibly, was on the
wane, and even the least sensitive of Englishmen knew that an era had passed.
Victoria, ascending the throne in 1837, counted about seventeen million
subjects in the United Kingdom; at her death the population of the United Kingdo
m exceeded thirty-seven-and-a-half million. Most of the huge increase took place
in the cities. Although many English villages in 1837 still looked much as they
were in Chaucer s day, before the century s end almost every village had been trans
formed. Arnold Bennett recalled from his childhood the separate Five Towns that in
1910 were united into the giant Stoke-on-Trent. Into many a sequestered village
the railroads breathed the soot of coal dust and lured village youth to the mus
hrooming industrial cities. Whole counties were blanketed with the smoke pouring
from factory into a nation of factory workers.
The real beneficiaries of this labour were the members of the triumphant
middle class. Even a sophisticated French author and critic like Hippolyte Tain
e, visiting England in the 1870s, was awed by the display of national wealth. Par
is , he declared, is mediocre compared with these squares, these crescents, these
circles and tows of monumental buildings of massive stone, with porticos, with s
culptured fronts, these spacious streets. Assuredly Napoleon III demolished and
rebuilt Paris only because he had lived in London. But even this London splendor
paled before the baronial magnificence of Midlands manufacturers, where the mag
nates of the north ruled industrial empires from palaces that a Roman emperor wo
uld have envied.
The foreign world disliked the English merchant, but it greatly envied h
im and grudgingly admired him. The honesty and integrity of the English manufact
urer and merchant were a global byword; to this day Argentinians assert palabra
ingles (the word of an Englishman) when they mean the unqualified truth. Thus, w
e can see that Victorian repressive morality was largely due to deep-seated conv
iction, not to hypocrisy as it has often seemed to the 20th century. The Victori
ans possessed an English conscience and were not exclusively unfeeling exploiter
s of their fellows; the hosts of reform measures in the era testify to a humanit
y behind the wall of stock-holders. Private charity and public service often sho
wed the bourgeois to be worthy inheritors of the best traditions of a superseded
aristocracy and bulwarks of a stable England.
CULTURAL CONDITIONS.
Victorian , as we use the word, is wholly accurate as a label simply for the chrono
logical period 1837-1901, the reign of Queen Victoria. Much more dubious is the
use of Victorian to characterize the British spirit during this era. In the inev
itable reaction of the early 20th century the term meant smug, stuffy, narrow-mi
nded, prudential, moral, hypocritically righteous, and naively optimistic. The l
ater 20th Century has tended to see Victorianism as moral earnestness, astoundin
g material progress, confidence, and a serenity strange to our troubled times. I
n truth, the Victorian age was an era of extraordinary complexity and variety of
viewpoint, as its writers demonstrate. But, oversimplified, the spirit of the p

eriod falls into three broad categories: Victorian Orthodoxy, Traditionalists, a

nd Innovators.
VICTORIAN ORTHODOXY.
The orthodoxy of the period (what we usually mean when employing the term Victor
ian) is the middle-class spirit of the 19th Century. It is this spirit that domi
nated the age and put its impress upon the queen herself. The early Victoria was
a vivacious girl who was a bit annoyed by the repressions of the time, such as
the dull, pious Sundays, but the aged woman had fully conformed to the sedate im
age desired by her middle-class subjects.
The principal factor in the mind-set we usually term Victorian was Evangel
ical Protestantism, as noted by the Frenchman, Halevy, perhaps the greatest auth
ority upon this era. A sizeable proportion of the middle class consisted of Wesl
eyans (Methodists), intent upon transforming all society into a decorous, moral
institution consonant with the preachings of John Wesley. The nonconformist grou
ps (Baptists, Congregationalists, etc.) were almost all staunchly middle class a
nd evangelical. Within the Church of England itself, the same evangelical forces
were manifest; the sporting and drinking clerics of the 18th Century (as Trollo
pe notes in his novels) vanished in favour of sober and moralistic parish clergy
men. Evangelicanism invested 19th Century English nobility (frequently middle-cl
ass in origin) with a dignity and rectitude seldom found even as late as the Reg
ency. Evangelicalism also established amid the proletariat a number of the age s
prang not from the radicalism of a Shelley or an Owen but from the Evangelicals.
Indifferent to tradition, the Evangelicals sought to form the Holy Society righ
t here and now in each heart. This spirit exuded Protestant individualism.
Only slightly less instrumental than evangelicalism in forming Victorian
orthodoxy was the economic and political philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. Benthami
te reform was as potent during the Conservative regimes of Peel and Disraeli as du
ring the Liberal administrations. Benthanism worked in two directions, (occasional
ly at cross-purposes). In its insistence upon laissez faire it sought to insure
freedom of action for all individuals capable of useful and intelligent conduct.
Hence such measures as the repeal of the Corn Laws; but, even more important he
re, was its firm support for the unrestrained competition of a free enterprise s
ystem. Thus it worked hand-in-glove with the triumphant bourgeoisie, who benefit
ed spectacularly under free capitalism. On the other hand, the insistence of Bet
hamism upon the greatest happiness of the greatest number called for the restraint
of criminals and lunatics and the protection of women, children, and paupers in
the interest of a wholesome society. It must be remembered, therefore, that the
reform spirit of the era was fundamentally a defence, (a shoring-up) of the bou
rgeois capitalistic system, intent not upon altering the system but upon strengt
hening and smoothing its operation.
Most Victorians were conditioned, by Bethamism and their own bourgeois o
rigins, to view art and literature with two entirely different attitudes, which
led to two entirely different expressions of popular art.
On one hand, average Victorians frequently looked upon art as a pleasant
superfluity that provided occasional enjoyable relief from the persistent drive
for wealth. The taste of the populace therefore often equated art with a treacl
y romanticism, a glamorous escapism devoid of the rebellious and disturbing char
acteristics of the great Romantics. This demand resulted in an abundant supply o
f sweet, coy, sentimental art of the type Meredith called rose-pink . The medievali
sm of the age distilled the colourful and charming aspects of the past, avoiding
the vulgar, violent, and sensual. Perhaps the ultimate of romanticism in the er
a, possible only with the complete victory of the bourgeoisie, was the romantici
zing of the middle-class career itself.
On the other hand, many Victorians of the practical middle-class conside
red realism as the real art . Properly, 19th Century realism is best termed bourgeoi
s realism , and it demonstrated the following aspects:
Bourgeois characters central to the portrait. Most Victorian novels depict the m
iddle-class and ascribe bourgeois viewpoints to the admirable aristocrat and pro
letarian. Even in historical fiction and poetic medievalism the characters in ef

fect are transplanted in Victorian bourgeoisie.

Bourgeois experience of life. It is the everyday vicissitudes of bourgeois strug
gle, the urge to financial security and social acceptance, and the problems of d
omestic and commercial life that preoccupy these realistic characters.
Bourgeois ethics. Realistic 19th Century literature demonstrates the success of
those who conform to the middle class concepts, and the failure of the unconvent
ional and rebellious.
Bourgeois surroundings. Middle class places of residence, work and resort domina
te the backgrounds. Solid, comfortable often cluttered and tasteless settings mi
rror the possessive goals of the characters and symbolize their purposes and nat
ures.
Largely a middle-class product anyway, the novel in the Victorian period
became the most popular form of literature and, for most writers, the only reas
onably certain way to earn a living. Through the bourgeois realistic novel the V
ictorian age offers a fuller picture of its life than we find in the literature
of any previous epoch.
The most admired writers of this age obviously were those who supported
the Victorian orthodoxy. Tennyson was the poet laureate of the bourgeoisie, Maca
ulay - its historian and Spencer - its philosopher. When Tennyson in irate fashi
on deplores the passing of old England , it is actually the weakening of the Victor
ian orthodoxy that he regrets. In his military reform spirit, Dickens is really
a true Benthamite, resolutely working to maintain the middle class. The so-calle
d laughing critics , like Gilbert and Sullivan, are generally attacking the deviati
ons from the bourgeois orthodoxy, and Matthew Arnold sought not to overthrow the
bourgeois ascendancy but to render it more enlightened.
Broadly it can be hazarded that the majority of English writers reaching
their maturity between 1837 and 1875 accepted the Victorian orthodoxy and in es
sence expressed it.
TRADITIONALISTS
We would label this group conservative, but the term is avoided because 19th Cen
tury conservatism differs significantly in meaning from 20th Century conservatis
m. Essentially what is meant here is that the intoxication with material progres
s in Victorian England did not entirely eradicate a persistence of traditionalis
m and a desire for institutions unaffected by change. To some, Evangelical Prote
stantism and its individualism seemed an abandonment of structure in favour of c
haos. The powerful religious need for an unchanging rock amid the convulsions of
the era produced, most notably, the Oxford Movement (detailed more fully under
Cardinal Newman). Newman himself entered the Roman Catholic Church, and many oth
er religious and intellectual figures of the period were also converted to Roman
Catholicism. Within the Church of England, the same spirit produced Anglo-Catho
licism (often termed High Episcopal in the United States), which differed essentia
lly from Roman Catholicism only in ritual and Mass in English instead of Latin,
optional vows of celibacy for secular clergy, and refusal to admit primacy of th
e Bishop of Rome (the Pope). To many moderate Englishmen (as Trollope reveals of
himself in his Barsetshire novels) Anglo-Catholicism proved more attractive tha
n Evangelicalism because of its dignity, colour and sense of long-continuing tra
dition. Within the last one hundred years Anglo-Catholicism has probably been th
e most dynamic element in the Church of England, has moved the entire Establishe
d Church in a more Catholic direction, and has tended to diminish the English an
tipathy to Roman Catholicism.
Traditionalist reaction to Benthamism produced, especially in Carlyle, a
distrust of and a distaste for a free competitive society and extended franchis
e. Carlyle deeply regretted the passing of a paternalistic, agricultural system
in favour of wage-slavery, and he contrasted the protected peasant of the past w
ith the rootless proletarian of the industrial age, concluding that modern socie
ty had produced far less happiness and security for the average man. Carlyle saw
the vast increase in the electorate as producing vulgarity and demagoguery, for
he deeply believed that men must be led by great leaders rather than electing o

fficials to be mere tools of the popular voice. In many respects he was a belate
d feudalist or possibly a protofascist. His age listened to him respectfully, bu
t continued on the Benthamite path.
Both of the reactions discussed in this section are fundamental criticis
ms of the Victorian middle-class dominance, not for the sake of its correction b
ut rather with an eye to its demise and a desire to return to an earlier pattern
of life, either real or supposed.
INNOVATORS
We might label this trend liberalism, but again the term is avoided because of t
he great difference between 19th Century liberalism and 20th Century liberalism.
As early as 1859 Fitzgerald in The Rubaiya expressed the intellectual s scorn for
Victorian Evangelicalism and, in fact for orthodox faith generally. It can be s
aid, broadly speaking that most of the significant English writers reaching thei
r maturity between 1875 and World War I had lost religious faith. Some, like Har
dy, were deeply pained by the loss; others, like Wilde, professed faith at the a
pproach of death or in severe psychological disturbances; most, however, had aba
ndoned any sincerely felt conventional religion and were not much incommoded the
reby. The major causes for this break with orthodoxy can be found in the emergen
ce of the intelligentsia and in the contentions of science.
At the century s end many intellectuals were sufficiently disillusioned wi
th the middle-class ascendancy to sympathize with or vigorously advocate sociali
sm. This, of course, was a native English brand; relatively few Englishmen becam
e Marxian socialists, even though Das Kapital (1867-94) by Karl Marx was written
in London. English socialists were intent not upon a complete change to a regul
ated economy, a nationalized industry, and a transfer of power from the middle c
lass to the workers.
Both these leftist tendencies (seeking an overthrow of the Victorian) orth
odoxy and looking to a new and different system ahead) may be traced largely to
the development of the 19th Century intelligentsia. We use this latter term in t
he sense of the rebellious intellectuals of recent generations who are at odds w
ith their age impatient with any orthodoxy whatsoever. The major Victorian autho
rs (Tennyson, Arnold) had made the transition from being voices of an educated e
lite, as were 18th Century authors, to being voices for and to the triumphant Vi
ctorian middle-class. By the last quarter of the century, however, most young wr
iters and thinkers had lost sympathy with the bourgeoisie even though the intell
igentsia had itself developed from the middle-class. Since the spectacle of the
intelligentsia bitterly railing against current society is still with us deep in
to the 20th Century, it is advisable to explore the reasons for this hostility.
The 19th and 20th centuries have produced more educated and articulate p
ersons than there are jobs commensurate with their abilities. Many of the intell
igentsia (as yet greater in percentage in Europe and England than in United Stat
es) are annoyed with every aspect of a system that will not support them adequat
ely or provide them with the artistic and creative expression they desire.
In conclusion, the Reform Act of 1832 had transformed political power from the u
pper to the middle classes, but failed to benefit the labouring classes. The eco
nomic depression that had begun about four years later, the Poor Law of 1834, an
d the ruthlessness of the manufacturing classes (laissez
faire, iron law of wage
s, Malthusianism) excited discontent among the working classes, which attributed
their hardships to the exclusion of politics. The People s Charter of 1838 advocate
d:
1) universal manhood suffrage;
voting by secret ballot;
annual election of Parliament;
abolition of the property qualification for membership in the House of Commons;
payment of salary to the members of the House of Commons;
equal electoral districts.
After 1840 the movement lost a large part of its parliamentary and took on a mor

e socialistic and revolutionary character. Demonstrations occurred in industrial

centres. On several occasions the general strike was measurably effective. As t
rade improved and economic conditions became more settled, the movement languish
ed and died. By 1881, however, all the objectives of the People s Charter had been o
btained, excepting that of an annual parliament. The significance of the Chartis
t movement is that for the first time in England the people were class conscious
in their opposition to the half way, class
inspired measures of bourgeois refor
mism; it was the vanguard of the radical working class movement.
The age is remarkable for its scientific progress. The century was an age of inv
entions. In medicine, the figures of Pasteur, Lister, Paget, and Koch stand out;
in the field of natural science, those of Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Herbert
Spencer, A. R. Wallace, Mill, and Tyndall. In communication and transportation
came the greatest advance in material progress; the building of railways, commun
ication by telephone, telegraph and the wireless, the beginning of the automobil
e and of transportation by air. Industry was revolutionized by the application o
f machinery, steam and electricity. The art of photography was perfected. Despit
e all aspects of scientific progress, however, very little was accomplished in a
meliorating industrial slavery of men, women and children.
It was an era of peace. The few colonial wars that broke out during the Victoria
n epoch did not seriously disturb the national life. There was one continental w
ar that directly affected Britain; The Crimean War and one that affected her ind
irectly, though strongly The Franco
German struggle; yet neither of those caused
any performed changes. In America the great civil struggle left scars that were
soon to be obliterated by the wise statesmanship of her rulers. The whole age m
ay therefore generally be described as one of peaceful activity. In the earlier
stages the lessening surges of The French revolution were still felt; but by the
middle of the century they had almost completely died down, and other hopes and
ideals, largely pacific, were gradually taking place.
The material development in the period is remarkable. It was an age alive with h
er activities. There was a revolution in commercial enterprise, due to the great
increase of available markets, and, as a result of this, an immense advance in
the use of mechanical devices. The new commercial energy was reflected in the Gr
eat Exhibition of 1851, which was greeted as the inauguration of a new era of pr
osperity. On the other side of this picture of commercial expansion, we see the
appalling social conditions of the new industrial cities, the filthy slums, and
the exploitation of cheap labour (often of children), the painful fight by the e
nlightened few to introduce social legislation and the slow extension of the fra
nchise. Such writers as Dickens and Elisabeth Gaskell vividly painted the evils
of the Industrial Revolution, and they called forth the missionary efforts of me
n like Charles Kingsley.
As far as intellectual development is concerned there can be little doubt that i
n many cases material wealth produced a hardness of Temper and an impatience of
projects and ideas that brought no return in hard cash; yet it is to the credit
of this age that intellectual activities were so numerous. There was quite a rev
olution in scientific thought following upon the works of Darwin and his school,
and an immense outburst of social and political theorising which was represente
d in England by the writings of men like Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill. I
n addition, popular education became a practical thing. This, in its turn produc
ed a new hunger for intellectual food, and resulted in a great increase in the p
roduction of a press and of other more durable species of literature.
2. Literary Features of the Age
The sixty years (1830 - 1890) commonly included under the name of the Victorian
Age present many dissimilar features; yet in several respects we can safely gene
ralise.

General View of the Literature

Victorian literature was written in the main for the people, and reflected the p
ressing social problems and philosophies of a complex era. The age was prevailin
gly one of social restraints and taboos, reminiscent in this respect of the Puri
tan period. The writers, whether poets or novelists or essayists, are didactic a
nd moral and purposeful, although that statement is not valid for the members of
the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Possibly the dominant literary form was the nov
el; possibly the least notable form was the drama. Undoubtedly the Victorian age
ranks second only to the Elizabethan period.
1.Its morality
Nearly all observers of the Victorian age are struck by its extreme deference to
the conventions. To a later age these seem indecorous. It was thought indecorou
s for a man to smoke in public and much later in the century for a lady to ride
a bicycle. To a great extent the new morality was a natural revolt against the g
rossness of the earlier Regency, and the influence of the Victorian Court was al
l in its favour. In literature it is amply reflected.
Tennyson is the most conspicuous example in poetry, creating the priggishly comp
lacent Sir Galahad and King Arthur. Dickens, perhaps, the most representative of
the Victorian novelists, took for his model the old picaresque novel; but it is
almost laughable to observe his anxiety to be moral . This type of writing is quit
e blameless, but it produced the kind of public that denounced the innocuous Jan
e Eyre, as wicked, because it dealt with the harmless affection of a girl for a
married man.
2.The Revolt
Many writers protested against the deadening protests of the conventions. Carlyl
e and Matthew Arnold in their different accents were loud in their clemenciation
s; Thackeray never tired of satirising the snobbishness of the age; and Browning s
mannerisms were an indirect challenge to the velvety diction and the smooth sel
f satisfaction of the Tennysonian School. As the age proceeded the reaction stre
ngthened. In poetry, the Pre
Raphaelites, led by Swinburne and William Morris, p
roclaimed no morality but that of the artist s regard for his art. By the vigour o
f his methods, Swinburne horrified the timorous, and made himself rather ridicul
ous in the eyes of sensible people. It remained for Thomas Hardy to pull aside t
he Victorian veils and shutter and with the large tolerance of the master to reg
ard men s actions with open gaze.
3. Intellectual Developments
The literary product was inevitably affected by the new ideas in sciences, relig
ion, and politics. On the Origin of Species (1859) of Darwin shook to its founda
tions scientific thought. We can perceive the influence of such a work in Tennys
on s In Memoriam, in Matthew Arnold s meditative poetry and in the works of Carlyle.
In religious and ethical thought the Oxford Movement, as it was called, was the
most noteworthy advance. This movement has its source among the young and eager
thinkers of the old university, and was headed by the great Newman, who ultimat
ely (1845) joined the Church of Rome. As a religious portent it marked the wides
pread discontent with the existing beliefs of the Church of England; as a litera
ry influence it affected many writers of note, including Newman himself, Kingsle
y, and Gladstone.
4. The New Education
The Education Acts making a certain measure of education compulsory, rapidly pro
duced an enormous reading public. The cheapening of printing and paper increased

the demand for books so that the production was multiplied. The most popular fo
rm of literature was the novel, and the novelists responded with a will. Much of
their work was of high standard, so much so that competent critics had asserted
that the middle years of the 19th century were the richest in the whole history
of the novel.
5. International Influences
During the 19th century, the interaction among American and European wri
ters was remarkably fresh and strong. In Britain the influence of the Great Germ
an writers was continuous and Carlyle and Matthew Arnold championed it. Subject
relations, in particular the Italians were a sympathetic theme for prose and ver
se. The Brownings, Swinburne, Morris and Meredith were deeply absorbed in the lo
ng struggle of the followers of Garibaldi and Cavour; and when Italian freedom w
as gained the rejoicing was genuine.
6. The Achievement of the Age
With all its immense production, the age produced no supreme writer. It
revealed no Shakespeare, no Shelley, nor a Byron or a Scott. The general literar
y level was, however, very high; and it was an age, moreover, of spacious intell
ectual horizons, noble endeavour, and bright aspirations.
7 The Development of Literary Forms
The Victorian epoch was exceedingly productive of literary work of a hig
h quality, but except in the novel, the amount of actual innovation is by no mea
ns great. Writers were as a rule content to work upon former models, and the imp
rovements they did achieve were often dubious and unimportant.
3. POETS
The lyrical output is very large and varied, as a glance through the works of th
e poets will show. In form there is little of fresh interest. Tennyson was conte
nt to follow the methods of Keats, though Browning s complicated forms and Swinbur
ne s long musical lines were more freely used by them than by any previous writer.
In descriptive and narrative poetry there is a greater advance to chronicle. In
subject
for example in the poems of Browning and Morris
there is great variety,
embracing many climes and periods; in method there is much diversity, ranging fr
om the cultured elegance of Tennyson s English landscapes to the bold impressionis
m of the poems of Whitman. The Pre Raphaelite School, also, united several featu
res, which had not been seen before in combination. There was a fondness for med
ieval themes treated in an unconventional manner, a richly coloured pictorial ef
fect, and a studied and melodious simplicity. The works of Rossetti, Morris and
Swinburne provide many examples of this development of poetry. On the whole we c
an say that the Victorians were strongest on the descriptive side of poetry, whi
ch agreed with the more meditative habits of the period, as contrasted with the
warmer and more lyrical emotions of the previous age.
There were many attempts at purely narrative poetry, with interesting results. T
ennyson thought of reviving the epic, but in him the epical impulse was not suff
iciently strong and his great narrative poem was produced as smaller fragments w
hich he called idylls. Browning s King and the Book is curious, for it can be call
ed a psychological epic- a narrative in which emotion removes action from the ch
ief place. In this class of poetry The Earthly Paradise of William Morris is a r
eturn to the old Romantic tale as we find it in the works of Chaucer.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)
His poetry

When he was 17 years old Tennyson collaborated with his elder brother, C
harles in Poems by Two Brothers (1827). The volume is a slight one, but in the l
ight of his later work we can already discern a little of the Tennysonian metric
al aptitude and descriptive power.
His volume of Poems (1833) is of a different quality and marks a decided
advance. It contains such notable poems as Lady of Shalott, OEnone , The Lotus
Eaters and The Palace of Art, in which we see the Tennysonian technique approach
ing perfection. Then in 1842 he produced two volumes of poetry (Poems) that set
him once and for all among the greater poets of his day. The first volume consi
sts mainly of revised forms of some of the numbers published previously; the sec
ond is entirely new. It opens with Morte d Arthur, and contains Ulysses, Locksley
Hall, and several other poems that stand at the summit of his achievement.
In order to form a fair appreciation of Tennyson s poetry we have to consid
er him in the perspective of his age as well as in artistic contexts. We must al
so view him within the scheme of his psychological process (J. Carr)
As a result of this careful examination, we shall come to a conclusion: that Ten
nyson has been subject to a life, subject to a fundamental division of mind. On
the one hand, his aesthetic conviction that withdrawal, dream and creaseless con
templation were necessary to art; on the other hand, the conviction of the socia
lly responsible Tennyson, that of being in duty bound to transmit the ethos of t
he age and who therefore used poetry as a didactic weapon.
The expression of his poetic dream we find in the youthful poem called T
he Hesperides. The Garden of the Hesperides, the vanished and unattainable parad
ise, stands for the poet s conception of a poetic Eden, of a life time dedicated t
o art, a life withdrawn, introspective and sensuous. It is a symbolic presentati
on of the situation of the artist, a kind of incantation sung by the three Hespe
ridian maidens invoking the magic of poetry assuming that the poet s art may thriv
e and be protected.
The Greek myth of the Hesperidian gardens with its tree, golden apple, th
e fruit of wisdom and its blissful atmosphere reminds us of the Garden of Eden. H
e thereby anticipates the use of mythology as handled by later poets, like W.B.
Yeats and T.S. Eliot. Thus there is no shape break between the poetry of the Rom
antics (Shelley and Keats), of the Victorians and of the moderns, but simply con
tinuity and transformation. The golden apple is a treasure of the West. The noti
on of east and west has a special significance, being part of the mythology of T
ennyson s early poems. The maidens, daughters of Hesperus, the evening star, are d
aughters of the West. The West is a place of Twilight of relaxation and death. I
t is essentially the world of magic twilight of the Lotus-Eaters, a land where i
t seemed always afternoon, of the Merman and the Mermaid, a land of retreat into
fantasy and unreality. The antithesis to this is East, the land of dawn, of act
ivity and strife. The antinomy is constantly emphasized by a light
dark, evening
morning contrast.
He frequently expressed his reasoned intentions to participate in the ac
tivities of his fellow
men, for, in spite of the grudges he bore to the utilitar
ism and mechanization of his period, he was impressed with the scientific advanc
e of his time and could not fail to notice the progress achieved. In spite of hi
s spiritual devotion to the remoteness and isolation of his poetic garden, Tenny
son made a conscious effort to transmit the ethos of his age, using poetry as a
didactic weapon.
This ambivalence of Tennyson s attitude towards the poetic act of creation
expresses itself in thematic images, which, like musical motifs in a symphony,
always introduce the same idea and state of mind. The land of Lotus-Eaters is an
other version of the same poetic garden. A land in which it seemed always aftern
oon, a land of twilight, languid air , weary dream of passive stability. A land whe
re all things always seemed the same, the land of muffled noises, the land of th
e pale-faced melancholy Lotus-Eaters, of the magic fruit of soothing effect, whe
re the inner spirit sinks There is no joy but calm .
The dreamy melancholy poet and the responsible social being are fused in Ullysse
s. The poem may be interpreted as one more speculation of Tennyson s on the fate a

nd calling of the poet. The basis of Tennyson s poem is not to be sought in the Ho
meric poems, but in Dante s Inferno. In the eleventh book of the Odyssey it is for
etold that after his return to Ithaca and the slaying of the suitors, he is to s
et off again on a mysterious voyage. This voyage and its outcome are related by
the figure of Ullysses in Dante s Inferno.
The poem, however, expresses a personal emotion of Tennyson s as a man of
his own epoch deeply and personally felt. Ullysses, the far
travelled and much t
ried, has at last reached his isle of barren crags , has rejoined an aged wife and ru
les as an idle king over a savage race. He has returned but he cannot rest from tra
vel and is continuously drawn and bewitched by the mystery of the future so he ta
kes a decision and makes a moving appeal to his former companions.
What sort of poem is Ullysses? It is not epic. The narrative passages ar
e occasional flashbacks in the course of meditation of an internal monologue tha
t expresses the complex mood of a moment; a call of the undiscovered mystery lyi
ng ahead; a dramatic resolution; a heroic call to action. (Nature = background f
or reflecting some human emotions).
When Tennyson was ennobled for his poetry it was because he had become t
he poet of his times. His representative position and his peerage, both seem to
have derived from In Memoriam, his great elegy for his friend and fellow
student
Arthur Henry Hallam who died in 1833. In the lyrics that make up In Memoriam he
found his own poetic voice properly for the first time, escaping from the influ
ence of Keats.
Typically for the High Victorian era that was to follow it, the themes o
f the poem are death and doubt. The first of these was always popular with the V
ictorians who invented a complexity of mourning and a style of funerary art. Tha
t can seem exaggerated to a later generation. The second theme, doubt, is profou
ndly connected in the poem to the new evolutionary explanation of the universe t
hat was emerging in the 1840 s and 1850 s. This did not find its full expression unt
il the publication of Darwin s On the Origin of Species in 1859, but it was in the
air around Tennyson at Cambridge and elsewhere much earlier than that. Tennyson h
ad a difficult engagement to his future wife, Emily Sellwood, during the years o
f composition of the poem and it appears that it needed, finally, to convince he
r that his Christian faith was sound before she would agree to marry him. With t
his in view he sent her privately
printed version of In Memoriam, to which he ha
d recently added the prologue, some months before its official publication. Asto
nishingly, it convinced her that her fianc was indeed a Christian.
Perhaps the prologue goes some way towards explaining this. With its add
ition the poem at least opens with a direct invocation of Christ: Strong Son of G
od, Immortal Love . But a careful reading of the rest of the poem reveals more of
doubt than of faith while much of the prologue itself shows anxiety about religi
ous faith. Having invoked Christ, it continues:
Whom we, that have not seen thy face
By faith and faith alone embrace
Believing where we cannot prove.
The emphasis is on the reasons to doubt, rather than on the reasons to believe,
and this tone remains dominant throughout the poem. Thine are these orbs of light
and shade
Thou madest Life is man and brute
Thou madest Death; and I, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not live us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
These words trust and somehow are repeated in the poem on several occasions always s
tressing the uncertain nature of good. ( Oh yes we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill ,

Yet if some voice that man could trust,

Should murmur from the narrow house
and so on) along with wo
rds such as yet and but , they offer a key to the poem.
The doubt comes from the fact of death. Tennyson said that he would desp
air if he ever came truly to doubt God or Immortality, Yet Hallam s death and the
anguished questrim as to where Hallam now was and whether they would meet again
put an immense strain on these beliefs. Death in In Memoriam keeps the key to all
the creeds for only after death will the truth be revealed though it may be the
truth that all religion is untrue.
The poem s lyrics are separate from one another and most of them can be re
ad as units more or less successfully; a lyric such as: I envy not in any moods (n
o 27) could be anthologized separately without huge loss. But undoubtedly the po
em works best as a whole. It has a vague structure, passing through three years
of mourning, showing us three Christmases and moving towards some sort of very t
entative resolution. Above all, its emotional register pervades all its constitu
ent parts, which would therefore lose something if cut off from it. When evoluti
on is the topic (in lyrics 54-56 for instance) we are still aware that it is per
sonal grief that has provoked these thoughts and that it is not only the answer
to life s mysteries that is Behind the veil, behind the veil , but the whereabouts of
Tennyson s friend, too. A good comparison in this respect would be Shakespeare s so
nnets which can be read separately, but which are nonetheless a sequence.
Lyric 48, in which Tennyson describes his own method in the poem, asks u
s not to take his short shallow- flights of song too seriously as intellectual arg
uments; the slender shade of doubt , he protests, has become vassal onto love . But th
is is nonetheless the great poem of Victorian doubt as the poet himself recogniz
es when he proclaims, in an astute move, that There lives more faith in honest do
ubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds .
In Memoriam is a great elegy, a great poem of doubt, and an excellent picture of
Victorian frame of mind. Last but not least, it is also characterised by an ext
raordinary euphony and a masterly use of the rhythms in English.
In one of his dramatic monologues, Tennyson interprets the myth of Ulysses. Dant
e, Shakespeare, Joyce, and many others have recast the role of the legendary her
o. Interpretations have varied, from Dante s condemnation of him to the circles of
hell as a symbol of overreaching pride and ambition, to Tennyson s espousal of hi
m as a symbol of the human desires for experience, physical prowess, courage, ad
venture, and knowledge.
You must establish the dramatic situation. Ulysses is now an elderly kin
g as he addresses the people of Ithaca. He is about to set off again in quest of
great adventures and plans to leave the management of the kingdom to his son Te
lemachus. To establish the character of the speaker, consider the following exce
rpts.
I will drink/Life to the less
Ulysses is in an active, vibrant human being who wants to experience as much as
possible in life. He wants to move out into realms of the unknown in an effort t
o live life to the fullest and to increase the knowledge of all people.
It little profits that an idle king
mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race.
Ulysses plans to leave Ithaca because he feels no challenge in the calm, rustic
routine of slowly building a society from a backward nation.
I am a part of all that I have met
Ulysses is an inextricably linked to the past experiences which built his fame.
He needs to reach out into experience, to sail again the seas of the unknown and
to grow even more. His past shaped his present character:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
For him to stand is tantamount to an admission that his abilities have died. He
must set out again on a quest.
Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains.
Even one lifetime cannot contain his infinite energies and desires.
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star
Even in his old age Ulysses spirit still yearns to uncover new lands and to explo
re new vistas of human life.
Tis not too late to seek a newer world
For Ulysses, human beings must never surrender their spirit of exploration and t
heir desire for knowledge.
Though much is taken, much abides
In spite of the many victories he has won, there are always more awaiting the ad
venturous person.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
This famous closing line of the poem has become a credo for all that is great in
human fortitude and strength.
In direct contrast to Ulysses is his son Telemachus. Tennyson purposeful
ly establishes this contrast to represent two separate ways of life. Ulysses, as
is quite obvious above, represents the heroic vision of the explorer. But Telem
achus, of whom his father says, He works his work, I mine , represents a different
but in many ways equally important role in life. The hero can seek out new exper
iences, but his constant wanderings leave him little time to contemplate the mea
ning of his discoveries, to discern what societal benefits they may reap. Telema
chus is the thoughtful man of society who places its well being above his own. H
e can face the daily challenge of dealing with an unenlightened race in an attem
pt to build a culture and a civilization. Telemachus possesses a slow prudence to
make a mild/A rugged people, and through soft degrees/Subdue them to the useful
and the good . He has tenderness coupled with a strength to deal with common duties .
In this poem, Tennyson clearly sides with the individual who seeks perso
nal actualization rather than social involvement. But this is not to condemn the
value of either goal. In fact, the biographical fact that Tennyson wrote this p
oem after the death of his close friend Arthur Hallam in an attempt to emphasize
the need to go forward and brave the struggle of life makes his meaning and int
ention clear.
The many lines which have universal significance reflect the poet s desire
to have his speaker relate the value of the heroic way of life. His tone of com
mitment to his ideals and of lofty aspirations serves to enhance the poem.
The public received Maud and Other Poems (1855) with amazement. The chie
f poem is called a monodrama . It consists of a series of lyrics, which reflect the
love and hatred, the hope and despair of a lover who slays his mistress s brother
and then flees, broken, to France. The only other poem of any length is Enoch A
rden (1864), which became the most popular of all. The plot is cheap enough, dea

ling with a seaman, supposed drowned, who returns and finding his wife happily m
arried to another man, regretfully retires without making himself known.
His Poetical Characteristics
a) His choice of subject. Tennyson s early instincts as seen in his first volumes
led him to the lyric and legendary narrative as his principal themes, and these
he handled with a skill and artistry which he rarely surpassed. Already, however
, in the 1842 volume, there are signs of the ethical interest, which was to be t
he mainspring of his later work. As a thinker, Tennyson lacked depth and origina
lity. He was content to mirror the feelings and aspirations of his time, and his
didactic work lacks the burning fire, which alone can transform the didactic in
to truly great art. The requirements of his office as Poet Laureate led to the p
roduction of a number of occasional poems which have caused him to be described
contemptuously, as the newspaper of his age, and it is surprising that they are
as good as they are. For the rest, with the exception of In Memoriam and Ulysses
, Tennyson s poems are best when he reverts to the lyric or narrative themes, whic
h were his original inspiration.
b) His Craftsmanship. No one can deny the great care and skill shown in Tennyson s
work.
His method of producing poetry was slowly to evolve the lines in his mind, commi
t them to paper and to revise them till they were as near perfection as he could
make them. Consequently, we have a high level of poetical artistry. No one exce
ls Tennyson in the deft application of sound to sense and in the subtle and perv
ading employment of alliteration and vowel-music.
His excellent craftsmanship is also apparent in the handling of English meters i
n which he is a tireless experimenter. In blank verse he is not so varied and po
werful as Shakespeare nor so majestically as Milton, but in the skill of his wor
kmanship and in his wealth of diction he falls but little short of these great m
asters.
His Pictorial Quality
In this respect, Tennyson follows the example of Keats. Nearly all his poems, ev
en the simplest, abound in ornate description of natural and other scenes. His m
ethod is to seize upon appropriate details, dress them in expressive and musical
phrases and thus throw a glistening image before the reader s eye ( The Day Dream , In
Memoriam ).
Although these verses show care of observation and a studious loveliness of epit
het, they lack the intense insight, the ringing and romantic note of the best ef
forts of Keats.
d) Tennyson s lyrical quality is somewhat uneven.
The slightest of his pieces, like The Splendour Falls, are musical and attractiv
e; but, on the whole, his nature was too self-conscious and perhaps his life too
regular and prosperous, to provide a background for the true lyrical intensity
of emotion. Once or twice, as in the wonderful Break, break, break and Crossing
the bar he touches real greatness. Such lyrics have a brevity, unity and simple
earnestness of emotion that makes it truly great.
e) Style
His typical style shows a slow, somewhat sententious progress, heavy with imagin
g cry and all the other devices of the poetical artist. In particular he is an a
dept at conceiving phrases
jewels five words long as he himself aptly expressed it
; and he is almost invariably happy in his choice of epithet.
IV. Robert Browning (1812-1889)
His Poems and Works
His first work of any importance is Pauline (1833) an introspective poem which s
hows very strongly the influence of Shelley, whom, at this period Browning held
in great reverence.
Paracelsus (1835), the story of the hero s unquenchable thirst for that breadth of
knowledge which is beyond the grasp of one man, brings to the fore Browning s pre

dominant ideas
that a life without love must be a failure, and that God is worki
ng all things to an end beyond human divining.
Then Browning wrote a number of six plays, but he lacks the fundamental qualitie
s of a dramatist. His amazingly subtle analysis of character and motive is not a
dequate for true drama, because he cannot reveal character in action. His method
is to take a character at a moment of crisis and, by allowing him to talk, to r
eveal not only his present thoughts and feelings, but also his past history.
The volumes Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) show
this faculty being directed into the channel in which it was to achieve perfecti
on that of the dramatic monologue. Now, at the height of his powers, Browning pr
oduced some of his best work in Men and Women (1855) which consists almost entir
ely of dramatic monologues. Here are to be found the famous Fra Lippo Lippi, An
Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physicia
n, Andrea del Sarto, Cleon. Most of them are written in blank verse. The year 18
64 saw the publication of his last really great volume, Dramatic Personae, again
a collection of dramatic monologues.
In style, these poems have much of the rugged, elliptical quality, which was on
occasion the poet s downfall, but here it is used with a skill and a power, which
show him at the very pinnacle of his achievement.
Features of his work
His choice of subject
Browning s themes divide themselves broadly into three groups: philosophical or re
ligious, love, and lighter themes as in the Pied Piper of Hamelin. His philosoph
ical poems, on which his reputation rested in his own day, all bear on his centr
al belifs that life must never be a striving for something beyond one reach, and
that it is God s task to make the heavenly period perfect the earthen. The obvious
optimism of What I aspired to be / And was not, conforts me , has been resented by
more modern critics as a facile shirking of life s complexities. His love poems a
re perhaps his greatest achievement. They have a calm authenticity of tone.
Always, his first concern was with the human soul. He was particularly intereste
d in abnormal people, and was able to project himself into their minds and to la
y bare their feelings and motives. Yet his characters are not often completely o
bjective, because so many of them are mouthpieces for his own philosophy.
He shows a fondness, too, for out-of-the-way historical settings and for foreign
scenes, which at his best, as in The Bishop Orders His Tomb are recreated with
a vivid accuracy. Along with this interest in the unusual goes an obvious relish
for the grotesque and macabre, which is seen at its most striking in Childe Rol
and to the Dark Tower Came.
b) His style
Browning s style has been the subject of endless discussion, for it presents a fas
cinating problem. At his worst, his poems are a series of bewildering mental acr
obatics, expressed in a willfully harsh rhythm vocabulary. At his best he can a
chieve a noble dignity, and a verbal music as good as anything produced by that
master of melody, Tennyson. Above all, his verse reflects the abundant vitality
of his charater. He is a master of surprising variety of metrical forms and exce
ls in the manipulation of rhythmic effects.
In his greatest work even the notorious rugged angularity of his phrasing and vo
cabulary is turned to account and produces a beautiful peculiarly of its own.
His Descriptive Power
In this respect Browning differs widely from Tennyson who slowly creates a lovel
y image by careful misssing of detail. Browning cares less for beauty of descrip
tion for its own sake. In most of his work it is found only in flashes, where he

paints the background of his story in a few dashing strokes, or crystallizes hi

s meaning in an image whose beauty staggers us. He is fond of striking primary c
olours which startle by their very vividness, and as a painting of movement he h
as few equals. (Caliban upon Setebos: You other sleekweek and says a plain word
and
Cleon: Cleon the poet
Thy lip hath
; the passages show two very different exemples
of his descriptive skill).
The Dramatic Monologue
Characteristics
Another form of the lyric, the dramatic monologue, was brought to great heights
by the Victorian poet Robert Browning. As the title suggest, it is a poem told b
y one speaker about a significant event. Several qualities exist in the form:
1. The speaker reveals in his/her own words some dramatic situation in w
hich he/she is involved.
2. The speaker demonstrates his/her character through the poem.
3. The speaker addresses a listener who does not engage in dialogue but
helps to develop the speech.
We enter the psyche of the speaker, and the skilful poet makes much of his/her o
wn nature, attitudes, and circumstances available in words to the reader who dis
cerns the implications of the poem.
The dramatic monologue differs from a soliloquy in a play in that, in drama, tim
e and place are developed before the character ascends the stage alone to make h
is/her remarks, whereas the dramatic monologue by itself establishes time, place
, and character.
Fra Lippo Lippi
A dramatic monologue in blank verse, is one of the poems, which displays Brownin
g s immersion in the civilisation of the Renaissance. Browning establishes the atm
osphere of his poem by placing his speaker, the Florentine painter and monk, Fil
ippo Lippi, on the pavement outside the Medici-Riccardi s palace, having him refer
to the altarpiece he is painting for Cosimo de Medici, to the churches of the C
armine and San Lorenzo and to numerous intimate features of the life of the time
. Browning drew most of his material for his poem from the account of Fra Lippo
in Giorgio Vasari s Lives of the Painters, but his person is quite different both
from Vasari s portrait and from the historical figure. As Brownings s Fra Lippo spe
aks to the watchmen who have intercepted him on his return from a night of revel
ry in disreputable company, he exhibits a character largely invented by the poet
himself and his philosophy of art echoes Browning s views. Browning places Fra Li
ppo as a realist who diverged from the religious idealism of the earlier painter
s, very much as Browning s poetry diverged from Romantic and Victorian conventions
.
In explaining himself to the watchmen, Fra Lippo shows that he is an earthy, hon
est fellow, whose attraction to the pleasures of the flesh is part of a general
delight with the world that leads him to depict it realistically in his painting
. His joy is so irrepressible that he occasionally interrupts himself to sing fo
lk songs. His account of the orphaned childhood, which led him to become a keen
observer, and of his first paintings, which portrayed the scenes and people of t
he neighbourhood, is full of remarkable particulars that convey vivid glimpses o
f life in Renaissance Florence. The monk begins by admitting that his escapades
are due to weakness of will, but this gradually changes to a move of self-justif
ication as he express his real views. The church authorities have criticized his
paintings because they do not express religious feeling, saying that they repre
sent a decline from the work of Fra Angelico and Lorenzo Monaco. But Fra Lippo d
efends his realism by declaring that taking pleasure in the visible world is a w
ay of worshipping the God who made it. He says his escapades are a form of prote
st against hypocritical prohibitions, against taking life as it is, and that it
is the painter s mission to call attention to sights that others overlook: Art was
given for that: / God uses us to help each other so

Nevertheless, Fra Lippo is reluctant to flout authority, feels that he has said
too much, promises to make amends for his faults by painting a picture for the nun
s of a nearby church, and closes his monologue by imagining that if he should ap
pear in the company of virtous people, he will be defended by the pretty girl wh
o has modeled the figure of Saint Lucy in his painting. The picture he plans to
paint is Lippi s Coronation of the Virgin which is described in some details, not al
l of it accurate. Browning saw it in Florence, but it is also emphasized in an a
ccount of Lippi s life in Fillippo Baldinucci s Notizie de Professori del Disegno, o
ne of Browning s sources of inspiration about painters.
In this poem Browning has presented a remarkably vivid portrait of a vigurous, i
ndependent personality whose convinctions about life s values compel him to challe
nge the discipline of the church. On one level, the conflict is an opposition of
principle between individual liberty and institutional conformity, but on anoth
er, it is simply a case in which a man has been forced into an unsuitable role i
n life. As Fra Lippo says: Jon should not take a fellow eight year old/ And make
him swear to never kiss the girls .

V. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

1.His poetry
It is a unique figure in the history of English poetry. His work was not general
ly available until 1918 when his friend Bridges published a slim volume of poems
collected from his letters and manuscripts. But for Bridges, it is likely that
this fine poetry, which has exercised a great influence on later poets, would ne
ver have been known. Hopkins, a converted in his twenty-second year to Catholici
sm, is not only the first really great religious poet in English since Milton, b
ut also, he was the creator of an original poetic medium, so much his own that a
major modern critic has doubted whether it can ever be used by another writer.
No (modern) poet has been the centre of more controversy or the cause of more mi
sunderstanding.
In 1875, when his long training as a Jesuit was reaching its end, he broke his s
elf-imposed silence with The Wreck of the Deutschland , a great ode occasioned by t
he sinking in a storm of the Deutschland , which had on board five nuns, refugees f
rom religious persecution. The poem is wider in scope than the title suggests. I
t contains the crystallised religious experience of his seven years poetic silenc
e, and has considerable autobiographical significance.
In its eight-line stanzas the typical Hopkins technique is seen for the first ti
me. Sprung-rhythm, counterpoint-rhythm, alliteration, assonance, internal rhythm
, coinages and unorthodox syntax give to the poem a revolutionary appearance, wh
ich led the editor of the Jesuit organ to refuse to print it after originally ac
cepting it. But, if it is difficult in thought and unconventional in technique,
it is full of brilliant passages and has an artistic and emotional unity of the
highest order.
Hopkins continued to write poetry until the end of his life, though his output w
as very small. From 1875 onward his writing was exclusively religious, and the e
cstatic enjoyment of nature, found in the sonnets of his early maturity is a sac
ramental experience. Nature is a manifestation of the beauty of God, a call to p
raise. Through his period of priesthood a growing concern with man is perceptibl
e. The evils of the industrial system he saw as man s falling-off from God, his re
jection of the grace won for him by Christ. Felix Randal is typical of his warm
sympathy with men and his concern with their souls. But the deepest and most int
ensely personal of his poems belong to his Dublin period (1884-1885). In their p
assionate, direct simplicity they stand apart from most of Hopkins work, and they
have been described as his greatest poems. His defiant refusal to capitulate to
this despair is to be seen in Carrion Comfort.
Features of his poetry

His love of nature

A sensuous love of nature, based on minute observation, is found in most of Hopk
ins poems especially before 1878. His early struggle to reconcile his obvious en
joyment of natural beauty with the ascetic life, the Jesuit resolved in his sacr
amental view of natural beauty. His great delight lay in the discovery of the in
scape, or inner pattern, which gave to each thing its distinctive beauty. His fe
elings at the perception of this inscape he described by the term instress.
His Use of Language
One of Hopkins most obvious idiosyncrasies is in his choice and use of language.
He believed that poetry called for a language distinct from that of prose, a lan
guage rich in suggestion both to the senses and the intellect. His vocabulary is
drawn from many sources, archaic, colloquial, and dialect words all being used.
He had a particular fondness for composed epithets such as drop-of-blood-and-foa
m-dapple-cherry and for evocative coinages. A full appreciation of a word may wel
l demand of the reader knowledge of its derivation. At times the result is obscu
rity and this is increased by his deliberate distortion of normal syntax, either
to compel the reader s attention, or to give to key words the stress they deserve
. But, whatever the difficulties arising from vocabulary, syntax, or compression
of thought, Hopkins is always precise in his use of words and his poetry has th
e muscular vitality of expression of the true Shakespearean tradition.
His Rhythmic Patterns
Hopkins most important experiment is with sprung rhythm, which appeared first in
The Wreck of the Deutschland and is based on the irregular verse of Samson Agonist
es. The basic principle of this attempt to break away from strictly conventional
patterns is that each foot contains one stress, possibly, but not necessarily,
followed by any number of unstressed syllables. Hopkins felt it to be The least f
orced, the most rhetorical and emphatic of all possible rhythms.
Counterpoint rhythm is the use in two consecutive feet of a reversal of the pred
ominant rhythm of a line. Every rhythmic effect in Hopkins is a result of carefu
l and deliberate workmanship, and so important did he consider a true understand
ing of his intentions that his manuscripts make use of some twenty symbols, rath
er like those of a musical score. Unfortunately, he was not consistent in the us
e of these symbols, and, to avoid confusion, Bridges omitted from the 1918 editi
on all but the most vital.
After The Wreck of the Deutschland he devoted much time to typically individual mo
difications of the sonnet form, which he used with the greatest freedom. A brief
summary can do no more than indicate the nature of Hopkins experiments, but it i
s important to add that the full import of rhythm in his poetry can only be gath
ered if it is read aloud after close and delicately sensitive study of its orche
stration.
His imagery
It is remarkable for its richness. His appreciation of nature, his reading of th
e great English poets, particularly Shakespeare, and of the Bible are evident.
Often he shows that blend of the emotional and intellectual which distinguishes
the poetry of the 17th century metaphysicals. But, however their sources and aff
inities, the images of his poetry are distinctively his own
always precise and v
itally illuminating, usually briefly expressed, and often suggesting more than o
ne possible interpretation.
The Wreck of the Deutchland

(1875-1876)

On 4th of December 1875 a transatlantic steamship left Bremen in Germany carryin

g emigrants for New York. Driven off course by bad weather, The Deutchland found
ered in the treacherous shoals of the outermost reaches of the Thames estuary. R

escue did not come for 30 hours by which time many had drowned. Five German Nuns
clasped hands and were drowned together, the chief sister, a gaunt woman 6 ft. h
igh, calling out loudly and often, Oh Christ, come quickly! till the end came , as
the Times reported.
These events occasioned the most ambitious of G..M. Hopkins completed poems and t
he first composition of his poetic maturity written to break a self-imposed abst
ention which had lasted since he had joined the Jesuits seven years earlier. But
they are not the poem s whole subject, for as Hopkins wrote The Deutschland would be
more generally interesting if those were more wreck and less discourse I know,
but still it is an ode and not primarily a narrative. The poem s business in the tr
ue condition of the ode, is that of lyrical meditation or reflection on a large
issue.
Part the First of the poem says nothing of the shipwreck, instead dealing autobi
ographically with Hopkins own relations with God and describing an unspecified sp
iritual experience which, though harrowing, was ultimately comforting. In emphas
ising that God is both destructive and merciful
Thou are lighting and love, I fou
nd it, a winter and warm
Hopkins set forth the attitude which is to govern his re
sponse to the shipwreck, too. Likewise the difficult passage from stanzas 6 to 8
though open to much theological debate about Duns Scotus theory of the Incarnati
on, finally seems to stress God s perpetual presence in the world, something which
the drowning nun will also call upon. In these respects the poem is a theodicy
attempting to justify God s ways. The attempt was pressing for Hopkins as a fervid
patriot, for his co-religionists had been left to die by the people of his own
country.
Death speaks the first words of Part the Second, for Hopkins does not intend it
to have the last. The description of the shipwreck which follows offers scope fo
r some of Hopkins most exuberant linguistic effects. From stanza 17, the entire s
econd half of the poem concerns itself either with the meaning of the tall nun s w
ords and actions, or with the thoughts which they provoke in the poet. For him i
n turn words break forth suggesting that both nun and poet are faintly echoing in
their own way the all-creating Word of God. Just as the tall nun is praised for
her power to read and word correctly the meaning concealed in the unshapable shock ni
ght , so, too, Hopkins reads and interprets using words which denote signs, such a
s cipher , mark , stigma , signal , token , lettering .
The poem is concerned with the construction of meaning; its subject is not so mu
ch the wreck but the meaning of the wreck, and that meaning is not waiting, fixe
d and unproblematic, within the story of the wreck, but has to be sought, and pr
oduced by interpretation.
Some controversy in recent years has centered on stanza 28, following Elisabeth
Schneider s suggestion that Hopkins is here claiming a miracle, that Christ actual
ly appeared on earth in response to the nun s cry. Rather it seems the latter part
of the poem deals with fervent hopes and wishes, not with facts, nor with claim
s about any particular actions of Christ. The significant verbs near the end are
in the imperative, not the indicative: Let him ride in his triumph ; Let him easter
in us, expressing Hopkins wish to see Christ reborn in people s hearts and actively
ruling his kingdom there. But this and much else remains open to debate.
This was the poem in which Hopkins first put into practice his theories on Sprun
g Rhythm, the essence of which is to break free from the tyranny of alternating rh
ythm by counting stresses in a line, as he put it quoting from stanza 2 why, if i
t is forcible in prose to say lashed: rod, am I obliged to weaken this in verse,
which ought to be stronger, not weaker, into lashed birch-rod or something? But
the poem also displays as many other radical techniques as he could cram in, suc
h as cynghanedd (consonant-chime, following strict rules from Welsh models); an
elaborate stanzaic pattern; rhymes which wrap across line-breaks; and syntax whi
ch is often muscle-bond. All of this leads to a verbal texture, which is intense
, energetic, and rich, as he could make it, even if the plain sense sometimes ge
ts the worst of it.
The Wreck of the Deutschland is a decadent work in the sense that form and languag
e, at least at first sight, seem to outweigh content and meaning. In the end, th
ough, particularly in the more theological passages, the poem s meanings are far f

rom simple, single, or easy. The paradox is that such an acutely aesthetic sensi
bility as Hopkins was also wedded to the idea that there were indeed absolute mea
nings and supreme truths crying out to be expressed.
Needless to say, it was all too much for contemporary taste. The poem was reject
ed from publication; like much of Hopkins work it did not appear until 1918; and
it did not attract wide attention until the rise of the New Critics, to whom it
seemed modern rather than Victorian, and to whose moral and analytical assumpti
ons it proved particularly apt.
VI. NOVELISTS
Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)
The greatness of Charles Dickens is of a peculiar kind. He was, at the same time
, the great popular entertainer and the great artist, his greatness and his popu
lar appeal being inseparable. The reasons for this lie deep in the man's nature.
He was a born orator and actor. His lifelong enthusiasm for amateur dramatics a
nd the maniacal intensity with which he read aloud his own works were both signi
ficant. He was never a pure artist. Like a great political orator, he drew stren
gth from his audience; he delighted to please them, he accepted the validity of
their judgement.
So, Dickens was in many respects the ordinary English man of the middle class tr
ansformed by a unique unrepeatable genius. In his own person he fulfilled and ex
emplified many dominant myths of the mid-19th century. He was a self-made man, l
ike the heroes of the immensely popular and influential Samuel Smiles. Without p
roper education, without a loving and secure home, he had made himself a househo
ld name by the time he was in his early twenties. In an age more notable perhaps
than any other for deep feeling about childhood, he had been a rejected child,
forced to find his own lodgings and earn his own living by the time he was 10 ye
ars old.
Then he was typical of his great middle-class public in being a practical man of
the world, not particularly bookish, with a double share of the extraordinary e
xuberant energy and humour of that expansive age. Like his public he was a bit o
f a philistine; his views on art were much nearer to those of the crowds than th
ey were to those of John Ruskin.
Like his public, too, he was interested in reform. Like them, he was very certai
n that reform should work in the direction of reducing aristocratic privilege; l
ike them, he was much more dubious about extending middle-class privileges to th
ose lower down. Like them he was very keen on a strong police force and the prev
ention of crime and like them he took an unholy delight in the breathless drama
of a murder story. Like other popular writers he was deeply melodramatic, but th
ere was nothing cynical or calculating in this. In expressing their aspirations,
fears and prejudices he was simply expressing himself.
Dickens was a man of obsessions, which can be traced all through his work. He wa
s haunted by the idea of the lonely child, because he had been one. He was haunt
ed by the idea of the prison because his father had been in the debtors prison. H
e was deeply obsessed by the thought of violence. These themes occur constantly,
but this does not make his work repetitive. His development consists partly in
the perpetual deepening of these themes. The prison of Pickwick Papers is the sa
me debtors prison as the one in Little Dorrit (and the same in which his own fath
er was confined), but as literary experiences the two could hardly be more diffe
rent, and the latter one is immensely the more brilliant and profound. Occasiona
lly, two of his obsessions meet in the same passage, such as the burning of the
prison by the mob in Barnaby Rudge (prison and violence) or the exclusion of Dor
rit at night from her only home, the Marshalsea prison (prison and lonely child)
and such passages often have a particularly intense power or pathos.
Balancing this constant recurrence of the same facts and ideas, we have his extr
aordinary inventiveness, variety, and mastery of significant detail. His world i
s fuller and richer than other novelists worlds. His imagination finds poetry, hu
mour, and significance in the most ordinary things. That physically filthy Victo

rian London, which struck intelligent foreign visitors as almost a hell on earth
, was his natural home as man and artist. He drew strength and inspiration from
his long solitary walks (often at night) through the dingiest and strangest area
s. His pathos, his wild, extravagant humour, his zeal for reform, his serious in
dignation was all rooted in this vision of the strangest city in the world, and
the one with most bizarre contrasts.
In general one may say that in his early works, up to about 1845, his exuberance
, whether comic or melodramatic, predominates. Plots are widely improbable; coin
cidences abound; deeds often lack their natural outcome. At times we seem to be
almost in the world of fairy-tale, not about princesses, but about orphans and c
himney-sweeps.
Dombey and Son (1848) is a land-mark of change. The old features are still prese
nt in some degree, but so are those that became more and more dominant in his la
ter work, psychological insight, serious thought about society, and above all a
sense of the consequences of things and of the complexity of moral choices. In N
icholas Nickleby, an early work, two philantropical brothers diffuse joy and pea
ce all round them by giving away their money. In Our Mutual Friend, his last com
pleted novel, Boffin, a kindly man anxious to do good with his large fortune, fi
nds himself thwarted and deceived, and unable to produce beneficial effects. The
later books are in places just as funny as the earlier. But the humour is more
satirical, even savage. The soaring, high-spirited nonsense of Pickwick is gone.
Finally we would stress the inexhaustible variety of Dickens. In him alone amon
g later English writers, we can, without absurdity, find a likeness to the fecun
dity of Shakespeare.
In short Dickens may be described as a humanitarian novelist and journalist. His
literary activity may be structured in four main periods of creation.
Experimental period
1. Sketches by Boz (1834-1836) is a series of short papers having descriptive va
lue and appealing primarily because of their humour.
2. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the one novel of Dickens that a
bounds neither in pathetic, grewsome, nor dramatic passages. It is pure fun from
beginning to end, with a laugh of every page. It was published in 1836, and aid
ed by the clever illustrations of Hablot Brown, or Phizi , it attained immediate su
ccess and laid the foundations of Dickens fame. The types illustrated are caricat
ures, but nevertheless they are types: Mr. Pickwick, the genial, unsophisticated
founder of the club; and that masterly array of endicrous individuals drawn fro
m all classes high or low.
Although the whole book is exaggerated comedy, there is no other that has furnis
hed more characters universally known, or given to common English speech more cu
rrent phrases. Many sayings and events are still in the Pickwickian sense ; Sam Wel
ler and his admirable father are still quoted; Mrs. Leo Hunter is still a featur
e in social life; Bardell trials occur occasionally; and there are many clubs as
wise as Pickwick s.
Second Period
1.Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-1839) with the object of showing the principle
of good surviving through adverse circumstance attacked the abuses of the Poor L
aw and exposed the workhouse system.
The story shows in vivid colours the miseries of the pauper s home where the inmat
es are robbed and starved, while the dead are hurried into unhonoured graves; th
e haunt of villains and thieves where the wretched poor are purposely made crimi
nals by those who have sinned past hope; and one wrong-doing is used to force th
e victim deeper in vice. With such lives are interwoven those of a better sort,
showing how men and women in all grades have power on others for good or ill.
Oliver Twist so called because the workhouse master has just reached the letter T
in naming the waifs was born in the poorhouse, where his mother s wanderings cease
d for ever. When the hungry lad asked for more of the too thin gruel he was whip
ped. Bound out to work, he runs away from his slavery and goes to pickpocket s sch
ool. But he will not steal. He finds a home. He is kidnapped and forced to be ag

ain with the bad ones, and to act as helper to Sykes the robber in house-breakin
g. Nancy s womanly heart, (bad enough her life may be) works to set him free.
Once more good people shelter him, rescuing him without assistance of the Bow St
reet officers, who make brave talk. The kind old scholar, Mr. Brownlow, is the g
ood genius that opens before him a way to liberty and a life suited to his natur
e. The excitable country doctor deceives the police, and saves Oliver for an hon
est career. The eccentric Mr. Grimwig should not be overlooked. The mystery of h
is mother s fate is solved, and he finds a sister. Although the innocent and less
guilty suffer, the conscious wrong-doers are, after much scheming and actual sin
, made to give back the stolen, repair
if such can be
the evil done, and pay the
penalty of transgression. They bring ruin to their own heads. There are about t
wenty prominent characters, each the type of its kind, in this life drama; separ
ate scenes of which we may, as it were, read in our daily papers, so real are th
ey. The author says that as romance had made vice to shine with pleasure, so his
purpose was to show crime in its repulsive truth.
1) Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), where Dickens becomes a
gain a social reformer, one of his principal purposes being to expose the farming
schools of Yorkshire and their severe mistreatment of children.
2) The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), not his best novel, but among his most ce
lebrated in which not the plot but the central figure of Little Nell has made it
popular.
3) Barnaby Rudge (1841) is frequently called a historical novel, although all th
e characters, except Lord Gordon, are imaginary. The plot is extremely intricate
. Barnaby is a poor half-witted boy, living in London toward the close of the 18
th century, with his mother and his raven Grip. His father had been the steward
of a country gentleman named Haredale, who was found murdered in hid bed, while
both his steward and his gardener had disappeared.
The body of the steward, recognizable only by the clothes, is presently found in
a pond. Barnaby is born the day after the double murder. Affectionate and moral
ly docile, credulous and full of fantastic imaginings, a simpleton but faithful,
he grows up to be liked and trusted. His mother having fled to London to escape
a mysterious blackmailer, he becomes involved in the famous (No Popery) riots o
f Lord George Gordon in 1780, and is within an ace of perishing on the scaffold.
The blackmailer, Mr. Haredale the brother and Emma, the daughter of the murdere
d man, Emma s lover, Edward Chester, and his father, are the chief figures of the
nominal plot; but the real interest is not with them but with the side character
s and episodes. Some of the most whimsical and amusing of Dickens s character stud
ies appear in the pages of the novel; while the whole episode of the gathering a
nd march of the mob, and the storming of Newgate is surpassed in dramatic intens
ity by no passage in modern fiction, unless it is by Dickens own treatment of the
French Revolution in the Tale of Two Cities . Among the important characters, many
of whom are the authors of sayings now proverbial, are Gabriel Varden, the chee
rful and incorruptible old locksmith, father of the charming flirt Dolly Varden;
Mrs. Varden, a type of the narrow-minded zealot; Miss Miggs, their servant, mea
n, treacherous, and self-seeking; Sim Tappertit, an apprentice, an admirable por
trait of the half-fool, half-knave, so often found in the English servile classe
s about a century ago; Hugh the hostler and Dennis the hangman; and Grip, the rave
n, who fills an important part in the story, and for whom Dickens himself named
a favourite raven.
Mature Period
1.Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844) is a sermonic book melodr
amatized by a murder and made unequal by trivial burlesque and intricate plot.
2.Dombey and Son (1846-1848) is memorable for the pictures of Little Paul and th
e pathos of his death.
The story opens with the death of Mrs. Dombey, who has left her husband, the pro
ud possessor of a baby son and heir. He neglects his daughter Florence and loves
Paul, in whom all his ambitions and worldly hopes are centred; but the boy dies

. Mr. Dombey marries a beautiful woman, who is as cold and proud as he is, and w
ho has sold herself to him to escape from a designing mother. She grows fond of
Florence, and this friendship is so displeasing to Mr.Dombey that he tries to hu
mble her by remonstrating through Mr. Carker, his business manager and friend.
This crafty villain, realizing his power, goads her beyond endurance, and she de
mands a separation from Mr. Dombey, but is refused. After an angry interview, sh
e determines upon a bold stroke and disgraces her husband by pretending to elope
with Carker to France, where she meets him once, shames and defies him and esca
pes. Mr. Dombey, after spurning Florence, whom he considers the cause of his tro
uble, follows Carker in hot taste. They encounter each other without warning at
a railway station, and as Carker is crossing, the tracks he falls and is instant
ly killed by an express train. Florence seeks refuge with an old sea captain who
m her brother, Paul, has been fond of, marries Walter Gay, the friend of her chi
ldren, and they go to sea. After the failure of Dombey and Son, when Mr. Dombey s
pride is humbled and he is left desolate, Florence returns and takes care of him
. The characters in the book are immediately concerned in the plot, but famous f
or this peculiar qualities, are Captain Cuttle, Florence s kind protector, who has
a nautical manner of expression; Sol Gills, Walter s uncle; Mr. Toots, who suffer
s from shyness and love; and Joe Bagstock, the major. The scene is laid in Engla
nd at the time the novel was published in 1848.
3.David Copperfield (1849-1853) is a novel, where, excluding the central figure
of David, who narrates his adventures, the chief theme is the betrayal of Little
Emily by Steerforth and Mr. Peggoty s search for the girl.
Of all my books says Dickens in his preface to this immortal novel, I like this the
best Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite, child. An
d his name is David Copperfield .
When David Copperfield appeared in 1850, after Dombey and Son and before Bleak House ,
it became so popular that its only rival was Pickwick . Beneath the fiction lies mu
ch of the author s personal life, yet it is not an autobiography. The story treats
of David s sad experiences as a child, his youth at school, and his struggles for
a livelihood, and leaves him in early manhood, prosperous and happily married.
Pathos, humour, and skill in delineation give vitality to this remarkable work;
and nowhere has Dickens filled his canvas with more vivid and diversified charac
ters. E.M. Forster says that the author s favourites were the Peggotty family, com
posed of David s nurse Peggotty, who was married to Barkis, the carrier; Daniel Pe
ggotty, her brother, a Yarmouth fisherman; Ham Peggotty, his nephew; the doleful
Mrs. Gummidge; and Little Emily, ruined by David s schoolmate, Steerforth.
It has been their fate says Forster as with all the leading figures of his inventio
n, to pass their names into the language and become types; and he has nowhere gi
ven happier embodiment to that purity of homely goodness, which, by the kindly a
nd all-reconciling influences of humour, may exalt into comeliness and even gran
deur the clumsiest forms of humanity.
Miss Betsy Trotwood, David s aunt; the half-mad, but mild Mr. Dick; Mrs. Copperfie
ld, David s mother; Murdstone, his brutal stepfather; Mr. Spenlow and his daughter
Dora
David s child-wife - Steerforth, Rosa Dartle, Mrs. Steerforth, Mr. Wickfield, h
is daughter Agnes, (David s second wife),( ) and the Micawber family, are the person
s around whom the interest revolves. A host of minor characters, such as the com
ical little dwarf hair-dresser, Tommy Traddles, Uriah Heep and others, are portr
ayed with the same vivid strokes.
4) Bleak House (1852-1853). One theme of this story is the monstrous injustice a
nd even ruin that could be wrought by the delays in the Old Court of Chancery, w
hich defeated all the purposes of a court of justice. The scene is laid in Engla
nd about the middle of last century. Lady Dedlock, a beautiful society woman, su
ccessfully hides a disgraceful secret. She has been engaged to a Captain Howdon;
but through circumstances beyond their control, they were unable to marry, and
her infant she believes to have died at birth is alive. Her sister, however, has
brought up the child under the name of Esther Summerson. Esther become the ward
of Mr. Jarndyce, of the famous chancery law case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, and

lives with him at Bleak House. Her unknown father, the Captain dies poor and neg
lected in London. A veiled lady visits his grave at night; and this confirms a s
uspicion of Mr. Tulkinghorn, Sir Leicester Dedlock s lawyer, already roused by an
act of Lady Dedlock. With the aid of a French maid he succeeds in unravelling th
e mystery, and determines to inform his friend and client Sir Leicester of his w
ife s youthful misconduct. On the night before this revelation is to be made, Mr.
Tulkinghorn is murdered. Lady Dedlock is suspected of the crime, disappears, and
after long search is found by Esther and a detective, lying dead at the gates o
f the graveyard where her lover is buried. The story is told partly in the third
person, and partly as autobiography by Esther. Among the other characters are t
he irresponsible and impecunious Mr. Skimpole; Mrs. Jellyby, devoted to foreign
missions; crazy Miss Flite; Grandfather Smallweed; Krook, the rag-and-bottle dea
ler; Mr. Guppy, who explains all his actions by the statement that There are chor
ds in the human mind ; the odiously benevolent Mrs. Pardiggle; Mr. Turveydrop, the
model of deportment; Mr. Chadband, whose name has become proverbial for a certa
in kind of loose jointed pulpit exhortation, Caddy Jellyby, with inky fingers an
d spoiled temper-all of whom Dickens portrays in his most humorous manner; and,
among the most touching of his children of the slums, the pathetic figure of poo
r Jo, the crossing-sweeper, who don t know nothink . The story is long and complicate
d; but its clever satire, its delightful humour, and its ingrained pathos, makes
it one of Dickens s most popular novels.
5) Hard Times (1854) is a revolutionary problem novel presenting the squalor and
misery of a textile town, denouncing trade-union agitators.
When Hard Times appeared as a serial in Household Words in 1854, Dickens was about
midway in his literary career. In the same year this novel appeared in an octav
o volume with a dedication to Thomas Carlyle. Its purpose, according to Dickens
himself, was to satirize those who see figures and averages and nothing else-the
representatives of the wickedest and most enormous vice of this time
the men who
through long years to come will do more to damage the really useful facts of Po
litical Economy than I could do (if I tried) in my whole life . The satire, howeve
r, like much that Dickens attempted in the same vein, was not very bitter.
The characters in Hard Times are not numerous; and the plot itself is less intrica
te than others by Dickens. The chief figures are Mr. Thomas Gradgrind a man of re
alities , with his unbounded faith in statistics; Louisa, his eldest daughter, and
Josiah Bounderby, as practical as Mr. Gradgrind, but less kind-hearted; Louisa,
though many years younger than Mr. Bounderby, is persuaded by her father to mar
ry him. She is also influenced in making this marriage by her desire to smooth t
he path of her brother Tom, a clerk in Mr. Bounderby s office. Though not happy, s
he resists the blandishments of James Harthouse, a professed friend of her husba
nd s. To escape him, she has to go home to her father and this leads to a permanen
t enstrangement between husband and wife. In the meantime Tom Gradgrind has stol
en money from Bounderby, and to avoid punishment runs away from England. Then Lo
uisa s sacrifice of herself has been useless. Mr.Gradgrind s wife and his other chil
dren play an unimportant part in the story. Of more consequence is Sissy (Cecili
a) Jupe, whom the elder Gradgrind has befriended in spite of her being the daugh
ter of a circus clown; and Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby s housekeeper, who has seen bet
ter days, and is overpowering with her relationship to Lady Scadgers. Mrs. Pegle
r, the mother of Josiah Bounderby, is a curious and amusing figure; while a touc
h of pathos is given by the love of Hephen Blackpool the weaver, for Rachel, who
m he cannot marry because his erring wife still lives.
Mr. Gradgrind came to see the fallacy of mere statistics; but Josiah Bou
nderely, the self made man, who loved to belittle his own origin, never admitted
that he could be wrong. When he died, Louisa was still young enough to repair h
er early mistake by a second and happier marriage.
6. Little Dorrit (1855 - 1857) was published when the author s popularity was at i
ts height. The plot is a slight one on which to hang more than fifty characters.
The author began with the intention of emphasizing the fact that individuals br
ought together by chance, if only for an instant, continue henceforth to influen

ce and to act and react upon one another. But this original motive is soon altog
ether forgotten in the multiplication of characters and the relation of their fo
rtunes. The central idea is to portray the experiences of Dorrit family, immured
for many years on account of debt in the old Marshalsea Prison, and then unexpe
ctedly restored to wealth and freedom. Having been pitiable in poverty, they bec
ome arrogant and contemptible in affluence. Amy, Little Dorrit , alone remains pure
, lovable, and self-denying. In her, Dickens embodies the best human qualities i
n a most beautiful and persuasive form. She enlists the love of Arthur Clenman,
who meantime has had his own trials. Returning from India, after long absence, h
e finds his mother a religious fanatic domineered over by most the hypocritical
old Flintwinch, and both preyed upon by the Mephistophelian Blandois, perhaps th
e dastardly villain in the whole Dickens gallery. The complications, however, en
d happily for Arthur and Amy. The main attack of the book is aimed against offic
ial red tape as exemplified in the Barnacle family and the Circumlocution Office . It
also shows up Merdle the swindling banker, Bar , Bishop and other types of Society . Th
e Meagleses are practical people with soft hearts; their daughter is married to an
d bullied by Henry Gowan, whose mother is a genteel pauper at Hampton Court. Oth
er characters are Pancks the collector, puffing like a steam - engine , his hypocri
tical employer Casby, the humble and worthy Plornishes, the love blighted and ep
itaphic young John Chivery, and the wonderful Mr. Fllintwinch s aunt with her expl
osive utterances. The novel is intricate in plot but splendid in its indictment
of the system of imprisonment for debt and of the dilatoriness of the Circumlocu
tion Office (government departments).
7. A Tale of Two Cities (1860 - 1861) is one of his most artistic novels, restra
ined both in its melodrama and romantic atmosphere. It differs essentially from
all his other novels in style and manner of treatment. Forster, in his Life of Di
ckens , writes that there is no instance, in his novels excepting this, of a delibe
rate and planned departure from the method of treatment which had been pre emine
ntly the source of his popularity as a novelist. To rely less upon character than
upon incident, and to resolve that his actors should be expressed by the story
more than they should express themselves by dialogue, was for him hazardous, and
can hardly be called an entirely successful experiment. With singular dramatic
vivacity, much constructive art and with descriptive passages of high order ever
ywhere, there was probably never a book by a great humanist, and an artist so pr
olific in conception with so little humour and so few remarkable figures. Its me
rit lies elsewhere . The two cities are London and Paris. The time is just before
and during the French Revolution. A peculiar chain of events knits and interweav
es the lives of a few simple, private people with the outbreak of a terrible publi
c event. Dr. Manette has been a prisoner in the Bastille for eighteen years, lan
guishing there, as did so many others, on some vague unfounded charge. His relea
se when the story opens, his restoration to his daughter Lucie, the trial and ac
quittal of one Charles Durnay, nephew of a French marquis, on a charge of treaso
n, the marriage of Lucie Manette to Darnay these incidents form the introduction
to the drama of blood which is to follow. Two friends of the Manette family com
plete the circle of important characters: Mr. Lorry, a solicitor of a very ancie
nt London firm, and Sydney Carton, the most complete gentleman to be found in Di
ckens. Carton has wasted his talents leading a wild, bohemian life in London. Th
e one garden spot in his life is his love for Lucie Manette. To this love he cli
ngs as a drawning man to a spar. For this love he lays down his life. At the bre
aking out of the French Revolution, Darnay hastens to Paris to aid an old family
servant, who is in danger of losing his life. His wife and his father-in-law fo
llow him. Gradually the entire circle of friends, including Mr. Lorry and Sydney
Carton, find themselves in the horrible environment of the Paris of the Terror.
Darney himself is imprisoned and condemned to death by the agency of a wine
sel
ler, Defarge, and his wife, a female impersonation of blood and war. To save the
husband of the woman he loves, Carton by strategy takes his place in prison. Th
e novel closes with the magnificent scene when Carton goes to his death on the s
caffold, redeeming a worthless life by one supreme act of devotion. Only the lit
tle sewing girl in the death cart with him knows his secret. As he mounts the gu

illotine there rises before him the vision of a redeemed and renewed Paris, of
great and glorious nation. There rises before him many memories and many dead
opes of his own past life, but in his heart there is the serenity of triumph:
is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better
est that I go to than I have ever known .

a
h
It
r

Final Period
1. Great Expectations (1860 - 1861) is one of his most artistic novels, restrain
ed both in its melodrama and romantic atmosphere. It is Dickens s tenth novel, pub
lished nine years before his death. As in David Copperfield , the hero tells his ow
n story from boyhood. Yet, in several essential points Great Expectations is marke
dly different from David Copperfield , and from Dickens s other novels. Owing to the
simplicity of the plot, and to the small number of characters, it possesses grea
ter unity of design. These characters, each drawn with marvelous distinctness of
outline, are subordinated throughout to the central personage Pip , whose great ex
pectations form the pivot of the narrative.
But, the element that most clearly distinguishes this novel from the oth
ers is the subtle study of the development of character through the influence of
environment and circumstance. In the career of Pip, a more careful and natural
presentation of personality is made than is usual with Dickens.
He is a village boy who longs to be a gentleman . His dreams of wealth and
opportunity suddenly come true. He is supplied with money and sent to London to
be educated and to prepare for his new station in life. Later he discovers that
his unknown benefactor is a convict to whom he had once rendered a service. The
convict, returning against the law to England, is recaptured and dies in prison
his fortune being forfeited to the Crown. Pip s great expectations vanish into thi
n air.
The changes in Pip s character under these varying fortunes are most skill
fully depicted. He presents himself first, as a small boy in the house of his de
arly loved brother-in-law Joe Gargery, the village blacksmith, having no greater
ambition than to be Joe s apprentice. After a visit to the house of a Miss Havisha
m, the nature of his aspirations is completely changed. Miss Havisham is one of
the strangest of Dickens s creations. Jilted by her lover on the wedding night, sh
e resolves to wear her bridal gown as long as she lives, and to keep her house a
s it was when the blow fell upon her. The candles are always burning; the molder
ing banquet is always spread. In the midst of this desolation, she is bringing u
p, a beautiful little girl, Estella, as an instrument of revenge, teaching the c
hild to use beauty and her grace to Fortune men. Estella s first victim is Pip. Sh
e laughs at his rustic appearance, makes him dissatisfied with Joe and the life
at the forge. When he finds himself heir to a fortune, it is the thought of Este
lla s scorn that keeps him from returning Joe s honest and faithful love. As a gentle
man he plays tricks with his conscience, seeking always to excuse his false pride
and flimsy ideals of position. The convict s return and the consequent revelation
of the identity of his benefactor, humbles Pip. He realizes at last the dignity
of labour, and the worth of noble character. He gains a new and manly serenity
after years of hard work. Estella s pride has also been humbled and her character
purified by her experiences. The book closes upon their mutual love.
Great Expectations is a delightful novel, rich in humour and free from fal
se pathos. The character of Joe Gargery, simple, tender, quaintly humorous would
alone give imperishable value to the book. Scarcely less well
drawn are Pip s ter
magant sister, Mrs. Joe ; the sweet and wholesome village girl, Biddy, who becomes
Joe s second wife, Uncle Pumblechook, obsequious or insolent as the person he addr
esses is rich or poor; Pip s friend and chum in London, the dear boy Herbert Pocke
t; the convict with his wistful love of Pip; bright, imperious Estella, these ar
e of the immortals in fiction.
2. Our Mutual Friend (1864 - 1865), besides the frequent criticism conce
rning the dubious grammar of the title, is overcomplicated in plot. The scene is
laid in London and its immediate neighborhood. All the elaborate machinery dear
to Dickens s heart is here introduced. There is the central story of Our Mutual F
riend, himself the younger heir to the vast Hermon estate, who buries his identi

ty and assumes the name of John Rokesmith, that he may form his own judgment of
the young woman whom he must marry in order to claim his fortune. There is the o
ther story of the poor bargeman s daughter, and her love for reckless Eugene Wrayb
urn, the idol of society; and uniting these two threads in the history of Mr. an
d Mrs. Boffin, the ignorant, kind
hearted couple, whose innocent ambitions and b
enevolent use of money intrusted in their care, afford the author s opportunity fo
r the humour and pathos of which he was a master.
Among the characters which this story has made famous are Miss Jenny Wre
n, the doll s dressmaker, a little, crippled creature whose love for Lizzie Hexam
transforms her miserable life; Bradley Headstone, the schoolmaster, suffering to
rments because of his jealousy of Eugene Wrayburn, and helpless under the carele
ss contempt of that trained adversary
dying at last in an agony of defeat at his
failure to kill Eugene; and the triumph of Lizzie s love over the social differen
ce between her and her lover; Bella Wilfer, the boofer lady cured of her longing
for riches and made John Harmon s happy wife by the plots and plans of the Golden
Dustman, Mr. Boffin; and Silas Wegg, an impudent scoundrel employed by Mr. Boffi
n, who is, at first, delighted with the services of a literary man with a wooden
leg , but who gradually reorganizes the cheat and impostor, and unmasks him in dra
matic fashion. As usual, Dickens finds to incite his readers to practical benevo
lence. In this book he has a protest against the poor
laws in the person of old
Betty Higden, whose dread of the almshouse haunts her dying hours. By many, this
volume, published among his later works, is counted as among the most important
.
3. The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) is a fragment of detective fiction that has
set up a challenge for completion. Only six of the projected 12 monthly numbers
were written. Dickens had set out to write a mystery story, set chiefly in the
cathedral city of Cloisterham. John Jasper leads a double life as cathedral cho
irmaster and opium addict, travelling secretly to a London opium den to satisfy
his craving. Edwin Drood, on whose mysterious disappearance the story was to hav
e centred, is Jasper s nephew; he was betrothed as a child to Rosa Bud, but the co
uple are not in love and their engagement is dissolved. Jasper nurses a passion
for Rosa. Edwin vanishes on Christmas Eve after a ferocious thunderstorm.

VII. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811

1863)

Features of his works

His Reputation
While Dickens was in full tide of his success, Thackeray was struggling through
neglect and contempt to recognition. Thackeray s genius blossomed slowly, just as
Fielding s did; for that reason the fruit is more mellow and matured. Once he had
gained the favour of the public, he held it, and among outstanding English novel
ists there is none whose claim is so little subject to challenge.
His method
Since the author of Tom Jones was buried says Thackeray in his preface to
Pendennis, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to its utmo
st power a Man. We must drape him and give him a certain conventional simper .
Thackeray s novels are a protest against this convention. Reacting against
the popular novel of his day, and particularly against its romanticizing of rog
ues, he returns to the Fielding method: to view his characters, steadily and fea
rlessly, and to set on record their failings as well as their merits and capacit
ies. In his hands the results are not flattering to human nature, for most of hi
s clever people are rogues and most of his virtuous folks are fools. But whether
they are rogues, or fools, or merely blundering incompetents, his creations are

rounded, entire, and quite alive and convincing.

His Humour and Pathos
Much has been made of the sneering cynicism of Thackeray s humour, and a g
ood deal of the criticism is true. It was his desire to reveal the truth and sat
ire in one of his most potent methods of revelation. His sarcasm, a deadly speci
es, is husbanded for deserving objects, such as Low Steyne and to a lesser degre
e Barnes Newcome. In the case of people who are only stupid, like Rawdon Crawley
, mercy tempers justice; and when Thackeray chooses to do so he can handle a cha
racter with loving tenderness, as can be seen in the case of Lady Castlewood and
of Colonel Newcome. In pathos he is seldom sentimental, being usually quiet and
effective. But at the thought of the vain, the arrogant, and the mean people of
the world, Thackeray barbs his pen, with destructive results.
His style
It is very near to the ideal for a
erefore unobtrusive, detracting in no wise
also flexible to an extraordinary degree.
red the Addisonian style; this is only one
in his burlesque finds ample scope.

novelist. It is effortless, and is th

from the interest in the story. It is
We have seen how in Esmond he recaptu
aspect of his mimetic faculty, which

His work
Thackeray s earlier work, much of it published in Fraser s Magazine and, aft
er 181 in Punch, included both travel sketches and grotesque stories. In The mem
oirs of Barry Lyndon (1856), Thackeray attempted a rogue s tale in the manner of F
ielding s Jonathan Wild. In Catherine (1939-40), he exposed what he saww ass the m
oral dangers of the Newgate novel as practised b Bulwer-Lytton, Aisworth and Dck
ens, while in Novels by Eminent Hands (1847), he extended his literary satire to o
ther writers of popular adventure fiction. The Yellowplush Papers (1856) present
a sevant s view of fashionable life, but it is The Book of Snobs (1848) that most
clearly looks forward to Vanity Fair.
Vanity Fair
The story of William Makepeace Thackeray s Vanity Fair is set in the period
of the Battle of Waterloo and later. The title reverberates with associations, a
nd should alert us to the fact that the book is a morality. Vanity Fair, in John
Bunyans s allegory The Pilgrim s Progress (1678) is where poor Faithful was stoned
by Deeth by a worldly and wicked populace. It recalls, too, Ecclesiastes 1: 2: Va
nity of vanities, saith the preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity . The nove
l s closing words quote from the Latin of the Vulgate:
Ah! Vanitas vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us ha
s his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied? come children, let us shut up the box
and the puppets .
Vanity Fair is based on the medieval concept of the world as stage. Like J
onathan Swift, Thackeray is a master of irony, and none, of his explicit stateme
nts should be taken at face value. The words of D.H.Lawrence are relevant: Never
trust the teller, trust the tale .
The tension between tale and teller is a major component of Thackeray s ar
t. His pretence at detachment, derived from his beloved Fielding, has misled rea
ders into thinking that he despised his own tale, along with his characters. Yet
he tells us clearly enough, for example in chapter 8, what he is about:
my kind reader will please to remember that this history has Vanity Fair for a ti
tle, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sor
ts of humbugs and falseness and pretentions .
While Christian, in Bunyan s fable, completes his journey, Faithful is the
hero martyred at Vanity Fair. In the novel Dobbin plays the role of Faithful; h
e does not die, but his reward is too pretty for his deserts.
The novel opens at a demure girls school in Chiswick, where rich, pampere
d Amelia Sedley is leaving for home, accompanied by the French instructor, Rebec

ca Sharp, on her way to become a governess. Amelia is sweet-natured, but insipid

and foolish. Critics have tried to argue that Becky is good-humoured because Thac
keray calls her so, but we are warned early that she is a dangerous bird . Rebecca s
background is not respectable; her father was a drunken artist, and her mother a
French opera singer (Victorian shorthand for loose woman ). The humble calling of h
er female parent Miss Sharp never alluded to . . Rebecca is consumed by envy of the
privileged boarders, but latches on to Amelia, and sets her cap at Amelia s rich b
achelor brother, the gross Joseph Sedley, Collector of Boggley Wallah in India,
but he escapes her clutches. She then goes to work for the family of Sir Pitt C
rawley, an uncouth baronet who derives in part from Squire Western in Fielding s T
om Jones, and secretly marries Sir Pitt s younger son Rawdon. The couple is forced
to live on their wits not paying bills. Rawdon becomes a professional gambler.
He and Becky climb higher and higher in society, with no visible means of suppor
t. Becky is even presented to George IV there too was Vanity .
Throughout the novel, there is a play on the two meanings of the word va
nity: futility and vain conceit. Rawdon is arrested for debt, and when his kind
sister-in-law, Lady Jane, gets him out of debtor s prison, he comes home, to find
Rebecca with the rich, dissolute Marquis of Steyne. The novelist asks us shyly Wa
s she guilty or not? She said no but who could tell if that corrupt heart was in t
his case pure?
The innuendo about Becky s virtue is resumed in chapter 64, where she is ima
gined as a mermaid, attractive above the waist, but with a hideous tail under th
e waterline. She has degenerated from kept woman to common prostitute. Like Swif
t s Yahoos and Milton s Satan, Becky, through evil, has all the life, while loving p
lodders like Dobbin represent patient merit spurned by the unworthy. Dobbin marr
ies Amelia, and is disappointed. Just as Dobbin is the true hero, Lady Jane Crawl
ey, principled and loving , is the true heroine. The imagery throughout is of bril
liance and sparkle, true and false lights.
Thackeray has been accused of cynicism on the one hand and sentimentalit
y on the other. Gordon Ray, Thackeray s biographer, has argued that Thackeray s marr
iage was less happy than Thackeray admitted, and that Amelia is a portrait of th
e weak-minded Mrs. Thackeray. As evidence, he believes that Thackeray idealizes
Amelia at the start of the story and patronizes her at the end. But the novel es
tablishes at once that Amelia is good but too trusting, while Rebecca is hard an
d vindictive. As the cynicism, his audience recognized that Thackeray was writin
g about a demi-mondaine. Thackeray s string of apparently innocent questions as to
what really happened is a strategy for coping with Victorian prudery. He hints ex
pertly at unpleasant facts; we learn that old Sir Pitt became helpless and had t
o be fed and cleaned like a baby
that Sir Pitt became incontinent.
Thakeray regretted the loss of the previous century s frankness. The overc
oming of this difficulty has led to much misreading, but in Vanity Fair, Thacker
ay shows a fine moral attitude and a masterly, playful control of tone.
VIII. The Brontes
Their Lives
Charlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48), and Anne (1820-49) were the daughters of a
n Irish clergyman, Patrick Bronte, who held a living in Yorkshire. Financial dif
ficulties compelled Charlotte to became a school-teacher (1835-1838) and then a
governess. Along with Emily she visited Brussels in 1842, and then returned home
, where family cares kept her closely tied. Later her books had much success, an
d she was released from many of her financial worries. She was married in 1854,
but died in the next year. Her two younger sisters had predeceased her.
Their Works
Charlotte Bronte s first novel; The Professor failed to find a publisher and only
appeared in 1857 after her death. Following the experiences of her own life in a

n uninspired manner, the story lacks interest, and the characters are not create
d with the passionate insight which distinguishes her later portraits.
Jane Eyre
(1847) is her greatest novel. Similarities between Jane Eyre and
fairy-tale have often been noted and on a very simple plot level the influence
is obvious. We should thus not be too worried by the magical coincidences which
allow the heroine to gain her ends so spectacularly. An element of wish-fulfilme
nt in the story appealed to Victorian readers and still appeals, helping this to
become one of the most universally popular novels in English. The fairy tales e
lements do not end with the plot however, and are exploited throughout the novel
. Jane, whose surname is Eyre, is compared by critics (Rochester) to an elf . It is
clear that in Charlotte Bronte s terms the feminine spiritual element is civilizing
the unprepossessing masculine one, guiding and taming him until he is fit for u
nion with her.
Jane, however, is no conventionally pretty young woman. Her creator link
ed Jane with herself and according to Elisabeth Gaskell told her sisters:
I will
show you a heroine as plain and small as myself, who shall be as interesting as
any of yours .
A psychoanalytic view of the both might see the masculine psyche split b
etween the immoral but good-hearted Rochester and the rule-bound pair Mr. Brockl
ehurst and St. John Rivers. The latter presents himself to Jane s sense of duty, a
nd she is seriously inclined to marry him, until an incorporeal voice (that of R
ochester communicating through telepathy) challenges her choice and recalls her
to her deeper emotional commitment.
The fiery aspects of the feminine are locked by Rochester in the attic a
t Thornfield in the shape of his mad wife Bertha, who makes several efforts to r
eveal herself and is finally disclosed on the occasion of Jane s would-be marriage
to her legal husband. It is no only duty which demands that Jane should leave t
he house. The author clearly intends us to notice that Rochester has failed to t
rust Jane as a fellow human; her refusal to stay should not be seen purely as an
acceptance of Victorian convention.
The obvious Gothic elements in Jane Eyre are used symbolically. Symbolism
has also been detected in the names of the localities through which the heroine
passes: Gateshead, Thornfield, etc. In connection with this, we may recall the B
rontes early attachment to The Pilgrim s Progress. Jane also shows some complex pic
tures to Rochester, which she has drawn herself and which evoke insoluble proble
ms of her being. These deeply revealing sketches seem to echo actual pictures dr
awn by Charlotte Bronte, her brother and sisters.
The search for originals in Jane Eyre became an industry soon after its pu
blication. Thus Lowood was quickly discovered to represent Cowan Bridge school,
where the author s two younger sisters had caught diseases from which they subsequ
ently died. But Rochester has no original, though he may take some traits from M
r. Constantin Heger, the Belgian schoolmaster she met in 1832. His descent from
the Byronic hero imaginations is clear. Though the Rivers sisters mirror to some
extent in an idealized fashion the home personas of the Bronte sisters, they ar
e not to be confused with the real Emily and Ann.
There are many elements of visual description in Jane Eyre , some showing a
cute observation, like the landscape of the road to Hay on the January day when
Jane first meets Rochester. Bewick s woodcuts are not far from this scene. Bewick
is also present in the very first scene when Jane is hiding from her cruel cousi
ns. The author s short-sightedness meant that she studied landscape partly through
Bewick and other engravers. The coldness of the winter scenes in Bewick emphasi
ses the loneliness of some humans, and this chimes with the Bronte s interest in o
rphans and the tyranny of the adult world over the world of childhood. The scene
s involving Mr. Brocklehurst, including those at Lowood, explore the nature of c
hildhood resentment.
Ch. Bronte was able to use Jane Eyre as a critique of evangelical religi
on, which exerted some attraction for her own personality but which she rejected
here as heartless and mechanical, though the sense of duty exhibited by St. Joh
n Rivers is not disparaged. He is approved as a conscientious person, but his in
conclusive relationship with Rosamund is presented critically. The empty ritual

of Bible reading at Lowood while Miss Scatcherd torment her victim provides a bl
ack image.
Jane Eyre was on the whole well-received by the early critics, who noted i
ts passion and warmth. The first person narrative enabled them to come close to
the life experience of the underprivileged heroine and sympathy was quickly esta
blished. It is possible to see the book as a feminist text, both in the sense th
at the female first person is the emotional centre of the story, and also since
Rochester and the other made characters are shown as inadequate. He learns throu
gh suffering, but it is not clear whether St. John Rivers is capable of learning
, and Broklehurst is a stereotype. Subsidiary female characters, good or bad are gen
erally more credible than male, though Bertha Mason is seemed externally: devian
t, outraged and menacing . Jane Eyre successfully raises the woman question high o
n the agenda, but it was perhaps more important still to the author to portray J
ane as a champion of the human race, irrespective of gender. She clearly stands
for the individual against a deforming society, a child rather than a girl only
against harsh education, a servant than rather merely a governess against the bl
and superiority of the gentry, represented by Blanche Ingram, and sincerity agai
nst the blandishments of wealth which considers it can buy anything.
However, the traditional plot, in which an oppressed orphan magically bu
t deservedly overcomes loneliness and finds a strong partner who is finally fit
to be her equal is clearly a major reason for the success of the book. It stands
, among other things, as the archetypal romance, by which many subsequent novels
have been influenced. The character of Jane is imbued with so much life that ge
nerations of readers have believed in her as the real author of the book.
The genuinely popular nature of the novel at one time led critics to und
erestimate its artistry, but in recent years its importance has been readily ack
nowledged.
Emily Bronte (1818-48)
Though she wrote less than Charlotte, she is some ways the greatest of t
he three sisters. Her one novel Wuthering Heights (1847) is unique in English li
terature. It breathes the very spirit of the wild, desolate moors. Its chief cha
racters are conceived in gigantic proportions, and their passions have an elemen
tal force, which carries them to the realm of poetry. In a series of climaxes, t
he sustained intensity of the novel is carried to almost unbelievable peaks of p
assion, described with a stark, unflinching realism.
Analysis of Wuthering Heights
It will be helpful in our study of Wuthering Heights to know the vital statistics
of the characters. Emily Bronte gives us this information throughout a work whic
h deals with the lives of people in three generations. It is summarized by Mark
Schorer in his Introduction to the Rinehart edition of Wuthering Heights (1950).
The story at Wuthering Heights begins with Mr. And Mrs. Earnshaw. They hav
e two children, Hindley and Catherine. Mr. Earnshaw adopts a waif, Heathcliff, w
hom he picked up on a visit to Liverpool. Mrs. Earnshaw dies in the spring of 17
73 and Mr. Earnshaw dies in October 1777, leaving Heathcliff to the tender merci
es of Hindley, who hates him and mistreats him. At this time Hindley, who was bo
rn in the summer of 1757, is twenty years old. Heathcliff is thirteen, and Cathe
rine, with whom Heathcliff is inseparable, is twelve. In 1777 Hindley marries Fr
ances, and a Year later they have a son, Hareton. Frances dies the following yea
r.
Catherine, believing she is in love with Edgar Linton of Thrushcross Gra
nge and thinking through this marriage to be able to help Heathcliff, marries Ed
gar in April, 1783. Heathcliff had left, and she did not know whether he would r
eturn. At this time Edgar is twenty-one and Catherine is eighteen.
Heathcliff, who left Wuthering Heights when he overheard Catherine tell
Nelly Dean that she was planning to marry Edgar, returns three years later to fi
nd Catherine ill. In January of 1784 Heathcliff, bent on revenge, marries Isabel

la Linton, who is nineteen. Unable to bear Heathcliff s cruelty, Isabella leaves h

im soon after his marriage and goes off to London, where, in September, her son,
Linton, is born. Meanwhile, in March 1784, Catherine has died after giving birt
h to a girl, also named Catherine.
Hindley, weakened by drink, dies in September 1784, six months after the
death of his sister Catherine and the same month in which his nephew, Linton He
athcliff, is born. Hindley s son, Hareton, is now in the care of Heathcliff, who t
reats him as a servant. Isabella dies in June 1797 at the age of thirty-two, at
which time her son is thirteen.
To further his revenge, Heathcliff plans to own Thrushcross Grange by ar
ranging a marriage between his son Linton, a sickly boy, and his niece Catherine
. He manages this by forcing Linton to come home to Wuthering Heights, by arrang
ing meetings between Catherine and her cousin, and finally by locking up Catheri
ne, away from her ailing father. The two young people are married in August 1801
. Both are seventeen years old. In September of that year Edgar dies at the age
of 39, and the following month young Linton dies. Heathcliff is now the owner of
Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Young Cathy is forced to live with hi
m.
Life at Wuthering Heights is a dismal existence. Cathy and Hareton quarr
el, but a feeling of concern for one another begins to grow in them. Heathcliff s
fury is spent. He realizes that in death he can rejoin his beloved Catherine. He
neglects his health and dies in May 1802, at the age of thirty-eight. Love betw
een Cathy and Hareton grows, and they are married in January 1803. Hareton is tw
enty-five and Catherine is nineteen. Calm is restored to Wuthering Heights.
This summary is useful for two reasons. First, it shows that Wuthering H
eights is a carefully planned novel, not a wild, amorphous work. Second, it help
s to visualize the characters and to see the story more clearly. This is a story
about young people who live tortured and violent lives and who, except for youn
g Catherine and Hareton, and except for Nelly Dean and Lockwood, who tell the st
ory, die at a young age. The ones who die are subject either to the cruelties of
the climate, the raging passions that burn within them and destroy them, or the
fierce cruelty of the satanic Heathcliff.
The story has two settings - Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. Thrushcro
ss Grange reflects the character of Edgar Linton. It is a quiet, civilized place
were the amenities are observed and where the passions of its inhabitants have
been disciplined to make possible a genteel existence. Wuthering Heights, on the
other hand, reflects the characters of Hindley and Heathcliff. It is a wild, de
solate place surrounded by howling nature that constantly threatens the people t
hat dwell there and imbues them with some of its fierceness. Within Wuthering He
ights there is an undisciplined energy and a stark malignity that infects its in
habitants and leads to violent and destructive actions. In a drunken stupor, Hin
dley Earnshaw drops his son Hareton over the bannister, and had Heathcliff not c
aught the child, Hareton would have been killed. It is a place of twilight and n
ight and of a brooding and submerged anger that frequently bursts into fury.
When Catherine moves into Thrushcross Grange, she brings much of the unr
est of Wuthering Heights into its peaceful interiors. When Isabella, as Heathcli
ff s wife, moves into Wuthering Heights, she is unnerved by the cruelty and feroci
ty of its atmosphere and must escape.
The novel and its centers reflect metaphorically the world of nature as
Emily Bronte experienced it on the moors. There seems in nature a constant strug
gle between the forces of turbulence and the forces of serenity, the forces of d
estructiveness and the forces of regeneration. One does not react in revulsion a
gainst storm and tempest. One is fascinated by it. At the same time one yearns f
or the calmness and peace of nature s quiet moments. Wuthering Heights metaphorica
lly transfers into its characters and laces the conflict between the satanic for
ces of violence and the beneficent forces of temperateness which one finds in na
ture. With a deranged Hindley and a demonic Heathcliff in control of Wuthering H
eights, the world there is frenzied and insecure. When the people of this world

invade Thrushcross Grange, the gentle, civilized life of the Linton is upset. Th
ere is a wild and passionate loyalty in the love of Heathcliff and Catherine, a
subsurface turbulence in the marriage of Catherine and Edgar, a volcano of demon
ic tension when Heathcliff returns and upbraids the sick Catherine for betraying
him, and fury, passion, and savage grief when Catherine dies.
There follow quiet years while the younger Catherine and young Linton gr
ow up. Again the fury begins when Heathcliff schemes to take over Thrushcross Gr
ange, and Cathy and Linton, like Hareton, are trapped by his malevolence. But He
athcliff s fury is spent. He at last joins his Catherine in death, and calm is fin
ally restored in the marriage of Cathy and Hareton.
The reader finds fascinating the intense love between Catherine and Heat
hcliff, and feels deep sympathy for the mistreated Heathcliff, especially when h
e feels rejected by his beloved. The reader is repelled by Heathcliff s cruelties
but is again won over by a Heathcliff exhausted by his furies of revenge and ach
ing for the death that will enable him to rejoin Catherine. If Heathcliff and Ca
therine represent the demonic forces of nature, and Edgar, Isabella, and young C
athy the beneficent forces, then we can understand the skill of Emily Bronte in
being able to involve the reader in the anguish of the lovers. The reader is fri
ghtened and fascinated by the power of their passion, as he/she would be frighte
ned and fascinated by the power of tempestuous nature. The resolution is a peace
that follows the tension of conflict.
The Narrators of Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte creates two narrators to tell the story of Wuthering Heights : Mr. Loc
kwood, a visitor from the city, comes to the moors to forget that his cold manne
r had frightened away a girl he had loved and hoped to marry; and Miss Nelly Dea
n, a serving girl in the Earnshaw household. Nelly is more than a servant. Becau
se her mother, too, was a servant of the Earnshaws, she was brought up with the
Earnshaw children, was probably their playmate, though she knew her place, and h
as, therefore, become confidante, too. Catherine confides many things to her, as
does Heathcliff. She takes care of young Cathy, born just before death of her m
other. As a servant so close to the family, she cannot help but interfere in the
ir lives. She tries to encourage the child Heathcliff to run away from Wuthering
Heights; she incites Catherine to violence in the presence of Edgar; she arrang
es for Heathcliff to visit the sick Catherine when Edgar goes to church; she giv
es little Cathy provisions for a ride to Wuthering Heights. She is, in part, the
catalyst of some of the tragic events of the novel.
But Nelly serves a more important purpose. She is a vigorous, healthy yo
ung woman, untroubled by any emotional or psychological drives beyond her contro
l. She is governed by strong moral principles, but her morality is not a harsh,
rigid piety. Hers is a wholesome personality. She can join with pleasure the ent
ertainment and dances of the villages. She becomes the exemplar of morality, of
equilibrium. The intense, troubled passion-ridden behaviour of Catherine and Hea
thcliff, of Hindley and Isabella, of Young Cathy and Hareton is measured against
her normality. The reader is at first inclined to accept her views, but as the
story progresses, he/she begins to recognize that Nelly is a poor judge of peopl
e whose lives are fashioned by overwrought minds and uncontrollable emotions. Ne
lly makes critical judgements, which the reader will not accept; the reader s judg
ements go beyond Nelly s, and, in objection to her comments, the reader moves more
closely into the heart, the center, of the story.
Nelly is, in short, an important character in the story. She was created
by the author to guide the reader to the point from which he/she is forced, bec
ause of the need to challenge Nelly s views, to share more deeply the pain of dwel
lers of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, and by sharing their pain to u
nderstand them better, to be moved by their plights, and not to be shocked by th
eir excesses. The catharsis of the reader is impelled by Nelly.
Lockwood performs a different function, and yet an important one. He pro
vides the reader with the view of an outsider, the city dweller, unfamiliar with
the mores of the people of the moors. He seeks solitude, he says, but it is a p

ose. Solitude is not what he wants. Even though he is poorly treated on his firs
t visit to Wuthering Heights, he must return for a second visit; and he is not d
eterred by threatening weather. He is sentimental about relationships, though af
raid to make a gesture that will involve his life with another s. He is sufficient
ly sensitive to suggestion to dream that the ghost of Catherine knocks on the wi
ndow of his bedroom, when he spends the night at Wuthering Heights, and tries to
enter. Later he thinks that he may be able to charm and to win as bride the win
some young Cathy.
He is, of course, fascinated by the story which Nelly tells him and whic
h he records for the reader in Nelly s words. He is inclined to accept Nelly s judge
ments because he, too, represents a normal view, a little different from Nelly s,
and because his is the view of an outsider, a male, and a romantic. He is perhap
s more sympathetic to the supra-normal passions of the dwellers at Wuthering Hei
ghts, but his sympathies are those of a sentimental spectator rather than, as in
Nelly s case, those of an active participant.
The story, therefore, filters through two different normal minds, one he
althy, one troubled, and takes on added appeal as the reader responds part in ag
reement, part in protest, to their views.
There is in the novel a myriad of views. There are the views of the char
acters themselves, for example, Heathcliff s account of how Catherine, bitten by t
he Linton dogs, came to stay at Thrushcross Grange; Catherine s passionate avowal
to Nelly of what Heathcliff means to her. In addition, there are Nelly s views and
Lockwood s views. Finally, there are the reader s views, complex and varied, fashio
ned by the author through this intricate approach.
Another View of the Novel
Wuthering Heights is a romantic novel. It deals basically with two love stories
in two generations, one tragic and one felicitous. Both are presented as existin
g on an ideal level. The love between Catherine and Heathcliff, fostered in chil
dhood and nurtured on the wild moors, transcends the normal passions of reality.
Despite its tragic consequences, it is a love that exists in a world of dreams.
It is a love also that is so demanding that it devours its participants. It is
a love that men and women yearn for and find unattainable. It is because of this
that the ungovernable and tortured Catherine and the Byronic and suffering Heat
hcliff are appealing.
The love between young Cathy and Hareton is of another kind, and it, too
, exists on an ideal level. It is a love that begins with disgust on Cathy s part
and hatred on Hareton s part. But below the surface of the antagonism of the two l
urks a physical attraction fostered by health and vigour. Alone together, and no
t troubled by Heathcliff s aggressions and Nelly s mortalizing s, the two become aware
of the another as an individual beings, and they begin to try to please one ano
ther. It is a more normal life and it works out well because it is idealized in
terms of a resolution of the inherited passions of the two lovers. Cathy, with h
er mother s stubborn, passionate nature, and Hareton, with the potential of his fa
ther s self-indulgent and violent nature, subdue the unrest and submit to the beau
ty of mutual respect and mutual help. They are on the way, the story suggests, t
o a good life on the wild and rough moor, ready to match their strengths as free
spirits and as partners against anything the moor can offer. This is the ideal
and romantic ending of Wuthering Heights and forms a companion fadeout to the phan
tom appearances on the moor of the ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff.
Anne Bronte
She is, by far, the least important figure of the three. Her two novels, Agnes Gr
ey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) are much inferior to those of her
sisters, for she lacks nearly all their power and intensity.
Their Importance in the History of the Novel

With the Brontes the forces which have transformed English poetry at the
beginning of the century were first felt in the novel. They were the pioneers i
n fiction of that aspect of the romantic movement which concerned itself with th
e haring of the human soul. In place of the detached observation of a society or
a group of people, such as we find in Jane Austen and the earlier novelists, th
e Brontes painted the sufferings of an individual personality, and presented a n
ew conception of the heroine as a woman of vital strength and passionate feeling
s. Their works are as much the products of the imagination and emotions of the i
ntellect, and in their more powerful passages they border on poetry.
In their concern with the human soul they were to be followed by George
Eliot and Meredith.
IX George Eliot (1819-89)
Mary Ann Evans, who wrote under the pen-name of George Eliot was the dau
ghter of a Warwickshire land-agent, being educated at Huneaton and Coventry. Aft
er her father s death, she took up to literature and in later life she travelled e
xtensively and in 1880 married J.W.Cross. She died at Chelsea in the same year.
Her works
George Eliot discovered her bent for fiction when well into the middle y
ears of her life. Her novels deal with the tragedy of ordinary lives, unfolded w
ith an intense sympathy and deep insight into the truth of character.
Appearing in 1859, an annus mirabilis of Victorian publication, with man
y notable works, her first novel Adam Bede was a runaway success and established G
eorge Eliot at once among the masters of the art as written in The Times on April
12, 1859.
The basic plot of the humbly-born poetry girl caught between a decent fa
ithful love from her own class and a more glamorous but unprincipled rich admire
r (wicked baronet, squire, gentleman , industrial magnate) was very familiar in co
ntemporary drama and fiction (Emily/ Ham/ Steerforth in David Copperfield) but E
liot s treatment of it was characteristically original. Not only does the girl fai
l to escape intact in time from this imbroglio, but instead, tragically and real
istically, becomes pregnant, lets her baby die and is sentenced to death for inf
anticide; but also the characters and motives of the girl and her seducer are ex
plored with uncommon intelligence, inwardness, sagacity, and sympathy (which doe
s not inhibit firm moral judgement). Henry James regarded the girl, Hetty Sorrel
, as Eliot s most successful female figure.
Adam Bede, her humble carpenter
lover, has been less admired as a creation, though at a non-literary level his d
epiction was much praised by an old friend of the author s father: That s Robert (van
s), that s Robert to the life! Indeed, Adam, as George Eliot recorded, has some of
her father s qualities: steady, proud craftsmanship, upright character.
The novel s climatic event. The girl s conviction for infanticide-came from
family memory, too. Eliot s Methodist preacher aunt, Mrs. Samuel Evans had accompa
nied a lass during her final night in a condemned cell and on her way to the sca
ffold and had received her confession to killing her child. This incident implie
d a seducer and, given the fictional conventions of the day, another (socially h
umbler but morally superior) lover. To marry the latter off to the estimable Met
hodist lady, Dinah Morris, after a decent interval, was as predictable as the gi
rl s last-minute reprieve at the scaffold ( a horseman cleaving the crowd at full ga
llop it is Arthur Donnithorne (the seducer), carrying in his hand a hard-won relea
se from death ).
These later events and developments carrying less conviction than the re
st of the narrative where, as Eliot puts it in her famous chapter 17 manifesto,
she is dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one s best efforts
, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult . Her later s
uccumbing to temptation does not, however, negate the very substantial merits of
the body of her simple story , appropriately prefixed by an epigraph from Wordswor
th, promising clear images
Of nature s unambitions undergrowth and something more tha

n brotherly forgiveness for those who went astray. Our supreme novel of pastoral l
ife V.S. Pritchett has called it, though he was irritated by what he regarded as
failures in its presentation of sexuality. Eliot certainly fulfilled her promise
to her publisher that it would be a country story - full of the breath of cows a
nd the scent of hay . Memories of rural Warwickshire were backed by typically, sch
olarly research into events before her life-time (the action begins in 1799 and
ends in 1807). This related especially to Methodist activities, here depicted wi
th uncommon understanding and respect. The well-named village of Hayslope with i
ts manor and parsonage, farms, workshop, and places of assembly, is presented in
loving and convincing detail. Mrs. Poyser, the kindly but redoubtable farmer s wi
fe who is Hetty s and Dinah s aunt, became a legendary figure overnight (quoted in P
arliament soon after publication data) for her fluent forthright folk-wisdom vig
orously expressed in bucolic imagery.
The narrator, a more sophisticated and better informed Mrs. Payser, is e
qually liberal with tough-minded generalizations, and with sharp assessments of
individuals. ( Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty s, struggling am
idst the serious, sad destinies of a human being are strange ). Opinions differ on
how fully and fairly Eliot sympathises with pretty but simple-minded Hetty and hi
gh-minded grey-clad Dinch.. But Hetty s foolish dreams of marrying the heir of the
manor and becoming a lady with a plentiful wardrobe, and her lone suffering befo
re and after childbirth, are splendidly rendered, as is the process whereby the
fundamentally decent, but wobbly-conscienced Arthur allows himself to continue s
eeing Hetty and eventually to seduce her and to lost the respect of Adam (whom h
e much values) and eventually of the whole village (Hetty s trial coincides with h
is coming into his inheritance).
As often in Eliot, elements of the conventional happy ending - the novel s
penultimate chapter is entitled Marriage Bells - are balanced by severer fates: d
eath for Hetty as she was due for release, disappointment for Adam s brother Seth,
who had unsuccessfully courted Dinah and is provided with no alternative mate,
and disgrace for Arthur though he is finally granted a purgatorial illness after
which he may be largely forgiven ( a frequent denouement device in fiction of t
he period).
Her next work, considered by many her best, was The Mill on the Floss , pub
lished in1860. The most autobiographical of George Eliot s fiction, it draws on he
r childhood in the Warwickshire countryside, recalled some 30 years later, her s
truggles to assert herself against a background of stifling conventionality, and
her painful love for her brother Isaac. There are important differences: Eliot,
unlike Maggie Tulliver, suffered frustration but always had enough money to pay
for lessons in the subjects that interested her. She was never reduced, as poor
Maggie is, to relying on church services for the only music available after the
sale of the family piano. The rebellious girl-child had been invented in fictio
n by Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre, but the turbulence of Mr. Tulliver s little wen
ch owes much to the young Mary Ann Evans, who also tried with all her might to be
good.
The first chapter paints a scene of rural beauty, but the life within it
is not idyllic; the second chapter opens with Mr. Tulliver s ruminations, in dial
ect, about giving his son an eddication , which will fit him for business. We do no
t get much impression of the man s wisdom. The conversation between him and his wi
fe is inconsequential. We learn that their daughter is more intelligent than the
ir son and that Maggie is too cute for a woman
Mrs. Tulliver is unconvinced that Maggie s intelligence is not damaging wh
ile she is still small: it all run to naughtiness . She complains the child is half
an idiot in practical matters, and her hair refuses to curl. Clearly, Maggie s pros
pects of intellectual encouragement are not good. Mrs. Tulliver is concerned wit
h cleanliness and respectability. The interaction of her and her sisters, former
ly the Misses Dodson, is the comic highlight of the book. With them, Eliot creat
es a picture of provincial life in the early years of the 19th century, which sh
ows both their admirable self respect and their absurdly narrow views.
Maggie objects to doing patchwork tearing things to pieces to sew em togeth
er again . And she does not want to please her Aunt Glegg by doing it, because she

doesn t like Aunt Glegg. Like other children Maggie cuts her own hair. She jealou
sly pushes her pretty blonde cousin Lucy into the cow-manure, and runs away to j
oin the Gypsies, planning to become their instructress and queen. Four-year-old
Mary Ann Evans, unable to play a note of music, sat down at the piano in order t
o impress the servant with her prowess, and the mature Eliot ruthlessly satirize
s this aspect of her younger self. Even more painful is her treatment of that lo
rdly bully, brother Tom, secure in his conviction of superiority to any mere fem
ale, and in his right to rule. Maggie slavishly worships Tom and lives for his a
pproval. All this childish emotion was revisited by the writer after her own bro
ther had rejected her for living with George Henry Jewes, yet being unable to ma
rry him.
But after Mr. Tulliver becomes a bankrupt our perception of Tom changes;
he is no intellectual but he is a young man of integrity, and at 16 sets to wor
k in his Unch Deanc s wharf, saving money and paying off his father s debts. Tullive
r is reduced to working for his old enemy, lawyer Wakem. Maggie gets religion and
decides to renounce the world and its pleasures. But one secret pleasure remains
to her: she meets Waken s hunchback son, Philip, in the disused quarry, The Red D
eeps. Philip is the intellectual companion Maggie needs after the family books a
re sold. Philip wisely tells her she is merely trying to stupefy herself.
Maggie has not yet grasped that renunciation remains sorrow, though a sor
row borne willingly (Book 4, Chapter 3). The real theme of the novel is Maggie s at
tempt to come to terms with the loss of her brother s love. The story betrays unea
se; it says the love between the children was mutual, yet we never see Tom s affec
tion, apart from family pride, in action - we have to take it on trust. The stor
y slackens when Maggie and Lucy s young man falls in love and go boating, which ca
uses Maggie, who has improbably renounced him anyway to avoid hurting Lucy and P
hilip, to lose her reputation. Because the love-subject is neither handsome Step
hen, nor handicapped Philip, the conflict is insoluble. There is nothing to do w
ith the brother and sister, but reunites them in death by drowning. Eliot could
not invent credible lovers for Maggie or convincing reasons for her brother s, bec
ause the real reasons for the break between the author and her brother were too
personal and too painful. So, she has to say good-bye symbolically to the childr
en she and her brother used to be.
Silas Marner: the Weaver of Raveloe (1861)
It is a shorter novel, which again gives excellent pictures of village l
ife; it is less earnest in tone, and has scenes of a rich humour, which are blen
ded with the tragedy. Like The Mill on the Floss it is somewhat marred by its melo
dramatic ending.
Other novels are Romola (1863), Felix Holt the Radical (1866), Middlemarch, a
Study of Provincial Life (1871-2) and Daniel Deronda (1876).
Features of Her Novels
Her Choice of Subject
George Elliot carries still further that preoccupation with the individu
al personality which we have seen to be the prime concern of the Brontes. For he
r, the development of the human soul, in the study of its relationships to the q
uarter things beyond itself, is the all-important theme. There is relatively lit
tle striking incident in her novels but her plots are skilfully managed. Behind
all her writing there lies a sense of the tragedy of life, in which sin or folly
brings its own retribution. Her preoccupation with this theme gives to her late
r work some of the features of the moral treatise
Her Characters
They are usually drawn from lower classes of society, and her studies of
the English countryman show great understanding and insight. An adept at the de
velopment of character, she excels in the deep and minute analysis of the motive
s and reactions of ordinary folk. She brings to bear upon her study of the soul

the knowledge of the student of psychology, and her characterization makes no co

ncessions to sentiment. Her sinners, and she is particularly interested in selfdeceivers and stupid people, are portrayed with an unswerving truthfulness.
The tone of her novels
It is one of moral earnestness, and at times in her later work o
f an austere grimness. But almost always it is lightened by her humour. In the e
arlier novels this is rich and genial, though even there it has some of the iron
y which appears more frequently and more caustically in the later books.
George Eliot s Style
It is lucid, and, to begin with, simple but later in reflective
passages, it is often overweighed with abstractions. Her dialogue is excellent f
or the revelation of character, and her command of the idioms of ordinary speech
enables her to achieve a fine naturalness. Only rarely does she rise to the imp
assioned poetical heights of the Brontes, but her earlier novels particularly The
Mill on the Floss , are full of fine descriptions of the English Countryside, and
her faculty for natural description she never lost entirely.
Her Place in History of the English Novel
She is of a great importance in the history of fiction. Her serious conc
ern with the problems of the human personality and its relationship with forces
outside itself, her interest in detailed psychological analysis of the realms of
the inner consciousness, did much to determine the future course of the English
novel. The 20th century has seen the rapid development of these interests and i
t is significant that the reputation of George Eliot, which suffered a temporary
eclipse after her death, has recovered during the last decades to a surprising
degree.
10 Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)
Features of his Novels
His Subjects
Hardy s subject is the same in most of his novels. In all his greatest wor
ks he depicts human feelings facing up to the onslaughts of a malign power. Acce
pting as he did the theory of evolution, Hardy saw little hope for man as an ind
ividual, and though his greatest figures have a marked individuality, Hardy s aim
was to present MAN or WOMAN rather than a particular man or a particular woman.
He was a serious novelist attempting to present though fiction a view of life, a
nd one entirely different from that of his great contemporaries Tennyson and Bro
wning. Most frequently his mood was one of disillusioned pessimism, excellently
summed up at the end of The Mayor of Casterbridge by Elisabeth Jane whose youth had
seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general dram
a of pain . And yet Hardy was never quote certain of his philosophy; he hovered be
tween the view of man as a mere plaything of an impersonal and malign Fate and m
an as a being possessing free will, in whom character is fate; until in The Dynas
ts , he evolved the conception of the Immanent Will .
His Treatment of his Themes
Hardy s preoccupation with his philosophy of life
is seen in the way in whi
ch he intrudes himself into his novels to point an accusing finger at destiny or
to take the side of his protagonists, and in the over - frequent use of coincid
ence, through which he seeks to prove his case. Too often his plots hinge upon a
sequence of accidents which have the most dire consequences and, therefore, whi
le he seldom fails to inspire in his readers his own deep pity for the suffering
s of his characters he frequently fails to attain the highest tragic levels. All
ied with this use of coincidence are a fondness for the grotesque or unusual and
a weakness for the melodramatic. Yet he handles striking situations with great
firmness of touch and a telling realism, and all his best novels contain individ

ual scenes which are unforgettable.

His Characters
They are mostly ordinary men and women living close to the soil. The individuali
ty of some is sacrificed to Hardy s view of life, but while he is, by more modern
standards, not really deep in his psychological analysis, characters like Jude a
nd Sue, Tess, Henchard and Eustacia Vye show considerable subtlety of interpreta
tion.
Such figures as Gabriel Oak ( Far from the Madding Crowd ) and Diggory Venn
( The Return of the Native ) are finely realized, country types blending with the co
untryside to which they belong, while the minor rustics who are briefly sketched
but readily visualized, are a frequent source of pithy humour, and act as a cho
rus commenting on the actions of the chief protagonists.
His Knowledge of the Countryside
In this Hardy stands supreme. His boyhood was spent mainly in the country, and h
e had an acute and sensitive observation of natural phenomena. As a unifying inf
luence in his novels, The Wessex scene which he immortalized is second only to h
is philosophy. But nature provides more than a men background, often it is a pro
tagonist in the story, an unfeeling, impersonal force exerting its influence upo
n the lives of the characters. Probably, the finest examples of Hardy s use of nat
ure are in The Woodlanders and in The Return of the Natives.
His work
Hardy is among the leading novelists of the late Victorian era and one of the gr
eatest poets of the early twentieth centuries. He wrote poetry throughout his ca
reer, but his first published work was in prose.
After the rejection of The Poor Man and the Lady in 1868, George Meredith
suggested Hardy write a work in the sensationalist mode of Wilkie Collins. The r
esult was Desperate Remedies (1871), a densely plotted novel of coincidence and in
trigue, much concerned with class conflict, that some were to censure on moral g
rounds. Others had praised the rural scenes in Hardy s earliest work however, and
on this hint he wrote Under the Greenwood Tree . Here his amused but delicate sympa
thy with country people and his intimate knowledge of their ways of life create
a gentle comedy of love and pastoral incident as Hardy shows the activities of t
he Mellstock choir and how Fancy Day eventually chooses the humble Dick Dewy as
her husband..
In A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), Hardy returns to the ironically constructed
novel of youthful love and class difference. The plot in which the young archit
ect, Stephen Fitzmaurice Smith, commissioned to restore a church tower, falls in
love with the vicar s daughter owes something to the circumstances of Hardy s first
marriage to Emma Gifford. In the novel however, the hero s nerve fails him as the
couple plan to elope. Elfride is pursued by the cold and literary Knight, Steph
en s erstwhile patron, but when Knight learns of her earlier affair with Stephen h
e rejects her. At the conclusion of the work, both men travel down to Cornwall o
n the same train only to discover that Elfride s corpse has accompanied them in th
e baggage van.
Such Satires of Circumstance point to fundamental concerns in Hardy s fictio
n. The situation is grotesque while it also suggests a preoccupation with how pa
ssion and aspiration are constantly thwarted by the indifferent Immanent Will. A
s a young man, hardy had lost his faith amid the doubts unleashed by Darwin, and
the scene in A Pair of Blue Eyes where Knight clings desperately to the sight o a
cliff while a fosilized trilobite stares blindly across at him gives early expr
ession to Hardy s view of man living in an uncaring universe that stretches back o
ver aeons of time and inn which man himself is no specially favoured creation.
In Far from the Madding Crowd Wessex becomes for the first time Hardy s great
imaginative domain. His account of the loves of Bathsheba Everdene- her relatio
nship with the dashing Sergeant Troy, with the luckless Boldwood and finally wit
h Gabriel Oak is distinctly sensational in its plotting, and Hardy achieves such
fine effects in this mode as the moment when lamplight suddenly reveals to Baths

heba the presence of Troy himself. The grotesque and the pathetic merge in the s
cene where water from a gargoyle washes away the flowers the repentant Troy has
placed on Fanny Robin s grave. It is the integration of such action with the seaso
ns however that gives the novel its satisfying resonance. The ageless cycles of
the life of the land and the relation of the human passion to the turning year a
re excellently achieved. Hardy s Wessex
his evocation of the life and landscapes o
f the West Country and of Dorset in particular- place is characters against a un
iversal setting. Generations appear to have brought man into some unity with suc
h a world, and no passage in the novel more clearly shows Hardy s deep response to
this than the twenty- second chapter, describing the place occupied in the live
s of these people by the great barn.
In The Return of the Native (1878), Hardy s remarkable ability to fuse the lo
cal with the cosmic shows aspects of nature that are altogether more narrowing a
nd malign. Egdon Heath is timeless and indifferent nature itself, enduring rathe
r than picturesque, chastening rather than kind. It crushes or subdues to its ow
n wisdom those who live there, and for Hardy, the heath is nature itself as mode
rn man must see her. Those like Clym Yeobright who are disillusioned by the defec
ts of the natural laws come to love the heath precisely for its reflection of the
ir own disenchantment. In this they are late Victorians wracked in a world where
old- fashioned revelling in the general situation grows less and less possible.
Science and agnosticism reveal an inimical world where man must either e
ndure or, as with Michael Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge ( 1886), become the
victim of his own character as its energies weave his fate.
Michael Henchard, Hardy s Man of Character , is his creator s most heroic figur
e. Henchard is at once both agent and victim in a plot where remorseless tragic
coincidence provides far more than sensationalism. The Mayor of Casterbridge offer
s one of Hardy s most elaborate examples of his changing the natural order and pro
portion of events to show how, in an indifferent universe, man is trapped by his
character, his past and the far-from-benevolent march of progress. This last ev
entually replaces Henchard with the thin and bloodless Farfrae, the accountant a
nd man of the machine. But if the plot has an almost Sophoclean inevitability, Th
e Mayor of Casterbridge achieves at its climax especially something of the grande
ur and pathos of King Lear. Henchard s death inspires both pity and awe. Farfrae a
nd Elizabeth-Jane arrive too late, and Abel Whittle s account of the hero s death an
d the reading of his will are moments unbearably poised between rustic simplicit
y and an annihilating, universal despair.
Tess D Urbervilles
The novel is considered one of the supreme achievements of English fiction. The
tragic passions of an obscure country girl perfectly integrate Hardy s abiding con
cern with love thwarted by an implacable universe and the ruthless dislocation w
rought by class. The landscape of Wessex, evoked with great poetic power, relate
the particular to the universal with consummate mastery, while the narrative al
so allows Hardy to engage with contemporary issues of religion and morality.
The day of Tess s wedding to Angel Clare shows how perfectly these themes are fus
ed with high drama. Tess and Angel have courted each other trough a long summer
of heady pastoral luxuriousness. Nature pulses through them and all the world. B
ut the wedding itself takes place in the dismal greynness of New Year s Day and, o
n their first evenings man and wife, each confesses to an earlier affair as the
fire glows with a Last Judgement luridness. Tess, in particular, tells her husban
d of her seduction by the feckless Alec D Urberville, a supposed aristocratic rela
tive whose child she bore. Though nature does not condemn her for what has happe
ned, memories of a child s eternal damnation, and in little ceremony of her own d
evising she christened the baby Sorrow before burying it in a scne of the utmost
pathos.
It is restorative power of nature that brought Angel and a revived Tess together
. Though Angel has discarded most of the Christian beliefs in which he has been
reared (his progress to agnosticism was that of many intelligent young Victorian

s) he is horrified to discover that hi wife is not, in his opinion, a pure woman.

His love freezes under the withering spectre of conventional morality and he dep
arts for Brazil. With Ange gone, Tess endures the purgatory of winter farm work
until her family is all but ruined by death of her foolish father. In order to s
upport them, Tess, flawed by her reckles acquiescence in chance , returns to the wo
rldly and rootless D Urbverville. Her love however is still for Angel: She tried to
pray to God, but it was her husband who really had her supplication. Her idolat
ry of this man was such as she herself almost feared it to be ill-omened . That fe
ar is justified.
Angel returns in chastened humanity, and Tess herself, hysterically grieving, mu
rders D Urberville and rushes to give herself to the one man she loves. The great
closing scene at Stonehenge
Hardy s symbol of an ancient and malevolent natural wo
rld of human sacrifice is one of supreme achievements. As the policemen take Tes
s away to trial and execution, so we see how, in this brutal and implacable worl
d, justice9 was done and the President of the Immortals in Aeschylean phrase had
ended his sport with Tess.