Qn: Discuss the chief characteristics of the Victorian poetry.

Ans: It is known that the literature of any period is influenced and directed by the
social conditions, political ideologies and religious controversies. Victorian poetry
is also no exception. The Victorian age broadly corresponds with the age of
Tennyson. The most influential poets during this period were Tennyson, Browning
and Arnold.
The second half of the nineteenth century is marked by two important
currents the progress of democracy and the growth of science, technology and
industry. When there is a switch over from an agricultural society to an industrial
society, things both good and bad are bound to happen. The theories of the
scientist Charles Darwin revolutionised the ideas of evolution and the faith of
many people in religion was shaken. The hope, despair and the doubt of the
entire age are reflected in the poetical works of Tennyson, Browning and Arnold.
Meredith and Morris are in favour of political reform and social justice and
equality. Tennyson, as expressed in his Maud, attacks the commercial attitude
of the Victorian society. At the same time he expresses hope in future. He
believes that man will progress to a brighter future with more freedom and social
equality. Swinburne and Meredith believe in evolutionary humanism, the
development of moral and intellectual faculties out of animal qualities. Most of
the Victorian poets are religious. They believe in life after death and redemption
and salvation by Jesus Christ. Arnold, in his Dover Beach laments the loss of
faith in religion. Browning is optimistic. He believes that life which is an
incomplete are on earth will be completed in Heaven. According to him, God
judges man by his aims not by his achievements.
Matthew Arnold, setting aside the social and political problems of the
period, writes about basic human feelings and emotions such as love, hatred,
friendship, jealousy etc. Brownings poems are dramatic and psychological in
nature and deal with various aspects of human nature. Tennysons poems like
Idylls of the King are beautifully narrative in subject matter and treatment.
The Victorian poetry is also lyrical. The Victorian poets do not always treat
poetry as a vehicle for social or religious opinion. Like the Romantic poets they
do write poems packed with personal emotions. Brownings Porphyrias Lover
D.G. Rossettis My Sisters Sleep and Jenny are examples of emotional
poetry.
One of the most important characteristics of the Victorian poetry is the
representation of abstract ideas in poetry through concrete imagery. With the
publication of Darwins On the Origin of Species, in 1859, the conflict between
science and religion took centre stage in Victorian poetry. The use of imagery
and the senses to depict the conflict as well as the ideas about nature and
romance make the readers have firsthand experience of the men and manners of
the Victorian period. Tennyson in his Mariana writes:
The doors upon their hinges creaked;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the moldering wainscot shrieked.
Here the creaking door, the blue fly singing in the window, and the mouse
with the moldy wood panelling all help in the creation of a definite image of an
active, yet lonely farmhouse.
Like the Romantic poets, the Victorian poets are lovers of Nature. Love of
Nature is found in the poems of Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelite poets. There is
also a return to the past, a Romantic tradition, clearly expressed in the poems of
Tennyson and Browning. The poetic idiom of the Victorian poets is also in the
Romantic tradition. It is rich in imagery and symbolic in meaning.