The nineteenth century: the victorian age

(1832 - 1899)

Although Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 and died in 1901, the Victorian period is generally said to begin with the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832. This Bill shifted political power from the upper class to the middle class. The reading public increased greatly in size. The period was one of scientific progress and political imperialism. Many of the great Victorian writers were concerned with criticizing the time in which they lived. In particular, many of them felt deeply about the social problems of the day.

The greatest novelists of the early Victorian period were Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë and her sister Emily, George Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans), Anthony Trollope, and Elizabeth Gaskell. Because of the humour, love and sympathy that filled such novels as “David Copperfield”, “A Tale of Two Cities”, “The Old Curiosity Shop”, and “Great Expectations”, Dickens is probably the best loved of all English novelists. Many of his novels exposed the pitiful conditions of the poor in England; they were passionate pleas for sympathy with the unfortunate men and women who inhabited the underworld of London, which he knew so well. His great portrait gallery, which includes Mrs. Gamp, Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Micauber, Mr. Pecksniff, Mr. Chadband and Mr. Dick, can only be compared with portraits in Chaucer’s “Tales”. Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair”, Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”, her sister Emily’s “Wuthering Heights”, George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” and Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Cranford” and “Wives and Daughters” are among the great mid-Victorian novels. Eliot’s books portray rural and clerical society. The Brontë sisters knew and wrote of a harsher world than this: their wild Yorkshire home is unforgettably described in “Withering Heights” and in some passages of “Jane Eyre”. Almost as important from the historical point of view was Mrs. Gaskell’s “North and South” (1855), which stressed the contrast between industrial and rural England.

Later in the century novels of Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad and Robert Louis Stevenson were popular. Thomas Hardy’s theme in his 8 great novels published between 1872 and 1896 is that injustice is inescapable. The beauty of nature and the dignity of his simple characters make blind fate seem all the harsher.

Joseph Conrad, a Polish aristocrat who spent his early life at sea, and who became a naturalized Englishman, was writing his first novel as Hardy published his last. Conrad’s characters confront evil and corruption and malevolent nature only with the virtue of fidelity.

Equally valued by children and adults, Stevenson’s tales of action and adventure have sometimes, as in the famous story of Dr. Jekyle and Mr. Hyde, hints of interest in psychology which 20th-century novels were to evince.

The two leading poets of the Victorian age were Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. Tennyson was the most popular poet of the period. His “Idylls of the King”, retelling in verse the story of King Arthur and his Knights, is still popular. Browning wrote various kinds of poems and many plays.

Later in the century a group of writers turned to the Middle Ages for inspiration. These Pre-Raphaelites were led by the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Throughout most of the 19th century playwriting was less successful than other kinds of writing. It was not until the last 2 decades of the century that the theatre became more lively, particularly with the comedies of Oscar Wilde whose aesthetic revolt against Victorianism is comparable with the Restoration against Puritanism. John Galsworthy, who was also a novelist, and George Bernard Shaw wrote notable plays that dealt with social problems.

The Irish literary revival at the end of the century produced fine dramatists, among them William Butler Yeats, who was also a major poet. His plays and poems brought him the Nobel prize for literature in 1923. Another playwright of importance, later associated with the Irish literary revival, was Sean O’Casey. His “Guno and Paycock” and “The Plough and the Stars” are generally considered among the best plays of the 20th century.