Christine Reigner
Amy Dean
English 242
24 March 2014
Realism versus Romanticism in the Victorian Age
The Victorian Age demonstrates the changes that were going on in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in England. England was the first to experience change in industry and become the first industrial nation, “Because England was the first country to become industrialized, its transformation was an especially painful one” (NAEL 1018). This is the time where realism overcame romanticism in literature. Realism was displayed by many different works and differed greatly from romanticism in several ways. Realism focused on everyday life, industry and technology changes, and religious controversy versus romanticism which focused on feelings/emotions, imagination, and nature.
The focus of everyday life in the Victorian Age gives an idea of what the people, in that particular time, had to deal with. Men and women alike walked the streets of London to complete their daily tasks set before them, “Hundreds of thousands of men and women drawn from all classes and ranks of society pack the streets of London” (Engels 1591). This kind of picture of everyday life shows us a realistic picture of Victorian London; it was crowded with people from all social lives. Although the Victorian Age did mention social class, it did not focus on it like the Romantic Period did. The Romantic Period tended to focus on the struggles of the poor, how they interacted with the rich, and how love, imagination, or determination overcame social class, as in “The Mortal Immortal”. In the realistic view of the Victorian Age, the poor stayed poor most of the time and did not socialize with the rich outsid...
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...rature and art. Industrial and technology advances were documented in numerous ways as both a good movement and a not so good movement. And the realism religious controversy also played a part in the changes in the Victorian Age that changed the views of some individuals. Although the Victorian Age did overcome the Romantic Period for some time, each has its part to play in literary education among students; whether it’s everyday life or imagination, a focus on industry and technology or nature, or it’s religious controversy and feelings/emotions.
Works Cited Page
Greenblatt, Stephen, eds. The Norton Anthology English Literature. 9th ed. Crawfordsville: R.R. Donnelley & Sons, 2012. Print.
Lewis, Matthew Gregory. “The Monk.” Greenblatt, 603-608.
Engels, Friedrich. “The Great Towns”. Greenblatt, 1590-1597.
One Victorian sentiment was that a civilized individual could be determined by her/his appearance. This notion was readily adopted by the upper classes and, among other things, helped shape their views of the lower classes, who certainly appeared inferior to them. In regards to social mobility, members of the upper classes may have (through personal tragedy or loss) often moved to a lower-class status, but rarely did one see an individual move up from the abysmal lower class. Although poverty could be found almost anywhere in Victorian London (one could walk along a street of an affluent neighborhood, turn the corner, and find oneself in an area of depravity and decay), most upper-class Londoners, who tended to dwell in the West End, associated the East End with the lower class.
The Victorian Era was classified by a strict set of rules that every upstanding citizen must follow. These rules can be seen in “the behavior between sexes, tea at four-thirty each day, and a fascination with wealth that was suppressed by the good taste not to talk about it”
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print
The working class of Victorian England was a group that worked hard to stay out of poverty as well as off the streets Unlike the upper class they had minimal recreational time. Many different people have tried to account for the working class conditions and what they did in their spare time: “he could attend evening courses on scientific subjects or Latin or shorthand at a Mechanics’ Institution, or at one of the Working Men’s Colleges” (Picard The Working Class and Poor). This imposes that the men could take an educational course to get a better job. Also in their spare time, people would go to street vendors as opposed to markets so they could get food for a more affordable price (Picard The Working Class and Poor). W.J. Reader, a
Romanticism and realism can be presented through poetry, novels, or even paintings. These two styles of art were big in the 19th century. Romanticism is freeing the mind through different types of art. Realism is being real about ones circumstances, even if it’s ugly or not appealing. These two styles of writing are very important in literature.
The highest social class in Victorian England was the Nobility or Gentry class. The members of this class were those who inherited their land, titles, and wealth . Popular opinion at the time asserted that the noble class women led lives of lavish luxury and wedded bliss. "Ladies were ladies in those days; they did not do things themselves, they told others what to do and how to do it."
Abrams, M.H. and Greenblatt, Stephen eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Seventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.
The Victorian era prevailed under the reign of Queen Victoria, thus the realist novel emerged during this era with industrialisation taking place and the age of improvement occurring, society felt both optimistic about the future and pessimistic about the uncertainties it holds . Realism texts like, North and South is a mimetic novel as it attempts to to hold up a mirror to society, to the conditions in England at the time and the conflicts that surrounded it in order for the readers to become reflective of the world. Gaskell lived in this time period and thus stands in as a didactic writer, meaning a writer who intends to teach a lesson, North and South reflects the consequences of industrialisation by revealing, responding and interpreting public conflicts, conflicts of the individual and conflicts of society . Gaskell then uses the theme of romance to draw in the readers.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. 6th ed. Vol.2. New York: Norton, 1993. 480.
The second half of the Civilization II course showed us the radical changes from the Renaissance period to the Romantic era and further on. With works like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground we move farther away from the religious views of the sixteenth century Europe and move toward a more open and industrialized world. With Romanticism the views of the Enlightenment are also changed. The Enlightenment was a time where reason and individualism were put forth whereas Romanticism was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement. It originated in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th century and, it is due in part to the French Revolution which planted the grains needed for Romanticism to sprout and grow. Romanticism was the protest of the individual against the universal laws of classicism. It was also the protest of feeling against reason and perhaps more importantly the protest on the behalf of nature against the encroachments of industrialization (Barrett Chapter 6). However, it is not because a protest against reason is occurring that faith is taken away as seen in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. From the Romantic era and Industrialization, the world then witnessed World War I and finally, the course touched upon Samuel Beckett’s Endgame which shows the changes that occurred in daily life post-war. Within a short amount of time the views of mankind and its beliefs drastically changed. It also seems that all that was studied from the Enlightenment onwards are pieces of a very big puzzle. Each piece fits snuggly and creates one big picture that ends with Beckett’s Endgame.
The Victorian Era in English history was a period of rapid change. One would be hard-pressed to find an aspect of English life in the 19th century that wasn’t subject to some turmoil. Industrialization was transforming the citizens into a working class population and as a result, it was creating new urban societies centered on the factories. Great Britain enjoyed a time of peace and prosperity at home and thus was extending its global reach in an era of New Imperialism. Even in the home, the long held beliefs were coming into conflict.
The span of time from the Victorian age of Literature to the Modernism of the 20th century wrought many changes in poetry style and literary thinking. While both eras contained elements of self-scrutiny, the various forms and reasoning behind such thinking were vastly different. The Victorian age, with it's new industrialization of society, brought to poetry and literature the fictional character, seeing the world from another's eyes. It was also a time in which "Victorian authors and intellectuals found a way to reassert religious ideas" (Longman, p. 1790). Society was questioning the ideals of religion, yet people wanted to believe.
The Victorian period was in 1830-1901, this period was named after Queen Victoria; England’s longest reigning monarch. Britain was the most powerful nation in the world. This period was known for a rather stern morality. A huge changed happened in England; factories were polluting the air, cities were bursting at the seams, feminism was shaking up society, and Darwin’s theory of evolution was assaulting long established religious beliefs. The Victorians were proud of their accomplishments and optimistic about the future, but psychologically there was tension, doubt, and anxiety as people struggled to understand and deal with the great changes they were experiencing. One of the authors known for writing during the Victorian Period was Robert Browning. Robert Browning was a poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic monologues, which made him one of the Victorian poets. Robert died in December 1889. His Poem “Porphyria’s Lover” was published in 1836. This essay will explore three elements of Victorianism in Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Brown...
By the mid-nineteenth century,much of Europe had become industrialized, and the generation of artists who had inaugurated the Romantic movement were dead. But much of the romantic spirit lived on. In their emphasis on individual genius and subjective experience, arts of the Romantic era handed future generations the basis for their own developement and provided a point of view that coloured their understanding of the past.
The Industrial Revolution was a period of time in which Great Britain saw advancements in technology, agriculture, and transportation. These changes heavily influenced the country economically and socially. The creation of the unskilled factory labor worker emerged and a movement began from rural to urban areas. With an increase in wages from factory work, the population of the country increased as well. Overall Britain was becoming smaller during this time period. The Industrial Revolution did not solely bring positive outcomes. The interactions humans once held despite social status were gradually deteriorating as values began to shift. The industrialization taking place in Britain had a great presence in current and up and coming literature. Through the years authors such as Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde, and D.H. Lawrence created characters whose morals were altered due to the evils of industrialization despite their social classes. During the course of the eras in literature, characters began to have a shift in morals which caused the relationships held with other characters to fall apart. The presence of industrialization and its troubles amongst the range of classes is present in Frankenstein, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.