Survey the prominent literary trends of the Victorian Age.

Mostly Victorian age marked as reigned of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). This age plays a very distinguished role in the history of English literature. Often it considered a bridge between the romantic-era works of the previous century and what would become the literature of the newly industrialized world of the twentieth century, Victorian literature is characterized by a strong sense of morality, and it frequently champions the downtrodden. It is also often equated with prudishness and oppression, and while this is sometimes true, Victorian literature is also known for its attempts to combine imagination and emotion with the neoclassical ideal of the accessibility of art for the common person. Some of the best-known authors of this period are Charlotte Bront (Jane Eyre), Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights), and Charles Dickens (Great Expectations). In 1897 Mark Twain was visiting London during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations honoring the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's coming to the throne. "British history is two thousand years old," Twain observed, "and yet in a good many ways the world has moved farther ahead since the Queen was born than it moved in all the rest of the two thousand put together." Twain's comment captures the sense of dizzying change that characterized the Victorian period. Perhaps most important was the shift from a way of life based on ownership of land to a modern urban economy based on trade and manufacturing. By the beginning of the Victorian period, the Industrial Revolution, as this shift was called, had created profound economic and social changes, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns, where they lived in new urban slums. But the changes arising out of the Industrial Revolution were just one subset of the radical changes taking place in mid- and late-nineteenth-century Britain among others were the democratization resulting from extension of the franchise; challenges to religious faith, in part based on the advances of scientific knowledge, particularly of evolution; and changes in the role of women. All of these issues, and the controversies attending them, informed Victorian literature. In part because of the expansion of newspapers and the periodical press, debate about political and social issues played an important role in the experience of the reading public. The Victorian novel, with its emphasis on the realistic portrayal of social life, represented many Victorian issues in the stories of its characters. Moreover, debates about political representation involved in expansion both of the franchise and of the rights of women affected literary representation, as writers gave voice to those who had been voiceless. The section in The Norton Anthology of English Literature entitled "Victorian Issues" (NAEL 8, 2.15381606) contains texts dealing with four controversies that concerned the Victorians: evolution, industrialism, what the Victorians called "The Woman Question", and Great Britain's identity as an imperial power. Norton Topics Online provides further texts on three of these topics: the debate about the benefits and evils of the Industrial Revolution, the debate about the nature and role of women, and the myriad issues that arose as British forces worked to expand their global influence. The debates on both industrialization and women's roles in society reflected profound social change: the formation of a new class of workers men, women, and

children who had migrated to cities, particularly in the industrial North, in huge numbers, to take jobs in factories, and the growing demand for expanded liberties for women. The changes were related; the hardships that the Industrial Revolution and all its attendant social developments created put women into roles that challenged traditional ideas about women's nature. Moreover, the rate of change the Victorians experienced, caused to a large degree by advances in manufacturing, created new opportunities and challenges for women. They became writers, teachers, and social reformers, and they claimed an expanded set of rights. In the debates about industrialism and about the Woman Question, voices came into print that had not been heard before. Not only did women writers play a major role in shaping the terms of the debate about the Woman Question, but also women from the working classes found opportunities to describe the conditions of their lives. Similarly, factory workers described their working and living conditions, in reports to parliamentary commissions, in the encyclopedic set of interviews journalist Henry Mayhew later collected as London Labor and the London Poor and in letters to the editor that workers themselves wrote. The world of print became more inclusive and democratic. At the same time, novelists and even poets sought ways of representing these new voices. The novelist Elizabeth Gaskell wrote her first novel, Mary Barton, in order to give voice to Manchester's poor, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning tried to find ways in poetry of giving voice to the poor and oppressed. The third section of this Web site, "The Painterly Image in Victorian Poetry," investigates the rich connection in the Victorian period between visual art and literature. Much Victorian aesthetic theory makes the eye the most authoritative sense and the clearest indicator of truth. Victorian poetry and the Victorian novel both value visual description as a way of portraying their subjects. This emphasis on the visual creates a particularly close connection between poetry and painting. Books of fiction and poetry were illustrated, and the illustrations amplified and intensified the effects of the text. The texts, engravings, and paintings collected here provide insight into the connection between the verbal and the visual so central to Victorian aesthetics. Britains identity as an imperial power with considerable global influence is explored more comprehensively in the fourth topic section. For Britain, the Victorian period witnessed a renewed interest in the empires overseas holdings. British opinions on the methods and justification of imperialist missions overseas varied, with some like author Joseph Conrad throwing into sharp relief the brutal tactics and cold calculations involved in these missions, while others like politician Joseph Chamberlain considered the British to be the great governing race with a moral obligation to expand its influence around the globe. Social evolutionists, such as Benjamin Kidd, likewise supported the British dominion through their beliefs about the inherent developmental inferiority of the subject peoples, thus suggesting that Europeans had a greater capacity for rulinga suggestion that many took as complete justification of British actions overseas. Regardless of dissenting voices, British expansion pushed forward at an unprecedented rate, ushering in a new era of cultural exchange that irreversibly altered the British worldview. So by this time if we look through all the incidents and aspects we can find some philosophical and literary trends dominate this era. Those are:

a) b) c) d) e) f) g) h) i)

Conflicts between science and religion. Realism Morality Humanitarianism Mysticism Nature in poetry Symbolism Love and romance Note of pessimism

All this features can be more or less found in every Victorian author. Let us explore these features: Conflicts between science and religion: During the nineteenth century, the entities we refer to as 'science' and 'religion' both underwent dramatic changes. It would consequently be nave to expect to be able to find one simple and unchanging relationship between the two. The relationship has varied across time and geography, and from one individual to another. In addition to the historical interest of the nineteenth century debates between science and religion, there is a great historiographical significance. The way in which science and religion have been perceived in the twentieth century was heavily influenced by the writings of late nineteenth-century historians of science and religion, whose influence we have only recently begun to move beyond. At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, religious faith and the sciences were generally seen to be in beautiful accordance. The study of God's Word, in the Bible, and His Works, in nature, were assumed to be twin facets of the same truth. One version of this belief had been manifested in William Paley's Natural Theology (1802), which repeated the argument that natural objects show evidences of design, thus showing the existence of a designing God. Paley's work was enormously influential for its emphasis on nature as God's creation, even though, by the 1830s, few Christians saw a need to prove God's existence, preferring to take this as an act of faith. The Bridgewater Treatises(183336) showed how natural theology could be reconfigured in various ways to meet new discoveries. Their sales figures also showed that there was a substantial market for non-technical works of science. Realism: Realism coincided with Victorianism, yet was a distinct collection of aesthetic principles in its own right. The realist novel was heavily informed by journalistic techniques, such as objectivity and fidelity to the facts of the matter. It is not a coincidence that many of the better known novelists of the time had concurrent occupations in the publishing industry. The idea of novelwriting as a report grew out of this marriage between literature and journalism. Another fair comparison would be to think of the realist novel as an early form of docudrama, in which

fictional persons and events are intended to seamlessly reproduce the real world. The Victorian Period saw growing concern with the plight of the less fortunate in society, and the realistic novel likewise turned its attention on subjects that beforehand would not have warranted notice. The balancing act that the upwardly mobile middle class had to perform in order to retain their position in the world was a typical subject for realistic novels. There arose a subgenre of Realism called Social Realism, which in hindsight can be interpreted as Marxist and socialist ideas set forth in literature. A great friend of Mark Twain, and an eminent American realist in his own right, was the magazine editor William Dean Howells. In charge of the Atlantic Monthly for several years, Howells exercised a lot of authority over the currents of taste on his side of the ocean. In his role as editor, he was instrumental in promoting the fame of literary rising stars, such as Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Howells wrote copious volumes of fiction of his own, and was an unqualified success in that regard. For a time, he was widely considered the most accomplished of all American Realists. That reputation faded somewhat and today Howellss work as an editor is held up as his most important contribution. That being said, several of his novels are in the first rank of American Realism. Published in 1885, the ironically titled The Rise of Silas Lapham tells the story of an ambitious businessman who tumbles out of fortune through his own mistakes and poor judgment. It is an anti-success story, and illustrates one of the central ideas of Realism, that of crafting honest narratives rather than feel-good sentimental fantasies. In short, there is a kind of grimness to Realism that many readers have found unappealing. A Modern Instance highlights this same principle in detailing the steady disintegration of a seemingly happy marriage. Morality: Every social class in Victorian England was religious, going to church every Sunday and reading the Bible every night. In some cases, church was attended twice every Sunday due to the growing importance of religion and spirituality. This was a new sensati on across England which, in the nineteenth century, was marked by a religious revival almost as large as that of the Puritans in the 16th and 17th centuries. This new interest in religion brought with it a focus on combining behavior with morality and adhering to rules of what was considered right and wrong. Even today, most people frequently attribute the term Victorianism to this correlation between religion and moral behavior because it was such a contrast from the previous lifestyle practices in England. One of the morals that was considered distinctly English was the value of truth. Throughout England, there were two meanings of the word truth, one referring to fact and the other referring to honesty. Truthfulness was regarded as a very important factor when distinguishing someone's moral character. Victorians focused on truthfulness by caring more abo ut the moral character of the person than factual roots of his or her words. In addition to valuing truthfulness as an imperative moral, Victorians also possessed strong

morals regarding sexual conduct. During the Victorian period, sexual behaviorwas regarded differently between classes. In the upper and middle class, women were expected to have no sexual relations before marriage. Acceptable displays of affection consisted solely of a kiss on the cheek or an arm around the waist. The only premarital sex that would take place would be between men and servants or prostitutes because the nice girls would not go against the norm of accepted sexual behavior. The "high class" Victorians strictly enforced these beliefs and values into the minds of members in society so that women would continue to be seen as pure. In contrast, it was far more acceptable for the working class citizens to have sex before marriage. It was even winked at as long as the couple ended up getting married. Premarital sex in the working class was much more accepted by society than premarital sex in the upper class. It was so acceptable that nearly one third of working class women were pregnant on the day of there wedding! Although the acceptance of sexual behavior differed between the upper and working class, beliefs regarding homosexuality w Ere the same in both classes. It was considered immoral to be homosexual, and the punishment for being homosexual during the Victorian period was execution.

Humanitarianism: Humanitarianism is one of the basic trends of Victorian era. In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution. No distinction is to be made in the face of suffering or abuse on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, tribe, caste, age, religion, or nationality. (Humanitarianism) Alfred Tennyson was an independent thinker, though not an innovator, a conservative liberal, and was so widely popular because he expressed in frank but reverent fashion the moderately advanced convictions of his time. His social ideals, in which he is intensely interested, are those of Victorian humanitarianism. Mysticism: Nobody thinks of the English as mystic; the Victorian English least of all. Yet in 1913 a very Victorian Englishwoman wrote a book in which she argues that nearly twenty of the nineteenth century's writers were mystics to one degree or another. In Mysticism and English Literature, which has recently been reprinted once again, Caroline Spurgeon (1869-1942) also asks: "what does the mystic see?" Her answer, in three words, is the best you're ever likely to come across:

"Unity underlies diversity." That's all. Joy, serenity, a sense of cosmic harmony and benevolence, are side effects; anything else is an intellectual add-on. Via Wordsworth, she also describes the mechanism by which mystics see what they do. Writers nowadays are instructed to "show, not tell." With mystics there's not a lot to show, unless you share their experience, and those who tell it the way it is are usually the most powerful and graphic. Nature mystics seem to do this best of all. In her book, Spurgeon discusses three: Henry Vaughan, Wordsworth, and Richard Jefferies. Wordsworth owed nothing to anybody but himself, Spurgeon insists, while Vaughan (16221695) was steeped in both Plato and alchemy (which was about reaching union with God, as much as turning base metal into gold). Vaughan thought, like most mystics, that the underlying unity is reachable via all created things. To him, a pool below a waterfall (on the River Usk in his native mid-Wales) was an symbol of what happens after death at first the water loiters then suddenly pours swiftly away down to the sea. But in his most famous lines he gives us a direct glimpse of what he himself witnessed: I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, All calm as it was bright.

Nature in poetry: Romanticism offers an idealized look at the world. Life are beautified, and the human pursuit of knowledge and power as a wonderful thing. Romantic poetry also tends to personify and beautify nature. The poet attempts to connect himself to nature and relate with it. For example, in his poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", William Wordsworth compares himself to a drifting cloud, and then rejoices in the beauty of a field of daffodils. Victorian Poetry, however, is much harsher and realistic. During the Victorian era, people became aware of the grave social injustices in their world, and therefore many people didn't like the romanticized version of society. Victorian poetry tends to deal with more serious and realistic subjects, such as child labor, slavery, and other such social injustices. It often called for social reform, as in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children". In this poem, Browning write of the atrocity of slavery, and the damage it has done to children and families. Victorian poetry marks society's progression from the carefree notions of Romanticism to a state of social awareness and reform. Symbolism, Love and romance, Note of pessimism is also very important trends of Victorian age. These three aspects rules mostly in poem and prose. Basically Symbolism heavily used at poems and Love and romance, Note of pessimism are used in Victorian drama and prose.

So from the discussion we see for sake of art Victorian tries to change almost everything to make their era to flourish English literature most and it can be told that as an age Victorian age play most significant role to develop English language and literature to this stage,