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(1834) - 1901
Queen Victoria's reign.
The Gothic Novel
Mostly prevalent during the late 1790s and the early 19th century, but it continued to crop up throughout the latter part of the century.
It was called Gothic because its imaginative impulse was inspired by medieval buildings and ruins, and novels were usually set in castles or monasteries that had subterranean passages, hidden panels, trapdoors, etc.
It sought to induce terror and horror.
Other tropes include the supernatural, a damsel in distress, dreams and nightmares, superstition, eroticism.
Realism (1820-1920)
Realistic literature was based on the daily experiences of characters rather than putting weight on the plot.
Its purpose was to instruct and entertain and it wanted to reinforce that humans control their own destiny.
It avoided the sensational and dramatic elements of naturalism and limited the use of symbolism, preferring to use imagery.
The usual voice of realistic novels is omniscient third person.
Rejected Romanticism.
Naturalism (1870-1920)
Believed that a person's environment shaped their character.
Influenced by Charles Darwin.
Realism + naturalism describe things as they are, but naturalism also tries to scientifically analyse the influences behind a person's actions.
Pessimism is a key characteristic.
Traces back to France: Emile Zola.
1880s (Society)
Industrial society continued to evolve as Britain became home to many industrial cities.
Better job prospects for working-classes.
1870 Education Act: education becoming more accessible.
Public Health Act of 1872
Education for both sexes became compulsory.
Potential for a change in the social hierarchy as self-made middle-class men challenged the power of the landed aristocracy.
Industrialisation contributed to social and class tensions.
1880s (Empire)
The British Empire covered 1/5 of the earth's surface and 1/4 of the population.
Colonial administrators took on their duties with a fierce determination to do good.
1880s (Economy)
Commerce and overseas trade were key to making Britain the world's greatest power.
Britain's status as the financial capital of the world also secured investment which preserved its immense prosperity.
1880s (the Industrial Revolution)
Brought wealth and major social changes: miserable housing conditions, long working hours, infectious disease, premature death.
Decent sewers were finally being put in place in the larger cities, especially London, where the disease and living conditions for the poor had reached a crisis point.
1880s-1890s (Culture)
Darwin prompted debates about natural selection, religion and science.
The development of new technology and science brought about religious scepticism.
Interests included the spirit world and ghosts.
1880s (Women)
The Question of Women: A phenomenon referring to the various debates about women's place in society during the Victorian era.
The first wave of feminism was largely led by white, middle-class women and mostly didn't include women of colour.
1880s (Family)
A key focus of the period.
Men were still dominant.
Prostitution was common, with double standards regarding the moral expectations for married men and married women.
The impact of the growth of the middle class on literature
A rise in the popularity of novels as the middle class grew in size and wealth and more public libraries were opened.
Early 1880s themes
Social class
status
economics
identity.
1881 - Henry James
"The Portrait of a Lady" - Realism
1882 (Women)
The Married Women's Property Act was implemented, allowing women to own, buy and sell property in their own right and have a separate legal identity to that of their husband amongst other things.
Society began moving away from the Victorian notion that a woman's role was being the "angel of the house", the home being her only domain.
1884
The Third Reform Act built upon the First and Second Reform Acts by extending the vote to agricultural workers.
This meant that voters in counties had the same political rights as voters in the boroughs of industrial cities.
Although this gave more people the vote, 40% of men still didn't receive that right and neither did any women.
1888
The Whitechapel murders intensified as Jack the Ripper killed 5 women, resulting in people focusing on "the fallen woman" convention that described a woman who had "lost her innocence" and fallen from the grace of God - this was used to refer to the sex workers Jack the Ripper murdered.
Consequently, this made people start considering the duality of gender identity and women's place outside of the home.
Aestheticism
An art movement that focused on beauty, 'art for art's sake' and the visual and sensual qualities of all the arts, over more socio-political and moral themes.
Art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, without the need to serve any other purpose.
It began as a reaction to the prevailing utilitarian social philosophies, which dictated that something is only right if it is useful or for the benefit of the majority.
Themes of late 1880s / early 1890s
Morality
sexuality
duality
hedonism / aestheticism
the Gothic.
1901
Queen Victoria died and her son Edward VII took the throne. The Edwardian Period (1901-1914) refers to his reign.
1900s (Society)
The class system continued but there was an air of change.
Greater social mobility.
Growing socialist ideas led to the elevation of workers' social status: they were treated as humans rather than machines.
Establishment of trade unions
The lower classes started to receive benefits from the Government.
Introduction of a small pension for 70+ year-olds.
Balfour Education Act 1903: improved access to education
1900s (Politics and Economy)
Constitutional monarchy
Parliamentary reforms prevented thoughts of revolution.
By 1910, Britain's economic and industrial power was being overtaken by the US and Germany.
Literature and Imperialism
Authors began questioning imperialism, colonialism and racism.
Many focused on colonialism in Africa - Joseph Conrad's novella is an example of this.
Themes: Imperialism, colonialism, Darwinism, race, identity.
1903
The Suffrage movement intensified as Emmeline Pankhurst formed the "Women's Social and Political Union", which sought women's right to vote.
Women began to move away from the domestic field and became more politically active, resulting in the birth of the 'New Woman' - a figure that has departed from the Victorian gender norms and is educated and independent.
'New Women' also included working-class women.
1903 - Samuel Butler
"The Way of All Flesh" - published posthumously after he died in 1902.
1908
The first Ford 'model T' motorcar became available to the upper classes, which prompted society's fascination and technology.
With this fascination came anxiety about technological transformations and change as urban populations grew as a result of industrialisation.
Aestheticism and Decadence
Shocked the Victorian establishment by challenging traditional values, foregrounding sensuality and promoting artistic, sexual and political experimentation.
Aestheticism 1860-1870s
Many Victorians passionately believed that literature and art fulfilled important ethical roles. Literature provided models of correct behaviour. 'Art for Art's sake' became identified with the energy and creativity of aestheticism. Aestheticism unsettled and challenged the values of mainstream Victorian culture. As it percolated more widely into the general culture, it was relentlessly satirised and condemned.
Swinburne
Swinburne was strongly influenced by the French writers, Baudelaire and Gautier that poetry had nothing to do with didacticism (the teaching of moral lessons). He also insisted that beautiful poetic form and what he deemed 'perfect workmanship' made and subject admirable. Swinburne's poetry presented readers with moral ambiguity and with no comfortable psychological position.
Aesthetic Style
Poetry was central to aestheticism, from the work of Pre-Raphaelites, Swinburne and William Morris, through to the flourishing of poetic voices in the final decades of the 19th century. Aesthetes played with traditional oppositions or even hierarchies between art and life.
Aesthetics and Politics
Morris was one among a number of important proponents of aestheticism who saw art as inseparable from political ideals. Oscar Wilde was also a supporter of socialist politics, as was the writer Edward Carpenter.
Satire and Critique
This mixture of radical politics, sexual dissidence and privileging of the individual's experience of beauty was highly alarming to more conventional Victorians. In the press, aestheticism was roundly criticised.
Decadence
By the 1890s, another term had become associated with this focus on 'art for art's sake'. 'Decadence' was initially used to describe writers of the mid-19th century in France, especially Baudelaire and Gautier. The word literally means a process of 'falling away' or decline. In England, it was Wilde himself who was identified as central to the English decadent tradition, along with Arthur Symons and the poet, Ernest Dowson.
The Yellow Book
One of the most notorious exponents of what was labelled decadence was not a writer, however, but an artist. Aubrey Beardsley's distinctive, witty and often erotic illustrations are immediately recognisable, with their innovative shapes and lines and bold use of black and white space. Again, decadence was part of a culture of commercialism as well as of creativity.
Degeneration and the Wilde Trial
Decadence alarmed those who valued 'traditional' norms and values. It seemed to signify a society and culture threatened to its core with decline and decay. By the 1890s, decadence was associated with degeneration. Oscar Wilde, at the height of his fame as the most popular playwright of the moment, was put on trial. Decadence was intimately associated with dissident sexual desires.
Gothic fiction in the Victorian fin de siècle: mutating bodies and disturbed minds
The Victorian period saw Gothic fiction evolving and taking on new characteristics. For centuries Gothic fiction has provided authors with imaginative ways to address contemporary fears. As a result, the nature of Gothic novels has altered considerably from one generation to the next.
Post-Darwinian Nightmares
Late-Victorian society was haunted by the implications of Darwinism. For many, the balance between 'faith' and 'doubt' had tipped disturbingly in favour of the latter, and questions about the origins, nature and destiny of humankind had become matters for science, rather than theology to address.
Criminology
The influential Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) had argued that the 'born criminal' could be recognised by certain physical characteristics - unusually sized ears, for example. Notions that cruelty and criminal intent manifested themselves visibly in the features of an individual lay behind Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Fantasy
Gothic imagery, given its fantastical nature, allowed authors to explore in an indirect fashion themes that were not necessarily acceptable subjects for discussion in respectable society. Count Dracula, for example, is feared for his ability to move unnoticed through the crowds of London, potentially afflicting all in his path with the stain of vampirism. Gothic fiction has always possessed the ability to adapt to its environment.
'Man is not truly one, but truly two': duality in Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a late-Victorian variation on ideas first raised in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Stevenson's monster, however, is not artificially created from stitched-together body parts, but rather emerges fully formed from the dark side of the human personality.
Evolution and degeneration
Viewed on a simple level, Dr Jekyll is a good man, much admired in his profession. Mr Hyde, meanwhile, is evil. Darwin hypothesised that these stages of evolution had been preceded, in a direct line, by 'some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal'. Such a nightmarish biological lineage that denied the specialness of humans, feeds into many late-Victorian Gothic novels.
Homosexuality
Homosexuality and blackmail were frequently linked in this period. Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885 (the year in which Stevenson was writing his tale), made 'gross indecency' - a nebulous term that was not precisely defined - a criminal activity.
Origins of the term
The origins of the term 'New Woman' are disputed, but it appears to have entered the language in 1894 when it was used in a pair of articles written by the novelists Sarah Grand and 'Ouida' in the North American Review. Once coined, the term became popular shorthand to describe the new breed of independent, educated women.
The New Woman in literature
The New Woman was a real, as well as a cultural phenomenon. In society she was a feminist and a social reformer; a poet or a playwright who addressed female suffrage. In literature, however, as a character in a play or a novel, she frequently took a different form - that of someone whose thoughts and desires highlighted not only her own aspirations, but also served as a mirror in which to reflect the attitudes of society.
The New Woman and sex
The traditional view of a woman's role in Victorian society was epitomised by Coventry Patmore's poem 'The Angel in the House', first published in 1854. As a general rule a modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband, but only to please him and, but for the desire of maternity, would far rather be relieved from his attention.
Decline and Fall
The New Woman and the Decadent were frequently linked, but the alliance was an uneasy one. Sarah Grand attacked Decadence via the disreputable figure of Alfred Cayley Pounce in The Beth Book - Pounce even works for a journal tellingly named The Patriarch. Other New Women writers however eagerly submitted stories to The Yellow Book which was viewed as the definitive Decadent publication.
Portraits Behaving Badly: Decadence, Degeneration and The Picture of Dorian Gray
In the very first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), a figure steps down from a painting and enters the action, instigating an enduring trend for portraits in Gothic novels to behave rather strangely. Then, of course, there is Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel about a painting that bears the weight of its subject's debauchery and has to be hidden away from prying eyes. Many Victorians believed that sinful and shameful acts left a visible record upon the faces of those guilty of such activities.
Perversion and degeneracy in The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray was a Gothic novel that skirted scandalous behaviour: the transgressive, supernatural elements of the genre provided a frame for speaking unspeakable things. The book tells the story of the beautiful young man Dorian Gray, who is given the capacity to explore every possible vice and desire while his moral decay is hidden away in his painted portrait that bears all the marks of his degeneration.
Education and Class
Education provides the means for upward social mobility but, in doing so, it also challenges the established order that gives advantages and privileges to those already at the higher end of the class system.
Marriage and the role of women
If the dominant theme in the first part of the novel is education, then the focus in the second is marriage and the opportunities available to women in a largely patriarchal society. Jude the Obscure addresses the horrors of sexual relationships devoid of love; the consequences arising from ignorance about sex, and the unenlightened view held by society and the Church that an unhappy marriage was preferable to a loving, sexual relationship outside of wedlock.
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