"Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe"
Quote by Carlyle in 1834
Abandon the Romantics and turn to higher moral purpose
Queen Victoria
Reigned from 1837 to 1901
Symbolized middle class earnestness, moral responsibility, and domestic propriety.
The Early Period: Time of Troubles and "Hungry Forties"
Characterized by bad harvests, unemployment, poverty, rioting, and slums
Laissez-faire economy and free trade
Chartists: large organization of workers (Jane Eyre)
Reform Bill of 1832
Extended the right to vote to all males owning property worth £10 or more.
Corn Laws
Abolition of the high tariffs of imported grains.
Protected British farm products from having to compete with cheaper imported products from abroad.
Mid-Victorian Period: "Age of Improvement"
Time of prosperity; flourishing agriculture
Restrictions on child labor
British colonialism; destruction of many indigenous industries to increase capital
Science and technology: railways and telegraph wires, Darwinism, astronomy and geology (which extended the history of the earth back millions of years) ----> challenged religion and human-centrism
Evangelical Movement
emphasized a Protestant faith in personal salvation with attention to moral lifestyle and also good works
Oxford Movement ("Tractarians")
sought to bring the official English Anglican Church closer in rituals and beliefs to Roman Catholicism (AKA "High Church")
"The White Man's burden"
"Protect the poor natives and advance civilization"
Missionary projects in India, Asia, and Africa
Utilitarianism
Belief that all human beings seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
Greatest number (but individualism is not important)
Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" (1859)
Introduced natural selection and evolution
"reduced humankind even further into 'nothingness'"
The Late Period: Decay of Victorian Values
Victorian values dengenerated
Culture of consumerism
Conflicts caused by imperialism: "mutiny" in India (1857); Jamaican Rebellion (1865); massacre of General Gardon's troops in Khartoum, Sudan (1885); Anglo-Boer wars
Trade unions
Marxism
Marxism
"Utopia could be achieved only after the working classes had, by revolution, taken control of government and industry"
Problem plays
Addressed difficult social issues
Playwrights include Shaw and Wilde
Satirized Victorian pretense and hypocrisy
Literature
Compulsory reading/education to the age of 10
Steam printing press, paper and typesetting allowed for mass production of literature
Growth of the periodical
Literature meant to instruct and delight
Created a community of readers
"The Woman Question"
Limited education/occupational opportunities (could only be governesses if higher class; working class women in factories)
early feminist agitation for equal status and rights
Women's Property Acts (1870-1908)
Married women could not handle their own property until these acts.
Custody Act of 1839
gave mothers the right to petition the court for access to her minor children
Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857
established civil divorce court and a woman's right to her property after divorce
“Angel in the House”
Separation of public and private spheres
Women provided heart and hearth to working men (a space of comfort)
Stressed a woman's purity and selflessness
"The Mad Woman in the Attic"
Argues that nineteenth-century women writers suffered “anxiety of authorship” that was particularly problematic because they didn’t have a female literary tradition.
The monstrous double
Bertha/Jane
Women trapped in domestic roles
Victorian elements in Jane Eyre
Governesses (limited opportunity for middle-class women)
Critique on class/power distinction (Jane as an orphan; Brocklehursts as hypocrites; Blanche's classism toward governesses; relationship between employer and employee)
British superiority and Imperialism (racism toward the French, creoles, "gypsies," etc.)
Missionaries to "civilize" the savage (Brocklehurst in Chapter 6; St. John's mission in India)
Religious element (Brocklehurst's Evangeliscism; St. John)
Domesticity (Rivers household)
Early feminism (Jane paving her own direction; declaring she is Rochester's "equal")
Repression/Freedom in Jane Eyre
The novel constantly uses words such as slave, master, servitude, mutiny, savage, bird metaphors, and scenes of containment (drawing room + attic)
Jane rebels against John and Mrs. Reed in Chapter 4
Repressed by Lowood for being an orphan, a "heathen"
Helen Burns helps her to keep her passionate nature and temper in check: She believes in living a calm life and looking forward to a better life after death.
Jane turns to education to discipline herself; Learns French, painting, etc. to become top of her class
"Frees" herself from Lowood through new servitude at Thornsfield
Struggles to keep passions in check with Rochester; attempts to repress her feelings of love (for example, by comparing herself to Blanche)
Jane leaves Thornfield on her own terms because she does not want to be a mistress; returns as an independent woman with her own wealth
Jane and Rochester
Rochester allows Jane to be herself and speak about what's on her mind.
Shift in dynamics: Employer/Employee to that of Dependent/Caretaker
Rochester attempts to manipulate Jane's feelings out (through jealousy)
Passionate (and at times temperamental) unlike St. John
Rochester sees Jane as someone who will "redeem" him; she is everything he wants in a woman (ie everything Bertha, Blanche, and his other mistresses are not)
Jane and St. John
St. John proposes not out of love, but for his own ambition
Jane sees him as family
Jane follows her passions and love; St. John is cold, unfeeling and does not pursue his love for Rosamund
St. John is characterized by reason over feelings (work over relationships)
Dramatic monologue
The speaker (not the author) expresses something about his/her character through a monologue whether an audience is present or not.
Enjambment
the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pause
Caesura
A pause or interruption
Pathetic fallacy
The fallacy of attributing human feelings to inanimate objects
Ex) Weather creates mood; weather has a personality
"Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning
Dramatic monologue
iambic tetrameter (4 iambs) ---> mimics the sound of rain
enjambments
Caesuras: broken meter indicates heartbreak (line 5); speaker does not call back (line 15); speaker kills Porphyria (line 41)
Pathetic fallacy (rain sets up the mood)
Speaker kills Porphyria so that she will stay with him forever ("ties" in line 24 may indicate she is betrothed)
"And yet God has not said a word!" (line 60) — Indicates a Godless world; God does not punish him
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning
Speaker had duchesses before (covered up painting of his previous one; assumed that he killed her)
Duchess was flirty with other men
Caesura (line 46): "smiles stopped altogether" (duchess died)
Very materialistic, egotistical, possessive (lines 54-56)
Speaker's audience may be a marriage agent
Pre-Raphaelites
Pursued art for art's sake. (Previously, the purpose of art was to entertain and be didactic)
Avante-garde
Rejected conventions
Return to nature
"Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti
About temptation / Original sin (fruit)
Rape/incest
Addiction / Going through withdrawal (stanza 12 + lines 277-280)
Victorian market values, mass production (fruits of different seasons are on the market)
Cautionary tale for women who misbehave
Can be read through a queer lens
Pure/white symbolism (lines 81-86)
Trimming hair = trope to giving up purity (lines 123-126)
Shift in domestic dynamic; juxtaposition of Laura and Lizzie (lines 199-214)
Lizzie withstands strong, tempting forces (lines 408-421)
Love between two sisters as a regenerative force (lines 464-474)
inscape
The distinctive design that constitutes individual identity.
instress
The apprehension of an object in an intense thrust of energy toward it that enables one to realize its specific distinctiveness.
Identifies the inscape
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Devout Catholic (was shunned by his family for this)
Poetry as instress
His style: he disrupts conventional syntax; coins and compounds words; employs repetition
omits syntactical connections to fuse qualities more intensely (“the dearest freshness deep down things”).
“God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
sonnet
“charged” (line 1) can mean pay, ordered, or energized
enjambment (lines 3-4): oil oozes into the next line
Questions why men don't heed God's power? (line 4)
Men soil the earth with their presence, "trade", capitalism (lines 6-8)
People are no longer in touch with the earth; can be read literally (line 8)
Nature will always refresh itself (lines 9-10)
"Broods" can mean to sit on a nest or to worry (line 14)
"As Kingfishers Catch Fire" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sonnet about the inscape of different beings
Stones ring as they bounce off the sides of a well (line 3)
Bells ring out its name as it swings against its bow (lines 3-4)
What entities do to enact "Self" is God-given (lines 7-8)
God created man in his image, though each man has his own design (lines 9-11)
"The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
sonnet
"dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon" (line 2): dawn sky is drawing speckles on Falcon
"...rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing" (line 4): Falcon is riding the wind like a human riding a horse
Lines 7-8: Such an ordinary bird left an impression on the speaker
Buckle (line 10): can mean prepare for action, fasten together, to collapse
Soil is refreshed under dry dirt (line 12)
Things that seem to unremarkable open up to be beautiful; the speaker is recognizing the Falcon's inscape through instress
"Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Pied: Two or more colors in blotches, variegated
Brinded cow (line 2): brownish orange cow with streaks of gray
Sequined trout (line 3)
Line 7-8: Things that are freckled are unique
Thanks God for his unique creations (lines 9-11)
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