Victorian Escapism

Flashcards on Victorian Escapism based on lecture notes.

Victorian Escapism

Less violent, less intense, less passionate escapism, lacking dramatic flow and reduced to delicate elements.

Romantic Escapism

Violent, intense, passionate escapism with cosmic dramatic intensity.

Places of Escape in the Victorian Era

Nature, Exotic spaces, Religion, Eros, Cultural Past, Childhood, Dream and Art

William Morris

Optimistic perspective on domesticating nature and designer of mild natural elements in symmetrical patterns and decorative nature such as flowers, plants, trees and non-ferocious animals.

Kipling’s Jungle Book

Exotic space where nature is wild and dangerous. Mowgli learns how to make friends and control nature (the nature of the jungle, the nature within himself and within the village people he goes to. He makes use of animals’ wisdom in order to tame the wild nature of man)

A pessimistic perspective on nature

Pessimistic perspective on nature seen as an indomitable evil exterior force, as wild (and evil) human nature

Burnett's Secret Garden

Novel where sadness and loneliness are suggested in the presence of the unweeded garden.

Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations

Novel where the garden of Miss Havisham represents the fallen garden.

Matthew Arnold’s view on Nature

Violent phenomena of the material world or the nature of women leading to nature becoming eroticised

Carl Jung’s Animus-Anima

The irrational feminine principle becoming man’s alter ego.

Escape in Religion

Feeling of escape from Puritan to Catholic approach to divinity or from atheism and industrialism to the Christian religion

God

Replaced by the spirit/metaphysics of nature where God is absent but there is an energy of nature, a sort of pantheism which makes the text very poetic.

Escape in Eros

The protagonist caught between the bad angel (Arabella) and the good angel (Susan)

Example of Escape in Eros

When the protagonist is atopos: he is caught between the bad angel (Arabella) and the good angel (Susan)

Childhood in the Victorian Era

Instead of being a space of safety and bliss, it is felt as a prison or a nightmare.

Escape in Art

Art creates its own universe and is self-sufficient.

Pre-Raphaelites

Movement that developed a cult of the heroes whom they called “the immortals” and focused upon the images and personalities of Jesus Christ, Homer and his work, King Alfred, Shakespeare and his plays, Dante Alighieri, Leonardo Davinci.

Proserpine

An evil woman who initiates men into evil love and death

Arabella

Initiates Jude into physical love to finally contribute to his destruction