Literature As A Mirror of The Era
Literature As A Mirror of The Era
Literature As A Mirror of The Era
DONE BY:
LATRECHE Anfel
TERRAI Ilhem
(Group 3)
SUPERVISOR:
HAMADOU Yasmin
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Outline:
I. Introduction:
Overview
Realism
Moral purpose
II. Body:
III. Conclusion
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1. An Overview:
Over the six decades of Queen Victoria’s reign, some 60,000 works of prose fiction were
published in Great Britain alone. This unprecedented growth was due in part to in part to the
spread of education, the emergence of the middle classes, and the proliferation of more
too did the demand for new types of literature increase –a demand that was met by more than
7,000 authors.
Queen Victoria came to the throne during the world’s first Industrial Revolution, a time
characterized by rapid change and development. Key advances in communication methods and
the growth of the railway network led to a boom in print production and distribution.
As reading became less of a privilege of the wealthy and more of a pastime of the common
British citizens, publications such as periodicals flourished. These magazines provided monthly
installments of news articles, satire essays, poetry and fiction. Theses serial publications enabled
many authors to easily share their works with the public and helped launch the careers of
prominent Victorian writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Tennyson, and the
Browning’s (Norton). Because literature was an accessible and pervasive part of Victorian
society, studying it is crucial in understanding the attitudes and concerns of the people who lived
during the era. Most of the writing during this time was a reaction to the rapidly changing
1. 1. Victorian Compromise: The Victorian period was a time of great contradiction, often referred to as
Victorian compromise; Victorians took a compromising position between dualistic ideologies. An effort
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was made to restore the old and the new to bring about a compromise between morality and depravity,
faith and doubt, progress and tradition as well as romanticism and realism. 2. Realism: during this era,
Literature shifted its interest from romanticism to realism, which strives to represent life without
idealization; faithful representation of reality. 3. Moral Purpose: Victorian Literature was marked by a
deep moral purpose; Literature both in prose and poetry departed from the purely artistic standard of
art’s sake and became replete with morale values to uplift and instruct the common masses. 4. The
reclaiming of the past: this was a major part of Victorian Literature that was found in both classical
1) The Novel:
"A novel is not simply a vehicle for private expression, But that it also exists for social examination."
Margret Atwood
The authors of this era all seem to reflect on life experiences to convey their thoughts about
One of the most famous authors of the time is Charles Dickens. His books contained the harsh
reality of the world; they showed the truth of what was going on in London at the time of the early 19th
century. Many issues that occurred during the Victorian era inspired Dickens writings greatly. In his
famous works, "Oliver Twist", "Great Expectations", "Nicholas Nickleby", Charles portrays the
sordid lives of criminals, exposes the cruel treatment of many orphans and how they were used in the
worst ways, and discusses how people were defined by how much wealth they had and what status they
were. Dickens emphasized various themes in his stories. He reflected upon the superficial attitudes of
Victorian Society, focused on the real meaning of poverty, discussed the idea of crime and the
difference between being born a criminal and an influenced one, so, while crime was high during the
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Victorian era, much of it had to do with people being forced into it because of their social standing. In
addition, Charles often considered the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. During this
period, the lower classes experienced squalid working and living conditions. Dickens himself
experienced this hardship as a child when he was forced to work in a shoe factory after his father was
sent to debtor's prison. This influenced his depiction of the Marshall Sea prison in Little Dorrit. Prisons,
orphanages, or slums may seem grim settings for a story, but they allowed Dickens to shed light on how
George Eliot is also regarded as one of the Victorian Era's most prominent novelists. In her
masterpiece "Adam Bede" (1859), she states, "let us have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to
the faithful representing of commonplace things". Through this quotation, George explicitly expresses her
realist orientation, similar to that of Dickens. Using literature, she tried to accurately mirror the world and
For instance, in another of her famous works -called "Middlemarch" (1871-72), Eliot denounces
the harshness of oppressive social expectations through discussing the ways people, especially women;
conduct themselves and how the community judges them. On the other hand, she shows that any
resistance is inherently limited, as ways of living for women at the time did not exist.
2) Poetry:
Following Romanticism, Victorian poets continued many of the previous era's main themes, such
as religious skepticism, but they also raised other distinct themes related to the issues that emerged
during the Victorian Era. Realism was one of the features that characterized the Victorian poetry; it had
less idealized view of nature as compared to the Romantic poetry. Poets like Lord Alfred Tennyson and
Robert Browning were the first to depart from the tradition of 'art for art's sake' and were very conscious
Victorian poets portrayed the misery that Industrial Revolution had brought about in the society.
Under the new order of economy, the world became more complex and stranger, which made humans
more individualized than ever before, but also made them fail to find their position in society. People
felt less satisfaction and freedom, but more isolation. True that on the surface, Victorians seemed to
enjoy the wealth and prosperity, but the feelings of uncertainty, cynicism, and self-doubt also prevailed.
The poets of this age reflected these problems in their poems and wrote on isolation, despair, doubt, and
general pessimism that surrounded the era; besides, they raised voice for indiscrimination against the
common masses. To demonstrate, Tennyson’s poem, ‘Locksley Hall’ (1842) is about the restless “young
England”. Mathew Arnold explored the “strange disease of modern life” and the loneliness of modern-
age men in his poem ‘The Scholar-Gipsy’ (1853). In ‘The City of Dreadful Night’, Arthur Hugh Clough
deals with the note of Insomnia and Pessimism. In addition, the Victorian era was the first grate age of
doubt; leading 19th century intellectuals battled the church and struggled to absorb radical scientific
discoveries that upended everything the Bible had told them about the world. The leading Poets of this
age reacted to this religious skepticism through their works. To illustrate, Robert Browning attempted to
criticize religion in his poems like ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’. He also questioned the demands of the church that
go against human nature. Similarly, When Tennyson wrote ‘In Memoriam’ (1850), he raised many
questions on life and death. Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’ (1867), also addresses the eroding religious
iii. Conclusion:
The Victorian Era was, indeed, a time of great economic, political, and social changes. The writers
of the time often reflected these substantial changes in their literature focusing of the interest of society.
Themes like science vs. religion, progress, social class and women question had been a center of
SOURCES:
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vRUtYr2_jYlakX1JilX8FP_9Pj36Roc1TStO3gS7kqRsRc&fallb
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2. https://career101.in/characteristics-of-victorian-poetry/4885/
3. Wikipedia
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLke4z4ArMI
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffv3GzOU5D
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBCnhoFbLtA
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6vjjQKWoIA