A great moral inflexibility characterized to the society of this historical period. In the Victorian era, it was aspired to the vigor, to the alteration, to the dignity and to the human moral stability, so that the romanticism, the feelings, the emotions, that is to say, the “adventures”, they were not provoking but distrust and slight. Without place to doubts, the Victorian era, from the coronation of the Victory queen, in 1837, until his death, in 1901, it was an era of social transformations. The attention of many writers was directed, sometimes passionately, problems as the development of the English democracy, the education of the bulks, the industrial progress and the materialistic philosophy that brought with himself, and the situation of the working class.

The three authors more important of the Victorian era were occupied of social problems. Though Alfred Tennyson began within of the Romanticism soon it was interested by religious problems as that of the faith, the social change and the political power; example of this is his elegy “In memoriam” (1850). His style, as well as his conservatism typically English, contrast with the intellectualism of Robert Browning. The third of these Victorian authors, Matthew Arnold, is maintained aside from the previous because he is a thinker more sharp and sensible. His labour as literary reviewer is very important and this poetry exposes a pessimism offsetted by a strong sense of the duty, as occurs in his poem “Beach of Dover” (1867).

The novel was converted in the dominant literary form during the Victorian era. The realism was the trend that was imposed as we can see in the novels of Jane Austen, as “Pride and prejudice” (1813). The historical novels of Walter Scott, of the same era, as Ivanhoe (1820), conside the spirit against which the realistic reacted. The novels of Dickens about the contemporary life, as “Oliver Twist” (1837) or “David Copperfield” (1849), demonstrate an astonishing ability to recreate incredibly live characters.

Their plays constitute a satire of the official hypocrisy and of the conventions of the Victorian era. Dickens describes with bitterness and sentimentality a society that permitted still the exploitation and mishap of the destitute childhood and is shown critical before the incomprehension that was making ostentation the trusting English middle class. Their portraits of the social evils and his capacity for the caricature and the humour provided to him countless readers and the recognition of the critique as one of the important novelists of all the times. His play is devoted to illuminate the world less favored and practically ignored by a public that closed the eyes before the tragedy of the humble.

Other notable figures of the Victorian era, were Anthony Trollope and the sisters Bronte. Emily wrote one of the most important novels of all the times, “Stormy summits” (1847), while their sisters Charlotte and Anne also wrote memorable plays. George Eliot is other important novelist of the universal literature, as well as George Meredith and Thomas Hardy.

Finally, we can emphasize Oscar Wilde, the confrontation that Oscar Wilde makes between the hard work and the idleness seems to be guided to old ideas formed about the happiness. For Wilde the artist is converted into a symbol of a society without the duty of a necessary work. “The importance of be called Ernest” is one of the plays most known of Oscar Wilde, it is the most brilliant of all his comedies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

-Encyclopedia Microsoft Encarta, Microsoft Corporation, 2000

-GIRALT, Emily. Historia Universal Salvat. Salvat editors, S.A, Barcelona, 1985