VICTORIAN AGE
The Industrial Revolution took
place in Britain in 1865-1900 (it used to refer to the reign of Queen Victoria)
and it had created radical changes in the economy and society; with migration of
workers to industrial towns, the democratization; changes in religious faith due
to the advances of scientific knowledge; and changes in the role of women. All
these political and social issues are reflected in the Victorian literature
though the expansion of the newspapers and press.
What defined the Victorian Era
is the appearance of “the middle class”. The formation of a new class of workers
(women, men and children) who migrated to cities looking for jobs in the
factories. The Industrial Revolution created new opportunities for women and
rights. At this moment/period, women were allowed to write, to go to social
events,…So we can observe that women in the Victorian period have rights; they
became teachers, writers,…Women could even publish their books with their own
name.
However, in the Romantic
period, women had to disguise themselves with a male alias in order to publish
books.
In Victorian era, Women began
to be more important in social roles, instead of being housewifes as they did
during Romanticism. There was a Revolution of Women, and writers started to
represent the Victorian woman as a character and referred to them with titles
such as “The New Woman”, “The girl of the Period”, “The Dangerous Woman of the
period”, “A wife of the period”, “Poetry of the Period”, “The cigar of the
Period” etc.
That was part of the ´breeding
process´, of being educated. The lower class did not have access to this
´breeding process´.
ELIZABETH BARRETT
BROWNING
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was
born in 1806 in Durham, England. Due to her health problem (opium for a nervous
disorder), she lived a childhood and youth isolated in the family castle and was
devoted to the study of the Classics and Shakespearian plays. The lost of her
mother when she was 22, mark signs that we can observe in Aurora Leigh. She is a
prolific author, her poems were praised so much in England as in the United
States; so much so that in Wordsworth´s death she was considered the successor
of the Poet Laureate although it finally went to Tennyson.
She got married to a poet
Robert Browning without his father´s permission, it was the reason why Mr
Barrett disowned her. But she had inherited some money from her own kin so that
the couple were able to escape to Italy where they had a son (Robert Wiedeman
Barrett Browning) in 1849 and Elizabeth recovered in health. There she died in
his arms in 1861, after writing some of her best works. Barrett´s Browning had
an immense impact on society and she was held as the Victorians´ favourite
poet.
During her youth, Elizabeth
was worried about the role of women in society. Marriage was a particularly
interesting topic of the era because of the new generation of women. During the
19th century, women were loosing legal identity in marriage until the
Divorce Act arrived in 1857. We can see this in Aurora Leigh, a
revolutionary poem, as it is an attack on the patriarchal world, discussing
resentment through her mythical, historical and real characters.
Elizabeth had lived feminine
experiences during the 19th century, that made her a writer committed
with her world, and a suffragist, and therefore she was punished by a
conservative press.
The female poets of the
Victorian era belonged to a cultural system in which their passions were
celebrated. We can see it in all her poetry, especially in the forty-four
sonnets that she wrote during her engagement with Robert Browning in which,
passion, devotion and gratitude are shown in a clear way.
The conditions of slavery,
abolitionism, marriage (its illusion and disillusion), motherhood (desirable or
undesirable), passion (sexual or religious), the loose woman (single mother or
prostitute), the militarism and the revival of nationalism are all components of
the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The psychological world of her
characters is a clear sign: her creatures are her with different personalities
and facets. The internal and external character of her poetry was worried about
the restoration of civic-minded liberties of her town in Italy. We can observe
it in her poems “A poem in Italy” or “A Meditation in Tuscany”; in the absence
of freedom as a consequence of the tyranny of the Medici in
Florence.
All her images are related
with concepts such as height and depth; gratification more than frustration;
separation and reconciliation. The symbolism dominates the world of Barrett, as
the masculine as the feminine. It appeared as the basis to which she faced the
philosophical and political values which she was so worried about in her poetry.
She was constantly worried about the lost of the Unity in the Christian
religion. Her symbols always mean to get to the reader in blank verse and as
symbols of impoverishment and exploitation.
The wound is a symbol that
represents the society of those who died, of the prostitutes, of the poor
persons and the social spirit that transformed a world infected by the sins of
men and women.
On the other hand, Barrett
uses the symbol of the bird in all her poetry. Innocence is implied in this
image, where they showed the highlights of the fresh, the nest in the morning
and the power of the nightingale which John Keats showed us in his
Odes.
Elizabeth
genre
Elizabeth Barrett Browning is considered
to be the pioneer in introducing the first feminist elements in literature, that
gave way to the suffragist movement which developed feminism. (Elizabeth was in correspondence with
Edgar Allan Poe and we can observe there how she gave way to the
movement).
Barrett Browning insisted that
(on the contrary of her contemporaries), she disassociates with the term
“Victorian” in dealing with and demanding issues of her time. Sometimes her
poetry is accused of being “little feminism”, to get influence from writers such
as Virginia Woolf.
Barrett Browning admires the
figure of George Sand, to whom she dedicated some poems which are a tribute of
her poetry, and Barrett reproachs her for the use of a masculine pseudonym.
“Thou large-brained woman and
large-hearted man,
Self-called George Sand!
…”
She inversed the stereotypical
qualities usually associated with men and women (man-brain; woman-heart).
Elizabeth refers to the “genius” of Sand as a writer beyond her sex (it does not
matter if she is a woman or a man and leaving the pseudonym aside), who is
coming closer to post-feminist position.
“Till God unsex thee on the
heavenly shore”
This verse refers to a speech
of Lady Macbeth in the play of Shakespeare, this shows clearly the meaning that
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wanted to incorporate in her poems addressed to
George Sand:
“Come, you
spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts.
Unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to
the toe top full
Of drest cruelty”
Lady Macbeth, Macbeth Act
IV
Another work in which Barrett
Browning is getting inside the issue of genre is maybe the most famous and
important work: Aurora Leigh, a novel written in blank verse. It tells of a girl
borne in Italy whose father is English, and having been orphaned returns to the
land of her father, where she encounters difficulties because her literary
inspirations were based on her worries of her society which Barrett Browning
criticized from a feminist and socio-politic view.
The complex structure
narrative is not only useful for the plot of the novel-poem, but also allows the
different characters, among them Aurora, to express their thoughts and
desires.
“I read a score of books on
womanhood
To prove, if women do not
think at all
They may teach thinking (to a
maiden aunt
Or else the
author)…”
“By the way,
The works of woman are
symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our
fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what?...
”
This type of criticism
continues all through her work. For example; in “A Man´s Requirement” an ironic
poem about conventional love; or “The Cry of the Children” in which she
criticized the degradation and exploitation of children, and the poverty of her
society at that time.
“They look up with their pale
and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to
see.
For they mind you of their
angels in high places,
With eyes turn on
Deity.
“How long”, the say “How
long”, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the
world on a child´s heart-
Stifle down with a mailed heel
its palpitation,
And tread onward to your
throne amid the mart!
Our blood splashes upward, O
gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your
path!
But the child´s sob in the
silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his
wrath”
So we can observe that
Elizabeth was an atypical author at her time, the first poet and writer with
heavy influence in the 19th century and whose works remain through
the years, setting the basis for a movement of poets to come who would reference
her.
In spite of this, the work of
Barrett Browning also leans on her formal structure and style. In Aurora Leigh,
for example, we can see how the author changes the tone and style of her
narrative; from a retrospective narrative of Aurora in Book I, to the facts that
you can appreciate the difference between author and character in Book V where
the main issue is the searching of emotional realization and the
self-consciousness.
Because of the mutual
understanding of author and character, it is difficult to make differences,
which shares a similarity with the Romantic poetry of Wordsworth. Reflecting in
his autobiographic poetry, Barrett Browning captures her philosophy and feminism
in a male chauvinist society.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was
a pioneer of her time and an idealist, who fought against the imposition of her
society.
Aurora Leigh is “a novel-poem”. Elizabeth
fuses genres together to form a collage. She combines a verse to Bildungsroman; the growth of a poet´s
mind (the development of a youthful protagonist as he or she matures. It is a
kind of “education novel”, which explores the youth adulthood of a protagonist
searching for the meaning of life and the nature of the world). She explored the
relation between gender and genre and she also created a feminine tradition by
alluding to her predecessors. She transfers The Victorian woman´s novel to the
long poem.
Aurora Leigh tries to explain the ways of
God to men and the problem of faith between having faith or keeping that faith.
There are biblical references.
The protagonist of Aurora
Leigh offers a radical redefinition of the hero from a point of view of a woman
author. The novel-poem has contemporary setting. Elizabeth uses the past as a
literary form in a way to talk about contemporary issues but keeping an
aesthetic distance
Aurora Leigh has a narrative structure and
Elizabeth focus on the relations between man and woman, and especially the
marriage. The reader has to experience the world as the poet sees it, and her
main poetic theory; women in their battle with oppressing
men.
The poem Aurora
Leigh
represents the life of a woman poet, Elizabeth Barret Browning, who uses Aurora
in order to defend her right to be a poet. It explores The Woman question;
the nature and role of women in the Victorian period.
AURORA
LEIGH
...
I read a score of books on
womanhood
To prove, if women do not
think at all
They may teach thinking (to a
maiden aunt
Or else the author) – books
that bodly assert
Their right of comprehending
husband´s talk
When not too deep, and even of
answering
With pretty “may it please
you”, or “so it is”—
Their rapid insight and fine
aptitude,
Particular worth and general
missionaries,
As long as they keep quiet by
the fire
And never say “no” when the
word says “ay”,
For that is fatal—their
angelic reach
Of virtue, chiefly used to sit
and darn,
And fatten household
sinners—their, in brief
Potential faculty in
everything
Of abdicating power in it: she
owned
She liked a woman to be
womanly,
An English women, she thanked
God and sighed
(Some people always sigh in
thanking God),
Were models to the universe.
And last
I learnt cross-stitch, because
she did not like
To see me wear the night with
empty hands
A-doing nothing. So, my
shepherdess
Was something after all (the
pastoral saints
Be praised for´t), leaning
lovelorn with pink eyes
To match her shoes, when I
mistook the silks;
Her head uncrushed by that
roundweight of hat
So strangely similar to the
tortoise shell
Which slew the tragic poet
.
By the way,
The works of women are
symbolical.
We sew sew, prick of fingers,
dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of
slippers, sir,
To put on when you´re weary =
or a stool
To stumble over and vex
you…”curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion,
where you lean
And sleep, and dream of
something we are not
But would be for your sake.
Alas, alas!
This hurst most, this—that,
after all, we are paid
The worth of our work,
perhaps.
…
(Book 1, 427-465)
ROBERT
BROWNING
PORPHYRIA’S
LOVER
The rain set early in
tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for
spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to
break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the
storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the
cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the
dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat
and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And
called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made
her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And,
stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow
hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's
endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties
dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
But passion sometimes would
prevail,
Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one
so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind
and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last l knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine,
fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her
hair
In one long yellow string l wound
Three times her little throat
around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no
pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And l untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning
kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder
bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little
head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is
fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed
not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together
now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said
aword!
ROBERT
BROWNING
Robert Browning
was born in a
suburb in London “Camberwell” in 1812. He is a child of Ana and Robert Browning.
He was educated at home and at the age of fourteen he spoke Latin, Greek,
Italian, and French. He was an student at University College London.
Robert Browning admired
Elizabeth´s poetry. Their relationship started when he sent letters of
admiration to her about her poetry, and ended up sending letters of love to her.
Throughout their marriage, Robert Browning learnt from his wife and she was a
model and wife to study and follow. Elizabeth dedicated her Sonnets from the Portuguese to her
husband and Robert dedicated his best poetry to her “Men and Woman”. Elizabeth was much more
popular than him during their lifetime.
He admired the Romantics
poets, especially Shelley.
“The Ring and the
Book” is a
long narrative poem, it is based on an “old yellow book” which told a murder
case and trial in Rome 1690, this poem was the most ambitious project of Robert
and gave him significant recognition.
In 1881 it was founded the
Browning Society.
Robert Browning invented the “dramatic monologue”. He
uses a new poetic form, a new genre with his own rules. He wrote poetry that
never was understood and enjoyed by his society. The readers of Victorianism do
not seem themselves reflected with the poem. They were accustomed with the
first-person speaker that was the poet or his idealized persona, but audiences
at that poem they only see a homicidal maniac of “Porphyria´s Lover”. He strangles his
lover with his own hair in order to haver her love forever. In “My Last Duchess”, the mind of the
speaker is mad. The Duchess is murder but she is just reduced to an object d´art
in the Duke´s collection of paintings.
CONCLUSION
Thanks to some authors, such
as Elizabeth Barrett Browning women are evolved in society and we still keep
fighting for the same human rights as men. We are all individuals (men and
women), we are all human being but we are not equal and we have the rights to be
treated right and to be put the individual as women as men in society. Elizabeth
was the poetess of the Victorian period that contributed on her society for
these rights and had a great influence on our society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Browning, Robert. Selected
Poetry and Prose. London and New York: Routledge, by Aidan Day
1991.
Browning. Men and Women and
Other Poems. London: the Macmillan press ltd, by J.R. Watson
1974.
Browning, Robert. Poems
selected by W. E Williams. England: Penguin Books 1954.
The Victorian
Web.
University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore. 2 Dec.
2008
Literary
History. By
Donna J. Pridmore 1998-2007. 2 Dec. 2008
http://www.literaryhistory.com/19thC/BROWNING.html
Liceus. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. Jose Luis Caramés Lage.
Universidad de Oviedo. 2 Dec.
2008
http://www.liceus.com/cgi-bin/aco/lit/02/11910.asp
Thomas Hampson: I hear America
singing 3
Dec.2008
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/poet/browning.html
Wikipedia the free
Encyclopedia
4 Dec. 2008
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_era
Wikipedia the free
Encyclopedia
4 Dec. 2008
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Victorian_Era
The Norton Anthology of
English Literature Norton topics online
2003-2008. 2 Dec. 2008
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/English/nael/Victorian/welcome.html