There are key features which define Victorian era literature. While some trends in literature may be difficult to define, the Victorian era is not. It is not only easily definable, current classic literature is riddled with examples of it.
Victorian era literature contains some combination of several primary characteristics. While not every piece contains every characteristic, it is common to find more than one in those works. It includes serialization resulting in many Victorian era literary works being interminably long. Often ideas of industrialization appear as it reflects the changes people from every social stratum were forced to cope with. Class was a consistently recurring theme in Victorian literature as it was an important part of the Victorian era. One might also see efforts to reconcile science and religion. The Victorian trend tackled both progress and nostalgia and often one resulted in the other. Frequently the plight of a woman and how she overcame her circumstances are a topic for the Victorian era trend (Bennett & Royle 129).
Much of the Victorian era literature is quite long, but that was not some random effort on the part of authors to ramble incessantly. On the contrary, serialization was a popular tool authors used to publish their works. Instead of a novel, works were released pages or chapters at a time in a weekly publication. Not unlike the comics of today’s print paper that may carry a story over days or weeks, serials were a novel broken down into manageable, publishable bits and released to the public. Serializing novels was the introduction to the season cliff hanger except back then one did not have to wait nine months for the new season; they waited a week for a new chapter (Bennett & Royle 132). Those serial installments, however, once put together in one place, constituted a daunting novel.
Industrialization was efforts by Victorian era authors to grapple with the changes taking place in England and the subsequent struggles associated with those changes. Many Victorian era themes followed farming communities industrializing as their simpler ways of life could no longer sustain them. Often conflicts between a sedate, quaint agricultural existence and a fast-paced, hard-hitting industrial life were the catalyst for other conflicts throughout a story. Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, North and South, is a prime example of this very idea. In her book, a genteel woman raised in a gentle, farmland part of England is transplanted with her family to Northern, industrial England where she faces for the first time the struggles and successes of men and women working industrial jobs and the differences in those realities (Bennett & Royle 213).
Being able to weigh science against religion was often a theme for Victorian literature. Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859. Following that, Victorian era intellects took up the cause against their God-fearing counterparts with literary explorations serving as their trailblazers for the next uncharted world of science (Bennett & Royle 200).
Progress appeared often in Victorian era literature as the world became increasingly industrialized, wealth was no longer synonymous with lineage, and women were growing increasingly restless under the thumbs of fathers, husbands and brothers. This, like the tenet of class, often showed up in literary characters reaching beyond the station in which they were born and becoming something greater than themselves (Bennett & Royle). It was also reflected in dying towns experiencing resurgence and waning ideas being reworked and turned into the philosophy of modern thought.
With themes of progress, nostalgia must almost always appear. Nostalgia gives the author a chance to remind readers that not all things of the past were bad and there is sadness in letting them go. The things that were not ideal must die, and death is always difficult, even when that which will replace it is shiny, new and progressive. Many writers were not as progressive in thought at others and felt the changes taking place in England were the first tidings for a national crisis. They feared the changes they were seeing and that is reflected in their writing of simpler times believed to be better. Tennyson wrote prose of the wonders of Camelot suggesting these were better times and remembering them to readers as idyllic (Bennett & Royle 189). However, Mr. Tennyson did not remind his readers of the black plague, inquisitions and witch hunts. But then, that is what nostalgia is about.
Gender issues were often a part of Victorian literature. While they are not the issues of today, they represented the beginnings of feminist movements and the backlash against those movements. Options were limited for women in the Victorian era. They would live in poverty, be born to wealth, or become a governess (Bennett & Royle 121). And novels about just such lives abounded: Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair created heroines who joined the working world as a governess then found a way to move beyond their humble beginnings.
Victorian literature is easily identifiable not just by the era in which it was written or author who penned it, but by the characteristics common to it. Themes such as progress and nostalgia often went hand-in-hand in novels such as North and South by Gaskell, women’s equality was at the forefront of Woolf’s mind and appears in her writing, class and industrialization often appears in the works of Dickens. Independently these themes may seem of little consequence. But combined by the hands of the great Victorian novelists, great classic literature was formed.
Works Cited
Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle. Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (3rd ed.), 2004. Print. New York: Pearson Longman.
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights, 1967. Print. New York: Washington Square Press.
