1) Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde's many poems, plays and novels poke subtle fun at the Victorian mainstream, addressing the faults and the problems inherent within that society. Many of his works deal with the decadence and beauty of the Victorian upper class, as well as how empty and duplicitous that society is. By painting detailed portraits of flawed and overly vain characters, he shows the Victorian aristocrat as someone nearly inhuman, and far from sympathetic. In many ways, it transcends the nature of the Victorian mainstream by holding a mirror up to it and pointing out its flaws, whether through parody in Importance of Being Earnest or nearly literally through the Gothic Picture of Dorian Grey.
Wilde's own position about his place in Victorian culture was mixed, as he never felt as though he belonged, and felt actively persecuted for his beliefs. In De Profundis, an account of his time in prison for 'gross indecency,' he betrays his disregard for the social mores of Victorian society, opting instead to live the way he wanted to life: "I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom" (De Profundis 739). Oscar Wilde was a mysterious figure, one whose own frustrations with his own life often reflected in his works. This was definitely true of his Gothic horror novel The Picture of Dorian Gray - a tale of sin, desire and hidden evil lying underneath the surface of a man who, on the surface, has it all. However, the connections between Wilde's life and the story of Dorian are very clear when you look closer; like Dorian, Wilde was tortured by his own secret nature, which had to be hidden away for fear of rejection from society. Oscar Wilde's homosexuality and problems with his self image affected his work on The Picture of Dorian Gray, and he definitely used his works to express his own frustrations and lack of peace within Victorian society.
2) Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold is famous for coining the term 'philistine,' a word that he used to describe the English middle class in the Victorian Era, who allowed doubt to cloud their faith. This is a wonderful microcosm for Arnold's own perspective on the Victorian mainstream, as he critiqued the spirit of his age as one that lacked the faith and religiosity of his forebears. His book, Culture and Anarchy, notes the importance of culture as a "study of perfection," which did away with classes and created a transcendental world for humanity to live in (Arnold). Much of Arnold's work emphasizes this social criticism of Victorian society as irreligious and decadent, always wrapped up in conflict instead of getting down to the business of engaging with each other and God, and working to create a perfect society. In "Dover Beach," he writes that "we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night" (Arnold). This can be interpreted as metaphorical for Arnold's perception of Victorian society - constantly fighting for righteousness and social superiority, all of these conflicts being immaterial to the struggle between faith and doubt.
Arnold sees life in Victorian society as ultimately unfulfilling and without peace, as society has gone too far away from religion to be focused and happy. In "The Scholar-Gipsy," Arnold writes about "this strange disease of modern life, / With its sick hurry, its divided aims," noting that this perspective should be avoided in order to prevent oneself from being infected by it (line 203). To that end, it is clear that Arnold sees little peace in Victorian society, choosing instead to opt for a more transcendentalist viewpoint for humanity, getting in touch with God and Culture over the vagaries and confusion of modern society.
3) Dante Rossetti
The work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti are incredibly sensual, having a great eye for detail and a strange spirituality in its medievalism. Unlike most of prim and proper Victorian society, Dante enjoyed exploring traditional values in non-traditional ways, eschewing Victorian modesty and properness in favor of lurid sexuality and religiosity. While Victorian beauties were often portrayed as innocent blondes with souls that lie separate from their body, Dante, in "The Blessed Damozel" betrayed a union of body and soul that flew in the face of Victorian notion that the soul was more important. In "The Blessed Damozel," Dante writes, “The blessed damozel leaned out / From the gold bar of Heaven; / Her eyes were deeper than the depth / Of waters stilled at even” (Rossetti 1-4). By having both her body and soul perform actions at the same time in the same place, he notes that body and soul are the same; furthermore, this eroticization of the woman, even in Heaven, makes his stories even more lurid. In "Jenny," he characterizes a sleeping prostitute with loving, sensuous language, equating sense with thought: "Come, come, what use in thoughts like this? / Poor little Jenny, good to kiss, — / You'd not believe by what strange roads / Thought travels, when your beauty goads / A man to-night to think of toads!" (Dante).
Through his unique examination of the world and of beauty, Dante rarely found much comfort in the world during the Victorian era, especially because of his obsession with the perfect, idealized woman. any of his works are about the frustration of no longer being able to attain women as easily as he could before, what with the changing mores of Victorian society allowing women to have ore rights and agency.
4) Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti's works commented often on the role of women in Victorian society, in particular about their own sexual desires and social status. Rossetti also explored issues of religious temptation and redemption through suffering, as well as social poverty, which was a rampant issue in Victorian society. Through her works and poems, Rossetti challenged the Victorian mainstream's lack of care for the poor and disenfranchised, particularly women and children, and defended women's ability to reconcile and be forgiven in the face of sexual trespasses. In "Goblin Market," Rossetti's feminist politics are very clearly found; she criticizes Victorian society's rejection of 'fallen women,' women who have had sex before wedlock, and the social order that necessitates Victorian marriage markets. Talking about Lizzie's dead friend Jeanie, "Who should have been a bride; / But who for joys brides hope to have / Fell sick and died," cements this perspective, as sexual temptation is shown as something common to women in the Victorian era, but not beyond redemption (Rossetti). Food is often used to conceptualize sexual temptation, creating further links between this theme and the Adam and Eve story; lines like "She sucked their fruit globes fair or red" help to equate sexuality with eating of the forbidden fruit (Rossetti). Rossetti uses her works to find comfort in women's solidarity in the Victorian era; the tale of "Goblin Market," in which two sisters fend for each other in the face of a monstrous environment dominated by sexually ravenous goblins. Here, the patriarchal society of Victorian England is combated by heroic sisterhood, something Rossetti herself seems to take great pride in; female autonomy through this sisterhood helps to successfully stave off the goblin creatures and reconcile the two halves of womanhood (and Rossetti) - the ascetic and the sensual.
5) William Morris
William Morris' poems are almost always very dark, including "The Defence of Guinevere," and revealed a distinctly socialist message that was extremely at odds with the proper and capitalist Victorian society of the day. He was extremely distrustful of the upper classes, and did not feel as though they worked in the best interests of the people. The increasing mechanization of English society was also to blame, as it made the labor class even more dehumanized. As a result, he used fantasy in his poetry to return to more chivalrous, fantastical times, rejecting the Victorian mainstream and opting instead for social democracy. Morris deals with dark, solemn themes of death and choices in his work, particularly "The Defence of Guinevere: when Guinevere attempts to defend herself after her dalliance with Lancelot, she asks her accusers to imagine their deathbed: "Listen, suppose your time were come to die, / And you were quite alone and very weak; / Yea, laid a dying while very mightily / The wind was ruffling up the narrow streak / Of river through your broad lands running well" (lines 16-20). Despite the high fantasy setting of the poem, this passage in particular shows a psychological depth to Guinevere's personality taken in the Victorian form of a dramatic monologue. Morris did not find any sort of solace or comfort in the capitalist and cutthroat nature of Victorian society; this is why he became such a staunch socialist and activist. He was extremely discontent with the system that was already in place: "What shall I say concerning its mastery of and its waste of mechanical power, its commonwealth so poor, its enemies of the commonwealth so rich, its stupendous organization—for the misery of life!" (Morris). Here, he notes the offensive nature of the class and income inequalities of Victorian society, as well as the dangers of mechanization and industrialization, all of which he noted as being incredibly dissatisfying and ugly to him.
6) Walter Pater
Walter Pater, unlike many of the more radical Victorian writers, admired the romanticism and classicism of Victorian society and wrote on that often. The glorification and idealization of women present in Victorian society, while also being combated by women's rights advocates so as not to commodify women, was celebrated by Pater in his essay on the painting "La Gioconda." He was an aestheticist first and foremost, always admiring form over function - to that end, the decadence and opulence found in upper-class Victorian society, as well as the art of antiquity, very much appealed to him. In his essay on "La Gioconda," Pater states that be believes that the Mona Lisa represents the "ideal lady, embodied and beheld at last" (Pater). By saying 'beheld at last,' Pater implies that objectification of women is somewhat acceptable, as women are worshipped by him and made into more of an ideal than an actual person. He, like the typical Victorian romantic, has the capability of ascribing to the Mona Lisa any and all traits he decides to in his idealization - "She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave" and so on (Pater). Pater's primary source of solace and comfort came in this idealization of women; by studying and exploring femininity as an object to be acquired and worshipped, Pater allowed his own patriarchal ideas of women as sexualized commodities to glorify the Victorian era's similar perspectives. By attributing mystery and idealism to the female form, Pater exemplifies Victorian patriarchal ideas of women as commodity: "The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire" (Pater).
7) Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne rebelled strongly against the Victorian mainstream, through his own extremely sexual and pathological poetry. These works were shocking to Victorian audiences at the time. Swinburne's works are extremely decadent and full of vice, containing florid word choice that masked the depravity in lines and meters of extreme beauty. By showing these beautiful instances of sex and death, Swinburne created controversy and dealt with the prudishness of Victorian society through this sensationalism. In this way, Swinburne showed the incredible acts of sensuality and eroticism that he perhaps felt were lacking in open Victorian society. Swinburne was very much preoccupied with sexuality and erotic experimentation, showing such lurid detail in his poem "Hermaphroditus": "Where between sleep and life some brief space is, / With love like gold bound round about the head, / Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed" (Swinburne). He was also a profoundly hedonistic, secular poet, as he wrote greatly about death and its finality, despite the presence of gods and the like: "So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep. / For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep" (Swinburne, "Hymn to Proserpine"). Through his poems, Swinburne seemed to be very much at odds with the rise of Christianity, and so he wrote these poems to rebel against the diminishing of paganism in English society, particularly in "Hymn to Proserpine" - "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; / We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death" (Swinburne). This exacting and florid prose allowed Swinburne to creatively depict his lament at the popularization of Christianity in Victorian society, and poke fun at the conservativeness of sexuality the upper class professed.
Works Cited
Norton Anthology Of English Literature - Vol 2: Romantic Period Through The 20th Century, 8th edition.
