Puritan elements in the Victorian Age
The Victorian Age was, on the whole a Puritan Age. Social conventions were rather marked out and any overstepping of the lines was promptly condemned and punished by ostracism. Like most periods of strait-jacketing, it was self-righteous, smug, almost priggish age. And it was quite inevitably a didactic age replete with sermons, and lectures dutifully delievered by those call upon to preach and teach and more or less dutifully listened to by those eager to confirm.
The bulk of Victorian literature bears the moral stamp of the times.
Prose
Some of the major prose writers wrote not so much to entertain as to interpret and to correct.
In most of their essays on social and industrial problem the "prophet" Carlyle, Arnold, Newman and Ruskin undeniably give the impression of feeling that the "time is out of joint" and that they have called upon to set it right.
Prose fiction
The purposefulness of the period reflected also in the prose fiction. In the most romantic George Eliot's novel Romola the exists for the purpose of revealing that the wages of self-indulgence, selfishness and social sin is death.
Novel
Many of the novels of Charles Dickens are vehicle of conveying his moral and social ideas
Poetry
In the poetry there is the same reflection of the morality of the age. Arnold insists that great literature must be characterized by "high-seriousness". Although Browning's poems are more intellectual than emotional, they are almost always moral in the Victorian sense of the word. Tennyson finally emboides the very essence of the age. In spite of the range and variety of his age, the Victorian note predominates. He is the most Victorian of poets, moral to the core, self-conscious to the end. Like queens he laureate he was for more than forty years, he understood the middle class virtues of his periods and took pride in teaching them through the medium of his poems. It was this purpose, no doubt, even more than his high art which made him the most popular Victorian poets.
The Victorian Age was, on the whole a Puritan Age. Social conventions were rather marked out and any overstepping of the lines was promptly condemned and punished by ostracism. Like most periods of strait-jacketing, it was self-righteous, smug, almost priggish age. And it was quite inevitably a didactic age replete with sermons, and lectures dutifully delievered by those call upon to preach and teach and more or less dutifully listened to by those eager to confirm.
The bulk of Victorian literature bears the moral stamp of the times.
Prose
Some of the major prose writers wrote not so much to entertain as to interpret and to correct.
In most of their essays on social and industrial problem the "prophet" Carlyle, Arnold, Newman and Ruskin undeniably give the impression of feeling that the "time is out of joint" and that they have called upon to set it right.
Prose fiction
The purposefulness of the period reflected also in the prose fiction. In the most romantic George Eliot's novel Romola the exists for the purpose of revealing that the wages of self-indulgence, selfishness and social sin is death.
Novel
Many of the novels of Charles Dickens are vehicle of conveying his moral and social ideas
Poetry
In the poetry there is the same reflection of the morality of the age. Arnold insists that great literature must be characterized by "high-seriousness". Although Browning's poems are more intellectual than emotional, they are almost always moral in the Victorian sense of the word. Tennyson finally emboides the very essence of the age. In spite of the range and variety of his age, the Victorian note predominates. He is the most Victorian of poets, moral to the core, self-conscious to the end. Like queens he laureate he was for more than forty years, he understood the middle class virtues of his periods and took pride in teaching them through the medium of his poems. It was this purpose, no doubt, even more than his high art which made him the most popular Victorian poets.
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