Victorian Realism - Essay Example

Victorian Realism The Industrial Revolution was the cause of a great time of change, also referred to in literary circles as the Victorian period. The comfortable old social and cultural norms were being challenged in ways that had never before been experienced as new technology in the form of machines and new social structures in the form of growing cities emerged as driving forces in many people’s everyday lives. “By the beginning of the Victorian period, the Industrial Revolution, as this shift was called, had created profound economic and social changes, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns, where they lived in new urban slums” (“The Victorian Age”, 2007). The rising middle class began breaking down the old class structure that had formed the backbone of European society for so much of its history just as advances in technology and machinery touched off new debate regarding the existence of the soul and the nature of God. Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution touched off new debate as well regarding the veracity of the Bible itself. With the availability of new jobs in the cities, traditional women’s roles were also being challenged as more and more young women sought better futures for themselves within the factory setting. The public was becoming more and more involved in the debates being waged, particularly as newspapers and other periodicals became more prevalent with the introduction of the printing press, introducing and maintaining widespread discourse in the political and social issues of the day. “The Victorian novel, with its emphasis on the realistic portrayal of social life, represented many Victorian issues in the stories of its characters” (“The Victorian Age”, 2007). While the initial reaction to these changes was a nostalgic clinging to the past, now referred to as the Romantic period, later Victorian writers concentrated on presenting their worlds in a more realistic frame of mind based upon the world that was actually around them. To gain an understanding of the change that took place, it is helpful to understand what is meant by Romantic and what is meant by Realism and then apply these concepts to a work of the period, such as Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles. Although the Romantic Period would seem to be so named because of an unusual fascination with stories of love and what we consider ‘romance’ today, the actual literary movement was characterized by a complete ideology that focused on the natural, picturesque and the fantastic as they might have been understood in an idealized Golden Age of society. As a literary movement, it is recognized to have begun sometime during the 1770s and extended into the mid-1800s, a bit longer in America (“Introduction”, 2001). Occurring as it did from the middle of the 1700s to the middle of the 1800s, the Romantic Period was an age of tremendous change and upheaval. The American Revolution shook the world in 1776, inspiring the French Revolution in 1789 (“Introduction”, 2001). The Industrial Revolution also marked this period, introducing a new world view that challenged traditional social structures and provided opportunity for the enterprising common man. Life began its transition from being primarily dictated by the land one owned to an economic structure based on commerce and manufacturing (Greenblatt, 2005). In this switch, there was a great deal of social upheaval as people living in these changing times began to question the status quo. Social class structures were beginning to break down as common men were able to make fortunes in industry and landowners found it more and more difficult to keep the idyllic life they’d constructed alive. “A revolutionary energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the theory and practice of poetry (and all art), but the very way we perceive the world” (“Introduction”, 2001). Characteristics of the genre identified by Welleck (2003) include a “revolt against the principles of neo-classicism criticism, the rediscovery of older English literature, the turn toward subjectivity and the worship of external nature slowly prepared during the eighteenth century” (196). This approach to representation began to lose its appeal, however, as more and more individuals were forced to face life as it was in the urban cities, giving birth to a new approach to literature – realism. It seems almost redundant to provide a definition of what is meant by realism in writing. “Broadly defined as ‘the faithful representation of reality’ or ‘verisimilitude,’ realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing” (Campbell, 2007) but is often traced to the second half of the Victorian period. Some of the primary characteristics of the realist writing style include the concept that the character in all his strengths and weaknesses should be presented as he would exist within his given environment and with his assumed background. Events are plausible and scenes are depicted in accurate yet representative language. According to William Harmon, “Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence” (2002: 428). For many writers, the best way to achieve this realism was to present stories using universal symbols and appeals as a means of showing the reader what is occurring and allowing them to draw their own conclusions and emotional responses based upon the facts as they are presented. This idea would later be identified by author T.S. Eliot as the ‘objective correlative’ in which symbols were used “such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” (Eliot, cited in Pateman, 2005). In bringing this approach to literature to life, later Victorian writers such as Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), developing his talent out of the Romantic movement began to look for motivations and external realistic causes for his characters’ behaviors and decisions. Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’urbervilles, for example, demonstrates to a large extent just how the previous romantic fascination with supernatural influence transitioned into the more realistic portrayal of how external life factors such as societal norms, economic condition or spiritual beliefs might work together to influence a character’s behavior and life choices. The basic text of Hardy’s novel tells the story of a particular woman, Tess, as she makes her way from young maidenhood to death by hanging for having murdered. The novel starts just as Tess is entering the world of adulthood on the eve of their peasant family discovering that they may be distant relations of an old and wealthy family. To further the family’s prospects, she is sent to a nearby ‘relation’ to see if she might be capable of attracting a wealthy husband. She does manage to attract the attention of this relation’s son and he takes advantage of her weakness to take her virtue. However, she is not as fond of him and returns home to give birth to Alec’s son, who dies a week later. Some time later, when she has recovered in body and mind, Tess again enters the world, this time on her own terms, taking a job as a milkmaid and falling in love with Angel Clare, who returns her affection. They are eventually married, but on their wedding night, when each confesses to the other their past sexual transgressions, only Tess is able to forgive and Angel abandons her back to her family. She is now reduced to taking on hard labor to support herself and continues to run into shame and disgrace before she finally again runs into Alec. Although Alec eventually becomes interested in renewing their former acquaintance, Tess is still devoted to Angel and is distracted by the sudden death of her father and the eviction of the family from their home. She has no choice but to accept the hospitality offered by Alec for the benefit of her family. When Angel returns to ask Tess’ forgiveness, she is driven to such despair that she kills Alec, whom she now lives with as a mistress, and she and Angel run away to hide. Although they manage to evade capture for two weeks living in an abandoned mansion, they are eventually discovered and flee to the countryside. They eventually come upon Stonehenge where Tess falls asleep and awakens to find herself surrounded by police. The novel ends with her execution. At every stage of the novel, it is seen that Tess was forced to make decisions based upon conditions that weren’t entirely under her own control while those decisions she did make were based upon her own upbringing, beliefs, conditions and circumstances. When Tess is first introduced within the novel, she is participating in a May Day Celebration. Hardy indicates “The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain” (Ch. 2) of which this celebration is one. To help emphasize this point, Hardy also includes mention of the symbolic accessories that make up the celebration: “In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left a bunch of white flowers” (Ch. 2). The celebration is comprised of a dance in which the young women form the inner circle and in which only women participate. This moving circle of girls and women, with Tess singled out by her red ribbon, is not only a celebration of spring and the renewal of the cycles, but represents the beginning of Tess’ cycle of life as she finally joins in the dance. It is significant that it is at this point that Tess’ father finds out that he is distantly related to a very old and noble family, through a character known as Pagan d’Urberville. This ancient connection, to both family and religion, is incompatible with the Christian morals and ideals of Tess’ modernizing world. “Tess herself realizes the incongruousness of the distant past in relation to her own present as she scorns her ancestors and ‘the dance they had led her’ (Chap. 16)” (Rogers, 1996). From the May Day Dance and the discovery of her relationship to Pagan d’Urberville, Tess moves on to see if Mrs. d’Urberville, who is believed to be a wealthy relation, might help Tess find a better position in the world and thus help her family. The lady in question lived in a modern house on the outskirts of The Chase, which is described as “a truly venerable tract of forest land, one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primeval date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as they had grown when they were pollarded for bows” (Ch. 5). It is within this setting that Alec d’Urberville, encircled by a dark expanse of shadowy trees, takes advantage of Tess’ innocence and robs her of it. “The one particularly exigent connection between man and nature is that of sexuality. Like other natural forces, the sexual impulse is essentially amoral; it influences human destiny without regard for human notions of appropriateness” (Bonica, 1982: 859). While this event will shape the rest of Tess’ life, a natural interpretation of the event does not hold Alec as evil or Tess as impure. However, despite Tess’ continued determination to move beyond her past, her past continues to haunt her and she finds herself lying down in exhaustion at one of the most ancient and pagan landmarks known to man – Stonehenge. Like the life-changing event that occurs within the darkness of the ancient wood, Tess seems to sense the change coming as she and Angel approach Stonehenge after she’s killed Alec: ‘What monstrous place is this?’ said Angel. ‘It hums,’ said she. ‘Hearken!’ He listened. The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. (Ch. 58). Ralph Harrington (2005) points out that this single note, the one-stringed harp, is itself a signal of warning to the pagan concepts of Tess as a sign that there are few options left to her now as compared to the many notes and possibilities she had found when she had first found Angel playing his harp. This dark circle of stones, themselves devoid of the life energy represented by trees, emphasizes the direction that one option would lead Tess. Exhausted, she flings herself down on the one supine stone she finds near her. Finding it warm and inviting compared to the cold of the grass and field and sheltered from the cold wind by an upright pillar, she finds a tremendous peace and drifts into a restful sleep. “The stone upon which Tess rests is an altar, but also prefigures a grave, with all the ominous associations of a final resting place, ‘so solemn and lonely’” (Harrington, 2005). Anyone familiar with this ancient landmark quickly realizes which stone Tess must be resting upon, the stone that is widely believed to have served as an altar, thus transforming Tess into a heroine through her willing acceptance of fate rather than continuing as a fugitive. Rather than placing the actions of the story upon supernatural interference or inner movement brought forward by a response to the sublime elements of the natural world, Hardy keeps his story firmly placed in the real by providing numerous details and background information to give his character reasons for doing what she does. Tess is motivated to be a good girl and to live a happy life with a man she loves. Throughout her life, though, she is consistently thwarted by real circumstances beyond her control. As a young girl, she is expected to do what her family wishes in trying to secure a wealthy match that will provide for all of them. When this results in her own disgrace because she is incapable of loving the man who wants her, she returns to her family to start again. However, because of her past life, she is unable to achieve this new start and circumstances continue to prevent her from finding happiness and peace. Rather than focusing on the supernatural forces at work in her life, Hardy, in true realist fashion, simply presents the events of Tess’ life, permitting the realities to shine forth and the reader to understand how she has been limited and destroyed by a combination of factors as they exist in her world rather than any other. Works Cited Campbell, Donna. “Realism in American Literature, 1860-1890.” Literary Movements. (February 6, 2007). April 13, 2008 Greenblatt, Stephen (Ed.). “Introduction: The Victorian Age.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 8. New York: W.W. Norton, (2005). Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 2005. Harmon, William. A Handbook to Literature. New York: Prentice Hall, 2002. Harrington, Ralph. “The Shadow of Stonehenge: Paganism, Fate and Redemption in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” GreyCat.org. (2005). April 15, 2008 “Introduction to Romanticism.” A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies 6, Landmarks of Literature. New York: Brooklyn College, (2001). April 15, 2008 Pateman, Trevor. “Tradition and Creativity: T.S. Eliot ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent.’” Key Concepts: A Guide to Aesthetics, Criticism and the Arts in Education. London: Falmer Press, 1991. April 15, 2008 “(The) Victorian Age.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007. Wellek, Rene. “Romanticism in Literature.” Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, (2003). April 15, 2008 Read More