UNIVERSITÄT TRIER

Schriftliche Prüfungsarbeit zur Wissenschaftlichen Prüfung für das

Lehramt an Gymnasien im Fach Anglistik

"Problems of the Victorian Age as Reflected in the Poetry of

Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Alfred Tennyson"

Vorgelegt von:

Antje Wulff

Oktober 2003

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Contents

1.

Introduction

1

2.

High Hopes? ­ The Ambivalence of Victorian Optimism

2

2.1

The New Queen

3

2.2

Trade and Industry ­ Roads to Utopia?

6

2.3

An Imperial Vision

11

2.4

"To Strive, to Seek,...and not to Yield"?

15

3.

Dangers to the Nation

19

3.1

Dangers from Within

19

3.1.1

The Social Disease

19

3.1.1.1 People in Their Place

19

3.1.1.2 Capitalist Jungles

27

3.1.2

Searching for a Cure

38

3.1.2.1 Raising Bodies and Souls ­

The Message of "Aurora Leigh"

38

3.1.2.2 "Not Swift nor Slow to Change, but Firm" ­

Tennyson′s Policy of Gradation

43

3.2

Dangers from Without

48

4.

Fears of the Individual

56

4.1

The Religious Crisis

57

4.1.1

The Advancement of Victorian Science

57

4.1.2

Between Faith and Doubt

60

4.2

"Wandering Between Two Worlds" ­

Patterns of Nostalgia and Retreat

71

4.2.1

Nostalgia

71

4.2.2

Retreat

76

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4.3

The Identity Crisis

81

4.3.1

The Buried Self

81

4.3.2

Breakdown of Communications

84

4.3.3

Disintegration of the Individual

88

5.

Conclusion

93

Bibliography

98

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1

1. Introduction

A "period of most wonderful transition"1- that was how Prince Albert once euphorically

characterised the Victorian age. He was right in at least one regard: His was a time of change,

and of a change as far-reaching and comprehensive as it had hardly ever been encountered

before. This change rang in Britain′s heyday, and it led the country straight into modernity.

Thus, the Industrial Revolution transformed a predominantly rural nation into the highly

urbanised world centre of trade and industry within decades; a capitalist system was quickly

gaining ground, and imperialist expansion created an empire of unprecedented size and might.

Moreover, parliamentary reform bills kicked off a shift of political power to the middle and

working classes, thus paving the way for a truly democratic system, and new scientific

discoveries led to an increase in knowledge virtually unparalleled in the course of history.

Looking at all of this by and large, Prince Albert′s optimistic evaluation appears justified,

and there seems to be little evidence of the existence of any kind of fundamental problems.

However, it is a well-known fact that interesting times ­ and the Victorian era was a highly

interesting time ­ usually tend to be rather more difficult and problematic than one might

assume at first glance. The Victorian age was certainly no exception to this rule. Indeed, it is

frequently regarded not only as an era of progress, but also as one of "bewildering

complexity,"2 with the Victorians themselves being characterised as an extremely ambivalent

generation, torn between an over-optimistic belief in their achievements and the fear of the

dangers arising out of them.

So, how should later generations approach best the apparently split nature of this time? One

possibility ­ and not the worst one, to say the least ­ is to study its poetry. Poetry is by its very

nature a highly individualised mode of expression and usually over-sensitive to the mood of the

time in which it is written. Therefore, it can often provide a deeper and more truthful insight

into the disposition of a people and an age than many historical documents are able to, for it

tends to cover both what is on the surface of events and what lies beneath. The works of the

three Victorian poets to be discussed in the following essay ­ namely those of Matthew Arnold,

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and of the spokesman of his age and most famous poet laureate of

all, Alfred (Lord) Tennyson ­ undoubtedly testify to this assumption. Taken together, they

offer a kaleidoscopic view over the developments of a complex epoch, approaching topics

from diverging perspectives and treating the problems of the age overtly as well as covertly.

1

Quoted in: Walter E. Houghton.

The Victorian Frame of Mind

1830-1870

. New Haven/ London: Yale University

Press, 1957, p. 43.

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2

This essay will therefore have to examine a wide range of issues with sometimes only one

thing in common: They all affect Victorian Britain in one way or another. An interdisciplinary

approach will be taken where it seems appropriate, although generally, it should be the poems

themselves that provide the basis for comment and analysis. The proceedings of this analysis

are planned as follows:

Since the way the Victorians saw themselves, or rather wanted themselves to be seen, is vital

for understanding their

Zeitgeist

, chapter two will deal with poems voicing what was on the

surface of the contemporary consciousness, that is, the spirit of hope and optimism upheld by

the leading figures of the day. Naturally, the focus here will be mostly on Tennyson, who, as

poet laureate, was obliged to promote the official doctrine of his age. Chapter three, then, will

be dedicated to the study of poems taking up and discussing socio-economic and political

issues prevalent at the time, using material from Barrett Browning and Tennyson and taking

into account both internal and external threats to the stability of the nation. Finally, chapter

four will ask whether and in what way the inner consciousness of the individual human being

was affected by the developments of the age. Their impact on religious faith will have to be

discussed as well as possible changes in the perception of the world, the self, and interhuman

relations. Here, the emphasis will be laid on poems by Tennyson and Arnold.

Naturally, this essay will not and cannot be a compendium of all the difficulties of Victorian

Britain. What it can do, however, is to trace the predominant predicaments of the time and

examine the ways in which the three poets dealt with them. Their poems are individual, but

also exemplary reactions to the historical environment from which they emerged, and as such,

they can contribute to a better understanding of both this environment and the interrelation

between man and the forces of history in general.

2. High Hopes? ­ The Ambivalence of Victorian Optimism

To modern eyes, the high-flying optimism exhibited by nearly all Victorian thinkers and doers

alike might often seem a little naïve at best. It was, however, a ­ if not the ­ central

characteristic of the age, and to a large degree, it constituted the ideological framework of a

nation that by its enormous scientific, technological, commercial, and political achievements

was almost inevitably led to believe that anything might indeed be possible.

Having left behind the old feudal order and the volatile times of its violent destruction, the

Victorians genuinely felt to be on the road of progress, and they promoted that belief with

whatever means they found at their disposal. The following chapter will therefore examine the

2

Jerome H. Buckley. "Victorianism."

British Victorian Literature. Recent Revaluations.

Ed. Shiv K. Kumar. London:

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3

grounds on which Victorian optimism was laid and the ways it was presented by the poets

under discussion. It will also have to deal with what may be called undercurrents of doubt,

since even for the Victorians themselves, the notion of optimism seems not to have been

wholly unambiguous.

2.1 The New Queen

When Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, at the age of eighteen, the historical situation of

her country did not really seem to justify any excessive outbursts of optimism at first sight. The

loss of the USA in 1776 had meant the beginning of the end of the old mercantile system, the

French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars had profoundly shaken the social and political

landscape in Europe, and revolutionary forces remained a constant threat. Moreover, Britain

had become the leading nation with regard to the Industrial Revolution, which rapidly

transformed the old social order into a capitalist society with all its positive

and

negative

consequences. Those were not the natural preconditions for an age of stability, prosperity, and

progress. However, it is for qualities such as these that the 64-year long reign of Queen

Victoria is commonly remembered (if the memory is not still suppressed altogether, that is). In

her, all the hopes and expectations of the age seem to have found an adequate expression. Her

youth and apparent human kindness immediately appealed to the people, who put their trust in

her and soon came to regard her as the "icon[...] of an idealised myth of English national

character."3 She was looked upon as the figurehead of a bright future soon to come and

contributed considerably to the creation of a nation unified in its values and beliefs. Elizabeth

Barrett Browning′s poems on the subject of Queen Victoria, though deemed to be "among the

worst and most embarrassing of all her poems"4 by Hayter, nonetheless illuminate the feelings

of her contemporaries. After all, they were so popular with the Victorians that they probably

led the

Athenaeum

to propose Barrett Browning as Wordsworth′s successor for the post of poet

laureate.5 Thus, "The Young Queen"6 gives an emotional account of 20 June 1837, the day

when King William IV died and Victoria, his niece, acknowledged her "duty of administering

the government of this empire"7 in the Council Chamber. The first three stanzas of the poem

University

of

London

Press, 1969, p. 10.

3

Helen Groth. "Island Queens: Nationalism, Queenliness and Women′s Poetry 1837-1861."

Essays and Studies,

49 (1996), p. 44.

4 Alethea Hayter.

Mrs. Browning. A Poet′s Work and Its Setting.

London: Faber and Faber, 1962, p. 125.

5 Laura L. Hinkley.

Ladies of Literature.

Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1970 (= reprint of the

1946 edition), p. 267.

6 Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke (eds.).

The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

6 vols. New York:

AMS Press, 1973 (= reprint of the 1900 edition), vol. II, pp. 106-108.

All further poems by Barrett Browning are taken from this edition and will be documented in the text.

7 Quoted in: Porter/ Clarke (1973), vol. II, p. 360.

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4

characterise the mood of grief and sadness felt throughout the nation after King William′s

death. The atmosphere is altogether gloomy. Images of death set the tone in the first stanza,

while the following two stanzas are devoted to the depiction of courtiers and common people

grieving alike. The whole of London seems almost petrified with universal mourning; the

"king-dirging note" (l. 7) of the bells of St. Paul′s reinforces the sombre, almost ghostlike

mood. The nation is deeply affected by this sudden loss of its leader; the people′s tears

"confus[e] in a shapeless blot the sepulchre and throne" (l. 12) with the effect that all of them

are left in a state of utter helplessness and uncertainty. With the king already far removed in

eternity (l. 18), there are now neither glory nor guidance at hand. It is this desperate scene that

Barrett Browning has the young Victoria enter. "Firm" (l. 21) she is, and calm (ll. 24, 42), full of

dignity, natural nobility and an "exemplary faith in God′s will."8 Her "trusting face" (ll. 24, 42),

a symbol for both confidence and humility, in turn inspires the nation′s trust in her and makes

her the carrier of its hopes: "A nation looks to thee/ For steadfast sympathy" (ll. 46/47). In

contrast to her uncle, whose brows were only made "serene" (l. 4) by death, Victoria appears

"meek" (l. 52) and benign from the beginning, empathising with her people and giving

expression to "all its gathered tears" (l. 48) by means of her own body.

It is exactly this quality that is again taken up in "Victoria′s Tears" (II, pp. 108-110), a poem

based on an incident at St. James′s Palace, where Victoria appeared at the window, was cheered

enthusiastically by the crowd, and suddenly started weeping.9 Here, once more, her weeping

becomes the outward expression of the inner feelings of her people, those "mourners God had

stricken deep" (l. 17). Consequently, her eyes "can be read as transparent surfaces by her

subjects communicating a promise of a benign, non-tyrannical reign:"10 "The tyrant′s sceptre

cannot move,/ As those pure tears have moved! The nature in thine eyes we see,/ That tyrants

cannot own -/ The love that guardeth liberties!" (ll. 33-37). Thus, the public image of a Queen

is created who is most of all a human being, who loves her people, is intuitively aware of her

duties and willing to fulfil them, and who therefore can be trusted without reservation.

Although written fifty years later, Alfred Tennyson′s "On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria"11

still emphasises similar qualities when writing on her "kindliness/ Rare in Fable or History" (ll.

4/5) and praising her as "gracious, gentle, great and Queenly" (l. 14), having "[n]othing of the

lawless, of the Despot/ Nothing of the vulgar, or vainglorious" (ll. 12/13).

8 Groth (1996), p. 42.

9 Cf. Porter/ Clarke (1973), vol. II, p. 361.

10 Groth (1973), p. 54.

11 Christopher Ricks (ed.).

The Poems of Tennyson in Three Volumes.

Harlow, Essex: Longman, 21987 (= Longman

Annotated English Poets), vol. III, pp. 159-62.

All further poems by Tennyson are taken from this edition and will be documented in the text.

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5

The cheering crowd in "Victoria′s Tears" exemplifies the effect Victoria′s demeanour must

have had on her contemporaries. Millions have gathered to hail the new Queen, "[h]er name

has stirred the mountain′s sleep" (l. 15), and she obviously succeeds in waking up her nation

for a new beginning and in unifying it in a commonly felt sense of hope for and trust in a

promising future. She is, in fact, apotheosised into an almost angelic figure, endowed with a

divine blessing (l. 42) and thus laying the foundations for a myth that would form the basis of

the official Victorian ideology for the next 64 years. The poet herself must be regarded as a part

of the crowd ­ if not physically, then at least in mind and spirit. Therefore, the poem "both

describes and perpetuates the [Victorian] myth."12

Victoria′s coronation, as it is presented by Barrett Browning in "Crowned and Wedded"

(III, pp. 59-62), again underlines the exceptional status of the new Queen. Surrounded by all

the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony in Westminster Abbey and placed within a

historical tradition as authoritative as it is frightening (ll. 20-26), she maintains her humble

dignity and is more than ever transformed into a divine entity, vowing a "very godlike vow ­ to

rule in right and righteousness" (l. 7). The scene of her wedding, set against the solemn

coronation ceremony, reinforces the image of a benign queen, capable of giving and receiving

love and remaining true to her own humanity. She thus comes to encompass within herself

"the borders of heaven′s light and earth′s humanity" (l. 62) ­ a position that accounts for much

of the national pride, boundless self-trust, and unwavering belief in progress that dominated

the Victorian frame of mind, but was never wholly unambiguous either. Thus, in Barrett

Browning′s poems, it is her very humanity that makes Victoria vulnerable to grief and anxieties.

Though conceived of by any outward spectator as firm, balanced, composed, and guided

steadily by her trust in God′s will, she is constantly stirred by inner struggles that reveal her

actual insecurity. Her personal grief, first indicated in "The Young Queen" and culminating in

the act of weeping in "Victoria′s Tears," her nostalgic yearning for a lost childhood, and her

half-hidden desire to withdraw from the public sphere altogether in "The Young Queen" ("Her

thoughts are deep within her:/ No outward pageants win her" (ll. 25/26)) ­ they all contribute

to what Groth calls "a neurotic edge to the image of Victoria."13 If she is regarded as an

essential basis of Victorian optimism, as she obviously was by her contemporaries, the whole

notion of this optimism already becomes somewhat questionable. Barrett Browning′s poems,

surely intended as a positive account of the icon of the age, thus transcend their superficial

12 Groth (1996), p. 54.

13 Groth (1996), p. 53.

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6

meaning and lay bare the inner conflicts of a nation excessively confident on the surface. It

may be a "[s]trange blessing" ("Victoria′s Tears," l. 38) indeed that lies on that nation.

2.2 Trade and Industry ­ Roads to Utopia?

"Progress had almost deceived them into believing that theirs was an end rather than a way-

station. They had swallowed progress and were puffed up thereby."14 Thus, Baum comments

on the Victorians′ belief to live in a time and a country constantly moving towards some higher

state. This creed, so uniquely intertwined with the

Zeitgeist,

was actually founded on real and

visible achievements and developments.

Victorian Britain was essentially the Britain of the Industrial Revolution. Starting off in the

country′s textile industry, it soon affected the steel and mining industries as well, transforming

entirely the old forms of production and processing. A combination of technological

innovation, mass production, and increasingly effective transport facilities (the enormous

significance of the railway can hardly be underestimated in this context) soon placed Britain in

a truly unique position. Its industrial and technological development was years or even decades

ahead of the rest of the world, enabling it to export its industrial goods almost without

limitations and to attract an equal amount of raw materials for processing from all over the

world. Within a comparatively short period of time, the country thus turned into what came to

be known as "the workshop of the world," unrivalled in its industrial potential and therefore

rapidly acquiring the status of the world′s first and foremost trading nation as well.

Technological progress and commercial activity obviously worked hand in hand in creating a

newly organised society (shifting from the predominance of agrarian interests as represented by

the old aristocracy to the demands of a rising industrial middle class), whose members could

not help feeling to be rushing towards a man-made utopia.

This attitude is most clearly expressed in some of Alfred Tennyson′s poems. Being poet

laureate from 1850 till his death in 1892, he both described and prescribed the creed of his age,

often functioning as what might today be deemed a spin doctor of Victorian society and thus

holding aloft the banner of what his contemporaries claimed to believe in. Though sometimes

rather reluctantly, he was certainly what Richardson calls him: "one of the makers of the

Victorian age."15 His role as the public voice of his time obliged him every now and then to

write poems for special occasions, an example of which is his "Ode Sung at the Opening of the

International Exhibition" (II, pp. 622-25). Written for the second international exhibition in

14 Paul F. Baum.

Tennyson Sixty Years After.

New York: Octagon Books, 1975, p. 232.

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7

1862, it praises the innovations of the age and draws the utopian vision of a prosperous

brotherhood of men. The event of an international exhibition alone represented a powerful

reminder of Britain′s wealth and progress, as the first World Exhibition in 1851, originating in

an idea of the Prince Consort Albert, had been a triumph of national achievement and had

shown the world the superiority of industrialised Britain. Tennyson′s ode first of all re-enacts

the excitement at this Victorian boom. Praising Prince Albert, who had just died, for his

"world-compelling plan" (l.10), the poet hails the considerable advancement of "Science, Art

and Labour" (l.5), the idols of his age, as they are presented at the exhibition. All "earth′s

invention" (l.2), he sees stored in the huge exhibition hall, whose size alone is a symbol for the

"world-compelling" quality of the event. In the following lines, the "giant aisles" (l. 12) of the

hall are transformed into places of worship for the achievements of trade and industry.

Accordingly, the products praised are industrial ones such as loom, wheel, enginery, and mining

equipment (ll. 15/16), but also those important for a nation built on trade and commerce: steel,

gold, corn, wine, and fabric (ll. 17/18). However, Tennyson′s account of these goods is not so

much a mere enumeration of products on a material level as an invocation of treasures that

assume quasi-mythical qualities. "Secrets" (l. 16) they are called, "marvels" (l. 20), and

"wonder[s]" (l. 21) that are the products of an "Art divine" (l. 22) and even appear "fairy-fine"

(l. 18) to the stunned spectator. It is as Pitt remarks: "Victorian commerce is made to take on a

borrowed glamour, and its ordinary materials are coerced by the diction into a ritual of

industry."16 What in the retrospect view of Tennyson′s "Ode on the Jubilee of Queen

Victoria" (III, pp. 159-62) is hailed as "Fifty years of ever-broadening Commerce!/ Fifty years

of ever-brightening science!" (ll. 52/53) astonished no one as much as those responsible for it.

The Victorians′ own utter amazement at the progress achieved by means of commerce and

technological advances tempted them all too often to regard those forces as the ultimate means

to create their utopia. That is the vision Tennyson unfolds in the final stanza of his ode as well.

Before analysing this vision in detail, however, it seems necessary to discuss briefly the

significance of what the poet alludes to when demanding of the nation′s leaders: "From

growing commerce loose her latest chain" (l. 33). Free trade, for that is what is meant by this

remark, was an important issue of the time. In 1815, Corn Laws had been introduced to

protect the British corn market from foreign imports. This was particularly in the interest of

landowners, who still dominated the British Parliament. In the late 1830s, resistance against the

Corn Laws was growing. Liberals and industrialists argued that they hindered economic growth

15 Joanna Richardson.

The Pre-Eminent Victorian. A Study of Tennyson.

Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,

1973 (= reprint of the 1962 edition), p. 290.

16 Valerie Pitt.

Tennyson Laureate.

London: Barrie and Rockliff, 21969, p. 198.

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