Growth of Poetry, Novel and Prose and An Inclination to Individuality:
The Victorian age was one of the most remarkable periods in the history of English Literature. It witnessed the flowering of poetry in the hands of a host of poets, great and small. It marked the growth of the English novel, and laid the foundation of English prose on a surer footing. The note of individuality was the hall mark of Victorian literature. The literary figures of the Victorian age were endowed with marked originality in outlook, character and style. "In Macaulay there was much of the energy and enterprise of the self-made man. Tennyson loved to sing the praises of sturdy independence. In Dickens' books there are, perhaps, more originals than in those of any other novelist in the world. The Bronte sisters pursued their lonely path in life with the pride and endurance learnt at the Haworth parsonage. Carlyle and Browning cultivated manner full of eccentricity, and even Thackeray, though more regular in style than his contemporaries, loved to follow a haphazard path in the conduct of his stories, indulging in unbounded license of comment and digression."
Important Place of Novel in This Age:
The Victorian age was essentially the age of prose and novel. "Though the age produced many poets, and two who deserve to rank among the greatest," says W. J. Long, "nevertheless this is emphatically an age of prose and novel. The novel in this age fills a place which the drama held in the days of Elizabeth; and never before, in any age, or language, has the novel appeared in such numbers and in such perfection."
Literature Marked by Deep Moral Note:
Victorian literature in its varied aspects was marked by a deep moral note. "The second marked characteristic of the age is that literature, both in prose and poetry, seems to depart from the purely artistic standard of art's sake and to be actuated by a definite moral purpose.” Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin were primarily interested in their message to their countrymen. They were teachers of England and were inspired by a conscious moral purpose to uplift and instruct their fellowmen. Behind the fun and sentiment of Dickens, the social miniatures of Thackeray, the psychological studies of George Eliot, lay hidden a definite moral purpose to sweep away error and to bring out vividly in unmistakable terms the underlying truth of human life.
Emphasizing on Social and Political Life of the Age:
The Victorian literary artists, leaving aside a few votaries of art for art's sake represented by the Pre-Raphaelite school of poets, were inspired by a social zeal to represent the problem of their own age. Perhaps for this reason the Victorian literature is the literature of realism rather than of romance, not the realism of Zola and Ibsen, but a deeper realism which strives to tell the whole truth, showing moral and physical diseases as they are, but holding up health and hope as the moral conditions of humanity. Literature became an instrument of social reform and social propaganda and it was marked with purposeful, propagandistic. and didactic aims.
Continuance of the Spirit of Romanticism:
The literature of the Victorian age, in spite of its insistence on rationality, and an order born out of reason, could not completely cut off from the main springs of Romanticism. The spirit of Romanticism continued to influence the innermost consciousness of the age. It affected the works of Tennyson, Thackeray, Browning and Arnold. It permeated almost every thought just as it coloured almost every mode of expression. All the literary artists of the age were impregnated with it. Carlyle's thundering denunciations were charged with the same emotional fire and visionary colouring as that of Shelley and Byron. New vibrations were added to the main chord of Romanticism. Between the years 1875 to 1880 the romantic inspiration was again in the ascendant.
A Note of Idealism and Optimism:
Though a note of pessimism runs through the literature of the age, it cannot be dubbed as a literature of bleak pessimism and dark despair. A note of idealism and optimism is also struck by poets like Browning and prose writers like Ruskin. Rabbi Ben Ezra brings out the courageous optimism of the age. Stedman's Victorian Anthology is, on the whole, a most inspiring book of poetry. Great essayists like Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and great novelists like Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot inspire us with their faith in humanity and uplift us by their buoyancy and large charity.
The Impact of Science:
The literature of the age is considerably modified by the impact of science. "It is the scientific spirit, and all that the scientific spirit implied, its certain doubt, its care for minuteness and truth of observation, its growing interest in social processes, and the conditions under which life is lived that is the central fact in Victorian literature." The questioning spirit in Clough, the pessimism of James Thomson, the melancholy of Matthew Arnold, the fatalism of Fitzgerald, are all the outcome of the sceptical tendencies evoked by scientific research Tennyson's poetry is also considerably influenced by the advancement of science in the age, and the undertones of scientific researches can be heard in In Memoriam.
A Note of Patriotism:
A note of patriotism runs through Victorian literature. Tennyson, Dickens and Disraeli are inspired by a national pride and a sense of greatness in their country's superiority over other nations. Tennyson strikes the patriotic note in the following lines :
Interest in Nature:
The poets of the Romantic Revival were interested in nature, in the past, and in a lesser degree in art, but they were not intensively interested in men and women. To Wordsworth the dales men of the lakes were a part of the scenery they moved in. He treated human beings as natural objects and divested them of the complexities and passions of life as it is lived. The Victorian poets and novelists laid emphasis on men and women and imparted to them the same warmth and glow which the Romantic poets had given to nature.