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VICTORIAN AGE In this period England was the world centre of finance and this condition brought prosperity and wealth to England. The progress improved Victorians lifestyle. But there were bad aspects too; in fact, industrialization brought hard living conditions: workers and their families had to live and work in unhealthy conditions. There was a serious discontent in England, but the government was able to avoid revolution trough compromise. Parliamentary reforms such as the first Reform act and the factory act satisfied the middle classes but the working class was still without a voice. In 1838 the Chartism movement took place: it was a movement asking for the extension of the right to vote to all male adults. At the same time, a terrible famine took place too. In 1851 a great exhibition showed the world Britain’s industrial and economical power. People were able to travel for work and leisure, and the middle classes could live in the suburbs instead of the crowed town centres. With the two wars of Opium England gained the control of Honk Kong and gained the access to 5 Chinese ports. Victorian age was an age of compromise: progress, reforms and political stability coexisted with poverty and injustice. Philanthropy was born: the creation of societies which addressed every kind of poverty, and depended especially on the voluntary efforts of middle-class women. General attitudes to sex were a crucial aspect of respectability, the category of “fallen women”, adulteresses or unmarried mothers or prostitutes, was condemned and emarginated. Sexuality was generally repressed and prudery in its most extreme manifestations led to the denunciation of nudity in art and the rejection of words with sexual connotation from everyday vocabulary. The religious movement of Evangelicalism was inspired by John Wesley, stressed the need for a code of morality and was dedicated to humanitarian causes and social reform. Victorian society was characterised by Utilitarianism, a social philosophy: The duty of reason and law is the development of a system which can guarantee the happiness of more families. It suited the interest of the middle class. Meanwhile Mill’s Empiricisms said that happiness is a state of mind and spirit, that legislation should help men to show their own talents and personality, progress was linked to mental energy. In this period Darwin’s theory was born: strength is the main reason of the survival of the species, the weak ones are meant to die. At last there was also another important event: Women began to improve their social condition; in fact, they began to work. They began to work in factories, and then they expand their profession and became writers, journalists and teachers. Meanwhile in America there was a big difference between norther and southern regions which landed with the Civil war. Slavery was abolished but still life wasn’t easy for black people. In 1868 the English prime minister Disraeli provided sanitation as well as running water to everyone and limited the working hours per week. Gladstone made elementary education compulsory. In 1877 the British Empire occupied an area of 4 million square miles: into Asia (Ceylon, India), Africa (Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Rhodesia), Central America and Oceania. The Victorian age come to an end in 1901 when Queen Victoria died. In the late years of Victoria’s reign, middle classes women became more involved in public life, further education for women became available and married women had the right to own property independently from their husband. Civil pride and national fervour were frequent among the British. Patriotism was deeply influenced by ideas of racial superiority. The British had the conviction that the races of the world were divided by physical and intellectual differences, that some were destined to be led by others. The concept of “the white man’s burden” was exalted by the colonial writer, like Kipling, and the expansion of the empire was regarded as a mission. This attitude came to be known as “jingoism”. The defining characteristics of Victorian age poetry are its focus on sensory elements, its recurring themes of the religion/science conflict, and its interest in medieval fables and legends. Most of the Victorian Poets used imagery and the senses to convey the scenes of struggles between Religion and Science. The Victorian poets still had a romantic taste and sensibility, as well as a romantic style. The innovation is their attempt to express their doubts regarding the character of Victorian society, with it emphasize on science, progress and materialism.

The Victorian era was the great age of the English novel. Novels became the most popular form of literature; they are read aloud within the family. The novelist felt that they had a moral and social responsibility, for this they wrote about social problems and changes like Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democracy and the growth of towns. Charles Dickens introduced a new form of novel which had a great success: He published instalments of novels in newspapers and magazines using the technique of suspense. The great success is demonstrated by the rising of naturalistic novels, psychological novels and adventure novel: The first tended to view life more scientifically; the second explored the hidden motives of human action; the last dealt with exciting plots and exotic geographical and historical settings. These novels were also joined by the detective story, the fantasy novel and the mystery- detective novel which represented the short story novels. The Victorian novel can be divided in three groups: 1) Early Victorian novel (Charles dickens) dealt with social themes; 2) Mid-Victorian novel (Bronte sisters) dealt with psychological themes; 3)Late-Victorian novel (Wilde) was nearer to European Naturalism. Victorian novels had common features: The omniscient narrator who commented the plot; The city as the set of the novels The long and complex plot; The deep analysis of the character; The punishment and the moral in the final chapter.

aestheticism was a literary movement which developed in whole Europe by the middle of the 19th century, as a reaction against the utilitarianism and the moral restrictions of the Victorian Society. It originated in France about 1835. Adopting Gautier’s slogan “Art for Art’s sake”, the aestheticism broke with the conventions of the time and gave free rein to imagination and fantasy. Art shouldn’t have any political, social and moral involvement. It had nothing to do with morality and need not to be didactic. Walter Pater is the main theorist. Decadence is a European movement. It developed thanks to the Symbolists Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme who were much influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal. The main representatives of Decadence in Italy were Gabriele D’Annunzio with “Il Piacere” and Giovanni Pascoli. In this period two important figures developed: the bohemian and the dandy. The Bohemian allies himself to the proletariat whereas the dandy is a bourgeois artist.

DICKENS He was born in Portsmouth in 1812. His father went to prison when he was 12, so he had to go to work in a factory and in this way, he could understand the misery of poor people especially the problem of exploitation of children. He had a bad education because he went in a poor school. When he was 16, he has to work in a loyal office, then he

became a clerk, then a parliamentary reporter. He wrote about poor people, the way they lived. But he didn’t do any action to change this situation: he only wrote. Oliver Twist was Charles Dickens second novel. It was first published as a serial in between 1837 to 1839. The story is all about Oliver Twist who is an orphan and born in a workhouse. He is then sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker. Oliver then meets the Artful Dodger after he escapes to London. Artful Dodger is a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets which is led by Fagin who is an elderly criminal. This novel of Dickens exposes the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century. He also satirizes the child labour, the enrolment of children as criminals, and the existence of street children.

WILDE

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) became the embodiment of the Aesthetic movement. He was born in Dublin by a wealthy Protestant family; he attended the college in Dublin and then Oxford, following the lectures of the most important members of the Aesthetic movement, Ruskin and Pater. He led an intense and spectacular social life, and adopted extravagant poses that made him famous. He became famous with his theatre comedies (such as “The importance of being Earnest”), which are comedies of manners and portrait the superficiality of the time, challenging the Victorian moral code with witty and cynic dialogues. His most famous work is “The portrait of Dorian Gray”: in this novel, there’s the theme of dualism and even the contrast art-life; in the end, the portrait lives and the human body dies, so there’s the triumph of art over human life. Dorian’s death can also mean that nobody can live among pleasures and crimes without moral implications, because in the end he has to pay for his sins. The title plays on a double meaning: the word earnest (an adjective which means serious), but also the word is a name, Earnest. The protagonists of the play are Jack and his friend Algy. They have a double life. Jack lives in the country, but when he goes to London he has known as Earnest, to protect his reputation. Wilde is influenced by the Restoration Comedy for his witty dialogue, while he marked an important step to the theatre of the Absurd for the double life and identity. The play works on different levels. It is full of misunderstandings which ridicules the conventions of Victorian melodrama. The play is also a parody of love, in fact the two women are both in love with a name: Ernest. The characters of the play typically speak in paradoxes. Wilde wants to destroy Victorian’s labels on love, family, education, and for this reason “The importance of Being Earnest” can be read as a social satire on the value placed on appearances.

STEVENSON The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, novella by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. The names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the two alter egos of the main character, have become shorthand for the exhibition of wildly contradictory behaviour, especially between private and public selves. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson suggested that the human propensities for good and evil are not necessarily present in equal measure. Hyde is quite a bit smaller than Jekyll, perhaps indicating that evil is only a small portion of Jekyll’s total personality but one that may express itself in forceful, violent ways. Stevenson took inspiration from Darwin’s theories.

JANE EYRE This passage, written by Charlotte Bronte in 1847, is an extract of the main artwork Jane Eyre. In this specific part, we can see the tension between passion and reason. Jane has just found out that Mr Rochester was already married to a madwoman and so she decided to leave for her best, even if she still loves him. But it’s not easy for her, she loves him very much and she spends a lot of time thinking about leaving him. In the beginning she has an internal monologue where she asks herself many questions: why should she leave him? She has no one but herself. No one care about her but herself only. And be the mistress of a man was not the same to be his lover. So, if she really cared about herself, there was no choice but to leave Thornfield Hall and to start a new life. That is what Jane character is all about: it is difficult for her to choose between her independence and her love for Mr. Rochester, she is a free spirit and cares a lot about self-respect. Also, after Mr Rochester’s declaration, she has a moment of temptation: when he looks at her, she has a moment of weakness but she knows she can not stay, and that only a fool would have succumbed now. She is strong enough to leave him and start over. It is not that simple for Mr Rochester either. He begs Jane to stay with him multiplies times, he even declares his love for her spirit, her soul, her mind, not her body. He is deeply in love with Jane’s spirit and not with her beauty, so that is why it’s so hard form to let her go. He gets mad, he grabs his lover by her waist and tries to keep her with him forever, but in the end, he knows that she won’t stay with him. He eventually let her go, even if that broke his heart. It’s hard for him, since he is a Byronic hero, but still he knew he had to let her go, because when you really love someone, you let them go. The story is seen by Jane’s point of view, she often addresses the reader explain how she feels and how she makes decisions. The language is straightforward and develops differently according to the style and mood of each character. There is an emotional use of language and there are also a repetition of symbols and imagine....