Page 114 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

Unit 14: The Eighteenth Century-Approach/Transition Towards Romanticism (Decline of Novel, Agricultural ...........

However, such a state of affairs could not continue for ever. The Industrial Revolution gradually Notes
destroyed old agricultural England. As a result, there was migration on a large scale from the
villages to the cities. The country-side was de-populated. Industrialisation shocked the supremacy
of the aristocratic class and the landed gentry, and brought into being a new merchant class. This
new class, quite naturally, clamoured for power and prestige, both political and social, and did not
agree to the accepted order of things. Victorian traditions and conventions were thus subjected to
greater and greater pressures, and soon there were large cracks in the Victorian fabric. Moreover,
the lower classes, too, were acquiring increasing political rights. There was mental and cultural
emancipation all around.

The Spirit of Freedom
This spirit of emancipation is nowhere seen to better advantage than in the freedom which women
gradually acquired. Victorian tradition and Victorian prudery placed excessive emphasis on the
chastity of women. Their proper sphere was within the four walls of the home: any contact with
the outside world was supposed to corrupt and spoil them. Their sole business was to look after
the comforts of their men folk. But with the passing of time the movement for women’s emancipation
gained ground; women were given political rights and more and more of them came out of their
homes to take up independent careers. Florence Nightingale did valuable service to the cause of
women. Problems of sex and married life were receiving increasing attention from thinkers and
writers.

Notes Havellock Ellis and Freud were working on their epoch-making works.

The Advance of Science

This break-up of Victorian ‘compromise’, traditions and conventions was accelerated by the rapid
advance of science. Science with its emphasis on reason rather than on faith encouraged the spirit
of questioning. Victorian beliefs, both religious and social were subjected to a searching scrutiny
and found wanting. The publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 is of special significance
from this point of view. His celebrated theory of Evolution contradicted the account of men’s
origin as given in the Bible. His theory carried conviction as it was logically developed and
supported by overwhelming evidence.
Man’s faith in orthodox religion was shaken; he could no longer accept without question, God’s
omnipotence, benevolence, mercy, etc., for such orthodox notions of God were contradicted by facts.
Similarly, Darwin, with his emphasis on the brutal struggle for existence which is the law of Nature,
exploded the romantic view of her as a, ‘Kindly Mother,’ having a ‘Holy plan’ of her own. The
process started by Darwin was completed by philosophers like Huxley, Spencer, Mill, etc. The
impact of these developments in science and philosophy on the works of George Eliot is far-reaching.

The Rise of Pessimism

Thus established order, faiths and beliefs, traditions and customs, were losing their hold on the
minds of the people, and the new order of things had not yet been established. Man had lost his
mooring in God, Religion and Nature. The mechanistic view of the universe precluded any faith in
a benevolent creator. Man felt, ‘Orphaned and defrauded.’ He took a gloomy view of life, for he
felt miserable and helpless with nothing to fall back upon. It was for the first time, says David
Cecil, that, “conscious, considered pessimism became a force in English literature.” The melancholy
poems of Arnold, the poetry of Fitzgerald, Thomson’s The City of God and the works of Thomas
Hardy, and George Eliot, all reflect the pessimistic outlook of the late Victorian era. The growth of
pessimism was further encouraged by the flow of pessimistic thought from Europe, where
pessimism was much in the air at the time.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 107