British and Romantic Victorian Cultures

Stacey on Romantic, Victorian and Modern British Literature (MU ENG264-Dr. J. Glance)
References: Longman Anthology of British Literature, 2nd Compact Ed., Vol. B., (2003).

“Women and the fiction that is written about them”
-Virginia Woolf
from A Room of One’s Own, Chapter 1

Could Virginia Woolf’s life story be the reason she rejected Victorian ideals? Her “own roots went deep in Victorian literary culture” (Longman, p.1222). I believe it was because she was denied a formal education and it is stated that “the sense of having been deliberately shut out of education by virtue of her sex was to inflect all of Woolf’s writing and thinking”(Longman, p.1223).
It seems only natural that Woolf (the quintessential victim of sexism by her brothers’ objectification and incest) would reject the Victorian leaning of group-think (hypocritical) morality. How immoral a society that would dismiss the self-determination of their members and allow the oppression of so many of their members; specifically women?

Woolf’s stance in A Room of One’s Own (that a woman writer needs her own room and money) reflects her understanding that as long as women are financially-disadvantaged, they will continue to be at a disadvantage both educationally and socially.

BLAST & Percy Wyndham Lewis (1884-1957)
The mere existence and publication of the Vorticist Manifesto, in Lewis’ arts magazine Blast which announced the “END OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA” (Longman, p.1082) seemed progressive for any Christian country. Britain, as we know, was a little distracted by WWI. Only a war with so much human casualty could distract from a movement claiming the end of the Christian era. It appears that the Manifesto addressed concerns of both the literary and artistic communities.

The footnotes of the Manifesto were invaluable because much of it seemed like “an inside joke” or better said, “an inside list of insults”. The list of those “blasted” was divided into seven categories, “members of the literary and cultural establishment, popular/snobbish fads, high-minded popular writers, mediocre figures, and fuzzy-minded reformers”(Longman, p.1089). The last two categories were the most amusing: “popular figures whom the Vorticists just didn’t like and blasting just for the fun of it…or for reasons known only to the insiders”(Longman, p.1089).

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
It is said that “we have not, because we ask not”. When one begins to read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, it is immediately obvious that this will not resemble the sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. The introductory quote from Dante’s Inferno implied that the narrator did not think much of himself, nor did he think much of me (as he takes me on this journey of his thoughts). On the other hand, instead of an insult to the reader, it could have been a warning. The warning could have been that “you could get as lost as me (as I take you on this journey in my mind) and you may not make it back”. We knew, early on, that this would be no typical love song.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
It is always interesting to watch a poet’s personal life and interests come through in his/her poetry. Learning about Yeats’ Irish Protestant ancestry in the midst of the Catholic Irish nationalist movement and his interest in “various mystical movements” (Longman, p.1114) give special meaning to his imagery in his poem The Second Coming.
Yeats’ reference in the first stanza to the “The best who lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” reminds one of the feeling of superiority that many of his Irish Protestant ascendancy minority felt toward the Irish Catholic majority’s nationalist movement.

The references to Spiritus Mundi “the belief in a storehouse of all human experience and knowledge from his occult studies” (Longman, p.1115) and what sounds like a sphinx of “a shape with lion body and the head of a man” are reflective of Yeats’ personal interests in non-traditional spiritual ideology. In spite of his non-traditional spiritual thoughts, it appears that Yeats is mourning the “twenty centuries” of the traditional but dying Christian era that is in danger of the impending birth of an approaching “rough beast” that “slouches toward Bethlehem to be born” .

George Bernard Shaw “G.B.S.” (1856-1950)

My knowledge of Shaw is limited to his play Pygmalion as the basis for the play My Fair Lady which I have only seen in its big screen adaptation. The film adaptation is comedic and enjoyable, especially by a musical-lover like me, but the undercurrent of desire for social-class acceptance by Eliza is unsettling for a social scientist like me. When I learned of G.B.S.’s leanings toward socialism, poverty, and gender equality, along with his anti-formal education stance, the musical-play made even more sense. How progressive for Shaw to use humor to address social issues of gender equality and what the freedom of self-determination brings with it. For example, “Eliza knows that Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not need her” (Longman, p. 1071). It is a story (as Shaw ends Pygmalion) of how specifically, Eliza relates to the men in her life, and how generally, women relate to men on both personal and societal levels.