The Victorian age (1850 to 1900)

 The modern  period of progress and unrest

                    The Victorian age begins with the execution of Louis XVI and accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. This period seemed the lean. It lost the poetic fruitfulness of romantic age.

Historical summary

           Among the multitude of social and political forces of the age, four major things stand out clearly:- 

1.  Democracy

2. Equality in the nation without ruler

3. The age of comparative peace

4. Rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in Mechanical inventions

1. Democracy:- 

            The long struggle of the Anglo-Saxons for their personal liberty is settled, and democracy become established. The last vestige of personal Government and of the divine right of rulers disappears; the house of commons become the ruling power in England.

2. Equality in the nation:-

           It is an age of democracy, age of education, of religious tolerance, the growing brotherhood, and of profound social unrest. The whole nation become free and equal. The slaves become freed.

3. An age of comparative peace:-

           This is an age of equality. The whole nation realised that the common people bear the burdon and the sorrow and the poverty of war, and also realised that war is not answer of all thing.

4. Rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in Mechanical inventions:-

                      Vast number of inventions took place in this age from spinning looms to steamboats, and from matches to electric light. All this material thing, as well as the growth of education, have their influence upon the life of people. All this inventions make the influence upon literature, prose as well as poetry.

 Literary characteristic

1. An age of prose:-

                 Though, the age produced many poets, this is an age of prose. The number of readers has increased a thousand fold with the spread of popular education, it is the age of newspaper, the magazine,  and the modern novel. First two being the story of the world's daily life, and the novel is our pleasant form of literary entertainment by them our modern problems and ideas can be present.

                   The novel in this age fill a place, which the drama held in the days of Elizabeth; and never before, in english language, has the novel appeared in such numbers and in such perfection.

2. Moral purpose:-

                    In this age, literature came with the didactic moral preach. Through the literature, people get some moral insight. Art is not only sake for art, but for moral preach, people learn something by every case a definite purpose to sweep away error and to reveal the underlying truth of human life.

3. An age of doubt and pessimism:-

                  This age following the new conception of man and of the universe which was formulated by science under the name of involution. It is spoken of also as a prosaic age, lacking in great ideals. Both this critisism seem to be the result of judging a large thing when we too close to it to get its proportion.

                   Tennyson's work is sometimes in a doubt, but his In Memoriam is like the rainbow after storm.  

Conclusion:-

               So the literature expresses our faith in men, which may judge the Victorian age to be, on the whole, the noblest and most inspiring in the history of the world.