Themes throughout later British Literature

From the beginning of later British literature, we can see a consistent theme of authors depicting what they find to be relevant, beautiful, and worth being shared with their audience. Something that I have held on to from the beginning of the semester is William Wordsworth idea on what literature and poetry should be- “to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection, of language really used by men; and at the same time throw them over them a certain colouring of imagination." I think that this is consistently shown in work that we read, despite what time period it was written in. We are forced to ponder the topics of nature, purpose, God, and relationships throughout the times periods.

            Romantic authors were greatly influenced by the events that were taking place at the time, such as the French Revolution. We saw a great shift of focus onto nature, as many authors feared that it was something that was beginning to lose appreciation from the people. Many poems we read in class, such as “Lucy Gray,” and “Nutting” by William Wordsworth explore elements of nature while combining them with meaning that would be applicable to the reader. In Lucy Gray, we read about a lost girl in the woods. Although the main focus of the work is the girl, there is an underlying tone of nature’s relevance. In “Northanger Abbey,” we see our main character, Catherine, greatly intrigued with what nature has to offer. There is sophistication to the character of Henry Tilney, shown in how he takes Catherine on walks through nature through out the story.

            As we enter the Victorian era, we see a shift in how British authors portray their thoughts. Instead of through nature, they use poems to question bigger themes, such as God and their existence. In the poem, “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, we are set on a beach at night. However, the poem reflects themes of spirituality, of sadness, and the question of human purpose. The poem “After Death” by Christina Rossetti discusses the death of a man that makes us question what relationship the person had to the author. We also question the relationship of love, especially in the line that says “he did not love me living; but once dead, he pitied me.” 

            Approaching the twentieth century, we learn to question the things of society that we know. In TS Eliot’s, “The Wasteland,” we see a desperate call for the need of religion in society. The water and the rock show this metaphor, and how much we need the water in order to prosper. Authors begin to question the social norms. “In Passage to India,” we see a huge question of God’s relevance throughout Mrs. Moore’s character development after exploring the caves. In “Ingland is a Bitch,” Johnson questions the everyday work world and repetitiveness of the cycles of English life when it comes to making end’s meet.

            In retrospect upon learning about the different eras, the same themes remain the same. Even over hundreds of years, humans still question what is normal along with their existence and the existence of God. They are intrigued by what is beautiful to them, such as nature and love, and reflect upon this in their work.

Aesthetic and Poetry

Since the beginning of time, writers have found what is beautiful in their eyes and written about it eloquently. This is a common theme in all of the periods we have learned about this semester, but especially in the Romantic era. The Romantics used nature and all of its various flora, fauna, and landscapes to delve into the world of poetic artistry. For instance, in William Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads he brings up the point that human passions are connected to nature (which makes them more permanent) and focuses on the beauty of the natural element in “Nutting” by noting “the woods” and “the pathless rocks.” (pg.157). Another example of a romantic poet who is all about nature, Lord Byron, writes that, “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods…” and that the speaker “[loves] not man the less, but Nature more…” While this topic is still rather prevalent in many poets and authors today (ex. Mary Oliver), Romantics are definitely known for their natural themed works. While this theme has been completely constant throughout different time periods and world events, it has not been at the forefront of what every era has deemed alluring or appealing. 

In the Victorian era, there are many other themes of beauty. There is a heavy influence on the beauty of comparison between art and life. This comparison can be seen in many of Oscar Wilde’s work, where he claims that life imitates art, rather than art imitating life and it’s elements. Another very important element can be seen in both Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”: death and God. Both of these things were focused on as important in the Victorian era. Religion, or the questioning of religion, was a huge influence in many authors during this time. Tennyson’s use of imagery in “Crossing the Bar” romanticizes death and the idea of seeing God in person. This can be seen in the fourth, and final, stanza where it says, “For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place/The flood may bear me far/I hope to see my Pilot face to face/When I have crost the bar.”  By Tennyson using the imagery of a vast and endless ocean of water, and the Pilot (God), he views seeing God finally as alluring and pulchritudinous. 

Final Blog Post

As times change, so has society and those that take part in its various parts, particularly with the spread of education from just the higher white male class to the lower class, females, and non-whites. Because of this, writers have changed from mainly white nobles to almost anyone. Skill and prominence with the pen is not connected with one's birth anymore. The difference in viewpoints and personal writing aesthetics becomes clear between these two groups, particularly in terms of class. This is blatantly seen when comparing the neoclassical and some of the Romantic Era writers to the Late 20th Century writer, Johnson, and his work, "Inglan is a Bitch" written heavily in African-American English dialect and finding disgust in "Inglan" throughout the entire work. While others have spoken up against certain parts of England before him, none have done it, in what many back then would consider, an uneducated way and with such contempt for England as a whole. Percy Shelley, in his “Song to the Men of England”, indeed spoke up against English corruption and the misfortunes his fellow Englishmen suffer, but he wrote in such a way that the problems with England were certain men and that his fellow Englishmen should band together against the plots of such men. Johnson did not speak of camaraderie with his fellow Englishmen and was a solitary negative viewpoint towards all of England. 

That being said, it was not a straight procession from the high class to the lower class and everyone. Some of the middle class and lower echelons of the higher class were accepted, sometimes with dispute, into the society of writers before the lower class ever did. John Keats was not originally welcomed as a writer by all, receiving harsh criticisms of his work and of those who were willing to accept him. Even Wordsworth and Coleridge were at first hesitant and asked of their readers to be patient and give their viewpoint towards writing a chance. They even tried to appeal to the common rural Englishman, with a focus on nature and the common man in such works as "Lucy Gray", "Nutting", and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". This would become much more common later as the common man became the writer, which would lead to the production of works such as "Digging" by Heaney or "This will be the Verse" by Larkin.

Ironically, with the increase of freedom and equality, women's works for women have lost some prominence as women in first world country societies tend to be all but true equals with men and did not suffer such horrible indignities and lack of rights as did women before them. Works such as Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the rights of Woman" will not be commonly found today in first world countries. Still, Women's rights has been a slow process and in Virginia Woolf's time, they were still in the process of making accomplishments. Accomplishments had been made though, and one can see the difference in Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway"which details a rich and high class woman acting on her own. The problem is because of her high class, she has never done anything properly for herself and is a fool at times, as shown through her thought processes. This story is not empowering for women despite showing the main character as doing something something, or at least attempting to, by herself and of being high class. It just follows a foolish woman and her idiocies with no attempt to sugarcoat or make her look better than she is.  

War in British Literature

      British writers treated and reacted to war in different ways. After WWI writers started to speak out more against the harsh realities of war. We see a very different tone in Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade compared to the later 20th century authors. In the Victorian Era Britain was flourishing and expanding its empire. They felt that it was their duty to carry the "white man's burden" and install British sensibilities and religion in other colonies. War was celebrated as expanding the power, heritage, and assets of the Empire. Soldier's killed in action were glorified for giving their life for the empire. In Tennyson's last stanza;

"When can their glory fade?/ O the wild charge they made!/ All the world wondered./ Honour the charge they made!/ Honour the Light Brigade,/ Noble six hundred!" (702 1st ed) The words glory, honour, and noble stand out evoking emotions of patriotism and duty. We aren't left questioning the reasons of the war but in awe of the brave 600. I also noticed "All the world wondered" repeated twice. This decision adds to the gravity of the scene, and glorifies the act on a world stage. It's easy to see why when looking at the context of the wars; during the Crimean War (1853-54) Britain lost around 25,000 soldiers, whereas WWI was fought on the home front and led to over 900,000 soldiers killed in action.

      Due to the huge differences in magnitude of wars as well as the state of Britain Post-WWI the later works give a more realistic depiction of war and loss. Owen's Dulce et Decoru, Est leaves a very different taste in your mouth; "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory?/ The old Lie: Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country" (1118). Owen brings the horrors and nightmares of war to light while also working directly against the tradition that its an honor to die for ones country. No patriotic nod to the greatness of Britain but only looming unheroic death. Gurney takes on the same tone in "To his Love" describing a fallen soldiers as a "red wet thing I must somehow forget" (1129). A common thread between the poets who served in the war is their style representing their fragmented sense of self. Owen uses weird half rhymes in Strange Meeting as well as unconventional stanza/meter styles in other works. The Aftermath of WWI changed British Literature drastically; no longer the ideal or the realistic but a new era without identity. Writers and readers alike are left trying to make sense or direction from the remaining fragments.

Jackie Kay "In My Country"

"Walking by the waters down where an honest river shakes hands with the sea, a woman passed round me in a slow watchful circle, as if I were a superstition." I found the beginning of this poem promoting friendliness and virtue. Where the river is personified as honest and shaking hands with the sea, it was pleasant, and with the introduction of a word choice like superstition, there seemed to be emphasis on the play the woman has on the narrator, who is potentially a "superstition." My first impressions of this entire poem in relation to how we might want to interpret the setting is that, there is a comfort and friendliness in the turf. See, the place of people at the beach is being set for us as though there is a lot more meaning and value to the land than anything, however, it was a superstition and judgement, that caught my eye...

She later says other than a superstition, it was a look as though the narrator were "the worst dregs of her imagination." I believe this is supposed to pose the woman as a threat to the narrator: for if anyone would have any harsh negative judgement on a woman at the friendly beach. When she spoke, her words spliced into "bars of an old wheel," as if a ship were turning around and changing direction. "A segment of air." The pause for effect here seems to be entertaining the notion that there are people who might find us to be a curious subject as though there are reasons for us to be subject for any suspicions...

I believe that the writer was making a statement about people and their nature in owning the land to be theirs and familiar vs. worrisome or unfamiliar in any way... in which case a place where anyone could look at them as though there could be any reason to believe that there could be anything dreg about it... Because there was some mischief in this poem, I assessed that there was a regard for the cause of that woman to be curious of the nature of the narrator... because perhaps, it was that she was not from around those parts. See, if she had been from around there, she may have been able to determine that there were more reason to be friendly by an honest river who shakes hands with the sea, and not a place to be reckoning that there be any reason to believe there narrator to be anything other than friendly.

I believe that this poem speaks for the writer and her value of England in the late 20th century, because she speaks for the her country: it's her land: it's her country, and when she is asked in the very ending where it is that she is from, she replies: "Here... Here. These parts." Jackie Kay likely believes that her poem is still very representative of the sea and her passions for her true nature as an English woman to be determined as both friendly and virtuous... and anyone who should challenge that nature of her being... she should speak her mind to believe in her own powerful nature as a woman of England: a woman with power who was actually not a bad woman at all. It speaks for her country, and it speaks for her time.

The Inability to Escape One's Social Class: a Social Issue

An overarching social issue in the different genres of British literature that we read that I noticed was the inability to escape the social class that you were born into. This seemed to be an apparent theme in all of the genres that we read. This is something that I was unfamiliar with, having only read mostly American literature where you can rise from poverty all the way to West Egg. In many of the poems and novels, this issue was not directly addressed. It is something that I have simply observed that seems to lie within many texts that we have read. This issue of inability to escape one’s social or economic class is problematic for me as an American reader because I have grown up reading and being submerged in a culture that promotes, and often encourages, people to work hard to move on up the ladder.

            Starting in the Romantic Era, a prime example of inability to escape one’s social class is The Chimney Sweeper. In this poem William Blake describes a young boy who is sold by his parents to a chimney sweeping company. This poem describes the miserable life as a chimney sweeper and the awful conditions that they work in that inevitably leads the working children to their death. The fact that a boy’s parents are forced to sell their son to a chimney sweeping company leads me to believe that he comes from a poor family who could use every last dime they could get. It is clear that little Tom Dacre will not have a fair chance of making a steady living sweeping people’s chimneys and eventually work his way up to the top of the company and retire a rich man after sweeping for several years. On the contrary, we learn the little Tom Dacre will, soon, die a chimney sweeper, never having the chance to advance from a low social standing to a higher social class.

            In the Victorian Era, a clear example of the inability to escape social class is shown in Dickens’ A Walk in the Workhouse. In this short story, Dickens attempts to draw sympathy from the reader on the lower class people in this workhouse. He successfully does this by given detailed descriptions of the different kinds of people that are in the workhouse. He describes this congregation as having few “young women, and beetle-browned young men; but not many” but “aged people were there in every variety” (751, Broadview Anthology). The description of all the different types of old people and their disabilities leads the reader to the fact that these are people who have been in the workhouse for their entire lives, and the abundance of elderly people show that there is no escape from their poverty.

            Finally, in the 20^th Century we get another, perhaps the clearest, example of the inability for people to escape their social class. In E.M. Forster’s novel, A Passage to India, we see an obvious social divide between the colonized Indians and the Anglo Indians. A direct example of this conflict is when two friends, one Indian (Aziz) and the other British (Fielding), are discussing their friendship at the end of the book. In their last dialogue, Aziz claims that he and Fielding cannot be friends and it is clear that the reason for this is because Fielding is of a different social class that Aziz. They cannot be friends because one is a colonizer and the other is the colonized, which creates an inequality between the two that neither can escape due to their nationality. In conclusion, the texts that we have read this semester all seem to carry the theme of the inability to escapes one’s social class, regardless of the time period or genre it was written in.

War and Poverty

Writers, no matter their time period, like to write about the beauty and the life they see around them. Nature and the everyday human life was the most common topic of the romantic’s era that hasn't yet disappeared. More than anything writers seem to write about social issues. Issues such as war, and poverty and oppression because these issues never seem to completely disappear. For example, an evaluation of the everyday working life of man can be seen in "Song to the Men of England" in 1819 and in "Inglan Is a Bitch" written in 1991. There is one hundred and seventy two years between these two poems and yet both address the unfair difference in the life of the working poor.  "Men of England, wherefore plough/ For the lords who lay ye low?/ Wherefore weave with toil and care/ The rich robes your tyrants wear?" (pg 412) and "mi know dem have work, work in abundant/ yet still, dem mek mi redundant/ now, at fifty-five mi gettin' quite ol'/ yet still, dem sen' mi fi goh draw dole." (pg 1599)  Both of these poems address the unfair conditions of the working poor. In “Song to the Men of England” the poet is addressing those poor men who were working in a time of economic depression and social turmoil following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. This poem is a call to arms to force change I the social and economic order. In “Inglan Is a Bitch” the speaker is bemoaning the unfairness of the working conditions for immigrants. In the passage quoted above the man was laid off after fifteen years of hard work and had to receive welfare at fifty-five. He ends the poem with the line “is why wi a goh dhu ‘bout it?” which seems as though it could also be a call to arms.

War is another social issue poets commonly write about, mostly because it’s an all encompassing topic that happens over and over simply due to human nature. Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Bridgade” is probably one of the most famous of the Crimean War’s resulting poetry. World War One and World War Two and the Crimean War are a few that have poetry written for them. Even the modern wars in Iraq and Afghanastan, soldiers write about their experiences. Some topics are universal. Sadly enough, war and poverty seem to be some of them.