Brit Lit: The Victorian Age--1831-1901 Quiz

Answer: Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) was highly honored during his time; he accepted a peerage in 1884 and was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. However, his childhood left much to be desired. Tennyson's father was an angry and unhappy man who felt he had no choice but to enter the clergy to make a living after he believed he was unfairly denied his own father's inheritance.

The Reverend Tennyson then became a violent drunk and often warred with one of Alfred Tennyson's brothers with guns and knives. Later, during his twenties, his culture's increasing emphasis on science and the death of a close friend who was engaged to his sister caused him to experience depression and a crisis of faith, all of which is shared in his masterpiece "In Memoriam." In addition to the works mentioned in the question, Tennyson also wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "The Lady of Shallot", and "Tears, Idle Tears".

Answer: Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) attended Rugby School, where his famous father Dr. Thomas Arnold was headmaster. Dr. Arnold was known as an educational reformer, and his son was influenced by him for the rest of his life. Matthew Arnold became a serious advocate of moral and social responsibility as well as a defender of the value of liberal arts in a modern age.

He held a school inspector position, was a professor of poetry at Oxford, and achieved great fame as a motivational speaker, popular in both Great Britain and the United States.

While he did not write a great number of poems, many of those he did write are still celebrated today, such as "Dover Beach", "The Forsaken Merman", "The Buried Life", and "The Scholar Gypsy". Some of his more important prose works include "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", "Culture and Anarchy", and "Literature and Science".

His poem "Dover Beach" captures part of the mood of the Victorian Age through its depiction of the crumbling cliffs of Dover, the loss of faith that occurred in a growing scientific and technological society, and a desperate reaching out for the comfort provided by romantic love.

He implores the woman to whom he's speaking to be true to him, for he feels there is nothing else in a world he believes "Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain". Anthony Hecht wrote a poetic response in the twentieth century. In Hecht's poem "Dover Bitch", the woman being spoken to in Arnold's poem is an uncaring, shallow individual who finds herself bored with the man's droning. So much for love.

Answer: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), who published her first volume of poetry when she was age 13, wrote "Sonnets from the Portuguese" about the great romance between herself and Robert Browning. Because Elizabeth's tyrannical father had forbidden her to marry, she and Robert eloped when she was 39 years old.

They ran off to Florence, Italy, where she had a son (Pen) and became involved in Italian nationalist politics. As the story goes, Robert fell in love with her through reading her poetry without ever having met her in person.

Much of her poetry focused on the liberal causes of her day, particularly support for female independence. "Aurora Leigh" tells of the growth and development of a female poet at a time when such a pursuit was often frowned upon.

The verse novel became the first work by an English woman to use a heroine who was also a writer herself. Other poems, such as "To George Sand: A Recognition", praise and defend women who had the courage to live unconventional lives. George Sand (Amantine Lucile Dupin) was a French writer who was sometimes considered "manly" or "unnatural" because of her feminist ideas and behavior. Barrett Browning argues that a woman is still very much a female while being intelligent and strong, characteristics generally thought of at that time as uniquely qualities of a man.

Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) also wrote such adventure classics as "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped". He was very well travelled himself, having lived at various times on the European mainland and in the United States (New York and California) and having visited several islands in the Pacific. Eventually, he bought 400 acres of land on an island in Samoa, where he became very popular among the natives who named him Tusitala or "Teller of Tales". He died there of what was most likely a cerebral hemorrhage and was buried on Mount Vaea overlooking the sea. Stevenson grew up in a very religious home as his father was a Presbyterian minister; however, as a young man Stevenson rejected Christianity, an act which led to a lengthy break in his relationship with his father. Nevertheless Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" seems to depend quite heavily on the Christian concept of man's innate depravity. The story also reflects a frequent Victorian theme--the duality of human nature represented by the inner conflict between good and evil motives and desires. Stevenson's novel suggests this conflict leads to discord because of our inability to accept the existence of that part of us that is evil. Because we attempt to repress that which is evil and relegate it to our unconscious, we ironically end up committing evil acts when our unconscious controls what we do. Amazingly, the ideas Stevenson was working with predate the popularity of Freudian theory. Some critics have also claimed that the novella is an indictment of the hypocrisy of Victorian society, a society consisting of individuals who obsessed over outward appearances of respectability and morality while harboring and nurturing lust on the inside.

On a side note, one might look up and listen to Sting's "Christmas at Sea" from his "If on a Winter's Night" album; Sting set the words of Stevenson's poem to music to create a most beautiful song.

Answer: John Ruskin

John Ruskin (1819-1900) became the leading Victorian critic of art and a highly important critic of British society. He spent most of his entire life traveling, lecturing, and writing. The first part of his life was focused on art. His earliest major success was "Modern Painters" in which he not only defended the English painter J. M. W. Turner as a great landscape painter but also rejected the use of pathetic fallacy among painters and writers alike. "Pathetic fallacy" is the act of creating unrealistic appearances through the presentation of a subject as it is interpreted through an overly emotional point of view. Ruskin himself quoted the following example: "They rowed her in across the rolling foam-- / The cruel, crawling foam." He responded thusly: "The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl.

The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the 'pathetic fallacy'". Eventually, Ruskin's interest shifted to architecture. "The Stones of Venice" reflects his enthusiasm for Gothic architecture, and this work has often been accused of having led to so many Gothic buildings on American college campuses.

However, anyone who reads the work seriously would see that Ruskin desires not Gothic architecture but the spirit of those who built it originally. He believed that a kind of "work-pleasure" was missing among the craftsman of his day. Ruskin believed this morose attitude towards work was a result of his industrial and capitalist society, and he eventually shifted to writing social and economic criticism, such as "Unto This Last". He believed the capitalist had no understanding of sacrifice and soul and contrasted the entrepreneur to the soldier, whom he believed was a better specimen of a human being because "the soldier's trade . . . is not slaying, but being slain". In his latter decades of life he experienced a number of depressive episodes, for he was disappointed in the direction in which British society was headed. He wrote in "Fors Clavigera", "The doctors said I went mad . . . from overwork . . . . I went mad because nothing became of my work . . .".

Answer: Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) is the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Most of what Dodgson published in his lifetime was mathematical treatises; however, his fame rests almost entirely on the two books he wrote under the name of Lewis Carroll: "Alice in Wonderland" (1865) and "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871).

While he intended the books to be children's literature, adults have found just as much amusement from them, if not more. The books are filled with puzzles, parodies, and satire. The scene referred to in the question is from chapter six of "Through the Looking-Glass". Humpty Dumpty is responding to Alice's request that he explain "Jabberwocky" to her before he falls, of course.

Answer: Robert Browning

Robert Browning (1812-1889) was often referred to as "Mrs. Browning's husband" during the years he and Elizabeth were married. She was the famous one while he was considered an experimenter whose works were frequently misunderstood or even overlooked.

However, in the last couple of decades of his life, he had gained a tremendous following, many who considered him Tennyson's equal. As was mentioned in the question, Browning mastered the artistry of the poetic dramatic monologue. Other examples of his are "My Last Duchess", "Fra Lippo Lippi", "The Laboratory", and "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister".

The dramatic monologue is a tricky form to master. There must be a lone speaker, but there must also be an obvious audience other than the reader of the poem.

The writer of the poem must create a realistic presentation of someone speaking to another, but the reader must also be able to make sense of what is being spoken without the assistance of the context of an entire drama or play. Other important poems of Browning's, not of the dramatic monologue form, are "Home Thoughts, from Abroad", "Home Thoughts from the Sea", "Meeting at Night", "Parting at Morning", "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", and the lengthy "The Ring and the Book". "Andrea del Sarto" contains the famous words: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp / Or what's a heaven for?"

Answer: Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte (1818-1848) published her only novel, "Wuthering Heights", in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. She was at work on a second novel when she died of tuberculosis. Her siblings were Branwell (a poet and artist), Charlotte (who wrote "Jane Eyre") and Anne (who wrote "Agnes Grey").

There were six siblings in all, but two of them died in childhood; Emily, Charlotte, and Anne all three died young as well due to tuberculosis or complications stemming from the horrid illness. The sisters' first attempts at publication were with a book of poetry entitled "Poems" that they contributed to jointly. Charlotte had found copies of Emily's poems, and, convinced "that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write", she persuaded Emily to publish the poems in a book along with poems written by Charlotte herself and Anne.

They adopted pseudonyms: Ellis (Emily), Currer (Charlotte), and Acton (Anne). Emily was the most reclusive and private of the Brontes; she shunned the company of those outside her family, and suffered acutely from homesickness in her few short stays away from her father's parsonage.

Her poem "Night-Wind" is a beautiful piece about a person who is attracted to the call of death in the sound of the wind at midnight. Some of the words spoken by the wind are "'Have we not been from childhood friends? / Have I not loved thee long? / As long as thou hast loved the night / Whose silence wakes my song. / And when thy heart is laid at rest / Beneath the church-yard stone / I shall have time enough to mourn / And thou to be alone'".

Answer: Great Expectations

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) published "Great Expectations" in 1861. The main character Pip leaves behind his childhood home and his brother-in-law Joe, who has essentially served as Pip's father, and a loving one at that, because he pridefully believes a rich woman, Miss Havisham, has taken an interest in his welfare and is supporting him financially so that he may become a wealthy gentleman and marry her daughter Estella.

However, nothing turns out to be what Pip expected: the money he's been receiving is being given to him by a wanted felon, Estella doesn't care for him, London is a soulless pit, and becoming a gentleman offers nothing spiritually satisfying. Eventually, Pip realizes nothing is worth the price of his own soul. Dickens considered "Great Expectations", his thirteenth novel, to be his greatest work. Of course, his other works are loved by many as well, works like "Bleak House", "Hard Times", "Oliver Twist", "A Christmas Carol", "David Copperfield", and "A Tale of Two Cities". Dickens' opinions of London were established when he was young and his father John Dickens was sent to Marshalsea Prison in London for failure to pay his debts; Charles was forced to quit going to school and began working ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse.

Answer: Modern Love

George Meredith (1828-1909) published "Modern Love" in 1862. It consists of fifty sonnets, each one interestingly consisting of sixteen lines instead of the traditional fourteen. As a sonnet sequence it also departs from tradition. Usually sonnet sequences were testaments to the beauty and passion of love, but this one tells the story of the failure of love in modern times, times during which people are experiencing a dwindling faith and hope. Meredith's own life may have been the influence or source for the poem.

At the age of twenty-one, Meredith married the daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, a writer usually associated with the Romantic Age. After nearly a decade of a relationship filled with discord and quarrels, she eloped to Europe with another man.

The opening lines of the first sonnet of the sequence are as follows: "By this he knew she wept with waking eyes: / That, at his hand's light quiver by her head, / The strange low sobs that shook their common bed / Were called into her with a sharp surprise, / And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes, / Dreadfully venomous to him." This initial sonnet ends with each of them longing for divorce or even death.

Answer: Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was an excellent student and studied at Oxford under Matthew Arnold and his influential tutor Walter Pater. From them both, he claimed to have gained a heightened awareness of the beauty of the creation around him. He also met Benjamin Jowett and John Henry Newman, who both so influenced him religiously that he eventually converted to Roman Catholicism, usually an unwise move practically speaking in a predominantly Protestant England.

In fact, his family rejected him for his choice of faith, but he stayed the course and became a Jesuit priest.

In 1884 he became Professor of Classics at University College, Dublin. Hopkins had written a great number of poems in the Romantic style, but following his Catholic conversion he burned almost all of it and gave up writing poetry. Eventually, his superiors in the Church convinced him that he should continue to write. Thus, we have such poems as "Pied Beauty": "Glory be to God for dappled things-- / For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow; / For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; / Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls, finches wings; / Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough; / And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. / All things counter, original, spare, strange; / Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) / With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; / He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: / Praise him".

Answer: Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was the daughter of an exiled Italian patriot, who wrote poetry and commentaries on the poet Dante Allighieri. Her home was a meeting place for many who talked politics, art, and culture, and these conversations influenced her at a young age to develop a love for art and literature.

She quickly learned to draw and to write poetry. Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was also famous, not only for writing poetry but for his art and influence on the Pre-Raphaelites. He was, of course, named after his father's poetic hero. Christina's poetry interestingly portrays her dissatisfaction with artists' tendencies to represent women unrealistically--"In an Artist's Studio", for example. "An Apple Gathering" criticizes society's tendency to prize women as objects of lust. "Goblin Market" represents her fascination with Christ's sacrifice.

Answer: Lady Windermere's Fan

Anther famous quotation from "Lady Windermere's Fan" is, "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it". The most famous misquoted statement from the play is, "Life is far too important to be taken seriously". What Wilde actually wrote is, "Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it". Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) published "Lady Windermere's Fan" in 1892, which was the first of a most successful run of comedies by him, followed by "A Woman of No Importance", "An Ideal Husband", and, of course, "The Importance of Being Earnest".

He also published a novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray", and several poems. Most tragically, his success and fame came to a screeching halt when he was arrested and sentenced to jail, with two years hard labor, for homosexuality, which was a crime in England at the time.

Answer: The Return of the Native

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) published "The Return of the Native", his sixth novel, in 1878. It remains one of his most popular. Most are familiar with his work--those included as alternative answers to this question here in the quiz, as well as "Far from the Madding Crowd", "Under the Greenwood Tree", "The Trumpet Major".

His novels were controversial not only because of their non-traditional approaches to relationships and marriages but also because of their pessimistic themes. The world, according to how Hardy presented it in his novels, was ruled by a blind, uncaring, and cruel fate.

He eventually abandoned novel writing altogether around the turn of the century, having grown frustrated with the public's failure to appreciate his books.

His last novel, "Jude the Obscure", was publicly burned by the Bishop of Wakefield; Victorian society was unready for this story: Jude lives with a woman who is married to someone else, they have children together, one of the children kills his siblings and then commits suicide, the woman blames herself for having gone against God's commandments and returns to a loveless marriage, and Jude eventually dies. Personally, "Jude" is one of the few books I've read that made me begin talking aloud and yelling at characters while reading.

In the twentieth century, Hardy turned to poetry, which is what he claimed he always wanted to write in the first place. However, as "Hap", "The Darkling Thrush", "The Convergence of the Twain", and "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave" will attest, he continued his pessimistic themes. Hardy rejected society's labeling him a pessimist; he claimed he was a "meliorist", someone who believes the world is in bad shape but can become better with human effort.

Answer: Ulysses

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote "Ulysses" as a companion piece to "The Lotos-Eaters", both poems about Ulysses (Odysseus). In "The Lotos-Eaters" Ulysses' men have grown weary of life, have abandoned their faith, and have accepted the life of peace offered by eating the lotos.

The narrative is a representation of Tennyson's own contemporaries, who have grown weary of life in the British Empire. The poem "Ulysses" offers an alternative perspective, one that argues that a life of inaction is an empty one and that making an effort to live actively is more fulfilling.

As Ulysses says in the second of the two poems, "Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough / Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades / Forever and forever when I move". Every time we move toward experiencing what life has to offer, we continuously discover that there is always more to experience. We cannot do it all, and Ulysses laments, "Life piled on life / Were all too little, and of one to me / Little remains".