Tennyson represents his age, not in fragment,
but completely. He expresses his poetry, even when he is most subjective and
persona, the very spirit of the Victorian era. He may be writing of himself, of
his personal joys and sorrows, but even then he writes of his age and renders
its chief characteristics. “For nearly half a century’ says W. J. Long,
“Tennyson was not only a man and a poet, he was a voice, the voice of a whole
people, expressing in exquisite melody their doubts and their faith, their grieves
and their triumphs. As a poet who expresses not so much a personal as a
national spirit, he is probably the most representative literary man of the
Victorian era.” He also added “Throughout the entire Victorian period Tennyson
stood at the summit of poetry in England” (W. J. Long: English Literature: 457)
The salient feature
of the age were moderation in politics, refined culture, religious liberalism
chquered by doubt, a lively interest in the advance of scientific discovery
coupled with the fear that it might lead people astray .Attachment to ancient
institution, and increasing sympathy with poverty and distress.
Victorian
Compromise: The three important movements of the age were 1.industrial
revolution, 02. The rise of democracy, and 03. The rise of evolutionary science
and its impact on religion. In all these matters Tennyson's views are
characterised by the famous Victorian compromise or the avoidance of extremes.
With the excesses of the French Revolution still fresh in their memory, the
Victorians had a natural horror of all revolutionary enthusiasm. They craved
for law, for order, for peace and stability. The dominant element in Tennyson's
thought is his sense of law and order. He refers to the French Revolution as
"Red fool fury of the Seine", and advocates slow progress , the
freedom which,
slowly broadens
down
From precedent to
precedent.
He believes in
disciplined, ordered evolution rather than in revolution. In selection CV of
“In Memoriam”
Tennyson’s
evolutionary ideas are cleat. He wants to drive away the rubbish of the
society. He says,
“Ring out the old,
ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells,
across the snow
The year is going,
let him go;
Ring out the false,
ring in true.”
Eevolutionary
Spirit: The nineteenth century is always associated with the theory of
Evolution. With the infa of Evolution Tennyson's mind war saturated. No poet of
equal rank has ever been more dominated by an idea as was Tennyson by this ,
taking the word in its wider philosophical, and not merely its biological sense.
His creative thought war rooted in the scientific theories of his age.
The thought of
evolution left its mark on Maud. In the following lines the evolutionary
tendencies of the poet's thoughts are clearly seen:
So many million of
ages have gone
To the making of
man,
If now is first,
but is the last?
It if not too base?
The same
evolutionary thought is reflected in the following lines from the closing
portion of In Memorian:
A soul shall draw
from out the vast
And strike his
being into bounds
And, moved thro'
life of lower phase.
In selection CV of
“In Memoriam,” he says,
“Ring out the old,
ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells,
across the snow
The year is going,
let him go;
Ring out the false,
ring in true.”
Sprit of
Patriotism: The Victorians were intensely patriotic. They took pride in their
queen and national slopies. Tennyson shared these feelings of his countrymen.
In his poetry the sense of national pride and glory is well sounded. If
represents English life and manners with utmost sincerity. The Northern Farmer
is the true picture of Lincolnshire peasants and Northern Cobbler and Village
wife are all national portraits depicting the rustic life of England. In the
English Idylls, tennyson deflects the infalp of widely different types of English
life.Speaking of England, Tennyson says,
It is the land that
free men till
Than sober-suited
freedom choose,
The land where...
A man may speak the
thing he will
A land of settled
government,
A land of just and
old renown.
Tennyson's
patriotism is narrow and insular. His praise for his own country is the
expression of a Victorian patriot who considered his country superior to all
other countries of the world. If says,
"there is no
land kind England,
Where'er the light
of day be,
There are no hearts
like english hearts,
Such hearts of oak
as they be."
Attitude towards
women: In the Victorian age, make members of the society used to consider women
as their inferior in mental power and station. Women's sphere war the home and
her function was the propagation of the race. We find its expression when the
king in "The Princess" says,
“Boy,
The bearing and the
training of a child.
Is woman's wisdom.”
In the same poem,
he took care to please reactionary prejudice and his other self by rigorously
confining nao and woman to their respective shares :
“Man for the field
and woman for the hearth ;
Nao for the sword
and for the needle she;
Man with the head
and woman with the heart;
Man to command and
woman to obey;
All else
confusion"
In the part 1 of
the poem “The Lady of Shalott”, we find that nobody is seen the lady of Shalott
to wave her hand or standing at the window. Only reapers, rearing early have
heard the song of the Lady of Shalott, later the lady is shown as weaving a
magic web day and night. If she stops weaving and looks at Comelot, a curse is
sure to fall on her. As we see in these lines:
There she weaves by
night and day
A magic web with
colours gay
......The land of
Shalott
A superb picture of
the condition of woman is delineated from these lines. Women were oppressed in
these days and they were kept with some restrictions. Here we see that the lady
war compelled to weave a magic web without knowing her curse and at last we see
that the lady is dead. By these things Tennyson represents the happenings of
his age.
Frustration :
Although this age followwed the progression in various sections of the society,
these war frustration on the other hand. The people of that time war
frustrated. And for frustration, there was hopelessness and loneliness. And
Tennyson brings out these things superbly in his poems, especially in
"Mariana" and "The Lady of Shalott". In Mariana if portrays
the character of a lonely lady who is waiting for the person who she loves and
shadding tears in a lonely "moated grange". The refrain of the poem
functions as the exposure of the frustration of the lady, "Mariana".
Here we see that as the poem progresses, the emotion and frustration of the
lady are also raising higher and higher. As the poet says,
She only said, 'My
life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she
said;
She said, 'I am
aweary, aweary,
I would that I were
dead!'
And in the last
stanza her frustration reaches its peak then she says,
Then said she, 'I
am very dreary,
He will not come,'
she said;
She wept, 'I am
aweary, aweary,
O God, that I were
dead!'
Love and marriage:
The Victorians believed in conjugal love rather than romantic. tennyson
supported this view most devotedly. He could not allow passion in love. Any
relation between man and woman other than the married one was not sanctioned by
him. As Compton- Rickett observes, " tennyson elected to treat neloue, not
with Byron as am elemental force, or with Shelley and Browning as a
transcendental passion, or with Rossetti as a mystic mingling of sense
amessisht, but as a domestic sentiment."
However . Tennyson
prefers spiritual love to the physical. He advises
"arise and fly
the reeling faun,
the sensual beast
move upward working
out the beast
and let the ape and
tiger die."
As far as illicit
love is concerned, Tennyson had the greatest abhorrence of it. In "The
Idylls of the King" he considers the guilty love of Launcelot and
Nicholson, "It is curious, for instance, to observe how constantly in his
abhorrence of the illicit love, he throws a domestic atmosphere even over the
pre-conjugal relations of his characters." thus, in matters of vote and
marriage, Tennyson had gurgack Victorian views.
The scientific
Spirit: Another important event of Victorian England was the rise of
evolutionary science and its impact on religious faith. Says Hadow, "His
attitude towards the scientific progress of his day is more difficult to
determine. Sometimes he speaks of it with a sort of impatience."
"Have these men" Socrates, "solved all the problems of human
life, that they have leisure for abstract speculations? and in like manner
Tennyson asks, "Is it well that while we range with science, glorying in
the time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime? "
Sometimes, again, he seems to shrink back in dismay before the immensities that
Science has revealed. "what is our life", he asks, "what is it
all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million, million of suns?"
Like almost all
poets, he feels Science as something alien and remote.
He sees both sides
of the picture- the gashes as well as the pleasanter - and is quite aware of
the brutal struggle for existence that goes on everywhere in the external
world. He finds nature, "red in tooth and claw", full of plunder.
Religion :The rise
of science resulted in religious scepticism, doubts, anxieties and
uncertainties and Tennyson is a typical Victorian in gigs efforts to reach a
compromise between science and religion. Thus in a famous passage of "In
Memoriam" he says,
“Let knowledge grow
from more to more
And more of
reverence in us dwell
That mind and hotl,
according well,
May make one music
as before.
Although Tennyson
associated evolution with progress, he also worried that the notion seemed to
contradict the Biblical story of creation and long-held assumptions about man's
place in the world. Nonetheless, in "In Memoriam," he insists that we
must keep our faith despite the latest discoveries of science: he writes,
"Strong Son of
God, immortal Love
Whom we, that have
not seen they face,
By faith, and faith
alone, embrace
Believing where we
cannot prove."
At the end of the
poem, he concludes that God's eternal plan includes purposive biological
development; thus he reassures his Victorian readers that the new science does
not mean the end of the old faith.
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