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Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen On Other Common Themes

We began on Thursday, February 23rd with a Reward Quiz and the class joking with Dr. Foss about canceling class because of the beautiful weather. The answers to the Reward Quiz were: 1. The baby was white/had a dominating look like her master 2. Pan 3. She dies 4. Porphyria’s lover strangles her and 5. “G-r-r!”. After the quiz, we moved on to small group discussions considering Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 22,” “Sonnet 43,” and “A Musical Instrument.”

My group included Eric, Caroline, Shama, Elizabeth and myself. As we speculated on the meaning of “Sonnet 22,” I shared my opinion that it is saying that the lovers don’t need or want to go to heaven and don’t care about earthly trials as long as they have each other. Our discussion of “A Musical Instrument” provided much more material for the Ladies vs. Gentlemen topic; we couldn’t decide on a gender for the reed in the poem because the text alluded to it as a man, but it had the feminine qualities of patience and submission. Our group concluded that we didn’t really understand “A Musical Instrument.”

Dr. Foss then called us back to large group to tell us about E.B. Browning’s life, including her exciting elopement with Robert Browning. Dr. Foss mentioned the role of a female speaker towards a male love object, a novel idea during the Victorian era. He also shed some light on “A Musical Instrument,” telling us that Pan created his music/art by means of harm to the reed, which could symbolize male creation by means of harm to woman—although he also says there are plenty of ways to interpret the meaning of this poem, including that it is about the Industrial Revolution.

Next we moved on to a large group discussion about E.B. Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” and the class focused on how this poem compares to Mary Prince’s account. Most of the class agreed that Mary Prince’s account is more moving because it’s true, and it’s hard to sympathize with Browning’s speaker because she killed her child. Dr. Foss makes the point that modern readers question whether Browning’s poem is over the top, but at the time this may not have been outrageous. He also mentioned that the speaker suggests that what really killed her child was the “cross her people have been made to bear” i.e. the institution of slavery. Someone said that the killing was easier to bear because of the “master’s look” in the child’s eyes, and another contributor said that the child’s death was a blessing because a life of slavery probably would have been worse. The class questioned why the speaker said she left white men curse-free and whether it put her on a moral high-ground above them, despite her actions. Dr. Foss asked us whether the speaker’s harshness on God’s role in allowing slavery to happen was characteristic of the Victorian era as one of doubt or as one of faith.

We subsequently moved back into small groups and the topic of Victorian gender to discuss “Porphyria’s Lover,” “My Last Duchess,” and “Love Among the Ruins” by Robert Browning. In my group, Elizabeth said that “Porphyria’s Lover” resembles Elizabeth and Robert Browning’s meeting but Eric disagreed. After some discussion on the lover’s reasons for killing Porphyria, we agreed with Eric’s opinion that it was to preserve and keep her forever. It was said that this poem includes the idea that the woman was perfect and the man overpowered and took possession of her, not an uncommon Victorian theme.

Our group moved on to “My Last Duchess,” deciding that the speaker killed his wife because he did not want to “stoop.” At this point Dr. Foss briefly interrupted the discussion to say that Porphyria’s lover might have been wondering whether she would come to meet him. Our group returned to “My Last Duchess,” saying that the Duke was more interested in things than people and he doesn’t want to have to make them perfect, he just wants them to be perfect. We didn’t have enough time to discuss “Love Among the Ruins.”

The class returned reunited to hear about Robert Browning’s life from Dr. Foss: that he re-popularized dramatic monologue and was famous for creating controversial poetic speakers. He continued to say that “Hallmark Browning” speakers have an allure despite how distasteful they may be and there is a “reluctant fascination that switches between desire and revulsion,” which sounds pretty characteristic of Victorian sexuality. Dr. Foss also mentioned that Browning was opening these characters up to criticism and that he was not these people himself. The class was asked how traditional patriarchal influences balance in with Elizabeth and Robert Browning’s poetry, and how the same writers can write such different poems.

We then moved on to discussion on “Soliloquy on the Spanish Cloister,” specifically its origin/motive: is it the product of an age of doubt, simple exposure of hypocrisy in the church, or is it just British criticism of Catholicism? Dr. Foss also wondered aloud whether the past was a convenient cover for criticizing contemporary Victorian society or if authors wrote about it because it had better material. Someone mentioned that the speaker is “doing the devil’s work,” indicating that this poem is definitely ironic, but there was some doubt as to the attitude Browning wanted us to have toward the speaker and thus Victorian hypocrisy.

The class moved back into small groups for the third and final time to discuss “The Lotus Eaters” and “Ulysses,” paying special attention to the Victorian themes of war, travel, and empire. Our group says that “Lotus Eaters” says exactly the opposite of what it is trying to get across; Caroline said that it was glorifying from the eaters’ perspective. Eric said that Tennyson wants us to sympathize with them but realize that they’re doing wrong. One of us mentioned that it basically makes fun of lazy travelers, implying that they should come back to reality but also that traveling is good. About “Ulysses,” our group said that Tennyson seems to convey his own feelings through the speaker, and the last two lines could be interpreted as a direct statement on imperialism (“Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”).

Class began to wrap up with Dr. Foss’ impersonation of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s grandfather saying “There, that is the first money you have ever earned by your poetry, and, take my word for it, it will be the last.” We learned that Tennyson was the poet laureate and was a “rock star” and extremely easy person to make fun of because he was such a cultural institution. He also poses difficulties for scholars dating the Romantic era, because many of his poems can be considered Romantic yet still speak to Victorians.

Our last topic was Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot” which we discussed in large group, the main conclusion being that she was imprisoned in a culture that expected her to be silent and domestic. The implication of this poem is that art dies if the artist stops creating it, and there is doubt as to whether the lady’s death was worth anything. Thus ended the February 23rd British Literature Since Eighteen Hundred class in which we focused on E.B. Browning, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Victorian gender roles, and those authors’ other important themes.

By June Walker (1, 244 words)

Class Summary for Tuesday, February 21, 2012 Today, class began with a reward quiz, which was much more of a punishment—just like normal. The answers to the quiz were: she killed the baby because it made the master’s face, Pan is the main character, the Lady of Shallot dies, he strangles Porphyria to death, and the sound “grr” opens and closes the poem. After that, Professor Foss recommended that we ask him about any handwriting questions we have on our graded tests. For the remainder of class, we moved in and out of small groups discussing Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, and Lord Alfred Tennyson. We reviewed the relationship between Victorian men and women, the attitudes towards the sudden Scientific Revolution, and expansion of the British Empire that affected the Victorian writers that appeared in the poetry. By the end of our conversation, we had concluded that women held little value in the Victorian Era, the Scientific Revolution caused a critical analysis among the church, and everyone showed pride for the expansion of the Empire.

Class discussion opened in small groups looking at poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We examined sonnets 22 and 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese and the poem “A Musical Instrument.” The two sonnets spoke of the Scientific Revolution. In Sonnet 22, Barrett talks about the fear of venturing too far away from religion, and “let us stay / rather, on earth, Beloved,” (9-10). By Sonnet 43, Barrett has given up on religion, saying, “in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. / I love thee with a love I seemed to lose / with my lost saints…” (10-12). Professor Foss then ended group discussion and brought our attentions to “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point.” Here, we reviewed the poem and Mary Prince’s account of slavery. The two both made a powerful anti-slavery statement, but Prince’s seemed to have more power because it was a realistic account, not a piece of fiction. Barrett’s poem, however, did use interesting symbolism. During the poem, the speaker kills the child conceived from the master’s sexual abuse. Most of the classmates had a hard time feeling bad for her because she killed her own child, but she does this out of desperation. In her suffering state, she feels that the only way to overcome her master’s control is to kill this child because it looks like her master. The child becomes a symbol of slavery to the speaker and its death is the only way she can overcome it.

After this, we moved back into small groups to discuss Robert Browning’s poems, “Porphyria’s Lover,” “My Last Duchess,” and “Love Among the Ruins.” We found that these poems dealt with the aspect of relationships between men and women in the Victorian Era. In “Porphyria’s Lover,” the narrator kills Porphyria at the moment that she pronounces her love for him. By doing so, the narrator hopes to keep Porphyria in that brief moment of perfection, commenting on the fickle love of women. “My Last Duchess” reveals to us that women were not treated as equals in society, but rather as an object. The Duchess’s husband ends up killing her because, “she smiled, no doubt, / whene’er I passed her, but who passed without / much the same smile…” (43-45). The Count believes that she has cheated on him and he kills her for it. He tells this story to the father of his new bride-to-be, awaiting his daughter as a gift. “Love Among the Ruins,” from what our group had time to review, was simply about how it sounded a lot nicer than the other poems.

When we switched back into the large group discussion, Professor Foss quickly revealed that Mr. Browning was known for creating controversial characters in his work because even if one dislikes the narrator, the reader can identify and critique something that the narrator says. “The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” then became the topic of discussion. The text illustrates the sudden turn on the Church in light of science. Browning uses an ironic undertone to illustrate the change. The speaker scrutinizes the actions of a fellow monk, citing that, “[while I] drink watered orange pulp / in three sips the Arian frustrate / he drains his in one gulp,” (38-40). This ridiculous scrutiny of drinking orange juice, followed with things like selling his soul to the devil, makes the monk sound comical. This rejection of the church becomes common practice during the Victorian Era.

Then the final author came into discussion—Lord Alfred Tennyson. We began, once again, in small group discussion. The Tennyson selections we read seemed to have one component that the other selections for the day lacked—pride for the expansion of the empire. The poem “Ulysses” talks about how Ulysses and his men were bored after returning home, wanting to go back out and go adventure. This relates to the expansion of the empire. The sense of imperial pride appeared greatly during the Victorian Era, even though Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” before the Victorian Era began.

Professor Foss then gathered us together for a very short summary of “The Lady of Shallot.” He said that the readers often interpreted the poem as a statement about women in society. The lady dies because she removes herself from her weaving, causing her death. The account comments on the value of women.

By the end of class we had analyzed three early writers of the Victorian Era. Their works reveal many facets of the time: the lower status of women in society, the struggle between religion and science, and the excitement for the vast empire. Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson both show us how women were mistreated as objects and servants. Elizabeth and Robert Browning show us the back and forth how people started to accept the Scientific Revolution as their new religion. Finally, nationalism for the British crown showed in the final poems of Tennyson, allowing us to trace major themes of the period throughout the poetry selections. Cole Wyrough Word Count 1,004