September 11, 2023
Why I Hate Victorian Literature
I hate Victorian Literature. Actually, allow me to rephrase this: I hate Victorian literature with a passion. This isn’t very useful to you, but why I hate it can be. And the connection between why I think Victorian literature sucks and our present time, even more so.
I’ve been exposed to enough Victorian literature during my university years to have developed a pretty solid opinion of it. In other words, I’ve read enough abandoned enough texts of such authors as Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, to know I hate them and the rest of their lot.
This is a subjective opinion, to be sure, but I think Victorian literature was a disaster for art. The repercussions are still with us ever since, and they boil down to one critical element: making money.
I Hate Victorian Literature Because of Its Destabilized Priorities
In plain terms: I hate Victorian literature because, arguably during the Victorian time, we began to see the full effect of the industrialization of the arts. The literary priorities – a narrative arc that made sense, a plot submitting to the demands of the narrative, and so on – took second place to marketability and making money.
I’ll give you an example, quoting from my doctoral dissertation, pages 28-29.
The creative process itself had to be adapted to the new reality. Whereas Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein – no pun intended – in the context of a friendly competition during a journey to
Europe, Charles Dickens… explicitly complained about the demands of his writing
schedule, going as far as calling himself a prisoner (Houston, Gail Turley. From Dickens to Dracula: Gothic, Economics, and Victorian Fiction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005., 78–79). This effect was caused by the demands of serialized, weekly publication practices, and there often was a direct conflict between authorial intent and temporal constraints. Elizabeth Gaskell is a notable example, as in the preface of her 1855 North and South she effectively disowns the serialized version that had appeared in Household Words, the weekly literary magazine edited by Dickens, due to the latter’s alterations.
“Imposed”, “Originally Intended”, “Improbable Rapidity”
Indeed, it’s interesting to see what Elizabeth Gaskell herself had to say about the matter (I’m quoting again from my dissertation, directly quoting Gaskell’s preface):
On its appearance in ‘Household Words,’ this tale was obliged to conform to the conditions imposed by the requirements of a weekly publication, and likewise to confine itself within certain advertised limits, in order that faith might be kept with the public. Although these conditions were made as light as they well could be, the author found it impossible to develop the story in the manner originally intended, and, more especially, was compelled to hurry on events with an improbable rapidity towards the close. In some degree to remedy this obvious defect, various short passages have been inserted, and several new chapters added.
It seems to me Gaskell fully admits that marketing and the demands of money-making directly interfered with the creative process. What she (and Dickens, as editor) prioritized was not the narrative itself but that “faith might be kept with the public”.
Narrative Reasons Why I Hate Victorian Literature
Again, a reminder: Though there is a cloak of objectivity here, this does remain a subjective opinion. I hate Victorian literature, but there are obviously many readers who can’t get enough of Dickens, the Brontë sisters, or (the pre-Victorian but writing like a Victorian on steroids) Jane Austen, whose writing I hate more than words can say.
With this little reminder on subjectivity out of the way, the narrative reasons I hate Victorian literature are:
- It’s drier than a rock in Sahara. No poetry, no conceptual foundation, no symbolic frameworks. No room for interpretations, nothing, nada, zip. Perhaps a determined reader could squeeze in some accidental meanings in there, with a lot of effort.
- It has no sense of narrative pace. Thirty pages on getting a description of a royal garden? Yawn.
- Huge relatability issues. And before you claim it’s a repercussion of the social context, kindly explain why there are no such problems with the far older Hamlet or Othello, or even, since I mentioned it, Frankenstein. If I can relate to an imaginary Danish prince of the late 16th – early 17th century, or a nonhuman creature made of dead matter, the problem is not the social context but something else.
- Little to no ambiguity, either in terms of narrative interpretations (see above), or in terms of character makeup. Victorian characters are flat as an iron.
Obviously, I’m exaggerating and generalizing. Hard-pressed, I could (probably; maybe; perhaps) find some counterexamples. But as a reader, with so many great books around that wait to be read, why would I bother spending any of my time on such dullness?
What Lessons Does Victorian Literature Have for our Time?
The writing (no pun intended) has been on the wall for quite some time. Writing-as-market is about similarity, uniformity, predictability, quantification, conformity. Writing-as-art is about divergence, dissonance, authenticity, chaos.
The problem is, most people don’t want any of the latter. Most readers indeed want entertainment, escapism, easily digestible pastimes; not complexity, not mental work, and certainly not existential agony. Which only perpetuates the cycle, because that means more entertainment, still.
Is any of that a problem? Not to me; I can find books I like to read, though more and more I have to search for them; which is fine. But it’s a problem to our societies, as we have fewer and fewer people able to understand writing-as-art, let alone enjoy it.
Ultimately, is there any Victorian literature that doesn’t suck I like? Perhaps, depending on the definition of “Victorian literature” – would certain Gothic works count as Victorian simply because they were written during that time? But, again, it’s a matter of ratio. I know for a fact I’ll like any work by Shakespeare, Byron, or – to approach our own era and prose – Mishima or Moravia. Why would I want to take my chances with something of an author I know I dislike?
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If that was the hallmark of victorian literature (marketing, predictability) we are now living in ultra victorian world. In fact t todays world is a drab conveyor belt society.
However, hate is a strong word, and I’m not sure it was as dull then back in the 19th century compared to the dead world we have made for ourselves in the 21st
Your point regarding the subjectivity of dullness is both apt and intriguing. Indeed, it’s highly likely it wasn’t considered dull (otherwise it wouldn’t sell).
On the other hand, it’s precisely this subjectivity that troubles me, in the sense that it reveals something about our societies. I mean – to make the transfer to our current “conveyor belt society” – that you have people unable to read anything longer than an Instagram post and consider the latest Hollywood blockbuster the reference point for good filmmaking is certainly disturbing.
I don’t hate it – I read the obvious stuff when I was young, but fortunately never had to study it – but I don’t go looking for more of it.
Maybe its very predictability is what makes readers not only read the canon, but be open to faux and pastiche and anachronistic versions. It is still popular with certain readers. I assume they long for a time in which they might have been one of the characters, not considering they probably wouldn’t have been, but would have been stuck as a 16-hour-a-day scullery maid or stable boy.
‘Romance’, and safely in the past! You could get lost for days!
Great point on predictability! There’s a post waiting to be written on the paradox of predictability and escapism. I mean, it would seem many people seek reading that is predictable yet for the purpose of escaping their mundane routine.
And yet, 19th century writing establishes what we know as literature, defines the standard for what we now call literature. It’s fascinating.
Fair point, but I’d consider it a “proof of concept” of sorts. I mean, the Wright Flyer established that heavier-than-air flying was possible; it was obsolete the moment it left the ground.
thank you for the reply.
I think a chief difference between Victorian literature and our equivalent world some 150 years later is that we are in a cultural cul-de-sac. Obviously, there was some thought put into prior times, which itself developed from the 18th century literature – it was a period of emerging republics – the age of David Hume, and of science. That emerged from a rather predictable 17th century model and if I might use a musical analogy – Bach was a composer of a rather edifying predictability. Predictable, harmonic, but nonetheless edifying.
So perhaps the gadfly is romanticism in literature that predictability. Irving Babbit once wrote “It is easier for the romanticist to be a genius than for the classicist to be an ordinary man” (Rousseau and Romanticism)
Even then, they could be unnecessary terms, as some of the most edifying moment’s in Bach and Mozart are their romantic elevations. They put soul into music, and I think we can find the same in fine literature. Even in the 20th century Walt Whitman, Aldous Huxley concentrated on man’s finer emotions and shades of expression.
we in the 21st are governed entirely by predictability and marketing, but an almost total absence of feeling or finer sentiment. in fact, when you look at Instagram, it is going to be the same people posting almost exactly the same photoshopped images, with some variation of exactly the same faux buddhist lines recanted time and time again – which I assume they are deploying to make them selves seem sage, but which is nothing more than arrogated 2nd hand knowledge deployed to make themselves seem grander than they really are. I also doubt they even practice what they preach, yet there they are, lauding it over us
I would like to argue against your suggestion that we are in a cultural cul-de-sac, but I’m not sure I can. You’re making pertinent observations regarding the state of what ought to have been expression but has degenerated into imitation without limits, in the chase for profit (and with platforms like Instagram obviously encouraging it).
To name my favorite example, that the YouTube algorithm encourages 15-second videos of dogs eating a sausage over a 40-minute lecture on existential philosophy will not end well for us.
In a way, we should take Carl Sagan’s sadly accurate prediction about scientific illiteracy (essentially anticipating in the 90s the politicization of climate change denial, vaccine denial, and flat earth) and apply it to culture: Not only do we live in a dystopia where people work 12+ hrs per day in jobs they hate while robots (AI) “make art”, but these people don’t even realize that what AIs produce (whether textual or visual) is not art.
The most immediate definition of art I can find is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power:”
Artificial intelligence: I don’t see there is any such thing. It is really advanced programming, and not intelligence.
However, artistically you could have two artists in front of the same visual scene. Both will produce different perspectives – whether that be Watteau or Boucher – obviously from the 18th century – evoking the same visual scene..
It’s the same principle in literature – you would have two different intellects responding differently to the same stimuli , yet both would be relatable.
I fear that it has all become generic now and the death of originality
Not jumping the gun or hogging the forum, but I’m fascinated by your description of Victorian characters. Dull, wooden, devoid of a human touch, as though they’re wooden stock characters doing a stand and deliver performance. I agree this is strong in Jane Austen but the ghastliest book I ever read was Wuthering Heights.
it’s as though characters have lost personality and are functions of society, politics, excess romance, which was the vogue of the time, , and other outside notions that simply do not originate in the individual.
It’s as though they are just sociological agents.
What we seem to have inherited is this kind of outside ideology governing minds – which is what the marketing does. It kind of takes away the individual, in the most invited way.
Very intriguing connection between outside forces and the loss of individuality.
To me, there’s an intense paradox in capitalist forces purportedly being about the individual, while actively taking away difference and diversion to facilitate a production-line economy (because it’s cheaper and maximizes profit).
Back to Marx we go, and the alienation of the worker. I mean, all those “content-producers” who mindlessly imitate one another have no individuality, no connection, and no work to be alienated from.
I see marketing works like this: the industry takes our desires and feelings, dispossesses us of them then repackages them as a uniform commercial product. What they present to us is just a shadow of our
original sense. They create a dissatisfaction then present themselves as offering the solution which, of course, comes at a price. What we forget is that it is our sentiments and feelings. Not theirs.