An Analysis of Common Themes in Victorian Poetry

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Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : The Theme of Celibacy in Browning’s Poem “Fra Lippo Lippi”  •   Overview of Romanticism in Literature  •   Elements of Romanticism in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley  •   Poetry Comparison of Dover Beach (Arnold) and Sonnet 29 (Shakespeare) 

Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning was more conservative in her expression of religious criticism, even her husband expresses some sense of loss over the grand days when faith and religion were apparent. In his poem, “Love Among the Ruins” he details a city that has fallen, but nonetheless it is romanticized and described as a place where  “they built their gods a brazen pillar high / As the sky” (7.75). It is interesting to note how Robert Browning’s language changes when he speaks of these more traditional and lofty ideas about religion and spirituality and it is worth noting that Robert Browning is a master of using different voices and language to convey different meaning.

The language of the Victorian period is most traditionally associated with that of Tennyson whose poetry used grand language that was not of the Victorian age, but rather conjured up a romantic image of days gone by and glorious places and events from history. In many ways then, instead of having Tennyson stand out as the quintessential Victorian (or even English) poet, it seems more fitting that Robert Browning should have the honor because he was capable of using the grandiose language of older more traditional poets, yet was also able to invoke slang and rhymes that are almost childish in their simplicity—both in terms of language and structure. For instance, his poem “Two in the Campagna” delicately conjures the Romantic era with a tinge of Tennyson thrown in—almost for effect. The second stanza is flowery and stands in stark contrast to the bold language of “Fra Lippo Lippi”. “Help me to hold it! First it left  / The yellow fennel, run to seed / There, branching from the brickwork's cleft, / Some old tomb's ruin: yonder weed / Took up the floating weft” (11-15). It seems he is unable to resist the traditional pastoral impulse and delights in using the tone and form of such poems but to look at such a poem provides a vastly incomplete picture of Browning as a poet.

The fact that he was able to harness everyday language and combine it with his knowledge of classical and traditional language is symbolic of the sense of encroaching modernity of the Victorian period. The economy was growing, the nobility was becoming less important, and all of the class structures that once propagated such “flowery” Romantic poetry were disappearing. There is a visible (and even audible) search occurring with Victorian poets to find a voice that is uniquely of their time and place and although Tennyson was perhaps the most prosaic, he did not capture the essence, the almost post-modern (by our definition) self-conscious co-mingling of so many decades, forms, structures, and movements. Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning has notable skill, there is not such an edge that separates her from other poets of the time. While it is true that she represents one of the few distinctive women’s voices in Victorian poetry, her words do not slice; they soothe. Unlike other, later Victorian poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s assertions of love and “lost Saints” sounds a bit hollow when one understands that on the level of language alone, English poetry was undergoing a massive (and often, or so it seems) fruitless search for a distinct identity.

            In Robert Browning’s “Love Among the Ruins” one cannot help but think of the new economy that was growing exponentially during the middle part of the Victorian period—the period in which he was doing much of his writing. He is wistful and as mentioned above he imagines this different society building “brazen pillars” to their gods. This is a bustling city he represents in the poem “Love Among the Ruins” and money and the economy is at the forefront—mentioned even before the allusions to a grander view of religion. Instead of making this ruined city fall only because of war, he sees the ills of money and remarks,  “And that glory and that shame alike, the gold/ Bought and sold” (3.35-36). The ever-growing capitalist economy was not only changing culture as a whole, but the very language and images used in Victorian poetry. In fact, this slant on economic history can form an important point of analysis of “Love Among the Ruins” by Robert Browning.

While there was a great deal of wealth and gold, there was a darker side to this as well which Matthew Arnold explores in his poem, “To a Republican Friend” he reminds the reader of the sad side of the new economy and the potential for greed in such a rapidly progressing system of commerce and industrialization. Matthew Arnold closes the poem with the resonating yet simply worded lines, “The armies of the homeless and unfed: -- / If these are yours, if this is what you are, / Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share” (11-14). Instead of setting his language on high, as Tennyson and the poet John Keats were wont to do, he brings it down to a lower level and exposes the dirty side of the new economy and subsequent politics. During the Victorian age there was an increased sense of treating workers well and although one might to consider this to be a reminder to be a humanitarian, it is a reminder of what they flowery language of the earlier never spoke.

Between these three poets of the Victorian period, it is possible to see the themes of religious questioning and turmoil, the changes and revisions of language in order to find a distinctively Victorian form of poetry and syntax, and an ever-present but implicit awareness of the economic issues of the world outside the of the speakers’ lines. While it has been stated above that Robert Browning captures these ideas perfectly because he is able to combine all of the themes without backing himself in a corner as far as language is concerned, perhaps it is unfair to try to pinpoint any particular poet as representative of an age that was progressing too rapidly to be pinned down.