Representation of social problems on Victorian literature
The age of queen Victoria is one of the brilliant literary ages in english history.The spread of education produced a large reading public who had taste for all kinds of literarture.
In order to cater for their taste writers and publishers brought forth a wonderful variety of books and periodicals.Poets,philosophers ,scientists and historians contributed alike to make the age intellectually rich.
Charles Dickens(1812-70)
Charles Dickens,the most popular of english novels,was born in 1812 as the second son of the eight children of a poor clerk.From very early days Dickens was fond of books and theatre.
He had a special talent for mimicry.But he could not have a good schooling due to the financial difficulties of his family.His Father ran into debt.He was sent to the debtor’s prison and his son went to a factory in his eleventh year.
Later the father was released and little dickens returned to school.He left school at fifteen and soon became a clerk in the office of an advocate.He then studied shorthand and became a parliamentary reporter in 1830.
Dickens started his leterary career by writing some articles for the periodicals.He wrote profusely and became famouse not only in europe but in the other parts of the world as well.
His important Novels are Pickwick papers,oliver Twist,Nicholas Nickleby,The old curiosity shop,David Copperfield,Bleak House,Little Dorrit,A Tale of Two Cities,Graet Expextations.He died in 1870 and was buried at Poets corner,Westminister Abbey.
Charles Dickens was a wonderfully prolific writer who was immensely popular with the reading public.The constatnt demand for his works induced him to write profusely and there was little time for him to make his works flawless in every respect.
In spite of crudities of construction and unreality of characters ,his novels stand unrivelled in the field of prose fiction.Dickens was a novelist of the lower middle class life of London.He identified himself with the weak, the outcast,and the oppressed.In his works Dickens attacked the abuses of his time.
Dickens was on the side of the underdogs and wrote his novels with the evident aim of ameliorating their living conditions.In other words ,he was a social reformer who used the medium of prose fiction to combat social evils.
Thackeray(1811-1863)
William Thackeray was born of English Parents in calcutta.His father was a district collector.After his death Thackeray was sent to england in 1817.He entered Trinity college ,cambridge in 1829.
But he had no inclination to study and in the next year he left the college.Financial problems made him try several means to earn a living.
When he failed to gain anything by painting and sketching Thackeray turned to writing.He send various compositions to periodicals and slowly won recognition.
Thackeray became famous with his vanity fair,pendennis,The history of Hentry Hesmond,The new comes,and The Virginians.
Like Dickens he undertook lecture tours to the U S A.Throughout his career Thackeray contributed regularly to periodicals like the PUNCH and CORNHILL Magazines.
The latter got him as its editor in 1860.An element of sneering cynicism marks his humour.The vanity and futility of human life are expressed in many of his works.Thackeray died in 1863 leaving his last novel DENIS DUVAL a fragment.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde (1854 –1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s.
Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life.
At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism.
He also profoundly explored Roman Catholicism, to which he would later convert on his deathbed. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States of America and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist.
Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day.
At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence.
Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel.
The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest, tried for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour.
In prison he wrote De Profundis(written in 1897 & published in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.
Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.
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