Realism and compromise in political negotiation

¶ … Victorian Prose and Poetry, by Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom. Specifically, it will discuss Realism and compromise in Victorian Literature. How do Victorian writers search for realistic compromises with the world around them?

VICTORIAN LITERATURE

In Victorian literature, Realism followed the age of Romanticism, and Realism quickly evolved into Naturalism, practiced by many authors of the time, including Jack London, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Sinclair Lewis. "There was a time when the intellectual and spiritual life of Europe as a whole was dominated by neo-classicism; it was dominated in the next era by Romanticism; and then it was dominated by Realism, which developed into Naturalism" (Baker 58). Realism in literature attempted to portray things as they really were, scientifically and without emotion, placing man in balance with nature.

The task of realism, Howells felt, was to defend "the people" against its adversaries. The realist, he wrote, "feels in every nerve the equality of things and the unity of men." Howells's defense of the portrayal of the typical was designed to counter views that associated the average with the degraded and to widen the bonds of commonality: "Such beauty and such grandeur as we have is common beauty, common grandeur, or the beauty and grandeur in which the quality of solidarity so prevails that neither distinguishes itself to the disadvantage of anything else"

Borus 165).

Arthur Christopher Benson wrote the ultimate poem on Realism, entitled aptly, "Realism," which illustrates the ideals of Realism perfectly.

And truth, you say, is all divine /'T is truth we live by; let her drench / The shuddering heart like potent wine / No matter how she wreck or wrench / The gracious instincts from their throne, / Or steep the virgin soul in tears; -- / No matter; let her learn her own / Enormities, her vilest fears, / And sound the sickliest depths of crime, / And creep through roaring drains of woe, / To soar at last, unstained, sublime, / Knowing the worst that man can know; / And having won the firmer ground, / When loathing quickens pity's eyes, / Still lean and beckon underground, / And tempt a struggling foot to rise. / Well, well, it is the stronger way! / Heroic stuff is hardly made; / But one, who dallies with dismay, / Admires your boldness, half-afraid. / He deems that knowledge, bitter-sweet, /

Can rust and rot the bars of right, / Till weakness sets her trembling feet / Across the threshold of the night. / She peers, she ventures; growing bold, / She breathes the enervating air, / And shuns the aspiring summits, cold / And silent, where the dawn is fair. / She wonders, aching to be free, / Too soft to burst the uncertain hand, / Till chains of drear fatality / Arrest the feeble willing hand. / Nay, let the stainless eye of youth / Be blind to that bewildering light! / When faith and virtue falter, truth / Is handmaid to the hags of night.

The details are vivid and real, which is one of the characteristics of Realism in Victorian writing. Following Romanticism as it did, Realism attempted to bring the reader back down to earth from the heady idealism of the Romantics, replacing it with a more natural and real experience. Charles Dickens, while a Romantic at heart, wrote realistic novels of London's poor during this time, and his writing is an excellent example of Realism, portraying life in the slums as it was, gritty and difficult at best.

Compromise is also an important component of Victorian literature. Many Victorian writers, such as Dickens, compromised between Romanticism and Realism, trying to find a balance in their beliefs and how they portrayed them to their audience of readers. Times and culture was changing when these writers wrote, and they had to discover ways to compromise between staid Victorian culture and the modern culture that was rapidly following it. Morals were becoming less strict, and Victorian principles were being replaced with more realistic and modern beliefs. The writers at the end of the Victorian era helped illustrate the changes that were happening, and the compromises that people were making to blend the old and new belief systems. Poets such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear wrote nonsense verses that would have never been published at the beginning of the Victorian era, for they were far too frivolous for staid Victorians (Tilling and Bloom 692-704). By the end of the era, their silly rhymes were not only accepted, they were enjoyed with relish. This shows compromise on the part of the writers, who knew the time was right for their work, and waited until it was, and compromise on the part of the public, too, who were ready to accept new ways of looking at the same old stodgy thing in their reading or their lives.

Of course, there was criticism and dislike of the realistic form of writing becoming more popular as the Victorian age wore on.

The immediate danger of the realist is to sacrifice the beauty and significance of the whole to local dexterity, or, in the insane pursuit of completion, to immolate his reader under facts; but he comes, in the last resort, and as his energy declines, to discard all design, abjure all choice, and, with scientific thoroughness, steadily to communicate matter which is not worth learning (Decker 158).