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The Individual and Society

This material has been prepared by Julie Wilson, Dubbo College

The prescribed texts discussed in this material are:

In the HSC Extension 1 examination answers you will be assessed on how well you:

  1. demonstrate understanding of how particular ways of thinking have shaped and are reflected in texts
  2. sustain an extended composition appropriate to the question, demonstrating control in the use of language.

Introductory notes: common areas
Comments from the markers
Weekly assignments: independent research
Robert Browning
Browning characteristics, criticism
The Victorian poet
Notes from E Johnson
Drama in poetry
Extended response exercises
Sample student essay extract on Browning
Browning bibliography
North and South
 North and South extract
Additional readings for North and South with written exercises
“Condition of England” novel
North and South contemporary criticism

Introductory notes: common areas for focus in Extension 1 Modules

Challenges for the student

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An interpretation of comments from previous HSC markers

Each year that this Elective has been examined the Board of Studies has issued Notes from the Marking Centre on their web site, along with the examination papers.

Here is my summary of what has been stated:

  1. Close study of the prescribed texts is necessary; similar in-depth study of additional texts is also required. This naturally includes how texts convey meaning. Every year markers despair over students who write recounts and tell the story of the texts. There is no time in the exam for such elementary thinking. Extension 1 students must go beyond knowing what happened and must interpret, analyse and be highly creative.
  2. Prepared answers are poor answers in this exam because they do not allow students to grapple with the actual question in a unique and convincing way. Top answers show real flair and demonstrate that the student can harness all their knowledge and choose the most appropriate material to set up a complex argument or create an intelligent and sensitive new text based on the question in front of them; not last year’s question or the one from their Trial exam!
  3. For the Individual and Society elective in Module B: Texts and Ways of Thinking, students must demonstrate an understanding of the 19th century. This is their context: this is the historical period about which they have pondered “ways of thinking”. It is completely erroneous to write about ways of thinking in the 20th century or 21 st century. All texts discussed in the exam should be set in the 19th century.
  4. Markers are looking for the student who goes beyond the cribs and the obvious. They are looking for answers which strive to be individual and engaging. They hope to find variety in the texts selected so that in one school there will be a number of choices made. Independent research by students is expected so that a class where all the students use exactly the same additional texts, citing the same information, would suggest little independence. Markers have suggested artworks from the period have been effectively used in discussion about ways of thinking. Why not consider non-fiction works, such as essays, articles, biographies and letters as well.
  5. Students cannot possibly cover all aspects of the 19th century. It was a long time and there were enormous changes in society. They need to be selective and dwell deeply on a few major issues. Personal preference should be followed by students so that their interests take them on a learning path; this will lend conviction and uniqueness to their answer. It was suggested that just talking about “marriage”, however, may not give students enough scope to demonstrate intellectual rigour.
  6. In all the Electives for this course students are required to demonstrate an understanding of literary theory and historical paradigms. In the case of The Individual and Society this involves philosophy and religion, politics, economics, social and educational institutions. It also involves the study of literature, forms of texts and literary movements. The language of film, film theory and techniques of production need to be understood in order to analyse Langton’s Pride and Prejudice.
  7. Markers encourage students to practise their creative writing skills so that they can produce sophisticated, engaging, original texts in the exam; so that they can write with confidence and flair; so that they can write extended responses in the restricted time of the exam.
  8. Make sure that there is a synthesis of all texts discussed in your analytical answer. Show an awareness of similarities and discrepancies among the texts you have chosen to illustrate your understanding of the Elective. It is not sufficient to deal with texts separately and tie them in to an argument. Students at this level should be able to interweave information from several different sources to prove a complex argument.

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Weekly assignments

Independent research into the ways of thinking in the 19th century. Suggestions

Report style is acceptable, or exposition/essay. Tie in with your literary reading if possible. Write approximately 400 words.

  1. What have you learned about social institutions of 19th century Britain?
    Mention such issues as class, hierarchy, inheritance, primogeniture, patriarchy, status, rank, traditional values
  1. What have you learned about Religious institutions of 19th century Britain?
    Mention some of the following: Anglican church, religious hierarchy, Tractarians, Catholicism, Methodism, Dissenting churches, Unitarians, universities.
  1. What have you learned about Political institutions of the 19th century in Britain?
    Mention such issues as Parliamentary representation, House of Lords, House of Commons, enfranchisement, property qualifications, Chartism, Luddites, Reform Bills, Corn Laws, Poor Laws, Factory Reforms, Edmund Burke, Liberalism, Nationalism.
  1. What have you learned about economic institutions of the 19th century in Britain?
    Mention some of the following aspects:- industrialization, tariffs, Trade Unions, Factories, J.S. Mill, Marx and Engels, Utilitarianism, Carlisle, “Workshop of the World”, the Great Exhibition, British Empire, Colonialism.
    Explain the views of some of the prominent philosophers of the period. You could mention: William Morris, Hegel, Kant, Herbert Spencer, Bosanquet, F.H.Bradley, Nietzsche, Social Darwinism.
  1. What have you learned about scientific thought and discoveries of the period?
    You could mention Darwin, Pasteur, Edison, Rutherford, J.C. Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Joseph Lister, Joseph Jenner, Augusta Ada Byron.

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Robert Browning

The poets you’ve studied previously have most likely belonged to various periods or groups or schools. For example, Donne is a Metaphysical poet, Keats is a Romantic, Lowell is a modern American poet and Slessor is a modern Australian poet. It’s rather difficult to place Robert Browning in a literary school or period as he is such an individual as a poet and sits chronologically between the Romantic and Victorian periods. His talented view of human behaviour looks backward to the character analyses of Shakespeare and forward to the psychologists of the twentieth century.

The chart of dates below may help you to understand the time-frame in which Browning lived.

Browning’s early life

Robert Browning was born in England in 1812, the son of a senior banking clerk who was at the same time a fine scholar with a large library. He inspired Robert with a love of history, literature and the arts of the Renaissance world (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in Europe). Thus in spite of being mostly educated at home and not graduating from a university, Robert was well prepared, with the support of his parents, to embark on his chosen career as a poet.

Through family contacts, he visited Russia in 1834 and Italy in 1838 and 1844. These visits set the lifelong pattern of his close relationship with Italy. On one of these trips he wrote the well-known ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’:

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there.

His early poems, published with family funds, were well received by critics, including the Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Browning’s poetry sales were poor, however, and he undertook some script-writing, which gave him experience in the dramatic form. This experience provided the dramatic element that makes his poems so successful and popular.

A series of poems followed, in a set of pamphlets entitled Bells and Pomegranates. This series included some of the poems you are studying as well as the long poem of innocence, ‘Pippa Passes’. You may know the song that begins that poem. It concludes with the optimistic lines:

God’s in his heaven –
All’s right with the world.

Browning’s life

Contemporary events

   

1789

French Revolution

   

1798

Romantic Revival with preface to Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth, Coleridge

1812

Browning born

   
   

1819-24

Byron published ‘Don Juan’

   

1821

Death of Keats

   

1822

Shelley drowned

1833

First poem ‘Pauline’ published

   
   

1834

Death of Coleridge

1835

‘Paracelsus’ praised by Wordsworth

   
   

1837

Queen Victoria came to the throne. Dickens published Oliver Twist

   

1843

Wordsworth made Poet Laureate (official poet of England)

1846

Married Elizabeth Barrett, moves to Italy

   

1848

Visited St Praxed’s Church. Dramatic monologues mostly written during 1840s

   

1849

Son, Pen born

   
   

1850

Death of Wordsworth, Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ published, Tennyson appointed Poet Laureate

1861

Elizabeth died, Robert and Pen returned to England

   

1860s

Wrote ‘The Ring and the Book’

   
   

1870

Death of Dickens

1889

Death of Browning

   
   

1892

Death of Tennyson

   

1903

Death of Queen Victoria

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Browning’s poetry – characteristics and criticism

Note the following characteristics:

  1. Dramatic tone and detailed setting, as if you are looking at a play.
  2. Brilliant characterisation, in which you become aware of the characters” thoughts and their abnormal traits of behaviour.
  3. Some obscurity or lack of clarity in his language and sentence construction (for example, lines 5 to 13 of "My Last Duchess"). The Browning Society spent years looking for deep and philosophical meanings in some of his obscure expressions. Critics have now realised that he wrote at speed and was perhaps careless at editing. He also used archaic (out-of-date) vocabulary, which did not help the reader’s understanding.
  4. An interest in medieval and Renaissance culture. To understand these terms, you may need to know a little about European history. The Roman civilization in Europe collapsed around the eighth century AD and there were waves of invasions by people from the north and east. During the dark and middle (medieval) period that followed, the Christian Church safeguarded the literature that remained from ancient Greek and Roman times. Some of the monks in the monasteries of Europe had as their duties the copying by hand of these precious manuscripts as printing had not yet been invented.

In the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries there was an increased interest in the contents of these manuscripts, which contained, among other things, the stories of the ancient Greek and Roman gods. In addition, there were new developments in science, philosophy, art and architecture, stirring changes sometimes based on contents of the old documents, sometimes using fresh ideas, for example, the invention of printing.

These changes constituted a rebirth of European civilization and the period is known by the French word for rebirth ‘renaissance’. In Italy great use was made of the ample supply of marble to build beautiful new churches like St Peter’s in Rome and to carve statues after the style of ancient sculpture that travellers were now rediscovering.

Browning was delighted with the Renaissance architecture and works of art he found in Italy and the medieval architecture he found in Spain. These settings inspired him to make up stories about the people who lived there a few centuries previously.

The poems set for study are representative particularly of Browning’s Dramatic Monologues. The poems were completed in the middle of the 19th century and were not received particularly well by the critics and other poets of the time. The most common criticisms were that: His poems were obscure. His poetry was not lyrical/musical enough. He was lazy and did not take the time to write perfect verse. E.D.H. Johnson considered Browning in relation to his age (Victorian England) and argued that he was often at odds with it and preferred to trust his “intuitive and individual apprehension rather than the received ideas of the time.”

Browning’s ideas of love are seen in ‘their unorthodox position relative to the age’. This refers to the constraints of society on individuals and the general philosophical attitude that morality and propriety should suppress and keep in check passionate outburst of any kind.

Browning preferred his work to remain "vigorously rooted in reality, in common human experience: wives are unfaithful, husbands tyrannical, men lie dying. His characters are emphatically men and women in society, representative, sinful, unpoetical men and women." (J.R. Watson).

Browning is concerned with everyday experience and therefore his characters emerge out of a particular incident, a brief moment and multiplicity of detail, not through grand statement. According to J.R. Watson (1974): "We see the misery of unhappy marriages, but no reason why; we experience the worldliness of greed, without understanding its cause; we behold human nature in its bewildering variety, but are given no prescriptive interpretation of it."

George Eliot, female novelist of the mid 19th century, wrote in 1856:

"Here (we) will find no conventionality, no melodious commonplace, but freshness, originality and sometimes eccentricity of expression; no didactic laying-out of a subject, but dramatic indication, which requires the reader… to exert himself .

She found energy in his distinctive style and ‘keen glance’ which "pierces into all the secrets of human character" but also noted that the secrets are revealed not by a process of dissection but by" dramatic painting."

John Ruskin in 1856 referred to Browning’s “seemingly careless and too rugged rhymes" but greatly admired his grasp of the Italian Renaissance. In referring to the Bishop’s references to precious stone worked in by southern Italian artists, Ruskin asserts:

"I know no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit,- its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, - hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin".

On Browning’s death, Henry James spoke of "contemporary individualism" as the hallmark of his work and described him as a great oddity.

“What he takes into the Abbey (Westminster) is an immense expression of life - of life rendered with large liberty and free experiment, with an unprejudiced intellectual eagerness to put himself in other people’s place, to participate in complications and consequences; a restlessness of psychological research that might well alarm formal orthodoxies (in his) reckless individualism of form." 

G.K. Chesterton, in 1903, considered criticism of Browning by his contemporaries to be misplaced because of their narrow-minded adherence to classical form in poetry. He maintained that Shelley and Wordsworth wrote their original ideas in perfectly normal traditional ode form and traditional Greek lyrical drama; therefore they were considered clever poets in their day.

Browning on the other hand not only wanted to express new ideas but he also created a large number of "quite novel and quite admirable artistic forms". He saw The Ring and the Book as an "illuminating departure in literary method - the method of telling the same story several times and trusting to the variety of human character to turn it into several different and equally interesting stories". Chesterton went on to claim that Browning had an unrivalled ear for ‘staccato music’ in his poetry, which lent energy to his subjects, and that he is recognised for his rhythmic originality.

Chesterton was interested in Browning’s fascination with the grotesque and stated:

“To present a matter in a grotesque manner does certainly tend to touch the nerve of surprise and thus draw attention to the intrinsically miraculous character of the object itself." He asserted that "Browning’s dark and elliptical mode of speech, like his love of the grotesque, was simply a characteristic of his, a trick of his temperament, and had little or nothing to do with whether what he was expressing was profound or superficial."

E.D.S. Johnson wrote in 1952 that Browning concentrated on “the dynamics of behaviour" and he "rigorously externalised his perceptions under dramatic forms" after the criticism he received following the publication of Pauline early in his career regarding a self-conscious indulgence of his own sentimental feelings. Johnson said, "By motivating the actors in his dramas with his own ideas and impulses, Browning could speak out with greater originality and boldness than would ever have been possible in his own person". He goes on to say, “One wonders how the Victorian Middle class with its worship of conformity could have failed to take exception to the poet’s outspoken flouting of social conventions."

Johnson felt that where the Romantics had pursued anti-intellectualism, Browning constantly advocated the intuitive over the rational and pushed in the direction of ‘pure primitivism’. He felt that Browning "endorsed the subconscious as the true wellspring of being". Browning’s notion that intuitions operate from the emotions rather than the intellect led him to a frank celebration of man’s physical nature, which was very foreign to Victorian reticence in such matters. Browning’s philosophy was at variance with Tennyson’s, who sought to combine mind and spirit into effective opposition against the bodily appetites.

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The Victorian Poet

Joseph Bristow suggests that there was a void between the Romanticism of the 18th century. Wordsworth lived into the 19th but there was little to replace the 1790-1830 movement away from 18th century empiricism, ‘the age of reason’, in which poets focused on the authenticity, autonomy and creativity of the poetic mind.

Romantics shared the same ideology; they promoted poetry as a ‘recreative’ or transforming power, that is, poetry changes what it sees as it sees. Imagination is a central Romantic term, suggesting the transfiguring properties of the mind. Barbara Everett argues that there were really only two Victorian poets, Browning and Tennyson:

“the enormous expansion of the ordinary culture of the age could be assimilated with some directness into he developing form of the novel; but it left poetry with particular problems. Victorian criticism of Victorian poetry seemed to pull in different directions - towards classicism on the one hand and metaphorical ingenuity on the other" (Bristow).

Victorian Britain is an elastic period of 60 or so years. Poetry as an art was visibly breaking up in Victorian Britain just as the nation seemed to be polarized, in terms of class and gender, in the face of industrialisation. Over a period of such length and social change the word Victorian is all-encompassing.

There was a stark stylistic contrast between Browning’s and Tennyson’s poetry - in 1864 Walter Bagehot saw Browning as ‘grotesque’ and Tennyson as ‘ornate’ whilst Wordsworth was ‘pure’. Browning’s most discursive poetry was produced after his involvement with what he saw as a literary hybrid, the ‘dramatic lyric’, now usually referred to as the Dramatic Monologue.

Tennyson, on the other hand, was engaged in heterogeneous forms like the medley and was completely different in form from Browning. Bristow describes him as a Romantic Victorian, along with the Brontes. There seemed little memorable poetry during the period 1830-1850. D.J. DeLaura wrote, "from about 1820 well into the 1850’s the continuous context for discussion of poetry in England was a fear that it was nearly defunct.” G.H. Lewes reviewing the work of Browning in 1849 said: "in our day... few men of remarkable powers have given any labour to poetry."

By the middle of the century then, poetry was perceived as marginal discourse, a relatively unimportant genre that did not appear to suit the needs and wants of the Victorians. John Stuart Mill and a number of theorists looked back to the Romantics and were interested in the automatic translating of feeling into words in poetry, claiming that poetry expressed emotional truth: something sincere. The ironic structure of Browning’s monologues, fascinated by the duplicity of their speakers, such as Porphyria’s Lover and the Duke of Ferrara, made Mill’s assertions absurd. In monologue, irony operates to subvert the expressive ambitions of the Romantic ego, that is, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" advanced by Wordsworth. Victorian poets like Browning manufactured a poetic ‘I’ that no longer spoke as a subject guiding language at will but a speaker who is instead subjected to language. The monologue indicates how language speaks over against the speaker. This is one of the most significant advances made by Browning: something experimental and very different from the previous poetic traditions.

Mill’s poet speaks in a private, poetic voice, expressing its feelings directly, as if the reader has overheard very private, secret, feelings. Victorian poetry, like its more popular counterpart the novel, made the individual seem more intricate, subtle and psychologically intriguing than ever before. Neither Tennyson nor Browning traded in stock characters and their protagonists are distinguished by their eccentric fantasies.

Dobell emphasised the poet’s, "pre-eminent ability to produce an inexhaustible stock of men and women in the transmutable substance of his own character". This remark adheres to the Romantic ideal of authentic poetic identity while praising the poet’s skill at producing an endless variety of characters. Personae are therefore seen as the infinite aspects of a great poet’s genius and the self is both personal and dramatic. It is this multiple identity of the poet that marks out a Victorian difference from Romanticism. With this dramatic skill, the skill to proliferate the poet’s identity into numerous personae, Victorian poetry managed to accommodate a startling range of themes: ego, homicide, eroticism, irreligion that other literary discourses found it hard to take up.

Mill, Alexander Smith and other critics demanded sincere emotions in poetry and simplicity of expression. However poets like Browning were directing their work into the darkest areas of the psyche, pushing the limits of what was regarded as respectable. Browning’s shockingly ‘grotesque’ style articulated many narratives which teetered on “the dangerous edge of things" (Bishop Blougram, 1855).

‘Risky’ poems demonstrated that poets were working in a discourse that encountered the urgency of the Victorian ‘double standard’ well in advance of their critics. This was achieved by taking the initiative to express real emotions, ones not necessarily admitted in public, to extremes, and usually by means of a persona. The persona, the dramatic voice, gave an extraordinary opportunity to the Victorian poet to explore what we know now to be forms of unconscious motivation. However, poetry like Browning’s was pushed to the margins of Victorian culture.

In its concentration on individual states of mind, Victorian poetry found itself doing two things at once.

  1. It demanded greater attention to the uniqueness of human character in opposition to the stultifying forces of the "march of mind" - industrial “progress” and the utilitarian values underpinning it.
  2. It discovered that this focus of interests on the private self actually evacuated it from the space it wanted to occupy - the centre of culture. In trying to put the individual - whether as poet or persona - forward as the eminent cultural figure, poetry was pushed to the margins of that culture. The men and women dramatised by these poets are brought into public view in narratives which relate how removed they are from public experience.

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Notes from Browning - Alien Vision of Victorian Poetry by E.D.H Johnson (Princeton 1952)

Through his dramatic experiments Browning had learned to project his insights outward and to give them “objective embodiment in imaginary characterisations.”

He dropped “the pretence of external action and confined his attention to the portrayal of individuals under the stress of such interior, psychological conflicts as characterised in the play of his own complex and highly original mind. Seemingly so remote from their creator in time and place and circumstance, these figures would thus become Browning’s agents for delivering to his age the messages which he failed to get across in other ways." (p91)

Concentrating on the dynamics of behaviour, he “rigorously externalised his perceptions under dramatic forms. Browning spoke out with great originality and boldness, motivating the actors in is dramas with his own ideas and impulses - how did the Victorian middle class with its great worship of conformity fail to take exception to his outspoken flouting of social conventions?” Browning constantly advocated intuitive over rational knowledge. In Browning’s world the artists and lovers are not remarkable for their intellectual power: “they possess a phenomenal capacity for passionate emotion combined with a childlike reliance on instinct, experiencing life intuitively.” These qualities put them in conflict with conventionalised modes of social conduct.

His belief that the “intuitions operate through the emotions rather than the intellect led Browning to a frank celebration of man’s physical nature, very foreign to Victorian reticence in such matters.” Among Victorian poets he is the great champion of individualism. His belief held that “the individual’s first and highest obligation is to fulfil his own being, regardless of consequences”, according to Johnson.

"If self-realisation is the purpose of life, then it follows that any agency which thwarts that process is inimical to the best interests of human nature. And since formalised systems of thought have always tended to repress freedom of belief and action, Browning’s most characteristic poems have to do with the conflict between the individual and his environment. There is wisdom of the mind and wisdom of the heart; and the two are always at odds, since the one teaches compliance with the ways of the world while the other inculcates non-conformity. Thus where his political and religious convictions or his beliefs about love and art are concerned, each man must “make a choice between intellectual subservience to customary values and emancipation from all such restrictions." (p 95)

Browning’s opposition to existing values and the extent of his alienation from Victorian society are illustrated by his characters whose ways of life are conditioned by some clearly defined set of conventions.

The Duke in ‘My Last Duchess’ is motivated in all he does by “punctilious pride of rank. The gentle Duchess in her response to all innocent pleasures made a mockery of her husband’s ceremoniousness" (p97). Irony occurs as the speaker damns himself while trying to discredit his ‘unsuspecting adversary.

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Drama in poetry

In your study of the prescribed poems which are dramatic monologues, consider how these dramatic elements are present and think about the effect they have on the ‘audience’ or reader.

Setting: general background

To whom are Browning’s monologues spoken?

Poem

Speaker

Audience

‘My Last Duchess’

‘The Bishop ...’

‘Porphyria’s Lover’

‘Andrea del Sarto’

‘The Laboratory’

the Duke

the bishop

the murderer

the painter

the lady

the ambassador

the bishop’s sons

himself

the painter’s wife

the apothecary

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Extended response exercises

  1. Choose any one of the ‘characters’ encountered in Browning’s poems. Write a story about what happened next, after the finish of the poem. How did the situation work out? You may write in any form you wish.
  2. Compare and contrast the thought, structure and language of ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. Which poem do you find the most powerful depiction of an individual as an effective agent of his/her own destiny?
  3. We make critical judgements of both the Duke and Porphyria’s Lover, but how would they have been viewed in the 19th century? Support your view by close reference to both poems.
  4. Write a story about the lovers in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ which would serve to explain the origins of their relationship and how it was forced into this type of meeting.
  5. ‘Meeting at Night’ and ‘Parting at Morning’: even though these two short poems are lyrics, not monologues, they still convey ideas about the behaviour of individuals in a restrictive society. How well do these poems make their message heard?
  6. You will find below an extract from Browning’s ‘The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St Praxed’s Church’: What insights into the character and values of the dying Bishop does Browning present in this extract? By what means does he present them?

You should use the extract printed here as the basis of your answer, but should also refer to the poem as a whole.

Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black-
‘twas ever antique-black I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,
And Moses with the tables ... but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp
Bricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
Nay, boys, ye love me - all of jasper, then!
‘tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.
My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There’s plenty jasper somewhere in the world –
And have I not Saint Praxed’s ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?

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Sample student essay extract on Browning

Nineteenth century literature reflects the relationship with a world that placed limited value upon individual need. Conflict center upon the acceptance of an established social order and conforming to various religious, economic and social paradigms of the era. Robert Browning’s poetry: ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘Meeting at Night’ and ‘Parting at Morning’ explore the dichotomy between individual passions and established attitudes.

‘Porphyria’s Lover’ is a dramatic monologue exploring the conflict of possession and social duty. Whilst seen through the eyes of the male persona, the poem studies a clandestine affair and the motivations to murder and insanity. Awaiting the arrival of his lover, the audience and the elements empathise with the male persona. The “sullen wind” that “tore the elm-tops down for spite” reiterates mixed emotion; agitation, violence and passion are conveyed as he awaits to delayed arrival of Porphyria. Even before her arrival, conflict centers on the upper class female, and throughout the poem the persona reflects on her inability to defy society and acknowledge him.

Murmuring how she loved me – she
Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.

“Vainer ties” of wealth, respect, family and upper class privileges prevent an open relationship between the couple and even the “soiled gloves” that the mistress removes on arrival suggest the persona’s belief that she is being contaminated by values of an outside world. Possessing Porphyria becomes a fixation revealed in four references to the mistress’s hair. Her “damp hair fell”, “yellow hair displaced”, “her yellow hair” and finally, “In one long yellow string I wound”. Overcome with mixed emotions the control of the persona is broken, just as the iambic tetrameter is also broken, at the poem’s dramatic climax,

“That moment she was mine, mine, fair”
    /      ~   ~     ~    ~      /        /        /

‘Meeting at Night’ and ‘Parting at Morning’ use sensual images to recreate a concealed affair between a man and his mistress. The images are sensed in the darkness as the poet leaves room for the imagination to fill in the blanks.

“As I gained the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed I’ the slushy mud.”

Caught in the momentum of the action, the ship entering the cove, a prelude to the night’s sexual passion, the sailor crosses the beach and fields; the reader is empathetic to the build up of anticipation and danger that accompanies the couple’s meeting. It is in fact with ‘Parting at Morning’ that Browning reveals a contrast between the “blue spurt of a lighted match”, a world of infatuation, and the society of men who must make their own achievements, consumed in the world of commerce and struggle for survival; “a need of the world of men for me.” The poem reiterates secret passions ignored by the conformity in the realms of 19th century society.

Conclusion

Browning’s poetry illustrates the dichotomy between individual needs and the expectations of society. The four poems discussed reiterate passions of love, greed, possession, arrogance, envy and power and the danger of suppressing such powerful emotions. Clearly questioned within the texts is whether identity is prescribed by class or individual decision. As the Duke, Porphyria and the sailor conform to their social duty, they repress their individual needs. In each case passion prevails and clandestine lives subvert the expectations of society.

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Browning bibliography

There are many sources of information on Browning. Below is a short but useful list:

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North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

TV dramatisation

The BBC four part series of this novel has been screened on ABC Television in Australia.

Students would be wise to read the novel FIRST, as there will be departures from the plot in the TV series. For example, the last scene is a chance meeting of Margaret and Thornton at a railway station – a serious deviation from the novel. There is also, it seems, little reference to the world of Harley Street, which is an important element of Margaret’s formative influences. It is also Margaret’s re-appraisal of the world of idle luxury at Harley Street that reveals her growth towards individual autonomy. The North /South divide, the “two nations”, is most obvious in this environment, as well as Hellstone.

However, it will no doubt be an interesting catalyst to discussion in classrooms about the novel.

Reviews and some scenes are available on the BBC website.

The DVD will be available for sale in Australia from the first week in May 2005.

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North and South extract

Margaret and Thornton meet for the first time:

In the following extract consider the following:

Margaret opened the door and went in with the straight, fearless, dignified presence habitual to her. She felt no awkwardness; she had too much the habits of society for that. Here was a person come on business to her father; and, as he was one who had shown himself obliging, she was disposed to treat him with a full measure of civility. Mr Thornton was a good deal more surprised and discomfited than she. Instead of a quiet, middle-aged clergyman, a young lady came forward with frank dignity,--a young lady of a different type to most of those he was in the habit of seeing. Her dress was very plain: a close straw bonnet of the best material and shape, trimmed with white ribbon; a dark silk gown, without any trimming or flounce; a large Indian shawl, which hung about her in long heavy folds, and which she wore as an empress wears her drapery. He did not understand who she was, as he caught the simple, straight, unabashed look, which showed that his being there was of no concern to the beautiful countenance, and called up no flush of surprise to the pale ivory of the complexion. He had heard that Mr Hale had a daughter, but he had imagined that she was a little girl.

'Mr Thornton, I believe!' said Margaret, after a half-instant's pause, during which his unready words would not come. 'Will you sit down. My father brought me to the door, not a minute ago, but unfortunately he was not told that you were here, and he has gone away on some business. But he will come back almost directly. I am sorry you have had the trouble of calling twice.'

Mr Thornton was in habits of authority himself, but she seemed to assume some kind of rule over him at once. He had been getting impatient at the loss of his time on a market-day, the moment before she appeared, yet now he calmly took a seat at her bidding.

'Do you know where it is that Mr Hale has gone to? Perhaps I might be able to find him.'

'He has gone to a Mr Donkin's in Canute Street. He is the land-lord of the house my father wishes to take in Crampton.'

Mr Thornton knew the house. He had seen the advertisement, and been to look at it, in compliance with a request of Mr Bell's that he would assist Mr Hale to the best of his power: and also instigated by his own interest in the case of a clergyman who had given up his living under circumstances such as those of Mr Hale. Mr Thornton had thought that the house in Crampton was really just the thing; but now that he saw Margaret, with her superb ways of moving and looking, he began to feel ashamed of having imagined that it would do very well for the Hales, in spite of a certain vulgarity in it which had struck him at the time of his looking it over.

Margaret could not help her looks; but the short curled upper lip, the round, massive up-turned chin, the manner of carrying her head, her movements, full of a soft feminine defiance, always gave strangers the impression of haughtiness. She was tired now, and would rather have remained silent, and taken the rest her father had planned for her; but, of course, she owed it to herself to be a gentlewoman, and to speak courteously from time to time to this stranger; not over-brushed, nor over-polished, it must be confessed, after his rough encounter with Milton streets and crowds. She wished that he would go, as he had once spoken of doing, instead of sitting there, answering with curt sentences all the remarks she made. She had taken off her shawl, and hung it over the back of her chair. She sat facing him and facing the light; her full beauty met his eye; her round white flexile throat rising out of the full, yet lithe figure; her lips, moving so slightly as she spoke, not breaking the cold serene look of her face with any variation from the one lovely haughty curve; her eyes, with their soft gloom, meeting his with quiet maiden freedom. He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself he was—a great rough fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him. Her quiet coldness of demeanour he interpreted into contemptuousness, and resented it in his heart to the pitch of almost inclining him to get up and go away, and have nothing more to do with these Hales, and their superciliousness.

Just as Margaret had exhausted her last subject of conversation—and yet conversation that could hardly be called which consisted of so few and such short speeches—her father came in, and with his pleasant gentlemanly courteousness of apology, reinstated his name and family in Mr Thornton's good opinion.

Mr Hale and his visitor had a good deal to say respecting their mutual friend, Mr Bell; and Margaret, glad that her part of entertaining the visitor was over, went to the window to try and make herself more familiar with the strange aspect of the street. She got so much absorbed in watching what was going on outside that she hardly heard her father when he spoke to her, and he had to repeat what he said:

'Margaret! the landlord will persist in admiring that hideous paper, and I am afraid we must let it remain.'

'Oh dear! I am sorry!' she replied, and began to turn over in her mind the possibility of hiding part of it, at least, by some of her sketches, but gave up the idea at last, as likely only to make bad worse. Her father, meanwhile, with his kindly country hospitality, was pressing Mr Thornton to stay to luncheon with them. It would have been very inconvenient to him to do so, yet he felt that he should have yielded, if Margaret by word or look had seconded her father's invitation; he was glad she did not, and yet he was irritated at her for not doing it. She gave him a low, grave bow when he left, and he felt more awkward and self-conscious in every limb than he had ever done in all his life before.

'Well, Margaret, now to luncheon, as fast we can. Have you ordered it?'

'No, papa; that man was here when I came home, and I have never had an opportunity.'

'Then we must take anything we can get. He must have been waiting a long time, I'm afraid.'

'It seemed exceedingly long to me. I was just at the last gasp when you came in. He never went on with any subject, but gave little, short, abrupt answers.'

'Very much to the point though, I should think. He is a clearheaded fellow. He said (did you hear?) that Crampton is on gravelly soil, and by far the most healthy suburb in the neighbour hood of Milton.'

When they returned to Heston, there was the day's account to be given to Mrs Hale, who was full of questions which they answered in the intervals of tea-drinking.

'And what is your correspondent, Mr Thornton, like?'

'Ask Margaret,' said her husband. 'She and he had a long attempt at conversation, while I was away speaking to the landlord.'

'Oh! I hardly know what he is like,' said Margaret, lazily; too tired to tax her powers of description much. And then rousing herself, she said, 'He is a tall, broad-shouldered man, about—how old, papa?'

'I should guess about thirty.'

'About thirty—with a face that is neither exactly plain, nor yet handsome, nothing remarkable—not quite a gentleman; but that was hardly to be expected.'

'Not vulgar, or common though,' put in her father, rather jealous of any disparagement of the sole friend he had in Milton.

'Oh no!' said Margaret. 'With such an expression of resolution and power, no face, however plain in feature, could be either vulgar or common. I should not like to have to bargain with him; he looks very inflexible. Altogether a man who seems made for his niche, mamma; sagacious, and strong, as becomes a great tradesman.'

'Don't call the Milton manufacturers tradesmen, Margaret,' said her father. 'They are very different.'

'Are they? I apply the word to all who have something tangible to sell; but if you think the term is not correct, papa, I won't use it. But, oh mamma! speaking of vulgarity and commonness, you must prepare yourself for our drawing-room paper. Pink and blue roses, with yellow leaves! And such a heavy cornice round the room!'

But when they removed to their new house in Milton, the obnoxious papers were gone. The landlord received their thanks very composedly; and let them think, if they liked, that he had relented from his expressed determination not to repaper. There was no particular need to tell them, that what he did not care to do for a Reverend Mr Hale, unknown in Milton, he was only too glad to do at the one short sharp remonstrance of Mr Thornton, the wealthy manufacturer.”

Please note: the whole of the North and South novel is available online.

Student commentary:

“She felt no awkwardness: she had too much the habits of society for that… These ladylike habits were learned at Harley Street – she has been trained.”

The dominant ‘ways of thinking’ dictated female modesty, courtesy, dignity and an upright stance. Through training from a very early age these postures were habitual.

Later in the book, when Margaret throws herself in front of Thornton and makes physical contact with him in front of the strikers, she has abandoned all of this training and acted on impulse. She is instantly ashamed of making a spectacle of herself and feels she deserves the condemnation of all her saw her shameful, immodest behaviour. She represses her passions and declines into a pallid and guilty fragility.

“She was disposed to treat him with a full measure of civility” – Margaret knew her social duty. (Compare this with the discussion of ‘civility’ when Darcy first proposes to Elizabeth and insensitively insults her, in Pride and Prejudice).

Thornton sees the Indian shawl and perceives –“which she wore as an empress wears her drapery”. He assumes that Margaret is aristocratic and by far his superior. Yet there is irony in this because at Harley Street Margaret was just the “poor relation” who stood in for the spoiled Edith by modeling her Indian shawls (very expensive luxury items).

Thornton’s social naivety is revealed in contrast. He felt “surprised” and “discomfited”. He was not “in the habit of seeing young ladies like her”. Direct antithesis – same word ‘habit’. She “felt no awkwardness” but he was “discomfited”.

Thornton is immediately aware of her as a woman. He sees her “beautiful countenance” (face) and “pale ivory complexion”. “Her full beauty met his eye”…“with her superb way of moving”.

Balanced antithesis again reveals the difference between Thornton and Margaret:

He had been in “habits of authority himself” but “she seemed to assume some kind of rule over him at once”. “He had been impatient” yet now “he calmly took a seat at her bidding.

He “began to feel ashamed”, the word ‘vulgarity’ is used.

In contrast Margaret, giving “the impression of haughtiness”, “full of a soft feminine defiance” is conditioned by her society – “she owed it to herself to be a gentlewoman”.

Thornton is mesmerized by Margaret – he sees her through a sensual reaction, but she remains modest, as is her traditional role as a single lady. She gives Thornton a “simple, straight unabashed look” whereas he sees “ her round white flexible throat rising out of the full yet lithe figure… her lips…the cold serene look… one lovely haughty curve; her eyes, with their soft gloom, meeting his with quiet maiden freedom.”

This is an example of feminine modesty versus masculine sexual arousal.

He looked at her “with an admiration he could not repress” and she looked back “with a proud indifference.”

Thus Thornton’s reaction is not surprising – he feels inferior and vulgar, basically for not being able to control his feelings ; “mortified feeling”, “irritation”, “ “a great rough fellow, with not a grace of refinement about him”

This epitomizes the South – North divide. Having been made to feel inferior, he responds to her “cold quietness of demeanour” with resentment. He ascribes “contemptuousness” to her and “superciliousness”.

The outcome of their first meeting is consequently that Margaret found him difficult company, “exhausting” her supply of polite conversation, and he “felt more awkward and self-conscious in every limb than he had ever done in all his life before.”

The omniscient , third person narration delves inside the consciousness of all the characters. Margaret’s feelings dominate, but the reader is also allowed a glimpse of the “ways of thinking” of a variety of characters – a much wider variety in terms of class/ status than allowed in Pride and Prejudice or Browning’s poetry. Gaskell attempts to bridge the gulf between the upper, middle and working classes in a modest way in this novel by bringing about an empathetic understanding between the diverse Margaret, Mr Hale, Thornton, Higgins and even Bessy. There is even an attempt to understand the habitual subservience of the maid, Dixon.

After Thornton leaves Margaret is asked to describe him. She has no passion to repress – she has been fairly objective in her description, but she also has sensed his power:

“I should not like to have to bargain with him; he looks very inflexible… sagacious, and strong, as becomes a great tradesman.”

Ironically, when Margaret does have to bargain with Thornton, she finds all of the above to be true. She resorts to using her own body to come between Thornton and the working class mob which stands up to him. It is his show of strength and stubbornness which makes the strikers more belligerent, so that Margaret uses her “feminine weakness” as a shield, more to stop the mob from rioting and being punished by the army than to protect Thornton.

Her father resents her snobbery:

“Don’t call the Milton manufacturers tradesman Margaret… they are very different”
(this is reminiscent of Caroline Bingley’s comments about the inferiority of those in “trade”, even though she is only one generation removed from it herself. Snobbish arrogance dismisses these people as unsuitable for their society.)

However, in another context, the landlord respects Thornton, “the wealthy manufacturer” far more than he does the impoverished ex-clergyman regardless of his class. Mr Hale recognizes Thornton’s worthiness and admits him as a friend – this is an emerging ideology which challenges traditional class rigidity.

So the ways of thinking that are revealed in this opening section of the book:

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Additional readings for North and South

Bodenheimer, R: “North and South: a Permanent State of Change”
Bodenheimer, R: “The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction
Duthie, E.L.:“The Themes of Elizabeth Gaskell “
Easson, Angus: “Elizabeth Gaskell and the Novel of Local Pride”
Easson, Angus: “Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage”
Easson, Angus: “Elizabeth Gaskell”
Harman, B.L.:“The Feminine Political Novel in Victorian England” Martin, C.A.: “Gaskell, Darwin and North and South”
Robinson,D: “North and South: The Maturing Art”
Schor, H.M.:“One continued series of Oppositions…..”
Stoneman, Patsy: “North and South 1854”
York, R.A.:“Strangers and Secrets”
David, D.:“The Victorian Novel”
Howard,D et al: “Tradition and Tolerance in 19th Century Fiction”

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Written exercises

After reading the novel and a selection of different critical texts on Elizabeth Gaskell and North and South you will be prepared to answer some of the following exercises.

  1. What values are inherent in this story? How typical are these values of the mid-19th century in Britain?
  2. What evidence can you give to support the notion that North and South is a “condition of England” novel?
  3. In terms of values underpinning the novel, how does it reveal the North/South divide?
  4. In what ways do you think this novel supports mainstream thinking of the period?
  5. In what ways does this novel show resistance to mainstream thought?
  6. How is individual autonomy constrained by the demands of the society in the novel? How does Gaskell’s own life as a female novelist reflect this constraint?
  7. Imagine that you are one of the male characters in the first few chapters of North and South. Write a conversation that you have with a friend about the things that are of interest to you during that time.
  8. What do you think when you hear the term “Victorian values”? What values do you think are held up for approval in North and South? Which values are put up for condemnation?
  9. Victorian novels often paint a vivid picture of life at different levels of society during the 19th century. Is it safe to assume that what you read represents an accurate picture? Can any novel ever produce an unbiased picture? Make particular reference to “vivid pictures” in North and South and other Victorian novels you have read.
  10. Make sure you understand the notion of different critical approaches to texts. Jot down a summary under each of the following headings :
    1. The Humanist school
    2. The New Criticism –Leavis
    3. Formalism
    4. Sociological Criticism
    5. Psychological Criticism
    6. Feminist Criticism
    7. Post-Colonial criticism
    8. Structuralism
    9. Deconstruction
  12. Write an essay of about 1500 words on the following:
    Explore the implicit and explicit attitudes to women revealed in 19th century novels: what new perspectives are opened up for you by a specifically feminist reading of three 19th century novels you have read? Make reference to North and South, a Jane Austen novel and one other that you have read for this module.
  13. Rosemary Bodenheimer wrote that “Elizabeth Gaskell’s “North and South” emerges as a dismantling of the paternalistic assumptions that underlie the plots of her predecessors.”
    Do you agree ?
  14. The Margaret/Thornton story “takes place within a network of related stories, each of which depicts a troubled relation between authority and independence.”
    How does Gaskell resolve these troubles within the framework of her novel?

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“Condition of England” novel North and South

Gaskell’s novel is a seemingly realistic portrait of place and people of the time.

What were the conditions like?

Social hierarchy – huge divide between rich and poor.

Set up a binary opposition :

Rich poor
Educated ignorant
Leisured hard labour
Wasteful deprived
Powerful powerless
Arrogant humble
Aggressive meek, etc

Problematic gap between the gentry and the wealthy middle class

Gentry middle class
Leisured actively involved in business
Land owners factory/mine owners
Educated  

basic formal education

Traditional inventive/challenging old ways
Legal power industrial power
Widespread authority localised authority
Snobbery social aspirations

The growing assertion of women

Mainstream thinking:

Emergent view, particularly espoused by female novelists: women were capable, strong, intelligent, independent, passionate.

Conflict arises on several levels in North and South, largely because of reversals in status, eg. The Hale family is reduced in status and John Thornton has been elevated in status.

However, remnant behaviours forbid their mutual equality. Wealth is not enough to guarantee a place in the top echelons of society. Birth is not enough to maintain a place at the top of the hierarchy.

Wealth plus Breeding = high status

Margaret’s reduced circumstances bring her into contact with Thornton, Higgins, Bessy and Boucher’s family – unlikely occurrences had she married Lennox and stayed within the social sphere of Harley Street.

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North and South contemporary criticism

Contemporary criticism at the time North and South was published in “Household Words”, in some cases, attacked Gaskell’s “realism”. Henry Fothergill Chorley wrote in his review for the Athenaeum in April 1855, that “she deals with difficulties of morals needlessly”, believing that fiction is not the appropriate area for “one-sided handling of such matters”. He feared that passions could become “engaged” and “there is always a danger of unmooring the eager and the inexperienced from their anchorage”. This I assume refers to people experiencing a moral dilemma through fiction and coming to their own, and perhaps the author’s, conclusions about solutions, thus abandoning their traditional moral upbringing, which Chorley saw as their anchor in life.

Another “way of thinking” which underpins Chorley’s review is opposition to including Margaret’s lie about Frederick. Such dishonesty should not have to be tolerated by readers, in his opinion. He also reflects the attitudes of many when he stated “in real, actual, life, blameable, cowardly and selfish is the man who turns away from dealing with difficulties so terrible.” Chorley took exception to the character Frederick’s behaviour and wrote that his difficulties “must be faced, with such honour, such charity, such disposition to excuse, and such power to weigh good and evil as can be summoned: but to thrust them forward in Fiction (where only artistic truth is possible) amounts, in deed, if not in purpose, to a wilful “playing with fire.”

Chorley concluded that Mrs Gaskell had a “mistaken desire to do good”.

An unsigned review of North and South which appeared in the Leader on April 14th 1855 stated that Thornton was “an untrue picture of a Lancashire Mill owner” and that there are so many errors of fact in the novel that “it is inconceivable for a resident in Manchester to have made, and which none but a lady could have so made.”

Here the author obviously assumes the ignorance of a “lady” on issues to do with manufacturing and trade; a typical assumption of the time. This author asserts that all extensive manufacturers, trading to all parts of the globe, own their mills and do not rent – they are all millionaires who deal in all manner of produce, not just cotton. He repudiates Gaskell’s “facts” one after another in an effort to show that the subject of her book is inappropriately detailed. Thornton says:

“The Americans are getting their yarn so into the general market, that our only chance is to beat them by producing at a lower rate”.

But the reviewer says:

“this is the first time any man, woman, or child found this out. American competition is altogether a bagatelle, and in yarn it is less than nothing. They cannot even supply themselves, with high protective duties. Error number four.”

This review is a spirited attack on an author who may influence the general readership towards ways of thinking that are based on ignorance.

“If our objections seem too technical, we have to allege in excuse that we take so deep an interest in the questions that agitate Lancashire…. .are so convinced that nothing but a sound, masculine, practical insight can aid their solution; are so sure that in this, above all other social complications, sentimental yearnings and feverish idealisations only complicate matters; are so certain that if there are two classes that should give trade and masters-and-men questions a wide berth, those classes are clergymen and women…. Our authoress knows too little of the Cotton Trade to be entitled to increase the confusion by writing about it.”

The review writer articulates the widespread notion at the time that men could master a “sound”, “practical insight” but women (and clergyman) espoused “sentimental yearnings” and “feverish idealisations”. Obviously this reviewer would not agree that Gaskell has presented an accurately sketched “condition of England” novel.

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