The supernatural element in Victorian literature, is this statement as antithetical as it may sound?

Abstract

The first words that might spring to one’s mind upon hearing the term Victorian literature are often Classic Realist Text. Indeed, one can say that the majority of works belonging to this era are weaved into the fabric provided by this literary style. The Battle of the Books had long been over, with the novel, having been elevated from all that pertains to the mundane in the common perception. The rigorous intellectual debate and conflict between those who regarded poetry as the only literary genre capable of artistry, while viewing the novel as the product of mere craftsmanship, which was threatening to blemish and taint what they saw as the pure sublimity of their art, and those who in a revolutionary stance, were determined to break away from the established convention, venturing into unchartered territory, was resolved, with the budding novelists gaining the upper hand. Prior to the assertion of novel writing as a literary endeavour, with books finding their way into the Canon, prose existed in the form of tracts or essays penned by the most erudite scholars, on deep philosophical notions that only the privileged few, could easily engage with. The emerging novelists were driven by the aim of democratising what was back then, in the Age of the Enlightenment, an intellectual pleasure reserved for the elite. Fuelled by the philosophy of Rousseau and the prevailing school of thought that German thinkers were subscribing to on a wide scale, late eighteenth-century writers took it upon themselves to provide a voice to those who were denied one in the rigid hierarchical structure that still reigned supreme in their society despite the move from Providentialism to Humanism. The so-called Romantics were feeling stifled by the strict confines of the city, consequently advocating a return to nature, which they perceived as the ideal place where humanity can thrive and develop freely without being stunted by the fierce competitiveness and inhumane conditions which had to be endured in the industrial city. They didn’t use literature as a means to an end, just a form of escapism from the harsh reality out there, but to provide solace for man that was being reduced to a cog in a wheel. For these writers, literature has to be deprived of the ornate language that was used by their predecessors, and be laid bare instead. There was a clear shift from the structure of the poem to its content. The Romantics’ mission was to replace the bitterness of the Augustan writers’ satire with a more mellow tone, dealing with subject matter that is not necessarily related to the concretion of the real world, but that can be identified with through the fickle and volatile realm of the imagination. The Victorians were, as one would expect, rather sceptical of this kind of literature, and though not complying entirely with the Augustans’ view of life, most of them refused to keep on writing in the vein of their antecedents. Victorian novelists were obsessed with capturing the natural environment and human nature via an almost photographic approach; zooming in on every nook and cranny in the landscape and putting the most minute details of a person’s physical appearance or facial characteristics under the magnifying lens to paint a portrait that would mirror their protagonists’ inner mindscape. However, although the Classic Realist Text and the promulgation of Naturalism in writing are, arguably, the hallmarks of this era in literary history, one cannot jump to the conclusion that they enjoyed all the Victorian bards’ approval. Novelists like Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë and Bram Stoker, were Victorians with a Romantic soul. The texts these three writers are mostly renowned for, revolve around themes that can be more easily associated with that of their predecessors than their contemporaries. Once again the reader can witness a return to nature in its most hostile, violent and primeval form. Moreover, there is a palpable feeling of the landscape engulfing, susbsuming and threatening those who inhabit it; the Moors in Brontë are not just a mere backdrop, they are endowed with a spiritual intensity that almost outshines that of some of the characters, mainly the second generation of lovers, while being embodied by the two main protagonists, who are undoubtedly Moorish figures, with the supernatural becoming the pivot on which these novels are hinged.