How Victorian was Queen Victoria?

One of the more characteristic aspects of the study of literature is the impulse to group works together in a kind of thematic way. In the case of the Edwardian and Victorian Ages of course the grouping is obviously linked to the beginning and end dates of the reigns of the various monarchs. What is not so obvious is whether it is in any way legitimate to link those authors who wrote while happening to live in those times. Furthermore, did those particular monarchs exert any significant influence by their own personalities on the times that have come to bear their names? How Victorian and Edwardian were Victoria and Edward themselves?

Certainly, monarchies have served to define at least the technical boundaries of an era in their own times. That Queen Victoria was the longest serving monarch of her nation could be demonstrated indisputably by the simplest calculation of dates and her Jubilees, both gold in 1887 and diamond ten years later were celebrated in high style and in a way which would have been impossible for any Londoner to have missed. Furthermore, the sway both Victoria and Edward were perceived to have over the real politics of their day seems to outstrip that of any of their successors. It is significant that Edward’s was the last era of English art, literature and culture to be named for its presiding monarch.

Also, the sense of Victoria and Edward’s reigns both signifying an “age” is further shaped by the proximity of Victoria’s death and Edward’s ascension to the throne to the turning of the century, following that auspicious date by only three weeks. The ostentation of her funeral coupled with the formal departure seemed to have a powerful effect on writers like Henry James who wrote, “I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of her big, hideous Scotch-plaid shawl and whose duration had been so extraordinarily convenient and beneficent,” to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. “I felt her death much more than I should have expected; she was a sustaining symbol.”

Queen Victoria’s death, in fact, gives perhaps the truest insight into her life or at least how Victorian’s themselves perceived the way she herself had influenced them. That Victoria was a devoted wife and mother is obvious in her fastidious care for her children’s lives and arranging their marriages as well as her devotion to the memory of her husband Albert after whose death she wore black for the remainder of her life. But this sense of Victoria as epitomizing the domestic is evident also in the Times of London’s obituary on the day after her death. The anonymous writer summed up that: “To most of us the whole course of our lives as subjects of the Queen has been the proof of the inimitable way in which—unique woman—whose small frame was permeated, so to speak, with Royal dignity, whose home life was so simple and pure, and whose intelligence, with none of the brilliancy of her eldest daughter or of her Imperial grandson, was yet formed by work and long experience into a powerful instrument of life—has met the difficulties of the longest and the fullest reign in English history.

Though such a “tribute” may seem back-handed and somewhat patronizing (matronizing?), it is clear that from the people closest to Victoria to those who found her era repugnant she was held to be, in many ways, the epitome of her age. Christopher Clausen summarizes:

“The age itself and the widow who gave it its name still refuse, in some odd sense, to behave as though they were dead. Victoria's last private secretary wrote in his memoirs: "Never in her life could she be confused with anyone else, nor will be in history. Such expressions as 'people like Queen Victoria' or 'that sort of woman' could not be used about her." Twenty years into the century, even Strachey paid grudging tribute to the "sincerity" that, he concluded, was the source of her lasting power over the imaginations of others. "She moved through life with the imposing certitude of one to whom concealment was impossible--either towards her surroundings or towards herself. There she was, all of her.., she had nothing more to show, or to explain, or to modify; and, with her peerless carriage, she swept along her path."

Clausen, Christopher, “The Great Queen Died.”American Scholar, December 1, 2001, Vol. 70, Issue 1

James, Henry. letter, Feb. 20, 1901, to jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.. Letters of Henry James, vol. 4 (1984).

This was actually posted by Graham!