Eng426 20th century english literature

Moral Representation/Idealism/The Narrator

Moral Representation: There was strong moral representation in the Victorian Literature. Writers asserted moral purposes. This became necessary because people moved from the countryside to places where industries were located and they were beginning to adopt new life styles. Victorian literature attempted to correct the attitudes of people in order to preserve relationships, societies and so on. The literary works of Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, and Ruskin show great moral messages.

The Post-Victorian literature, that is the early Twentieth Century Literature, showed moral, but in the modernist literature, attention was not given to morals at all. The modernists had witnessed the First World War. They saw the decline of civilization and the doom that civilization brought upon human. Instead of morals, modernist writers represented how machinery and increased capitalism had alienated individuals and led to loneliness. The writers also preferred to show that life needs to be lived according to practical desires. For example, the happiness of Connie is Lady Chatterley’s Lover lies in living with a man who could satisfy her sexually, and she gets this vitality in Mellors.

In Victorian literature, there was doubt about the existence of a Supreme Being who controls the affairs of human. Scientific advancement had caused this doubt among people. The ideal of evolution was upheld by a lot of people. Then, it seemed like man was recreating the world and was giving meaning to life through his ideas and institutions. But Victorian writers still exalted ideal life. They struggled to maintain that despite the new form of life to which the people were exposed, and irrespective of the questioning of a Supreme Being, ideals like ‘truth’, ‘justice’, ‘love’, and ‘brotherhood’ were still valuable. These notions were represented in the literary works produced.


Idealism: Modernist writers were no longer contemplating the existence of a Supreme Being. They believed that there was no Supreme Being anywhere. Their question seemed to be: if there was a Supreme Being, why could he not protect human from the calamities of the First World War? They represented the idea that men are only capable of creating machinery and institutions that can destroy them. To them, every action of people towards greatness will lead to their sudden destruction. Modernists considered people’s feelings, thoughts, and perceptions. They saw the environments as deceitful, and saw the inner beings as where true feelings and thoughts can be found. Therefore, in modernist literature of the Twentieth Century, ideals like ‘truth’, ‘justice’, ‘love’ and ‘brotherhood’ were not valued as they were in the Victorian literature.


The Narrator: In the Victorian literature, the omniscient narrator is evident. The narrator always knows everything. In the modernist writing of Twentieth Century literature, the omniscient narrator is not evident. This is because, to the modernists, no one knows an individual better than the individual. The modernists represented the truth about a character as being in the character and can be perceived through his or her psychological dispositions.