hereas Trollope tells his tale of everyday heroism in a highly realistic and straightforward, almost mundane manner, Elizabeth Barrett Browning goes in an entirely different direction to make her statement about the identity of the Victorian Hero in Aurora Leigh. Browning takes what is seen as the "highest" literary genre, the epic poem, and combines it with a "weak," "women's" form of literature, the novel. In addition, she alters many of the poetic conventions of the epic, in that it is set in the Victorian period rather than an earlier era, most of the environment is urban rather than expansive country, and very little action is immediately related by the poet, instead characters retell the dramatic events. The emphasis is chiefly on the evolution of the characters' feelings, and Aurora's development as a woman and an artist is the focus of the story.
The plot, reminiscent of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, thus fitted to the heroic epic form places the unmarried woman, Aurora, in the hero's position. Her "quest" is the reconciliation of her desire to be a poet (an aspiration, as her cousin Romney would have it, reserved for men) with her femininity (somewhat in doubt due to her dim view of "feminine" submissive women, such as Marian and her aunt). Like Septimus Harding, Aurora originally can be perceived neither as wholly feminine nor masculine, in that she is not meek nor seeks marriage, though she is obviously a female and is not yet a good poet.
At the conclusion of the story, Aurora realizes that she has suppressed her love, thinking that it was a form of weakness that would not allow her to concentrate fully on being a poet:
...Passioned to exalt
The artist's instinct in me at the cost
Of putting down the woman's, I forgot
No perfect artist is developed here
From any imperfect woman.
...Art is much, but love is more!
...Art symbolizes heaven, but love is God
And makes heaven. I, Aurora, fell from mine.
I would not be a woman like the rest,
A simple woman who believes in love
And owns the right of love because she loves,
And, hearing she's beloved, is satisfied
With what contents God... (IX, 645-664)
Like Eleanor Harding, Aurora realizes that she does not need to sacrifice her love and her female nature for what she believed in, but that love itself is a noble and admirable thing. Aurora yields to the "weakness" of her love for Romney, and thereby finally succeeds at being both feminine and a great poet.
Romney himself plays the role of the ineffective hero held by John Bold in the Warden. He also was a young man, master of his house, and an active philanthropist. Unlike Bold, Romney's "heroic" philanthropic efforts cause his own downfall, with his house burnt down by angry townspeople and his subsequent illness and blindness. The simple efforts of Aurora in providing support for Marian Erle in France and realizing her own personal shortcomings accomplish much more in the vein of heroism than does Romney's grandiose attempt at full class reconciliation through one marriage or housing poorer people in Leigh Hall.
Like Aurora Leigh's tale of personal development as an artist and a woman, the maturation of Alice is the major theme of Alice in Wonderland. Her search for self-identity, exemplified by her size-changing and conversation with the likes of the caterpillar and Humpty Dumpty about who she is, and also her quest to reach the eighth square and become a queen, is a perfect allegory for the search of the Victorians to classify and give meaning to their age. It is true, the Victorians were the first to name their own era, and their place in history was of great interest to them. John Stuart Mill stated that the Victorian period was "an age of transition," and that man had "outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and [had] not yet acquired new ones (�The Spirit of the Age')." Artists and writers employed many methods in attempt to answer and refute Mill's assertion. Authors such as Charles Dickens and Alfred Lord Tennyson searched for meaning in their own age through other time periods. Carlyle often stated that an age never seemed heroic, romantic, or ideal to itself (Works of Thomas Carlyle, 5.3-4). Lewis Carroll's seven-year-old innocent's perspective makes perfect sense as a type of "everyman," or in this case, "everyone" searching for meaning in a confusing world.
Carroll's opinions on the matter are made manifest by Alice's reactions to Wonderland poetry and her encounter with the White Knight. In reading the White King's "Jabberwocky" and hearing Tweedledee's poem, "The Walrus and The Carpenter,"Alice makes no pretensions about its quality or the meter or overarching themes. Instead, she simply says, "It seems very pretty, but it is rather hard to understand!" or "I like the Walrus best, because he was a little sorry for the poor oysters." Often, we take elaborate steps to drag a meaningful lesson out of every literary work, but it takes Carroll's parodies and Alice's innocent observations to remind us to enjoy the work as well.
Alice's role in the chronicles, as it seems from her unsophisticated action in even the strangest of situations, is to open our eyes to the nonsense society serves us. Mr. Pickwick's "child-like" naivete and Septimus Harding's "child-like" role in dealing with others ("Your Father is like a child!" The Warden, 161) both provide the same fresh, simple, uncluttered perspective which appears to be present in some form in all Victorian heroes.
The White Knight, Alice's final encounter before her "coronation," would be the romantic, chivalrous hero, yet he is clumsy, absent-minded, and old. He does, however, prove himself to be quite gentlemanly in his offer to escort her to the final square and the fact that he is the only character Alice meets who is neither argumentative nor evasive. Indeed, his "shaggy hair," "gentle foolish face," "mild blue eyes," and "kindly smile" coupled with his general industry, but lack of effectiveness make him almost an exact parallel of Septimus Harding. The apparent hardship and necessity of his departing from Alice, paralleled by Dodgson's eventual leave-taking of the Liddell girls (footnote, p. 181), and coupled with his friendly, sensitive nature leads him to be the most sympathetic and strangely noble character in Alice's eyes and ours.
So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest..."There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily�"...she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited until he was out of sight. (190)
For all of his falling off the horse, he always gets back on. The White Knight never slays a dragon, but he sacrifices and he endures. He is the Victorian Hero.
As Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope point out in The Female Hero, "People who are not recognized by society as noble or heroic often slay dragons out of necessity...'The poor need courage. They're lost, that's why. That they even get up in the morning is something in their plight (Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and her Children, 392)" (5), and Rachel Brownstein recounts the epigraph from an 1818 novel called Marriage, by Susan Ferrier, "Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities (4)." The theme of endurance comes up again and again in talk of Victorian heroism, chiefly with respect to theories of feminism and gender. Before the Victorian era, the accepted view of the hero was the stereotypical energetic male. Victorian authors, in searching for a truer spirit of an increasingly industrial, self-centered, and amoral England, took the complementary position, the "feminine" qualities of constancy (in child-bearing, child-rearing, and affection), patience, open-mindedness, and yielding, and found the heroic in the everyday. For the Victorians, Septimus Harding will continue to mildly conduct the choir, Aurora Leigh will remain happy in her marriage and her work, Alice will persist in growing wiser, and the White Knight will always get back on his horse.
Other Sections of "The Atypical Hero in the Victorian Novel"
- The Atypical Hero in the Victorian Novel: The Warden
- Recreating The Heroic in Fantastic Poetry: "Childe Roland..." and "Goblin Market"
- The Warden and Punch: Money and Dignity in the Victorian Social Consciousness
Last modified 1998