Victorian Period Essay

Anna Ebaugh

Mrs. Wilson

British Literature B

May 14, 2013

Victorian Period Essay

The Victorian Period lasted between 1832 and 1901 and it was a period of industrialization and the theory of evolution. Charles Darwin was a British scientist who established the theory of evolution (http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk). The theory of evolution is that all species of life descended from generation to generation all from a common ancestor (http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk). Evolution changed the way people thought out God and religion. In “De Profundis” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she uses nature motif, repetition and religion to express the speaker’s grief about the death of her brother and to indicate the sudden realization she has about her mortal grief.

A nature motif is used in this poem to emphasize the fact that her grief is ongoing. Browning uses the whole idea of nature and all the four seasons throughout her poem to show how long her grief is going on for. Browning talks about her grief and she says, “This Nature, though the snows be down, / Thinks kindly of the bird of June: / the little red hip on the tree/ is ripe for such. What is for me/ whose days so winterly go on” (IX)? This quote is showing winter is coming to an end and then will go into spring and how her grief continues to go on all throughout the seasons. Browning continues throughout the poem expressing her sorrow and feeling bad for herself when she then says, “God’s Voice, not Nature’s” (XVI). This quote is saying that “nature”, which is her grief, has been calling out to her all this time and she finally hears and recognizes God’s voice. When she hears God’s voice, she stops talking about nature because she doesn’t feel the need to grieve anymore since she is now able to talk to God. God is her savior and he relieves her from this grief she is feeling about her brother’s death. She says, “A voice reproves me thereupon, / more sweet than Nature’s…” (XV). This quote is saying that God’s voice is better than Nature’s, God is better than the grief she is feeling and he can help her through the grief. The theme of nature in this poem really shows how nature symbolizes her grief and reminds her of it because it keeps going on and on.

The use of repetition in the last line of every stanza show the reader how depressed the author feels about her ongoing grief. The repetition shows how much she is grieving and it emphasizes that she has been grieving for a long time. Browning repeats a single line throughout her entire poem and it says, “And yet my days go on, go on” (III). This quote shows that her long days of grieving still go on every day and they don’t end. The fact that it says “go on, go on” shows the reader that she is grieving every single day and her life is not getting any better. In the middle of the poem she then goes on to say, “Whose desolated days go on” (VII). The use of the word “desolated” shows the reader how she really feels, lonely. In the beginning of the poem, she only said “and yet my days go on, go on” but then she started to add words like desolated and vacant to really express to the reader how she is really feeling but still show the reader how long she is grieving for. Towards the end of the poem she starts to say, “I praise Thee while my days go on” (XXII). This quote is showing that she will now praise God while her days go on, instead of grieving from the loss of her brother. Her days do still go on and she is still living her life but instead of grieving, she has found a new resolution and turned to God to relieve herself from the grief.

The talk of religion and the allusion to Jesus shows that not only is she going against the theory of evolution, but she is also creating a sudden realization with the depth of her grief. She is going against the theory of evolution because in the Victorian Period, the theory of evolution was introduced by Charles Darwin and that made everyone shift away from religion and God as the creator of the earth, to beginning to think more about evolution. She remembers that Jesus sacrificed himself and died on the cross for every single person in this world and that remembrance makes her realize that she should not be grieving this hard because Jesus sacrificing himself is so much bigger than her grieving. Browning says, “Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown! / No mortal grief deserves that crown” (XX). This quote is showing that her grief doesn’t even come close to what Jesus did for us and she shouldn’t even be able to compare herself to him. She says that she doesn’t deserve the crown of thorns because she did not nearly go through as much pain and grief as Jesus went through. She realizes that she does not need to be grieving as much as she is because it’s not worth it. In the last stanza of the poem she wraps up her sudden realization and she says, “As a child drops his pebble small/ down some deep well, and hears it fall/ smiling-so I” (XXIV). This quote symbolizes her grief and sorrow and how small it is compared to other things. Her grief is just one small pebble in life and she realizes that it is only one bad thing in her life and it’s not worth grieving for an ongoing period of time. Jesus plays an important role in this poem for when she realizes the tremendous depth of her grief and when she realizes that it is immoral.

In “De Profundis” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she uses nature motif, repetition and religion to express the speaker’s grief about the death of her brother and to indicate the sudden realization she has about her mortal grief. All of those three tools aid in showing the reader the depth of her sorrows and aid in helping the speaker come to a resolution about her grief in the end. Religion may not be a big role in the Victorian Period but it plays a huge role for Elizabeth Browning and in her poem. Browning feels great sorrow about her brother’s death but with the help of God and the remembrance of Jesus, she realizes that her grief is just one small pebble in a giant well.