Moral and Social Decline in Three Victorian Texts

Discuss representations of social and/or moral decline in Victorian texts.

Moral and social decline are essential concepts to the Victorian era, the period having experienced radical change, innovation and uncertainty. The texts: The picture of Dorian Gray, The Time Machine, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, analogously act as dynamic explorative pieces of Victorian literature, centralising on pre-existing anxieties and concerns. The three pieces focalize on the anxieties specifically associated with the Fin-De-Siècle, demonstrating the apprehensive Victorian society. This essay will explore mutual notions within the selected texts, focalizing on Degeneration, the divergence of the central to the ‘other’, and appearance in terms of surface and reality, all relative to the concept of progress and Devolution. These crucial themes will facilitate a discussion on how these texts enabled a profound understanding of the anxieties and changes. Darwinian theory as well as modern critics will be engaged in order to consider distinctive vantage points and contemplate the texts in their moment of production.

The transgression of moral codes and degeneration are central themes to all three texts. Dorian Gray, also referred to as the decadence manifesto, embodies creeds relative to art, that conflict with Victorian society’s conformities regarding art. Therefore, the book itself would have been deemed degenerate. Wilde adopts Walter’s notion of the art for art’s sake. He addresses the idea of valuing ‘Not the fruit of experience’, but’ the experience itself’ through denying that art should be didactic or morally instruct. (Pater, 1868:152)‘The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame’, thi...

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...rising anxiety towards the ‘professional’ men highlighted the blurring between the classes illustrating how the decline of social and moral code inhabits in both.

Bibliography:

Primary:

Stevenson, R .L (2003) ‘The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other tales of horror’, Mighall, Penguin books

Wilde, O. (2008) ’ The Picture of Dorian Gray’,Akroyd, Penguin Classics

Wells, H .G.(2010) ‘The Time Machine’, Orion publishing group.

Secondary:

Mighall,R.( 2003)’Diagnosing Jekyll: The scientific context to Dr Jekyll's experiment and Mr Hyde's embodiment’.

Nordau,M (1895)’Degeneration’ ,New York: Appleton, URL: < https://archive.org/details/degeneration1895nord>

Showalter. E, (1990), Sexual anarchy; Gender and culture at the Fin-de-siècle (New York, Viking Penguin), 105-16

Stutfield ,H.M.E. (1895)’Tommyrotics’

Pater, W .(1868)’The Renaissance’