Poetry for Students

Volume 19 211

for twenty years, until Albert’s death in 1861 from

typhoid fever. After his death, Victoria remained

devoted to Albert’s memory, and she never remar-

ried. Her popularity as a monarch grew as she aged,

as England exerted its dominance over world af-

fairs, becoming the world’s most powerful country

because of its strong navy and its colonization of

Africa, India, and other territories that raised its fi-

nancial power to ever-increasing heights.

Literary tastes changed during the time of Vic-

toria’s reign, reflecting the queen’s tastes. The

nineteenth century began with the romantic move-

ment, which was initiated by Wordsworth and Co-

leridge and most frequently associated with

Shelley, Keats, and Byron. Romantic poetry can be

generalized as focusing on nature and on the im-

portance of individual judgement and emotional re-

action over the pressures of social institutions.

Victorian literature, on the other hand, is generally

concerned with how individuals fit into the social

scheme, with formality and decorum. This poem,

an introduction for a work written between 1833

and 1850, shows the influence of both eras. Ten-

nyson has the romantic’s sense of self-importance

in his telling of his individual experience of grief,

but he also expresses concern about the proper re-

lationship with God and his fellow humans that

came to characterize most literature during Victo-

ria’s reign.

The Industrial Age

At the same time Tennyson was writing this

poem, England was undergoing a major change in

basic economic structure, from agriculture to in-

dustrial production. Coal-powered machines made

large-scale manufacturing possible, and this in turn

created a surge in urban populations, which cre-

ated a need for more jobs. London, for example,

which had kept a stable population for centuries,

grew fourfold between 1801 and 1841, from

598,000 to 2,420,000. New technologies made cen-

tralized industry possible: rail lines allowed man-

ufacturers to produce items by the ton and transport

them to distant points for sale; electric lighting

(first invented in 1808) made it possible for work-

ers to continue to labor beyond normal daylight

hours; telegraphs allowed businesses to place or-

ders and make arrangements in a fraction of the

time it took to send representatives from one town

to another.

The drawback of the industrial age was that

rapid expansion caused cities to quickly became

overpopulated with people, creating unsanitary

conditions. Diseases such as typhus spread rapidly

in crowded tenements, and the situation was made

more perilous by the fact that workers, including

children, worked long hours with little pay. Pollu-

tion was blinding, darkening the skies of industrial

cities at midday. All of these conditions caused a

crisis of faith: the benefits of industrialization

turned out to be the cause of misery for millions of

British citizens. Tennyson plays off this tension by

contrasting knowledge with faith in this poem.

Critical Overview

Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam A. H. H., which

“Proem” introduces, has always been considered

one of Tennyson’s most important works. George

O. Marshall Jr., explained in 1963 in A Tennyson

Handbook, “One of the most remarkable things

aboutIn Memoriamwas its popularity with Ten-

nyson’s contemporaries. It seemed to be such a sat-

isfactory answer to the problems of existence,

especially those raised by the struggle between re-

ligion and science, that the Victorians clasped it to

their bosoms to supplement the consolation offered

by the Bible. This wholehearted acceptance of its

teachings went from the highest to the lowest.”

Marshall’s account of the poem’s reception is

at odds, however, with that of G. M. Young, in his

essay “The Age of Tennyson.” Young’s essay ar-

gues that Tennyson was less a Victorian poet than

a modern one, explaining:

In Memoriam was influential in extending his

renown, but within limited range: many of its earli-

est readers disliked it, many did not understand it,

and those who admired it most were not always the

best judges of its poetry.

T. S. Eliot, writing in his Selected Essays, has

declared that In Memoriam’s “technical merit alone

is enough to ensure its perpetuity.” Eliot also noted,

“While Tennyson’s technical competence is every-

where masterly and satisfying, In Memoriamis

the least unapproachable of all his poems.” Eliot’s

influence is evident in contemporary views of Ten-

nyson’s poem: while Tennyson’s other works are

critically respected, modern readers tend to take

particular interest in the perspective taken by In

Memoriam, which examines one person’s grief

(though Tennyson himself wanted readers to un-

derstand the views held by the speaker of the poem

were not necessarily his own). This directness

makes this poem, of all Tennyson’s works, the

most similar to the poetry with which twenty-first-

century readers are familiar.

Proem

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