We begin to see now in the Victorian Era a pushback of Christian beliefs in literature. I was reminded by a classmate this past week to look through a historical lens when reading these pieces rather than just taking them for what they mean now. Though I loved the mentions of sexuality and the hidden homoeroticism within some pieces, I took my time to step back and really think about what it was like to publish these pieces during the Victorian Era.
Starting with the simple story of Guenevere and Lancelot that everyone knows now, Morris publishing this piece of her defending herself must have pushed many buttons at the time. Here we have a majorly Christian belief system that preaches adultery as an awful sin and Morris writes a piece defending the adulterer! Guenevere not only defends herself throughout the piece but also blatantly calls a man of power a liar! This is huge when you think of the belief system of the church at that time and the belief of women’s place in the world is under men. Morris is here putting a different twist on a story known by many that is going against the church at the time.
Morris was not the only one to do this though apparently. We see in Meredith’s first sonnet a couple struggling in their relationship and wanting more than anything a divorce. The sonnet mentions the agony of each partner in the marriage and even states, “each wishing for the sword that severs all”. At this time, divorce was highly discouraged and almost unheard of. Meredith throughout these sonnets paints a picture of a miserable couple who is trying there best to hide the unpleasantries from the world and stay together. You can sense Meredith’s disproval of the church being against divorce. He titles these sonnets “Modern Love” because now many couples will be forced to stay unhappily married.
It was interesting to see within this week’s readings the mentions of things seen as unholy by the church and to think of how risky it was for these authors to publish some of these pieces. No longer today do we really see comparable risks that authors take in their work. When was the last time you thought “Wow, that was risky. I can't believe
they wrote that”?