Victorian Decline, Modernist Rise — A.C. Ward on 20th-Century Literature

Victorian Decline, Modernist Rise - A.C. Ward on 20th-Century Literature

This blog is written as a task assigned by the head of the department of English(MKBU), Prof. and Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. Here is the link of the professor's blog for background reading: Click here

This Blog is given with reference of Barad Sir's Research Article

Reading material of The Setting Twentieth Century English Literature - A. C. Ward: Click Here

Here is the Mind Map of this blog:   Click here

Here is the Consice Infographic upon the setting of Twentieth Century literature:

Briefing Document: Analysis of 20th Century English Literature and Society

This document synthesizes an analysis of the first half of the 20th century, a period defined by a profound paradox: unprecedented technological and material progress running parallel to a significant moral and spiritual regress. Central to this era is a comprehensive revolt against the Victorian mindset, trading its values of stability, permanence, and acceptance of authority for a new spirit of questioning, skepticism, and a sense of universal mutability, championed by figures like Bernard Shaw. This societal shift is mirrored in literature, which fractures from a unified public discourse into competing and often isolated movements. Early 20th-century writers like Shaw and H.G. Wells pursued an "art for life's sake" creed, engaging with broad social issues. However, the post-1922 literary landscape, marked by James Joyce's Ulysses and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, retreated into an esoteric intellectualism that held the "common reader" in contempt. This trend fostered a form of academic criticism that became a self-perpetuating, insular discipline. The post-WWII era, despite the material benefits of the Welfare State, produced a new set of social ills, including a pervasive consumer culture driven by manipulative advertising, a "cult of immaturity" surrounding a newly affluent youth, and a widespread contempt for authority that degraded potent art forms like satire into witless ridicule.

I. The Paradox of the 20th Century: Progress and Regress

The first fifty years of the 20th century witnessed a series of upheavals more remarkable than those of "perhaps fifty generations in the past." This period is fundamentally characterized by the dual outcomes of the Scientific Revolution, which produced both accelerating progress and unprecedented moral relapse.

The Scientific Revolution's Dual Impact: Man's growing mastery over the physical world brought both immense benefits and catastrophic threats.

• The internal combustion engine enabled the mobility of millions via motor cars but also facilitated mass slaughter through aeroplanes in two world wars.
• Nuclear power introduced the "threat of universal destruction" alongside the potential for global stability through a "saving fear of mutual annihilation."

Social and Moral Consequences: Technological advancements directly contributed to profound shifts in social structures and moral values.

• Increased mobility, particularly for young people, allowed them to "travel far from their homes and exude natural parental guidance and control," contributing to a "revolt of youth."
• The text notes that the ease of "mass manipulation of youth" was demonstrated by movements like the Hitler Youth, contrasting with the previous British norm that students should study, not agitate.

II. The Revolt Against Victorianism

A defining characteristic of the early 20th century was its conscious and total rejection of the preceding era's values. The "truths and certainties of one generation" became the "superstitious and baseless conventions" for the next.

Characteristics of the Victorian Mindset

The Victorian era was marked by a spirit of acceptance and a belief in the unshakable permanence of its core institutions.

Acceptance of Authority: Victorians demonstrated a "widespread and willing submission to the rule of the Expert" and the "Voice of Authority" in religion, politics, and family life. This was an "insistent attitude of acceptance," characterized by an innate desire to "affirm and confirm rather than to reject or to question." To 20th-century minds, this faith often seemed to be "mere second-hand clothing of the mind and spirit" lacking personally realized conviction.

Belief in Permanence: Victorians viewed their institutions the home, the constitution, the Empire, the Christian religion as final and established in perpetuity. There was a sense of living "in a house built on unshakable foundations."

The Early 20th Century Interrogative Spirit

The post-Victorian age displaced this sense of stability with an ethos of questioning and a perception of universal change.

The Call to Question: Bernard Shaw was a foremost herald of this change, attacking the "old superstition" of religion and the "new superstition" of science. His watchwords were "Question! Examine! Test!" His creed held that every dogma is a superstition until it is "personally examined and consciously accepted by the individual believer."

The Shock of Instability: Shaw’s writings had an invigorating effect on many, exemplified by Andrew Undershaft's declaration in Major Barbara: "It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won't scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions." For others, this collapse of certainty was deeply unsettling, as expressed by the character Barbara: "I stood on the rock I thought eternal; and without a word it reeled and crumbled under me."

Universal Mutability: The Victorian idea of permanence was replaced by a sense of "universal mutability." H.G. Wells captured this with phrases like "the flow of things" and the idea that the world was no longer a home but "the mere sight of a home."

III. The Evolution of Literary Purpose and Audience

The 20th century saw literature move from a tool for broad social engagement to a medium for esoteric expression and political polemic, creating a significant divide between intellectual writers and the general public.

Group / Period	Core Principle	Key Figures / Works	Audience Focus
Fabian Society Group (Pre-WWI)	"Art for life's sake" or for the sake of the community. Literature as a secondary tool for sociological and political motives.	Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Beatrice and Sidney Webb	The general public and political sphere.
The Modernist Turn (1922)	Literature retreats "into an esoteric fastness." Marked by intellectualism and complexity.	James Joyce (Ulysses), T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land)	A "small and fastidious public" of intellectual elites.
The Bloomsbury Group	Restoration of the "art-for-art's sake" principle, valuing intellect, aesthetics, and good manners.	Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, J.M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey	An intellectual circle contemptuous of "lesser minds."
The 1930s Political Writers	Art as the "handsmaid of politics." Creative ability suppressed for social service and polemics.	Christopher Caudwell (Studies in a Dying Culture)	"Already converted comrades" within Socialist circles.
Post-WWII "Anti-Art"	Indifference and antagonism towards form, style, and literary craftsmanship.	Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim), John Osborne (Look Back in Anger), Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot)	A public receptive to "chaotic production."

• The 1922 Turning Point: The publication of Ulysses and The Waste Land is identified as the moment "literature left the highroad of communication." Before this, leading writers like Hardy, Kipling, Shaw, and Wells were enjoyed by critics and "the general body of averagely intelligent readers." Afterwards, a new orthodoxy of intellectualism emerged.

• The Fabian Influence: The Fabian Society, founded in 1884, aimed to spread Socialist opinions. Its prime movers, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, were the "architects of the Welfare State." Their focus on State control and mass welfare was criticized for being "blind to the leaven in the social lump the exceptional, the eccentric, the individually independent-minded."

IV. The Rise of Academic Criticism and Intellectual Arrogance

The shift towards esoteric literature was accompanied by the development of a new style of academic criticism rooted in elitism and a narrow focus on textual analysis, often detached from lived experience.

•  Contempt for the "Common Reader": This intellectualism was founded on "contempt for normal intelligence."
• Stuart Gilbert's 1930 commentary on Ulysses states that Joyce "never once betrayed the authority of intellect to the hydra-headed rabble of the mental underworld."
•     T.S. Eliot wrote that those who see an antimony between elite literature and life are "flattering the complacency of the half-educated."
•  Critique of Professional Inbreeding: The text argues that when academic criticism's purpose is simply "the multiplication of academics ad infinitum," it becomes a form of "cerebral incest." This isolates literature from its function as an "enrichment of life," reducing it to "raw material for university exercise.

Case Study: Empson and the Printer's Error: A stark example of the pitfalls of textual criticism is provided. Professor William Empson, in his influential book Seven Types of Ambiguity, built a finely drawn theory about T.S. Eliot's poem "Whisper of Immortality" based on a syntactic ambiguity. However, this ambiguity was later revealed to be a common printer's error in the third and fourth editions of the text, which was absent in earlier and later editions. The admired "point of the whole poem" was created not by the poet, but by a faulty printer.

V. Socio-Political Context and its Literary Reflection

The century's major political and military events profoundly shaped its creative output.

• The World Wars:

• WWI produced an "outburst of poetry" (e.g., Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen) that was "intelligible and attractive to the common reader." It also generated a wave of anti-war books in the late 1920s, including C.E. Montague's Disenchantment and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.
• WWII was faced with "stoical determination" rather than the "romantic-patriotic fervor" of 1914. It produced "little verse and that that little was mostly in minor key and often obscurely phrased."

The Failure of Internationalism: The League of Nations failed to secure universal confidence, being used more as a tool "for keeping the defeated in subjection" than as an instrument of justice. Its failures in response to Japan's attack on China, Italy's invasion of Abyssinia, and the Spanish Civil War contributed to a darkening European scene.

The Rise of Psychiatry: The inter-war period saw a growing preoccupation with "states of consciousness," influenced by the belated English discovery of Kierkegaard, Rilke, and Kafka. This led to an assumption that "most men and women are cases to be diagnosed" and that "nothing but abnormality is normal," with Freudianism becoming rooted in contemporary fiction.

VI. Discontents of the Post-War Affluent Society

The implementation of the Welfare State after 1945 created an affluent society but failed to deliver the expected contentment, instead giving rise to new social pathologies.

The Paradox of Welfare: The removal of economic stresses did not bring happiness. A "mood of sullen discontent settled upon large numbers," and crime and prostitution "flourished as never before." The state was found to be as "uncongenial and unsympathetic a master as many private employers had been."

The Culture of Consumerism and Advertising:

• Social habits once condemned as "conspicuous waste" among the "idle rich" became common to all classes. The age of "status symbols" and "keeping up with the Joneses" was born.
• Advertising shifted from highlighting a product's merit to using "depth psychology" to evoke "an automatic emotional response." The National Union of Teachers expressed anxiety about ads suggesting links between products (beer, corsets) and human love, or those promoting smoking and drinking as "manly and grown-up."

The Revolt of Youth and the Beatnik Phenomenon:

• Adolescents, endowed with "unprecedented and mainly undiscriminating spending power," fostered a "cult of immaturity."
• The Beatnik movement, a reflection of its American prototype, emerged as a symbol of this revolt. Adherents professed disgust with debased society and chose to "contract-out." They were characterized by "decrepitude of person and dress" (shoddy jeans, baggy sweaters), a rejection of hygiene, promiscuity, and drug use, and an interest in Zen Buddhism.

The Decline of Authority and Satire: A defining characteristic of the period was a "prevalence of contempt for authority." This manifested in "bastard satire" that lacked intelligence and understanding, descending into "witless innocence" and "irresponsible malignancy." The text contrasts this with the Shavian view that "without good manners human society is intolerable and impossible." The final assessment suggests that what the 20th century derided as Victorian hypocrisy might be better judged as "commendable reticence and modesty."

Here is the Detailed Infographic upon the setting of Twentieth Century literature:

Here is a brief video overview of Chapter 1, 'The Setting', from Twentieth-Century English Literature by A. C. Ward

Twentieth-Century English Literature: Progress and Regress

A Brief Hindi Video Podcast Debate on Chapter 1: The Setting from Twentieth-Century English Literature by A. C. Ward

Literature in an Age of Upheaval — War, Welfare & the Rise of Modernism

Learning Outcomes:

References:

1. Barad, Dilip. “Modernist Literature: Online Test & Thinking Activity.” Dilip Barad | Teacher Blog, 23 Mar. 2017, https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2017/03/modernist-literature-online-test.html.

2. Barad, Dilip. Worksheet Lab Activity: Modernist Literature DH. 2025. ResearchGate, doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.22260.41603. Accessed 11 Dec. 2025.

3. Ward, A. C. The Setting: Unit 5. Google Docs, docs.google.com/document/d/1jHd58kgj3JsTGiOYvf4PUKDElTl6Nm42YjfUkRbfW7o/edit. Accessed 11 Dec. 2025.

Thank you!