Victorian Life Through Color Essay Research Paper

Victorian Life Through Color Essay, Research Paper

Victorian Life Through Color

The use of color in Victorian literature and art has gone far beyond simple description to form it’s very own sort of diction. Whether reading Victorian prose or looking at a Pre-Raphaelite painting one is drawn in and deeply affected by the arrangement and combination of it’s colors. In the two of these mediums, each color is both powerful and used precisely either to represent a trait or emotion or to compliment other colors to form a greater representation of an idea. Furthermore, seeing these colors in the mind brings out any unconscious association, bias, or preconceived notion of what traits and emotions generally go along with a given color. This use of color is partially why Victorian poetry is so beautiful and compelling to the reader. It describes an onslaught of emotions without ever having to call them by name. Indeed, it can truthfully be said that Victorian literature and art speak to the reader in a language of color.

The first point to look at when examining the Victorian use of color is the general similarity between it’s art and poetry. These mediums, in fact, have gone beyond similarity and become practically interchangeable. In this way, the colors of each poem seem to paint a perfect picture in the reader’s mind. Conversely, each painting seems to tell an involved story that draws the viewer in through it’s use of brilliant colors and color placement. This is why so many of the poems written in this time have been painted over and over again. Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott” alone has probably been painted at least a hundred times. Members of the Pre-Rapaelite Brotherhood saw poetry and painting as sister arts. They believed strongly in the use of bright colors to evoke strong emotional responses. Victorian art and literature both clearly depend on color to bring them to life.

The most obvious use of color association in Victorian painting and poetry is that that is used in relation to it’s female characters. The most desirable women in Victorian art and prose alike are almost always described as pale, pallid, and white. Their coloring represented not only their beauty, but also their sad helplessness and mysterious erotic quality that they possessed. The more gaunt, white, and ghostlike they were, the more attractive and desirable they were considered to be. Tennyson’s most desirable female of all, for example, is characterized by not only having a ghostly white appearance, but is even wearing white clothing. The Lady of Shalott, sailing across a lake, is described as “Dead-pale” and “robed in snowy white.” The colors here show the reader her complete purity and beauty in her willingness to sacrifice her life for love. The perfect Victorian woman, represented fully by only a color.

Another use of color in Victorian art and literature is that phantasmagoric coloring effect used to draw out extreme feelings and reactions from the viewer. In works like these, surreal scenes of color are presented in order to give an overwhelmingly precise view of the dream-like world that the characters are experiencing. Light and darkness are used in ways that entrance anyone reading or viewing them. In paintings like The Enchantment of Merlin, it is not only Merlin that is being enchanted. Swirling greens and purples draw in and capture the viewer. This viewer not only just sees Merlin being enchanted, but through the use of color placement, understands how he is being enchanted and walks away feeling a bit of the vicarious after effects as well. These feelings are not an accident, but instead the intentional utilization of the power of that color has in both painting and poetry.

Much like the white that is associated with the purity of the Victorian woman, red is an extremely powerful color in both art and literature. It represents strong emotion and characterizes certain types of people in this time. The mere mention of the color in this context brings to mind thought of passion, anger, lust, and blood, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The color characterizes strong will, sometimes to the point of cruelty. A perfect example of this lies in Tennyson’s Maud, in which Maud herself symbolizes the passion of the red rose and the purity of the white lily. These states of being could not be expressed without the use of these colors that create the perfect contrast between the two ways that the narrator sees her. Red also signifies the brutally and violence in life. Even nature is said by Tennyson to be “red in tooth and claw” from devouring itself (Tennyson 1). This is easily understood when read because of the universal language of color in both Victorian art and literature.

Pre-Rapaelite detail is also very important to the use of color in much of Victorian poetry and painting. In these works it is not only which colors are being used, but also how they are being outlined and combined. This hyper realism is employed to give colors a freshness they did not have in previous time periods. Furthermore, bright and detailed colors create bright and detailed feelings and emotions. This is not only true for Pre- Rapaelite paintings, but also poetry and prose as well. The beautiful sisters of Rossetti’s Goblin Market are not simply said to be lying next to each other, but instead are described as “golden head by golden head” (Abrams 1593). By using th