Memory is a funny thing. I have been digging into my CV to prepare this post and what I have found does not quite match my recollections. I was under the impression that I have been teaching Victorian Literature every year since I was hired in 1991, except the year that I spent in Scotland (already thirty years ago!), but it turns out that there is a five-year gap corresponding to my time as Head of Department and the ensuing sabbatical, and another year when I taught Romanticism instead. Since 1991 we have gone through five syllabi (1977, 1992 and 2002 for the Licenciatura; 2009 and 2021 for the BA or Grado), with subjects being labelled very differently. Victorian Literature used to be part of annual subjects: Literatura Anglesa I (1977 syllabus), Literatura Anglesa Moderna i Contemporània II (1992 syllabus), and Gèneres Literaris Anglesos del Segle XIX (2002 syllabus). It only emerged as a semestral separate subject finally called Literatura Victoriana in the 2009 syllabus. No wonder I am confused about what and when I have been teaching.

            I’m writing this post, precisely, to fix my memories of Victorian Literature now that I am taking a break that might be a goodbye. As part of the new 2021 syllabus we have decided to introduce a new compulsory third/fourth year subject called 20th and 21st Contemporary Anglophone Literature. The logic behind this is that although the electives may cover contemporary genres (fiction, drama, poetry), we believe that the students need a more systematic approach to current times. Since we teach in reverse chronological order, they begin by reading 20th century genres in the first-year subject Introduction to English Literature, but we came to the conclusion that we have been graduating students with a poor knowledge of contemporary literary genres, hence the new core subject. Of course, the difficulty is how to define the contemporary and although I usually draw the line at the 21st century, my colleagues decided that we need to begin with the 1990s (a reason is that in the first year we teach Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, and that was published in 1989). I have expressed very loudly and very insistently my wish to teach the new subject, on the grounds that I am a specialist in the contemporary and here I am, preparing to launch a new adventure, a new experiment (of which more next week).

            Since I am only teaching 17 ECTS, courtesy of the Ministerio and UAB because of my five ‘sexenios’ (or personal assessment exercises), and I need to teach in the MA, this means that I am saying goodbye to Victorian Literature, perhaps for good, depending on how things progress. Today’s post is, then, a sort of record thinking of a time in the future when perhaps I will return to Victorian Literature and I will need to recall what I have done so far.

            To be perfectly honest, although I have felt very happy and comfortable teaching Victorian Literature, this is no longer how I feel. I taught for many years the first-year subject Introduction to English Literature and, very selfishly, I declare here that this is a subject I have been consistently avoiding since I last taught it, back in 2012-13. In a way, I pulled rank to entrench myself in Victorian Literature, and this coincided with a series of reductions in my workload, which helped me to stay put in this cosy corner of the syllabus. I have now in many ways run out of steam but I don’t feel at all that I’m done with Victorian Literature. I just need a break, a long one if possible, and considering that I have been a teacher for almost 33 years, this break might be permanent. Past the age of 55 one starts thinking of retirement and at the moment, if everything goes well, I am planning to retire in ten years’ time, at 68. Right now I hope that those ten years are intensely focused on the 21st century, both in the new core subject and in the electives, but, who knows?

            I must clarify that although I have been teaching Victorian Literature for so many years, I am not a specialist in this area. I was just given the task to teach it three decades ago, and loved it. I decided quite recently to correct this state of matters, and so I published four years ago “Arthur and Annabella’s Irresistible Passion: Adultery in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (Raudem 8, 2020, 136-161) and last year “Jaggers the Plotter and the Pretty Child: Masculine Vulnerability to Beauty in Great Expectations” (Dickens Quarterly 40.4, December 2023, 457-475). This is indeed very little for three decades but, as I have mentioned, my area is the 21st century (and the last decades of the 20th century). Now and then I’ve tried to catch up with the latest innovations by reading academic work on the Victorian Age, but, to be honest, I have not read primarily about this period.

            The same applies to its literature. Yes, of course, I have read many 19th century novels and essays, but not so many in the context of the total amount of reading I do every year. If I haven’t done more, this is because the demands of the subject have been diminishing rather than grow. In the 1992 ‘Licenciatura’ syllabus we introduced a subject called Pràctiques de Literatura Anglesa Moderna i Contemporània II, designed to teach students to read secondary sources about the 19th century, and that required a good knowledge of the extant bibliography. Once we lost that subject and introduced the new BA/Grado, our Victorian Literature subject has become increasingly shallower.

            And this brings me to the main reason for my rushing to take the new Contemporary Literature subject: I am immensely tired of the general disinterest in the novels we teach. Sorry to be so blunt, students. I happen to absolutely love Victorian fiction but I don’t see that love is shared by the students at all; I just need some distance from their indifference and even open dislike of the books. It might come as a surprise, given my tiredness, to learn that this semester I have failed only one student out of 71, but this is easy to explain: my students have managed to do correctly and in some cases very well the exercises but this does not mean that all have read the books, and much less appreciated them. It’s the classic problem of the Literature subjects: you can get away with not reading. Looking at the number of A and B+ final marks, my guess is that about 25 out of the 71 students were truly interested in the novels and did read them (perhaps even loved them). I’m writing this knowing that they will all be my students again in the fourth year, a prospect that perhaps dismays them; meeting again might be, yes I know, embarrassing for both.

            I would like to recall next the Victorian fiction I have taught so far. I have taught, of course, also some pre-Victorian 19th century (Regency and Romantic) fiction, but not that much: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma; Walter Scott’s Waverley and even Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (these two were not my choice at all). Here are the Victorian works I have taught, all of them wonderful texts:

  • Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre; Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
  • Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Oliver Twist, and Great Expectations
  • Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (once, long ago, when students were not afraid of long books…)
  • Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • George Eliot’s Silas Marner (because students got afraid of long books, and we never dared teach Middlemarch)
  • H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines
  • R.L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Return of the Native (now I marvel that we ever taught Hardy…)
  • Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
  • Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest (the only 19th century play we have ever taught)
  • Bram Stoker’s Dracula
  • Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

            Please, note, that we have taught between four and five of these books in each edition of the subject, which is semestral. Perhaps there are teachers out there who can manage to teach all of these in one semester, which would be ideal, but this is impossible to manage in our BA. Apart from the four/five books, when we started the new BA in 2009, I prepared booklets for poetry, the essay and a selection of scenes from other novels. Typically, I would begin the classes reading a passage from an essay, but in recent years I have not had the time to do that. Students, besides, have firmly indicated that they don’t want extras and prefer me to focus on the novels.

            I would say that Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall remains the most consistently successful work, together with Wuthering Heights, and that the others are a list of failures. I have never managed to have students enjoy Dickens, and who could have though they would not like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Dracula? With the current selection (Tenant, Great Expectations, King Solomon’s Mines and Dracula), we seem to have reached an impasse: this selection doesn’t work well, but I just don’t know what other four novels would work better to generate interest and debate (please note that we don’t teach Haggard to be admired but to be discussed).

            I’m leaving for the next post a more detailed description of the idea but, in a nutshell, in the new subject Contemporary Literature each student will have a different set of four books. More about this next week. In the meantime: goodbye, Victorian authors, for the time being. I carry you in my heart and will love you for ever. I don’t know, however, whether I will have again the stamina to endure seeing you disdained as dense and boring, or not read at all. We’ll see.