Reading through a collection of works written during the Victorian period in England quickly makes one aware that nature played an important role in how these people understood their world as well as the fact that their world was changing. Nature is repeatedly brought up as a means of recapturing a sense of self and equilibrium with the world that, it is implied, has been lost. Considering this idea, it is possible to see that nature is idealized and the concepts surrounding it are somehow linked to a sense of innocence and golden existence. It provides the authors with a connection to their soul and often is used as an indication of a character’s well-being. These ideas can be traced through William Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey” as well as Mary Shelley’s near Victorian story Frankenstein.
William Wordsworth makes it clear throughout his poem “Tintern Abbey” that he considers time spent in the country as necessary to a healthy living. He begins the poem with a description of the picturesque landscape he sees before him, including not only the wildness of the countryside, but also the tamed areas that have been shaped and manicured by man but left green and living rather than crowded and paved.
That his response to this vista is restorative and necessary is expressed within the second stanza, “These beauteous forms, / Through a long absence, have not been to me / As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: / But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din / Of towns and cities, I have owed to them / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; / And passing even into my purer mind, / With tranquil restoration” (23-31).
Within these lines alone, Wordsworth indicates both the encroachment of the city and all its connotations with loss of country, pollution, over-crowding and hectic activity as well as the peaceful connection he experiences alone in nature. As the poem continues to illustrate, nature not only represents carefree childhood and freedom for the poet, but also now serves as a place of reflection and rejuvenation. This is particularly clear as he discusses his sister’s enjoyment of the landscape as it reflects his previous means of identifying with and enjoying the land. However, with maturity, Wordsworth has come to learn a new appreciation.
This rejuvenation and restoration is what Wordsworth equates with the sense of God himself, as he discusses what nature means to him now as a mature man, “I have felt / A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; / A motion and a spirit, that impels / All thinking things, all objects of all thought, / And rolls through all things” (95-104). This idealization of nature as the end-all connection to God places it up against the city that threatens to overwhelm and remove God from man.
This concept of the restorative power of nature even over the hand of man is also illustrated through Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. The monster of Frankenstein’s creation has a similar reaction to nature, first finding refuge and support in it and later finding comfort from it even in the midst of his vengeful turmoil. His first impression of nature is one of enlightenment as the moon rises above the forest in which he first takes refuge. “I was delighted when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my ears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had often intercepted the light from my eyes” (105).
He finds his sustenance from nature, subsisting primarily on berries, roots and nuts that he finds in the forest and drinks from a clear spring that flows past his hiding place near the De Lacey cottage. As he describes the period of time he spent observing the De Lacey family, as they lived close to the earth, he also illustrates how the changing seasons affected him, which would later have similar effects on both himself and his creator. As the spring warms the earth, the monster tells Frankenstein “my spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy” (119).
Even after he is possessed by thoughts of revenge against his creator for making him such a monster, the creature is able to find respite in the solitude of nature. “The day, which was one of the first of spring, cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them; and, forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy” (148).
However, even in these silent places, the monster was unable to avoid negative human interaction, becoming injured as he struggles to save a woman being swept away by a spring-fed stream. Thus, he becomes convinced that there is no where and no place for him to be happy as long as normal humans are present.
Through both of these authors, then, the importance of nature is revealed to be necessary to the well-being of the individual characters. Regardless of what man has done to them, either through the reality of the city or the unreality of science, both Wordsworth and Frankenstein’s monster are able to find a sense of meaning and connection through the naturally beautiful or picturesque places in their world. Only through nature are they able to find balance and harmony and only in nature are they able to truly understand themselves.