Literary Response on the Victorian Era and Death
             From the stems of the imaginative, emotional, and freedom-loving Romantic Age grew the many new and complex social theories of the Victorian Era. Literature and religious texts were examined and debated by many, and new ideas on life were formed. With the importance of Christianity in every day life fading, the topic of death was a commonly addressed one.
             The theme of death is found in many great Victorian writers' works, including Lord Tennyson. "Ulysses," his continuation of Homer's ancient Greek epic poem the Odyssey, portrays some of his feelings on death. Ulysses tells the mariners who have served him all their lives that old age does not spell a retreat into oblivion and monotony. "Tis not too late to seek another world" he says, telling the mariners that only the glory of the Happy Isles (Elysium fields of Greek Mythology) could be gained after death if one continues to live a life infused with heroism and adventure. This is Tennyson's way of proclaiming to the public that one must be resolved to push onward and work to achieve the life that they most desire, even with the knowledge that death is ever standing but a few steps behind.
             Death is also present in works of the other Victorian writers, if not as the dominant theme then as the subordinate one. In "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning, only death allowed the obsessive Duke to exercise complete control over his indecorous wife. Unable to prevent her pleasant associations with other men during her lifetime, the Duke took a rather macabre pleasure in hanging her portrait where only he could enjoy it.
             The poem "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave" is a somewhat anomalous piece. The speaker, lying in her grave, questions who is digging in the earth above her. We see that it is not her best friend come to plant flowers or her worst enemy to desecrate the...