‘Tis The Season
The Victorian novel almost always starts with a winter.
It is the season of Victorian writing, as summer is the season of Southern writing. I can’t think of a single Victorian novel without imagining the silhouettes of the characters against an icy moon, feet crunching through snow and fingers red-blue from the cold.
Something always happens in the novel’s beginning pages of winter, something to set the character off in a direction that will forever change their life. After they spend the following seasons suffering and learning and growing, winter rolls around again and the climax takes place, when the character finally faces the problem that’s been shadowing them for several hundred pages. A new person, the character looks forward into warmth, whether it be spring or friendly firelight. This is how the Victorian novel goes.
I spent my entire life in the sticky, muggy South, and never saw a real winter. So winter became as exotic and far-away as moors and crumbling castles, something that could thrive only in the imagination.
And now, for the first time in my life, I am seeing a true winter: lacy cobwebs of snow, sugar-dusted trees, crimson berries frosted with silver. Now, the Victorian novel is always in my mind. I know why summer personifies Southern writing: because the South has always been caught in a sort of grotesque limbo, baked into stillness by the oven-heat of a slow, merciless sun. Why is winter the choice of the Victorians?
Is it because so many novels took place in England, where winter is long? Is it a symbol, the metaphorical death a character must go through, like the trees and plants, before they are able to thrive in the warmth?
I’m not sure, but I do know one thing: it’s a beautiful season.
8 Comments
I also have never seen a real winter, not one the way you’ve described. Right now we’re heading into summer on our side of the globe, so the cold weather sounds terrific. But in all honesty I dislike winter immensely. I grew up in a very humid, tropical and costal area. To me the heat is normal and cold is weird.
Personally, I’d agree that winter in Victorian novels is something of a device for the writer, not that I’ve read any, yet.
It may even be a comment/metaphor on the Victorian society in general. 
What a way with words you have, darlin’! Your description was as breathtaking as a December day!
You are absolutely right about “winter” being a device (almost a character) in Victorian novels. The growth/season cycle mirrors character development, exactly as you described. You are just SO smart – LOL
I missed the change of seasons terribly when living in areas that don’t see “winter”. After a few years, I felt less “seasoned” myself, as if the lackadisical drift through warm/cool didn’t pressure me the way severity of season does. A lot of people said I was crazy when I told them I was anxious to return to the wild mood swings of weather in the Midwest. I just smiled. I already knew I was crazy – LOL
Great entry. This weekend I saw Pride & Prejudice on BBC again, then Sense & Sensibility on another channel last week. And I agree the winter is a framing device for them. Living in Georgia I guess I can use Indian summers as a framing device or tornado season. About every three years in Atlanta we have an ice storm, but then I would have to write an epic to use that as a frame. You know what would be a good device- -football season.
Heather–would you even want to try the winter? Build a snowman at least?
Thank you, Marti! Wow, what a fabulous point about needing the change of season to feel ‘right’…that’s exactly why I languished so much in Florida, I think. Brilliant as always, Marti!
Hi Dee, thanks for commenting! I love watching those on BBC. Have you seen the Pride & Prejudice movie that just came out? I can’t wait.
Now football season would be QUITE the device!
Actually, Rhys, even building a snowman sounds like one way to get totally freezing. It’s pretty hard to convince me winter is anything but cold. Brrr!
protonix…
connecting drains apposite Gideon spooky repairmen …