Beautiful Endings in English Literature That Feel Balmy

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:03]Hello, good evening and welcome to a new episode of arguably the reading quest. I am Nishant. So in this video I'm going to talk about some of the most beautiful endings in Victorian literature that feels like healing that feels balmy.

[00:00:17]Often at times I've seen people talking a lot about the opening lines in literature. Some of the most beautiful opening lines but somehow in my case I don't know opening lines have never fascinated me as much as endings. I believe endings you know leave an after taste in your mind that lingers on and on a kind of impossibility that want that you want to revisit again and again. And I've sheld come across a a person talking about uh you know the endings in literature that that has fascinated him. So I thought of doing a video on some of the most beautiful endings particularly in Victorian literature with only one exception of American literature that I've included for the video.

[00:01:05]But before we start, I would also like to theorize uh you know I've asked some of my uh very well read and urid friends some of my seniors that why do they think that opening and closing line particularly closing lines are so important and I got a few responses from them. So I'll like to you know read out those responses verbatim and uh in the context of those responses I will set up uh and speak and read out uh close to eight novels that I have you know picked up which I have found very beautiful when it comes to you know endings that will linger on and on in your mind hauntingly so I asked Dr. Sanjay Kumar of uh French language department, French language and literature at Iflu Hyderabad and he obliged me by replying that why ending endings matter and this is one excerpt that has been published already in one of his journals uh in one of his research paper. So Dr. Sanjay says that the formation of a story can be understood as an intervention in the continuous flow of life. It is as if a segment has been cut out from the movement of time and events have been arranged within it. In other words, the beginning and end of a story are not natural states but conscious choices made by the author in the process of meaning making for the reader. Since the reader's sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction depends largely on the ending.

[00:02:54]You see the the the reader sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction depends largely on the ending. It's not the opening lines. The author faces the challenge of how to conclude the story.

[00:03:05]Of course, readers are free to imagine the expansion of events beyond the boundaries of the text. Something must have existed before the so-called beginning and something will continue after the so-called end. Yet at a certain point, the author is compelled to pause the narrative. The conclusion of a story can be seen as a conscious process that defines its limits and provides the reader with a particular experience. On rereading this experience may shift since in the first reading we don't know the conclusion we've only anticipated and this anticipation changes at every turn of the story. This is why Stanley Fish one of the greatest critiques considers reading a dynamic art where the reader moves through multiple possibilities on rereading. However, we already know the conclusion. So every word, sentence and episode acquires a definite meaning.

[00:04:07]In short stories, the conclusion carries a special significance that does not appear in the same way in novels. David Lodge, another critique, observes, the truth is that one could say the short story is essentially end centered because we begin a story with the expectation that its outcome will soon be revealed. Whereas when we begin a novel, we have no clear idea when we will finish it.

[00:04:35]Because of their relatively smaller size, though not all stories are short, short stories can often be read in a single sitting. And that is why the conclusion has a crucial impact on the experience and interpretation of a story.

[00:04:49]So uh now I'll read out you know the texts verbatim from the books that I have selected. But I have you know kept three of my most favorite endings for the end of this uh this this video.

[00:05:08]So please watch the video till the end.

[00:05:10]If still not not liked, shared and subscribed my YouTube channel arguably the reading quest. Please do that before you start you know listening to uh the episode further.

[00:05:22]So I will uh start with uh one of my favorite novelist DH Lawrence the rainbow.

[00:05:33]Rainbow is one of his magnum opus that is very less talked about when compared to uh lady chatterly's lovers or sons and lovers but rainbow is a family saga that has to be read.

[00:05:47]So I'll just read the ending of rainbow and it reads like this. You see this is beautiful. And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sorted people who crept hardcile and separate on the face of the world's corruption were living still. That the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit. that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration.

[00:06:17]That new clean naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away. The world built up in a living fabric of truth fitting to the overarching heaven.

[00:06:46]This is how this novel ends. The rainbow.

[00:06:53]Now one of my most favorite Victorian novelist of all times and one of her favorite novel that she herself likes the most liked the most George Elliot the mail on the floss but this time it is the silas manner and it ends like this.

[00:07:22]Epie had a larger garden than she had ever expected there. Now in other ways there had been alterations at the expense of Mr. Cass the landlord to suit Sila's larger family for he and EP had declared that they would rather stay at the stone pits than go to a new home.

[00:07:42]The garden was fenced with stones on two sides, but in front there was an open fence through which the flowers shone with answering gladness as the four united people came within sight of them. Oh father, said EP, what a pretty home ours is. I think nobody could be happier than we are.

[00:08:06]Now you see this happy ending as has been uh you know exposited by my senior friend uh Mr. Deepak Chri he's a English language editor at Viva books and a very senior editor and and and and a very you know incisive poet. So Deepak Chadria writes that there's no denying that beautiful closing lines render the experience of reading a novel memorable.

[00:08:34]This is particularly in context of happy endings. However, there are I think multiple other reasons for which closing lines of a novel are important. In many of the late 18th and early 19th century English novels like those written by the likes of Cruso and Fielding as well as Densian building's roman that usually ends on a happy note. I don't know whether uh George Elliot can still be placed in the category of densian uh densian buildings roman as deep research says uh that's still another matter of discussion besides the point closing line assure that the protagonist after all their trials and tribulations have reached a stage where life seems to be happy and secure.

[00:09:25]Thus, closing line reinforces and foreground the idea of life being happy.

[00:09:31]If it is led purposefully and optimistically, the idea of a joyful happy life could best be conveyed through beautifully worded lines. And no wonder uh in this episode I have chosen all the Victorian novels that have you know impacted me the most. And it's all about the hip and the happy ending of the building's romance.

[00:09:56]Now another novel by George Iliot the mill on the floss. Please know that George Iliot's magnumopus was middle March but she herself like Silas Marner the most.

[00:10:11]But if Leguin and Kazamian were to believed were to be believed, uh they tell us that the first 200 pages of the mill on the floss were the most perfectly written in all the Victorian literature combined and put together.

[00:10:29]So, nonetheless, it is for you to read and decide. uh but I'll read the closing lines and it is ladden with melancholy but nonetheless it is a happy ending that everything finally comes to a deep deep state of rest near that brick grave there was a tomb erected very soon after the flood for two bodies that were found in closed embrace and it was visited at times different moment by two men who both felt that their keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever buried there.

[00:11:09]One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside him, but that was years after.

[00:11:18]The other was always solitary.

[00:11:21]His great companionship was among the trees of the red deeps where the buried joy seemed still to hover like a revisiting spirit. This is such a simile that I have never come across. I would like to repeat this once again.

[00:11:40]His great companionship was among the trees of the red deep where the buried joy seemed still to hover like a revisiting spirit. The tomb bore the name of Tom and Maggie Taliviver and below the names it was written in their death they were not divided the mail on the floss.

[00:12:07]Now another past master of beautiful stylistic pros so much so that there has always been a debate whether it was the age of Charles Dickens or whether it was the age of Thomas Hardy. So I'll read the test of the abilities one of a feminist novel of its kind or a proto feminist novel I shall say and the ending is like this and the abilities knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing the two speechless gagers bend themselves down to the earth as if in prayer and remained thus a long time absolutely motionless the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again and went on. The end. Now there is an appendix to it which again Thomas Hardy wrote.

[00:13:06]I would like to read it as again an you know addendum to the closing lines of test of the overies. I had wished that those in dramatic, ballad and narrative form should include most of the cardinal situations which occur in social and public life and those in lyric form a round of emotional experience of some completeness. But the pretty done the vast under. The more written the more seems to remain to be written and the night cometh. I realize that these hopes and plans, except possibly to the extent of a volume or two, must remain unfulfilled, wrote Thomas Hardy in the year 1911.

[00:13:54]Now let's experience Charles Dickens and this time again the tale of two cities the opening lines of which has been one of the most quotable quotes in all literature and one of the most beautiful paradoxes.

[00:14:08]It was best of the time it was worst of the time. But what is often overlooked and what has been often overlooked is is is the are the beautiful uh closing lines which are equally beautiful if not more.

[00:14:24]I see that a child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name. A man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well that my name made is made illustrious there by the light of his.

[00:14:43]I see the blotss I threw upon him upon it faded away. I see him foremost of just judges and honored men bringing a boy of my name with a forehead that I know and a golden hair to this place then fair to look upon with not a trace of this day's disfigurement and I hear him tell the child my story with a tender and a flattering voice. It is a far far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

[00:15:23]This is how this great magnumopus of Dickin ends.

[00:15:32]Now, some of the most beautiful and iconic lines that have hit me hard and you know that have cut deep into my mind and soul has been reserved for the last part of this video. So, let me start with uh fast Spartacus.

[00:15:54]Spartacus was a story about slave revolt. I've already done a video two three years back.

[00:16:02]You see this is a beautiful ending on the struggle and the meaning of life.

[00:16:10]So Spartacus the slave that you know took Rome by storm was long dead. And this is how the story progresses once he's dead.

[00:16:22]With this kind of a life the son of Spartacus lived and died. Died in struggle and violence as his father had.

[00:16:30]The tales he told his own sons were less clear, less factual. Tales became legends, and legends became symbols. But the war of the oppressed against those who oppressed them went on. It was a flame which burnt high and low, but never went out.

[00:16:49]And the name of Spartacus did not perish.

[00:16:52]It was not a question of descent through blood, but a descent through common struggle.

[00:16:58]A time would come when Rome would be torn down, not by the slaves alone, but by slaves and serves and peasants, and by free barbarians who joined with them.

[00:17:09]And so long as men labored and other men took and used the fruit of those who labored, the name of Spartacus would be remembered, whispered sometimes, and shouted loud and clear at other times.

[00:17:23]This is such a novel of bravery that whenever I read this uh you know uh uh closing line I literally get those goosebumps and these closing lines have a you know hair raising effect on me still when I'm reading this I can still feel that hair raising thing. So this one now the second last is a magnumopus by Charles Dickens David Copperfield and no wonder Dickin tells that I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child and his name is David Copperfield in what would appear to be the most personal and certainly one of the most populars of all his novels as the back cover says.

[00:18:14]Now you have to decide which of uh these three is the most beautiful.

[00:18:20]I turn my head and see it in its beautiful serenity beside me. My lamp burns low and I have written far into the night. But the dear presence without which I were nothing beers me company.

[00:18:35]Oh Agnes, oh my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed. So may I when realities are melting away from me like the shadows which I now dismiss still find you near me pointing upwards.

[00:18:54]You see I would like to repeat this lines once again. When realities are melting from me like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me pointing upwards.

[00:19:08]And the very last quote, very last beautiful ending I have reserved for my favorite novel and for my favorite Victorian novelist, George Elliot and her magnumopus, Middle March. And you see this is how it reads.

[00:19:26]Her finally touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that reaper of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive.

[00:19:49]For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the numbers who live faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.

[00:20:08]So this is how it ended. Now if uh you have guessed out of these eight endings there are three endings that have a vivid mention of graveyards and rightly so. So it is for you to decide. Do let me know which of these endings did you like the most. For me my favorite always remains this with the only exception of Spartacus from from American literature. If you have still not liked, shared and subscribed my YouTube channel arguably the reading quest, please do that guys. Happy reading. Thank you.