Victorian Novels

Social Background
England was the “workshop of the world.”

Widespread poverty and wretchedness among

the working class.
People were trying to live up to a national spirit of
earnestness, respectability, modesty and
domesticity.
Common sense and moral propriety, which were
ignored by the Romanticists, again became the
predominant preoccupation in literary works.
Victorian Literature
Literature produced during this period
reflects the “spirit of the times”:
Expansion of newspapers and periodicals
led to ongoing debates about current
political and social issues.
Victorian literature (especially novels)
offered a realistic, day-to-day portrayal of
social life and represented these issues in
the stories of the characters.
Suddenly, the once-silent female segment
of society raised their voices. They could
even appear onstage, acting in dramas (a
privilege denied to them prior to this time).
Victorian Literature
Chronologically the Victorian period roughly
coincides with the reign of Queen Victoria over
England from 1836 to 1901.
In literature, the early Victorian age can be
said to be the age of critical realism. The
critical realism of the 19th century flourished
in the forties and in the early fifties.
Puritan morality of the early and mid Victorian
period was reflected in the novels. In Victorian
novels the society’s effects on individual are
analyzed.
The Victorian Poetry
Victorian poetry developed in the context of the
novel. Poets sought new ways of telling stories in
verse.

All poets show the strong influence of the

Romantics, but cannot sustain the confidence the
Romantics felt in the power of the imagination.

Victorian poets often rewrite Romantic poems

with a sense of belatedness.

Dramatic monologue – the idea of creating a lyric

poem in the voice of a speaker ironically distinct
from the poet is the great achievement of
Victorian poetry.
The Victorian Drama
The theater was a flourishing
and popular institution during
the Victorian period.

The popularity of theater

influenced other genres.

Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde

transformed British theater
with their comic masterpieces.
Victorian Literature
The novel became the dominant form of
literature
Novels were commonly read aloud in family
gatherings. This led to novelists avoiding
some topics which would be inappropriate for
the entire family.
Readers wanted to be guided and
enlightened by authors.
Much of Victorian literature has a positive,
eager or earnest response to the innovations
of life in the 19th century
The Victorian Novel
Victorian novels seek to represent a large and
comprehensive social world, with a variety of classes.
Victorian novels are realistic, their major theme is the
place of the individual in society, the aspiration of the
hero or heroine for love or social position.
The protagonist’s search for fulfillment is emblematic
of the human condition.
For the first time, women were major writers: the
Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot.
The Victorian novel was a principal form of
entertainment.
Victorian Novels
Most were concerned with people in society and with manners,
morals and money.
Typically a protagonist struggles to find him or herself in
relation with other men and women, in love or marriage, with
family or neighbors, or with work associates.
Most novels were set in 19th century England, a world that
would be recognizable to the reader.
Many novels were published in installments. This challenged the
writer to sustain the interest of the readers. In every single
installment they had to entertain.
Aspects of Victorian
Novels
Realism – capturing everyday life as it really
is lived; identified social problems: Charles
Dickens, William M. Thackeray, Charlotte
Brontë, & Emily Brontë.
Psychological realism – focused on inner
realities of the mind: George Eliot’s.
Naturalism – views nature and society as
forces indifferent to human suffering. E.g.
Thomas Hardy.
Novel of Realism
Renders reality closely and in comprehensive
detail.
Characters appear in their real complexity of
temperament and motive; They are in explicable
relation to nature, to each other, to their social
class, to their own past.
Character is more important than action and plot;
Complex ethical choices are often the subject.
Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels
avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of
naturalistic novels and romances.
Novel of Realism II
Class is important; The novel has
traditionally served the interests and
aspirations of an insurgent middle class.
Selective presentation of reality with an
emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the
expense of a well-made plot.
Diction is natural vernacular, not
heightened or poetic; Tone may be comic,
satiric, or matter-of-fact.
Objectivity in presentation becomes
increasingly important: overt authorial
comments or intrusions diminish as the
century progresses.
Critical Realism
The critical realists described with much vividness
and artistic skill the chief trait of the English society,
and they criticized the capitalist system from a
democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying
contradictions of the social reality of that time.

The English critical realists of the 19th century not

only gave a satirical portrayal of the bourgeoisie and
all the ruling classes, but also showed profound
sympathy for the common people.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Without doubt the most popular

of Victorian writers was Charles
Dickens.
His combination of sentimentality
and his attacks on the social evils
of the day made him highly
successful.
He is concerned with the
problems of crime and poverty
and the life of the lower class.
William Makepeace Thackeray
(1811-1863)

English journalist,
novelist, famous for his
novel Vanity Fair.
William Thackeray
wrote of the upper
classes.
"This I set as a
positive truth. A
woman with fair
opportunities, and
without a positive
hump, may marry
The Brontë sisters

Charlotte (1816-1855):
Jane Eyre
Emily (1818-1848):
Wuthering Heights
Anne: Agnes Grey
The Sisters & their Identities
Wutheirng Heights and Agnes Grey were
accepted for publication before Charlotte had
finished writing Jane Eyre.

However, their publisher delayed bringing their

novels out so that Jane Eyre was published
first. It became a best seller.

In an effort to cash in on the success of Jane

Eyre, he implied that Wuthering Heights and
Agnes Grey were written by "the author of Jane
Eyre–to the distress of all three sisters. The
pseudonyms they had adopted unintentionally
contributed to his deception.
The Sisters & their Identities
Wanting their works to be judged for their literary
merit and not on their sex, Anne, Charlotte, and
Emily published their novels under names which were
not obviously masculine, Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell.
Preserving their male identities was so important to
the Brontë sisters that Charlotte maintained that
identity even in writing to her publishers.
In order to prove to Charlotte's publishers that Acton,
Currer, and Ellis Bell were not one person, Charlotte
and Anne met with them in London; during the
interview, Charlotte inadvertently revealed that they
were three sisters.
 Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte wrote three

other books, Shirley,
Villette,and The
Professor.In 1854
Charlotte married.But she
died in the following year
after a lengthily painful
illness.
Bildungsroman

A novel of formation or a coming-of-age

story --- the story of a child’s maturation
and focuses on the emotions and
experiences that accompany and incite his
or her growth to adulthood.

Such a novel takes the reader through a

character's young adulthood as she
defines her identity against forces of
opposition.
Emily Bronte (1818 - 1848)

On July 30, 1818, Emily Bronte was

born in Thornton, Yorkshire. Most
accounts portray Emily as the
brightest, most intense, and most
difficult of the three sisters.

Her "powerful and peculiar"

character, said Charlotte, inspired
"an anguish of wonder and love."
George Eliot (1819-1880)

The pseudonym of Mary Ann

Evans, born in Warwickshire,
England in 1819
Called “the embodiment of
philosophy in fiction” by Oscar
Wilde
Adam Bede (1859)
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Silas Marner (1861)
Middlemarch ()
Daniel Deronda (1876).
Naturalism
Characters’ lives are governed by scientific
determinism, i.e., heredity and environment.
To show this determinism, naturalists often create
weak and passive characters. The naturalistic trap.
Sex and violence are bed partners; sex is brutish,
without tenderness. Violence dominates the lives of
the naturalistic character. The beast in man. The
chronicle of decline.
Zola showed writers how to document the
determinism.
 Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

The last and one of the

greatest of Victorian
novelists
His best local-colored
works:
1. The Return of the Native
2. The Mayor of Casterbridge
3. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
4. Jude the Obscure
 Characteristics of Hardy’s Writing
1) Hardy is a meditative story-teller or romancer, as well as
a great painter of nature. Naturalism has played an
important part in Hardy’s works.
2) His heroes and heroines are all vividly and realistically
depicted. Hardy's characters have a fascinating
ambiguity: they are victimized by a stern moral code, but
they are also selfish and weak-willed creatures who bring
on much of their own difficulties through their own
vacillations and submissions to impulse.
3) All works of Hardy are noted for the rustic dialect and a
poetic flavor which fits well into their perfectly designed
architectural structures.
Novels of character & environment

His pessimistic philosophy seems to show that mankind

is subjected to the rule of some hostile and mysterious
fate, which brings misfortune to human life.
The outside nature is shown as mysterious supernatural
force, uncaring to the individual’s will, hopes, passion,
or suffering. It likes to play practical jokes upon human
beings by producing a series of mistimed actions and
unfortunate coincidences.
Man proves impotent before Fate, however he tries, and
he seldom escapes his ordained destiny.
Literary Criticism
Tess of the d’Urvervilles
Editors forced Hardy to rewrite parts of it
Well received, but heavily criticized
Jude the Obscure
Harsh criticism- considered blasphemous
Critic G.K. Chesterton wrote that Hardy “became
a sort of village atheist brooding and
blaspheming over the village idiot”
Because of the criticism, Hardy was “cured” of his
desire to write novels, and returned to poetry
Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Pure
Woman
It came into conflict with
Victorian morality. It explored
the dark side of his family
connections in Berkshire.
The tragic story of a woman
wronged by two men and by the
harsh, repressive society in
which she lives.
Hardy's most striking and tragic
heroine, Tess is a woman of
intense vitality and innate
goodness, and the author's
favorite character.
 Tess
Tess, a poor peasant girl, is seduced by Alec.
Then she meets Angel Clare who falls in love
with marries her.
On their wedding night They tell each other
about their past, hoping to be forgiven by each
other. But after hearing Tess’s confession, Clare
leaves her abruptly for Brazil.
Poverty forces Tess to seek for work at a farm
where she is insulted by the master. Her father’s
death and the poverty of her family drive her to
seek for assistance from Alec.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles:
A Pure Woman

Alec soon resumes his former illicit

relations with her. Tess can do nothing
but obey.

Angel Clare returns repentant and ready

to be reconciled to Tess, but Tess finds
that her living with Alec hinders her from
returning to Clare. She kills Alec in
hatred and despair and then is quickly
arrested, tried and hanged.
The Transformation of the English
Novel:
1890-1930

The novels of Hardy, Lawrence, Conrad, Joyce,

Forster and Woolf represent a radical break
from the past.

The great change in major British fiction from

the realistic to the expressionist novel begins
roughly in 1895, the year of Hardy’s last novel,
Jude the Obscure, and reaches a climax with
Woolf’s major novels, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and
To the Lighthouse (1927).
Influenced by English romanticism, developments
in modern art, and a changing intellectual milieu
that questioned the possibilities of universal
values or objective truth, these novelists erased
the boundaries between art and life.
They no longer believed that they could or should
recreate the real world in their art and they
questioned the assumption that verisimilitude was
the most important aesthetic value. They realized
that each man perceived a different reality.
According to traditional writing techniques developed
before the 20th century, a piece of narrative works
should tell a vivid, interesting story and portray one or
more characters who have distinct traits and who are
often involved in certain kind of psychological or social
conflicts which, with the development of the plots, will
in the end come to certain solution.
This kind of notion, however, was fiercely attacked
since the end of 19th century. Since then the concept
of narrative literature and its writing techniques have
undergone profound changes.
Stylistic Innovations of
Modernist Novels
Reality as understood by traditional writers was merely
the mortal beings and natural objects in the material
world. Thus the task of the traditional writers was to
reflect and imitate this exterior world.
Modern short story writers, however, turn to explore and
delve into man’s interior world. Instead of looking at the
stern reality from the angles of money, class status,
social desire, or other material desires, they tend to be
preoccupied by the sub-consciousness of the mind; they
pay more attention to human beings’ experience,
feeling, and introspection.