Introduction: The Victorian era is known for the galaxy of female novelists.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE, EMILY BRONTE, Mrs. Gaskell and GEORGE ELIOT are in
prime focus. They also include Mrs. Trollope, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Maroh, Mrs. Bray, Mrs.
Henry, charlotte younger, Miss Oliphant, and still more. However, the four most
important women novelists, who yet are quite important, are charlotte Bronte, Emily
Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and George Eliot. Of the four, the two first named were sister, and
their methods and achievement as novelists met at many places. But each of the
remaining two priced her own line and made herself known in the field of English novel
in her own way.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816 55) The three Bronte sister Anne, charlotte, and
Emily collectively known often as the Stormy sisterhood, who took the England of
their time by storm, were in actual life Shy and isolated girls with rather uneventful
lives. All of them died young and died of Tuberculosis. Hugh Walden to assert: The
Bronte belongs to that class of writers whom, it is impossible to understand except
through the medium of biography. Thus Samuel Chew observe The three Bronte sister
have been overlaid with so much biography, criticism, and conjecture that is reading
about than there is danger best their own books be left unread.
Charlotte wrote four novels - The professor, Vilette, Jane Eyre and Shirley.
The first two novels were based on her personal experiences at a Brussels boarding
house where she most probably fell in love with the Belgian scholar Hager who perfectly
answered her conception of a dashing hero of the Byronic type. The heroine of her third
novel is a governess, just like her sister Anne. Her tempestuous love affair with
Rochester a combination of wonderful nobility and meanness is the staple of this
novel.
Charlotte Bronte in her novel revolted against the traditions of Jane Austen, Dickens,
and Thackeray. Thackerays Vanity Fair she praised in glowing terms, but she herself
never attempted anything of the kind. Her novels are novel of manners but of passions
and the naked soul. Her characters mostly the effusion of her own soul are
elemental figures aching in the back drop of elemental nature.
According to Compton Rickett, three characteristics detach themselves from the
writing of charlotte Bronte. They are the note of intimacy; the note of passion and the
note of revolt. The note of intimacy is caused by the markedly autobiographic slant of
her novels. The note of passion is struck by lonely sensitive woman on behalf of woman.
Her point of view is the point of view of a woman. As regard the note of revolt, we must
emphasize that she was a rebel by nature and a puritan by training. She could not
reconcile these two elements. Though she did not fully or even appreciably, revolt
against social conventions, she at least revolted against the conventions of the novel.
EMILY BRONTE (1818 48):- Emily was a poet as well as novelist, and her only
novel Wuthering Heights is a poem as well as a novel. There is no other book, says
Longinus which contains so many of the hassled, tumultuous, and rebellious elements
of romanticism. She is fiercer than over charlotte, but her fierceness is strangely
accompanied by numeric strokes of intuitive illumination.
Wuthering Heights is a story of primal passions enacted amongst elemental
environment. Walter Allen observes: The central fact about Emily Bronte is that she is a
mystic. Her mysticism lies not only in her handily of the voice of the dead Catherine

cabling Heathcliff to her, but also in her use of symbols. In many of her poems, too
Emily tries to give expression of her mystical experience.
Mrs. Gaskell (1810 65):- Mrs. Gaskell had nothing of this passion and frustration
of the Bronte sister. She was wife of a quite Unitarian clergyman in Manchester one of
the bugging centres of English industry. She was mother of seven children.
What distinguishes the novels of Mrs. Gaskell is her deep social consciousness combined
with a compassionate observation of the life around her? Her novels divide themselves
into two well defined categorizes. First, we have novel like Mary Barton and North and
south which deal with the social and industrial problem arising out of the masters
workmen struggles which were a features of the industrial age which had then just got
under way. Being herself a resident of Manchester, Mrs. Gaskell was a witness to the
blessings of the Industrial Revolution. Secondly we have novel like Ganford, Ruth,
wives and Daughters and Sylvias Lovers which eschew all industrial problems and are
concerned with rural life and manners which she knew so well, thanks to her long stay at
Knutsford with her aunt, before she settled at Manchester with her husband. Of all the
novels of this category the best known is Coranford which is a disguised name for her
own Knutsford Ganford is a classic of its own kind. It portrays a world in habited by
woman alone. These women belong to middle class families.
GEORGE ELIOT (1819 80):- With George Eliot we come to the most philosophy of
all the major Victorian novelists, both female and male philosophy is both her strength
and weakness as a novelists. It keeps her from falling into bathos or triviality, but at the
same time gives her art an ultra serious and reflective quality which makes it heavy
reading. Even her human the faculty in which she doubtlessly is quite seen has
about it the quality of ponderous reflectivity. George Eliots important novel are the
following:- The mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Felix Holt, Daniel Deronda
and Middlemarch. All of them are marked by extreme seriousness of purpose and
execution. As Samuel Chew observes, in George Eliot hands the novel was not primarily
for entertainment but for the serious discussion of moral issues. She is indeed, too
didactic and make every incident a text moralistic expatiation. In her novels we
invariably meet with the clash of circumstances with human will. She indeed, believed
that circumstances influenced character, but she did not show circumstance entirely
determining character. A man called upon to choose between two women or a woman to
choose between two men is the common motif of the novels.
Another important feature of her novels is their very deep concern with human
psychology. Her novels are all novels of character. She, says Compton Rickett
was the first novelist foray the stress wholly upon character rather than incident; to
make her stories spiritual rather than physical dramas. In her characterization she
displays both subtlety and rarity. Her studies of the inner man, but more particularly the
inner woman, are marvelous.
George Eliot excels at portraying the tragedy of unfulfilled female longing. She identified
herself with her chief female characters unfold their inner feelings with masterly
strollers. Compton Rickett points out: Maggies was for fuller life, Romolas for
ampler knowledge, Darotheas for larger opportunity for doing well. She stands at the
gateway between the old novel and the new, a massive caryatid heavy of countenance
uneasy of attitude, but noble, monumental, profoundly impressive.
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