Victorian Age

Victorian Age, a period in British history during the reign of Queen Victoria in the 19th century;
her character and moral standards restored the prestige of the British monarchy but gave the
era a prudish reputation.

Victorian literature
Victorian literature is that produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) or the
Victorian era. It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the
very different literature of the 20th century.

Golden Age of Novel

The Victorian period was considered the golden age of the novel and most capable of reflecting
the increasing complexity of the modern world and, was also the main source of entertainment
for the educated middle-classes. This aspect became an important feature of the 19th century
novel.
Mostly work on ​novel ​was done. Minor plays or dramas were written but novel gained much
fame. Novels were dominant at that time. Because people wanted to read books that can help
them in relaxation and novels show human experiences.
As we know novel is:-
​"​ A novel is a long, fictional narrative which describes intimate human
experiences. The novel in the modern era usually makes use of a literary prose style.​"
Victorian Age is also called age of novelist.

Characteristics of age
● Industrialization
The Victorian Era (1837–1901) is defined by the reign of Queen Victoria, who ascended to the
throne at the age of 18 and ruled during the industrialization of England, encouraging
tremendous change and expansive growth of England’s domestic and foreign power. The
Victorian period in England’s history is a case study in stark contrasts: the beauty and richness
of the aristocracy versus the poverty and depression of the poor working class. The middle
class was essentially nonexistent, but the Industrial Revolution meant that the balance of power
shifted from the aristocracy, whose position and wealth was based on land, to the newly rich
business leaders. The new aristocracy became one of wealth, not land, and often bought
themselves titles, which remained important in British society.
● Start of Migration
Until the reign of Queen Victoria, England’s populace was primarily rural. The explosion of the
Industrial Revolution accelerated the migration of the population from the country to the city.
The result of this movement was the development of horrifying slums and cramped row housing
in the overcrowded cities. By 1900, 80% of the population lived in cities. These cities were
“organized” into geographical zones based on social class—the poor in the inner city, with the
more fortunate living further away from the city core.
 ● Inadequate System
In an age of burgeoning technology and industry, the common working man suffered what to the
modern reader would seem brutal, degrading, and almost unimaginable conditions with a
patient resignation and the sense that survival is its own end. Industrial workers labored from 6
a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, without health benefits, bonuses, or vacation. Adult factory workers were
forced to leave their children with little to no supervision in drafty homes with inadequate septic
systems, no running water, toilets, and little ventilation. Half of all children died before the age of
five due to neglect and malnourishment. By 1839, nearly half of all funerals were for children
under the age of ten.
● Death by diseases
The overcrowded shanty homes were built within walking distance of the factories. The houses
were “back to backs,” often sharing a wall without windows in the front of the homes, and no
backyards. In London and other large towns, the waste from houses drained into the sewers
that ran down the center of the street, tainting the air with the smell of human and animal waste.
Due to these conditions and mountains of animal filth and feces that filled the London streets,
disease ran rampant, quickly sweeping through neighborhoods and factories. More than 31,000
people died from an outbreak of cholera in 1832; typhus, smallpox, and dysentery were also
common diseases.
● Psychological issues
Due to migration in cities people become lonely always busy in work no one to talk with and
alone in home. People started having psychological problems.
People with a mental illness were seen as crazy, and were almost always incarcerated in an
asylum. There were little to no other widespread treatment options for people with mental
illnesses, so asylums were always used to supposedly "control" the people who suffered from
any mental illness. Asylums are no longer around (nor are they legal) but during their reign.
● Peak of Colonialism
Great Britain during Victoria's reign was not just a powerful island nation. It was the center of a
global empire that fostered British contact with a wide variety of other cultures, though the
exchange was usually an uneven one. By the end of the nineteenth century, nearly one-quarter
of the earth's land surface was part of the British Empire, and more than 400 million people
were governed from Great Britain, however nominally. An incomplete list of British colonies and
quasi-colonies in 1901 would include Australia, British Guiana (now Guyana), Brunei, Canada,
Cyprus, Egypt, Gambia, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Hong Kong, British India (now Bangladesh,
India, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Ireland, Kenya, Malawi, the Malay States (Malaysia),
Malta, Mauritius, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somaliland (Somalia), South
Africa, the Sudan, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and Trinidad and Tobago. Queen Victoria's far-flung
empire was a truly heterogenous entity, governed by heterogenous practices. It included Crown
Colonies like Jamaica, ruled from Britain, and protectorates like Uganda, which had relinquished
only partial sovereignty to Britain. Ireland was a sort of internal colony whose demands for home
rule were alternately entertained and discounted. India had started the century under the control
of the East India Company, but was directly ruled from Britain after the 1857 Indian Mutiny (the
first Indian war of independence), and Victoria was crowned Empress of India in 1877. Colonies
like Canada and Australia with substantial European populations had become virtually
self-governing by the end of the century and were increasingly considered near-equal partners
in the imperial project. By contrast, colonies and protectorates with large indigenous populations
like Sierra Leone, or with large transplanted populations of ex-slaves and non-European
laborers like Trinidad, would not gain autonomy until the twentieth century.
● Clashes between science and religion
The basic conflict was that more scientific knowledge was being acquired and some aspects of
this knowledge came into conflict with the teachings of the Christian church. The most obvious
example of this was the theory of evolution as made popular by Charles Darwin.
the relationship of science and religion in the western world passed from fruitful co-operation
and modest tensions to harsh public conflict, a situation that many observers have since come
incorrectly to assume to be a permanent fact of modern cultural life. To understand that
Victorian clash and why historians and others should not draw excessively pessimistic
conclusions from it, one must analyse the earlier nineteenth-century relations of science and
religion so as to present the late-century controversy as an event to be explained rather than as
an inevitable occurrence arising from necessary, existential hostilities. Many years ago Gordon
Allport observed, ‘A narrowly conceived science can never do business with a narrowly
conceived religion’. Such narrow conceptions had not prevailed in 1750, but as a result of
transformations within scientific and religious communities and changes in the structure of
publication, education, and wider cultural discourse a narrowing of focus had come into being by
the middle of the nineteenth century and with that narrowing the conflict of science and religion.
In this respect Thomas Henry Huxley wrote more presciently than he may have realized when
he once claimed: The antagonism between science and religion about which we hear so much,
appears to me to be purely factitious – fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious
people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by
equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that
which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension.
● Suffering of females (feminist issues)
The status of women in the Victorian era was often seen as an illustration of the striking
discrepancy between the United Kingdom's national power and wealth and what many, then and
now, consider its appalling social conditions. During the era symbolized by the reign of British
monarch Queen Victoria, women did not have the right to vote, sue, or own property. At the
same time, women participated in the paid workforce in increasing numbers following the
Industrial Revolution. Feminist ideas spread among the educated middle classes, discriminatory
laws were repealed, and the women's suffrage movement gained momentum in the last years of
the Victorian era.
The rights and privileges of Victorian women were limited, and both single and married women
had to live with hardships and disadvantages. Victorian women were disadvantaged both
financially and sexually, enduring inequalities within their marriages and society. There were
sharp distinctions between men's and women's rights during this era; men were allotted more
stability, financial status, and power over their homes and women. Marriages for Victorian
women became contracts which were extremely difficult if not impossible to get out of during the
Victorian era. Women's rights groups fought for equality and over time made strides in attaining
rights and privileges; however, many Victorian women endured their husband's control and even
cruelty, including sexual violence, verbal abuse, and economic deprivation with no way out.
While husbands participated in affairs with other women, wives endured infidelity, as they had
no rights to divorce on these grounds and divorce was considered to be a social taboo.
● New Morality
Although truthfulness, economizing, duty, personal responsibility, and a strong work ethic are
strongly regarding as morals of the Victorian era, the years between 1837 and 1901 involved so
much more. One of the most notable differences involves the stark contrasts between the
lifestyles of various people, as documented by Academia. The wealthy and the poor had
incredibly different lives. Opportunities and expectations for men and women also varied.
Another central element of Queen Victoria's reign involved industrialism; the mid-18th century
Industrial Revolution largely prompted this.
In simple words, it means good is good if person feels good and bad is bad if person feels bad.
If a person is not happy, good will not be joyful to that person. It was new concept of Morality.
● Prosperity
MoreThe Victorian period: a prosperous time full of scientific advancement, historic peace,
growth in population, economic strength, and political progress. However, this was only true for
the wealthy; the relatively small percentage of aristocrats of an otherwise population in
shambles. The Victorian period is the historical era designated to the span of Queen Victoria’s
reign. Therefore, this era commences the year Queen Victoria took the crown, 1837, and
finalizes the year of her passing, 1901. As was previously stated, this period is characterized as
a historic era of peace and good fortune for a variety of reasons. First of all, during her reign,
Great Britain’s population grew from one of 2 million to one of 6.5 million. This is due to the fact
that Britain was not going through any sort of epidemic nor famine, making Great Britain a safe
place to live. Second of all, Britain was in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, advancing
progress in science, technology, industry, economy, among other things. In addition to this
change in the world, there was a change in people’s minds and the way they thought. For
instance, socialist movements became prevalent, inspired by famous thinkers like Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels.
● Revolt against Romantics
In Victorian age, writers use their own romantic patterns in writings. Before them, writers in
romantic poetry talked about subjectivity but in Victorian age, writers in romantic poetry talked
about objectivity. They talked about general issues.
● Gateway towards Modernism
As science was progressing, so victorian age was moving towards Modernism.
● New concept of poetry
It was presented by Robert Browning. The concept was questioning to God, concept of love,
faith, Christianity, sorrows, suffering and problems of the world.

​POETS
● Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue
made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony,
characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging
vocabulary and syntax.
Characteristics of his poetry:

1. Multiple Perspectives on Single Events

The dramatic monologue verse form allowed Browning to explore and probe the minds of
specific characters in specific places struggling with specific sets of circumstances. In The Ring
and the Book, Browning tells a suspenseful story of murder using multiple voices, which give
multiple perspectives and multiple versions of the same story. Dramatic monologues allow
readers to enter into the minds of various characters and to see an event from that character’s
perspective. Understanding the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of a character not only gives
readers a sense of sympathy for the characters but also helps readers understand the
multiplicity of perspectives that make up the truth. In effect, Browning’s work reminds readers
that the nature of truth or reality fluctuates, depending on one’s perspective or view of the
situation. Multiple perspectives illustrate the idea that no one sensibility or perspective sees the
whole story and no two people see the same events in the same way. Browning further
illustrated this idea by writing poems that work together as companion pieces, such as “Fra
Lippo Lippi” and “Andrea del Sarto.” Poems such as these show how people with different
characters respond differently to similar situations, as well as depict how a time, place, and
scenario can cause people with similar personalities to develop or change quite dramatically.

2. The Purposes of Art

Browning wrote many poems about artists and poets, including such dramatic monologues as
“Pictor Ignotus” (1855) and “Fra Lippo Lippi.” Frequently, Browning would begin by thinking
about an artist, an artwork, or a type of art that he admired or disliked. Then he would speculate
on the character or artistic philosophy that would lead to such a success or failure. His dramatic
monologues about artists attempt to capture some of this philosophizing because his characters
speculate on the purposes of art. For instance, the speaker of “Fra Lippo Lippi” proposes that
art heightens our powers of observation and helps us notice things about our own lives.
According to some of these characters and poems, painting idealizes the beauty found in the
real world, such as the radiance of a beloved’s smile. Sculpture and architecture can
memorialize famous or important people, as in “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s
Church” (1845) and “The Statue and the Bust” (1855). But art also helps its creators to make a
living, and it thus has a purpose as pecuniary as creative, an idea explored in “Andrea del
Sarto.”

3. The Relationship Between Art and Morality

Throughout his work, Browning tried to answer questions about an artist’s responsibilities and to
describe the relationship between art and morality. He questioned whether artists had an
obligation to be moral and whether artists should pass judgment on their characters and
creations. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Browning populated his poems with evil people,
who commit crimes and sins ranging from hatred to murder. The dramatic monologue format
allowed Browning to maintain a great distance between himself and his creations: by channeling
the voice of a character, Browning could explore evil without actually being evil himself. His
characters served as personae that let him adopt different traits and tell stories about horrible
situations. In “My Last Duchess,” the speaker gets away with his wife’s murder since neither his
audience (in the poem) nor his creator judges or criticizes him. Instead, the responsibility of
judging the character’s morality is left to readers, who find the duke of Ferrara a vicious,
repugnant person even as he takes us on a tour of his art gallery.
His work
My last Duchess (summary)
SUMMARY “MY LAST DUCHESS”
Complete Text
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Summary
This poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who
lived in the 16th century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us he is entertaining an
emissary who has come to negotiate the Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to
the daughter of another powerful family. As he shows the visitor through his palace, he stops
before a portrait of the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins
reminiscing about the portrait sessions, then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way
to a diatribe on her disgraceful behavior: he claims she flirted with everyone and did not
appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.” As his monologue continues, the reader
realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the Duke in fact caused the Duchess’s early
demise: when her behavior escalated, “[he] gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped
together.” Having made this disclosure, the Duke returns to the business at hand: arranging for
another marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the emissary walk leave the painting
behind, the Duke points out other notable artworks in his collection.
POET
● Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS was a British poet. He was the Poet Laureate of
Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most
popular British poets. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at
Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu."
Characteristics of Tennyson Poetry:
1. National poet
Tennyson is a chiefly remembered as the most representative poet of the Victorian age. He
was a national poet, whose poetry reflected the various important tendencies of his time. That is
why he was a popular in his own day. But one whose poetry is so representative of his age is
apt to be less universal in his appeal.
2. Universality
With greater universality in his themes, Tennyson would have been far more popular both
during and and after his own time. But the set back caused to his popularity by a certain want of
universality is amply compensated by his being poet-artist of a very high and permanent value.
Today he is admired mainly as a literary artist of a very high order.
3. Nature
His word paintings of the external beauties of nature his careful observation, his accuracy in
description to the minutest details, his keen sense of the value words and phrases.
4. Sense of music
his strong sense of music in words- all these makes him a poet- artist in the truest sense. Prof.
Web has ably summed up the qualities of Tennyson as a poet, "His poetry, with its clearness of
conception and noble simplicity of expression, its discernment of the beautiful and its power of
shaping it with mingled strength and harmony, has become an integral part of the literature of
the world and so long a s purity and loftiness of thought expressed in perfect form have power
to charm, will remain a passion for ever." Now these Characteristics may be studied more fully.
His work
The charge of the light brigade (summary)
Six hundred men in the Light Brigade ride through the valley, pushing half a league ahead. Their
leader called them to charge for the enemy’s guns. It was a death mission; someone had made
a mistake. But the men simply obey; “Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why, /
Theirs but to do and die.”

They are surrounded by cannons, but the six hundred men ride on with courage into “the jaws of
Death,” the “mouth of Hell.” They flash their sabers and slash at the gunners, six hundred men
charging an entire army while the rest of the world wonders at their deeds. They plunge right
through the smoke and through the battle line, forcing the Cossacks and Russians back.

Having accomplished what they could, they return through more cannon fire, and many more
heroes and horses die. They have come through the jaws of Death and mouth of Hell, those
who are left of the six hundred.

The speaker wonders whether their glory will ever fade due to their heroic charge; the whole
world marvels at them and honors the “noble six hundred” of the Light Brigade.
 ​Novelist

● George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet,
journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.
Characteristics of her novels
● The Traditional Novel: Its Plots
George Eliot was a contemporary of such early Victorian novelists as Dickens, Thackeray,
Trollope, Mrs. Gaskel. They were all novelists in the tradition of Henry Fielding. George Eliot
also follows that tradition in many respects, but she also modifies and alters that tradition. This
departure from tradition is most clearly seen in her art of plot-construction. “The traditional
English novel,” says David Cecil, “consisted of a number of characters and incidents knit
together by an intrigue centring round a young attractive hero and heroine and rounded off with
their happy marriage. The plot did not, except in the single case of Vanity Fair, arise from the
characters, it was imposed by the author on them.

● George Eliot’s Originality

“But George Eliot began with an idea of character or situation, her plot was intended to follow,
not a standardised formula, but what she conceived to be the logical development of that idea;
and this might entail something quite different from the accepted Victorian notion of plot. It might
entail no marriage, no happy ending, no character answering to the Victorian conception of hero
or heroine. Often it did not. In Silas Marner the hero is an elderly bachelor; The Mill on the Floss
ends very badly and has no hero at all. In Middlemarch there is no central figure of any kind; the
main interest is divided between four separate groups of characters and none of these, except
Dorothea Brooke, approaches the conventional heroic type. Finally, since the action of George
Eliot’s stories arises logically from the characters, those strokes of fortunes, coincidences,
sudden inheritances, long-lost wills, which are the stock-in-trade of the ordinary Victorian plot,
are inevitably omitted. They are the first novels which set out to give a picture of life wholly
unmodified by those formulae of a good plot which the novel had taken over from comedy and
romance. Her story is conditioned solely by the logical demands of situation or character; it ends
sadly or happily, includes heroes or omits them, deals with the married or the unmarried,
according as reason and observation lead her to think likely. In fact, the laws conditioning the
form of George Eliot’s novels are the same laws that condition those of Henry James and Wells
and Conrad and Arnold Bennett. Hers are the first examples in English of the novel in its mature
form; in them it structurally comes of age.”
● Logical Causation: Thematic Unity
In other words, George Eliot’s plots are all expositions of some particular idea or theme. As in
the other Victorian novels, we also get in her work beautiful descriptions of rural life and a
number of characters drawn from that life. But such scenes and characters are subsidiary to the
central idea round which the story is built. This is so because she is the first intellectual novelist.
Says David Cecil, “Her mind was always active; experience set it immediately and instinctively
analysing and generalising, to discovering why and how things happened. And when she turned
her attention to the world around her it was this analysis that started her creative imagination
working. It is inspired, not by a wish to convey her impressions of life but her judgments on it.
And it embodied itself not in a picture but in a theme. She did not have a vision of Barchester or
Cranford and then invent situations on which to hang her picture of this vision; she had a vision
of human society as the expression of certain principles, and she embodied it in a picture of a
specific place-Middlemarch. Her novels are built round an idea or theme, and everything not
relevant to that idea is rigidly excluded. The end is implicit in the beginning, successive events
are logically and casually connected with each other and as the action proceeds, it is seen to be
the logical and natural outcome of the character or characters concerned and those characters
themselves are the result of their social environment.” Thus the final catastrophe in The Mill on
the Floss follows logically from Maggie’s love of her brother, and her emotional, noble and
self-effacing nature. Her death by drowning is hinted at, right from the beginning, when her
mother repeatedly calls her a ‘wild thing’ and is afraid that she would be drowned one day. The
central idea or theme is that any deviation from the path of duty and rectitude is bound to bring
down nemesis, and the plot is designed to illustrate this theme.
● Organic Wholeness
George Eliot’s novels are organic wholes, the characters, the setting and the social environment
are well integrated. Once George Eliot herself said, “It is the habit of my imagination to strive
after as full a vision of the medium in which a character moves as of the character itself” and
that habit accounts for the depth and breadth of the vision of life she communicates. In her
novels of the English rural life, she deals with, “The rural and provincial life of England she had
known from childhood: her imagination contained it rather than strove after it. But it is clear that
she gave as much attention to presenting the outer circle of her design as the inner. The outer
circle within which the dramatic situation is contained, is an organic human society and her
novels are deeply imbued with the spirit of a particular place and time.”
—(Joan Bennet)
For example in Adam Bede the social milieu is provided by the life of Hayslopes. The people
have certain standards of right and wrong, they have their well-established moral codes and an
action is judged with reference to this code. The life of the outer circle (Hayslope society) is well
described to make the readers feel that Hetty’s flight was as natural and inevitable in that
particular society, as Arthur’s weakness in deserting her. Says Joan Bennet, “There is no part of
what we have learnt of the outer circle that does not affect our sense of the inner. The cultured
benignity of the Rector, the moral enthusiasm of the Methodists, the simple ignorance of the
country-folk, all make their own impact on the central characters and help to determine the
events. Although the impression while we read is of a leisurely sequence of naturalistic scenes
of comedy or of pathos and of a world richly populated with entertaining characters, when we
look back—we find that every individual scene or character is directly or indirectly related to the
simple story at the core of the book, of the carpenter’s betrothed betrayed by the Squire’s
grandson. In its setting this commonplace story becomes widely significant. “The simple
well-contrived pattern conveys the sense of a social structure enclosing four human beings as
completely as the soil encloses the roots of a growing plant and, in so doing, it illustrates one
aspect of the author’s vision of life.”
“Although the formal pattern is not elsewhere so simple and symmetrical as it is in Adam
Bede—the general character of the design, an individual tragedy surrounded by the life of a
community, is similar in all George Eliot’s novels except Daniel Deronda, where the absence of
such an enclosing community is an important part of her conception. In all her novels there is an
“inter-penetration between the life of a community and the individual lives that compose it.” Her
greatest success is achieved where this enveloping social life is well-sketched, a failure in this
respect weakens her novels as is the case with Romola, Felix Holt and Daniel Deronda. In
these novels, the social environment is not sufficiently convincing to provide a unifying centre;
whereas, in the vintage works, the community has identity as recognizable and persuasive as
that of the central characters, and it is the moral code, traditions, customs, beliefs, etc., of this
social environment which determine the action.”
● Suspense and Curiosity
The novel is primarily an entertainment and George Eliot’s novels are not deficient in this
respect. Curiosity is excited from the very beginning, the readers are eager to know the next
step, and, are fully involved in the fate of the central figure or figures, and as the action
proceeds we get an analysis, a presentation of the inner drama, the moral conflict, which goes
on within the mind of the central figures. In this way, her novels acquire a gripping interest. The
melodramatic is also introduced in deference to prevalent conventions. Her delicious humour
and excellently done scenes of pathos, also contribute to the charm aim fascination of her
stories, but it is the inner man, the conflict within the soul which increasingly absorbs the
attention, so that the reader does not like to put down the book unfinished.
● The Traditional Framework
George Eliot’s plots have a beginning, a middle and an end. In some respects she is a novelist
in the Fielding tradition. The main interest is focused on a small group of characters, the
development of whole fortunes is laid out. They move towards a crisis or tangle which is
unravelled before the end, so that in the last chapter a denouement is reached. All the fortunes
with which the reader has been concerned are tied up. The story ends in a marriage or a death
and the future of the survivors is indicated. The reader is persuaded that the story is complete.
Within this framework there is scope for the narrator to comment on the action and the
characters and so to expound her ‘philosophy’ or sense of moral values. ‘Wit’, both in the
commentary and in the dialogue, contributes to the reader’s delight and communicates the
author’s sense of proportion; descriptive powers evoke the surroundings in which the action
takes place, while dramatic powers enable the author to recreate the scenes of the story in
terms of dialogue and action.
● Her Originality
But from another point of view George Eliot is an innovator. The organic or living form of her
novels, within the expected framework, is different from anything that had gone before. It
resembles in some respects, Jane Austen’s form insofar as the central characters are deeply
rooted in their social environment—which determines their story as much as does their
individual character. The difference is that the social environment is wider, more complex, made
up of a greater variety of minor characters drawn from many more social and economic levels,
and also that the display of this outer circle or environment is more conscious. Jane Austen took
her social milieu for granted; its manners and traditions were, for her, as little open to question
as the laws of nature. George Eliot was aware of the ethical, religious, and social conventions of
the world she paints, as a product of history, evolved in time and changing with times. She was
consciously interested in the pressure all these exert on individual selves and in the existence of
a problem concerned with the resisting of, or succumbing to that pressure.
● Logical Unfolding of Character
She shares the awareness of modern man that human society is constantly changing and
developing. “Consequently, the organic form of her novels—an inner circle (a small group of
individuals involved in a moral dilemma) surrounded by an outer circle (the social world within
which the dilemma has to be resolved)—is more significant than in any preceding fiction.
Furthermore, her perception of individual human beings is more complex than that of her
predecessors. She never suggests a simple division of characters into good and bad. The
individual, like the environment, has evolved and is evolving; and the action is designed to show
this evolution. This is what George Eliot meant when she said, “My stories grow in me like
plants.” It is the growth of the plant, the gradual unfolding of character in its environment, that
compels attention, not the mere concatenation of events, as is the case with the novelists in the
Fielding tradition.
Her work
Adam bede(summary)
The novel revolves around a love "rectangle" among the beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty
Sorrel; Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her; Adam Bede, her
unacknowledged suitor; and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful
Methodist lay preacher.

● Charles Dickens
Dickens is remembered as one of the most important and influential writers of the
19th century. Among his accomplishments, he has been lauded for providing a stark portrait of
the Victorian-era underclass, helping to bring about social change. Charles Dickens (February
7, 1812–June 9, 1870) was a popular English novelist of the Victorian era, and to this day he
remains a giant in British literature
Characteristic
​Novels:
He had written 15 novels, 5 novellas and hundreds of short stories. He had also
written many non-fiction articles and lectured. He had campaigned vigorously for the rights of
young children and their education. He had also worked for other social reforms.
The literary success of Charles Dickens began with the publication of The Pickwick Papers
serially in 1836. He had become an international literary celebrity within a few years. He
became renowned for the humor and satiric tone in his works. He also had a keen observation
of the character and the society.
The Literary Style of Charles Dickens
The novels written by Dickens were published in monthly or weekly installments. This pioneered
the serial publication of narrative fiction that was to become the dominant mode for novel
publication in the Victorian Era. Since this allowed the time for audience reviews, Dickens could
modify the plot and develop the characters on the feedback.
Charles Dickens Writing Style
Dickens had picked on the style of the picaresque novels that he could find on his father’s
shelves. Another important Literary Style of Charles Dickens influence could be found from that
of the fables of The Arabian Nights. His writing style is marked by satire and his marked show of
caricature. Another important thing to be noticed in Dickens’ writing is the catchy names that he
had used in his novels.
Books and Works by Dickens
Dickens had published some of the most famous novels – more than a dozen in the count.
There is also a large count of short stories and a handful of plays and non-fiction. There had
been a number of Christmas themed stories as well.
The novels were initially serialized in weekly and monthly magazines and had subsequently
been printed in standard book formats.

Works of Charles Dickens

Tales of the two cities

Summary
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens tries to escape his heritage as a French aristocrat in
the years leading up to the French Revolution. During the Revolution, he's captured, but Sydney
Carton, a man who looks like Dickens, takes his place and dies on the guillotine. With A Tale of
Two Cities, Dickens asserts his belief in the possibility of resurrection and transformation, both
on a personal level and on a societal level.

Great Expectations(summary)
Great Expectations is the story of Pip, an orphan boy adopted by a blacksmith's family, who
has good luck and great expectations, and then loses both his luck and his expectations.
Through this rise and fall, however, Pip learns how to find happiness.
The main conflict is undoubtedly between Pip himself and his extremely powerful conscience.
Pip attempts to achieve great things for himself while still holding on to his morals and values
along the way. He must distinguish what means the most to him and figure out where his
priorities lay.