TOPIC 50 - THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

1.​ OUTLINE
2.​ INTRODUCTION
3.​ HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
- THE VICTORIAN AGE
4.​ LITERARY BACKGROUND
- THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
5.​ CURRICULAR IMPLICATIONS
6.​ CONCLUSION
7.​ BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. INTRODUCTION. THE VICTORIAN SCENE.

​ ​ The Victorian Era goes from 1830 to 1880. This period is characterised by
the extension of the British Empire, which implied its political and economical
superiority over the rest of the nations, and by the social effects of the industrial
revolution.
​ New territories were colonised: Gold Coast (1821), Falkland Isles (1833), New
Zealand (1840), Hong Kong (1841), some new territories in India…
​ However, liberals criticise the maintenance costs of the colonies. The main
reasons were the cost of the American Revolution; economic crisis in the West Indies
and lack of commercial interest in the colonies.
​ It was a period of social agitation:
First, middle class economical growth came together with the rise of population,
and population increase brought about emigration to the new territories of the
Empire.
Secondly, he Industrial Revolution had provoked that the country became more
urban and the population more mobile, mass production and division of labour were
introduced in the economical system, the smoke and debris invaded the countryside
and a non-ideological and with trades manlike qualities middle class rose.
Finally, the social transition was a peaceful process due to fear of spread of
revolution from the Continent and the Utilitarian ideology, whose main feature was
the tendency to mingle business with moralism.
​ Utilitarians were philosophical radicals whose main aim was the improvement of
the nation. Their proposal was the defence of property based on stopping
government interfering with trade; leaving capital to find its most lucrative course and

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leaving industries and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their
natural punishment.
​ Late Victorian period was characterised by the debate about the content of
English culture, habits of resistance to the standardising effects of machines, the
second Reform Bill of 1867: enfranchised working classes in the towns, and the Trade
Union Act of 1871: shifts the centre of power.

2. THE VICTORIAN NOVEL.

​ There is no doubt that the Victorian era was the age of the English novel,
namely realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long. By the end of the
period, the novel was considered not only the premier form of entertainment but also
a primary means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems,
only challenged by the revival of drama towards the last two decades. This king style,
the novel, is presented with a political, philosophical or social overtone (Thackeray,
Dickens, Brönte) since was the ideal form to describe contemporary life and to
entertain the middle class.
2.1. EARLY VICTORIAN NOVELISTS.
​ The early Victorian writers coincided with the deep transformation of rural
England into the industrial one and are, namely, among others, Charles Dickens
(1812-1870), as the dominant figure of the Victorian novel; the Brönte sisters, who
combined elements of the Gothic with a remarkably imagined account of the social
institutions of Victorian London; Dickens’ rival, Thackeray, who is namely represented
by his work Vanity Fair, a morality novel; and Mrs Gaskell and Trollope with a less
theatrical realism. Other writer worth mentioning on the limits between the mid and
late Victorian novelists is George Eliot, profoundly preoccupied with the historian of
imperfect lives in their fullest social settings.
2.1.1. THE BRÖNTE SISTERS
​ Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848), and Anne (1820-49) were the daughters of
an Irish clergyman who held a living in Yorkshire. Financial difficulties compelled
Charlotte to become a school-teacher and then a governess. Along with Emily she
visited Brussels in 1842, and then returned home, where family cares kept her closely
tied. Later her books had much success, and she was released from many of their
financial worries. She was married in 1854, but died in the next year. Her two younger
sisters had predeceased her.

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 The Brontë painted the sufferings of an individual personality, and presented a
new conception of the heroine as a woman of vital strength and passionate feelings.
Their works are as much the products of the imagination and emotions as of the
intellect, and in their more powerful passages they border on poetry. In their concern
with the human soul they were to be followed by George Eliot and George Meredith
a) CHARLOTTE BRONTË (1816-1855)
​ Jane Eyre (1847) is her greatest novel and is full of countryside details. The love
story of the plain, but very vital, heroine is unfolded with a frank truthfulness and a
depth of understanding that are new in English fiction. The plot is weak, full of
improbability, and often melodramatic, but the main protagonists are deeply
conceived, and the novel rises to moments of sheer terror.
​ In her next novel, Shirley (1849), Charlotte Brönte reverts to a more normal and
less impassioned portrayal of life. Again the theme is the love story of a young girl.
Villette (1853) is written in a reminiscent vein, and the character of Lucy Snowe is
based on the author herself. The truth and intensity of Charlotte’s work are
unquestioned; she can see and judge with the eye of a genius. But these merits have
their disadvantages. In the plot of her novels she is largely restricted to her own
experiences; her high seriousness is unrelieved by any humour; and her passion is at
times overcharged to the point of frenzy. But to the novel she brought an energy and
passion that gave to commonplace people the wonder and beauty of the romantic
world.
b) EMILY BRONTË (1818-1848)
​ Although Emily wrote less than Charlotte, Emily Brönte is in some ways the
greatest of the three sisters. Emily’s unique Wuthering Heights (1847) breathes the very
spirit of the wild, desolate moors where the main characters conceive their passions
in gigantic proportions. The novel often reaches the realms of poetry and has a series
of climaxes which increase the intensity of the novel by means of unbelievable peaks
of passion, described with a stark realism. She also tried with poetry though just a few
of her poems reached the very highest levels. Her finest poems are probably “No
Coward Soul is Mine” and “Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee”.
2.1.2. CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)
​ ​ Born at Portsmouth, he grew up in great poverty, little education, and he
was sent to work in a blacking business at ten. Then, he attended school until he was
15. Taught himself shorthand and became a parliamentary reporter. Began writing
sketches for papers, which were collected in the book Sketches of Boz (1835). Gained
public success and financial ease with The Pickwick Papers, and then wrote one book
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after another. Promoted public reading and travelled to the Continent and the States.
His public readings were successful, but exhausting, and led him to a breakdown in his
health. Died in 1870, at the age of 58, and was buried in the Poets´ Corner of
Westminster Abbey.
​ Dickens’ novels were so demanded despite the crudity of plot, the unreality of
characters and the looseness of style. His novels were also issued in parts, this
resulting in much padding and slow work. Yet, his style is characterized by:
· Dickens’ interest in social reform, which embody no systematic social or political
theory but the evils of his day (boarding schools in Nicholas Nickleby, workhouses in
Oliver Twist, the new manufacturing system in Hard Times, the Court of Chancery in
Bleak House). His crudest realism showed pictures of poverty rather than political
pictures of legislation, but all his novels show his preoccupation with social problems;
· His imagination, shown in the multiplicity of characters and situations to create a
whole world of people.
· His humour and pathos, which gave him the reputation of a good humorist. His
humour is not very subtle, but it goes deep, and is free and vivacious in expression.
His pathos appeared in the deaths of little children, which he describes in detail (the
death of Bill Sikes).
· His mannerisms so as to create a characterization of the protagonists in stereotypes:
the round character and the flat characters.
· His style is neither polished nor scholarly, but it is clear, rapid, and workmanlike, as
the style of a journalist. He would use cockneyisms, and tiresome circumlocutions. In
his deeply pathetic passages, he adopted a lyrical style, a kind of verse-in-prose,
which is blank verse slightly disguised.
2.1.3. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THAKERAY (1811-1893)
​ William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta, in India but, after his
father’s death in 1816 and mother’s remarriage, he was educated in England. He
entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829. Both at school and college he struck his
contemporaries as an idle and rather cynical youth, whose main diversions were
sketching and lampooning his friends and enemies. He spent part of his youth in
Europe as a painter, gambling away his money and, as a result, the loss of his fortune
drove him to seek some means of earning a living. These were the miseries from which,
financially at least, he emerged in the 1840s as a brilliant sketch-writer and
caricaturist.
After publishing The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon (1844), a picaresque novel, telling
of the adventures of a gambling rascal who prowls over Europe, and The Book of
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Snobs (1849), which continued to be Thackeray’s pet abhorrence. Next, Vanity Fair
appeared monthly in 1847-1848. Later, he published Pendennis (1848-1850), The History
of Henry Esmond (1852), a historical novel of great length and complexity, The
Newcomes (1853-1854) and The Virginians (1857-1859).
​ Regarding his style, he was namely recognized by his struggle through neglect
and contempt to recognition; his method, which protested against conventions and
reacted against the popular novel of the day, particularly, against romanticism; his
humour and pathos, mixed with a good deal of criticism, the desire to reveal the truth
and his satire; finally, he had a mimetic faculty and as a result, he was brilliant in his
burlesque.
2.1.4. ANTHONY TROLLOPE (1819-1888)
​ Anthony Trollope was born in London. Soon he was educated at Harrow and
Winchester, and obtained an appointment in the Post Office. After an unpromising
start he rapidly improved, and rose high in the service. He is known as a prolific
novelist and actually, he wrote 40 pages each week, each of 250 words, often while
travelling for the Post Office by train or ship. His Autobiography says that he began a
new novel the day after finishing the last.
​ Most of his books are set in London. He lived in Ireland for eighteen years, and
travelled more than any other 19th-century writer, in Europe, Africa, the Americas and
the Pacific. Unless Dickens he has no violently good or evil characters, and less
melodrama than George Eliot. The realism in which he excels is broad and everyday
rather than deep of intense, and is reflected in his prolific number of works.
​ Trollope began his career with Irish tales such as The Kellys and the O’Kellys
(1848), which had little success, and then produced the Barsetshire novels on which his
fame rests. This series, in which many of the same characters appear in several novels,
deals with life in the imaginary county of Barsetshire and particularly in its
ecclesiastical centre, Barchester. It began with The Warden (1855); then came
Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), The Small
House at Allington (1864), and finally The Last Chronicle of Barset (1866-1867). Later
Trollope turned to the political novel. Among his works in this kind were Phineas Finn
(1869) and Phineas Redux (1874). One of his most interesting books in An Autobiography
(1883).
​ Trollope is the novelist of the middle and upper-middle classes. With urbane
familiarity and shrewd observation he presents an accurate, detailed picture of their
quiet, uneventful lives in a matter-of-fact way which gives his works the appearance of

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chronicles of real life. His main concern is with characters rather than plot, but his
characters, though clearly visualized and described in great detail, lack depth, and
Trollope never handles the profounder passions. The framework of his novel is a series
of parallel stories moving with the leisureliness of everyday life. His style, efficiently
direct, simple, and lucid, is seen to particular advantage in his dialogue. A vein of easy
satire runs through many of his novels, and he makes skilful use of pathos. Within his
limited scope he is a careful craftsman whose works retain their popularity.
2.1.5. ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810-1865)
​ Mrs Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was born in London and died in Hampshire. In
order to offer an overall view of her life, it is relevant to say that her mother dying a
month after her birth, she was adopted by an aunt who lived at Knutsford, near
Manchester; in 1832 she married William Gaskell, a distinguished Unitarian minister
working in Manchester; she was mother of a large family; although she began to write
at thirty-seven, Dickens secured her for his magazines; she wrote Charlotte Brontë’s
biography. Following Alexander: “her work has the virtues of 19th-century realist fiction,
of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope.”
​ It is convenient to consider Mrs Gaskell’s writings in two groups rather than in
the chronological order of their appearance. Her first novel was a sociological study
based on her experience of the conditions of the labouring classes in the new cities of
the industrial North. Mary Barton, A Tale of Manchester Life (1848) gives a realistic view
of the hardships caused by the Industrial Revolution as seen from the workers’ point
of view. It is weak in plot, but nevertheless has some fine scenes, and it is carried
forward by the strength of its passionate sympathy with the downtrodden.
​ North and South (1855) is on a similar theme and its plot is better managed. Like
its predecessor it has some fine dramatic incidents. Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) is a moralistic
love story in a domestic setting, which scenes of wilder beauty and human violence
are well blended, but the novel is spoilt by its unsatisfactory and rather melodramatic
ending. Her last, and unfinished, novel, Wives and Daughters (1866), is by many
considered her best. It is an ironical study of snobbishness, which is remarkable for its
fine female characters such as Mrs Gibson, Molly Gibson, and Cynthia Kirkpatrick.
This is her most distinguished book which anticipates George Eliot in its steadily
built-up exploration of family and provincial life shaped by historical contingencies.
2.1.6. GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1890)
​ George Eliot was the pen-name of Mary Ann Evans, the daughter of the steward
of a Warwickshire estate, a circumstance which would inform all her work. She was
born near Nuneaton, and after being educated at Coventry, she lived much at home.
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Her mind was well above the ordinary in its bent for religious and philosophical
speculation. In 1846 she translated Strauss’s Life of Jesus, and on the death of her
father in 1849 she took entirely to literary work.
Adam Bede (1859) was a full-length novel, which announced the arrival of a new
writer of the highest calibre. It gives an excellent picture of English country life among
the humbler classes. The story of Hetty and the murder of their child is movingly told,
and the book is notable for its fine characters, outstanding among whom are Mrs
Poyser, Hetty, and Adam Bede himself.
Her next work, considered by many her best, was The Mill on the Floss (1860). The
partly autobiographical story of Maggie and Tom Tulliver is a moving tragedy set in
an authentic rural background, and the character of Maggie is probably her most
profound study of the inner recesses of human personality. As yet her novel is not
overloaded by the ethical interests which direct the course of her later works. In style it
is simple, often almost poetical. Silas Marner: the Weaver of Raveloe (1861) is a shorter
novel, which again gives excellent pictures of village life; it is less earnest in tone, and
has scenes of a rich humour, which are skilfully blended with the tragedy. Like The Mill
on the Floss, it is somewhat marred by its melodramatic ending.
​ Regarding her style, we may highlight her choice of subject, always focused on
the individual personality, the development of human soul, or the study of its
relationship to the greater things beyond itself; her characters are usually drawn from
the lower classes of society, and she shows a great management of psychology. Hence
her studies of the English countryman show great understanding and insight, and she
is particularly interested in self-deceivers and stupid people; the tone of her novels is
one of moral earnestness and humour; and finally, we may consider her style to be
lucid, simple, and reflective as well as often overweighed with abstractions. She
handles the dialogue for the revelation of her characters, and she shows a great
command of the idioms of ordinary speech, which enables her to achieve a fine
naturalness.
2.2. LATE VICTORIAN NOVELISTS.
​ Within the group of late Victorian writers, we find that novel writers went along
with and above a broadening mass market, as did Hardy and James respectively. The
main reason for the decline of the novel was that at the centre of the stage the late
nineteenth century saw the revival of literary theatre (drama) with Wilde and Shaw as
leading figures, and to a lesser extent, poetry with Housman and Kipling. However, we
will examine the main late Victorian novelists such as George Meredith and Thomas
Hardy.
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2.2.1. GEORGE MEREDITH (1821-1904)
​ Regarding his life, we have scanty details of his earlier life. All we know is that he
was born at Portsmouth, and for two years he was educated in Germany. Like so many
of the eager spirits of his day, he was deeply interested in the struggles of Italy and
Germany to be free. For some considerable time he was reader to a London
publishing house; then, as his own books slowly won their way, he was enabled to give
more time to their composition. For a time in 1867 he was temporary editor of The
Fortnightly Review. He died at his home at Box Hill, Surrey.
​ His first important novel is The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859). Almost at one
stride he attains to his full strength, for this Novel is typical of much of his later work.
In plot it is rather weak, and almost incredible toward the end. It deals with a young
aristocrat educated on a system laboriously virtuous; but youthful nature breaks the
bonds, and complications follow. Most of the characters are of the higher ranks of
society, and they are subtly analysed and elaborately featured. They move languidly
across the story, speaking in a language as extraordinary, in its chiselled
epigrammatic precision, as that of the creatures of Congreve or Oscar Wilde. The
general style of the language is mannered in the extreme; it is a kind of elaborate
literary confectionery.
​ The next novel was Evan Harrington (1861), which contains some details of
Meredith’s own family life; then followed Emilia in England (1864), the name of which
was afterward altered to Sandra Belloni, in which the scene is laid partly in Italy. In
Rhoda Fleming (1865) Meredith tried to deal with plebeian folk, but with indifferent
success. The heroines of his later novels – Meredith was always careful to make his
female characters at least as important as his male ones – are aristocratic in rank and
inclinations. Vittoria (1867) is a sequel to Sandra Belloni, and contains much spirited
handling of the Italian insurrectionary movement. Then came The Adventures of Harry
Richmond (1871), in which the scene is laid in England, and Beauchamp’s Career (1876),
in which Meredith’s style is seen in its most exaggerated form.
In The Egoist (1879), his next novel, Meredith may be said to reach the climax of
his art. The style is fully matured, with much less surface glitter and more depth and
solidity; the treatment of the characters is close, accurate, and amazingly detailed;
and The Egoist himself, Sir Willoughby Patterne, is a triumph of comic artistry.
2.2. THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)
​ Hardy was born at Upper Bockhampton, in the county of Dorset. His first
published work was the rather sensational Desperate Remedies, which appeared

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anonymously in 1871. In the following year the success of Under the Greenwood Tree
established him as a writer.
​ The art of Thomas Hardy was his poetry, but after his marriage he put it aside
to earn a living as a novelist. So, with respect to his novels, the involved construction
of Desperate Remedies (1871) gave place to the charming idyll Under the Greenwood
Tree (1872), one of the lightest and most appealing of his novels. It was set in the rural
area he was soon to make famous as Wessex. The success of this book, though great,
was eclipsed by that of the ironical A Pair of Blue Eyes, which appeared in Tinsley’s
Magazine in 1873; and the following year (1874) saw the first of the great novels which
have made him famous, Far from the Madding Crowd, a tragicomedy set in Wessex.
The rural background of the story is an integral part of the novel, which reveals the
emotional depths which underlie rustic life.
​ The rural setting is even more strikingly used in The Woodlanders (1887), the
tragic story of Giles Winterbourne and Marty South, two of Hardy’s most noble figures.
Then, separated by The Well-Beloved (1892, reissued 1897), came Hardy’s last and
greatest novels, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895), both of
which, by their frank handling of sex and religion, aroused the hostility of
conventional readers. They seem modest enough by the standards of to-day, but Tess
of the D’Urbervilles was rejected by two publishers and originally appeared in a
somewhat expurgated version, and the outcry which followed the appearance of Jude
the Obscure led Hardy in disgust to abandon novel-writing, though at the height of
his powers.
In these two books we have the most moving of Hardy’s indictments of the
human situation; both contain unforgettable scenes; the studies of Tess and Sue are
two of his finest portrayals of women, and the character of Jude surpasses in depth of
insight anything Hardy had previously achieved.
​ The main features of Hardy’s novels were his subjects, which depicted human
beings facing up to the onslaughts of a malign power, the man as an individual, and a
pessimist view of the period; his treatment of themes, which showed Hardy’s concerns
on his philosophy of life, coincidence, and the suffering of his characters; similarly, his
characters are mostly ordinary men and women living close to the soil, briefly
sketched as country type individuals, and their actions being told with a pithy
humour.

3. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Alexander, M. 2000. A History of English Literature. Macmillan Press. London

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