Name : Avni J Dave
Semester : 2
Roll no : 03
Paper no : 6 The victorian Literature
Topic : Victorian Novel Characteristics
Email ID : avni.dave1998@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of the English
Victorian Novel Characteristics
First of all in the Victorian Age the dominating literary form was the novel.
It was in fact easier to be read and understood by simple people, its plot was more interesting than any other literary forms, the main protagonist of the novel were the same people who read it so that they felt deeply involved in the adventue told about , the writer and his readers shared the same opinions, values and ideals because they belonged to the same middle class, the setting was mainly that of the same city where readers lived. In conclusion the novel was a kind of mirror reflected society and where a self-identification of the readers was possible.
Of course the middle class readers were the most avid consumers, particularly women: they had the money to buy or to borrow books, they had plenty of free time to dedicate to reading, but they also had enouh privacy to read. The problem of privacy was in fact very important: poor or working as people lived in narrowed houses and more than single family often shared the same flat or, at worst, the same room. So they didn’t have the possibility to read because reading need silence, tranquility, light.
In order to improve the reading public, in this period they started to publish novels in instalments: every week few pages of the novel (or a complete chapter), were included in one of the periodicals issued. This kind of publication have an important advantage on the price of the novel but also on the writers: they could ceck the reaction of their public to the plot and, if parts of were not be appreciated, they ould decide to change it in accordance with the taste of readers. This happened because, if not satisfied, the readers could stop buying the magzine determininng the failure of the novel and of its writer.
The novelists represented society as they saw it but, being aware of the problems created by industrialization, (exploitation of women and children, terrible living conditions etc) they used their novels in order to put in evidence these evils and to stimulated people to find remedies to them. In this sense “didacticism” was the dminating aim of most of the novels of these years. As a consquence the narrator is generally omniscient: he operates marked division between good and evil characters, he judges people and actions, he makes it stories finish with a wise distribution of “punishment” for the evil characters, “retribution” from the good ones.
The plot of the novels was generally very long and complicated by many sub-plots: the writer also wanted from give a marke impression of reality so that he presented not only the adventures to the main characters, but also those of the secondary ones.
=) The Victorian Age is essentially the age of the novel or fiction. During this period, the novel made a rapid progress.
This was partly because this middle-class form of literary art was bound to flourish increasingly as the middle class rose in power and importance, partly because of the steady increase of the reading public with the growth of lending libraries, the development of publishing in the modern sense and other eventing which accompanied thos increase, and partly because the novel was the best means to present a picture of life, lived under the stables background of social moral values by people who were like the people encountered by reader, and this was the kind of picture of life, the middle-class readers wanted to read about.
First Generation Victorian Novel and Novelists
The early Victorian and first generation novelists comprised of William Thackrey, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell etc. Although the were several novelists of the time, on only the ones mentioned here have survived the test of time and are considered representative to the early phase of the Victorian fiction in England.
=) Characteristics :
1. Themes
One of the prominent features, that the novel of the early Victorian era, was the concern with the “condition of England question”.
They chose for their themes the specific contemporary problems of the Victorian society caused by the predominance of industrialism and utilitarianism and wrote about them sometimes as satirists, sometimes as humanists, sometimes as moralists.
2. Imaginative Rendering of Reality
In spite of the fact that they were conscious of the havoc caused by the industrial revolution, the presence of mass poverty and accumulation of richs in a few hands, yet they believed like the common victorians that these evils would prove to be temporary, that on the whole, England was growing prosperous, which was evident from the enormous increase in material wealth and there was no reason why this progres should not continue indefinitely.
3. Characterisation
A significant shift in the English Novel in its movement from the 18th to the 19th century the change of emphasis from action to character. They gave primacy to the character as opposed to Neo-classical novelists who gave more importance to action.
4. Loose Plots
The early Victorian novel, unlike both the novel of the preceding era as well as the following novel of the later phase to the Victorian period, as rather formless.
One of the reasons was new reading public (the masses of middle and lower middle class) for whom they were being written.
Like the Elizabethan drama, the novel in the early Victorian phase was written more for any entertainent than fo any artistic purpose. But in spite, it contained the large purpose of offering a picture and criticisme of contemporary life.
The second and real cause of the lack of organization in these novels was that they were serialized in the monthly and weekly magazines.
Quite often, a novel took 25 serials to complete in the magazine. Now in between the beginning and end of a novel, hundreds of readers would give then suggestions. Thus the Victorian reader was in a way a share in the composition of the novel.
5. First generation novelists
CHARLES DICKENS: His famous novels are Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.
WILLIAM THACKERAY: He is famous for Vanity Fail.
MRS. ELIZABETH GASKELL: She has written novels like Mary Barton and North-South as the instrument of social reforms.
Second Generation Novel and Novelists
If the novels of the early Victorians were written in the 40s and 50s, those of the later Victorians were published in the 60s and 70s. George Eliot, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy all these major novelists of the period started publishing around the end of the 50 or later.
Lack of High Artistic Standard
The second generation Victorian novelists were more ‘literary’ and less ‘popular’ than the first generation. They had more academic flavors in their writings, more poetic imagination.
They did not have the breadth and variety (with the exception of Middlemarch) of the early novelists but they certainaily had greater depth of characterization and greater intensity of presentation.
1. Main Themes
The novelists of the later Victorian era, were not entertainers and reformers, as were their elders. Instead, there more serious composrs with greater involvement in the deeper passions of life particularly love.
Moreover, their main concern was with the rural England, which was being destroyed by industry and commerce rather than the city working class and its masters, the mill-owners etc. They depicted the tragedy of transition from the agraria way of life to the industrial order.
2. Shift From Industrialism and Utilitarianism
Another change that tk place in the English novel around the year 1860, was the shift in its focus from the city with its industrialism and utilitarianism to the village with it those vision of destruction under the threat on the new scientific rationalism and evolutionism, which started new ethics and human relations inspired by the Darwinian concepts of “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest”.
These new ideas made the novelists look at human socity from a new perspective, not as a static Biblical model existing between the dynamic and tension between good and evil, but as an evolutionary from process of human nature, society and civilization, growing on the Drwinian principles.
3. Shift Towards Intellectualism
Another significant change that takk in place in this era, was the shift towards intellectualism. Althoughhh Dickens and Thackeray were ‘educated’ enough to grasp the crosscurrent of ideas in their time, but were not ‘learned’ in the sense meredith and hardy were. The Novelists of this era were well-learn.
4. Second Generation Novelists
THOMAS HARDY: The Desperate Remedies, The Return of the Native, Far From the Madding Crowd.
GEORGE ELIOT: Adam Bede, Middlemarch, Romola
GEORGE MEREDITH: The Egoist, The Shaving of Shagpot
:- The victorian era ended in 1901, when Queen Victoria died. The Victorian Era still lives on today through music, literature, and art. This era will always be remembered as a great time in history when Queen Victoria ruled. 'From our presenet vantage point the nineteenth century begins to look like the great age of the periodical'. So write R.G. Cx in an essay published in 1958 which offered a brief, but suggestive, overviewed of the genre.The importance of Victorian periodicals, he stated, 'could scarcely be exaggerated'.
Semester : 2
Roll no : 03
Paper no : 6 The victorian Literature
Topic : Victorian Novel Characteristics
Email ID : avni.dave1998@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of the English
Victorian Novel Characteristics
First of all in the Victorian Age the dominating literary form was the novel.
It was in fact easier to be read and understood by simple people, its plot was more interesting than any other literary forms, the main protagonist of the novel were the same people who read it so that they felt deeply involved in the adventue told about , the writer and his readers shared the same opinions, values and ideals because they belonged to the same middle class, the setting was mainly that of the same city where readers lived. In conclusion the novel was a kind of mirror reflected society and where a self-identification of the readers was possible.
Of course the middle class readers were the most avid consumers, particularly women: they had the money to buy or to borrow books, they had plenty of free time to dedicate to reading, but they also had enouh privacy to read. The problem of privacy was in fact very important: poor or working as people lived in narrowed houses and more than single family often shared the same flat or, at worst, the same room. So they didn’t have the possibility to read because reading need silence, tranquility, light.
In order to improve the reading public, in this period they started to publish novels in instalments: every week few pages of the novel (or a complete chapter), were included in one of the periodicals issued. This kind of publication have an important advantage on the price of the novel but also on the writers: they could ceck the reaction of their public to the plot and, if parts of were not be appreciated, they ould decide to change it in accordance with the taste of readers. This happened because, if not satisfied, the readers could stop buying the magzine determininng the failure of the novel and of its writer.
The novelists represented society as they saw it but, being aware of the problems created by industrialization, (exploitation of women and children, terrible living conditions etc) they used their novels in order to put in evidence these evils and to stimulated people to find remedies to them. In this sense “didacticism” was the dminating aim of most of the novels of these years. As a consquence the narrator is generally omniscient: he operates marked division between good and evil characters, he judges people and actions, he makes it stories finish with a wise distribution of “punishment” for the evil characters, “retribution” from the good ones.
The plot of the novels was generally very long and complicated by many sub-plots: the writer also wanted from give a marke impression of reality so that he presented not only the adventures to the main characters, but also those of the secondary ones.
=) The Victorian Age is essentially the age of the novel or fiction. During this period, the novel made a rapid progress.
This was partly because this middle-class form of literary art was bound to flourish increasingly as the middle class rose in power and importance, partly because of the steady increase of the reading public with the growth of lending libraries, the development of publishing in the modern sense and other eventing which accompanied thos increase, and partly because the novel was the best means to present a picture of life, lived under the stables background of social moral values by people who were like the people encountered by reader, and this was the kind of picture of life, the middle-class readers wanted to read about.
First Generation Victorian Novel and Novelists
The early Victorian and first generation novelists comprised of William Thackrey, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell etc. Although the were several novelists of the time, on only the ones mentioned here have survived the test of time and are considered representative to the early phase of the Victorian fiction in England.
=) Characteristics :
1. Themes
One of the prominent features, that the novel of the early Victorian era, was the concern with the “condition of England question”.
They chose for their themes the specific contemporary problems of the Victorian society caused by the predominance of industrialism and utilitarianism and wrote about them sometimes as satirists, sometimes as humanists, sometimes as moralists.
2. Imaginative Rendering of Reality
In spite of the fact that they were conscious of the havoc caused by the industrial revolution, the presence of mass poverty and accumulation of richs in a few hands, yet they believed like the common victorians that these evils would prove to be temporary, that on the whole, England was growing prosperous, which was evident from the enormous increase in material wealth and there was no reason why this progres should not continue indefinitely.
3. Characterisation
A significant shift in the English Novel in its movement from the 18th to the 19th century the change of emphasis from action to character. They gave primacy to the character as opposed to Neo-classical novelists who gave more importance to action.
4. Loose Plots
The early Victorian novel, unlike both the novel of the preceding era as well as the following novel of the later phase to the Victorian period, as rather formless.
One of the reasons was new reading public (the masses of middle and lower middle class) for whom they were being written.
Like the Elizabethan drama, the novel in the early Victorian phase was written more for any entertainent than fo any artistic purpose. But in spite, it contained the large purpose of offering a picture and criticisme of contemporary life.
The second and real cause of the lack of organization in these novels was that they were serialized in the monthly and weekly magazines.
Quite often, a novel took 25 serials to complete in the magazine. Now in between the beginning and end of a novel, hundreds of readers would give then suggestions. Thus the Victorian reader was in a way a share in the composition of the novel.
5. First generation novelists
CHARLES DICKENS: His famous novels are Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.
WILLIAM THACKERAY: He is famous for Vanity Fail.
MRS. ELIZABETH GASKELL: She has written novels like Mary Barton and North-South as the instrument of social reforms.
Second Generation Novel and Novelists
If the novels of the early Victorians were written in the 40s and 50s, those of the later Victorians were published in the 60s and 70s. George Eliot, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy all these major novelists of the period started publishing around the end of the 50 or later.
Lack of High Artistic Standard
The second generation Victorian novelists were more ‘literary’ and less ‘popular’ than the first generation. They had more academic flavors in their writings, more poetic imagination.
They did not have the breadth and variety (with the exception of Middlemarch) of the early novelists but they certainaily had greater depth of characterization and greater intensity of presentation.
1. Main Themes
The novelists of the later Victorian era, were not entertainers and reformers, as were their elders. Instead, there more serious composrs with greater involvement in the deeper passions of life particularly love.
Moreover, their main concern was with the rural England, which was being destroyed by industry and commerce rather than the city working class and its masters, the mill-owners etc. They depicted the tragedy of transition from the agraria way of life to the industrial order.
2. Shift From Industrialism and Utilitarianism
Another change that tk place in the English novel around the year 1860, was the shift in its focus from the city with its industrialism and utilitarianism to the village with it those vision of destruction under the threat on the new scientific rationalism and evolutionism, which started new ethics and human relations inspired by the Darwinian concepts of “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest”.
These new ideas made the novelists look at human socity from a new perspective, not as a static Biblical model existing between the dynamic and tension between good and evil, but as an evolutionary from process of human nature, society and civilization, growing on the Drwinian principles.
3. Shift Towards Intellectualism
Another significant change that takk in place in this era, was the shift towards intellectualism. Althoughhh Dickens and Thackeray were ‘educated’ enough to grasp the crosscurrent of ideas in their time, but were not ‘learned’ in the sense meredith and hardy were. The Novelists of this era were well-learn.
4. Second Generation Novelists
THOMAS HARDY: The Desperate Remedies, The Return of the Native, Far From the Madding Crowd.
GEORGE ELIOT: Adam Bede, Middlemarch, Romola
GEORGE MEREDITH: The Egoist, The Shaving of Shagpot
:- The victorian era ended in 1901, when Queen Victoria died. The Victorian Era still lives on today through music, literature, and art. This era will always be remembered as a great time in history when Queen Victoria ruled. 'From our presenet vantage point the nineteenth century begins to look like the great age of the periodical'. So write R.G. Cx in an essay published in 1958 which offered a brief, but suggestive, overviewed of the genre.The importance of Victorian periodicals, he stated, 'could scarcely be exaggerated'.
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