The Victorian Novel
RISE OF NOVEL
The development of the novel started in the 18th century: we had the realistic
novel by Defoe, the epistolary novel from Richardson, the utopian by, the
comedy epic by and the experimental novel by Sterne. The novel was born
after the rise of middle-class that got rich and had free time that, especially
women, spended on reading books. The focus was on everyday life and the
puritan religion with its aims of rewards and punishments; the first novel was
Robinson Crusoe, a self-made man.
VICTORIAN NOVEL
During the Victorian Age, there was a communion of interests and opinions
between writers and readers. The reason was the growth of the middle classes,
who borrowed books from circulating libraries, libraries that moved to towns to
towns on wheels, and read periodicals every month. People were interested in
reading books because they got cheap thanks to the new technologies brought
by the Industrial Revolution, and for that more people could afford it.
Victorian novels were first published in periodicals, through which the writer
felt he was in a strict contact with his public. The novel became the most
popular form of literature and the main source of entertainment during the
Victorian age, since they were read with the whole family.
NOVELIST
The novelists felt they had a moral and social responsibility: they aimed at
reflecting the social changes like the Industrial Revolution, democracy and the
urbanization. They described society as they saw it and were scared of the
evils of the age, so they denounced them but in a peaceful way, cooperating
with the governments. In fact, their criticism was just aimed at making readers
aware of social injustices, such as the slums: Dickens in particular talks about
them, spaces were people had no running water and lived in terrible conditions.
It’s thanks to the novelist that the government passed laws to reduce this
problems, like the Ten Hours Act that allowed people work for a limit of 10 hours
a day. The Industrial Revolution made England richer and richer and the
same did with the upper classes, but there was also exploitation of the lower
classes; so it brought developments but also consequences.
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ELEMENTS OF VICTORIAN NOVELS
The omniscient narrator gave a comment on the plot and erected a barrier
between right and wrong, the puritan ideal of the complementary opposites,
according to which without this contrast there is no progress: he knew
everything that was about to happen because he was in the character’s head.
The concepts of retribution and punishment were found in the final chapter,
where all the events or adventures had to be explained.
The plot was very long like the story itself, that was so long even when it was
not necessary, and was often complicated by subplots, minor stories that
continue the plot.
The setting chosen by most novelists was the city, symbol of industrial
civilisation as well as the space where identities were lost. Man lose the contact
with nature: it’s called alienation the loss of identity of humans for the industrial
development and the rise of assembly line that made all workers do the same
movements, being exploited just like a mechanism and not like a real person.
Victorian writers created realistic characters so the public could easily identify
with them, this in terms of comedy (especially in Dickens) or dramatic passion
(in the Bronte sisters and their heroines). The novelist’s realism was
photographic, like a picture of the society but that never goes beyond what it’s
visible.
ZOLA: The first novelist that tried to go deep the society was Zola, that was not
afraid to describe even the most disgusting aspects and details of society: he
lays the basis for the naturalism. So, if England promoted a photographic
realism, France promoted naturalism, but also because they were not Victorians
with all their taboos and censures. In Italy, especially in Sicily, in this years
developed verism with Verga.
📌 The first part of the Victorian Age was linked to social and
humanitarian novels, and the main representatives were Charles
Dickens and the sisters Emily and Charlotte Brontë, that can be
associated with the persistence of the Romanticism and the Gothic,
and focus on subjective experiences.
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ROLE OF WOMEN
The novels published during the middle Victorian period were written by
women. This is surprising if one thinks of the role of Victorian women, but is
less surprising if one remembers that the majority of novel-buyers and readers
were women, since they spent more time at home in their free time. However, it
was not easy for women to publish because creative writing, as art and public
activities, was considered “masculine”. So some women used a male
pseudonym for publishing their works.
RELATION WITH THE SOAP OPERA
We can say that the structure of the novel inspired the soap operas’ one. A
soap opera can continue for decades, and its structure consist in an endless
story, but only if the audience liked it, otherwise the opera could be cancelled:
the audience had an important influence on the destiny of the periodicals. In
the soap opera, there is drama: the development of events is slow at the
beginning, but at the end there is a plot twist, a “coupe de teatre”, something
interest that happens and gives suspense, that the writer puts in the story to
keep the attention of audience very high.
Audience had great influence also on the development of the characters: in
periodicals, the writer waited for the audience’s reaction to continue what he
had in mind but according to what the public wanted. They were also
influenced in economy, because if the audience disliked the novel no one
buyed it.
DIDACTIVISM: didactive novels wanted to teach something to the reader, that
reading understands the behavior he should have.
WORKHOUSES: places were people with a broke life could start again. They
had a home, a place to live, but they had to work (according to the Chartism,
poor people were guilt of their condition because of their laziness). Oliver
Twist, a Dickens’ character, was hosted by a good family that taught him great
values but became a pickpocket; at the end he was rewarded anyway because
he was just a victim of a bad system and was not his fault. In all Dickens’ novels
we see the concept that if you are good you are rewarded and if you act bad
you are punished, because he was a manichean: most of the first novelists
were manichaeans.
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