Victorian Novel

1
Victorian Novel
Vincenzo DAngelo Gabriele Rabino
Classe 5 A
Anno Scolastico 2010/2011
2
Hystorical Background
The reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901.
The Victorian Age
Industrial Revolution

• 1837 Victoria ascended to the throne
• 1846 Repeal of the Corn Laws
• 1851 The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in
  London
• 1854 Crimean War
• 1857 The East India Companys authority was
  replaced on India
• 1867 The Reform Bills
• 1870 The Education Act
• 1871 The Trade Union Act
• 1886 and 1893 The proposals for Irish Home Rule
  were rejected. Rise to Sinn Fèin
• 1899 Colonial conflicts with Boers
• 1901 Queen Victoria died and was succeeded by
  Edward Prince of Wales

3
Victorian Values
Utilitarianism
All thing have to be useful
Puritan Talents Parabola
People have to improve theirself condition.
Darwinism
Survival of the fittest
4
Theme of Victorian Novel
The Victorian novel reflects social changes

• Theme
• Class rise of the working class
• Industrial System
• Contrast between rich and poor
• Education and children condition
• Family life (middle class)
• The struggle for democracy

5
Narrative Technique
The Victorian novel featured several developments
in narrative technique

• Full description and exposition
• Authorial essays
• Multi-plotting featuring several central
  characters
• Use of pathos and grotesque

• Setting
• The City

It is where the factory develop
6
Dickens Oliver Twist
Now consider the extract from Oliver Twist
written by Charles Dickens in 1837-38. The
extract is taken from Chapter 2
Oliver Twist presents some aspect of Victorian
novel.

• The novel was written in 1837-38 during the
  Social Unrest.
• Differences between social classes.
• Description of Everyday World.
• The novel ends with an happy ending.
• The setting is in London City and in a workhouse.
• Third Person intrusive omniscient narrator

7
Nicholas Nickleby
Now I am going to analyze is taken from an other
Dickens novel. The extract describe the first
school day of the teacher Nickleby.

• Differences between social classes. (Master
  Squeers behaviors)
• Description of Everyday World.
• Use of the grotesque (characterization of Mr
  Squeers)
• Condemn of education system
• Third person intrusive omniscient narrator

8
Hard Times
Its an other novel by Dickens. it is showed a
difficult time in the imaginary city of Coketown .

• It attacks industrialisation
• Mr Bounderby is the typical self-made man
• Utilitarianism
• Third person intrusive omniscient narrator
• Use of the grotesque and phatos

9
Why did novel have so success?
Novel appealed to readers because of its
The novelists of the Victorian Age

• Realism (semi realism)
• Impulse to describe the everyday world the reader
  could recognize
• Introduction of characters who were blends of
  virtue and vice
• Attempts to display the natural growth of
  personality
• Expressions of emotion love, humor, suspense,
  melodrama, pathos (deathbed scenes)
• Moral earnestness and wholesomeness, including
  crusades against social evils and self-censorship
• Improvement of the standard morality of the times

• Accepted middle class values
• Treated the problem of the individual's
  adjustment to his society
• Emphasized well-rounded middle-class characters
• Portrayed the hero as a rational man of virtue
• Believed that human nature is fundamentally good
  and lapses are errors of judgment

10
Anti-Victorian Novel
Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy
He uses a third person omniscient external
narrator.
No judgment only description
Cinematic effect
It is the first novel with a a working class hero