English Literature / Unit 15 ENL 1443 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Identifying a Victorian Novelist From a Passage
The idea
Use clues of voice and subject together. Grotesque names, comic tags, orphans and attacks on institutions suggest Dickens. A plain, passionate first-person woman narrator suggests Charlotte Brontë; a wild moorland passion told by outsiders, Emily Brontë. A wise narrator generalizing about provincial lives suggests George Eliot. A mocking narrator addressing the reader about a scheming heroine suggests Thackeray. Northern mills and workers suggest Gaskell; Wessex landscapes and fate, Hardy; cathedral clergy, Trollope; secrets and multiple narrators, Collins; logic in a dream world, Carroll; a respectable man's hidden double, Stevenson. Then confirm with the date and the form before you commit to an answer.
In practice
Voice plus subject points to the novelist.
Where people slip
Several novelists attack social ills. Decide by voice: Dickens's comedy, Gaskell's sympathy, Eliot's generalizing wisdom.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for English Literature