Victorian Fiction, Prose and Drama

Unit fourteen ended on poets meeting the age's doubt, each in a different sound. This unit turns to the age's prose, where the novel became the dominant form. Its governing idea is that Victorian prose made realism its hallmark, ordinary life faithfully shown, and that the same age argued in essays about what that life should be. This first part moves in three steps: the novel and its readers, Dickens and the Brontës; then Thackeray, Gaskell, George Eliot and the later novelists, from Trollope and Collins to Hardy, Stevenson and Carroll; and then the prose arguers, Carlyle, Ruskin, Mill, Newman, Arnold, Pater and Darwin, closing on Wilde.

We begin with the novel's readers and the way it was published, then Dickens and the three Brontës.

First, the form that dominated.

ENL 1401 The Victorian Novel and Its Readers

The novel became the dominant Victorian form, read aloud in families and borrowed from circulating libraries. The anchor names realism its hallmark: concrete detail, specific social conditions and nature reproduced as it was, not idealized. Dickens's novels exemplify it. Realism, a mass readership. Realism is the period's key term for fiction.

Next, how novels were published.

ENL 1402 Serial Publication and the Three-Volume Novel

Most Victorian novels first appeared in monthly or weekly instalments; the success of Dickens's Pickwick Papers in eighteen thirty-six established the serial. Books came out in three volumes for the circulating libraries, a format that disappeared after eighteen ninety-four. Instalments, then three volumes. These publishing facts rest on one reference source.

Now the greatest of them.

ENL 1403 Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens, whose father was jailed for debt, worked as a boy in a blacking factory, a shame he never forgot. A court reporter and sketch-writer, "Boz," he won fame with Pickwick and wrote serial novels attacking the social ills of his age, with humour and memorable characters. Factory boy, reporter, novelist. His childhood shapes his orphans.

His early novel attacked an institution.

ENL 1404 Oliver Twist and the Social Novel

Oliver Twist, serialized from eighteen thirty-seven, follows an orphan raised in a workhouse who escapes to London and falls among pickpockets led by Fagin. The anchor says it exposed the cruelty and lack of charity of the Victorian workhouse. An orphan, a workhouse, a gang. The novel attacks an institution.

Two orphans tell their lives.

ENL 1405 David Copperfield and Great Expectations

David Copperfield, of eighteen fifty, partly autobiographical, was Dickens's favourite of his books. Great Expectations, serialized in eighteen sixty and sixty-one, is a bildungsroman about the education of an orphan, Pip. Both are narrated in the first person by the grown hero. Two orphans tell their own lives. The older narrator judges his younger self.

Two novels attack law and facts.

ENL 1406 Bleak House and Hard Times

Bleak House, serialized in eighteen fifty-two and fifty-three, centres on Jarndyce and Jarndyce, an endless Chancery suit, and alternates Esther Summerson's narration with an omniscient narrator. Hard Times, of eighteen fifty-four, set in industrial Coketown, attacks Mr Gradgrind's creed of facts. The law's delay; the cult of facts. Bleak House has two narrators.

A ghost story carries critique.

ENL 1407 A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol, of eighteen forty-three, tells how the miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, and is transformed into a kinder man. A miser, four ghosts, a change of heart. The ghost story carries social critique.

Dickens's characters have tags.

ENL 1408 Dickens's Style and Characters

The anchor notes Dickens's characters are rarely rounded but have memorable quirks and tags with the ring of authenticity. He leavened his social observation with humour, complicated sentimentality with symbolism, and attacked hypocrisy, brutality and selfishness across the classes. Quirks, tags, humour, symbol. Flat characters can still be vivid.

Now the first Brontë novel.

ENL 1409 Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre, published in eighteen forty-seven as by "Currer Bell," is a bildungsroman of a plain governess who loves Mr Rochester of Thornfield Hall. Their wedding is stopped because he is married to Bertha Mason. The anchor says it spoke for women's individuality; it ends, "Reader, I married him." Governess, master, a hidden wife. Jane narrates in the first person.

Emily's only novel is layered.

ENL 1410 Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë's only novel, published in eighteen forty-seven as by "Ellis Bell," concerns the Earnshaws, the Lintons and their foster son Heathcliff on the Yorkshire moors. It is told by the tenant Lockwood, who hears the story from others, a layered frame. Two houses, Heathcliff, a layered frame. The narrators are outsiders to the passion.

The youngest sister wrote two novels.

ENL 1411 Anne Brontë

Anne Brontë, writing as "Acton Bell," published Agnes Grey in eighteen forty-seven and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in eighteen forty-eight, about a woman who leaves her abusive, drunken husband. Most critics now consider it one of the first feminist novels. A governess; a wife who leaves. Do not confuse the three sisters' novels.

Now a satirist, a novelist of the mills, George Eliot, and the novelists who followed.

Thackeray wrote a novel without a hero.

ENL 1412 William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair

Thackeray's satirical Vanity Fair, of eighteen forty-seven and forty-eight, subtitled A Novel without a Hero, follows the scheming Becky Sharp and gentle Amelia Sedley through the Napoleonic Wars. Its title comes from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. In his day he ranked second to Dickens. Becky Sharp, no hero, a fair of vanities. The title is from Bunyan.

Gaskell went to the mills.

ENL 1413 Elizabeth Gaskell: Mary Barton and North and South

Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, of eighteen forty-eight, a tale of Manchester life, deals with working-class hardship. North and South, serialized by Dickens and published in eighteen fifty-five, sets Margaret Hale from the south against the northern mill town of Milton. She also wrote a Life of Charlotte Brontë. Manchester, mills, workers. Gaskell is a condition-of-England novelist.

One great novelist used a man's name.

ENL 1414 George Eliot

George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, translator and assistant editor of the Westminster Review, lived openly with George Henry Lewes. She wrote seven novels, from Adam Bede, of eighteen fifty-nine, which argues for "the faithful representing of commonplace things," to Daniel Deronda. A woman with a man's pen name; realism of sympathy. George Eliot was a woman.

Her masterpiece is a whole town.

ENL 1415 Middlemarch

Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life, published in instalments in eighteen seventy-one and seventy-two, interweaves Dorothea Brooke's search for purpose and her marriage to the scholar Casaubon, the doctor Lydgate's ambitions, and others' lives. The anchor says it lifts the marriage plot to the level of lived life. A town of intersecting lives. The narrator generalizes about human nature.

Two more Eliot novels are rural.

ENL 1416 Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss, of eighteen sixty, follows the siblings Tom and Maggie Tulliver, who grow up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss. Silas Marner, of eighteen sixty-one, a realist tale, tells of a linen weaver from a small Calvinist congregation who finds new life in a village. A sister, a brother; a weaver. Both novels are rural and realist.

Trollope wrote in series.

ENL 1417 Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope, a Post Office official, wrote forty-seven novels, best known among them two series of six: the Chronicles of Barsetshire, about clergy in a cathedral town, and the political Palliser novels, as well as The Way We Live Now. Clergy, politics, money. Trollope wrote in connected series.

The sixties wanted secrets.

ENL 1418 Wilkie Collins and the Sensation Novel

The sensation novel of the eighteen sixties, with secrets, crimes and doubles, began with Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, of eighteen sixty, East Lynne and Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret. Collins's The Moonstone, of eighteen sixty-eight, told by several narrators, is an early detective novel. Secrets, crime, many narrators. The Moonstone helped found the detective novel.

Hardy invented a region.

ENL 1419 Thomas Hardy the Novelist

Thomas Hardy set his novels in Wessex, a semi-fictional region of southwest England: Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native and The Mayor of Casterbridge. His tragic characters struggle against their passions and their social circumstances. Wessex, fate, tragedy. Wessex is semi-fictional.

Hardy's last novels provoked.

ENL 1420 Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, of eighteen ninety-one, first serialized in censored form, follows a poor woman seduced by Alec d'Urberville. Jude the Obscure, of eighteen ninety-five, on class, education, religion and marriage, was Hardy's last novel before he turned to poetry. A wronged woman; a thwarted scholar. The subtitle "A Pure Woman" is provocative.

Stevenson wrote adventure and a double.

ENL 1421 Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, of eighteen eighty-three, Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, an eighteen eighty-six Gothic novella in which the lawyer Utterson investigates his friend Jekyll and a murderous man named Hyde. He settled in Samoa in eighteen ninety. Pirates, a kidnapping, a divided man. Jekyll and Hyde are one man.

A mathematician wrote nonsense.

ENL 1422 Lewis Carroll's Alice

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, of eighteen sixty-five, sends a girl down a rabbit hole into a world of talking creatures. A classic of literary nonsense, it signalled a change toward imaginative, empathetic writing for children. Through the Looking-Glass followed. A rabbit hole; logical nonsense. Carroll was an Oxford mathematician.

Now the prose arguers, who asked what the age's life should be.

First, the prophet against industry.

ENL 1423 Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle wrote Sartor Resartus, a philosophical novel on a German philosopher of clothes, The French Revolution and On Heroes. In Chartism, of eighteen thirty-nine, he raised the condition-of-England question, and he called political economy "the dismal science." Prophet, historian, critic of industry. Carlyle shaped Dickens's Hard Times.

Ruskin judged societies by their art.

ENL 1424 John Ruskin

John Ruskin defended Turner in Modern Painters, arguing that the artist's duty is "truth to nature," and in The Stones of Venice judged a society by its art and architecture. The anchor notes his attacks on laissez-faire economics and his belief that work should be fulfilling; Unto This Last marked that turn. Art, architecture, labour. Ruskin's art criticism is social criticism.

Mill argued for liberty and equality.

ENL 1425 John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill published On Liberty, of eighteen fifty-nine, warning of the tyranny of the majority, and The Subjection of Women, of eighteen sixty-nine, arguing for equality between the sexes. Both were developed with his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. Liberty, the majority, women's equality. Harriet Taylor Mill shared the work.

Newman defended his conversion.

ENL 1426 John Henry Newman

John Henry Newman, a leader of the Oxford Movement, which sought to restore Catholic beliefs and ritual to the Church of England, became a Roman Catholic in eighteen forty-five and later a cardinal. His Apologia Pro Vita Sua, of eighteen sixty-four, answered Charles Kingsley's attack on his honesty. Anglican to Catholic; a spiritual autobiography. The Apologia defends his sincerity.

Arnold turned to criticism.

ENL 1427 Matthew Arnold the Critic

In middle age Matthew Arnold turned to prose criticism. The anchor says he advocated an educated public versed in the classics, and proposed "touchstones" from the best thinking and writing of the world as objective measures. He thought literature could develop character and culture cure society's ills. Touchstones, culture, criticism. Arnold the poet is in unit fourteen.

His key book named the Philistines.

ENL 1428 Culture and Anarchy

Culture and Anarchy, collected in eighteen sixty-nine, defines culture as knowing "the best which has been thought and said" and spreading "sweetness and light." Arnold divided the classes into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace, and attacked the middle-class Philistines. Sweetness and light; Philistines. Philistine means the narrow middle class.

Pater urged living intensely.

ENL 1429 Walter Pater and Aestheticism

Walter Pater, an Oxford don, published Studies in the History of the Renaissance in eighteen seventy-three. Its Conclusion urges living intensely: "To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." The anchor ties him to Aestheticism. The gem-like flame. Pater influenced Wilde.

A scientist wrote a book of argument.

ENL 1430 Charles Darwin as a Writer

Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on the twenty-fourth of November eighteen fifty-nine, set out evolution by natural selection, building its case from observations such as the breeding of pigeons. Its argument reshaped Victorian thought on nature and faith. Evidence, then a theory. Darwin's book is literature and science.

Now the age's great wit.

ENL 1431 Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, a Dublin-born student of Ruskin and Pater, spread Aestheticism, wrote in nearly every genre, and was famous for his aphorisms. Convicted of gross indecency in eighteen ninety-five, he served two years' hard labour, wrote De Profundis and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," and died in exile in Paris. Aesthete, wit, prisoner, exile. The anchor calls his aphorisms amoral.

His comedy turns on a pun.

ENL 1432 The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest, a Trivial Comedy for Serious People, first performed in February eighteen ninety-five, follows two men who lead double lives, Jack as "Ernest" in town and Algernon "Bunburying" in the country. Jack was found as a baby in a handbag. It satirizes Victorian high society. Double lives, a handbag, a pun. "Earnest" puns on the name.

This first part followed realism and argument. We explained how serials and three volumes reached a mass readership, and why realism is the period's key term. We described Dickens, from the workhouse to Scrooge, and his characters' quirks and tags. We told the three Brontës apart, and identified Thackeray's novel without a hero, Gaskell's mills and George Eliot's Middlemarch. We met Trollope, Collins, Hardy's Wessex, Stevenson's double and Carroll's Alice. And we named the arguers' terms, the dismal science, truth to nature, sweetness and light, the gem-like flame, ending on Wilde. Part two turns to the century's end and the methods.