Victorian Fiction, Prose and Drama

Part one ended on Wilde's Earnest, a comedy of double lives. This second part follows Wilde into his novel, and then gathers the period into methods. The unit's governing idea pays off at the capstone: Victorian prose made realism its hallmark and argued about what life should be, and it ranges from Eliot's realism to Wilde's wit, so the mode comes before the author. We move in three steps: the late writers, Dorian Gray, Shaw, Kipling's fiction and the short story, with the condition-of-England question, the woman question and realism; then four procedures, for a fiction passage, a prose argument, naming a novelist and matching works; and then the late Gothic, decadence, the errors, the stage before Wilde, critics on Dickens's women and children's books, with Wilde's epigram and the capstone.

We begin with the century's last writers, and the great questions its prose debated.

Wilde also wrote a novel.

ENL 1433 The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in a magazine in eighteen ninety and as a novel in eighteen ninety-one. A beautiful young man's portrait ages and records his sins while he stays young. W-7 calls it philosophical fiction and Gothic horror, and the anchor ties it to Aestheticism. A portrait ages; the man does not. The novel tests the aesthetic creed.

An Irish playwright argued on stage.

ENL 1434 George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright, critic and Fabian socialist pamphleteer, became the leading dramatist of his generation and won the Nobel Prize in nineteen twenty-five. His plays of ideas satirize romantic illusions and social conventions. Plays of ideas, socialism, wit. Shaw's career runs well past nineteen-oh-one.

Two Shaw plays the exam knows.

ENL 1435 Arms and the Man and Pygmalion

Arms and the Man, of eighteen ninety-four, set in the Serbo-Bulgarian War, mocks romantic ideas of war through Bluntschli, a practical Swiss mercenary. Pygmalion, of nineteen thirteen, shows the phonetics professor Henry Higgins transforming a Cockney flower girl; it became My Fair Lady. A practical soldier; a professor and a flower girl. Pygmalion is Edwardian, not Victorian.

Kipling also wrote stories of India.

ENL 1436 Kipling's Fiction

Kipling's stories of India, such as "The Man Who Would Be King," about two adventurers who make themselves kings, and his novel Kim, of nineteen-oh-one, set in the Great Game between Britain and Russia, made him famous. The anchor says his work may reveal British racial bias yet care for the individual. India, adventurers, the Great Game. Attribute the anchor's judgment.

Magazines made the short story.

ENL 1437 The Victorian Short Story

Late Victorian magazines spread the short story. Kipling published tales of Anglo-India in newspapers before collecting them, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, introduced in eighteen eighty-seven, became famous through short stories in The Strand Magazine from eighteen ninety-one. Magazines, Kipling, Holmes. The magazine market made the short story.

One question named the poor's condition.

ENL 1438 The Condition-of-England Question

Carlyle's Chartism, of eighteen thirty-nine, first posed the condition-of-England question: whether the working people's state was intolerably wrong. Condition-of-England novelists, including Disraeli, Gaskell, Dickens and Kingsley, tried to move readers; Hard Times owes its subtitle to Carlyle. The poor's condition as a national question. This history rests on one reference source.

Another debated women's rights.

ENL 1439 The Woman Question

The woman question debated women's suffrage, property, legal and marriage rights, and whether women's private virtue belonged in public life. The anchor notes that a married woman's property belonged to her husband until the eighteen seventies and eighties, and it names Jane Eyre and Mill's essay. Rights, property, the public sphere. Novels as well as essays took part.

Realism is the period's hallmark.

ENL 1440 Realism and the Victorian Novel

Literary realism represents familiar things and everyday experience as they truly are, rejecting Romantic idealization. George Eliot's Adam Bede defends "the faithful representing of commonplace things," and the anchor calls realism the hallmark of Victorian prose. Ordinary life, faithfully shown. Realism has a moral purpose in Eliot.

Now four procedures that turn Victorian prose into answers.

Here is the method for a fiction passage.

ENL 1441 Reading a Victorian Fiction Passage

A Victorian fiction passage rewards five questions. Who narrates: a first-person hero looking back, such as Jane Eyre or Pip, or an omniscient narrator who comments, such as George Eliot's? What is the narrator's attitude: Eliot generalizes about human nature, Dickens satirizes, Thackeray mocks. What social facts frame the scene: class, money, inheritance, marriage, work? How is character shown, through Dickens's tags or Eliot's inner reflection? What is the purpose: reform, satire, sympathy or serial suspense? Then cite the narrator's stance and the social facts together, without confusing the narrator's comment with a character's view.

Here is the method for a prose argument.

ENL 1442 Reading a Victorian Prose Argument

Victorian nonfiction argues, so read it as argument. Find the thesis: Arnold wants "the best which has been thought and said" to spread. Find the opponent: Carlyle answers political economy, Arnold the Philistines, Newman his accuser Kingsley, Mill the tyranny of the majority. Find the key terms coined or redefined, "sweetness and light," "the dismal science," "condition of England," because questions test them. Notice the tone: prophetic Carlyle, urbane Arnold, personal Newman, logical Mill. Then state claim, opponent and method together, and keep each coined phrase with its author.

Here is the method for naming a novelist.

ENL 1443 Identifying a Victorian Novelist From a Passage

Use 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. A wise narrator generalizing about provincial lives suggests George Eliot; a mocking narrator and a scheming heroine, Thackeray. Mills suggest Gaskell; Wessex and fate, Hardy; cathedral clergy, Trollope; secrets and many narrators, Collins; logic in a dream world, Carroll; a respectable man's double, Stevenson. Then confirm with the date and form.

Here is the method for matching works.

ENL 1444 Matching Victorian Novels and Novelists

Sort by author. Dickens: Oliver Twist, Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Emily, Wuthering Heights; Anne, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Thackeray, Vanity Fair; Gaskell, Mary Barton and North and South; George Eliot, Adam Bede to Middlemarch; Trollope, Barsetshire; Collins, The Woman in White and The Moonstone; Hardy, Tess and Jude. In prose, Carlyle, Ruskin, Mill, Newman, Arnold and Pater; in drama, Wilde's Earnest and Shaw. The three Brontës wrote different novels, and George Eliot is not a man.

Last, the century's end: its Gothic, its decadence, its stage and its children's books, before the capstone.

The Gothic returned.

ENL 1445 The Gothic in Victorian Fiction

The Gothic returned at the century's end: Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, of eighteen eighty-six; Wilde's Dorian Gray; and Bram Stoker's Dracula, of eighteen ninety-seven, which opens with the solicitor Jonathan Harker visiting a Transylvanian count. Earlier, the Brontës drew on Gothic mystery. Doubles, portraits, vampires. Late Gothic fears the hidden self.

Art claimed to make new worlds.

ENL 1446 The End of the Century: Decadence

The Decadent movement of the eighteen eighties and nineties, the fin de siècle, saw art and books as creators of new worlds. Its leading British figures were Wilde, Swinburne and the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. Dorian Gray is poisoned, as by a drug, by a book. Fin de siècle, art over life. Decadence extends Aestheticism.

Four errors need correcting.

ENL 1447 Common Errors About Victorian Fiction

Four errors recur. George Eliot was a woman, Mary Ann Evans. The Brontës first published under men's names, Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Jekyll and Hyde are one person, not two. And Pygmalion and Kim both date from after Victoria's death in nineteen-oh-one. Four common corrections. Always check the pen name.

The stage had its own fashions.

ENL 1448 Victorian Drama Before Wilde

Before Wilde and Shaw, the Victorian stage was dominated by melodrama, built on virtue, villains and family crisis, and by burlesque, broad musical parody, in which W. S. Gilbert began. Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray, of eighteen ninety-three, about a woman with a past, shocked audiences. Melodrama, burlesque, the problem play. Serious drama revived late in the century.

Critics weigh Dickens's heroines.

ENL 1449 Dickens's Women and the Critics

The anchor judges that Dickens's characters often reveal the biases of his age, particularly gender biases for and against the virtuous woman. Readers should therefore read his idealized heroines and his fallen women as products of Victorian assumptions. The angel and the fallen woman. This is the anchor's judgment.

Children got a golden age.

ENL 1450 Children's Literature

The Victorian period saw a golden age of children's literature. Carroll's Alice, of eighteen sixty-five, signalled a change toward imaginative writing for children; Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies, Stevenson's Treasure Island and Christina Rossetti's verse for children followed. Alice, The Water-Babies, Treasure Island. Children's books were literary works.

Here is the method for a Wilde epigram.

ENL 1451 Reading an Epigram in Wilde

Wilde's epigrams overturn expectations, so read one in four steps. Find the expected statement: "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune" sounds like sympathy. Find the turn: "to lose both looks like carelessness" treats a tragedy as a lapse in manners. Ask what the reversal exposes: Lady Bracknell judges by propriety, not feeling. Ask who speaks it, because the epigram characterizes her and satirizes the society that shares her values. The target is the snobbery that treats parentage as a social credential. These are satire, not nonsense.

The capstone weighs Victorian prose.

ENL 1452 The Victorian Achievement in Prose

Victorian prose made the novel dominant and realism its hallmark, reaching a mass readership in serials and three volumes. Dickens exposed the workhouse, the law and the cult of facts, told orphans' lives and converted Scrooge. The Brontës, as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, gave a governess her voice, layered a moorland passion and wrote an early feminist novel. Thackeray's Vanity Fair had no hero; Gaskell took the condition of England to the mills; George Eliot defended the faithful representing of commonplace things and wove a town into Middlemarch; Trollope chronicled Barsetshire; Collins helped found the detective novel; Hardy set tragic lives in Wessex. Argument flourished: Carlyle's condition of England, Ruskin's truth to nature, Mill's liberty, Newman's Apologia, Arnold's sweetness and light, Pater's flame and Darwin's Origin. At the end the Gothic returned, decadence prized art over life, Holmes popularized the short story, and Wilde turned epigram into satire as Shaw began. Identify the mode before naming the author.

This second part turned the prose into method. We described Dorian Gray, Shaw's plays of ideas, Kipling's India and the magazine short story. We explained the condition-of-England question, the woman question and realism. We read a fiction passage by narrator and social facts, and a prose argument by thesis, opponent and coined term. We named novelists by voice and subject, matched the works, and corrected the pen-name errors. And we met the late Gothic, decadence, the stage before Wilde and children's books, reading Wilde's epigram as satire before the capstone. Unit sixteen, Modernism, comes next.