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5. THE VICTORIAN NOVEL II
The Victorian Era (1837-1901) starts with the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria. At that time, Great Britain was the largest power in the world, both imperial and economic. Queen Victoria’s values also reigned: moral responsibility, eagerness, domestic propriety (decency, monogamy, the importance of the family, etc.). The society followed these values, she became a role model for the whole society. This era was full of prosperity, progress, changes, but also dark years, pessimism, crisis of values, controversy, etc. Industrialization developed greatly in those years and the population grew hugely, consequently, a demographic movement started: people from the country went to live to the cities to work in the factories, which developed too, thanks to innovations in the use of steam and other energies different to wind and water. There were new inventions too, like the telegraph, photography, printing or anesthetics. During the Victorian era social changes occurred, like compulsory education. Capitalism developed and thinkers like Matthew Arnold said that machines were going to replace men because progress erases society. About religion, there were religious debates and division in England’s church: high church, influenced by the Oxford movement, closer to Roman Catholicism and broad church, evangelicals against the authority of the Pope and the high church. They believed in inner spiritualism and had a negative opinion on humankind (because humans are evil and corrupt by nature). Society was very religious. The theory of utilitarianism raised at this time. This is, the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority. Women and children were victims of utilitarianism because this ethical theory looked for the benefit of the “important” majority: men. With this, the spread of many subjects like biology, geology, psychology, archaeology or medicine came. Specially, the studies of Charles Darwin (grandson of Erasmus Darwin), who identified humans with animals, and said we come from them. He was very strict with moral laws and very puritan. He rejected from every sexual perversion, for instance homosexuality (double morality of the Victorian times). The Victorian era is divided into three periods: early, mid and late. The first one, when Queen Victoria comes to the throne in a time of troubles. The railway between Liverpool and Manchester is built. There are reforms to eliminate the archaic voting system. There was an economic depression, industrialization (which carried bad working and sanitary conditions) and heirs of the French revolution, which provoked that the society asked for political reforms. The mid- Victorian period carried economic prosperity, growth of the empire and religious controversy. Industrialization and capitalism developed with political reforms. Working conditions started to be regulated. There was optimism, prosperity and political influence of Britain internationally. This time is when realistic novels are written. The late period brought skepticism, decadence and serialization. Middle classes read tons of Victorian times. There was a development in printing (it was cheaper), and consequently, newspapers, magazines, short stories, essays, etc. All male children had compulsory education, so readers increased, and the first libraries appeared.
Respect to literature, Victorian novels are about those who are unprotected by the system: women, children and lower classes. There was no compulsory education for women. This, combined with the cheaper printing, had as a result more readers, and consequently, more novels, that were mainly influenced by realism (Dostoyevsky, Pérez Galdós, George Eliot, Flaubert). Realism represents the social world with believable characters and situations. Some of these Victorian novels defended Victorian values, others like Dickens’ novels point out the negative things of this era and the main characters are the weakest members of society. The authors wrote about what middle classes were concerned about. Themes like class position, gender mobility (like Jane Eyre ), violation of hierarchy. Women protagonists were very recurrent ( Madame Bovary, Ana Karenina, Agnes Grey ), but also women as writers (Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell). In novels there is strong presence of the author, denouncing injustices in gender and social class. Therefore, we can say that there are two main themes in Victorian novels: the women question and the condition of the English questions. Although men achieved rights due to the French revolution, women remained without the right to vote, higher education, divorce, property… The essay Vindication of Women’s rights by Mary Wollstonecraft and the industrial revolution are the main triggers for the debates about women’s situation. Some laws allowed women to gain some rights. Thus, married women could keep some properties and a custody act was approved. In education, they were taught the necessary things to be a good wife and mother. In 1848, in London, was opened the first college only for women. In Oxford and Cambridge, women could assist to the classes, but not obtain a degree. About the English question, there were debates about the industrial revolution. People started working in factories, which created a socioeconomic model criticized by some authors. Associated to the industrial revolution occurred the migration to the cities and the bad working conditions. However, little by little, these things started to be regulated and trade unions appeared. Authors like Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell or Thomas Carlyle denounced this. 5.1. CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) Charles Dickens was born in Portmouth in a large family. They were always moving from one place to another. They suffered from financial difficulties. He had to abandon school and started working in a factory of shoe-blacking. His father went to prison because of debts, so all the family was imprisoned, except Charles, who had to work. At 15 he started to work for a lawyer, then he became a freelance journalist, writing short stories and sketches. At the age of 24 he was commissioned by the newspaper to collect all his sketches and publish them as a book: The Pickwick Papers, a picaresque novel about the journey of Mr. Pickwick and his friends. Charles Dickens started his career publishing chapter by chapter in newspapers and magazines creating a great suspense, so the readers kept buying his works. In his novels, the Victorian society is represented: working classes, orphans… He deals with heterogeneous themes and writings. His characters and situations are believable and realistic, this way, readers identified themselves and their lives in the novels. Dickens contributed to consolidate the Victorian values like honesty, hard work or morality. He denounced the poverty and injustice in society
5.2. WILLIAM M. THACKERAY (1811-1863)
William M. Thackeray was born in British England. His father died when he was a child and his mother sent him to England, where he was educated at schools in Southampton and Chiswick. He began as a satirical moralist and parodist. During the Victorian era, he was ranked as second only to Charles Dickens. Charlotte Brontë dedicated him the second edition of Jane Eyre. Thackeray embraces the Victorian values like the importance of money and private propriety, hard work, honesty… he has a pessimistic view of human nature: the vices and abuses of Victorian times cannot be eradicated. From his point of view, the major problems of Victorian society are: hypocrisy, greed, snobbery, flirting, lying, selfishness… Through satire and parody, Thackeray provides a lesson. He also laughs at social conventions and considers that there are no heroes in real world. Vanity Fair is his first work published under his own name (the rest were published under a pseudonym). It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848. The novel takes its title from the place designated as the centre of human corruption in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. Metaphorically, it represents human condition. The novel deals mainly with the interwoven fortunes of two women: the wellborn, passive Amelia Sedley and the ambitious, essentially amoral Becky Shrap. The adventurous Becky is the novel’s central character and the person around whom all the actors revolve. She becomes a governess to get money and a husband from a good family with no money that are waiting for their rich aunt Mathilda to die. The story framed as a puppet play and the narrator (omniscient), despite being an authorial voice, is notoriously unreliable. The novel is a satire of society, characterized by hypocrisy and opportunism. It is not a reforming novel, there is no suggestion that social or political changes or greater piety and moral reformism could improve the nature of society. Thackeray’s tendency to highlight faults in all his characters display his desire for a greater level of realism. With their lives (characters), the author is condemning consumerism and capitalism. 5.3. GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANNE EVANS) (1819-1880) Mary Anne Evans was born in the midlands in a good family. She was very clever and wanted to read all the time, thirsty for knowledge. She went to a local school and later to a boarding school. Highly religious, raised by an evangelical family. At the age of 17 her mother dies, so her father, her brother Isaac and her, moved to Coventry. There she was exposed to German criticism of the Bible (rationalism) and started to read philosophers of the age. She starts to lose her faith and becomes an intellectual, a free thinker. Because she is rejected to go to college, she reads and studies all on her own. Not satisfied, she decided to travel through continental Europe. Two years later, she comes back and moves to London. It was a scandal
in her family. She started to get male friends and lovers and becomes the assistant editor of the Westminster Review, a very important publication in London. She meets, falls in love and lives together for 20 years with George Henry Lewes, a drama critic. Even worse scandal. Consequently, she broke up with her family and was rejected in the literary circles. George Henry Lewes encourages her to write, so she wrote Adam Bede , and she becomes George Eliot, her penname (since women’s literature was considered a sin). She wrote an essay: Silly Novels by Ladies. She wrote about how good writers were Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë. She wanted everyone to think she was a man. She became the favourite novelist of Queen Victoria. George Henry died in 1878 and she married John Walter Cross, 20n years younger than her. Her main works are Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss , among others. She often uses provincial settings. She helps to consolidate Victorian novel and put it in a higher intellectual level, but also criticizes Victorian times. Her novels are often placed in pre-industrial times (1820s) and rural life. Her protagonists are usually ordinary people, she considers the rural communities to be more limited, so they have a narrow view of the world. Later, her characters are more complex and present and authoritarian. She allows herself to make judgements about the characters. Mary Anne Evans believes that the behavior of ordinary individuals is what changes the world. Therefore, she writes about the woman question: strong characters like Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch or Maggie Tulliver that have a great potential to love and to learn, but it is wasted because of the bad choices and the impositions on them. She wants the readers to love these women, she tests her characters with painful situations in which they must choose. The Mill on the Floss (1860) is a very realistic in depicting the psychological motives of the characters. That is why the readers feel sympathy for them. When reading this novel, we find the tensions between a woman and the social impositions. We find determinism like the flood in the floss against the free will like the decisions of Mr. Tulliver. Sometimes determinism prevails, sometimes it is free will, depending on the situation. Usually the first one is present when there are forces of nature: the flow of the floss taking away Maggie and Stephen, for example. There is something autobiographical in Maggie. Both Evans and she are intelligent, thirsty for knowledge and beauty, longing for tenderness, approval, admiration. They are both victims of the Victorian mentality: lack of education for women. The main themes of this work are:
- Childhood vs. adulthood: childhood is the paradise. When Maggie grows up and especially when she gives up with books and education, the mistake begins, she becomes a fallen woman, at least to the people of the town.
- Unconventional femininity: Maggie is not quiet, obedient, tranquil, she is “too clever for a girl”. But, she wants to be loved by her family, although her mother considers her a mistake.
- Education: as mentioned, it was different for girls and boys. The author says it should be reformed (we must remember that she did not go to college for being a
