ATE VICTORIANS: The period during which Late Victorian Novelists wrote their novel was marked by a
gradual anti-Victorian reaction. The early Victorians felt a social and moral responsibility to portray society
in a realistic way denouncing its injustices but they also expressed faith in progress. In Late Victorians,
instead, faith in progress and society begin to recede and the novels deal with the growing crisis in the
moral and religious values. They did not identify themselves with their age as the early Victorians had done,
and attacked the optimism of their previous predecessors. In literature all this resulted in a sort of realism
which led the writers to reject any sentimental or romantic attitude and to focus above all in the clash
between man and his environment, illusion and reality, dreams and their fulfilment. Individuals were
alienated from the world and felt powerless to alter their destiny. In their new attitude, some of them
were affected by Naturalism which had developed in France following the theories worked out by Charles
Darwin which saw man only like a creature conditioned by heredity and environment.