The Victorian Novel: main features
First of all in the Victorian Age the dominating literary form was the novel.
It was in fact easier to be read and understood by simple people, its plot was more interesting than any other literary forms, the main protagonists of the novel were the same people who read it so that they felt deeply involved in the adventure told, the writer and his readers shared the same opinions, values and ideals because they belonged to the same middle class, the setting was mainly that of the same city where readers lived. In conclusion the novel was a kind of mirror which reflected society and where a self-identification of the readers was possible.
Of course the middle class readers were the most avid
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In this sense “didacticism” was the dominating aim of most of the novels of these years. As a consequence the narrator is generally omniscient: he operates a marked division between good and evil characters, he judges people and actions, he makes its stories finish with a wise distribution of “punishment” for the evil characters, “retribution” for the good ones.
The plot of the novels was generally very long and complicated by many sub-plots: the writer also wanted to give a marked impression of reality so that he presented not only the adventures of the main characters, but also those of the secondary ones.
Victorian novel features
1) Omniscient narrator provided a comment on the plot and erect a rigid barrier between right and wrong (didactic aim)
2) The setting s the city (symbol of industrial civilization, anonymous lives and lost identity)
3) Long and complicated plot
4) Creation of character and deep analysis of their lives
5) Retribution or punishment in the final chapter
Dickens - a town of red bricks
The description of the modern city is depressing and repetitive. The city is rational, based on fact but the quality of the life is not good. Ten hospitals but no instrument for happiness. The life is boring, always the same, the life in the city swallow with lives in it. Irony in the description.
A part of the society lives in a different way from the Victorian’s canons:
Miserable, emarginated. Didactic aim: he creates characters,
There were some reasons that caused me to choose this novel. Its plot was very unique compared to other books I’ve read which are mostly adventure and many others. Its setting is quite modern since it took place in the early 1990s, making it more relatable to the readers.
The world today consists of children roaming the streets, technology taking over the world, and being able to work wherever you'd like but, could you imagine a life without all these things? Believe it or not there was a time in life where these things were very uncommon to see. This would be known as the victorian era. This time period was between 1837 and 1901. Daily life was very different from now. Health, social classes, and fashion are just three examples of how daily life was different in the victorian era.
The author’s style of writing is straightforward and to the point and the novel is unique because it is written through the different perspectives of the four main characters. The switching of perspectives throughout the book is what made the book so hard to put down. I could see, compare and contrast how the characters themselves feel about the situation. As this goes on, the reader can comprehend the characters’ personalities better and their view on the other characters. If this story was written from just one point of view, one wouldn’t be able to figure out each character’s thoughts and perception of people around them.
Therefore we have two main characters whose actions and even thoughts are observed by an objective narrator....
The book is simple and easy to read. The author has a good use of English language. He uses specific words, therefore making his book highly readable.
of the author and why he or she wrote the novel. In this case, one must delve into the lives of
The friendships and relationships formed and broken by characters and how they impacted on others at the time was a big part of the read. More
A: The narrator know about what is happening because in some parts of the story it has quotes from him.
There were many facets of the book that helped provide to the flow of the storyline. These include the use of flashbacks to build the structures of different characters, dialogue within the mind of the protagonist (further explained in next paragraph) that foreshadowed future events, and the suspense that was always building up under the surface. It kept the reader entertained and the conflicts never felt prolonged.
It is special to all readers because we can relate to Tom in different ways. The plot reflects real situations of that time. And the book has surprising twists pulling the reader into the book. Classical books are, among other things, enjoyable for people of all ages and timeless.
This paper will cover this topic by using the main aspects of Reader-Oriented Criticism, so it will also evaluate a few essays, reviews, or analyses on the book. Considering that there are two possible angles to interpret the book (idealistic or cynical), it is ultimately the readers who decide how they find its meaning, and their past experiences can influence that decision. In fact, these past experiences can also affect their character as a whole, possibly determining their attitudes towards life or the world. When analyzing the sources, this paper will focus on the parts of the book that people tend to reference most often when explaining their interpretations. It’s essentially important to see whether the readers from both sides are referencing the same scenes or different ones. If both “idealistic readers” and “cynical readers” are viewing the same moments from different perspectives, then that suggests their thoughts are essential to forming their interpretations, which supports the ideas of Subjective
The role that the city can add more to the theme of the futility,and directly hampers any opportunity for a communication. Eliot gives the vivid descriptions of the streets as follow.
the narrative. The description of the city emphasizes its social problems, and the choice of
great prosperity in Great Britain's literature. The Victorian Age produced a variety of changes. Political and social reform produced a variety of reading among all classes. The lower-class became more self-conscious, the middle class more powerful and the rich became more vulnerable. The novels of Charles Dickens, the poems of Alfred,
The line between nineteenth-century psychology and fiction is almost nonexistent. Based upon the contemporary scientific, medical, and public discourses, the topic of mental illness was examined across all fields. The mutability of this term, mental illness, draws the question of what made it so changeable in the nineteenth century. It is the aim of this dissertation to show the treatment of social and medical discourse in Victorian literature by exploring Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Roger Smith’s essay on psychology in periodical literature was the main inspiration for this dissertation. His statement inspired this research to explore how the medical discourse sparked public debate. Although his focus is on the discourse of different sciences, his research also inspired this dissertation’s attempt to prove a connection between academic fields, specifically literature and science. Smith’s articulation of his research is presented in such a way that helps provide a beneficial understanding of the discourse of nineteenth-century England.