THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

Giorgia Moro 5^B

Birth and influence in society Themes Settings Language Narrator The anti-victorian novel

1840

The industrial civilization had reached a state of acute, generalized crisis.

The middle class and the working class began to have some contrast

Novels began to have a real impact on legislators, opinion

formers and those who could vote.

According to the reaction of people novelists changes their way of writing

To write a novel became an industry itself

Clash between classes: the logic of Utilitarism

Coketown by C. Dickens: “ it was a town of machinery”, “tall chimneys”, “a river that run purple” “these attributes of coke town were mainly inseparable from the work by which it was sustained”.

Children exploitationVanity Fair by W. M. Thackeray : “I have been treated worse than a

servant in the kitchen”; “I have been made to tend the little girl in the lower schoolroom”.

Oliver Twist by C. Dickens : “Oliver Twist and his companion suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three month”; “the master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the laddle, pinioned him in his arm ..”

Education Nicolas Nickleby by C. Dickens : “go and look after my horse, and rub

him down well, or I’ll rub you down”.

Industry place where desperation and alienation born.ù

Coketown by C.D. : “ it was a town of red brick”; “ the solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door”.

School the most evident scene where the clash between classes and the exploitation of children take place.

Nicholas Nickelby by C. D.: “After this, there was an other hour of crouching the school room and shivering with cold, and than school began again.”

Nicholas Nickelby : “ he dismissed the first class to their experiments in practical philosophy, and eyed Nicholas with a look, half cunning and half doubtful..”

Pathos: narrative technique that produces feelings of sadness and sympathy in the reader.

Grotesque: rhetorical figure in which objects are exaggerated in order to create caricature.

Mr. Bounderby by C. Dickens: “a man with a great puffed head..”

Hyperbolic use of language: exaggerations entertain the reader.

Mr. Bounderby by C. Dickens: “ he was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacture, and what not”.

Thanks to these aspects the writer can criticize the reader and some aspects of the Victorian society in an indirect way

Language of sense impressionCoketown by C. Dickens :“ it was a town of red brick”; “black canal”;

“rattling and trembling”; “ill-smelling dye”.

MetaphorCoketown : “..out of which an interminable serpent of smoke trailed

themselves for ever and ever”.

RepetitionCoketown : “at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same

pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same

as yesterday and tomorrow”.Mr. Bounderby by C. Dickens: “ I was one of the most…, I was so sickly, that

I was always…, I was so ragged”.

The reader can creates a mental picture of the scene but also can smell and hear the alienated world of the Victorian age.

Third person narrator

OMINISCENT INTRUSIVEThe writer knows everything The writer wants to about society . involved the reader

in in the narration. “our”-”we”

Plot: Jude is time the eggs while he is waiting Sue, her lovers, and their children.

Children do not arrive so he goes upstairs and finds three of them hanged on three hooks. They have decided to die because they are “too many”.

Characteristic of the extract:

Jude= name taken from the catholic world. It means cheater. The choice of this name is based on the wedding’s value in the Victorian age. As a matter of fact Sue is not Jude’s real wife. Hardy wants to underline this aspect.

“Done because wee are too many”: these worlds seem to be tell by an adult instead a child. It is in line with the philosophy of Darwinism in which the stronger wins. This thought might never be associated with a childish mind. Commit suicide also is a extreme act that only an old person can do pushed by his will.

“it was in his nature to do this” : the doctor says that it was written that the child will be probably commit suicides because it is in his nature. Hardy uses the figure of the doctor in order to represent the middle class’ philosophy of Darwinism.