THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

The Victorian Novel

The Victorian age established the predominance of the novel as the supreme
literary species that went beyond the initial status of mere form of entertainment to that of
a vehicle used to express the feelings, problems and mentalities of the day. In other
words, the novel became what poetry and drama had been for previous periods of literary
history (i.e. Romanticism and Renaissance). The introduction of universal education in
the latter part of the Victorian age contributed to the bifurcation between two forms of
prose fiction, i.e. the novel (serious art form, devoted to the real) and the romance
(different than the novel, devoted to mythic, allegoric and symbolic forms). The overall
idea was that the novel was supposed to adhere to the principle of truth.
Why did the novel come to be such a dominant literary form in the Victorian
period? Who read novels, and what motivated them to read? And where did they obtain
fiction from? In purely numerical terms, the audience of novels grew enormously during
the nineteenth century. In part, this was due to economic factors: the growth of cities,
which provided concentrated markets; the development of overseas readership in the
colonies, cheaper production costs in what both paper and printing was concerned; better
distribution networks, and the advertising and promotion of books.
Within the middle classes of the day, reading fiction was a means of relaxing, of
forming a mental space that was totally detached from the business of running a
home/household. The nineteenth century saw the birth of what was to be called leisure
time for both men and women, which meant that both genders regarded the novel as a
wonderful means of escape after a hard day’s work. Thus, reading served different needs
on different occasions: the important thing to note here is that there was an ever-widening
and increasingly cheap range of fiction with which to satisfy the varied needs of the
reading public.
Until the end of the 19th century, the so-called “serious fiction” was expensive
when it came out in volume form - new fiction was expensive and publishers were not
willing to publish cheaper original editions. The best method of entering into the

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possession of such a serious work of fiction was by borrowing it from so-called
circulating libraries (which charged the readers with a small fee and, thus, became
prosperous).

PUBLICATION
- Victorian novels were most frequently published in installments (serialisation):
a. Monthly parts (Ch. Dickens)
b. Serial publication in weekly newspapers (Ch. Dickens, for instance, was the editor of
two magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round, in which he published not
only words written by him – Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times,
but also works produced by other writers of the time).
- Advantages of these two main types of publication:
a. keeping contact with the readers – testing their opinion
b. necessity to keep their interest awake (SUSPENSE)– to buy the next installment
- Disadvantages of these two main types of publication:
a. the necessity to use too many characters and plots
b. inconsistencies
c. chronological presentation, which was often unappealing to readers
d. shortening of stories, in order to meet the space constraints of a magazine column.
e. many discuss the hero’s actions with the readers (authors enter into various types of
dialogue with their readers, attending to their desires in various ways). (W. M. Thackeray
applied this method in his novels)

Characteristics of the Victorian Novel

The dominant tendency in the Victorian Novel was realism in the sense of “a
marked necessity of reflecting the truth-social, economic or individual” 1 and, at the same
time, a vigorous observation of reality by the writer that preceded the actual process of
creation. As one of the known Victorian novelists, George Eliot, stated, “Art is the
nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with
fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All the more sacred here is the task of

1
Ileana Galea, Victorianism and Literature

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the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the people. Falsification here is far more
pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life...”2.
In connection with realism (a literary trend that approached the novel as a full and
genuine presentation of human experience) there emerged two main characteristics of the
realist novel: focus on characterization and on the background. The Victorian novel
abounds in details in what both the story and the actors within it are concerned.
The Victorian novel is generally based on the chronological presentation of the
hero's life from childhood to maturity and, eventually, to old age. There were two main
methods of introducing the character to the reader, i.e. 1. by giving a full portrait of the
hero from the very beginning, and 2. the character emerges as the story progresses, his
evolution being shown by the reactions he has towards the things that happen around
him.
Very importantly, the Victorian novel had a profound moralising tendency. The
role of the writer of such a novel was considered to be twofold at the time: 1. to depict
reality; 2. to teach lessons of virtue and morality, to make the readers meditate on the
nature of the characters' actions. In fact, it is believed that the fictional actions and events
described in a Victorian novel were illustrative of human nature in general.

Narrative technique in the Victorian Novel:

 3rd person narration (omniscient author) - a more objective form of storytelling in
which a narrator relates all action in third person, using third person pronouns
such as “he” or “she”. Unlike in the first-person narration, the third-person
narrator does not describe his or her role in the action, he is a mere observer of it.
Examples: W. M. Thackeray, Ch. Brontë, George Eliot
e.g. “For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course
determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good
number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of
their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever
told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as
imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like
a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly.” (George Eliot, Middlemarch)
2
George Eliot, Essay

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 1st person narration (autobiography) – more subjective (Ch. Brontë in Jane Eyre)
= the telling of a story in the grammatical first person, i.e. from the perspective of
an “I” or “We”, who can be an active character in the story being told, or mere
observer. It often includes an embedded listener or reader, who serves as the
audience for the story told. First-person narration focalizes the narrative through
the perspective of a single character (which served to introduce later on the notion
of unreliable narrator - is this narrator entirely reliable, is it true, can we trust
him/her?).
 e.g: “I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful
to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart
saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my
physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed”. (Ch. Bronte, Jane Eyre,
Chapter One).

Victorian Novelists
Victorian novelists are traditionally grouped into two main generations:
1. The first generation of Victorian novelists - Ch. Dickens, W.M. Thackeray,
The Brontë sisters, George Eliot. These novelists were seen as the spokesmen
of the Victorian era, staying close to the readers and writing about their
concerns. Their works were mainly critical of the age (see Dickens), but they
still betrayed a confidence in progress and in the moral improvement and
evolution of the individual. They enjoyed a lot of popularity.
2. The second generation of Victorian novelists – Samuel Butler, George
Meredith and Thomas Hardy. These writers had no longer confidence in
Victorian values and mentalities and turned against them, allowing their
works to be pervaded by a sense of pessimism. They enjoyed less popularity
than the first generation.

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 CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM DICKENS
(1812-1870)

The most popular writer of the Victorian era, and one of the most popular writers of all
times, Charles John Huffam Dickens gained his success due to his constant preoccupation with
poor and miserable people, whom he treated with sympathy and compassion. He created some of
literature’s most memorable characters, and his novels are in many cases moral parables.
Much of his work first appeared in periodicals and magazines in serialised form, the
favoured way of publishing fiction at the time. Dickens, unlike others who would complete entire
novels before serial publication commenced, often wrote his in parts, in the order in which they
were meant to appear.

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812, during the new industrial age.
His father, a clerk in the navy pay office, was extravagant and irresponsible with money
and, consequently, life was difficult for the large Dickens family. In 1822 they moved to
a poor suburb of London, where Charles’s father hoped to find better opportunities. In
1824, when Dickens was 12, his father was sent to Marshalea debtor’s prison, while the
young boy was sent to work for some months at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market,
London, in appalling conditions. Memories of this traumatic period inspired much of his
later writing, in particular his most autobiographical work, David Copperfield (1849-
1850). During this unsettled period his education was almost entirely neglected.
However, he became a voracious reader, familiarising himself with the works of, among
others Henry Fielding and Cervantes.
After his father’s release from prison, Charles returned briefly to school and then
found a job as an office boy. He quickly rose through the ranks, studied shorthand and
became a reporter of debates in the Houses of Parliament for a London journal. In 1833
he began writing essays of London life and manners under the pen-name Boz. These
essays were published in several different journals and the readers’ favourable response
persuaded the publisher to ask him to write humorous texts to accompany a series of
sporting prints. The Pickwick Papers, which became a novel that continued in monthly
parts through November 1837, and, to everyone’s surprise, it became an enormous
popular success. Dickens proceeded to marry Catherine Hogarth on April 2, 1836, and

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during the same year he became editor of Bentley's Miscellany, published (in December)
the second series of Sketches by Boz, and met John Forster, who would become his
closest friend and confidant as well as his first biographer.
After the success of Pickwick, Dickens embarked on a full-time career as a
novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate, although he
continued, as well, his journalistic and editorial activities. Some of the works written in
that period were:
[Link] Twist, begun in 1837 and continued in monthly parts until April 1839; 2.
Nicholas Nickleby begun in 1838 and continued through October 1839; 3. Barnaby
Rudge, 1842; 4. Martin Chuzzlewit, 1843-1844; 5. A Christmas Carol, the first of
Dickens's enormously successful Christmas books appeared in December 1844.
In 1842 he embarked on a visit to Canada and the United States in which he was
welcomed with enthusiasm by the crowds. He advocated international copyright
(unscrupulous American publishers, in particular, were pirating his works) and the
abolition of slavery. Subsequent criticism of American society in American Notes (1842)
and Martin Chuzzlewitt (1843-1844) caused much resentment among what had been up
to then a very appreciative American public.
For the next three years (1844-1846) Dickens travelled in Italy, Switzerland and
France, while continuing to write without respite. His attention to social problems
increased in the novels he wrote in the 1850s: David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard
Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities. He also found the time to found newspapers
and a theatrical company and to become involved in charity work. His personal life was
not, however, happy and his marriage ended in a separation in 1858.
In the period 1861-1867 Dickens was busy with immensely popular tours of
public readings in Britain and America. These years also saw the publication of some of
his best work: Great Expectations (1860-1861) and Our Mutual Friend (1864 - 1865). He
carried on his dynamic professional life until he had a mild stroke. He cancelled some of
his readings but began one more novel which was never completed. In June 1870 he died
of a stroke at the age of 58.