Name:
Trivedi Disha Hiteshbhai
Paper no: 6
Topic: Major Victorian novelist
Year:
2015-2017
M.A Sem =2
Submitted
to: Smt. S.b.gardi department of English m. k. Bhavnagar Universit
Assignment
Paper no 6 (Victorian age)
Topic: write note on major Victorian novelist.
§
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Introduction:
In Victorian era we have many Novelists. They all are very famous for
their creation. Here i’m select some of them for my topic like..
- · Charles Dickens
- · Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell
- · Bronte sisters (Charlotte,
Emily, and Anne)
- · George Eliot
Now i would like to give some detail about them.
v Charles dickens:
Charles dickens (1812-70) is an central to the Victorian novel as
Tennyson is to Victorian poetry. Dickens's struggling, unhappy
childhood, as the son of poor, debt-ridden dock clerk , brought him into
contact with debtors prisons and forced him into work in a blacking factory at
the age of twelve. By perseverance he became office boy, journalist and finally
original contributor to periodicals. His satirical “sketches by Boz” proved
popular and the Pickwick Papers, following hard offer, made his name. In the
journey of a novelist it is said that he had to undergo two most traumatic
events. The humiliation of the blacking factory and the disgrace of the
marshalsea debtor’s prison. The sickening shame of both seeped to depths of his
writing and haunting him for the rest of his days.
The Pickwick paper was a great success. Dickens fame was secure. He
lived to enjoy a reputation that was unexampled, surpassing even that of scott.
His popularity was exploited in journalism, for he edited ‘the daily news’ and
founded ‘household words’ and ‘all the year round’. He also commenced his
famous series of public readings that brought him much money. He died in his
favourite house, god’s hill place.
After earning a lot name and fame dickens had been offered an
opportunity to stand for parliament but although he cared desperately about
social reform, he had no political axes to grind. His constituency
was the whole world, his policy the dignity of human beings. He abhorred
the impersonal machinery of a state fuelled by the evil power of wealth, and in
his writing he championed the cause of its victims who
were defenseless, dehumanized, degraded, demoralized and
deflated-victims powerless to help themselves.
Dickens’s exceptional sensitivity expressed itself through his characters
who were based on real people and much of his own vitality and experience
flowed through their veins. In many powerful passages he exposed the exploiters
and dyrants for the impostors they were ridiculing the
pompous, deride the insensitive and creating caricatures of all
those who had ceased to be human. He promoted the underprivileged whom society
had cast aside, eliciting a sympathetic response from his readers and
communicating warmth and kindness to those he supported.
Dickens has written wonderful novels and he has enriched the Victorian
novel. Apart from his Pickwick papers, he has to his credit few works, they
are:
- · Oliver twist,
- · Nicholas
- · master Humphrey’s clock
- · the old curiosity shop
- · A Christmas carol
- · David Copperfield
- · black house
- · hard times
- · a tale of two cities
- · Great expectations etc....
His style is neither polished nor scholarly, but it is clear, rapid and
workman like the style of the working journalist. As W. J. Long states,,
“dickens is excellent reading, and his novels will continue to be
popular just so long as men enjoy a wholesome and absorbing story”.
George Eliot:
Introduction:
George Eliot was one of the greatest novelists of
the Victorian age. She stood at the gateway between the old novel the new, no
unworthy heir of Thackeray and dickens and no unworthy forerunner of hardy and
Henry James. She was essentially a novelist of intellectual life and her
psychological insight into the motives of her characters was deep and profound.
Like Meredith she intellectualised the novel and gave in a moral fore
our and ethical bias, which it had not yet possessed in the hands of
dickens and ohackeray. She made notable contribution to the English novel
by giving it an air of sobriety, sternness and which it had not attained in the
hands of the early Victorian novelists.
George Eliot as a modern novelist:
George Eliot is known as a modern novelist in spite of living in
Victorian Age. She wrote in the fashion contrary to that of her contemporaries,
Dickens, Thackeray, etc. She is not completely divorced from the traditions.
She draws her picture in the Victorian style, but she develops it in a new
direction.
The Victorians, on the whole, were instructive and
they wrote what they wanted to write. Eliot, on the other hand, was an
intellectual and she wrote what she should have written. She is known as the
first intellectual novelist. Her novels are the embodiment of her
ideas. The main charm of the Victorians lies in the individual expression,
whereas, in Eliot, our interest is kept up in the way she analyses and
diagnoses problems. Eliot rejects dogma and wants to analyze the causes of
every problem she comes across.
Her scenes are more real than those of the Victorians because her
realism is not only documentary but also psychological. To other novelists,
realism is an intellectual necessity but in her case, it is a creed and emotion
rather ambition which follows avidly. Her picture is more realistic owing to
her clear perception of realities. She draws her characters inside out.
The Victorians were satisfied with the apparent realities whereas Eliot
penetrated deep into the phenomenon and brought to light the hidden
causes.
The Victorians, too, were satirist but they satirize just to create humor so they were ordinary humorist, whereas, Eliot satirized as a serious thinker. Her humor was of a distinct type i.e. intellectual and psychological humor soaked into deep pathos. She fused together comic irony and mild satire to create humor and her end was to moralize. Her humour had a serious message underlying it. This kind of humor is employed by the modern novelists.
The Victorians, too, were satirist but they satirize just to create humor so they were ordinary humorist, whereas, Eliot satirized as a serious thinker. Her humor was of a distinct type i.e. intellectual and psychological humor soaked into deep pathos. She fused together comic irony and mild satire to create humor and her end was to moralize. Her humour had a serious message underlying it. This kind of humor is employed by the modern novelists.
Other Victorians did have a moral touch but, in Eliot, we find moral
earnestness. Like Fielding, she wrote to inculcate moral in the people. But her
concept of morality was quite different from that of Fielding’s. She reshapes
the consciousness of the individuals in order to remold the whole
structure of the society. She believes in the presence of the moral code
at the heart of the universe. She made novels the embodiment of her moral
ideas. In “The Mil on the Floss”, she denounces the dominance of the self
recklessness, loose-living etc and emphasizes on the absoluteness of duty,
endurance, renunciation etc. her concept of morality is based on human values
and the laws of human heart.
Her psychological approach also makes her modern. The clear sighted
vision of the essential of character gives her a definite edge over the
Victorians like Bronte, Dickens, Austen, etc. The grasp on the psychological
essentials makes her draw complex characters better than the Victorians,
because she draws them inside out.
The insight into human nature makes Eliot’s picture of human
nature more homogeneous than that of Dickens, etc. She shows that saints and
sinners are made of the same clay; however, the latter lack the necessary
strength of mind. She has ardent sincerity which compensates for many of the
feelings of her aesthetic judgment.
Eliot is reveler of the self. Characters like Maggie are
the self-portraiture's of Eliot. She unveils herself through her
female characters. Eliot broke away from the fundamental conventions of form
and matter. She rejected the standardized formula. She conceived one idea and
its logical development.
She is modern in inspiration, too. Earlier, novel was meant only for the entertainment of the middle class reading public. Eliot’s intellectual approach made novel a ‘meeting place of problems’. She studied Man in relation to higher aspects of life. Eliot was the first novelist to discover this particular track on which the modern novelists are treading today. Though Eliot lived in the Victorian era yet she is modern novelist since she wrote in the modern fashion. But she cannot be called ‘Victo-modern’. Eliot, in contrast, is exclusively orthodox and Victorian in her ideas and modern in her approach. She can also be differentiated from Hardy in the sense that he is peculiarly Victoria in his style and approach and modern in his ideas. To be curt, Eliot is a modern novelist living among st the Victorians
She is modern in inspiration, too. Earlier, novel was meant only for the entertainment of the middle class reading public. Eliot’s intellectual approach made novel a ‘meeting place of problems’. She studied Man in relation to higher aspects of life. Eliot was the first novelist to discover this particular track on which the modern novelists are treading today. Though Eliot lived in the Victorian era yet she is modern novelist since she wrote in the modern fashion. But she cannot be called ‘Victo-modern’. Eliot, in contrast, is exclusively orthodox and Victorian in her ideas and modern in her approach. She can also be differentiated from Hardy in the sense that he is peculiarly Victoria in his style and approach and modern in his ideas. To be curt, Eliot is a modern novelist living among st the Victorians
v Three Bronte sisters:
- · Charlotte Bronte
- · Emily Bronte
- · Anne Bronte
§
Charlotte Bronte:
she broke a new ground in the history of the English novel. The novelist
following the example of Jane Austen had chosen to portray the manners and ways
of social life. Hitherto the novelists had undergone no revolution of mind or
soul. They were still faithful to the 18th century, still engrossed by the outward spectacle, fascinated by life’s
multitudinous variety, exhilarated by its humors if
not unendurable touched by its pathos, but
as yet unaware to the call of the deeper imagination.
She replaced the literature and the novel of manners by the novel of
spirit and the inner life of the soul.
“ A literature of manners was to give place to a literature of the
spirit”, says baker, in the novels of Charlotte Bronte.
In her novels the soul was at last awake to its own existence and its
relations to a complex and perhaps inscrutable universe. She looked into her
heart and wrote of thing she had intimately known. “At any rate, her
significance in the course of action is that she delineated the intense moods
of her own heart and imagination, which have their rapport in the moods of the
race.
v List of novels by Charlotte Bronte:
- § Jane Eyre
- § Shirley
- § Vilette
- § The professor
v List of novels by Emily Bronte:
- § Wuthering Heights(1847)
v List of novels by Anne Bronte:
- § Agnes Grey (1847)
- § The tenant of wild
fell hall (1848)
this is something about theme i hope it will be helpful to batter
understanding.
Thank
You...
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