VICTORIAN NOVEL

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VICTORIAN NOVEL
Chiara Del Bianco
5B
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CONTEXT

• 1837 Queen Victoria became Queen of the United
  Kingdom.
• Social changes Industrial Revolution, the
  struggle for democracy, growth of towns, birth of
  the middle class and of the working class, the
  clash between classes.
• Novels start to have an impact on peoples
  opinions and on common thought.

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FEATURES

• NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES- Grotesque The narrator
  deforms what he is writing to obtain caricatures
  or to parody and ridicule somebody. The grotesque
  works on sizes.() inflated like a balloon
  (). A man who was the Bully of humility. (Hard
  Times, C. Dickens)The board were sitting in
  solemn conclave (Oliver Twist, C. Dickens)-
  Pathos It is used to make the reader feel pity
  because he identifies himself with the
  characters. Children are often used to achieve
  this effect.
• He could not but observe how silent and sad the
  boys all seemed to be()The children sat
  crouching and shivering together, and seemed to
  lack the spirit to move about. (Nicholas
  Nickelby, C. Dickens)

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FEATURES

• FIGURES OF SPEECH- Metaphors () interminable
  serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and
  ever (Hard Times, C. Dickens) Serpent tentor,
  symbol of sin- Similies Unnatural red and
  black like the painted face of a savage, The
  piston of the steam engine worked monotously like
  an elephant in a state on melancholy madness,
  Four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs
  (Hard Times, C. Dickens)- Repetition It
  contained several large streets all very like one
  another, and many small streets still more like
  one another, inhabited by people equally like one
  another. (Hard Times, C. Dickens)

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THEMES

• Justaposition of classes and the contrast between
  the rich and the poor.
• Middle class family life
• Education
• Situation of children
• Factory work
• Fight for democracy
• Exploitation of women and children

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SETTING

• Cities and towns because of the Industrial
  Revolution and the consequently urbanization
  (Hard Times, C. Dickens)
• New Factories
• Schools (Nicholas Nickelby, C. Dickens Vanity
  Fair, W.M. Thackeray)
• Workhouses (Oliver Twist, C. Dickens)

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THE ANTI VICTIORIAN NOVEL

• Main novelists Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde
• Jude the Obscure is an example of this new
  literary flow.- The plot is different from the
  traditional Victorian novels it is about a
  couple who is not married and this was scandalous
  at the time- Characters are not too good or too
  evil they are more realistic- T. Hardy doesnt
  use irony or the grotesque to entertain the reader