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17
(1837-1901)
The literary scene
love came with two early Victorian
women novelists:
Emily Brontë
(
➤
p. 38
)
and
Charlotte Brontë
(
➤
p. 44
). They
came from a small village on the wild and
desolate Yorkshire moors, a Romantic
scenery which figures prominently in
Emily’s only and most famous novel:
Wuthering Heights
(1847). They lived a
life of isolation in the countryside but
they were also educated.
Emily’s novel is the archetypal novel of
Romantic love. Its hero, Heathcliff, is a
Romantic ‘dark’ hero
dominated by his
self-destructive passion for Catherine; Catherine, the heroine, is madly
in love with Heathcliff but bends to
social conventions
and marries
another man. Their love will continue after their death: their two
ghosts are said to walk together on the moor – an ending that shows
the influence of Romantic and
Gothic themes
.
Charlotte’s most famous novel is
Jane Eyre
(1847), the story of the
heroine’s life and her love for the mysterious Mr Rochester. The
book’s originality is in its mixture of
realism
(some scenes were taken
from Charlotte’s own life) and Romantic
imagination
. The novel’s
strength derives from its heroine: Jane Eyre shows a courage and a
determination uncommon to the heroines of a Dickens or of Gothic
fiction. She is passionate but not passive.
Technical features of the early Victorian novel.
The general
tendency of the period was towards a
mild realism
. The characters
of the novel tended to be acceptable to the majority of readers, and
identification on the part of the public was mainly in terms of
comedy
(especially Dickens’ characters) or the
drama of passion
(especially
the Brontë sisters’ heroines). Narrators were generally all-knowing, at
different levels: the narrator in Dickens is usually a companion to the
reader, and shows sound common sense; in Charlotte Brontë it is a
passionate deeply-involved first-person narrator. The great exception is
Emily Brontë, who in
Wuthering Heights
makes use of three different
narrators involving a shifting point of view.
S
tudy questions
1
Why did the novel become the leading genre in the
Victorian age?
2
What did Victorian readers expect from novelists?
3
What two characteristics do early Victorian novels
generally present?
4
What social concerns did Dickens show in his novels?
5
Which of his novels is a typical example of the
‘Victorian compromise’?
6
How would you define Charlotte’s and Emily Brontë’s
novels? Give reasons for your definition.
7
Describe the technical features of the early Victorian
novel.
The Railway
Station
, by William
Powell Frith,
well conveys the
combination of
new technology
and lively crowds
described in
Dickens’ novels
(1862).
The Brontë
sisters – Anne,
Emily and
Charlotte – in
a painting by
their brother
Branwell
(c. 1834).
001-027_The Victorians.indd 17
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