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THE NOVEL OF VICTORIAN ORTHODOXY

Below are lilted same of the major reasons for the spectacular success of the Victorianbourgeois novel.

(1) The English novel originated as a middle-class genre and it was the logical reading matter for the triumphant 1!th-centur"bourgeoisie.

(#) $nburdened b" tradition or status the novel was fle%ible and hence adaptable to the portra"al of the multitude of changingsituations is Victorian life.

(&) Escapism had become a ps"chological necessit" to an era bedeviled b" chaotic 'ndustrialism.

() ealism was the ostensible justification for the conscious reader as

escapism was the actual satisfier of his unconscious needs. *ust as +efoe had

earlier beguiled the middle-class readers with the pretense of genuine

reportage so the Victorian novelists appealed to their audience with the

semblance of the real world.

(,) The earnest Victorians sought and found in contemporar" novels

instruction for living amid bewildering comple%it" and change. ovelists

made sense out of the enormous variet" of choices and e%periences.

(* The novel assumed for the 1!th centur" the mission fulfilled in earlier eras b" the epic/ formulation of the 0m"th0 of the age. There

was no penser or 2ilton to perform such a tas3 in verse for the Victorian age. The most ambitious attempt to do this in verse was

Tenn"son4s somewhat pallidIdylls of theKing, andan" casual novel reader can name a score of Victorian novels of far greater m"th-

ma3ing power.

The outstanding characteristics of the bourgeois novel were/

(1) cceptance of middle-class ethics and mores. The 0good0 characters conform to principles of bourgeois orthodo%" and areproperl" rewarded.

(#) ocial orientation. The major human problem (rested b" the bourgeois novelists is the adjustment of the 'ndividual to hissociet".

&) Emphasis upon characters. The bourgeois novelists strove to produce fascinating rounded characters who resembled people theirreaders 3new or would li3e to 3now. 2ost characters were middle class in middle-class settings and with the t"pical middle-class

preoccupation even in 0historical0 novels. Their comple%it" was almost wholl" emotional lower-class figures were subordinate

usuall" treated patroni5ingl". $pper-class personages were viewed with a mhiure of env" and scorn.

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(6) The hero. The central figure though demonst rating human wea3nesses is molded to thebourgeois 'deal of the rational man of virtue. 7uman nature is believed tobe fundamentall" good and lapses from the bourgeois code

are errors of immature judgment which are corrected b" maturation.