19th-century literature in Britain: the advent of a social narrative
Social novels, also known as realist fiction, have its origins in the C18th.
William Godwin (Caleb Williams and St. Leon) and Mary Wollstonecraft (Mary, a fiction and A vindication of the Rights of Woman) are two exemplary authors who
inserted social commentary in their fictional works. However, some of the most
representative social narratives were written during the C19th
century with the rise of the Victorian Age. In more than one way, the C19th
social narrative emerges as a reaction to industrialisation and its
socio-political and economic impact on people’s life.
The overriding
social and political problem facing British society in the early decades
of the Industrial revolution was what to do with the poor. In the long run,
industrialisation led to a growing standard of living for workers, but the short
run it lead to great problems such as inadequate housing (slums), high infant
mortality, appalling working conditions and bare subsistence wages – according
to the economic theories of the time to pay higher wages would only encourage
the poor to have more children and thus drive down the value of labour creating
only more misery.
Around the 1830s
the social novel emerges as a literary means of protest, promoting awareness of
governmental and industrial abuses and other repercussions suffered by those
who did not profit from Britain’s economic prosperity i.e. children, women, the
working class in general.
Most liberals
rejected the idea of social legislation designed to monitor the factories,
regulate child labour, and protect women workers as intolerable invasions of
the sacred right of property. Liberals deplored the misery of the poor and
often gave generously to charities, but they firmly rejected any government
intervention in the name of property rights and the free market. For the most
part, Liberals in Europe looked on the poor with a mixture of sympathy, fear,
and contempt. Only a few visionary with a penchant for social reform voiced
ideas such as government providing unemployment insurance for workers. Two
watershed civil rights laws that passed in the 1830s and helped change this
situation were: The Reform Bill of
1832, which gave the middle class
the political power it needed to consolidate their economic position, and The Poor Law of 1834, the first attempt
to create a welfare system under government supervision.
The social changes provoked by Industrial
Revolution were so swift and brutal that intellectuals and artists of the age
had to deal in some way with the upheavals in society, the obvious inequities
of abundance for a few and squalor for many. Initially some often sensationalised
accounts and stories of the deprived population were directed toward middle
class audiences to help incite sympathy and action towards pushing for legal
and moral changes. Godwinian
utopianism rapidly gave way to attempts either to justify the new economic and
urban conditions, or to change them. and crystallized different issues in periodicals and
novels for a growing literate population.
The Industrial Revolution was a period of dramatic
change and development in Britain During the Victorian Era, Britain
experienced an enormous increase in wealth, but this rapid and unregulated
industrialisation brought a host of social and economic problems. Writers such
as Thomas Babbington Macauley applauded British progress, while others such as
Mathew Arnold felt the abandonment of traditional ways of life represented a terrible
toll in human happiness. The economic and social difficulties
associated with industrialisation made the 1830s and 1840s a “Time of Troubles”
characterized by unemployment, desperate poverty, and rioting. Moreover,
the “Condition of England” became a central topic for novelists including
Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Benjamin Disraeli in the 1840s and
early 1850s.
One
of the most prominent writers of the social narrative or the so-called realist
novel of the Victorian period was Charles Dickens. He was a prolific author who
wrote over 20 novels as well as short-stories and plays. Dickens is the creator
of some memorable fictional characters, such as Ebeneezer Scrooge in the book A Christmas Carol, the character was not
merely a miser, but a representation of the mentality behind the Poor Law.
Scrooge personifies the unfeeling the mentality lying behind classical
liberalism and laissezfaire
economics, which transformed the welfare system under government supervision,
represented by the workhouses into a place of hardship, strictness,
degradation, humility and punishment rather than a welfare system of relief.
For example, when his business associates ask
Scrooge to contribute to charity he denies giving money claiming “I can’t
afford to make idle people merry. I help the establishments I have mentioned [workhouses]—they cost enough”. In response the associate says those are
degrading places and many would rather die to go got there. Scrooge responds
that it would decrease the surplus population. The ethics of Ebeneezer Scrooge (which
echo the ideas of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, as well as the ethics of the
millowners and factory builders who created Victorian England) are redeemed by
a heavy dose of Christian love and charity.
The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1937) explores the world of the workhouses,
orphanages and underage gangs of pickpockets in the slums of London. In Bleak House (1952) Dickens took on the
outdated British legal system, describing British lawyers as “a ravenous flock
of birds of prey, an avaricious tribe of extortionist making an unsavory living
out of what was, in effect, a form of considered and organized oppression.” His
accusations revealed a society filled with widespread injustice. But Dickens
stops short of blaming the political system, in his world, both good and evil
are the product of individual personality.
Today, Dickens’s
novels often strike modern readers as overly sentimental or, from a feminist
perspective, downright insulting to women - his female characters are all too
often stereotypes of feminine weakness. There are far too many scenes
where a young woman swoons. His heroines are all too often bright and strong
young women who sacrifice their lives to care for some adored male like a
father or a husband. His novels are full of emotional death scenes for angelic
children carried off by some disease or other.
From a modern
perspective, Dickens is always tugging at our heartstrings or pumping our tear
ducts! Many of the benevolent male characters strike modern readers as
simplistic and unrealistic in the extreme. In spite of this extravagant
sentimentality, or because of it, Dickens impressed his huge reading public the
image of a society that tolerated injustice and simply could not keep up with
the human needs of its population.It is difficult to place Charles Dickens on
the political spectrum. He criticized both Tory and liberal. He probably would
have described himself as a liberal. But politically, Dickens had a real
conservative streak; no one exposed social abuses with such clarity, but ultimately his art was
descriptive and passive He has few suggestions for reform. George Orwell,
author of 1984 and Animal Farm wrote of Dickens: “There is
no clear sign that he wants the existing order to be overthrown, or that he
believes it would make very much difference if it were overthrown.” (Hibbert,
p. 301)
He
absolutely misunderstood the significance of the conflict between capital and
labor. Like many reformers of the 1830s, Dickens had a naïve faith in the possibility
of reconciliation between the classes. He hopes that charity on the part of the
rich and sacrifice and patience on the part of the poor can guarantee social peace.
At heart Dickens regarded revolution as a far greater evil than exploitation.
Although he describes the social horrors of the early Industrial Revolution in
unforgettable language, he has no sympathy with the emerging labour movement.
The only
route towards social justice was through education and gradual reform not through
strikes or resistance. Dickens was the spokesperson for the liberal
bourgeoisie, the comfortable middle class.
So far as
the poor are concerned, they are idealized in Dickens’s novels only so long as
they remain poor and virtuous. Charles Dickens was not a real believer in
social mobility. In all of his novels, not one working class person really
rises out of a humble background into the middle class, into wealth.
Those who try to do so, like Uriah Heep, in David Copperfield (1949) are
soon brought down. For the poor, Dickens preached a message of patience and
endurance.
The extreme
inequities between men and women stimulated a debate about women’s roles known
as “The Woman Question.” Women were denied the right to vote or hold political
office throughout the period, but gradually won significant rights such as
custody of minor children and the ownership of property in marriage. By
the end of Victoria’s reign, women could take degrees at twelve
universities. Hundreds of thousands of working-class women labored at
factory jobs under appalling conditions, and many were driven into
prostitution. While John Stuart Mill argued that the “nature of women” was an
artificial thing, most male authors preferred to claim that women had a special
nature fitting them for domestic duties.
Editorial market
Literacy increased significantly in the
period, and publishers could bring out more material more cheaply than ever
before. The
most significant development in publishing was the growth of the periodical.
Novels and long works of non-fiction were published in serial form, fostering a
distinctive sense of a community of readers. Victorian novels seek to
represent a large and comprehensive social world, constructing a tension
between social conditions and the aspirations of the hero or heroine.
Writing in the shadow of Romanticism, the Victorians developed a poetry of mood
and character. Victorian poetry tends to be pictorial, and often uses
sound to convey meaning. The theater, a flourishing and popular
institution throughout the period, was transformed in the 1890s by the comic
masterpieces of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Very different from
each other, both took aim at Victorian pretense and hypocrisy.
Democracy,
Science and Imperialism
In a word, English government, society and literature have all become
more democratic. This is the most significant feature of modern history. The
second tendency may be summed up in the word “scientific.” A third tendency of the Victorian age in England is
expressed by the word “imperialism.”
The great novels
Realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with
characters, and long the novel was the ideal form to describe contemporary life
and to entertain the middle class. The novels of Charles Dickens, full to
overflowing with drama, humor, and an endless variety of vivid characters and
plot complications, nonetheless spare nothing in their portrayal of what urban
life was like for all classes.
Emily Brontë's single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is a
unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled
by an uncompromising artistic sense. The fine novels of Emily's sister
Charlotte Brontë, especially Jane
Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853),
are more rooted in convention, but daring in their own ways.
Thomas Hardy’s profoundly pessimistic
novels are all set in the harsh, punishing midland county he called Wessex.
Robert Louis Stevenson a master of his craft, wrote arresting adventure fiction
and children's verse. H.G. Wells.
By the end of the period, the novel was considered
not only the premier form of entertainment but also a primary means of
analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems.
Poetry
The preeminent poet of the Victorian age
was Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Although romantic in subject matter, his poetry was tempered by
personal melancholy; in its mixture of social certitude and religious doubt it
reflected the age. The poetry of Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was immensely popular, though Elizabeth's was more venerated during their
lifetimes. Browning is best remembered for his superb dramatic monologues.
Rudyard Kipling,
the poet of the empire triumphant, captured the quality of the life of the
soldiers of British expansion.
During the 1890s the most conspicuous
figures on the English literary scene were the decadents. The principal figures in the group were Arthur Symons,
Ernest Dowson,
and, first among them in both notoriety and talent, Oscar Wilde.
The Decadents' disgust with bourgeois complacency led them to extremes of
behavior and expression. However limited their accomplishments, they pointed
out the hypocrisies in Victorian values and institutions. The sparkling, witty
comedies of Oscar Wilde and the comic operettas of W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur
Sullivan were perhaps the brightest achievements of 19th-century British drama
