Chapter 4 The Victorian Period

I. Social backgroud The richest and most powerful The first urban and industrial society in the wo

rld The greatest empire ruling over ¼ of the worl

d’s masses, over 20 nations. Railways,telegraphs,journalism A period of great social unrest(Chartist Move

ment 1838-1848 Religious doubt(theory of evolution and positiv

ist philosophy) Reform Bill(1832) was enacted

II. Literary background-A Golden Age of Novel

97% people able to read by 1900 Cheaper paper Faster printing Easier circulation More working readers demanding

cheap literature:religious tracts, self-help manuals,reprinting of classics, penny newspapers, new prose and poetry which instructed and entertained

Monthly instilment became the fashion in novel publication

III. Artistic features

While sticking to the principle of faithful representation of the 18th century novel, they carried their duty forward to the criticism of the society and the defence of the mass. They were all concerned about the fate of the common people. They were angry with the inhuman social institutions, the decaying social morality.

Victorian literature, in general, truthfully represents the reality and spirit of the age. The high-spirited vitality vitality, the down-to-earth earnestness, the good-natured humour and unbounded imagination are all unprecedented.

IV.Major figures of this period

Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist Great Expectations Hard Times W. M. Thackeray: Vanity Fair Elizabeth C. Gaskell: Mary Barton Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights

George Eliot: Adam  Bede

The Mill on the Floss

Silas Marner

Middlemarch

Thomas Hardy: Return of the Native

Mayor of Casterbridge

Tess of D’Urbervilles

Jude the Obscure

V. Representatives of this period Charlotte Bronte

1.  Biography born on April 21, 1816, in Thornton, Bradford, Yor

kshire. In 1824, Charlotte began attending the Cowan Bri

dge school for daughters of clergymen. In 1831, Charlotte began attending school at Roe

Head, taught by Miss Wooler. In 1842, Charlotte and her sister Emily traveled t

o the Pensionnant Heger in Brussels. Charlotte was married in June, 1854, at the age o

f thirty-eight. In 1855, Charlotte died

2.Literary works Jane Eyre (1847) Shirley (1849) Villette (1853)

2.    Characteristics of Charlotte’s work

Subject matter: her works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-realization, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full happy life.

Her works shows an intense love for the beauty of nature but contempt for worldly ambition and success.

She is a writer of realism combined with romanticism. Her heroines are never endowed with the traditional virtues, s

uch as brilliant beauty, gentleness and subservience. She is a subjective writer. The involvement of Vharlotte in her

novels is obviuos. She is constantly reliving her own life in the fictional world.

Her novels are largely autobiographical.

3. Analysis of his masterpiece

(1)   Brief introduction of Jane Eyre

(2)   Theme Love Independence Social class religion

(3)   Character analysis Jane Eyre: an angry, rebellious,10-year-old orphan a

nd then a sensitive,artistic,maternal and fiercely independent young woman

(4)  Interpretations of Jane Eyre Gothic elements in the novel: Gothic novel is a type of

romantic fiction that predominated in the late 18th century. It was one phase of the Romantic movement. Its principal elements are violence, horror and supernature, which strongly appeal to the reader’s emotion.

A quest for love and independence.

B. Thomas HardyBiography:

Thomas Hardy was born at Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, on June 2, 1840

In 1870 Hardy was sent to plan a church restoration at St. Juliot in Cornwall.

Hardy and Emma were married in 1874.

in 1914 Hardy remarried, to Florence Dugdale, his secretary .

Thomas Hardy died on January 11, 1928 at his house of Max Gate in Dorchester.

Life of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

— a 19th c. novelist and 20th c. poet

His major works: A Pair of Blue Eyes

Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874

The Hand of Ethelberta, 1875-76

Return of the Native

Mayor of Casterbridge

Tess of D’Urbervilles

Jude the Obscure

Analysis of his masterpiece:

Tess of D’Urbervilles

The main characters

Tess Angel Clare Alec

Tess

— fair face, poor fate

An innocent girl, a pure woman, honest, beautiful, loyal, full of love and sympathy; a keen sense of responsibility; inexperienced and lack of wise

A victim of the society and economic oppression; a victim of Chance, a series of coincidences

Alec

Wicked but honest: Alec does not try to hide his bad

qualities. In Chapter XII, he bluntly tells Tess, “I

suppose I am a bad fellow—a damn bad fellow. I was

born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad, in

all probability.”

As his name—in French, close to “Bright Angel”—suggests, Angel is not quite of this world, but floats above it in a transcendent sphere of his own.

A freethinking son to work for the “honor and glory of man.”

However, his love for Tess is abstract. Tess may be more an archetype or ideal to him than a flesh and blood woman with a complicated life. Angel’s ideals of human purity are too elevated to be applied to actual people:

Angel Clare

Themes—It condemns the hypocritical moral standard

of the society;

The Injustice of Existence

—Strong fatalism. Tess a victim of chance. Man is subjected to the rule of mysterious power.

Men Dominating Women

—the way in which men can dominate women: Alec in an explicit way, while Angle in an implicit way

Changing Ideas of Social Class in Victorian England

The Stonehenge

Stonehenge