The contribution of the women Victorian novelists.
Prepared by: Dhaval Diyora
Roll No: 05
Paper – 6: The Victorian Literature
M.A (English): Sem -2
Enrollment No: 2069108420190013
Batch: 2018-20
Email: d.d.diyora@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt .S. B Gardi, Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University.
Topic: The contribution of the women Victorian novelists
THE WOMEN VICTORIAN NOVELISTS
Victorian Novelists and the contribution of the women Victorian novelists in the development of the Victorian novel.
The Victorian Age :
The Victorian age, from the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837 until her death in 1901 was an era of the novel. The Queen Victoria ruled England from 1837 to 1901. It was time when a fresh generation in literature had arisen The earlier generation had nothing to add to their production, and the age found the expression 'among new men, strange faces, other minds ".
The Victorian Novel:
The Victorian novel continues to be largely in the Fielding tradition The plot is generally loose and ill-constructed. The story consists of a large variety of character and incident clustering around the figure of the hero. These characters and incidents are connected together loosely by intrigue, and the story ends with the ringing of wedding bells. Secondly, the Victorian novel is an extraordinary mixture of sentiment, melodrama and lifeless characters. We always find improbable and artificial in character and incident in Victorian Novels. The Victorians fail to construct an organic plot in which every incident and character forms an integral part of the whole. Still, it makes interesting reading. The novelists may not construct their plots well but they tell the story so well. They are so entertaining that we still love to read and enjoy a novel of the Victorian Age. The Victorian novelists give us comprehensive pictures of contemporary life. They also provide views of whole societies. The Victorian novelists are of varied moods, The range of mood is as wide as the range of subject. The Victorian novelists have not only a range of subject and mood; they also have creative imagination in ample measure. The creative imagination of the Victorian novelist works on the setting of his story and transforms it.
This creative imagination is also seen in the humor of the Victorian novelists. Each of the great Victorian novelists is a humorist. They have created a number of immortal figures of fun, each comic in his own different way. There are a hundred novels of fine jokes and witty remarks spread all over the Victorian novel.
The most important expression of this creative imagination is to be seen in the characterization, "The Victorians are all able to make their characters live." Their characters are amazingly alive. They are wonderfully energetic and vital. They are all individuals living their own existence. The victorian novel has a crowded canvas, crowded with living breathing individuals.
The Victorian novel lacks uniformity. It is extremely unequal: it is an extraordinary mixture of strength and weakness. It is technically faulty still considered as a fight for entertainment, and not as work of art. This artistic weakness also arises from the fact that the great Victorian novels were not published in book-form, but as serial stories in magazines and periodicals, The Victorian novel presents only a partial, one-sided view of life.
For these reasons, the Victorian novelists cannot be ranked with the very greatest, vet they have greatness in them. Their plots are improbable and melodramatic, their endings are conventional and their construction is loose. But their merits also are many. They are very entertaining they can capture and hold the attention, they have a creative imagination and they have the incomparable gift of humor. And these are qualities which only the great have.
WOMEN VICTORIAN NOVELISTS :
There is no doubt that 19th-century Women Victorian Novelist was able to succeed in a profession dominated by men. It was a kind of celebration for the women writer and the works of such celebrated writers as Jane Austen. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot, as well as some of their less remembered sisters, extended the opportunities for women in Victorian print markets.
The sky of Victorian Era presents a cross-section of writing by English women in the 19th century. During the Victorian Era, the Women Writers entered the literary marketplace in record numbers. Even a few British women planned for careers as writers during that time. Although women were generally excluded from the most areas of literature, by the end of the 1800s, "women wrote an estimated 20 percent of all material pub fished in England, a remarkable change in just three generations."
Katherine Reagan the library's curator of British Library said, "Many of the books don't reveal that the authors were female, it was common for female writers to publish under a pseudonym until well into the 19tfi century."This cloak of mystery was important for women as writing under a man's name could provide protection from criticism for unladylike thoughts.
Here are the most remarkable women novelists of the Victorian Era.
1. George Eliot (1819-1880)
George Eliot (1819-1880) was the pen name of Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans, a great Women English novelist. After her father's death in 1849, she traveled in Europe and then settled in London. There she wrote for important journals and became a friend of many important people. British intellectuals regarded her as one of the leading thinkers of her day George Eliot lived with George Henry Lewes a writer, from 1854 to 1878 although he was married and could not obtain a divorce under existing law.
Much of her fiction reflects the middle-class rural background of her childhood and youth. George Eliot wrote with sympathy, wisdom, and realism about English country people and small towns. She wrote seriously about moral and social problems. Her characters are living portraits.
Her masterpiece is Middlemarch, a long story of many complex characters, and their influence on and reaction to each other. Adam Bede (1859), her first novel, is a tragic love story in which her father serves as the model for the title character. The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Silas Marner (1861) are sombre works set against country backgrounds Silas Marner is the story of a cynical old miser who loses his gold, but at the edge, he turns to be a more human life through his love for a little girl. Romola (1863) is a historical novel set in Renaissance Florence. Felix Holt. Radical (1866), is the only political novel that is considered as one of her poorest novels. Daniel Deronda (1876), her last novel, displays her pro-Jewish sentiments. The book is largely a failure in spite of the warm portrait of its heroine.
2. Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell:
Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), an English writer, is best known for her novel Cranford (1853, The book is a lively account of life in the village of Knutsford, where she grew up. Gaskell also wrote two novels Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855), this novel shows her sympathy for the working class. She created believable characters and realistic backgrounds She had first-hand experience of the dark surroundings in which the worker lived and she presented them in her two early novels. She reflected the life of the workers with a note of sympathy for their unhappy lot. Mrs. Gaskell, however, did not offer any positive solution to the hardships of the laborers. Mrs. Gaskell also attempted psychological novels and entered into the thoughts and wayward moods of children with true insight, She made an interesting study of Women life and psychology in her famous novel Cranford (1843)
In Ruth, a psychological novel, Mrs. Gaskell deals with an ethical and moral subject. Ruth is an attractive swing girl who is betrayed and seduced by a young man at the age of sixteen. Ruth is left to die by the young lover. She is rescued by an unorthodox minister who takes her to his house and allows her to live as a widow. After a few days, the real fact about Ruth is revealed She again finds herself on the road where she dies. Ruth announces the approach of the psychological novel in a restrictive sense. Mrs. Gaskell "did not possess the clearness of vision, the equipment of knowledge, and the breadth of horizon required for completely satisfying the definition of the psychological novel. What she did in part was fully accomplished by George Eliot."
3. Jane Austen:
Jane Austen (1735-1817), born in Hampshire, received a better education than most women of her time. Austen began writing novels in her early 20's but did not publish them until late in life. Jane Austen (1775-1817) was one of the best-loved Women English novelists. She wrote with a keen sense of irony about the social institutions of her time. In each of Austen's six novels, a woman meets and marries an eligible man after a series of usually comic difficulties. Few authors have matched her sure eye for human weakness and her affectionate description of everyday life.
Jane Austen's first novel was Sense and Sensibility (1811) Pride and Prejudice (1813) is Austen's most famous work. In the novel, the lively Elizabeth Bennet dislikes Fitzwilliam Darcy's proud behavior and she is blinded to his better qualities. In Mansfield Park (1814), is a story of the long-suffering of Fanny Price who grows up by rich relatives. Her character may seem uninteresting compared with Austen's other Women characters. However many readers see Fanny as a successful portrait of personal integrity. Emma (1816) is a tale of the self-satisfied and overly imaginative heroine.
4. The Bronte sisters:
The Bronte sisters were three sisters who became famous novelists in the Victorian Era. They were Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), Emily Bronte (1818-1848) and Anne Bronte (1820-1849). Their lives and works are associated with the lonely moors of Yorkshire, England, where they were born.
Patrick Bronte, the sisters' father was a poor Irishman. He was a town clergyman in the small, isolated town of Haworth, Yorkshire. Patrick Bronte was somewhat eccentric and strict. The sisters' mother died in 1821, and the Bronte sisters were brought up with little affection of the family. The sisters went to several boarding schools where they received a better but in a harsh atmosphere.
The Bronte sisters were shy, poor, and lonely. They occupied themselves with music, drawing, reading and above all writing. Their isolation led to the early development of their imaginations.
In 1846, under the masculine pen names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, the sisters published a joint volume of poems. Although only two copies were sold all three sisters soon had their first novels published.
I. Charlotte Bronte:
Charlotte Bronte's famous novel Jane Eyre (1847) is largely autobiographical. Through the heroine, Charlotte relived the hated boarding school life and her experiences as a governess in a large house. Rochester, the hero, and master of the house is fictional. Jane Eyre was very much successful but many readers were shocked that Rochester, who tried to make Jane his mistress, should be rewarded by marrying her. Some readers were also shocked because Jane wanted to be regarded as an independent person, rather than as a weak female. Charlotte Bronte also wrote three other novels. The first one The Professor was not published until 1857, after her death. Shirley (1849) is set among labor riots of the early 1800s. Villette (1853), was the most popular of the three, is based on Charlotte's unhappy experiences as a governess in Brussels.
II. Emily Bronte:
Emily Bronte wrote only one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a romantic masterpiece. The work was not as popular as Jane Eyre It was even more condemned for lack of conventional morality and its glorification of romantic passion. However the author's vivid descriptions and her understanding of social class and individual temperament give, and a portrait of the moors reveals Emily as a poet of enduring power.
III, Anne Bronte:
Anne Bronte was the mildest and most patient of the sisters. Both her novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) can be seen as less violent versions of Jane Eyre.
Conclusion
We can say that there is no doubt that 19th-century Women Victorian Novelists were able to succeed in a profession dominated by men. It was a kind of celebration for the women writer and the works of such celebrated writers as Jane Austen Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot. as well as some of their less-remembered sisters extended the opportunities for women in Victorian print markets.
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