UNIT 7

VICTORIAN IDEALS, PRINCIPLES AND VALUES

SCIENCE AND RELIGION – BILDUNGSROMAN AND OTHER GENRES

1. Changes and Challenges

1.1. Mental Effects
1.2. Intellectuals and their Arrangements
2. Developments
2.1. Nature and Science
2.2. Religion
2.3. Mind
3. Literary Creation: Bildungsroman, etc.

1. Changes and Challenges: A new order?

Intellectuals of the time noticed about the new society, a society after industrial
revolution, the effects of the industrial revolution were being felt, the new model was
industrial and urban. Suddenly, parts of the country started creating an identity of their
own that had nothing to do with the traditional image of rural England, particularly in
the south of the country. But then, one of the interesting things is that this model was in
many ways not felt as a new order, but as a new disorder. That is, what people were
complaining about was that all these changes were taking place, and there seemed to be
no one in charge of projecting how these changes should take place. This idea was felt
as particularly noticeable by, for instance, some French visitors to the country who
realised that England was changing, but not because the government was doing
anything to make it change; but rather because people were doing things that were
making it change. So Tocqueville, an important traveller/politician of the time was
really shocked, and he noted in his commentary that “at every turn human liberty shows
its capricious creative force. There is no trace of the slow continuous action of
government”. This is why it is significant, because this illuminates/tells us something
about a very different essence about the way of thinking of the country in France and
England. France had always been a much centralised country, and there had always
been the belief that it was the central authority that
introduced/planned/projected/programmed the changes of the country. This is
something that did not happen in England because it was perceived that the English
nation had developed a distinct personality. And this personality, developed
particularly during the second half of the 18thC, was characterised by two qualities:
uncoordinated creative energy; that is there were lots and lots of entrepreneurs;
people deciding just to do something practical in life, to apply the scientific or technical
discoveries into the building/production of anything. So there were lots and lots of
people transforming England, and transforming it because there was a sort of
intellectual substrate/basis that made them very individualistic. So these two features of
the “English personality” of the time, helped England develop its industrial revolution,
and helped the country develop without any government apparently being able to take
the lead. That is, most governments were not taking the lead but rather running behind
social changes in order to introduce changes/adaptations/reformations or any sort of
regulations to make up for the social problems that were envisaged. That is why in fact

1
there was, at the time, a great deal of controversy concerning whether the state
should operate, should intervene, in the social problems. There were many people
defending the idea of some “remedial planning”; that is, why not creating
governments or people/institutions to solve the social problems that were arising at the
time. On the other hand, there were also people defending a more traditional, classical,
liberal attitude, being very reluctant to intervene. So it was the old debate: do we need a
state, or shall we simply leave society shape itself? The problems were very visible,
particularly in the Northern cities of the country, because small hamlets became huge
cities; what triggered problems in housing, with public health, sanitation, sewage,
ventilation, water supply, etc. That is, cities were very ill-built. They had not been
designed by anyone; they had simply grown up as mushrooms without any plan/system.
Of course, this affected working conditions: there were no working regulations made
by the authorities, and everything was sort of improvised. And, being improvised,
everything basically depended on the will of the factory owners. There were lots of
problems in terms of public health: cholera, typhus, consumption. And of course, there
was not even a regulation of commerce and education. So the county found itself with
lots of new things, and no ways of programming these changes. This is the idea
expressed by Davies, in these commentaries that you find on the slide: personal
relations were changed, social problems emerged, and industrial organisation was
sort of “steam-powered” without any “corresponding civic organisation”. This is
interesting because, this first commentary (on the slide) could be taken to represent an
interesting phenomenon: the industrial revolution had taken place because machines had
been introduced in factories and they had a sort of rhythm that was apparently not
decided by man, but decided by machines themselves. In a sense, people started feeling
that they were being dominated by the rhythm of machines: the factory, and the logic
of the factory, the logic of production, was becoming more and more important than
human will; and people had not got used to these changes. So they had to invent new
patterns of behaviour.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disraeli – Coningsby – Progress

This commentary is visible in the middle of a novel. Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister,
wrote several novels trying to comment on what was then a major topic in the English
novel: the so called “condition of England novel”/ “condition of England question”.
There was a national debate on what to do with the changing realities; and instead of
writing articles, or complementing his articles/essays/speeches about that, Disraeli
wrote a novel, well, he wrote a trilogy in fact, one of the novels of which was called
Coninsby. In this novel, the character is made to express his opinion about these recent
changes. Mind that apart from the commentary about the new changes, it is significant
that this text shows the topicality of the English novel of the time: how English novels
were about what was going on in the street/country. They were not about how this girl
loves this guy. Many of them were about this particular topic (i.e. events/changes in real
society). The character is sort of complaisant about the extraordinary economic
development of the country, there is a “concentrated stimulation”. And then he speaks
in rather grandiose terms about “the supreme control obtained by man over mechanic
power”; and he speaks about “a rapid advance of material civilisation in England”. But
then, we have the dark note in the closing part of the commentary: “but there was no
proportionate advance in our moral civilisation. In the hurry-skurry of money-making,
men-making, and machine-making, we had altogether outgrown, not the spirit, but the
organisation, of our institutions”. He is, in general terms, quite benevolent with the

2
economic and material developments of the country. Disraeli was a conservative prime
minister, and he was favouring the interests of the new oligarchies; but, apart from this,
he has to acknowledge that the country has not developed morally or intellectually as
much as it has advanced materially. This is a tension that will be seen many times.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Changes and challenges
1.1. Mental effects

Mental effects: all the obsessions and fears, and threats that were perceived by people
at the time. The portrait should make us think that people were all the time going to
their psychoanalyst to cure them from their obsessions; but there was no psychoanalysis
at the time, people were just complaining about the modern world.
A) – For instance, in many texts, and there are so too many, and so too vague, it is
expressed a sense of a lost natural beauty; that nature was something to remember (“oh
nature is something I used to see when I was a child”, or “where I was grown”, or “my
family came from the country”). There a lots of nostalgic commentaries in many
novels. People living in towns, working in factories, who suddenly remember that they
were once happy, when they were children, playing in a common garden or wherever.
This idea is present in many texts.
B) – Then, the complexity of modern life also favoured a “sense of unassimilable
incongruity”. That is, there are so many things happening, so many people, that we
cannot make sense of it. Mind that lots and lots of illustrations of the period are
crowded with people; and out of this crowd of people, it is very difficult for us to make
sense of what is going on. This created a sort of fear that, as there is so much confusion,
one cannot mentally arrange the things that are happening any more; one cannot decide
what is important and what is not. Evidently, at the beginning, there was, in many cases,
a more or less positive, what Joaquín calls a “picaresque relish of disorder as
spectacle”. For instance, in Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, written in the year 1836, there
are always public gatherings of people, lots and lots of people, lots and lots of parties,
meetings, and lots of characters; and people enjoyed that idea, because there was the
association of something to celebrate about it. But, in the long run, as Dickens grew
darker and darker in his production, some people like John Ruskin started using the
term “grotesque” not to refer to this original celebratory dimension, but rather to the
disconcerting effects that confusion has on people; people that get disoriented, that
cannot make sense of the world; grotesque occasions, which call for empathy, because it
is not something to celebrate/enjoy, but rather something to feel pity for (i.e. when
someone is involved in such grotesque occasions). So, something grotesque, as it was
used at the time, referred to something deformed, calling for a sorrowful attitude
towards it; so it was not positive but rather, later on, something negative.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1. Mental effects

C) – This idea was also expressed by the most influential thinker of the first half of the
century: Thomas Carlyle. And, concerning the industrial squalor, particularly of the
North of England, he complained that what was needed was some sort of general
“supervisal (i.e. supervision)”; he was calling for supervision by the central government,
supervision from a centre, the necessity to make the object clear. There are lots of
positive things that are demanded because what reigns now, in his opinion, is darkness
and “unreadable confusion” (beautiful metaphor: a present situation that is so confused
that is unreadable; if you cannot read, you cannot make sense, you cannot understand,

3
you cannot get a meaning from that confusion). So, in an article on Chartism, he is
defending particularly this idea of a central government, making/helping people to make
sense of reality by introducing some general criteria to solve all these problems.
Apart from this commentary, there were many other opinions about the problems faced
by people involved in this industrial squalor. For instance, something characteristic of
the time is that many social commentators were aware of the suffering of low-class
people/workers. But the position from which they expressed their sorrow, their painful
appreciation, was a position of middle class comfort; and in general, they were looking
down on these people, or were not very optimistic about anything that could come from
these low classes to solve their own problems. They [middle classes] felt that they were
the ones in charge of helping them, because in general, there was a prejudice about their
ability: poor people are, in many texts, expressed by benevolent writers of the time, just
unable to express themselves, unable to solve their problems; the suffering they are
experiencing is turning them dumb, deaf, and unintelligent. This is the feeling which is
seen in Carlyle, who is sympathetic towards the suffering of poor people, but at the
same time, he is prejudiced against the capacity of this people to solve their problems
or, to be given a voice: these low-class people are suffering, yes, we have to do
something to help them, but let us not let them have a political voice of their own; they
[workers] cannot create a political movement of their own. That is why Carlyle said that
these people are “inarticulate souls, struggling there, with inarticulate uproar, like dumb
creatures in pain, unable to speak what is in them”. He is trying to help, but not to pay
to them any attention; he knows better what they need. This is very unfair, because in
the chartist movement there were lots and lots of political leaders who were very
articulate; who were perfectly able to express themselves and to express their political
demands. But benevolence in the Victorian period, took always the form of a protective,
paternalistic, middle-class consciousness, it is middle classes, talking from above,
saying “oh how these poor people are feeling, let us do something for them, let us do
some charity, let us help them”. But in general, there was no voice given to them. This
is particularly felt in Carlyle, who was very sympathetic towards them, but who was
talking in the 1830s, and was deeply frightened about the social turmoil that could be
created if the extension of power to middle classes could be extended also to lower
classes/working classes; he was very afraid of the social consequences of this.
Some other social commentators, 30 years later, like Matthew Arnold, were also ready
to complain not against low classes, but to complain about middle classes: he claimed
that middle classes were not generous enough; that middle classes were not ambitious
enough; that middle classes were contented with the respectability they had achieved,
and with the moderate degree of comfort they had achieved for themselves, and were
not ready or willing to share it with anyone else. But this was a very interesting problem
that was in the minds of many people.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bleak House – Jo’s experience – Tom-all-Alone’s

This is an excellent example of this paternalistic, protective view of low classes

suffering: if you are feeling so sorry for them, why do not you make any of them a hero
of your novels? Dickens never does that; he always selects for his novels boys or girls
of moderate, low-middle class, or upper-low class, who can easily move up in the social
ladder; never definitely low-class people who are self-made men, this is a dangerous
social message for them. One of the characters that he created in Bleak House, to
complain about the poverty of people in the slums of London, is some boy called Jo, a
boy who lives alone, has no surname, has not known any family, he lives alone in a very

4
ugly place; he is a sort of squatter in a dirty street in the middle of London, in Chancery,
called Tom-all-alone’s (the portrait of the place is very evident). It is one of those
typical streets in which all houses have decayed, have been abandoned, and poor people
are just gathering there. This is the place where Jo lives; a place where his only
occupation is to sweep a crossing all day long. He goes to one of the respectable houses,
nearby, and spends the day sweeping in order to get some money from people living in
the area; that is his way of living; he is a very low one.
But then, selected in red, we have the idea that this boy is suffering so much that he is
completely unable to express anything, articulate anything intelligent about his life,
feelings or whatever. Whenever anyone addresses him, he repeats mechanically the
formula “I don’t know nothink”: “Jo sweeps his crossing all day long… He sums up his
mental condition when asked a question by replying the ‘he don’t know nothink’. He
knows that it’s hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to
live by doing it. Nobody taught him even that much; he found it out. Jo lives – that is to
say, Jo has not yet died – in a ruinous called Tom-all-alone’s”. And then, there is a
beautiful, but very sad, description of the way his street is abandoned, and at the end he
returns to the usual formula that appears every time Jo speaks: the only thing he says,
mechanically, is “certainly Jo don’t know. ‘For I don’t’, says Jo, ‘I don’t know nothink’.
The idea is that “well, we can feel sorry for him, but we cannot make a prime minister
out of him. Let us just feel sorry for him, at that is all”.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1. Mental effects

D) – Among the social changes that took place thanks to the industrial revolution, there
were sections of the English country/of English people, who had to move from the
country to cities; and there was also an alteration in the ways that traditional family life
was conducted. Particularly when families were involved in industrial life, the
configuration of common family, and the relationship between members of the family,
was altered, the traditional model was no longer valid.
For instance, we have instances within novels, particularly in the novels of Dickens,
where we have alterations of the traditional functional family (i.e. more or less
conservative family). There are children and women who are working, fathers that are
unemployed/ill/drunkards or have deserted the family, or we have little children who
have to behave as fathers and mothers to sisters and even to their parents. We have
many alterations of the normal order of family life or, as in the case of Dickens, we find
young boys who either are orphans (i.e. the traditional hero of a Bildungsroman tends to
be an orphan), or have simply deserted their families because life is unbearable in those
conditions. There are lots of instances of low-class life in which the father and the
mother are alcoholic, or they are infected with venereal diseases, and all that (these
cases are very frequent); and lots of cases of physical violence between members of the
family; so all these ideas are present everywhere.
Evidently, it was interpreted by social commentators of the time as an indirect/direct
consequence of the “disorder” that had been created by the new family life (i.e.
industrial life), as if all this had not existed in previous times: idealisation of the past
that took place at the time.
An interesting reading of the living conditions of people in the slums of Manchester was
made by Engels, the German philosopher and politician who wrote with Marx. Engels
was German but his family had a factory in Manchester, and so he had to spend several
years living in Manchester, taking care of the family company/factory. Evidently, it was
very cruel for him, he was a businessman, member of a family of businessmen, but he

5
was aware of the cruelty and the oppression of people; and he wrote extensively about
the bad conditions of life in the model of industrial city at the time, which was
Manchester, as opposed to London, which was a model of a city based on commerce
and trade (i.e. these were the two big models). Engels wrote extensively about the
ugliness of life in Manchester, and he even indulged in some nostalgic portrait of how
happy life was in “old rural England” (striking notion for anyone who thinks of him as
someone looking for the future). He was in a sense romantic about his vision of the
beauty, and the perfection of structure, in the old regime; particularly in England,
because it is true that all rural life in England had been much better than in any other
country in Europe (particularly than in France). The standard of living among rural
communities in England in the C18th and early C19th was much better than in any other
country (i.e. it was very good; people lived more or less affluently in comparison).
Evidently, Dickens gave us models of dysfunctional families. But he also gave us
models of people who tried to overcome all these initial difficulties; particularly, the
most self-complaisant model that he proposed was that of David Copperfield, although
there are lots of problems with the personal development of these character (something
we will see in the last section of this unit, when dealing with examples from several
Bildungsroman, namely Jane Eyre and David Copperfield, as models of “female” and
“male” Bildungsroman).
E) – Then, a general idea was that the age was producing a new, more unfeeling and
less human kind of being: the time was so obsessed with money, with living conditions,
that in general people were growing “harder”, both the poor, and also the money-
oriented rich people.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Butler on family (The Way of All Flesh, Ch. 24)

A spectacularly extreme example concerning the “disruption of the notion of family”

is found in one interesting, funny commentary by Butler. He was a Victorian, but a very
eccentric person, and wrote extensively about the very existence of the institution of the
family (because he considered he had been ill-treated by his father throughout all his
life; why? Because his father did not give him enough money. This was enough for him
to feel rancour for his father. Although there were other powerful reasons: he had been
physically ill-treated during childhood by his father, who aimed to make him a more
serious learner/student of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other languages that were “very
interesting and necessary” – irony).
In The Way of All Flesh, his autobiography, which is a perfect portrait of the cruelty of
Victorian society, he made the following reflection: “it seems to me, that the family is a
survival of the principle which is more logically embodied in the compound animal –
and the compound animal is a form of life which has been found incompatible with high
development”. A compound animal in biology is any animal which is made of two or
more simple parts or individuals in combination, such as coral: in coral, one animal
grows and then it has descendants, which grow by it, and they just accumulate, they
always keep together; there is no individual life for any member. So he plays at showing
that nature makes families live together only with species of animals that are inferior;
the essence of a superior animal is to get detached, separated from his/her family.
Evidently, this would be considered heretic, in former societies or by any conventional
person, but Butler was a very eccentric person, fond of breaking people’s minds about
conventional visions; and he is very provocative here, when he is claiming that if we
want to feel that we have developed or evolved over coral, the best thing we should do
is to forget about our families and live separate lives (which is what he did all his life).

6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1. Mental effects

F) – A radically altered sense of space:

First, the city becomes a world of its own, one that cannot be grasped; it is so big, that it
is impossible to be able to really control any of these cities. It was not only the
incredible size, but also the incredible density (illustration by Doré, a beautiful
illustration of London that conveys the sense of the density of population). This
density of population was considered inhuman at the time; no happy life can grow in a
place like that.
One of the social groups that felt most powerfully threatened by this change of size and
density in cities was that of the middle classes: they realised that they could be absorbed
in the corrupting social influences of, particularly, “the masses”. It was the first time in
history in which people were speaking eloquently and extensively about that new,
dangerous, infectious animal: the masses (the masses were, by the way, human beings,
human workers, the working classes. But they were speaking about them as if they were
some sort of virus that would infect them). And it was the time in which it became more
and more evident the process of creating suburban societies/boroughs: people in the
centre of cities, middle-class people who could afford to move outside, in order to try to
live more “decent” lives. Evidently, the introduction of railways made it possible for
many people to live outside London, and so away from the danger of having to share
space and rub shoulders with poor people (i.e. it was seen as something very dangerous).
In fact this is another thing that is commented many times: the excessive closeness.
There are portraits of life in the streets, and writers do not fail to note this idea that it
seems like disrupting, or strange, for the mentality of people that the rich and the low
can walk together in the street. They are living so close, and there is no way to create
individual, separate spaces for each of them. It was something felt as threatening,
dangerous or, at least, uncomfortable.
G) – Another interesting and funny effect is that on the altered sense of time:
Industrial rhythms belonged to the machine: people adapted to the necessities of
machines, not machines to the necessities of people (e.g. there are a lot of factories
nowadays in which there are three separate units for workers: morning shift, afternoon
shift, night shift). The machine cannot stop, it is people who have to adapt to the rhythm
of machine, it is not “well, what is comfortable for all of us? To work from eight in the
morning to …?” No, people adapt to machines; people are the arms and legs of the
machine. It is not that the machine helps us to produce things, it is us that help the
machine to produce them: a revolutionary inversion of the status of people over
machines. This was also brilliantly portrayed by Samuel Butler in his work Erewhon,
in which he speaks about how in fact we feel that we are superior to machines, but we
are only instruments in the hands of machines. In fact, something that people could also
perceive was that traditional life had always accepted patterns that depended on the
evolutional cycles of nature: traditional rural life adapted to the cycles of nature, in
a way that was felt as slow and easy flowing. E.g. what do you do in October?
Something that depends on the natural qualities of October. What do you do in March?
Something different that depends on the qualities of March. This happens when you are
living in the country, when you live following the cycles of agriculture and nature.
What are you doing in October different from March in an urban-industrial
environment? Nothing, just listening to someone; so you are not living according to the
cycles of nature. You have completely forgotten about the cycles of nature. For
someone living inside the new industrial/urban model, October, November, are exactly

7
the same as March or April. People lost all sense of life following a pattern that makes
stages different from each other. Not following a nature-made programme, but a man-
made programme; one that is not very benevolent with you.
Some other effects were very comic. For instance, there were many medical studies at
the time claiming that railways should be suppressed because they were very dangerous
for the health of people: apparently travelling at 30mph could blow your brain. This was
felt at the time as something frightening, that these things could have a damaging effect
on their minds.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gaskell – North and South – Industrial and Financial Rhythms

A writer who wrote powerfully about this, and a writer who I will quote anew in unit 8,
but this extract is a good illustration of her writings, is Elizabeth Gaskell: she was the
wife of a priest living in Manchester, a Unitarian priest; and she started writing novels.
She came from the North of Wales, from a rural area, and she got really impressed by
life in industrial Manchester, and all her novels are about the contrast between ways of
life in the South and the North, in the country and the city. She invented a town called
Milton (which is evidently Manchester) and she commented on the idea that people had
become instruments, or were completely dominated by the lifeless rhythms of
machines: “Meanwhile, at Milton the chimneys smoked, the ceaseless roar and mighty
beat, and dizzying whirl of machinery, struggled and strove perpetually. Senseless and
purposeless were wood and iron and steam in their endless labours; but the persistence
of their monotonous work was rivalled in tireless endurance by the strong crowds, who,
with sense and with purpose, were busy and restless in seeking after – What?” Can you
see the idea that people are trying, struggling to cope with the rhythm of machines?
People that do not know why they are doing things; they are doing things that are
“senseless” and “purposeless”. Do really people know what they are doing when they
are working in a factory? Are they aware of what they are doing? Or are their lives as
“senseless”, and “purposeless”, and “endless”? The very funny thing about this extract
is that, apart from the industrial rhythms, the rest of the extract depends on another
aspect that made life very difficult to live at the time, which was the new, accelerated,
financial rhythms: all the towns that were growing up so quickly depended on the
building of factories. Factories had to be built/companies had to be created in many
cases thanks to the financial support of banks or institutions. Evidently, this created a
very heated atmosphere and rhythm concerning investment of capital and financial
activities. Evidently, it also created something we all know very well: bubbles, and
collapses, and crises and all that. And people felt, very powerfully, for the first time
perhaps in history, that companies could go up, and suddenly and unexpectedly go
down, for reasons that had nothing to do with production, with commerce, with trade,
with quality, with anything… just purely financial operations that had nothing to do
with industrial activities. In fact, at the time, they experienced for the first time that
financial activities had a life of their own that had nothing to do with the secondary or
instrumental function that they had previously had. That is, at the beginning, it had
always been felt that banks were there to help people to do things. This evolved into a
radically new situation: banks are there to make money, God knows out of what; to
make operations that are not directly oriented towards helping industry grow or
whatever; operations that were not based on anything that could be touched or measured.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1. Mental Effects

8
H) – Economy: there was frenzy of share-investment and of financial gambling. Why
did this take place? Particularly because of two legal regulations: one, the abolition of
the Usury Laws in the year 1854. So, suddenly bankers could lend money, according
to the laws of the market; there was no restraint by the government. The Usury Law had
always tried to keep bankers quiet; by means of the abolition of this law, they were
given complete freedom, they can lend as much money as they want and at the rate of
interest that they want, given that the market allows it. This was the first measure that
favoured this. The second measure was the legalisation of limited liability: it meant
that if you invest money, or you create a company or whatever, your legal and economic
responsibility can be limited (e.g. you borrow some money, you create a factory, that
factory loses ten million pounds, but you are not obliged by anything to pay ten million
pounds; there are other ways of solving this problem: “no my responsibility concerning
this company just extends to ten thousand pounds, the rest of the money is lost”). Which
is what happens nowadays: you create a company, and then you lose all the money, the
company is destroyed but you do not have to pay for all the money that your company
has lost. This was a new phenomenon that took place at the time. Evidently, there were
lots of novels commenting on the tragedies deriving from speculation; lots of novels in
which a family was living comfortably, only worrying about their sentimental affairs or
whatever, and suddenly the father goes bankrupt and suddenly they have to change
everything. One of the most spectacular cases of this takes place in Vanity Fair by
Thackeray: remember that there are two girls, Becky Sharp and Amelia Osborne.
Amelia Osborne lives in a rich family and her father is a financial agent or banker or
whatever. He goes bankrupt and suddenly she loses her husband, they lose the family,
and she has to move to the very humble borough at the time of Chelsea were only poor
people lived. Suddenly, all her life expectations are destroyed because of her father’s
misfortune. There are a couple of bankruptcies in every novel written at the time,
because it was so typical. The slide also contains a few examples of novels written
primarily about all these financial problems: Little Dorritt, the Dorritt family has to go
to Marshalsea prison because they go bankrupt. Then also novels by Douglas Jerrold,
Charles Reade, Trollope.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thackeray – Jeames de la Pluche

There is an interesting short story by Thackeray about an individual called “Jeames de

la Pluche”. The beginning shows the financial mobility of the time. It starts like this:
“considerable sensation has been excited in the upper and lower circles in the West End,
by a startling piece of good fortune which has befallen James Plush, Esquire, lately
footman in a respected family in Berkeley Square”. I hope you have noticed the change:
this James Plush was a footman, that is, a servant. The story is about how he gets a
fortune by investing money he has borrowed from a friend (i.e. he suddenly becomes a
millionaire). Being now a millionaire, he even changes his name: from James Plush, he
starts calling himself “James de la Pluche”, which sounds more appropriate for his new
status in society. And how did Mr Plush get all his fortune? By “speculating in
railroads”; and he managed to get thirty thousand pounds out of the twenty pounds that
he started with. So there were lots of stories in which people go up and down very
quickly in this world. So, people started feeling that social position, which in many
cases also implied individual identity, was not very certain, was something they no
longer could feel confident about.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lewis Carroll – Through the Looking-Glass – The Shop

9
This confusion is even present in a very crazy, extravagant manner, in Lewis Carroll’s
Through the Looking-Glass. There is a funny episode in which Alice goes to a shop, and
the shop is not the traditional one in which you can see every object on the shelves.
Everything is appearing and disappearing, and there is no way to get hold of them. This
is comic, but many people have commented that this is an ironic reflection on the
volatile conditions of the market in England at the time. Shops in which things are
there, are not there. You can buy things that do not exist. You think you are buying
something and this something is transformed into something else (and you are doing
that when you are buying on Ebay or on the Internet, when you buy something and you
do not even know if the company exists). Another funny aspect of this extract is that the
shopkeeper is a sheep, and this sheep is very active, knitting all the time, knitting at
such pace that she can see as many as fourteen arms knitting wool, all the time. Perhaps,
as many people claim, this is another ironic reflection on the fact that industrial
production was expanding without a consideration of the social needs of population:
first you produce, and then you will find out who is going to buy your product. This
new mentality is comically expressed here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1. Mental effects

I) – Evidently, individual relations and social relations were also altered at the time.
First, people stopped relating to each other within a relationship based on status, but
rather based on contract. That is, it is not that I am inferior to you and that I owe you
some respect; our relationship depends on the commercial terms that we establish for
ourselves. So, instead of being people who have known each other, and know our
respective places in society, we are perfectly free to bargain about the conditions of our
relationship. If I have this to offer to you, you need this from me, then we can do it. It is
not the traditional scale in which everyone knew exactly what he had to do and to whom
he had to help or for whom he had to work. Evidently, there were more fluctuations in
working and living conditions of one single person.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2. Intellectuals and their arrangements

Let us now move to intellectuals trying to make sense of all these changes, expressing
views on all this. As Arnold expressed, what he lamented was that we should find a sort
of “steadying idea”, an idea to keep society coherent and cohesive, that is together, and
a society that would be collaborating in achieving something; something that some
thought that did not exist. In fact, they started feeling worried about the birth of a new
concept that they felt minimised the responsibility of the individual: the concept of
“society”. In much the same way as machines were limiting the scope of activity and
free-will of people, they started feeling that society, and the processes that take place in
society as a whole, are constantly limiting our capacity to act/re-act in ways that are
independent, free, or according to our views. People started feeling that society meant
the loss of something they had felt ideally to possess or to be in control of previously,
which was evidently an illusion. Who had felt that he was in control of his or her life in
the C18th? Very few people. But these few people were, in the C19th, much more
worried than they had felt earlier. And we mean the traditional high/middle-class man of
letters who felt that he could live more or less individually, comfortably, out of his rents,
to devote himself to writing without worrying too much about his income, because his
income was guaranteed. More and more people, when the world became more industrial,

10
felt that this comfortable position of independence was more difficult to attain, and so
they started blaming “society” (“oh, society is constraining me, is not giving me
freedom to be just the man who has free-time to think, and write, and meditate, and
walk, and go fishing”… this is the idea). And this happened with many men of letters at
the time, they complained about this lost paradise of personal autonomy for them.
Evidently, some controversy existed about the necessity of social engineering or state
intervention and centralisation: “should we implement measures to organise society?”
Evidently, there was also the “liberal approach”, which was represented mainly by the
intellectuals that came to be known as the Manchester School of political economists.
There was a group of people defending that market forces, free competition and the
releasing of all restraints would make society progress, and that society has always
mechanisms of self-adjustment, and that everything in the end becomes fair; and there
was always the hope/promise “let us help economy progress and advance and, in the
long run, everyone will get the benefits”. In contrast, there were “progressive
reformists” who were all the time trying to enforce legal regulations on everything, and
trying to spread a national structure of inspectors to take care of all these things. One
prominent figure was James Kay-Shuttleworth, who spent his whole life working as an
inspector of improvements in all the cities of England; and even Matthew Arnold, the
famous thinker and writer, spent his whole life as national inspector for the “national
board of teachers/schools” (or something like that); he spent his life travelling from one
city to another trying to measure the standards of quality of schools. So, they created a
sort of body of inspectors who tried to keep control of the quality of all this.
Evidently, the most coherent philosophy of the time was Utilitarianism. In order to
make sense of the strange world and to explain what measures should be taken in order
to produce everything, utilitarianism was capital. Utilitarianism was called
“Benthamite” at the beginning because of the figure of Jeremy Bentham, who died in
1830 or so, and he was a close friend of another important leader of this school, whose
name was James Mill. They created that school of utilitarianism; it was very influential,
particularly in the first 20 or 30 years of the C19th, and this role was later on inherited
by John Stuart Mill (“the basis of utility in our lives is the presence of pleasure”). He
said that the dominant principle of his philosophy was, as described by Phillip Davies,
“the impersonally rational principle of utility, cutting a path through the individualistic
thickets of short-sighted sentiment and blind self-interest: the usefulness of any measure
was to be calculated at the micro-level in terms of the measurable balance between the
basics of pleasure and pain, at the macro-level as to whether it served the greater
happiness of the greatest possible number”. So, the philosophy of this man was very
simple, for some people it is even reductionist: “why do we do things in life? Simply
because we are looking for pleasure. So, whatever we do in life is oriented towards
getting pleasure and avoiding pain. Whatever we do in life is based on a calculation on
the pleasure we are going to obtain, and the pain we are going to avoid. And, everything
in society should be considered good or bad, not according to some old-fashioned
principle of Christian morality, but rather according to the benefit it is going to give to
the individual. Of course, it is “desirable” if that benefit is extended to more and more
people. So, everything in life can be, in a sense, quantified: how much pleasure, how
much benefit is obtained from this. And so, everything is analysed in terms of this
philosophy: what is good vs. what is bad for me, the pleasure I obtain, the benefit I
obtain, and then whatever that is granted to one individual, will be granted to him, if it
benefits more and more people than if it causes some negative condition on others. So,
everything in life is to be based on this sort of mathematical reduction of choices.

11
Of course, I will return to this utilitarian philosophy later on, because it was very
influential and I have tried to relate it to the principles of Darwinism (later on, in the
section devoted to science). And, later on, I will use it again in unit 8, when talking
about social measures, because it is very central to the study of Hard Times, the novel
by Charles Dickens.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2. Intellectuals and their arrangements

However, there were lots of contradictions and tensions on how to imagine the solutions
that were needed, the principles to be obtained, etc. For instance, one of the first people
who tried to implement precise political measures deriving from the utilitarian
principles was Edwin Chadwick. He was responsible for the famous New Poor Law of
the year 1834 (remember unit 2 – how politicians and social analysts had developed
some new regulations to make the money invested on helping the poor more efficient
and effective. They had created Parishes, and they had created Workhouses; and they
had created measures to make life unbearable outside these houses, and particularly
inside these houses, to force these people to earn a living for themselves and not to be
living on subsidies). This person did this on account of efficiency, but later on he
realised that the results of this had been disastrous, they had not been efficient enough.
So, he was not embarrassed at all when ten years later he wrote a report claiming that
everything had been a failure and that they had to start it out again (i.e. not embarrassed
when having to acknowledge that this workhouse philosophy was wrong). Does this
mean that he changed his utilitarian philosophy? No, it simply meant for him that he
had found that other measures could be more efficient. So he was very analytical in this
respect: “I implement some measures and, if they do not function, I do not question
myself about the morality of ill-treating people; I still look for a better way of getting
some practical end”. Mind that Chadwick, if he had to be defined as something, he
would had to be defined as both liberal and progressive: he represented a positive
attitude towards solving these problems, and he had developed, in his opinion, a new
method that could be interpreted as an intended social security system, without giving
money, but taking care of people, at least nominally; they were helping people. So this
man is progressive, but at the same time his operations were perceived rather as an
attack on the poor.
A similar contradiction is perceived in one of the great enemies of Edwin Chadwick,
who was Richard Oastler. He was very critical towards all this reformism, but he did it
from a conservative position: “let us stop this system of workhouses, what works is the
charity of good, responsible families”. He tried to defend the poor, but not by means of
centralised, organised measure, but by means of some improvements in the factory
conditions for workers, and keeping the idea that what was needed was an aristocracy
that cared for the poor; that much damage had been inflicted on the poor in England,
when all the affairs of social welfare had been abandoned in the hands of middle-class
reformers. According to him, middle-class reformers had not improved the conditions of
the poor, they had made them worse. So, this man, who defends the superiority, and the
social and political responsibility of the aristocracy, criticises middle classes and
defends the poor from his own point of view.
A similar interesting confusion is felt in the message put forward by Benjamin Disraeli
in his novels about the condition of England, Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancred, in which
he defended (remember that he was a conservative Prime Minister, a Tory PM) the idea
of “one nation”, that is, the idea of recovering the sense of national togetherness in
which all classes would collaborate to keep the country going (it is a tremendous

12
paradox that, some weeks ago, the leader of the English Labour party delivered a speech
following exactly the same lines: one nation. At the congress of the Labour party, the
leader employed the formula of Benjamin Disraeli, one nation). Only that, evidently he
was not defending the progressive measures but, rather, a sort of feudal vision in which
he captured in his imagination a model in which the aristocracy had again returned to
effective control of power, and had a benevolent attitude towards everyone.
Mind that Ruskin was very conservative and complained against the new society, but
his conservative critiques were later on employed by William Morris and many socialist
thinkers of the end of the century (so, conservative ideas, later on taken by socialist
people in order to defend reforms). And the same mixture of ideologies is perceived in
Charles Kingsley’s “Christian Socialism”: he called himself a socialist, obsessed with
helping and promoting the living conditions of the poor; but doing it from a purely
Christian perspective. Evidently, this was not enjoyed by Marxist analysts that said that
this compromise with the poor was incomplete and bourgeois.
All this shows that it was very difficult to analyse or to describe the positions of these
people along clear-cut ideological lines. Some of them are apparently progressive but
then there is a conservative substratum or vice-versa. They all tried to help the poor but
defending either middle or high-class positions, either progressive/liberal – mind that
the progressive at the time was liberal, as opposed to the conservative that was
aristocratic; but there was no voice given to poor classes or working-class movements,
because people were trying to organise this with lots of internal contradictions.
Most of these conflicts and tensions that were experienced at the time correspond not to
the whole of the Victorian period but to most of them to the very troubled decade that
was called at the time “the hungry forties”. Later on, there came a period of social ease
and relative economic splendour, identified as the “Victorian Noon” (a period that
extended from the late forties/fifties up to the 1870s or so. There was little conflict and
everything was relatively stable in social and political terms). So most of these conflicts
were in fact not exclusive in England, they were happening also in many European
countries and that is why Europe in general was affected by lots of Revolutions in the
year 1848. Quite paradoxically, one of the countries that was most troubled by
economic and social problems, England, was not affected, there was no revolution in
England. And this was something that Marx and Engels were very surprised that: the
most industrialised country, the country with more inequality in Europe, was the one in
which Revolution had not existed (i.e. they managed to keep everything under control in
England in most cases). In fact, it is also interesting that this year (1847-8) is also a sort
of “golden year” for the English novel: lots of significant novels in the “canon” we
are dealing with appeared in that year. It can be said also that the English novel was
born at the time when powerfully felt crises disappeared from England. So there is an
interesting correlation between both things: the end of economic crises and the
beginning of a new kind of novel at the time. Of course, this does not mean that many
other novels replaced the so-called “condition of England” novels, or he “social-
problem novels” (i.e. they did not disappear). In fact, in the 1850s, many writers
devoted themselves to the analysis of these situations, particularly Gaskell and Dickens
with North and South and Hard Times (but we will deal with some aspects of these
novels in unit 8 – in this unit we are dealing with individual reactions to changes, not
social movements or social aspects of this social trouble).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

13
1.2. Intellectuals and their arrangements

And now that I have introduced some writers, and a reference to some writers, let me
just finish this section of the unit by commenting on an interesting reaction to all these
problems. In general, the strong call to analysis or concern with material aspects of life
had a characteristic reaction: many writers and intellectuals reacted against all these
simplifications or materialisations, or attempts to describe or consider everything as
only guided by material reasons, and there was a contradictory impulse: the impulse of
favouring idealistic, abstract, more romantic, approaches to reality; or at least the
vindication that life was not only working in a factory or caring about how much money
I am going to earn at the end of the month; there were more things in life. And literature
adopted a very active role in defending that there was something beyond this basic
element, some remnant in human life, in spiritual life, which could never be covered by
purely material considerations. So, that is why we can see in many writers of the period
some instinctive emotional search for old certainties in a new world of hostility and
poverty, as well as some search for elevated ideas to complement the ugliness of the
material world. This shows an interesting relationship with the Romantic period: in an
analysis of history, we tend to be told that every period reacts against the previous
period, and reacts by putting forward opposite values. This is not the case in the
Victorian period as opposed to the Romantic one. That is, Victorians were not clearly or
definitely opposing or undermining Romanticism. They felt, in many cases, the spiritual
inheritance of Romanticism; and they felt very powerfully attached to the ideals of
Romanticism, only that they felt that reality was forcing them to take other things into
account, but the only release, sort of mental or spiritual release for them, was a sense of
nostalgia for a more comprehensive, positive and perhaps humane attitude
towards life that they could see in many Romantic writers. So, in a sense, there was
some nostalgia. Of course, some of you may claim that this is not too different from
Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s approach to reality in Lyrical Ballads: remember that
they are, in a sense, reacting against some urban tendencies that they can see in
literature. So, what these people were doing was just to go on with this tendency of
finding some sort of refuge from the ugly modernity; but the ugly modernity against
which Wordsworth reacted was not as ugly and powerful as the industrial reality of the
1840s, 50s, etc in the North of England; it was yes a corrupted society of London as a
city full of activity; you have William Blake opposing some modern developments,
some commercial emphasis in the life of people. But things were much darker and
harsher, reality was much harsher in the Victorian period; and of course there were
other ingredients to take into account, and which we will also analyse, particularly the
evolution of science: now science and other disciplines made this material tendency or
move of society much more vividly felt by the Victorians that it had been for the
Romantics. And then, in some cases, it was not only looking for a refuge in the past, or
in the country: another typical tendency for Victorians was to look for another
world 1) in literature or 2) at home; which is another typical Victorian reaction: if the
world outside is ugly, why not privileging, vindicating the cleanliness, the purity, the
virtues, the pleasures, the comforts of living at home with my family, with personal
interaction. So, it is another typical tendency in the Victorian period to react by
vindicating the domestic as opposed to the public sphere. So that is why it was
manifested in many texts an emotional belief in the home and family.
So you can see several ways of escaping, finding relief from the tension of the present
(in the past, in the country, in the family… away from all these problems).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

14
2. Developments
2.1. Nature and science

- Naturalism:

We move on to the second part of this unit, the central part, perhaps the most important.
Remember that I divided it into three subsections: one is nature and science, the second
one has to do with religion, and the third one has to do with the mind. Concerning
religion, remember the process of secularisation, which has to do evidently with nature
and science; and the third one, the mind, has to do with the development of psychology
and new theories about our spiritual or intellectual life (and evidently this also had to do
with nature and science, and with religion; but it is very difficult to divide them; they
are all interrelated: people would not have got secularised unless science had told them
that some old theological dogmas were no longer reasonable or acceptable).
It is evident that, from the very beginning of the period, and thanks to the early work of
some scientists like for instance George Lyell, a geologist, people started moving
from a religious to a secular way of seeing the natural world; one that was more
soundly based on a scientific interest. That is, the strategy of analysis of reality was
greatly altered because instead of explaining reality as something teleologically oriented,
that is, some explanation of the world as something that has been made to make sense,
because it is rational; acceptable because it has been designed by someone. Scientists
realised that there was such a plethora, such a huge crowd of things to take into account,
that it was much more demanding to think about ‘how’ things had happened. And the
key science in this process is geology: mind that, when we are children, and we just
think of mountains and valleys, for us the explanation is always very simple: sometimes
they were mountains and now they have been erased, and now they are shorter, and
things like that. Our explanations are very simplistic; and we cannot see the great
variety of things that have happened on the surface of the earth. When people started
analysing different materials, different minerals, and different phenomena, they started
realising how many phases had taken place in the building of the actual surface of the
world. The stopped thinking about “why” God had created the mountains. And rather,
they found that the question of “how” many different processes of elevation, alteration,
inversion, etc, existed. So when scientists started realising the complexity of every
human process, starting with geology, and then moving on to biology, and then other
areas, they started considering that this metaphysical or supernatural explanation of the
world was no longer relevant; there was still too much to decide, to elucidate, before
starting asking about master creators of the world, etc.
This corresponds broadly to some wide phenomenon that was identified by the French
philosopher Comte, who said that in the intellectual history of the Western world, there
had been two phases: one, the “theological” phase (everything is explained just because
God has created it); then the world moved to a “metaphysical” phase (one in which we
stop attributing all that responsibility to God, but we still believe in abstract notions,
abstract ideals, abstract values, and abstract agencies); and then, we have also to
abandon this phase and move on to what he called the “positive” phase (one in which
everything/all analysis of reality has to be based on the inductive creation of
explanations based on facts, and observable). Evidently, he was advocating for this
phase but England was mostly moving within the metaphysical phase, or moving
perhaps from one to the other: they had abandoned the theological, but they could not
get rid of the metaphysical. And what philosopher represents this metaphysical phase of
philosophy? For instance, Kant, the German philosopher: he always thought of some

15
categories of the mind that exist apart from the mind but that are somehow repossessed
or grasped by the mind… where are these categories? Where do they exist? But they
exist. Evidently, for positive philosophers, all this is very close to the romantic faith in
some sort of generous structure of reality that is rational, and some correspondence
between the order of the universe and the order of the mind. The world is rational, and
we are rational, and we can apprehend the world. Well, things are different in Comte’s
opinion: they have been built carefully and painfully from the bottom.
Evidently, not everyone was satisfied with this; these claims were only a more or less
exotic, irrelevant claim at the time; although there were steps being taken in that
direction. In fact, as late as in the year 1870, there were people like Charles Kingsley
(writer, politician, priest, Christian socialist) writing books for children, trying to
explain that “yes, scientists are all the time doing or looking for the ‘how’, but it is more
intelligent just to wonder about the ‘why’”. He transformed all the conflicts between
scientists into a sort of fable for children - it is very entertaining to see how he
simplifies everything and how he is simply claiming the old idea: “do not get too
distracted looking for geological phases, just be happy/content with the idea that God
wanted that to happen” (he was, after all, a Christian priest). So he was trying to offer
this perspective.
One of the interesting things about this process of expansion and absorption of the word
“naturalism” and the new concepts of nature is that many scientists started claiming
that they were practicing the so-called “natural science”, or that they were “naturalists”;
and at the beginning there was no direct implication that their guesses/research should
in any way affect people’s faith/beliefs. They simply wanted to understand nature, and
that was all; and to explain it in a way that was not simplistically biblical. Remember
that if you read the bible, you are told that God created the world in seven days; and
geologists clearly realised that it had taken millions of years to make the world; and that
from Adam and Eve to the old fathers of the Old Testament, only about forty
generations had taken place (forty generations is, how much? Two hundred years? Well,
more than two hundred years passed from the beginning of mankind up to history. So,
as we can see, people realised that all these things did not work; so evidently there was
no way of thinking in theological or cosmological, global ways (i.e. “naturalism” as
neutral method: inductive understanding of nature deprived of theology & cosmology).
One of the most important consequences of this analysis of nature, and this analysis on
“how”, and not “why”, is that they got rid of (or at least some of them did) at least one
Romantic teaching: the quasi-religious understanding of nature that had been defended
by Wordsworth. Remember that, in a sense, Wordsworth always employed nature in a
way that looked like equivalent for God. When Wordsworth was looking at nature, he
was looking at divine creations and a divine logic, and a divine will; as well as a sort of
instrument to teach people about good, sound, moral values and attitudes to life, etc.
Evidently, the first move made by scientists in this period (i.e. those analysing nature)
was to consider that nature was a purely neutral object or medium: there is no direct
connection, there is no message; a tree is a tree, a bird is a bird, a worm is a worm, and a
man is a man; and I cannot say that I am learning things from them, or that God is using
worms to teach me anything.
This concept was already visible by the very wise Carlyle: he started writing about
these things in the 1830s; so much before a scientific sense of reality had spread around
England, he was aware of many implications; and he wrote them in his most influential
book of the early years (i.e. Sartor Resartus): a sort of strange blend of autobiography-
discussion that he published in the 1830s. He imagined a German philosopher and he
started analysing lots of things (I cannot imagine why he became so famous in England,

16
because it is so difficult to read him, but apparently people got into the habit of
analysing reality by using the very extravagant, strange ideas of this writer, particularly
of the character created by this writer; a character that is like a philosopher, like Goethe,
the German writer and philosopher who was very strange mixture, also with some
humour). And Carlyle realised that there had been developed two views of nature: one
as what he calls 1) the “living garment of God”. This formula, “the living garment of
God”, comes from Goethe, the German philosopher/writer. That is, as if nature is,
somehow, an instrument created by God, willingly, to give us lessons. And, from a
different point of view, many people started believing/suspecting that perhaps, from a
moral point of view, nature is simply 2) a “dead mechanism”, that nature is only “the
countryside”, not anything with capital letters, but quite normal; it is the countryside
what you get when you go out of the city, that is nature, but only that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hardy – Tess

A very aggressive attitude towards this earlier Romantic belief in the holiness of nature
is present in this commentary by Hardy in Tess of d’urbervilles: Tess is a young girl
who lives in a very poor family; her father is a peddler, that is, one of those people who
are going from one to another local market selling things; and this man is uncultivated,
he is a drunkard, he is not very intelligent, he has many children, he is quite
irresponsible, and he finds it very difficult to keep his family. So, not exactly an ideal
model of family, because this family is always finding that the situation is quite difficult.
What portrait are we given of the unity of this family by Hardy? “All these young souls
(there are several children) were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship – entirely dependent
on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield adults for their pleasures, their necessities,
their health, even their existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose to sail
into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, death, thither were these half-
dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail with them – six helpless creatures,
who had never been asked if they wished for life on any terms, much less if they wished
for it on such hard conditions as were involved in being of the shiftless house of
Durbeyfield.” That is, what idea is conveyed by Hardy here? Would God feel happy?
The fact that these six children have come under the Durbeyfield family, is it a
consequence of God’s design/God’s will? Did God say “I will make you happy, you
will all fall within this family, and I will give you two competent parents for you to
flourish and swell in comfort”? No, there is something cruel about this: it is not that
God wanted it to happen, but you are likely to be born in a family that is just a disaster.
It is not a very benevolent portrait of existence. And not a portrait of existence that is
made benevolent because we at least have the consolation that God wanted it to happen.
And then Hardy closes the commentary with an ironic commentary: “some people
would like to know whence the poet whose philosophy is in these days deemed as
profound and trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure, gets his authority for speaking
of ‘Nature’s holy plan’. Who is he speaking about? Wordsworth: is nature’s holy plan
to give this irresponsible couple six children for them to feel miserable all their lives? Is
that nature’s wise programme? Should we feel that it is very good on the part of God to
have given them an existence? Evidently, Hardy is ironic; nature is not as benevolent as
Wordsworth implied nor cruel: nature is just indifferent. All these things just happen.
Why are there so many cockroaches and not pigs? We do not know, but they are there;
and there is no divine plan that there should be more cockroaches or ants than pigs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

17
Wordsworth – Written in early spring

We can see that this “nature’s holy plan” is present in a beautiful, excellent, brilliant
poem by Wordsworth: Written in early spring. The idea in every stanza of this poem is
that he contemplates some element of nature; sometimes a bird, sometimes a flower,
sometimes the twig of a tree, dancing because of the breeze; and then he decides
automatically to think that if these animals or plants are moving, it is an expression of
joy, of happiness. So that is why he says “it is my faith that every flower enjoys the air
it breathes”. He sees just that a flower is being moved by the breeze, and as it moves he
says “no, it is not just moving, it is dancing, because it is happy, and I am a Romantic
poet… this is the idea”. The message is that flowers enjoy the air they breathe (Joaquín:
well, sometimes I can see trees that are not enjoying it when they are swept by the wind,
they are not laughing, I cannot here them laughing). And then, at the end of the poem,
he comments “if this belief from heaven be sent, if such be nature’s holy plan, have I
not reason to lament, what man has made of man?” So he is identifying his belief in
God with a message that is expressed by God through nature, and which is to be learnt
by men, who are clever and forget about men’s dealings, and face nature.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Developments
2.1. Nature and Science

- Science:

Another concept that is essential and that had a peculiar evolution at the time is science.
Science also got elevated and specialised. And at the beginning it was always felt,
clearly as a place aspiring to some “neutrality”. For instance, one of the first evolutions
or moves that took place was linguistic: science, for it to develop as a different activity,
got rid of the traditional words/formulas that had been used in order to describe it. So
science stopped being, as it was called at the time, “natural philosophy” or “natural
history”, it became “science”. It was a way of determining/explaining the fact the
methods of science, particularly natural sciences, were inductive and empirical; not
metaphysical, not purely rhetorical, as they had been in philosophical practice.
Remember that Aristotle knew nothing about science and he was writing books about
optics and geometry and things like that; how could he do it? Simply because he was
not using a scientific empirical method; he was just trying to imagine a way of
explaining things. Evidently, you could do that if you lacked the technical expertise to
do it; but the aspiration of the time was to develop individual, particular and rational
methods to help all these sciences develop. So, evidently, science divorced from
natural theology and from philosophy, as they were called. This is for instance
marked by the birth of the “British association for the advancement of science” (1830)
at the time (evidently, science with a precise, restricted methodological claim). It is
quite interesting that Coleridge, for instance was one of the first that decided to claim
that these people should not call themselves philosophers, and so that is why they
developed/invented the term “science”, and also coined the term “scientist” (this term
did not exist until then, until “philosophers” stopped being valid to refer to their
activities, they had to invent the word ‘scientist’).
However, science got very limited at the time because from “any study or trained skill”
it started acquiring a more precise meaning: it required “experimental method”, and it
was concerned only with the physical world and with visible things. Apart from this,

18
many scientists, defenders of this new science, were not very neutral: they were not
purely doing research and offering it to mankind. In fact, many of them were very
partisan; they spent as much time doing research as trying to market their research, and
trying to make their research to stand out among other discourses. That is, there were
lots of times in which things were written, not to propose materials, but rather to
denounce false practices, and other scientific practices, etc. And they were very
competitive, and in many cases they were even trying always to defend the superiority
and the particularity of their own research activities. Mind that it was a period that
coincided also with the growth and development of many English universities; that is,
universities started growing more and more complex, and started accepting more and
more scientific branches. So it was very interesting on the part of any scientist to create
a new discipline in order to make it easier for him to be appointed professor of any new
department of Oxford or Cambridge University. So there was also this material
ingredient: “I want to be prominent in society, I will make this discipline go up, I will
make it necessary, I will persuade society that this science is very necessary, and then I
will be the leader of this movement”. So there started not only departments, groups,
societies, magazines, journals, and all this; there was a parallel growth of research and
of the institutional life of departments of these sciences; both things went up together.
For instance, they were not very powerful in botany, and people in mathematics or
astronomy were claiming that these were superior disciplines to botany; there was no
reason for that except the power they felt they had in comparison with others.
Another factor that was employed to elevate the prestige of science at the time was the
connection that was frequently made between the material and industrial splendour of
England at the time and the development of science. So they made it very clear in
official or public discourse; “if you are happy that our country is powerful, it is not
because of military activities, or colonial activities… it is because of our technological
developments, and our technological developments spring or derive from scientific
activity. So if this country has grown powerful, it is not because of the red coats (i.e. the
military men), it is not because of the factory owners, it is because of the scientists, who
have produced the knowledge that has later on been used by all these people to make the
country powerful. So there was also some official discourse in this vein.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1. Nature and science

Evidently, from the very beginning there was the fear that scientific knowledge,
particularly geological knowledge, could destroy or make traditional religious beliefs
collapse. So, from the very beginning, it was felt by many people who were interested
in science, but did not want to attack religion, that science should collaborate with
religion. For instance, a very interesting series of documents is that of the Bridgewater
Treatises (published in the 1830s). These treatises are called like that because of the
Earl of Bridgewater, who was an aristocrat that, after dying, left in his will the idea that
all his money should be devoted to promote research that could claim that religion and
science were not opposed; and to promote scientific research that would seek
confirmation of religious ideas; not to destroy religious ideas, but to defend them. So he
aspired to make one defend the other, in a sense. This was also complemented with
scientists like Chambers, who were producing research within science, trying to
eliminate the atheistic implications of many scientific discoveries. So Chambers for
instance was opposing Charles Lyell, claiming that, if anything was found in geology, it
would always be explained as the idea of a designer, an intended origin, and possessing
a teleological end. Even nowadays in America they have this controversy, regarding

19
Creationism (there are people who do not want Darwinism to be taught in American
schools, because they feel that it is ideological, and they claim that Creationism - which
is just an attempt to reduce evolution to a biblical principle -that everything happened
because God wanted it to happen like that. They at least want to claim their right to
teach their own ideology in these schools, claiming that what they are doing is science,
and Darwinism is ideology; and there are schools in Texas, for instance, in which
authorities have granted them the right to teach creationism and to give students the idea
that these are two competing ideologies/theories: Creationism vs. Darwinism; at least
they are given the chance to consider them -it is stupid: one thing is a theory and is
science; the other thing is just a religious dogma, transformed into some scientific
discourse). But this was an essential topic at the time: to what extent can we make
science, without dispensing with religion; how much science can we make, and how
much God do we need in our science? There were lots of people always claiming that
this problem existed. One interesting contributor to this debate was Samuel Butler,
who was a very close follower of Darwin, but he was always thinking about the
problem of consciousness and the problem of will, not only in nature, but also in lower
forms of life: does a potato have any brain? Most of us would say no. Then, how does a
potato decide to start growing in groups in order to survive? How does a potato start
growing roots and leaves searching for light? Where is that element of intelligence, in
that vegetable, that makes it take that decision? Is that decision taken by God? Can you
find any brain in a potato? Do not try to find it, but there must be something of will and
consciousness in the potato developing all these mechanisms. People found it very
difficult to imagine life without that sort of design, will or intention, not only human life,
also animal life and every aspect of cellular life; because a cell knows that, at some
moment, it will have to divide itself into two selves. So, where is the intelligence of the
cell self in doing that? That idea/principle was interesting at the time, and how religion
was affected by it.
Scientists were painfully aware of the dark consequences for religious conceptions of
people that would derive from their statements, and Darwin for instance kept most of
his findings in secret for about 20 years. Only when it started getting revealed that
Alfred Wallace was coming to very similar conclusions, and started publishing his own
conclusions, Darwin felt obliged to publish his ideas. But it was only out of religious
fear, out of the idea/awareness of how damaging it was for people’s beliefs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1. Nature and science

From original attempts to make science and religion cooperate…

Charles Darwin, as a biologist, was aware of the relevance that the interpretation of the
Genesis had, as well as the great challenge that scientific research supposed. He always
found himself in a very difficult situation trying to keep to some extent this social and
intellectual respectability in a way that it would not be affected by the negative
ideological implications of his theories. So he always tried to keep his theories within
the boundaries of his area of research but, evidently, it was very difficult to reconcile
both things. A similar evolution was perceived in another term that was crucial at the
time: Agnosticism. The term was coined by T.H. Huxley in order to protect science
from many accusations of interfering with religious truth. It was a way of expressing
that “my truth, the truth that I am proposing, is limited to the area of knowledge and to
material analysis, I will never look for metaphysical or transcendental consequences of
this”. So originally it was ‘neutral’ for it was not intended to affect other areas of life.

20
Thus, it was really difficult to keep it in that purely scientific methodological realm and
it came to identify one particular religious position, one that was intermediate between
belief and disbelief: “if I don’t want to claim that I am an atheist, I can resort to a safer
term i.e. agnostic, what implies that I simply do not ask myself about religious concerns,
so I free myself form possible accusations”. (In-depth analysis of religion in section 2.2.)

But, with time, it clearly moved on to an expression of Scepticism, agnostic came to be

identified, in a quite cautious way, with a relativistic sceptical negative attitude towards
everything that cannot be identified with material causes. So it became a sort of element
for a battle; intellectual religious, spiritual and even ideological between different
positions, the defence or the attack of religion.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1. Nature and Science

Let’s now move on to a brief digression or analysis on how Darwinism affected

people’s perception of nature. In order to do so, let me remind you of what Alexander
Pope said in the 18thC: “first follow nature.” It is basically an aesthetic principle, if
you want to practice art or write literature, the first rule you need to follow is that of
following nature. But this is not exclusively an aesthetic principle; it is an aesthetic
principle with lots of consequences and implications.

We need to understand these previous notions of nature that have become part of
people’s mental structures in order to understand the implications of Darwin’s
revolution. That is, what was implied before nature was reinterpreted because of
Darwin’s revolution. Pope regards nature as the pattern to follow – if you want to write
properly you need to follow nature. Nature has a certain order; nature is not a neutral
thing but it is a sort of standard to measure perfection. Philip Sidney as well, thinks
that nature contains perfection (The Book of Nature), because nature is God-made,
and God has created a perfect structure.
In a sense, classicist authors still believe that a perfectly well written poem, a rational
poem, has to follow nature because nature itself was also rational. So, in a sense, nature
is not only the stint of things; how things are but, how things are right, how things are
rational and good. And all this derives from a sort of benevolent religious interpretation
of Nature somehow shared by Romantic poets: that the way things should be is the way
things are in nature. So nature contains also a positive moral implication sometimes,
that why Wordsworth idealises IT and why so many other religious people have
expressed THAT. You only have to consider the typical implication that is contained
when someone says that something is not natural or unnatural, and they really mean that
something is wrong, that it is against the pattern of perception established by nature.
And normally, when we are referring to a human action, we are referring to the fact that
such action is immoral, not Christian, against God’s wish. For, in human behaviour
many things are considered unnatural and worth of condemnation.

One of the very interesting consequences of Darwinism is that it forced people to

rethink to what extent nature offers us a stable, fixed, rational pattern of good behaviour,
good functioning, balance, lack of corruption etc. Paradoxically, inspiration for Darwin
came, not exactly from biology or geology, but from T.R. Malthus’s Essay on the
Principle of Population (1798-1803). This essay was a very early attempt to understand
the demographic and economic reality, that is, the principle of population devised by

21
Malthus is about the balance that exists or should exist and does not exist in reality
between the production of goods and the amount of people. If nature is perfectly
ordered and rational, we should always expect nature to keep a more or less reasonable
pattern between goods and population. But Malthus realised that things were not so
balanced and the tendencies of material productions of goods (particularly agricultural
production since he was writing at the end of 18thC.) and the cycles of natural
reproduction of people, did not coincide. This meant that if many people were born,
there would be a need for more material goods, so there would be death, poverty and a
negative evolution of the population. So, the production of goods and the reproduction
of people do not follow any well approved pattern of development designed by God, it
is something arbitrary. This, in a sense, puts God aside from the way things work in
reality, what was quite paradoxical since Malthus himself was an Anglican priest. So he
should have been aware of the fact that he had stopped people thinking of a benevolent
God controlling the supply of goods and people and keeping them at acceptable raise.
Hence, the very damaging implication of that theory consists in the fact that there is no
connection between man and the planet. And so, poverty and suffering are as natural as
comfort, wealth or human happiness, i.e. God has nothing to say about human happiness
or about the way things really are. Remember that the 19thC will represent the age of a
providential understanding of nature, that providence has stopped acting in order to
correct all the shortcomings witnesses or providences of reality.
How will these ideas and implications develop in Darwin-Wallace theory?

In fact, people had to learn how to interpret, whether in positive or negative terms, some
tenets of these theories. For instance, it was normally understood that both Darwin and
Wallace defended the idea of massive productivity and creative richness of life; that
life in nature is constantly producing and reproducing itself, there is a life principle that
is unstoppable. Every little being has an extraordinary potential for expansion and
production of new life, this is something that was absent from previous religious ideas
and it was then reconsidered as something positive for our interpretation of nature.

Another interesting notion in the conception of nature was the phenomenon of chance
variability, no animal species is defined or designed by anybody, and in fact the
evolution of species is something that happens more or less accidentally and that does
not follow any previous logic. Suddenly, animals may decide to grow a longer tail or a
longer neck and it is not that we grow in order to adapt to some new circumstances, we
animals are evolving in many crazy ways, only that the changes that favour our comfort
in life are the ones that make us develop or, some individuals develop, faster than other
who are developing less useful changes. Thus, there is not a steady progress of
improvement of mankind; there is a crazy, chaotic process of evolution of little beings
in many directions, some of them aiming for success, some others not.

Another interesting principle in this theory is the notion of adjustment and selection
and the struggle for existence. We may consider ourselves as the ‘fittest’, the kings of
the evolution, the ones that survived, but it is a cruel way of thinking. Our accidental
victory, the fact that we are still alive, may mean nothing regarding possible future
developments of our species, so it is very accidental. For Wallace and Darwin, natural
selection is regarded as a destructive force, if we are here is simply because for the
moment we have not been defeated by any other being but, there may be an evolution
that will prevent us from survival.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

22
2.1. Nature and Science

In general, what many people found disconcerting or uncomfortable was the idea of a
favoured origin, that is, that there was a conscious choice made by a superior being
that decided that we would be the chosen race. There was also the dissolution of the
idea of stable identities – there is no way of knowing that there is a particularly stable
fixed adequate way of being a human animal, we may develop other potentials in the
future so, perhaps, the question of what is a human being can only be tackled at a
particular moment in history, that is, seen ourselves as we are now, not in future times.
And evidently, there is no teleological orientation; we have not been created to lead to
any particular direction, only the future and natural conditions will explain that. Imagine
that in one million years the whole world is like in the film Waterworld, inundated by a
flood, suddenly we would have to develop a new kind of human identity that would
make us able to swim and walk at the time, so our human identity would be a sort of
hybrid between swimming and walking, but we can’t know that in advance and no one
has already decided, it is just being imaginative… just wondering about if’s.

Lyell expressed it very well: In the economy of the world I can find no traces of a
beginning, no prospect of an end. This way he invited people to forget about all that
narrative on the history of human kind that is contained in the Bible; God created man,
he made him human from the very beginning and he is watching us all the time until he
comes back on Doomsday. Lyell says it is all false.

Darwin refused Karl Marx’s dedication of Das Kapital (Marx’s confirmation that life
is sheerly materialistic) for Darwin was already enough troubled by the religious
implications of his theory to go as far as allowing his name to appear in the dedication
of Marx’s book. It would have meant Darwin’s intellectual and social crucifixion –he
would not only be destroying religion but even favouring Communism. However, Marx
was right. Darwin’s book gave him inspiration for his materialistic interpretation of
history. Basically, Darwinism is materialistic and deterministic, there is no such thing
as free individual will in the map of history. It is only two crucial forces –material and
survival –the ones that are determining the evolution or changes of things.

But it was so difficult to keep Darwinism at a purely biological, scientific level. In fact,
Sumner (very first professor of Sociology at the University of Yale) applied principles
of Darwinism to analyse the evolution of society in the new born discipline of
Sociology. There were many tycoons of the Golden Period in The States like Carnegie
and Rockefeller who were all the time vindicating the naturalness, the intrinsic justice
of Darwin’s thought in order to interpret economic behaviour and economic evolutions.
That is: “if I have become a millionaire it is only because I am the fittest, the survivor,
we are just all struggling in a jungle and the strongest one is the one that gets a bigger
company.”
In a sense, this was an attempt to vindicate the idea that there should be no moral
traditionally Christian objection to oppose any apparently cruel or too rigid ambition of
material prosperity: “we all want to survive so there is nothing wrong about trying to
survive”. Thus, according to them, Nature is in favour of this kind of behaviour, so
there is no moral objection to oppose that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

23
2.1. Nature and Science

Darwinism and Utilitarianism share some tenets, both are based on a functional
principle and both are materialistic, deterministic or based on a reduction of the
dimensions that we tend to associate with human behaviour.
Utility, in economic and social terms, simply implies that what is good is what
functions for some particular purpose what functions is good –what does not function is
bad. And this affects both the moral and the organic qualities. For instance, the
extraordinary ability we are developing at using our fingers with the mobile phone.
There is nothing to take for granted; everything that is useful will continue to be useful.
In the same way, utilitarians and people influenced by Malthus’ ideas were the ones
responsible for the creation of the New Poor Rule. It is simply a very functional
principle: “if I keep all poor people under control in a workhouse, they will be made
functional; they will produce and their production will make up for the food they are
eating. And at the same time, I will be able to check and put an obstacle to their natural
biological reproduction.” And no great concern arose from this action for it was seen as
an act of strict logic.

Another very interesting thing about these so-called reductions is the fact that it could
be seen as an attempt to kill all greatness and all association with instincts and feelings
that we normally associate with our human identity. For instance, beauty; we tend to
think that whenever we perceive beauty in any object it is because we have been granted
some divine kit to appreciate beauty etc. At the time, when people perceived beauty in
another human being, normally it is chiefly for the sake of sexual selection and that is it.
It is something built in a very primary purpose of sexual meeting and people learned to
like other beings because of plain physical attraction. You can beautify it or write
poems on it or whatever, but eventually it is simply built on a very basic primary
animal-like instinct of sexual selection.

The same applies to our intellectual capacities. Thoughts and mind are disposed;
something that God has given us in order to make us different from apes and other
beings deriving in that developed form of an interconnection and combination of
information provided by our body and our sensations.

The same happens with that great monster we have invented that we think that makes us
unique: “I have my conscious. That sort of internal life: a set of ideas, affections and
aspirations that define me and make me different from other people”. Just an invention
that we identify with ourselves and that simply springs from the internalization of the
tribe’s approval or disapproval, that is, we decide that some ideas are our own simply
because we consider that those ideas make us feel well integrated, happy and
comfortable within the community i.e. we prefer to belong to a group. We decide to
have ideas that will allow us to be a homogenous part in a certain community. And all
this has to do with the previous aspects; there is continuity between pleasures from the
most basic to the most elevated.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

24
2.1. Nature and Science

An inevitable consequence of these thoughts has to do with cosmological detachment,

which means that there is no possibility for us to communicate significant valuable
information from nature. Our impression that we have to follow nature forgets one
essential thing, the thing that our idea of nature is simply a human product. Alexander
Pope built a model of nature (“nature is orderly, rational…”) and ask people to follow
nature but, if we forget nature as a human as aspiration and see it as what it simply is,
we should realise that nature is completely morally indifferent to our life. So we should
never aspire to identify any behaviour with nature in order to validate it.
Nature is simply there and if we want to build a pattern of behaviour, we should do as
T.H. Huxley claims: “why not inventing an ethical process and that is all. That is, God
is not giving any model because I am agnostic, I do not follow nature either so… I am
free to develop my own model. Once I cannot rely on God or Nature to give me
principles, I must create my own pattern of behaviour, that of the ethical system that we
all agree about.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1. Nature and Science

Evidently, there were some negative reactions to these implications. All these
evolutions were not shared by everyone, there was a general reluctance represented by
many writers, against all this determinism, materialism and functionalism, for they
regarded it as a cause of the impoverishment of human nature and human aspirations.
For instance, some scientists claimed that the origin of an object does not explain
everything about the object. The fact that we come from inferior kinds of animals
explains everything about our present situation? Not necessarily. So we should not tend
to identify our low biological origin with the qualities that we have nowadays.

Then, other people claimed that trying to explain everything about nature would deprive
our sense of nature of its beautiful element of mystery. Thus, there should always be
the illusion that there is something that escapes from our ability to comprehend. So, at
the time, there were a lot of ‘poetic’ claims about the necessity of something that cannot
be grasped or understood. There is always this mystery and a whole universe of
commotions that are too complex to be organised, classified and labelled.
For instance we have this really expressive lament by Ruskin (1851): “If only the
geologists would leave me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I
hear the chink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses”.

Other intellectuals such as John Henry Newman, first prominent bishop of the Church
of England, claimed that all rational scientific approaches are in a sense altering or
subverting the natural prominence of human activities. That is, in his opinion, science
starts with knowledge and ends up with belief, he considers belief the superior kind of
activity as opposed to knowledge. Newman decided to privilege belief over anything
else.

And then, people like Matthew Arnold, still defend that our need for conduct and
beauty cannot be successfully covered by scientific activities. Particularly, he felt that
literature was a sort of religion or cult of beliefs that could replace metaphysical religion.
Arnold headed a general claim that defended that culture and literature could be what
people should look for when they had lost faith in God or whatever.

25
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1. Nature and Science

But how did all that affected writers?

For instance, George Elliot was really inspired by this ambitious attitude about the
power of science to illustrate, so he approached literature as if it were a scientific
activity. However, he never went as far as some French writers such as Flaubert whose
approach was much more scientific and rational, but Elliot always felt that fiction was a
sort of experiment in life and used the word ‘experiment’ very often to the extent that he
even subtitled his novel Middlemarch as A Study of Provincial Life, so the novel
Middlemarch is not a novel but a ‘study’, trying to keep the appearance of a sort of
serious, scientific, intellectual approach to the living conditions of people in a provincial
town. Hence, the word ‘study’ is fundamental to understand Elliot perspective. And as
we will see at the end of this unit, Elliot was really attentive to psychological processes
owing to his understanding of psychology.

Another interesting positive literary reaction or consequence (a bit trivial one), is that…
with the grow of science, literature developed a new figure that represented the kind of
authority that priests had stop to represent: “if there is no rationality coming from God,
if there is no God to give us rationality, if there is no God to provide people with justice,
what do we need? Well, we need for instance detectives and doctors as new figures of
authority. Detective fiction started as a sort of secular commitment for their belief in
providential justice. In the providential novel of the 18thC poetic justice was achieved
simply because God decided to provide the hero or heroine with a way-out of their
problems. The rational Post-Enlightenment view of reality of the 19thC had to develop a
new source of authority, a new provider of justice so the figure of the detective and the
doctor turned up as figures of secular authority to provide solutions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sherlock Holmes’ formation (1)

This is a commentary about Sherlock Holmes' formation. What is remarkable about

S.H. is his ignorance about some aspects which were considered as crucial at the time
for any cultivated gentleman. For instance, he doesn't know anything about Thomas
Carlyle, as I've mentioned, Carlyle was sort of compulsory and one should be familiar
with the writings of this man. This makes Sherlock Holmes strange and modern; he
does not follow the Victorian logic that you had to have some sort of human or
humanistic cultivation for your life. Sherlock Holmes simply let himself be guided
exclusively by a utilitarian principle, the principle of functionality: "I will only learn the
things which are necessary for my job."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sherlock Holmes’ formation (2)

He decided to be completely ignorant about many things that we all label as general
culture. More striking than that is the fact that he does not know anything about
Copernicus and he's explanation of the structure of the solar system. When asked about
it Sherlock Holmes just justifies himself: "well if I need any aspect of that theory for my
research then I will learn it, so you can tell me I have to know everything about the
cycles of the solar eclipses for my research, for instance, the I will learn when they take
place just in case I have to use it in my research but only because of that."
So it is perhaps a very ridiculous or trivial expansion of the utilitarian principle, perhaps

26
one that has developed in modern society. After all Sherlock Holmes had a diversity of
knowledge but they a have to do with his job, so that the aspiration of specialization
that so many people were claiming that was needed in the society: “no, let's students
decide what they want to do in the future and let them specialise in this or that particular
field". So Holmes' knowledge is a quite particular one, the kind of knowledge that has
to do basically with Criminology.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sherlock Holmes’ deductive method (1)

What is really interesting about this extract is that fundamental deterministic

underlying logic in his art of deduction. That is, remember that he always operates by
inferring something about the background profession or origin of any individual just by
having a look at several traits in his or her physical appearance.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sherlock Holmes’ deductive method (2)

So he is very proud of his capacity of observation and analysis. This is a very

deterministic logic and there is also some features of Reductionism; all the variety and
peculiarities of these individuals are reduced to certain physical traits in their physical
appearance that allow S.H. to make his striking deductive judgements of somebody.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some popular-comic-poetic reactions: Dickens' and Mr Krook’s Death (Bleak
House)

Now let's see an illustration of something really comic that happened to Dickens in
Bleak House. In Blake House one of the most well-known villains is this so-called
'Krook'. At one point the problem of the existence of Mr Krook is solved in a
spectacular manner: this man simply burst down out of nothing, something that seemed
totally unthinkable at the time. To the point that when he published the novel in book
form he felt obliged to present a note in the introduction defending himself and
defending also the scientific possibility of spontaneous combustion because he had been
severely criticized by Mr Lewes, which was George Elliot's (Mary Ann Evans)
husband: Mr Lewes criticized this and argued that this was just impossible. Evidently,
Dickens allowed himself a kind of poetic freedom: he imagines that there is so much
gas and rottenness inside the body of Mr Krook that the best way to make him disappear
is to make him burn down. Scientifically this was a bit ridiculous although Dickens tried
to provide evidence that all this had been strongly denied by many scientists. But in
general Dickens always managed to present a trivial or superficial approach to
science in his novels. He was not interested in science and indeed as someone really
interested in people's reaction and people's taste, he knew that in general they did not
expect him to be really serious about it and most of the times he preferred to laugh at
them what to consider many scientific activities as trivial. For instance this is his
approach to science in a series of sketches that he published in 1830s called The
Mudfog Papers. Here, he imagined a sort scientific society and the acts of the meetings
of these people are really ridiculous, that Dickens had not internalized science.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

27
2.1. Nature and Science

A completely different step can be seen in the area of cosmology with Thomas Hardy.
You have here three extracts from his writings:

“The emotions have no place in a world of defect, and it is a cruel injustice that
they should have developed in it”.

This is a very dark idea. If the world is not ruled by emotions it is cruel for us to have
developed emotions. It would be better for us not to feel sorry all the time because of
the lack of justice in reality.

“This planet does not provide the materials for happiness to higher existences”.

Thomas Hardy was deeply troubled by this idea, the idea that men have developed
consciousness and aspirations that exceed the rules and apply in the natural world. So
we are somehow forced to live in our world that is inadequate for us since we have
developed a cultural, intellectual and moral universe beyond the logic of the natural
world. So in a sense he is complaining about it.

And this is also expressed in this last extract from Tess:

“He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and extinguished the light.
The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned and
indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his happiness, and
was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to swallow up the happiness
of a thousand other people with as little disturbance or change of mien”.

Mind that the characters go to sleep and Hardy deliberately tries to emphasise the idea
that nature is not sorry at all about them because it is clearly unconcerned and
indifferent to them. So this is a deliberate refutation of the pathetic fallacy, an attempt
to resist the romantic tendency of Victorianism since it was always idealistic
melodramatic or emotional. So as you can see in the text he deliberately comments on
the idea that night is simply that comes, it is not the principle of peace or consolation or
the principle of any action of human life... it is, in sum, undisturbed, unconcerned and
indifferent. There is no place for that kind of supernatural metaphysical happiness to be
obtained from it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Utilitarianism on Women and what is found missing: Charlotte Brontë

Now, this last extract is a very interesting letter written by Charlotte Brönte to her friend
Elizabeth Gaskell. Along this essay Brönte reviews an article by J.S. Mill on the
emancipation of women, here Mill claims that women should be given the same rights
as men and quite interestingly (and according to his philosophy), he does not do it out of
any moral or Christian principle. He claims simply that there should not be more
obstacles in society for women. So he does not do it out of morality but employs a
functional, practical logic: it is more expensive and more disturbing for society to
create barriers to human activities than to adopt a more open approach to people's
capacities and ambitions.

28
Brontë’s reaction is peculiar. (See the text)

That literary emotional element writers are still trying to keep hold is noticeable. They
try to stick to elements of human feelings, morals and behaviour that resist the
dissolution caused by philosophical insights.

The text presents the idea of the heart as opposed to the head. Mind that C. Brönte was
considered at the time a very firm feminist, but she was a feminist with that
conservative-romantic rhetoric about qualities of women that needed still to be kept
because they were sort of repositories of these conditional values: disinterested
devotion and self-sacrifice in love. Brönte not only wants to keep some sort of
emotional approach to life, but also some very feministic prospective of reality in which
women seem to possess those inherent qualities that we directly associate to them and
are somehow denied to men. Is it natural and right for a woman to sacrifice her life and
give love to every soul? And so on. Hence, there is something atavistic, something old-
fashioned or too traditional in Brönte’s approach even in her own condition as a
woman. This is what Joaquín calls the resistance of writers to limit or to do without
some romantic values, some romantic circles: there is always that extra-element that is
not to be relinquished and that no science can understand.

This is, in Joaquín’s opinion, a brilliant and very beautiful depiction of that conflict that
exists between reason and some sort of religious, spiritual element that they do not want
to take out of their perception of life and human existence. For instance, "people might
identify from practical reasoning that if a woman wants to be a policewoman… Why
not? And then, there are still things that indicate that women's aspirations are still
conditioned and determined by a particular way of being that makes them different and
'inferior' to men. Although women possess some feelings or qualities (sensibility) that
make them superior to men, are like a double-edged sword since that is what society
uses to regard them as socially and economically inferior to men.
(This issue will be addressed in Unit 8)

The idea is that a woman is better than a man because age can give love to men or to
children, elderly or sick people. That is, she is the perfect nurse: "so your job in life is to
be a nurse not to be a politician, a prominent lawyer or whatever." It could be said that,
in this extract, C. Brönte is limiting the scope of action for women to areas that make
them socially inferior and subordinated.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

29
2.2. Religion

Starting with some pieces of historical evidence, the theory that England was a more or
less uniform Anglican country and that the official religion of the country was
Anglicanism and was shared by everyone, was shaking when on Sunday 30th March,
1851, a census was conducted in order to check how many people were attending mass
(there was an intention to make it compulsory -it did not succeed though), this census
revealed that England had started to grow secular and less Anglican: only 7 million
people attended religious services out of 18 million.

What is also striking is the fact that the Church of England was being followed by
groups of dissenters or non-conformists. Concerning religion, England was divided in
social classes and in regions: the Church of England dominated in rural areas and was
the religion of the middle classes rather than the religion adopted by working classes,
since these latter were following dissenting or non-conformist views. So, it is an
interesting fact that the unity of England was dissolved in this respect.

The threat of the growth of other religions and other views and the loss of the
uniformity of England in many respects was also enhanced by the adoption of several
legal measures that opened the country to other religions. That is, many restrictions to
other religions gradually disappeared, for instance in the 1828, non-conformists
could have access to public offices and to education, remember that normally it was
forbidden for them. This measure, which was original from the Restoration Period, was
extended the following year to Catholics as well.

Another interesting moment occurred when a member of parliament, CH. Bradlaugh,

declared that he was an atheist and did not believe in any God. He started to create
societies in order to promote the rights of people to declare themselves as atheist,
fearlessly. Certainly, academic life was extremely dependant on religious views.

However there were many things that started to break this exclusivity of Anglicanism.
Some of the most affluent industrialists and merchants of the north of England were in
many cases dissenters or coming from Puritan groups, and at local level they were truly
influential. This could indicate the idea that people were forgetting about religion but
that is false, people were not at all forgetting about religion. Religion was still a
deeply felt issue and something that accompanied people's thoughts constantly.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Religion

Yet, 1/3 of all books were religious. There were many clearly explicitly religious
newspapers; copies of tracts and sermons were sold by millions, normally published by
religious societies. For instance, a well-known priest called Charles Spurgeon spent
about sixty years making sermons every week and getting them published to sell them.
Up to 2,000 people would gather to hear his sermons, in a way, this new phenomenon of
the TV preachers did already exist at the time. Another typical phenomenon of the
period was the writing of religious hymns (a sort of soft or petty version of poetry), to
accompany the Common Prayer Book. That is, apart from the mass Anglican rites, there
were books of hymns to be sung by the religious community.
Evidently, this market for religious matters was in great contrast with the lamentations
coming from religious authorities about the fact that the modern world is not offering
30
or giving people room for religious or spiritual or higher ideas: that the world was going
materialistic; deterministic; that people were only interested in money in pleasure and
so on and so forth, the old story, for they had being saying that for about three or four
centuries already, there is nothing new about it. Even John Henry Newman claimed
that if people forgot about God, they were forgetting about their father, people were left
spiritual orphans. This last remark is quite funny since many writers reacted to that
and said that they preferred to be orphans rather than having the kind of father or God
that religions offered to them - Samuel Butler was one of those provocative attackers
of religion.

In fact many people were deeply affected by a sense of religious crisis, of religious
doubt: there were people still believing in religion; other forgetting about it; and
hundreds and hundreds of people worried about their loss of religion. People who did
not believe but were all the time thinking what it meant for them not to believe, a
serious concern about it. It is a sort on intermediate position that Philip Davis calls
'unbelief', that is, something which is in-between belief and disbelief. 'Unbelief' is an
intermediate and worrying state: "I don't believe but I want to believe but I am just
wondering why I am not believing...etc." Instead of simply forgetting and saying
goodbye to religion, even those who had lost faith were all the time lingering, dwelling
and going on with that worry. Consequently, this topic created a great deal of anguish
and seriousness.

Another interesting consequence of this loss of faith that was perceived at the time was
the fact that literature retained some of the functions formally enjoyed by religion by
becoming idealistic, by trying to enhance people's lives, people's sense of aesthetics of
goodness and good values: a literary faith replaced a dogmatic one, it was writers who
insisted on the world’s spiritual reality.

There was also a deeply felt view that the Church of England needed a new
Reformation. That the Church of England had somehow become too very much like
the corrupted Catholic Church of the Renaissance and so, a new effort to purify, to
simplify, to make it stronger was required. An impulse to the protestant faith was badly
needed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Religion

In order to carry out this Reformation, several religious groups within the Church of
England tried to adapt to these demands and the challenge of new times.
In the first years of the decade (1830-1850) there were three prominent religious
groups within the Church of England:

The most active one was that of the Evangelicals or, as they were called, the Low
Church, who represented 38%. Then there was the Broad Churchmen (21%), which
were the liberal ones, and finally the High Churchmen-Tractarians who amounted up
to 41% but this figure is inaccurate, because it sums up people who did not follow any
tendency or people who defended one particular variant of the official religion of the
institution formed by the Tractarians. In fact, there were about 20% following
Tractarianism and then 21% not following any particular tendency but just adapting to
what was the official voice of the institution at the time.

31
We will not go into theological debates since there are lots of aspects in which they
differ. We will just introduce several general tendencies that can be useful in order to
identify ways of behaving that were later on reflected in literature.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Religion

Evangelicalism was the closest the Church of England could go without crossing the
border with the dissenting churches. That is, Evangelicals were very much like
dissenters, like non-conformists but still kept within the Church of England.
Evangelicals showed a very emotional approach to religion and a very anti-
intellectual one:
"Religion is something that you must feel, and you feel it in a curious way"
Firstly because you are deeply worried about Fall. Fall becomes the centre of our
experience, that is, we consider ourselves falling; we consider ourselves sinners and
then, it is essential for everyone's religious experience to go through an experience of
conversion. And there we have the typical: "I was a sinner and then I found Faith, God
talked to me and said that I had to purify myself etc." This was something Evangelicals
were desperately looking for, that idea or feeling that they had received God's grace and
that they were morally clean what made them truly enthusiastic.

All this intense approach to religion found an extraordinary echo on lower classes, there
was a degree of emotional involvement in this religious view that was missing in other
religious tendencies. And, above all, it was clearly anti-intellectual and anti-literary.
There were many evangelicals who showed typical puritan notions that all fiction or
literature was sinful by definition.

A) They always tried to avoid literary forms and, evidently, this entailed a sophisticated
analysis of whether this or that is a sin. For instance, many important writers of the 19 th
C. came from this religion or from families that professed this religion; Thomas
Carlyle had to get rid of the family background because his father considered that
poetry and fiction were false and criminal. Something similar happened to Ruskin and
George Elliot: they were brought up as evangelicals and they lost faith and tried to have
their literary careers away from religion but somehow always showing the individual
inner seriousness that they had absorbed when they were children. So they always felt
very anxious and concerned about the morality and the rigour and the ambition that was
required for them in life and in art, that is, they abandoned evangelical faith but they
kept some traits in their personalities that derived from their religious background.
Hence, attitude to life was still that kind of ‘secular spiritualism’.
(Textual examples will follow later on)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Religion

B) Another important aspect of this religious approach was the importance of the Bible.
Unlike the Catholic Religion in which there are so many other texts written, and it was a
religion that sort of favoured the creation of texts to comment and to discuss the bible,
these people [Evangelicals] still thought that the Bible had to be literally followed and
there was a strong emphasis towards the need of spreading the message, spreading the
gospel.
C) Another interesting consequence of this is evidently, a simplification of their
rituals: they had grown too complex, too ornamental and so they felt that they had to be

32
purified. Samuel Pepys had been a puritan in his early years, he followed the Church of
England, but from time to time he was fond of attending Catholic masses that were
tolerated in some private houses in London, and he always said that he was fascinated
by them because there was music; it was like a theatrical show. As he was used to the
boring mechanistic rites of the Church of England, all this show with the priest dressed
in black colours or the way the church was decorated... It was something he found
extraordinary. (Joaquín shows us a picture of a Puritan church; modest and undecorated –
aspiration of the Evangelicals).

D) An interesting quality of these evangelical people was how they interacted with
social issues. One first generation of evangelicals called the Clapham Sect, were very
active in the second half of 18thC in trying to promote legal changes to avoid slave
trade. In general, they were quite progressive in social terms because they favoured the
improvement of living conditions of poor classes or working classes. In a sense, they
inherited the idea that it is part of our responsibility as Christian people not to see
anyone suffering, that is, all our neighbours are fellow souls and so we should always
spend our time, money and effort in trying to improve their lot.

This idea gradually evolved towards a different interpretation of charity. Evidently,

they did not defend the State's intervention, to help people it has to be an individual act
that you perform and, in fact, in many cases they preferred to justify the absence of help
and charity to other people because suffering is something that everyone needs to
experience in order to purify his or her life. Thus, the existence of poverty and misery
among poor classes should be tolerated somehow because it was part of the necessary
preparatory process for their spiritual conversion. There was always the belief that
people would be blessed by God's grace and suddenly they would reform their ways and
go up in life, so in a sense, they adopted (in Joaquín's opinion) a sort of hypocritical
view about human suffering and social problems: "No, there is nothing we can do, it is
God's will and God knows better what to do". Hence, helping was much more selective.
Remember that in the second half of the 18thC lots of charities were founded but it was
an act of placing yourself in society rather than genuine charity or will to help people.

Philip Davis summarises very well the fact that, perhaps not everyone in society
adopted this religion but something concerning the mood of this religious group became
a sort of general pattern of behaviour which was acceptable for everyone:

“What Evangelicalism gave the Victorians (even those who would

never or no longer have called themselves evangelical) was a base for
an extraordinarily energetic sense of individual conscience and moral
earnestness. This need for the individual to be consciously ‘serious’,
to be earnestly responsible and disciplined, to ‘recollect himself’,
arose directly from a lingering belief in the perils of the Fall.
Evangelicalism’s God was a hard God” (Davis 104)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane Eyre, Mary Ann Wilson and Helen Burns

The above commentary by Philip Davis clearly illustrates many novelists' approach to
novels: through the figures of the characters and the attitude of the protagonist... Which
are common features of the Bildungsroman (to be dealt with later on in the unit).
Let's now see this in Jane Eyre.

33
Here, Jane is in Lowhood School, where girls are educated in a religious program, and
she is quite aware of what she needs for her improvement starting with usual company,
the girls. Her best friend is Helen Burns, who is a pure angel, a girl so obsessed with
salvation that she is always happy for she is sure she will meet God, so she constantly
claims that in order to be happy the best thing that can happen is to die. Helen is all the
time asking for a way-out of this life of suffering, but she dies and ceases to be a
damaging influence on Jane.
Helen's attitude to life contrasts with Mary Ann Wilson's. Mary represents the kind of
friendship you make with someone who is superficial. We are told in this paragraph
about the quality of life with Mary Ann Wilson, mind that the qualities of this girl are
the ones you normally expect from a friend when you are a child and when you are at
school: you are getting entertainment, you are getting information about life, you are
getting social interaction and all this. She was observant, witty, and original: her
manner set me at my ease, she knew more of the world, and she could tell me many
things I liked to hear... My curiosity found gratification -then something slightly
different: to my faults she did ample indulgence -this is bad, Mary is not correcting her-
she did not scold me for anything I said, she liked to inform and entertain if not much
improvement.

Mind that indulgence and improvement are the things that Mary Ann Wilson cannot
supply. That is why Jane Eyre moves to an analysis of what she gets from Helen.
Because although she is not getting much fun evidently, she is getting improvement, she
is getting a satisfaction to something that she considers Helen has: a taste of fine high
things. Helen is more intellectually and morally ambitious and spends all the time
telling Jane what she needs to improve, thus Helen is a much more valuable company,
simply because Jane represents herself as someone who considers herself valuable -and
you cannot consider yourself valuable if you are only interested in gossiping. So there is
a clear intellectual and moral superiority of Helen Burns, because she is always
aspiring to make herself and anyone else better. And Helen represents that attitude of
(as Davis states) moral earnestness or seriousness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlotte Brönte, by Elizabeth Gaskell

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a biography of Charlotte Brönte and she described C. Brönte's
behaviour when she was in any social meeting. As we can guess, Brönte might not be a
religious fanatic like Helen Burns but there is something of that intellectual and moral
seriousness in C. Brönte's behaviour. Let's have a look at the way in which she is
described (see the text).

That is, she can have a conversation and never say a joke, never be frivolous -
everything in her is "straightforward", to the point. Perhaps conversations with
Charlotte were really interesting at an intellectual or moral level but they do not look at
all like the conversations that we have with our friends. This is the idea of moral
seriousness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

34
2.2. Religion

Commenting on Jane Eyre

In fact, evangelicals are quite prominent in many novels written in the period and
normally there is no voice to defend them. Most writers included evangelicals in their
novels basically to criticise them. Why were they criticised? Well, they were considered
in many novels as intolerant or hypocritical. And sometimes they could be considered to
some extent admirable but also to some extent inadequate.

Good examples to analyse this variety of attitudes towards evangelicals are Charlotte
Brönte and Jane Eyre themselves. Above, we have introduced a commentary on how
ideal Helen Burns is. Helen Burns is saying very obscure things about human life: she is
obsessed with salvation, the Fall, corruption of the human soul etc. And these ideas are
for instance constantly said by Mr. Brocklehurst, the self-righteous clergyman who runs
the school. So, how can Charlotte Brönte for instance criticise Mr. Brocklehurst and
defend Helen Burns if Helen Burns is saying exactly the same? For one reason, while C.
Brönte claims that Helen deeply feels all the things she says, Mr. Brocklehurst is a
hypocrite. He is the director of the school and he is all the time imposing a regime of
cruelty because of religious reasons: what girls need is to castigate and punish their vile
bodies to save their souls. Charlotte Brönte is criticising evangelicals who are
hypocritical (Mr. Brocklehurst) and false and she defends Helen Burns although she
dies, and she also defends in the novel John Rivers, a priest who decides to sacrifice his
life as a rural priest, living more or less comfortably and decides to become a
missionary in India. Perhaps Saint John Rivers represents this model, someone who is
admirable but not adequate at least for Jane, because he proposes marriage to Jane but
she is not so extreme in her religious faith.
So there were lots and lots of novels in which writers represented themselves socially as
liberal and progressive by criticising evangelicals through all these characters of their
novels. For instance, another character in Jane Eyre who represents these negative
qualities of evangelical faith is one of her cousins, Eliza Reed. When she visits her, by
the middle of the novel, she has grown up into a very religious person, but mind that C.
Brönte shows no sympathy for her at all along the novel. This woman spends all her
time thinking about religion, practising religious rites but, there is not a bit of warmth or
love in her heart. Her religious fervour is all intellectual and artificial and there is
nothing human in her life. For this character, what is important about religion is not the
message of love, charity and all that, it is the norms, the rules. So Charlotte Brönte is
clearly against that kind of religion that is obsessed with the norm and restraint.
Dickens also created an interesting character in this respect with Arthur Clennman in
the novel Little Dorrit. Arthur Clennman is a hero and he is also a good guy despite the
fact that he has been brought up by a religious fanatic mother. He manages to save
himself and is not corrupted by the emptiness and lack of warmth and soul proper of
Evangelicalism.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

35
2.2. Religion

Slide beginning: Oxford Movement – Tractarianism – Puseyism…

There were two branches The Evangelicals The other two movements are far or less
interested … art... in … or in fiction…. They were less commonson … people who had
adopted their views and particularly concerning the ways in which those religious views
would affect social behaviour… These days are clear connection between the way
people behave in society because of that religion particularly remember hypocrisy, lack
of generosity, rigidity, while other branches were perhaps more important from the
point of view of institution of the Church of England but less remarkable.

One interesting movement was the Oxford movement or Tractarianism. It is a group of

intellectuals based in Oxford who started producing a series of pamphlets with ideas on
particularly the evolution of religion in moan times and how the Church had been
according to them neglected or enslaved because it had submitted too powerfully to the
English government. The traditional association of the Church of England with the State
and the fact that it was a established church but it was protected. On the one hand had
guaranteed it a privileged position, but from the point of view of the purity of its
dogmas and of its liveliness it was even negative and they wanted, the Church, to have
a sort of authority or independence that they could see … by the time, because it was
remember at the time an independent state with a voice of its own?? while in their
opinion it was too dependent on … Then there was a sort of Odis movement, there was
a sort of attempt to try to create stronger links or bounds between the Church of
England and its Catholic origins to imagine a Church of England with a powerful
hierarchy and also one that found that perhaps the best way to the secularisation of the
growth of Agnosticism in society could be achieved by making religious life more
appealing, more interesting, and they found that perhaps one way to do it was to
enhance the rituals of the Church services, this is, to make them look closer to what is
prominent in Catholicism (more spectacular, with more involvement of people in all this
respects). One of the problems about this is that they looked back to the Church of
England that they started discussing a very serious problem: to what extent when the
Church of England had been created it had effectively departed from the Catholic
Church or was only the English branch of the Catholic Church. This created a lot of
controversy that was partly legal nominalistic, but which also implied for instance that
people like Calilonio??? moved to the the Catholic religion and many people moved
back so they created a so called Anglo-Catholicism.

Perhaps the only elements that have to do with how they handled the Bible had to do
with the fact that they favoured a very sophisticated, but fake, approach to the Bible.
Instead of the literal approach of the Evangelicals, they tried to fight back the
accusations brought about by scientific discoveries by claiming that the Bible should
not be read just as explicit, accurate message the history of human kind, the history of
the world and rules were not necessarily those that appear there, but rather something
providing inspiration, some messages that could be interpreted in several ways, so they
defended the idea that you can be more or less creative in the ways you respond to the
biblical message. However, there were still two ideas that kept them close to
Evangelicalism: A negative view of human kind as dominated by the notion of fall, but
instead of emphasizing like Evangelicals the idea of conversion and hope, they pay

36
more attention to baptism, revitalising that Catholic institution. And finally, the idea that
reason alone cannot be used … That there is always something that escapes from that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Religion

There were lots of writers who reflected all their religious views, but none of these
works is successful nowadays, none of these novels is read nowadays. Perhaps
Barchester Towers is read and contains some characters who profess this Tractarian
views, but in general Anthony Trollope is understood nowadays as someone who was
very careful in his analysis not of theological issues within the Church but rather how
there was some degree of interaction or interference between theological issues and
social life in provincial towns; this is, how there is a struggle for power and a struggle
of influences between local authorities and local religious authorities, politicians... And
most of his novels, particularly the series that is called Barsetshire, analyses the kind of
social life or public life in a small community, and how any aspects in the behaviour of
the priest answers in many cases some social, political pressure of the different forces
that exist in society. So instead of being theological, he was more social or political in
his analyses of how religion is seen?? in the small communities.

But from a historical point of view it has not to be forgotten that this novel, The Heir of
Redclyffe by Charlotte Yonge, was as successful at the time as the big Bildungsroman
written by the time (Davisd Copperfield and Jane Eyre). It was as popular and as best-
selling as the others. So in the cannon of the period it was as popular, only that
nowadays people are interested on the affairs of how this Guy Morville is a man who
feels that he has somehow inherited some curse of the family that make him feel
attracted to negative tendencies. It is something very confusing and something that
perhaps was considered appealing at the time, but has lost all reader's interest nowadays.

Perhaps of all these texts, the only one that I??? would advise you to be familiar with is
paradoxically one that passed completely unnoticed at the time, it is, the poetry of G.M.
Hopkins. He was born in the Anglican faith, later on converted into Catholicism, and in
fact he became a Jesuit priest. He wrote an excellent poetry, only that it was never
published until the year 1914/1915, many years after he died, so we cannot say that he
had any effect or any influence on Victorian poetry. But I find that there is something
interested in this poetry because it tends to celebrate in a very spectacular way the
greatness of God's creation of the world, the greatness of nature, and in a sense he …
the aesthetic enthusiasm shown by other theorists like John Ruskin and other writers of
the time. It was very modern, it was aesthetically elevated and still indulged in the
contemplation of nature as God's creation and something to celebrate, ?? so breaks into
Romanticism.

Newman, for instance, was at the same producing autobiographies: Apologia Pro Vita
Sua is an autobiography trying to explain or justify why he became a Catholic; and he
was combining this with novels like Callista: A Sketch of the Third Century, where he
narrates the life of the Catholic religion in the Roman times.

It is also quite interesting Nicholas Wiseman, who wrote Fabiola, because he was the
first Catholic Archbishop in England. In fact he had been born in Seville; his father was
an Irish merchant based in Seville so he was born in Spain, and when Catholics were

37
released and Catholic structure could be built again in England, he was appointed
Archbishop of Canterbury in England
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dickens about Tractarians – Bleak House

Dickens had particular views on religion, and only once he commented on Tractarians
in a negative way. He called them “Intellectual Dandies” because he complained that
these Tractarians were sort of complaining that people not feeling religion and they
should be instructed again in the duties of religion, but they were doing it with an
approach that could not be understood or shared by low classes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Religion

The third movement that has been identified in the period is the so called the Broad
Church Movement, represented by the Oxford professor Benjamin Jowett. In general,
the main tendency in this group was to try to accommodate, to find some consensus in
society in the interest of the national church, and the integrity of the Church of England.
That is, if there are problems in society or because science is somehow attacking us,
why not adopting every evidence that comes from outside and we try to find a meeting
point between all different views of nature.

They did not produce any significant writer or any significant commentary on them, but
in fact most of the history of this movement has to do with the difficult fate faced by
many representatives of this movement whenever they wanted or they aspired to have
access to any public office. Their views were in many ways too modern, too rational,
too pragmatic in many respects, so whenever one of these people like Hampden or
Gorham tried to have access to a professorship in any place there were lots and lots of
opposition against them, people trying to transform it into a sedition case and opposing
them; and only marginally because George Eliot represents part of the activities of this
group, because this group was one of those who tried to integrate and accept, was at the
time a very powerful tendency: the textual, or historical, or critical examination of the
Bible. Remember that while Evangelicals were literal (the Bible means what it says and
there is no discussion about its meaning and everything in the Bible is historical stuff),
scientific evidence showed that it was false, so there was a German movement in which
some scholars tried to determine all the historical inaccuracies, all the historical
problems that had to do with the Bible, because they acknowledged for the first time
that not everything about the Bible was designed by God, but was just a historical
product, a product that had sort of assembled throughout centuries by several Christian
or Jewish communities, particularly the first ideas of the Bible. So all these people
started producing evidence to discuss literal validity of that information and trying to
explain it historically, and George Eliot translated them from German (one of the most
important texts), and evidently she became an Atheist as a consequence of this.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2 Religion

One of the texts by Matthew Arnold concerning the religion of England's main idea
(texto perteneciente a la lista para el Assignment 1) is summarised as there is the
Hellenic as opposed to the Hebraistic approach. He sort of identifies two ways of
approaching human nature and approaching the essence of religion. In his opinion,
evidently he is biased because he tends to favour the Hellenistic approach, but

38
acknowledges that perhaps the other or some degree of attention to the other is
necessary. The Hellenistic idea is more complacent or flexible about human nature: men
are not perfect but possess something divine, and in fact we should elaborate a religion
that adapts to our spirit and nature. In contrast, he found that Evangelicals and Puritans
had adopted what he called a Hebraic vision of religion: religion is not about how you
feel, how you love other people, it is about restraining behaviour by means of
commandments, laws, principles, etc., and there is nothing else to do that to follow the
law. You are right or you are wrong depending on what you do according to the rules.
In his opinion, this is wrong, but some degree of attention to principles is needed, so he
was in favour of the Hellenistic approach.

The Anglican middle ground was so quiet that no one complained … In fact, all writers
always tried to keep away from direct attacks on the passivity of the middle ground. The
Church of England, as it stood without taking side, was only attacked in the Modernist
period, in the early 20th century, when many Modernist writers realised that Anglican
priests were like very bored civil servants doing something they did not feel at all a part,
not helping people, not making people feel religion at all; but rather keeping some sort
of social cement, that is, something giving integrity to society and preventing revolution
and rebellions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. Religion

After the year 1850 all these theological discussions just moved to the background
because people started paying more attention to how characters experience faith in their
lives, and they managed to integrate the account of the life of the character, his social,
sentimental, emotional, educational problems with some commentaries about how they
had lost faith,changed faith, perverted or whatever, but not paying attention to religion.
So novels stopped being about what religious views to take, but rather how religious
views somehow colour or affect the personal evolution of the character. Even in this
respect, the English novel got secularised because it was not prominently religious, but
rather religion was just another ingredient on the character's personality.

For instance, George Eliot, who was very concerned with religious issues given her
origins and her personal evolution, finds that there is much to attack in Methodists that
in one of her novels she makes one character, Adam Bede, evolve in a positive way
thanks to the influences of the character of Dinah Morris, who is a Methodist herself, so
the interaction with this character makes him better, but not because of theological
reasons, but not because of theological reasons, but only because she has the personal
qualities that he is looking for, and that he misses for his personal fulfilment. In some
other novels like Silas Marner, she introduces some attacks on some sects, but it is not
at all a prominent topic of the novel.

A writer who wrote something very specific about religious faith in England was Mrs
Humphry Ward. She is a very interesting case of an intellectual lady in the sense she
adopted anti-feminist positions. In fact, remember her single name was Mary Arnold,
and she belonged to the Arnold family (Mathew Arnold, Thomas Arnold); they were
one of the most prominent intellectual families in the country, and they were connected
to the Huxleys, and also to the Darwins, so it was a very important network of families.
When she started writing, mind that she adopted as her penn name Mrs Humphry Ward,
which is not her name but she is in some way submitted to her husband. The most

39
prominent novel in this was Robert Elsmere, which is a sort of compendium of the
religious views of England. The funny things is that it creates an interesting complaint:
one of the protagonists marries Robert Elsmere, then she is an Anglican, and he is an
Anglican too, but his religion evolves and he adopts new religious views. His wife feels
that he has betrayed her because she married an Anglican and now he and he is no
longer. So, all the novel is about the conflict that took place within this married couple
because of this personal evolution of only one of the members of the married couple.
The idea is that it is about religion, but it is about personal conflicts: An I right to
divorce you just because you are not the person I married? Should I desert you in order
to keep the integrity of my faith? Things like this became a more important topic and
just formulated the origins and the essence of every religious view.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dickens – Little Dorrit – Arthur Clennam

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

40
2.3. Mind & thinking

There is an interesting evolution in the 19th century because several developments made
psychology develop as the century advanced. The starting point had to do with the
theory called Associationism which is an adaptation of the empirical theories
formulated by people like John Locke (remember that our brains were a tabla rasa, and
impressions leave marks on the brain and empty scars?? combining them, and
formulated the idea of how different impressions start making connections in mind and
developing more abstract ideas, but there are not a priori structures in the brain. All
these empirical, philosophical theory of John Locke with his analysis of the passage to
observation, to impression, to thought, etc. was improved at the time with a lot of
physiological evidence, that is, more people working on the functioning of the brain by
means of physiological, experimental evidence (chemical information, perception of the
role played by electricity in the brain and body, and all these things). They started
developing a theory that clearly refuted the Kantian idealism: remember that in Kant all
our ideas are somehow prior to our existence, and somehow grasped by us because we
already possess those structures.

Evidently, another important evolution had to do with the fact that former traditional
interpretations of mental life as being placed in a very vague space called the soul were
transferred thanks to evidence to the idea that there is a mind, and that the mind is
located in the brain. It was not so evident at the time, and many people still claimed that
our self is somehow distributed in a very vague way in the body, and the same applied
to mental or cerebral activity. It was not always assumed that everything was placed in
the brain.

What was the main tenet of this idea? There is not need to go through all this in detail:
repeated impressions combined within passive memory automatically produce
networks of associations of ideas, and that is the way we produce sophisticated
thinkings.

Then, they started realising that this is the biological, physiological evidence. They
could experiment that parts of our brain and nervous system changed in ways that could
be objectively observed. That is why they spoke about vibrations transmitted through
the nervous system. All these ideas created a very strong physiological emphasis on
mental processes. The first parsing was from a purely spiritual conception of mental
processes to an interpretation that was extremely somatic, that is, everything that
happens with the body is a purely physiological process. So the first tendency in 19 th
century psychology, although it was not named like that at the time, was purely
physiological: everything is sort of mechanistic, everything happens because of
biological, physiological changes.

In a sense, this was helped by the influence of Utilitarian philosophy. Remember that
Utilitarian philosophy tried somehow to simplify all the complexity of human behaviour
into basic phenomenon: pain and pleasure; and so, pain and pleasure should be
channelled through the impulses of reward and punishment, so everything was very
simple in a sense like mechanistic.

One interesting consequence of this that many people found particularly uncomfortable
was the idea that we do not really make decisions, and then we act accordingly. The

41
idea that we make a decision, that we analyse something, then come to a conclusion,
and then act, is false. As they were quite mechanistic in their approach, they imagined
that conscious volition is simply a psychological mechanism that operates at the same
time that we are reacting automatically in order to persuade us that we are acting
according to our will. So, our body reacts towards something, and our body, at the same
time, creates the illusion that we have decided that we are going to do that because we
have thought about it. Conscious volition does not start an action, it simply accompanies
it. As T.H. Huxley expresses in a beautiful way, “It is not that we are not automata, [yes,
we are automata, we are robots, we are acting according to processes that are taking
place inside], it is simply that we are conscious automata [, we are automata, but at the
same time we have developed consciousness, the ability to analyse what we are doing
automatically]”. They realised somehow that our mental life is a sort of idealistic
construct, a construct built on some actions that are not really designed by us.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Mind & Thinking

Another curious development in this somatic face of the mental study at the period was
Phrenology. Phrenology was a science, pseudo-science we would call it nowadays, in
which it was understood that our brain is not integrated, is not a network, but a sort of
compound of several mini-brains, and each mini-brain controls and rules one particular
set of skills, abilities, or faculties. There is one particular area for each particular aspect
of our behaviour. And, in fact, when someone is, lets say, very greedy it is because that
part of the brain is unnaturally strong, energetic, big, prominent or whatever.

They developed the very ridiculous believe that by looking at someone's skull or head
you could somehow determine the attitudes that were more prominent in people, and
there were lots and lots of studies at the time showing that some particular shape of
skull makes for the criminal person, or makes for the emotional person, or makes for the
intellectual, etc.

They also believed that while we are given these faculties naturally, we can somehow,
through a process of training and intellectual adaptation, reshape the particular balance
of these sections of our brain. They imagined that you can train your courage, or any
ability.

This had some interesting or positive function: it created a more favourable view of
insane people: they were no longer wicked or cursed by God, but rather they were
perceived as ill because some problem was taken inside. It created more progressive
mental asylums were people could be taken care of, and it also developed this culture of
self-help: people actively trying to improve their capacities. This culture is very visible,
in my?? opinion, in Jane Eyre and David Copperfield. Charlotte Brontë had many
books of Phrenology in her library, so she studied it and she took this visibly very
seriously.

Another typical and interesting development that belong to the area of Phrenology had
to do with the discovery of how to handle the consequences for mental life of the fact
that we have two hemispheres in or brain. What is the relationship between the left and
the right part of our brain? It was understood at the time that in fact we have two brains,
and that one is the sentinel and security for the other. We have the brain that is
ourselves , and the other brain that is the policeman, just watching the other half of the

42
brain, sort of trying to control or to impose some restrain on it. It was believed that there
were separated functions for the different parts of the body. Evidently, this idea created
the possibility that there could be a conflict between the two parts of the body, or, in
fact, a symmetrical independence or double personality.

That is why the famous Jekyll & Hyde in a sense was built on some research done at the
time concerning the possibility of neutralising some animal, brutal, criminal parts of our
personality while favouring the others. The only problem is that in Jekyll & Hyde the
two mental realities of the doctor become two distinct personalities with two physical
appearances, for that is what makes the experiment go wrong. But in the origin, it was a
very sound idea, the idea of trying to neutralise one part of the personality.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Mind & Thinking

Another related discipline to Phrenology was Physiognomy: the idea that there is
always a connection between facial expression and emotional response. This, for
instance, is from Charlotte Brontë:

“He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his brow, and showed
a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave
sign of benevolence should have risen”.

Mind that by looking at Mr. Rochester's face, Jane Eyre can detect some traces in his
personality: he has a solid mass of intellectual organs, so probably the intellectual part
of his head is big, while the part of benevolence was deficient.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ch. Brontë – The Professor

She took it very seriously, and I?? found very entertaining Phrenological and
Physiological analyses performed by Charlotte Brontë in The Professor (lee la parte
marcada de la quotation: about Edward Crimsworth): there is a character whose nature
is envious, and so all the good qualities of the protagonist are just irritating that other
person. But this man (the protagonist) is cautious because he has three separated
faculties, parts of the brain, that control his actions: they were “Caution, Tact,
Observation”. They were, as he calls them “my natural sentinels”. He is a man who is
showing a careful behaviour towards his boss because he has these strong faculties
allowing him to keep a conscious attitude.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ch. Brontë – The Professor

When she goes to the school, she starts analysing other girls that are working there (no
dice de quién está hablando aquí). In The Professor, the protagonist is working and
studying at the same time at a boarding school in Belgium. There several characters
assemble, and one of them is a Spanish girl whose name is Juanna Trista. This girl was
of mix Belgium and Spanish origins. Her father was a Catalonian residing in the Canary
Islands where Juanna had been born, and then she was sent to Europe to be educated.
Mind the Phrenological analysis that she (Brontë?) performs (lee la parte marcada de la
quotation): I?? can imagine this girl looking at the other girl all the tame and taking
notes in order to analyse her behaviour as springing form qualities on her head.
Evidently, her attitude is not negative. She is pretending that she is giving physiological,

43
scientific, experimental, objective evidence to express her dislike to her; a dislike that,
by the way, is aimed at a foreigner, something that is so typical with Charlotte Brontë
and with Jane Eyre, all the time attacking other people who belong to other nation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ch. Brontë – The Professor

There is another girl, Adele Dronsart (lee la parte marcada de la quotation): “Suspicion,
sullen ill-temper were on her forehead”, again being able to read that on the forehead;
“vicious propensities in her eye”; “envy and panther-like deceit about her mouth”. She
shows the ability to read, again, personal qualities on the head shape and facial factions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ch. Brontë – Jane Eyre

Consider the passage from a purely spiritual perception of human behaviour to one that
is primarily based on somatic evidence. In a spiritual conception of human behaviour,
behaviour is very simply determined: it is either right or wrong, according to moral
principles, and there is not analysis to make in this respect. People either have a sense of
what is right or not, or have decided to adopt Christian values or to renounce them
because they favour other interests.

The somatic conception, as it seems to be based on propensities, that is, some

favourable tendencies we are born with, somehow tends to privilege the factor of
heredity. We have capacities that may be expected because they have been biologically
transmitted from our parents, although it accepts the possibility of some educational, or
some reformulational reshaping of them thanks to individual will or external
circumstances. So, there is a more balanced perception in this respect. However, mind
that the fact that propensities are addressed so often in Charlotte Brontë's work
somehow naturalises what we perceive as enmities or friendships on different degrees of
similarity or different behaviour of people without putting all the blame on them. Find
for instance that she says that she is “a discord in Gateshead Hall”, and she analyses
what is not going on well, or why they don't get on with her. I was so “opposed to them
in temperament, in capacity, in propensities”, so propensities become a sort of word of
authority to automatically classify characters as likeable or not alike, or opposed to each
other
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ch. Brontë – Jane Eyre

In some other movements this turn is employed to denounce something that is expressed
very vaguely, but which should be understood as a sort of sexual ingredient that makes
the character's word?? wicked. This is the way Rochester describes his mad wife, the
mad woman that has been kept in the attic for ten years. When he has to explain and
justify why is marriage with her failed he speaks about some giant propensities she had,
we can only guess from the text that it is an ambitious, sexual nature, very active nature,
and he feels offended by this element in her personality. Remind that instead of
expressing it, he sort of keeps and educated, polite, or rhetoric attitude: I will not make
you suffer with all the details, only that she had “giant propensities”, and after that she
was like “I don't want to hear anything else”. Suddenly, all this is qualifier to draw
attention on who is mind not to be 100% blamed because she is only “the true daughter
of an infamous mother”. As you can see, there is something morally wrong about her,
but this lack of morality is attenuated by the factor of heredity.

44
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ch. Brontë – Jane Eyre

I find the factor of physiological, biological, heredity, also interesting because it is

mixed in the Victorian novel with another factor that comes from the past and from our
ancestors, which is inheritance (money). Authors are playing all the time with things
that are inherited, particularly money, and Jane, the orphan, is said at the end of the
novel, because she receives an inheritance, once she has been all her life trying to
struggle with people who are negative because of her heredity.

Again, the word “propensities” appears at the end of the novel in a significant way. The
voice speaking here is St. John Rivers, the priest who offers to marry Jane, and go with
him to India as a missionary. Then, he tries to justify his decision to go to India because
he has propensities, that is, ambitions, but at the same time he has principles, and he is
trying to find in his moral life some point of agreement or coherence between his
Christian ambitions and his Christian humility and submission to God; Christian faith is
checking his ambition to do something very prominent.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Collins – No Name – Norah Vanstone

Another interesting case of application of current somatic, physiological perceptions of

human personality is to be observed in an interesting sensation novel by Wilkie Collins
entitled No Name. It is a story of two girls. They live in a respectable family, the
Vanstones. Just after the two parents die, the girls learn that their parents had only
married very recently, so they had been living as a family, but the two girls were born
when the marriage had not been established, so they had automatically lost their name
and the document has not validity in order to make them legal. They are bastards, they
lost the name, and they lost the family fortune. Then, the two girls react in different
ways: the first one, Norah, is just an impoverish version of the mother, and there is
nothing very interesting about her personality, and there is also nothing interesting
about what she does in the story. She represents a peasant attitude, she just accepts her
fate and does not struggle to get her reputation, her name, her family fortune back.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Collins – No Name – Magdalen Vanstone

But things are very different with Magdalen, the younger daughter. She is active, and in
fact, something that is peculiar about her behaviour in the story is that she starts trying
to solve the mystery of why all these things have happened and trying to find the way of
solving the problem by adopting multiple personalities. She spends all the novel
pretending that she is one person, making her guesses, and then doing that many times;
she has a very mobile personality. But there is an interesting and logical correlation
made in the story between her very mobile personality and the very mobile identities
she adopts, and the mobility of the features of her face, which is physically described:
we are told that her whole countenance was remarkable it had “an extraordinary
mobility. (...) The girl's exuberant vitality asserted itself all over her, from head to foot.”
She was vital, and she was also vital because there was some sort of discrepancy
between different features in her personality, as if her physiognomy was telling about
her ability to all this face.

45
For instance, we are told that there is a self-contradiction between the upper part of her
face and the expressions expressed by the lower part of the face. We are told about her
lips, her cheeks, the mouth, the complexion, and the chin, and nothing seems to fit. It
does not mean that she is ugly, only that there is not a balance or harmony. In a sense, it
is something used by her in order to act in the novel.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Mind & Thinking

Evidently, more neurological research was carried out as the century advanced, and this
faith to the way formed the third face in Victorian Psychology, the growth of
Psychology as we know it nowadays, which is less physiological, and somehow more
philosophical, that is, more based on abstract perceptions, analysis or study of
motivation and other factors in our identity.

How could all this develop? Partly because of neurological research. First, it was
discovered that there were actions that are unconscious, and others that represent our
inner life, that is, not all nervous activity is equally controlled by the brain. There are
forms of action, or reaction, that are automatic, and some others that are developed,
affected by will.

They started assuming the existence of something they called “unconscious cerebration”.
This idea gradually moved as Psychology was developed into what we know as the
unconscious, and many parts of our mental activity that are not controlled by our
conscious side (remember Freud and all these). In fact, some people as G. H. Lewes
claimed that we have the brain and we have also other parts of our nervous system that
in time could develop its own forms of consciousness and thought. He imagined that our
nervous system could develop brains, or could grow from simple to complex and
become something more sophisticated. Evidently, he was adapting evolutionary thought
in a way that was very bolt. Scientists nowadays do not think that any human or animal
form could develop a brain from the very simple neurological networks that we possess
in our body, but he believed in that possibility.

The philosophical turn is based on the perception that it was very difficult to classify all
forms of emotional, psychological reactions, such as having instinct emotional thought.
There was not enough physiological evidence to claim that they were based on separate
sets of abilities, skills or chemical reactions. Evidently, this led to the idea that from the
most simple and humble sensation to the most sophisticated idea there is a whole
gradation of elaborations, of concepts, that is based on differences of degree, not of kind,
so everything is more complex about our behaviour.

This movement was also helped by a growing interest in the function of education and
the sociological studies performed. More and more people started analysing behaviour,
not as departing from this somatic, but from other perspectives.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Mind & Thinking

One of the interesting areas of this development has to do with the awareness not only
of the fact that we have to identify all these problems through guessing, not only trough
experimental study, but also the extraordinary complexity of all our mental processes.
People started realising that you could not classify things as they had been in the

46
previous decades: this is an instinct, this is an impulse, this is a habit. For instance, they
started realising that there could be what they called “forms latent mental
modification”. It means that whenever we have ideas, these ideas, or all the
impressions we have, are not simply stored and remain perfectly like that in our brain;
our brain is modifying them, changing them, adapting them, reformulating them,
combining with other forms. And not all the processes of transformation of ideas that
take place in our brain are purely conscious, that is, we cannot be aware of the
complexity or the degree to which these forms remain as they were first obtained. For
instance, mind that there are acquired habits, the more unconscious forms of knowledge
that we can access at will; then there is knowledge revealed through dreams or
suspended consciousness; and then there is concealed forms of mental activity. They are
mental operations that we cannot really understand. We cannot say “oh, I will analyse
how I have reached this idea or emotion”; it is simply not accessible to our will. As you
can see, there is a whole gradation, and we are simply unable to decode some parts.

Other discoveries that existed like Mesmerism (that is, hypnosis) made writers be
interested on this phenomenon and explore instances of this in their writings. Remind
that something peculiar about this conception of the unconscious, or what is
unconscious, or what is hidden in our brain, was most of it very positive. They all felt
that it was a part of our self that had to be vindicated. We have these ideas that are sort
of hidden in the corner of our brain, we do not know anything about them, we cannot
recover them at will, we cannot understand them at will, but they are (perhaps a
Romantic tendency) also an integral part of ourselves, and a part that is perhaps
expressing the best of ourselves. If it was believed that we have an identity, and our
identity is sort of corrupted by life, why not thinking that our true essence is stored, and
sort of hidden, inside our brain? They had this positive attitude that was powerfully
revised by Freud: the unconscious is not necessarily positive, it is rather a repressive
form, so it is not the good essence that is in danger, but rather a repressive form of our
identity.

There were lots and lots of studies of different forms of consciousness, of what was
called liminal states, that is, the passage from the conscious to the unconscious. There
were lots of studies about what quality our mental processes have, and how we are
moving from time to time between these two dimensions, and how sometimes we do not
realise that our impressions are being affected by these unconscious, mental states. All
this is somehow pointing in the same direction: our mental life is more complex than we
tend to think.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Writers, Mind & Thinking: a few examples (1)

However, these ideas expressed in fiction. There were writers that were very interested
in this mental processes, particularly those having to do with inner life and how it is
reflected. We have Dickens with something that was very typical in his literary
technique: to identify some characters with some verbal formulas that sort of catch up
the essence of the personality. These verbal formulas are all the time expressed or used
by them whenever they are faced with a situation. Dickens normally uses them because
he was writing his novels following a serial order of publication, normally three
chapters every month. Normally, there would be a gap of 19 months between the
beginning of the publication of a novel, and the end of the publication of the novel. It
was very difficult for people to remember characters through such a long period of time,

47
so what he did was to signal them, in many cases particularly they were secondary
characters, with some verbal formulas. But he was very skilful because it was not only
easy for people to remember them easily after several months when they reappeared in
the novel, it was also very easy for them to grasp something about the essence of the
personality they had in these verbal formulas.

In David Copperfield we have this with the Micawbers. Mr. Micawber is a man who is
always in debt, everybody is asking him for the money, and he is always escaping from
one house to another, and escaping always from people. Dickens clearly created this
character based on the model of his own father, who was provident and he was always
running into debt; and apparently as biographies of Dickens express, his father was not
very offended when Dickens portrayed him like that. He was in fact pleased that he had
been transformed into a figure. So, this man is always using some formulas in order to
evade the question of “When are you going to pay to me?”. He always invented several
formulas. And Mrs. Micawber is always using “I will never desert Mr. Micawber”. Her
personality is limited to that very sentence, while Uriah Heep is always saying “may I”
when trying to talk to people. It represents that submissive person but hypocritical
person.

There are also other moments in which mental processes are reflected in the physical
evolution of people. For instance, Mrs. Clennam, who is a fanatic Evangelical person, is
so wretched in her believes, in her ideas, that she gets even physically paralytic. It is a
way to express how her mental, spiritual paralysis has led her into physical paralysis.

The opposite is expressed in Silas Marner. He is a man who is very sad, and thanks to
his friendship with another person starts improving, not only spiritually, but also
physically. There are lots of commentaries about how his appearance was improving
just because his soul was feeling much better.

Something fundamental which will speak about later on is the problems with memory
and how memory works on people. In David Copperfield there is a very careful task of
selection and edition of the memories of the protagonist, which is quite interesting
because, as you know, David Copperfield self is a selection and edition of Charles
Dickens' own autobiography. He wrote some notes for his autobiography, and then he
decided not to tell the story as that, but rather to reformulate it and create a
bildungsroman, an autobiographical novel in which David tells his life. There is a very
complex process: it is, Dickens analysing his life, transforming his life into the life of
David Copperfield, and then making him reflect on what to tell, and how to tell events
of his life. It is a very complex interaction of factors that takes place there.

In Oliver Twist there are characters who have visions that reveal their identities, sort of
trance-like states.

In Great Expectations (we will see about great expectations later), the protagonist is told
something that changes his life. The point is that he feels so pleased with the fairy tale
that he has been invited to experience that he decides to ignore many facts about what
he is really experiencing. That is, something happens, and he decides to misinterpret it,
more or less unconsciously, in order to favour the interpretation of the story that makes
him feel that he will satisfy his sentimental aspirations. It is a very stupid trick of his
memory or of his consciousness. “I know this story is absurd, but I will believe it

48
because I think it is more pleasant than any other story”. It is a very interesting game
that he plays, and something very clever, some game that he also makes every reader
follow. He tells a story, he makes a mistake, and he makes all readers of the story make
the same mistake of misinterpreting his life.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. Writers, Mind & Thinking: a few examples (2)

Now we will consider how the character of a protagonist through out the story and falls
in a very subtle and difficult way. We have inheritance, we have original positions, and
then we have other factors that change our personality. George Eliot, Thomas Hardy
and G. Gissing represent a new stage in the more sophisticated analysis of personality
because they all just try to analyse, to consider what elements of the character's ideas or
opinions are transformed as new events are happening in the story, and they are never
circumstantial, or trivial, or superficial in this respect. They take it very seriously to
explain every stage of the character's personality, and to explain every transition from
their opinions, from one stage to the following one.

Remember that all Victorian novels are basically oriented towards explaining one
significant transformation in the identity or the personality of a character. There is
always one essential movement. This movement has to be explained, and has to be
explained in a careful way, not just “oh, I changed my mind”, and that is all; All the
novel is an analysis of how external circumstances, moral teachings, readings, human
relationships, are collaborating in favouring this and folding all the character.

Evidently the most meticulous of all this was George Eliot. There is an abstract from
Middlemarch in which we are told how one character is changing her views, and there
are all the time references to how she would have thought differently about it some
months earlier. You can see how there is an interest in analysing changes in personality
and explaining what can create this effect.

Then we have an interesting time walk?? in what Trollope called people who are
“turned inside out”. An interesting phenomenon that is peculiar and that Trollope found
very difficult to justify, and that was essential to understand the stage of the time, has to
do with the fact that the personality of characters is analysed in many cases by
employing a third person, an omniscient narrator. He found it very difficult and
challenging for a writer to employ the third person, a omniscient narrator, and to build a
sort of analysis of the personality of someone. More or less, we are used to the
technique of first person narration, that is easier: you get into the mind of a character,
and you make the character try to explain him or herself. Of course, it is not always easy,
because you have to play with different attitudes or mental positions from the narrator
to the character, even when they are the same person. But he found it particularly
difficult to imagine how you can adopt the position of a sort of psychotherapist,
analysing the character and introducing information about the mental movements that
are taking place inside. That is why he said that character's personalities or brains are
open, and you are looking as through a microscope into them.

Another interesting evolution at the time had to do with the fact that the Psychology of
children is analysed, and how different personalities are taking place in our personal
development. So, there were writers more interested in Child Psychology.

49
At the close of the century more border experimental were made in the area of science
fiction, or fantasy, concerning phenomena like double personality, degeneration,
particularly Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells in The invisible Man, R.L. Stevenson in Jekyll &
Hyde, T. Hardy in several short stories about double consciousness and all these aspects,
etc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sensation Fiction: narrative strategies

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Copperfield: I Observe

In the extracts you read about David Copperfield, not many of you have concentrated on
the problem of memory. Some of you have moved on to other aspects of the story, but
not the aspect I wanted to check: how many of you realise how new, how significant it
is from the point of view of Dickens to focus on these early memories, and how he
approaches the topic. Some of you have identified the figures of Peggotty and the
mother, and the claim of importance of childhood. Some of you are right when you say
that there is something romantic about it, about the importance of childhood. But there
are other aspects I want to comment, some complexities I want to comment on, because
it is not as simple as that. Dickens realises that Childhood is important, so he pays
attention to the importance of childhood, and he narrates a child. There is something
much more problematic in the very writing, in the very process of recovering all these
events, all the past. And these complexities, these problems are expressed in the
language of the extracts.

Why not starting with some commentary by Sigmund Freud in these respects?: “In my
own case, the earliest childhood memories are... regular scenes worked out in plastic
form, comparable only to representations on the stage”. It is quite interesting. If we all
try to go as far back in our memories when we were children, what are the first ideas,
the first experiences that you remember? Evidently, they are visual, they are plastic, but
they are confusing: you are unable to build them into a structure, and you are also
unable to see them and to use them in ways that give you any certainty about their
values, their significance, and you find it almost impossible, if not completely
impossible, to have access to those images without some extraordinary read of present,
adult interpretation, and the elaboration of them. This is perhaps the problem that
Dickens was facing when narrating this “I Observe”. In fact, his “I Observe” is an
intolerable simplification of all the activities and all the implications that are contained
in the extract. It is not “I Observe”, it is “I Observed”. Shouldn't it be “I Observed”?
Who is observing? Himself. I remembered, but then, I understood. What did I
understand about what was going on? And how that I understood is in fact a present act
of understanding. It is very typical to claim that these representations on the stage, this
isolated image of the face of your mother, or the face of your father, or some noise,
some smell, still keep from that present. How do you narrate them? See the problem of
giving sense to them. This is complex, but at the same time this is in contrast with an
interesting, elaborated, conscious, deliberated, explicit decision to adopt the Romantic
will to believe in the extraordinary significance of childhood.

In fact, it was not Dickens' original plan. When Dickens started thinking about the
structure of David Copperfield, his first plan was to write it using the third person, and
he was decided to start it with a later face of his life, not with his childhood, when he

50
was still a tackler. But on the previous year, Jane Eyre had made such a huge success
hit with Jane Eyre starting with a girl who has nothing, and perhaps he thought “this is
what is fashionable, I will do it myself”. He changed his original plan and decided to
start exactly as Jane Eyre, with first person, with childhood, and with some vindication
of the natural, intrinsic essence of their personalities, as they happen in the novel
already reflecting on the very early stages of their lives. It is not that the beginnings of
these novels are just experiments in child observation, they are in a sense a metaphor of
the rest of the novel.

There are a couple of extracts, particularly the second and third one, where you identify
that he clearly says that he is proud of his power of observation, and he is proud of the
fact that he has not lost that capacity, the capacity of looking at things and seeing things
as a child does. This is what makes him in fact powerful, brilliant novelist. The essence
of his art is the capacity to see. And it is not something that has improved with the years
because he has become from a stupid person into a rational person, but rather because it
is the child that has the capacity that cannot be lost if you do not want to be
impoverished. Evidently, this reminds us an early critique of the famous poem written
by William Wordsworth My Heart Leaps Up (lee el poema, pero no está en las
diapositivas). The famous sentence is “The child is father of the man”. The child is not
below man in capacity, the child is superior to the man. Before you were here, there was
a child, and this child was superior to you. This idea expresses the same Romantic will
as Dickens. Remember that Victorians did not react in powerful ways against
Romantics. In many ways, they simply adapted their believes. In this respect, Dickens
firmly believes in the superiority of child observation, because this is what makes him
great, the capacity to look at things as if they were seen for the first time, to be able to
see the essence of things, and not through the corrupted eyes of experience. Normally,
nowadays you are not shaken at all by many things because you are experienced, and
you know that this or that happens. Can you see the language of children? They are all
the time making exclamations: “Oh, a chair!”, “Oh, a door!”. They are so happy, they
are looking at things and getting excited about everything. This is something that makes
them stronger, not deficient, something that is essential in the characters of many
Victorian novels, and the characters of Dickens. That is why Dickens indulges so many
times in narrating the life of children, because the very essence of the identity of this
personalities is easily found there.

Evidently, part of the attraction of this is not only the declared capacity of observation,
it is also the extraordinary intensity of life in those moments. In the extract from David
Copperfield we can see an extraordinary combination of pleasure, of curiosity,
excitement of things, but also of anxiety, fear, danger, threat... How many things
impress the character and make him feel frightened... In the first extracts they are not
there, but the last two extracts tell us about things that make him feel frightened, when
the mother tells the story of Lazarus, and second when he is in church and he is afraid of
calling the priest's attention. There is always that sense of being like a victim, or feeling
that something bad is going to happen to me, this idea that they are not projected. This
is also essential to understand the bildungsroman, that idea that childhood something
full of very intense feelings, and the intensity of these feelings is also important, not
only the power of observation.

This declared Romantic will, this idea of the superiority in term of emotions and
observations of children, is in a clear contrast with some complexities that cannot be

51
solved. For instance, the problem of memory. Mind that whenever we are trying to
recall an object from the past we have the fragmentary quality of the vision that has
been captured. It is something accidental, something without any motivation. Is every
moment that you remember for very early life when you were 2 or 3 years old an
important moment? Not necessarily. It could be one day you were walking through the
park, it has nothing to do with anything significant. Then, it is not only that this is
accidental, arbitrary and maybe unimportant. It is also that this vision has been clearly
erased. We cannot travel back in order to get the right mental copy. It is like one of
these pictures that have faded, and you cannot see the real nature of the colours. We
cannot avoid being vague and perceiving that it cannot be recovered.

We have also two other factors: the irrationality of our past interpretations. That is, at
the time we could not process it, there were things that could not be processed.
Sometimes, these visions that are defective have been falsified, not recovered, but
falsified by present interpretations that may be biased. I think I remember something, I
give an explanation to that, but that interpretation is my present interpretation now that I
may have decided not to be completely sincere. It is right to say that I love my past, but
it is also true to say that my past is a very lost thing, a thing that is to some extent
reformulated by myself in the present. Can you see now the very tentative approach
adopted by Dickens when he starts this novel? “I think I remember an image...”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Charles Dickens's David Copperfield – Chapter 2 – I Observe

In the first extract, what particular sentence can you find there that somehow illustrates
this issue of the problems of observation? We can assume that, perhaps it starts from the
very beginning. It is a phrase introducing the objects: mother and Peggotty. They take
over and become the protagonists of the second part of this long sentence-paragraph.
But this observation is introduced by a commentary about the fact that he is not going to
talk about objects, but to what extent some objects are still present in memory networks.
How can they be recovered by a subject who is sort of making an effort and trying to
make sense of those objects? The items in the second half of the of the sentence have
been introduced by a deliberated decision to place himself as a observer, so he is the
filter, he is imposing some conditions on this observer. More or less the same can be
applied to the beginning of the second paragraph. Mind that he also deliberately
introduces himself. It is not “I remember”, but “I believe I can remember”, and here he
is speaking about the blank of his infancy, and then, two objects that more or less
assume a distinct presence. Again, the following sentence is indirectly introduced.
Again, he is modulating it with some degree of psychological uncertainty: “I have an
impression on my mind which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance”. There is
not object that is introduced without claiming that there is a conscious self trying to
manage those remembrances.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Charles Dickens's David Copperfield – Chapter 2 – I Observe

The three sentences that appear in bold characters. There is another typical feature of
Dikens's approach that will be commented later on: his capacity not only to see things,
but also to perform a typical, rhetorical operation. What quality do these three elements
share? He is always comparing things by means of comparisons, metaphors that are
brilliant because they are unexpected, exaggerated, that reveal some innocent, naïve
perception of reality. But a powerful perception of things Mind that Peggotty's finger

52
was so rough that he compares it with a nutmeg-grater, which is quite exaggerated.
There are thousands of comparisons like that. It was like Dickens's trademark, his
ability to introduce brilliance, excitement in every description of every object by being
able to recover these sort of comparisons, these sort of visions that are childish, but are
brilliant because they make as look at things in a sense as is they were new, to consider
them as different. Evidently, there is another function that is performed here, which is
clearly to create a mode of sympathy, humour, creating an identification with the
character as well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Charles Dickens's David Copperfield – Chapter 2 – I Observe

Mind that even, when in the second commentary he speaks about his Romantic will to
consider things, he is always motivating them: “Indeed, I think”, “just as I believe”,
“This may be fancy, though I think”. He is all the time the figure that is controlling
somehow all the things.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Charles Dickens's David Copperfield – Chapter 2 – I Observe

What is remarkable about this Romantic theory is the idea of the superiority of the
vision of children, the idea that the child is father of the man indicates that the brain is
not something imperfect, or that we are not born with an imperfect brain that is later on
developed and somehow adapted and one that achieves excellence, but rather our self is
the process of unfolding consecutive selves, and each self is as authentic and genuine as
the rest.

“I was a child of close observation, or that as a I have a strong memory of my

childhood”: He is not departed from the self. He is clearly indicating his role in things.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Charles Dickens's David Copperfield – Chapter 2 – I Observe

The last two have to do with this quality that he identifies for himself, but mind that
sometimes events have not been captured in a direct way. Part of these memories do not
depend on objects that have a present for him, but rather they depend on what Peggotty
has told him. He acknowledges that sometimes memories are not exactly what he
remembers but they are the product of an interaction between visions, impressions,
apprehensions and narrations.

Evidently, another typical quality associated with childhood is fear. Remember that it is
important because if its intensity: children are not only excited, children are above all
frightened. This is a quality that many of his characters share, the capacity to be
frightened by everything, the presence of terror, which perhaps may be due to
biographical reasons. He spent a childhood shaken by uncertainty because of economic
reasons. The family was moving all the time from one place to another because the
father was unable to keep his job or to keep the family. There was always the idea that
he was growing rootless. Only in a sequence of 4 or 5 he had a more or less happy
childhood, but all this was shaken and destroyed at the age of 11.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

53
From Charles Dickens's David Copperfield – Chapter 2 – I Observe

We have the idea of death, and the idea that he is frightened, and he is also frightened
and embarrassed when he is at church. He is afraid and wondering “can I really look at
the priest's eyes or not? Haven't I been told that it is not good manners? What am I to
do? I must do something”. We have the sense of anxiety, which is also very typical. “I
might be tempted to say something out loud; and what would become of me then!”: this
is very typical of the character, and also very typical of the protagonists of the
bildungsroman. The protagonist is not only a child who is suffering for many anxieties,
fears, terrors, dangers and threats in their childhood; they are also people with a
considerable sense of social fear, fear to things, and that is what explains why they tend
to be so passive.

It is an interesting fact that almost the first sentence that appears in David Copperfield is
a commentary like “well, whether I will be the hero of this story, the reader will have to
judge”. He is not going to be the hero? If the novel is written with his name we are
expecting him to be the hero. He does not consider himself the hero because of things
like this, because his life is in many cases the things that happen to him rather than what
he is.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

The novel of Jane Eyre begins like this (lee la quotation). What is peculiar about the
behaviour of this girl is, we are told later on, that she feels very pleased to be alone, to
be kept locked somehow, willingly in the library of the how, apart from society. Mind
that she is away from society because she does not like the coldness outside, and she is
also happy to be alone because she does not like the company inside, the company of
her cousins, the physical inferiority that she perceives, and also because she is all the
time told off by Bessie, the nurse. She prefers to live a life of her own. This is an
interesting artistic decision on the part of Jane Eyre (remember that the revolutionary
about Jane Eyre's technique is the fact that, in a sense, the first chapter sort of
encapsulates in a metaphorical sense all the novel).

Something crucial about the novel is here: the importance of cold. She is experiencing
in her life several faces, most of them dominated by feeling cold, which is not physical
but metaphorical: it has to do with the fact that she does not feel that she is loved. The
idea of coldness, spiritual, intellectual, emotional is very important in the novel. All the
novel is about coldness and also fire (Eyre sounds like fire). We have the idea that she
prefers to be away from that cold nature, and away from the society of other people.
Jane spends her life almost alone; there is no place in her life in which she is having real
with a wide social group, only at school, and it is a very limited society. Later on, she is
always living in country houses where there is only one small family group living
together.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

She goes to the library and she starts reading books, and all the books are about cold
places and she seems to be more or less romantically indulgent in the contemplation of
places characterised by cold, loneliness. She has a sort of bookish, Romantic,
intellectual aspiration to enjoy all this. She is in a sense creating the idea that all these

54
far away places have a Romantic resonance, and one that sort of fits her sense of self,
the sense of herself as being isolated as well. But while she actually dislikes the contact
with actual cold weather out of the house, she indulges in the contemplation of all these
things.

Mind that she is also wed on the fact that there is something mental, or something
particular about her approach because she is a child, like she has comprehended notions
that feel weird for children's range, but strangely impressive. She acknowledges that she
cannot understand why she likes all this, but to some extent there is intensively living
there.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

She is attacked by her cousin, John. He throws a book at her: “The cut bled, the pain
was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.” What are the
other feelings that succeed? What is the other feeling that replaces terror? Anger: she
gets very angry, violent and passionate. It is very important, the novel starts with a
moment in which she lets her passion dominate her. Remember what I told you about
the education of civilised people as being characterised for being dominated by restrain,
self-control. Here, the passion succeeds, but again, is the adult, Jane, narrating her life
about 35 years later, able to remember distinctly how she felt or what she did? She is
unable: “I don't very well know what I did with my hands”. She is unable to narrate
what she did because she was so by her passions, by her violence, that it was not sort of
herself, it was someone else. She does not feel identified with that animal attack. In fact,
he is calling her “rat”, as if emphasising her animal instinct.

Mind that instead of being able to recall herself what she did, she has to only record
voices narrating the event from outside: he was calling me this, the other people were
doing that, and Bessie and Abbot were speaking. So she can hear, but she cannot even
see what she is doing, and she cannot acknowledge what she is doing. It is quite
interesting because Jane Eyre is about how Jane is educated to become a lady, a lady
that will never repeat this sort of behaviour.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

55
3. Literary Creation: Bildungsroman

These are the main features of the bildungsroman, and after that we will see three
examples: the lives of David Copperfield, Jane Eyre and Philip Pirrip from Great
Expectations.

1)

The first element should be familiar. What is revolutionary about this novel is how
privileged the vision and experience of children is. A vision that is privileged because it
is innocent, intense, genuine, but also to some extent inadequate. It is not necessary to
vindicate the vision of children, but later on to revise the idea that the vision of children
should not be modified because, after all, all bildungsroman imply some improvement,
development, and some trajectory of improvement. There is a peculiar ambivalence: I
tell you about the very early life of the child, I invite you to like him, I invite you to
admire his or her approach to things that is direct, but later on I will qualify that idea
with some commentaries about to what extent there are aspects on his or her personality
that have to be improved, or some difficulties that have to be overcame. We have this
double thing: childhood is liked, is enjoyed, is vindicated, but at the same time is to
some extent discussed.

Remember what I told you about the importance of intensity of these experiences, the
idea that it is very easy and very important for the writer to create some emotional link
between the character and himself, so the reader will find it very easy when the narrator
is telling you of his life to get him emotionally involved and to sympathise with their
disillusions, their terrors, and in some cases the humour. You are from the very
beginning of the novel invited to love them, and there is no reservation on the part of
the reader. It is quite manipulative.

Evidently, in order to enhance the element of terrors and disillusions they must be
shown to have been thrown out to our very nasty word. There are lots of difficult
experiences. Most of them are orphans, most of them are poor, and most of them have
to go through very difficult experiences of bulling and cruelty on the part of teachers at
school, so life is never easy. There are always some movements of happiness to be
lamented, but normally in the first 10 or so chapters of every bildungsroman there is the
contemplation of all the cruelty inflicted on them, in their entrance into life. Something
that is quite interesting because we are invited to love the innocent and romantic
tendency of children.

Another interesting fact about this is that they sort of believed that youth was a
meaningful part of life as if everything about your personality was partly determined by
that early stage. I will compare this to the evolution and the reaction in science. If is
history the most important thing, are origins the most important thing about ourselves?
Is our origin, the origin of the species what defines or determines us? In a sense, that
idea can be also expressed at a personal level: Is our youth the most important thing
about ourselves? Remember what a writer said: “La patria de todo escritor es su
infancia”, and it is the only authentic country they have experienced. It does not matter
whether you have been born here, there, or whether you are moving from one country to
another all your life. Your only country is your childhood. It is where your personality

56
was somehow determined, and you are all the time trying to make sense of that sense of
original identity that was forged in your childhood.

All this poses an interesting technical problem, the problem of the presence of the
contemporary present, the consciousness of the narrator, and how the narrator can or
should feel the gap between the former self and the present self, and how he modulates
his distance with his former self. This is a particularly challenging thing in novels in
which the narrator is not particularly happy with some aspects of his former personality,
of his former behaviour. For instance, in Great Expectations, which is about the
alienation of Mr. Pirrip narrating his life, and Pip and some particular faces of his life.
So there are moments in which distance between himself and his former self grow, and
some others in which they are close to each other.

2)

What is the end of all these novels? Normally it is positive, successful. Evidently, in
many cases there are ambiguities about it because there are many bildungsroman in
which the hero's or heroine's success is not spectacular, but they are always at some
point that they feel that they have achieved some stability, emotional, sentimental,
material, philosophical that makes them perhaps partly disillusioned in comparison with
the romantic ideals they enjoyed when they were children, but to some extent content to
have what they have achieved, at least adapted an reconsigned, or integrated in society,
people who feel that they are part of a community, that they cannot, or should not
expect anything else that to remain in that community, in that universe that they have
forged for themselves throughout the plot of the novel.

In many cases, all this satisfaction has a material result. Consider for instance David
Copperfield. At the end of the novel, he congratulates that he has managed to become a
successful writer. He is not selling millions, or he is not living in a castle, but he thinks
that the combination of his material prosperity and his domestic happiness is like a
blessing for him. Jane Eyre does not become a Prime Minister, she is happy with having
enough money for herself, being an independent woman, and being married to the man
she loves, that is all. Pip starts his life being just the apprentice of a blacksmith, and his
life has been designed just to become a blacksmith. He is invited to think that he will be
a gentleman. At the end, he goes down, he becomes just an office worker, but he thinks
he is moderately successful in comparison with his professional life, and he thinks that
at least he can be proud of some of the things that he has been doing in the past, and this
seems to suffices to him. In a sense, whenever material prosperity is not obtained, at
least the narrator, or the author, or the protagonist can be able to claim that they have
achieved some sufficient degree of moral strength, or a sufficiently strong moral
position (I may not be rich, but I can say that I am happy and I don't feel guilty about
anything).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Bildungsroman

One interesting difference between the protagonists of novels has to do with the
expectations that they can achieve because of their sex. Men are supposed to find their
selves in life, in society, through work. That is why in many of these novels their
success is professional, is economic, and there is a clear moral lesson of the importance
of endurance, hard work, resistance, in the habit of working hard, etc. And it is very

57
important that they don't think of work as something they have to do because there is no
other way, or any other thing to do in life. In general they introduce a notion of work as
embellished by the notion of vocation. It is not “I have to work because I cannot survive
without working”. They tend to represent people's development as something more
emotionally and psychologically necessary: “I have to work because I have to forge and
identity for myself, and my identity depends on doing things that I consider reflect my
personality and my ambitions”, “ I work to be, to know what my place in the world is,
to be satisfied with myself”. That is why work is in many cases replaced by vocation, by
a very personal word, “calling”, as if you had been called , and God had decided that
you have to do one thing in life.

But quite interestingly, I think it is very curious, this male protagonists, for reasons that
I will explain later, are notoriously weak and passive. They are not people who are
courageous, brave, and very active and strong in achieving those purposes. In many
cases we even feel that they have just come across the positions that they have achieved
by coincidence, or that they have been granted these positions. They have not had to
struggle very much. Why not? Because if the struggle to hard to obtain what they want
in life they could be considered too materialistic and too competitive, and there is
always the idea that it is better not to be too aggressive or too competitive in order to
achieve things in life. There is always that idealistic message.

On the contrary, female protagonists are first very aware of the genre difference. There
are lots and lots of commentaries made in female bildungsroman written by women in
which the protagonist or the writer reflects about how limited life is for women, and
how important it is that they have to do something that accommodates the very limited
scope that society offers for female development. That is for instance the case of Jane
Eyre, that was very unfavourably received in England at the time because it was
consider by many people a scandalous feminist novel. I cannot find but a couple of
commentaries that sound more or less feminist in the novel. The rest answer a very old-
fashioned vision of what feminine behaviour is.

Their possibilities to success in life are limited to a good marriage, so all their life's
struggle is limited to finding the right husband, and the only professions that they are
granted, apart from being a lady, are normally either to be governesses or to be artists.
There are no other possibilities open to them.

In agreement with the typical manipulation women's fate or identity in society, there is a
very dangerous double axis for them: either women are ideal, the angel in the house,
and the other possibility that appears in many novels is the fallen woman, the woman
who has had an inadequate sexual experience, normally she has eloped with a man, she
has been abandoned by him, and she has been forced to live a life of misery, poverty,
prostitution, etc. So apparently, there are very few and dangerous possibilities for
women: get married, be a governess, be an artist, be a prostitute.

Evidently, all these novels are focused on some climatic movements which are the so
called moral crises in these novels. Novels in which women have to face a conflict, the
conflict of what is better for my success, for my preservation, my future, and normally
decision has to do with the seduction of marriage, the seduction of material prosperity,
the danger of unhappiness, the danger of feeling guilty because you have done

58
something that is immoral, that you are forced to do something that you do not like or
feel warmly about to do it. There are lots and lots of consequences.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Bildungsroman

Most of these conflicts and these moral crises have to do with the typical conflict or
tension that many of these novels dramatise, the conflict between practical ambitions
and ethical demands. First, remember that in these novels the moral message is in many
cases evident, particularly in the English bildungsroman, which, according some critic
who has compared it with the French or Russian ones, are very childish, very simple in
terms of philosophy and moral outlook.

There is always an evident idea of hard work, and how work always leads inevitably to
some degree of material prosperity, and this equation always works. It never seems
possible that you can do well and end up wrong or badly. It seems that this logic does
not seem to work with them until it was radically, and violently, and provocatively
broken by George Hardy, at the end of the century. He said “I am fed up with all this
fairy tale logic that if you are a good guy you will get the princess”. Things do not work
like that, and he simply destroyed all these assumptions. In fact, he was so criticised by
people who were offended at his attempt to break this stupid law of poetic justice that
he was forced to abandon his novelistic career about 30 years before he died.

There is a comical logic that in this case does not have to do with fun, but with comedy.
Comedy has always the logic of the happy end, in comparison with the tragic sad end. It
is comedy in the sense there is always a tension, a conflict, and at the end all conflicts
are solved, which is the way all comedies end up. There is always attention, even in
Renascence dramas, at an opposition to a marriage, some conflict between identities,
and at the end all problems are solved.

Then, we have the problem of vocation, and work is presented as self-definition: you
find a job not to survive, not for low, materialistic reasons, but to stablish your own
identity. When you stablish your identity you obtain an equivalent social status.

So, the question of money is always explicitly and deliberately separated from the idea
of work as vocation. In general, all protagonists, all heroes and heroines are all the time
claiming that they are never moved by monetary, materialistic conditions. They always
claim that they are trying to do what they feel corresponds to their own selves. Money is
always secondary, because if you are to easily drawn by money ambition you will
succumb to moral failure. The funny thing is that it is rejected and refused as a direct
motive, but it is a topic, something always lurking in the background. We are reading
these novels and we realise that there are economic motivations that should be taken
into account, but they are never declared. It is always that idea that what matters is the
moral conflict, a conflict within happiness and disgrace, but not apparently money.

Another interesting tension that is to be said in many of these novels has to do with the
effect of external evolutions, the effect of time, the effect of history. That is, living
conditions, change, characters may move from one place to another, maybe forced to
adapt to new circumstances, situations... In a sense, they can evolve, but at the same
time writers are fold of preserving the idea of illusion, of continuity and permanence.
The character evolves, but the character is still x, y or z. The idea that where a character

59
changes from one certain idea to another, it is not an act of betrayal of his former self,
but an act of necessary encounter of his root self. When you evolve, you are not
changing, you are not a different person. You are simply searching for yourself. So, in
all the most successful 19th century novels one significant evolution or move in the
psychology or the personality of the characters. Only one or two, that they are quite
clear, that they are always looked at as instances of success, the trial of the character
searching for his or her place in life, the one that accommodates their needs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Bildungsroman

Another interesting feature that is shared by all these novels is the sense of cozy
familiarity. Most of the bildungsroman published in England always take action back at
least 30 or 40 years, back in the history of the country, something that according to the
rules of the time would make them qualify as historical novels (not nowadays). Most
authors always move action back all this time because the felt that there was a moment
in recent history that somehow could make the present missing more clearly by
contemporary people. Instead of placing action here, I move back, because at the time
there was a set of changes that can explain why the situation is like that in the present.
For instance, in Great Expectations, a novel published in the year 1859, action is made
to start in the Regency period, before queen Victoria was reigning (1810s – 1820s).
Wuthering Heights, published in the year 1847, starts action in the 1780s, about 60 or
70 years earlier. In fact, the very first date that appears in the novel is 1801, which is the
time in which Lockwood gets to the place. Jane Eyre writes an account of her life 10
years after the end of the action of the novel. Why were they moving back? Because
they felt that there was something about that society that made the references more
familiar to people.

There are many elements that explain why they were so successful. They are basically
very easy, they were reader-made, they were written in order to please very low
demands of the audience, in terms of intellectual demands. In general, they had been
designed to be best-sellers, so the formulas employed in them are always very simple:
Compromise with the reader (what matters is to please the reader); Fairy-tale vision of
things and childishness (if you want to be successful think of an audience in which
everyone is 14 years old); Evasiveness about sexuality; experience is very powerfully
moralised; there are tendencies to sentimentality and melodrama; The narrator makes
everything easier by addressing the reader frequently, so he is not telling the story,
sometimes he is having a conversation with the reader, and this makes the reading
pleasant; Directions are very easy to predict, it is very formulaic.

So, all these elements, apart from other ideological reasons, where the key why these
novels were so successful.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane Eyre’s formation: two extreme models

Remember that when we read some extracts from the beginning of Jane Eyre, she was
introduced as a little girl living in an unpleasant life of isolation. She has a sort of
intellectual literary imagination since she reads about distant, cool places of isolation,
isolation becomes a metaphor or a topic or a theme or a motif. It would say isolation is
lack of love, lack of company, lack of sympathy, that is, all those topics are relevant and
remember that the major thing of this opening chapter was the battles by scratching and

60
attacking him and given that she cannot help because she didn’t really know about
herself. This would be a topic and one interesting reference or references that appear in
the first chapter is about her reading experiences have to do with kind of troubles and
also with the pilgrims’ progress which is a very influential religious text; this will be
also influential and referenced in the text, the present of the religion.
Also, the idea that the pilgrims’ progress is a puritan text about a search for identity
salvation, etc. In a sense every bildungsroman is a progress, a progress through life in
order to obtain self or your identity in a sense of fulfilment for yourself. So, in a sense,
her life which is based in five different phases that could be understood to represent
symbolically or allegorically different stages of her life, of her progress. This is an idea
that was reinforced by some critics of sixties and seventies such as Linch? and Walter
and critics Durbert and Gubert The last one built a literature of their own the first set of
Bible of the mist analysis and the woman in the attic, another Bible of the same
criticism in the sixties and seventies. And the protagonist of both books was Jane Eyre;
the woman in the attic is a clear reference of one of the characters of Jane Eyre, so there
is a very prominent place understood by these critics. So, every phase, development is a
sort of development of her personality and the culmination at Thornfield seems to be
her paradise, the moment in which she has managed to reconcile her aspirations in life
with the constraints that every day or real life can offer to her.
And she is very pleased to announce at the end of the novel that she has succeed
somehow in life and it is apparently an equivocal message of triumph that it is conveyed
in the novel. Her life is a very sad particularly in stages 1 and 2; she passes through
testing experiences in 3 and 4. And then in section 5 there is a central fulfilment, so we
have initial development and the very nasty world, that I announced last week, where
the protagonists of these novels are thrown out into a very dark world; this dark world
is expressed with traces of her personality and then later on with her development.
So, we have the topic or idea of life is a pilgrimage leading to success. And one
interesting point is that of professional development; Jane or Jane’s life is the life of
governess. The aspiration in life once she is is either to get married or to be a teacher.
That idea of being a teacher is very interesting with developing the story because at first
she fits of it as an aspiration of something that could somehow fill her soul, her heart,
her life, give her pleasure, give her economy independence and identify with a notion of
vocation; the idea of work is presented as a vocation, something that represents the
aspirations or ambitions of your soul rather than just a mechanical, material way of
getting on in life after an economy tragedy.
So, we are told in the story how she has many occasions to lead as a teacher, she is first
a teacher at Lowood. At first, she is student but she is promoted to the role of teacher;
then, she is a governess in Thornfield. Then, she is a rural country school teacher at
Workhouse. And at the end, she is married and has the chance to be the private teacher
to her step-daughter and she refuses to perform that role.
So, throughout her life, she has lots of vocations to develop pressingly but the
impression we always get is that she does not fill that possibility is true, the one that
fills her sense of her life, her sense of doing something with her life. So, it is a
possibility that is explored, used and rejected as soon as she receives a lot of money and
then, she can do without doing it, so there is no strong vocation for teaching
Then, we have another parallel dimension in the novel which is the topic of personal
development. It has to be remembered that at the very beginning she starts attacking her
cousin; she shows that she has some witnesses in her personality because she is violent
and she can’t control herself. So, perhaps the novel would be how to regulate, how to
control that aspect of her personality. That aspect of her personality, her violence has to

61
be repressed since she was an unacceptable lady in society; it means that passion has to
be repressed by means of reason.
Later on in the novel we will learn that you can control your passion and regulate your
personality and be guiding only by the sense of duty and your reason; that is also
undesirable. She obtains at the end of her life what she expects to be the perfect
combination or balance between her emotional demands and her reasonable demands,
that is, she expects or she congratulates at the end of the novel that she has obtained
pleasure or satisfaction of her emotional demands, her feelings, her impulses, her
instincts; why at the same time making them dissent, respectable, valuable from a social
realistic point of view.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane Eyre’s formation: two extreme models
Helen Burns: self-denial / Spirit | Bertha Rochester: Passion / Flesh

So, the whole novel is about keeping all these demands and not being destroyed by any
of these two extremes, being able to keep in the middle in order to survive and this is
something that Jane has internalised and learnt very well in the novel to do exactly the
sort of thing that destroy her and she has occasion to witness, how destructive is stream
in her life and now is the achieve that we will see it in a minute through observing the
destruction of two women who represent both extremes.
Those two women are a woman who represents a big purity of spirit, rational religious
approach to thing and then the destruction of another woman who represents the
physical demands of the body. These two women are Helen Burns and Bertha
Rochester. Helen represents spirits as reason, a religious life trying to regulate
repressed all instincts while Bertha represents the physical, the body, the animal of us.
At the same time, these conflicts between feeling and reason are expressed in her
sentimental life, in her sentimental attachments because throughout her life, she
received two proposals for marriage by two men. In one of them, accepting the proposal
would mean to accept the superiority of instinct of feeling over reason and she does not
feel happy with that (this is Rochester proposal that we will see it in a minute because it
is just a summary of the extract that we will comment on). Moreover, she receives
another proposal for marriage from a priest; this proposal is perfectly rational,
acceptable, logical and reasonable; and it is very critical to her to say no to that because
she feels that she does not love him, so she also refuses to say yes to that man.
So, in a sense these two extremes are represented by two extremes of two marriages that
are wrong because they are not balanced, only at the very end of the story when
Rochester is not the same Rochester as the person who failed the first proposal, she
cannot accept the feasibility and logical or the acceptability to marriage to Rochester.

Helen Burns: self-denial / Spirit

Let’s see some of the extracts to see those aspects. For instance, Helen Burst represents
the virtues of self-denial and the logical, rational superiority of yielding to the demands
of the spirit and not of the flesh; it is a very Christian dichotomy, the flesh of the spirit
and the soul of the body. And she is a Christian and she has been trained and taught in
these conflicts because in Christian life, these two dimensions of people are always
presented to be struggling or superiority, the flesh or the spirit, salvation or pleasure,
God or sex; it is always very dramatic. And this is a sort of education that she was given
at school (remember that Mr. Brocklehurst was all the time saying / claiming that they
have to punish their vile bodies in order to save their immortal souls. She learns or is

62
told that messy is not willing to take it, after all she has some passion inside, she does
not want to relinquish or to abandon or to neglect. But, Helen Burns provides her with
an acceptable model of perfect feminine and Christian submission; a woman who is
willing to accept the superiority of masters, the superiority of men, the superiority of
God and her role is just to be a servant sacrificing her soul.
In fact, mind that Jane feels awfully attracted to her but at first she is reluctant to take
her message which she calls: “I could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance.” In
fact, there is something masochistic in Helen Burns, she seems to be enjoying every
time she is punished because she interprets it as a sort of new step in her career to
heaven, in her promotion to heaven and death. So, it is a very dangerous attraction the
one that she feels for Helen because she gets influenced by her, she could end up as
Helen does, dying out of conception, so it is necessary as it happens in lots of
bildungsromanic in the Victorian period where lots of characters die. And in this case it
is necessary for Jane’s progress that Helen dies in order to get free from that dangerous
mortal attraction.
Later on, in fact, she gets another more sensible mortal who is Miss Temple. Miss
Temple is a more moderate lady who keeps some notions of religion faith of Helen but
she is more realistic and she is more willing to endure religious constraints.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bertha Rochester: Passion / Flesh

Then, the other stream of personality is Bertha Rochester. Rochester’s wife who has
been kept in prison for ten years. This is the idea that there is something inadequate
about her and that inadequate thing is presented to us as some superiority, tyranny of the
body over the mental powers. So, Bertha Rochester is not a model to follow, but she is a
model to be despised. And of course she has some of the natural violent instincts that
we could see in chapter 1 in Jane. Evidently, Jane at this stage of the novel has to
become a perfectly regulated lady, that is, a lady who can control her emotionally
instincts very well. What it is remarkable about those portraits of Bertha Rochester is
how animal, how physical she is, how little sympathy there is in Jane’s approach to her.
She cannot fail that she is a poor woman suffering but rather we get the impression that
she is an animal to be looked at very negative perception.
[Ahora lee la diapositiva de Bertha Rochester: Passion / Flesh] Comentarios al terminar
de leer  He is a gentleman, he is struggling with a bad woman. This is not the sort of
woman than any woman would like to be, so she has to die.
But something of that passion will eventually being needed in Jane’s life, we will see it
the wonderful climatic moment in which she less just a bit of two grants of passion
regulate her.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane Eyre’s humiliation at school

The typical step in every bildungsroman is suffering at school. She is clearly

humiliated at school, she is made to stand on the stool for some time and no one can
approach her and she is accused of being a liar. This idea / this extraordinary attack on
her pride is essential to understand the idea because pride is a sort of impulse or
personal instinctive impulse that belongs to an overall animal dimension while our
education is intended to repress it. So, this is a necessary step in her education, the
ability to keep her submissive to deny all elements of concern with her animal demands.
[There is no need to go into detail, just read it at home and check all these ideas]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

63
Jane Eyre’s regulation & integration

Then, some miracle happens at school, Mr. Brocklehurst goes away and all the rules at
school are changed at a more acceptable, sensible, humane place and she develops a
perfect education; the perfect rigid, firm more or less inflexible education that a
Victorian lady should obtain for herself.
So, she has a happy life of these years because she has the company and the model of
Miss Temple. Some critics have not failed to notice the symbolic quality of her
surname is like a temple, a temple made of marble. She has the quality of being polish,
brilliant, cold and solid that the marble has. Jane Eyre is Eyre means / looks like / reads
like anger, fire, heir; lots of significances in history.
And Miss Temple becomes a perfect model of the regulated mind and the other problem
turns when that woman she married and went away; and suddenly, Jane starts to feel
unhappy and unregulated at school. She had aspirations and something that prevented
her from feeling happy and fulfilled at school.
How she represents the qualities of regulations and integration that she has learned.
Remember the chapter 1 when she was struggling with her cousin, she was called rat,
animal. Mind that she describes herself as a perfect lady who manages to repress all her
instincts: “I have more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated
feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I have given in allegiance to duty and
order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes of others, usually even to
my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued character”

She is perfectly an educated lady but this life stops being pleasant when she starts
feeling that there is something missing which is action. At first, she goes to Thornfield,
she has the first moment of apparently independence in her life; she is a young
professional living outside which has been her home for eight years. At first, she feels
satisfied until three months having the experience of teaching; she realizes that it is not
her vocation apparently.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane Eyre’s regulation & integration

A problematic extract in the novel, the one that made the novel qualified as a dangerous
subversive feminist text; many people complaint that there are dangerous messages for
women inviting them to be rebellious. She is writing about all this, the abilities and
skills that she has been teaching are the typical ones of a lady, a lady to be prepared to
be nothing, but just an ornamental object; to play a little piano, to know a little French,
to dance, to swim, a little mathematics, a little literature, some poetry. So, she is not
qualified to be anything apart from that and she is teaching a deal just to be another
boring lady. For that, there is nothing ambitions in her life and education.
To solve of those problems, the idea inside her of not feeling satisfied with her
aspirations, Mr. Rochester appears after a few weeks or months in the place. And then,
they develop an interesting relationship between both; Mr. Rochester represents the sort
of Byronic provocative hero and very active sexually, physically, prone to insult or
laugh at her. And they have a very interesting intellectual struggle throughout many
chapters in which he is constantly laughing at her and he is bored having conversations
with her and discovering that she has some mental powers that however she is able to
repress because she is quite sensible and she knows that her position does not allow her
to answer that and to refute openly what his master says. So, there is a mixture of
feminine submission, politeness, economic dependence in her attitude towards him, but

64
he discovers that there is something valuable in her (Jane). He spends a lot of time just
playing with her until there is a climactic moment because he is all the time provoking
her and he remembers announcing her that he is going to marry somebody else and they
have to say goodbye each other. And he spends a lot of time making references of that
“you don’t care about me”, “you don’t love me”, “I don’t care about you”. And at first,
she manages to keep her lady educational in control, so she keeps her soul at a very
polite level saying “it’s sad to say goodbye to you”
[y lee] I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free will, my
tears gust out. I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I avoided sobbing (…).
That is a sort of slip that she makes but she manages to repress it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane Eyre’s sentimental unregulation (2)

From then on, every time she speaks we have some references to her abilities to repress
her soul, not to let her feelings out.
[Lee algunas frases de la diapositiva]
“I could risk no sort of answer by this time”  She realizes that she has made a
mistake by saying that she would miss him and she does not want to make a mistake
again, so she does not answer.
“That I NEVER should, sir: You know-” Impossible to proceed”  Again, she
represses herself.
“In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured no longer; I
was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot with acute distress. When
I did speak, it was only to express an impetuous with that I had never been born,
or never come to Thornfield”
“Because you are sorry to leave it?”  Again, she makes a reflection
“The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me was claiming
mastery  can you see the battle that there is inside her? and struggling for full sway,
and asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise and reign at last:
yes, - and to speak”  She is exactly repeating the same situation that we could see in
chapter 1 when she is bullied by her cousin and then, she answers by letting her
passions dominate her and at different level this is exactly the same because she is been
emotionally bullied by Rochester who is playing with her heart telling her that he is
going to marry someone else which is false since he has no plan to marry anyone. He is
just inventing this in order to let the lion sleeping within Jane’s heart out and he will
keep the conversation all the time until he manages to make her wake up and make the
animal inside her wake up.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane Eyre’s sentimental unregulation (3)

And suddenly, after several pages, she starts shouting at him saying
“Why can you be so cruel to me? Why are you speaking about your wife, your lover all
the time? Do you think I am an automaton? In fact, I love you and we are spiritually
equals!”  That is the moment because apparently this sort of unregulated sentimental
passionate reaction is what Rochester has been looking for all the time.
And then, he says ““As we are!” Repeated Mr. Rochester – “so,” he added,
enclosing me in his arms. Gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips:
“so Jane””  Queriendo decir que ya había podido sacar lo que yo quería de ti.

65
This section is very interesting since we can see how this actress manages to involve
from the typical repressed woman to someone shouting all this; however, there has been
fashions. Earlier I showed to you this classic version from 1947.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rochester’s bigamy & proposal: Jane’s first decision

The problems of the moral choices, remember the crucial moments in every
bildungsroman is the moral choice that the protagonist has to face. And in this novel
there are two; how to react to the proposals for marriage that she receives.
The first one is very immoral for the conventional habits of the time. After Mr.
Rochester’s bigamy has been revealed, he decides to make a sort of deal with her: “we
can get married but why don’t we go away to France, to Marseille and pretend that we
are a married couple? We can live there; I promise I will respect you and all those
things”
And Jane’s double personality is in conflict, the two dimensions of her personality. We
have the conscience and reason; and we also have feeling. So, there is a conflict
between conscience and reason versus feeling.
[y lee la parte azul de la diapositiva (feeling)] “Oh, comply! It said. Think of his
misery; Think of his anger – look at his state when left alone; remember his
headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair – soothe him; save
him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for
you? Or who will be injured by what you do?  I have a good time with him.
And why the reply was so determinant [y lee la parte roja de la diapositiva (conscience
y reason] “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more
unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God;
sanctioned by man”  it is a moral principal that she has internalized and one that
follows her Christian cognition; it is wrong to go with a man if you are not married.
“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation”  Many
people say that they have laws and principles only after these principles are challenged;
then, they are willing to change. Estos son mis principios pero si me tientas, los cambio.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane’s first decision: practical evaluation & Providence

So, she makes a very religious moral message in order to justify her decision, her
decision is perfectly according to dominant moral views. But it is one that she does not
express as something that she is doing in order to comply with external factors but
rather as something that she has to do with her personal decisions; it is me who has to
decide these rules because if I betray them, I will betray myself. After all, it is an
external decision that she presents as personal and idealistic or abstract while there is a
practical sight to it. It is risky for her to go with him because she could be left perfectly
abandoned. She acknowledges for purely practical reasons that he would love her for a
while but he could abandon her. This practical reason is subordinated to the moral
reason as she expressed earlier.
Afterwards, she acknowledges that she has tried to analyze her situation on a practical
basis but she prefers to consider this as a complement and not as a primarily element in
her decisions. And in order to reinforce that decision later on embraces is with a
providential religious idea of “God directed me to a correct choice: I thank his
Providence for the guidance”. It is when people are doing thing all the time for
practical reasons and they say that it is because God is guiding them all the time and not
for practical reasons. They are trying to refuse all this implicit hypocrisy of puritans,

66
there is something very puritan life; about puritan hypocrisy here (I would say God is
guiding me).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane’s first decision: her mother helps

But it is not only God or practical reasons or philosophical principals; there is also even
supernatural help. There is a moment when she is still doubting that she has a sort of
trance-like dream and she hears a voice from a white human form shone telling her
“My daughter, flee temptation” and she says “Mother, I will”; that is extraordinary,
she does not remember anything from her mother, so a ghost appears to her and she says
that Jane has to flee temptation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
St. John Rivers’ proposal & Jane’s second decision

She decides to abandon the place just walking without any definite direction and she
gets lost in the cold weather and she is rescued when she is close to die in the freezing
place and she is raised by a family made of priests – John Rivers and his sisters
Dayanne and Mary.
And, what is characterized of John Rivers? His evangelical attitude; in the novel is said
that John Rivers is admirable and he is reasonably vocation. But he leads her to a
situation that is paradox to Rochester’s proposal but from the opposite end, a choice
which is so rationally acceptable that it is inadequate from the point of view of her
feelings. This man, rather than loving her, simply needs her to be the perfect companion
in his family’s missionary endeavor to transform “all poor stupid” people love India into
good Christians (evidently it was ironic; he was just laughing at this idea). His
persuasion (John River) is different from Rochester’s persuasion because Rochester can
only offer her pleasure at the consummation or perhaps her emotional and physical
aspirations.
Why the arguments used by John Rivers to propose to her are much more solid and
more difficult to oppose? There are at least three in this extract.
First, he uses flattery; it is essential for someone who is very interested in his / her
qualities, the best way to seduce these people is to spend a lot of time speaking about
his or her virtues. She is flattered and is much easier to get her to accept his view. It is a
very typical tendency or strategy to seduce someone. And it is expressed “I
acknowledge the complement of the qualities seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent,
disinterested, faithful, constant and courageous; very gentle and very heroic: cease
to mistrust yourself – I can trust you unreservedly. As a conductress of Indian
schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance will be to me
invaluable”
“Your assistance will be to me invaluable”  It is the second argument/element to
seduction; to comment/address on the benefits. Perhaps the benefits and success to be
obtained through her help, it is not necessary her success or her benefits; but you simply
omit that because it is just another typical strategy when politicians want to persuade
someone
There is another interesting aspect to seduce her. He has on his side the authority not of
love or sex which after all can be represented as witnesses. But the authority of love
because my mission is religious and duty; it is our duty to be useful, if you simply reject
the opportunity to bring something useful, you cannot say that you are following any
sense of duty. As we have been instructed in the idea of getting the best of the most of
our capacities; renouncing that capacity or that possibility is simply an act of witness/a

67
criminal act from a moral point of view. St. John Rivers is very manipulative because he
is using very solid arguments to persuade her; she, from a rational point of view, accepts
that there is nothing to do to oppose him. And it is expressed “I CAN do what he
wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge that”.
And in fact, she tries to generalize anything keeping her tied emotionally all along her
life, tied to England. What it is in green (diapositiva) is when she acknowledges that
there is nothing keeping her  “The case is very plain before me. In leaving England,
I should leave a loved but empty land – Mr. Rochester is not there. My business is
to live without him now”  She cannot get any powerful reason for her to escape.
How is this dilemma sort? She acknowledges what it could be seen as a witness because
she does not like the idea of living at the most probably dime and loft by him.
Everything is acceptable but it is not exactly what I decided that it is the culmination of
my life.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane’s second decision: telepathy helps

In order to solve this conflict, telepathy; which is another solution to rescue her.
Another solution comes to rescue her in such a chief trick to introduce the motive of
some miraculous message which is her apparently Rochester is calling her. She has a
sort of thing that it was not like a predicted shock but it was quite sharp, something that
she feels physically and then
“What have you heard? What do you see? asked St. John. I saw nothing, but I
heard a voice somewhere cry –
“Jane! Jane! Jane!” – nothing more.
“O God! What is it?” – I gasped
I might have said, “Where is it?”

Suddenly, she understands everything, she understands that “It is a known, loved, well-
remembered voice – that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and
woe, wildly, eerily, urgently”
“I am coming!” I cried “Wait for me!”
Suddenly she listens to a voice and she follows voice, she feels like Mr. Rochester who
needs her. Evidently, this is a very risky decision because maybe she has mistaken the
voices which could belong to someone else or she had an invention imagining that it
was Rochester’s voice. And what is the difference from the situation in which she
abandoned him? Apparently there is no difference because she has heard nothing about
his fate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jane’s fulfilment

Then, we are told when she is going to visit him that Bertha has died and that now he is
physically less strong and it is perfectly acceptable for Jane to reject St. John Rivers’s
proposal because she has found a new way of justifying her sense of duty. “Well, I
prefer being St. Rochester’s nurse than being St. John Rivers’s wife in India”
Suddenly, the perfect Christian message is to form in order to balance the undesirable
proposal or the project of becoming a wife in India. So, she returns to him remembering
that there is another miracle, she has received a fortune and now she is independent. So,
she returns to him and her life is one of success at a private personal level and not in
social terms; she could perfectly decide to move to London and keep the life of a lady,
instead she spends her life living in (lugar: Frending?¿?) a very remote and isolate place,

68
a perfect private paradise of utopia of understanding between herself and her husband.
So, we have this perfect portrait of fulfillment; fulfillment that I consider very doubtful
and very incoherent and inconsistent with her feminist demands expressed earlier. How
she dresses her married life of submission that something that makes her happy? simply
because is what she has chosen for herself; she has at least being given the chance to
choose and she has chosen to be a wife servant
[y lee la diapositiva entera]  All this looks like quite egalitarian, but there is the
following paragraph expresses that she is submitted and performing a more
conventional nursing submissive role.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DAVID COPPERFIELD
Let see if there are similar instances or tendencies in David Copperfield.
 Personal progress minimized (professional career left out)

The man’s progression/promotion tends to be professional rather than personal or

sentimental. However, Dickens created a very peculiar sort of bildungsroman with
David Copperfield because personal progress is something that is carefully neglected or
left out of the main narration of the story. It is not the memories of a writer but the
memories of a person before he becomes a writer and when he starts becoming a writer
in the novel, the professional part of his vocation is left out; we are only witnessing his
economic and social progress and that does not seem to be the most
important/prominent part of the novel.
The novel is about aspects which are not the professional ones. However, the
professional that he has chosen for himself to be a writer; at first, he is a clerk at some
high court and later on he becomes a novelist, all this dimension is not a one in which
there is a moral compromise for him because it is perfectly acceptable that he can
become a successful novelist without being a moral, it is more difficult if you are a
banker or a factory owner. But, it is an aspect which seems not to dominate in the story.
In fact, something very funny about this novel is that there are so many characters in the
novel that David Copperfield in himself is like a ghost, that is, it is a novel crowded
with hundreds of characters with lots and lots of plots that they are more important than
he is and he is only the linking element. For instance, more important than his
professional development is growing up in a no conventional family structure, he is an
orphan and he always lost the figure of a man/ of his father.
 Other plots and themes

a) Incomplete mothers and mistaken loves

- Pegotty / Clara / Betsey Trotwood
And to make things worse, his mother is clearly incompetent from an intellectual/moral
point of view; she is very beautiful but she is the typical model of girl woman because
she behaves like a weak and irresponsible person. She is not able to take decisions for
herself and she is not able to keep any authority anyway. It is usually interesting
because her very imperfect role or capacity as mother is balanced with the loving but
not authoritative position of Pegotty who is the servant. Pegotty gives him all the love
and care that he needs in the novel but she is just a servant. She cannot have or play the
role of a typical mother/figure of authority for him. He is middle class, she gives him
care, protection, love, affection but there is a lack of authoritative guiding male figure to
role/guide his life. David Copperfield is born in a world without male figures of
authority to imitate and to learn from; and with many female figures of love and

69
affection but incompetent in particular ways. He spends most of his life alone or under
the protection uncared of very doubtful masculine figures. Mr. Murdstone, the man who
marries his wife is just a criminal person who marries her in order to get her fortune.
Later on, he is under the protection of Mr. Micawber is just a very stupid or ridiculous
man, always in financial problem. He goes to school and the school director Mr.
Creakle is tyrannical and very cruel, so there is no male figure in the story that we can
learn from. But, his best friend Steerforth, a young, rich gentlemen, is very youthful. So
there is no good man in his life.
- Dora /Agnes
And what about women? First, when he is a child, he falls in love with a beautiful,
blonde girl, he meets Emily; he falls in love with her, she is lovely but evidently she
falls in love with someone else. And later on, she is seduced by Steerforth; then, he falls
in love with a young person, Dora Spenlow, she is a beautiful girl with a perfect replica
of his mother, beautiful but childish, incompetent. And he falls in love with her despite
that and his life is very miserable. She has to die and she dies, she dies because it would
be immoral or unacceptable for social standards to make David divorce her or abandon
her. So, she dies and he marries finally Mrs. Agnes Wickfield, the perfect modal of the
Victorian responsible, moderate woman. His success at the end of the life depends on
the professional success and the domestic bless that he obtains with Agnes Wickfield.
b) Education: Creakle vs. Strong
The novel is also about education. David is not doing well at school and he is sent with
his studies at home. At school, he is cruelly treated by Mr. Creakle. Later on, he
abandons the school and he is forced to work, and he is just ten or eleven. So, he
escapes from the factory where he is working. Then, he is sent to a much better school
board by Dr. Strong. So, the novel is also about the role performed by education.
c) Steerforth’s elopement & pursuit of Emily
Apart of this, most of the significant plots of the novel are only witnessed by David and
David is only secondary in all these plots. His friend Steerforth is invited by David to
visit the town Great Yarmouth. There, he comes across Emily; but, later on he abandons
her and she spends a lot of time living in London as a prostitute. One of her uncles
spends several years just trying to find her and finally she immigrates to Australia.
d) Collapse of Mr. Wickfield & defeat of Heep
Another interesting plot in the story, Mr. Wickfield is a lawyer and collapses morally
because he feels alone and he starts drinking too much and becomes an alcoholic and he
is manipulated by Uriah Heep, this man is a servant of his and he is all the time plotting.
And he has not only to defeat Mr. Wickfield but also to seduce Mrs. Wickfield. At the
end this plot is sold in a miraculous way by some characters
e) Adultery narrative of Anne Strong
And finally, there is also another story that is introduced and in which David is only a
witness which is the relationship between Anne Strong who is a young girl who gets
married to Dr. Strong. Anne Strong is being unfaithful to her husband with a young man.
This story does not lead anywhere and David is only witnessing it and getting some
inspiration from Anne Strong.
The most important stories are those in which he is the protagonist and not in the above
mentioned in which he is just witnessing what it happens. The only critical moment is
when he is sent to work to that factory and he escapes. That is the only relevant part.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David’s innocence: Brooks of Sheffield

70
Then, David goes through to several sections of the story. David has to be introduced as
a very poor victim, a poor victim because of his innocence. The first evidence plot
against him and his happiness is Mr. Murdstone’s plot. In fact, he is so little that he
cannot understand that Mary is clear evidence is seducing his mother only to be the
owner of her house and her fortune. One day, he is talking to some friends of his
[y lee] “What! Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield’s encumbrance?” cried the gentleman
“The pretty little widow?”
“Quinion” said Mr. Murdstone, “take care, if you please. Somebody sharp”

Evidently, all his friends know very well that he is plotting to seduce Clara Copperfield
in order to get her money. They are talking to (1.15.19) and he does not want David to
realize and that is why he invents a way of calling him which is Brooks of Sheffield.
Evidently, everybody understands that Brooks of Sheffield is a way of referring to
David without naming him. So, they are laughing all the time but David is unable to
understand that Brooks of Sheffield is himself; he says “I was quite relieved to find
that it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for; at first, I really thought it was I”.

[y lee] There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr. Brooks
of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and
Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused also.  So, he spends a lot of time talking
about Brooks of Sheffield and he never realizes that he is Brooks of Sheffield. It is a
perfect illustration of how naïve and stupid he is.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miss Murdstone

There is an imposing figure of Miss Murdstone, as soon as Mr. Murdstone manages to

marry Clara Copperfield, what he does is to move into the house and to bring his sister.
And his sister is the typical evangelical person and she is very cruel towards him and
also his mother
“I don’t like boys. How d’ye do, boy?”
Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I
hope she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone
disposed of me in two words: “wants manner!”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clara dispossessed

Evindently, very soon he will be sent to school. In fact, he is not doing well in his
studies because simply he does not feel he is loved in the house and he can see also
affected by the fact that he is witnessing how the imposing presence of Miss and Mr.
Murdstone is reducing his mother to the role of a helpless bird in a cage. The woman
or the wife is losing all the authority in the house; Miss Murdstone even takes her keys
and starts behaving as the owner of the house and the keys is a symbol of authority in
the house and evidently, Clara Copperfield is reduced to nothing. Miss and Mr.
Murdstone have the quality of inflexibility, risibility which is relate to her creed and it
is what defeats both Clara and David Copperfield, they are humane, weak. And apart
from this creed that makes them inflexible, rigid, strong, energetic, and impulsive; there
is a commercial material aspect:

“It’s very hard” said my mother, “that in my own house”

“My own house?” repeated Mr. Murdstone. “Clara!”

71
“OUR own house, I mean” faltered my mother, evidently frightened
He is using his mental energy, his power over this woman to decide that this house
belongs to him, evidently he kills her but nor physically but she is let to physical
destruction.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David’s humiliation at school

This affects David, so he starts not doing well at school, so he is bitten by Mr.
Murdstone “Please, don’t bite me” We have the same situation of violence than in
chapter 1 of Jane Eyre because he bites the hand of Mr. Murdstone, so he lets his violent
side operate.
And we have the same situation than in Jane Eyre when she is humiliated at school. In
his case, David is taken to Mr. Creakle’s school and he has to show a placard in which
you can read “Take care of him. He bites”. He is treated as a dog. So, he is sent to
school not to be educated but to be punished.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Criminal suspicion

For that, he is punished without knowing why he is punished because he considers that
what he has done is a natural reaction to the physical aggression that he has experienced
“I began to wonder fearfully what would be done to me. Whether it was a criminal
act that I had committed? Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to
prison? Whether I was at all in danger of being hanged?”
Evidently, he is not going to be hanged because he has just bitten the hand of Mr.
Murdstone. But, there is something typical that is the problem of guilt / the problem of
criminal suspicion of a criminal identity, the fear that you can be a criminal that
whatever you do can have criminal consequences.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David expelled from the family

Then, he is expelled from the family life and he is sent to that factory and the arguments
used to throw him out of the house are the typical ones of a materially oriented man and
a modern progressive person
[y lee] “David” said Mr. Murdstone, “to the young this is a world for action; not
for moping and droning in?” “As you do” added his sister.
“Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the young this is a
world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It is specially so for a young
boy of your disposition, which requires a great deal of correcting; and to which no
greater service can be done than to force it to conform to the ways of the working
world, and to bend it and break it”.

You have to be strong in a world of competition, you have to struggle with the
environment and you have to defeat the environment. It is the typical message of middle
classes and bildungsroman; how you are fighting/struggling for survival in society. In
fact, he is used because he is sent to a factory and he is not sent to school to be educated
but he is sent out of his house.

Later on, he makes several retrospective views, moments in which he reflects about his
past. He makes reflections about how cruel treatment he suffered. All this was very
sincere and direct reflections because all those cruel events were part of his life.

72
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David’s career

He considers himself “a child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of

observation, quick, eager, delicate and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems
wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But none
was made, and I became, at ten years old, a little laboring hind in the service of
Murdstone and Grinby” When he is speaking about himself being all these things is
not Charles Dickens inventing the character because he is describing himself and what
he felt with the cruelty of that experience.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David’s flight

Then, he escapes from the place. It is a remarkable section but it is perhaps the only one
in which we can see anything that looks like original, private, heroic behaviour to travel
from London to Gouvern (no es el nombre exacto, no se cuál es) just walking, it takes
him a few days. And nothing extraordinary happens there.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David’s undisciplined heart & unhappy marriage

And then, we have a talking of his problem. He spends a lot of time in the novel
speaking about his having been in his life a victim of what he calls undisciplined heart,
this formula is expressed many times to refer to himself. If we analyse his behavior
through the novel, we realize that there is nothing disciplined in himself if we leave out
only one aspect, his sentimental life or the decision to love a women that it was clearly
inadequate, Dora Spenlow. It is the only aspect in his life in which his heart is
undisciplined. If he had been wiser, he would not have felt at all in claimed to spend his
life with a woman who was clearly incompetent like his mother. After all, Dicken was
reflecting on a very sad affair that he had in his early life. When he was eighteen, he fell
in love with a woman, Maria, and he was willing to marry her and he proposes to her;
but he was rejected by her family due to the fact that he was poor. So, for him, it was a
dramatic experience in his life and he was remembering all this suffering for several
years.
In this novel, he makes an interesting experiment; he makes himself or his alter-ego
David marry that kind of woman in order to show that perhaps if she had been giving to
him, his life would have been miserable.
“I felt so disappointed at that time, I felt that my life could not go on, and then, I
realized that it was good for me” that was not so good for him because when he
married Catherine Hogarth, his wife, was deeply loved with her but quite soon he fed up
with her because he fell in love with his sister-in-law who was living in his house. This
is interesting because perhaps Dickens is reflecting on his own matrimonial affairs
when he introduces the idea of we have to be very careful when we get married that we
should always feel that we have to control our impulses and we should look for
someone who is suitable from the point of view of mind and purposes. So, what it is
needed is equality of mind and spirit which is the same idea than in Jane Eyre. In fact,
David thought that he could make Dora grow into a material person but she does not
develop. So, she is acknowledging that in these affairs is better to have discipline (a
sense of discipline, reason, logic) and to consider suitability and not perfect looks. Dora
Spenlow is more beautiful than Agnes Wickfield, but Agnes is better in terms of soul,
mind, behavior and materiality. This is not very different to Jane Eyre’s reflections

73
about how to get married - equality, combining affections and material or practical
aspects; it is the same.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David’s merits

There is an evidence moral purpose. He makes a very explicit and long analysis of the
reason for his success and the reasons for his success are conventional. His main gift in
life is not to be brilliant, just to devote himself fully with all his energies and mental
powers to whatever. The virtue is consistency, diligence and hard work rather than
innate talent. If you have the right habits, you can get whatever you want in life.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Pip’s “education”

A1 – Traumatic experience with Magwitch: guilt (betrayal) & imposed sense of

criminality [Official & Repressed Identity]

There are some consequences that tell us something powerful about his identity. First,
his sense of guilt that he develops because he is forced to steal some tools and some
food from the house in order to help a man. So, Pip spends a lot of time commenting on
the particular quality of guilt that he experiences. He claims that he feels much sorry
for Joe than for his sister because after all he loves Joe why he does not love his sister.
It is the idea of having betrayed Joe that makes him feel, the idea of betrayal because
of love affection for the man.

And then another aspect is the notion of criminality. Somehow Pip behaves as a
criminal, he commits a crime in order to help the man to escape from prison and he
spends not only this moment but different periods of his early life wondering about the
fact that perhaps he is a criminal or there is an element of criminality about himself.
This has to do partly with notions that are conveyed to him by adults, adults spend a lot
of time telling him that there are many thing wrong with him. So, there is that typical
element in adult education trying to convey the notion that he is intrinsically bad, that is,
there is an intrinsically badness in his nature which is a very typical idea in education,
children have to be corrected. And he feels that he has to be corrected many times
because of the particular aggressive behavior of his sister and adults like Wopsle and
Pumblechook in particular.
At the same time, this coincides to an interesting fact; he even, at the end of his short
encounter with the convict comes to fill some sort of sympathy for him, he feels some
pity at the bad situation in which this man is; he has to remain hidden in the marshes in
winter for a long time; so he takes some pity at the cold, wet conditions in which he is
experiencing all this. All has been interpreted by some critics who combine psychology
and narrative with a sort of conflict between an official identity and a repressed identity.
The critics who expressed this view in an interesting way was called Peter Brooks.

A2 – Traumatic experience with Estella: social-ethnical disorientation / alienation

[“Inadequacy” of “parental” & guiding figures: Mrs. Joe & Jaggers (fear) / Biddy &
Herbert (lack of authority) / Havisham / Joe (limitations)]

74
Then, the novel is willing with these situations and suddenly another important event in
his life takes place. Somehow he cannot explain/understand why he is sent to a house to
play and they also tell him that it could be great for him and he should feel grateful
because he is going to be sent to that house. This is a very interesting situation and as
traumatic as the original one because for the first time in his life, he feels embarrassed
of his social identity of his social class/social origin. He has never felt that there was
nothing wrong about his clothes, his way of speaking. And suddenly, they start
ridiculing him from a position of social superiority, as he is a very sensitive boy he
starts associating/adopting a clear position of animation, in the sense that he starts
growing up apart from his social position. And in a sense, he starts identifying that there
must be something wrong with the ways of low class people and something good with
the manners of high class people, particularly because they can speak well and they are
proud, dismissive since it is a good way to be in the life. And evidently, this is linked
with the physical fascination of the beautiful Estella. The damage of this disturbing
experience could have been limited and he had some valuable guiding figure to tell him
what are the right lessons to obtain from that experience. But unfortunately, Pip likes
this parental figure.

First, for Mrs. Joe and people like Mrs. Jaggers who appears later on, he can only feel
fear, he does not feel any confidence. Other good friends who had more sensible,
intelligent, clearer views on life than himself are Biddy and Herbert, he cannot bestow
authority because they are more or less close to him. Herbert is inferior in money but
wiser and Biddy in intelligent but she is a humble class woman, so he decides not to
learn the messages that she is sending to him. Miss Havisham is mad and very
interested in guiding him but rather distorting his views. And Joe is sensible and has a
common sense but there are several things about his manners that make him clearly
inadequate and not authoritative enough because he is very limited, childish and he has
a lack of social polish manners make Pip feel strange from him. And this notion of
feeling strange from Joe is important because Pip feels strange with his life.
Estrangement is basically the same word as alienation; those words were important
because he grows up alienated from himself and distant from the sort of behavior that
corresponds to him and should be more or less equivalent to his nature.

B1 – Pip’s fortune: wrong interpretation & evolution (internalization of the law &
snobbery-alienation)

Then, Mrs. Jaggers tells Pip that he is going to be a gentleman, he makes the wrong
interpretation and the interpretation is that his secret benefactor is not a benefactor. He
applies to very stupid fairy tale logic, “Well, if there was no reason for Miss
Havisham to decide to invite me to Satis house every week, why not? Making me
the heir of her fortune”. “Apparently, in his fairy tale logic she has decided to
protect me and I do not why because I have done nothing to deserve this positive
treatment but I have been rewarded by the fortune but after all fairy tales are
based on that stupid providential logic”. So, he decides not only to interpret it but
interpret that part of the suspended guilt to receive the whole fortune and to receive
Estella. How can he believe all this? Simply, because his memory decides to be selected,
he decides to believe/remember the things that suit this interpretation. And also, he has
made completely alienated from any inadequate interpretation of his merits and
capacities. Alienation has made him repress what was his first original authentic

75
impression that Miss Havisham is not a fairy god mother but a witch which is different.
But this idea he has also learnt that he has to repress the idea that Miss Havisham is not
a fairy god mother. God is the consequence of the wrong interpretation of the reward
that he received since he did nothing in order to obtain this gift, he goes on doing
nothing after he has received it; he just waits, waits and waits for the rest of the money,
that is, you are given a gift and you enjoy it, you do not apply any logic, any profitable
idea or interpretation of it.

B2 – Magwitch’s return: Repetition & Recovery of human (i.e. “classless”) identity

So, the message has to be shown to be wrong when Magwitch returns. Suddenly, when
he is being a gentleman, the convict that he helped in chapter 1, he returns and says Oh,
I’m your benefactor. All these ideas on his life collapse and he starts being forced to
remember that the logic that he should not apply is not that fairy tale logic (in which he
does nothing and he obtains something) but the logic in which he does something
because he has some values. And as a consequence of having done something, he is
rewarded with something. So, the message that he should obtain and follow is that he
would be rewarded is because he has done something that was humane and kind. So,
that is why Pip has to go through a very painful process of penitence, penitence in order
to return to the original position of not alienated but person showing the moral
integrative that he had when he was a child, that is, someone who is guided by the most
sincere honest feelings of fellowship and kindness. He realizes that he has a duty and
that duty is to help Magwitch to escape from England. He has to repeat what he did in
chapter 1 and 2 because he failed the subject. It is a painful thing for him to do because
he knows that by helping him, most likely what he will do is to lose all his money. He
could have perfectly betrayed Magwitch, kill him and then to keep the fortune; but he
decides to risk losing the fortune if they are arrested and helping him out. So, he
recovers an identity that is no longer snobbish or class oriented. He feels proud, he feels
that he loves this man despite the fact that this man has very bad manners, he is very
ugly and he cannot speak well.
And then finally, the last aspect to bear in mind is the serious technical problem. The
technical problem of controlling alienation and distance. The story is told by Mr.
Pirrip and not by Pip. So, Mr. Pirrip has to narrate the story and decides how much he is
Mr. Pirrip and how often he would be Pip. And he would be all the time shifting these
perspectives; sometimes he would be Pip and the presence of figure of Mr. Pirrip will
not be very prominent and other times we will see how Mr. Pirrip is taken over and
decides to narrate the story. This is very difficult because Mr. Pirrip has to face the
challenge of narrating himself or at himself and he is not very proud of. And this is
something very difficult when we have to narrate something from our past imagining
something very embarrassing about you and imagining that you have to tell it to your
friends. So, Mr. Pirrip is forced to modulate his distance with the protagonist,
sometimes he is proud of what he did, but other times he cannot even identify in these
reactions, in particular when Pip has become a snobbish young gentleman in London.
There are many moments in which Mr. Pirrip is just expressing about why he did
something in the past.
And the last technical problem is the fact that Mr. Pirrip makes the reader make the
same mistakes that he made in the past, the reader will be manipulated and only when
Pip discovers the truth, the reader will learn the truth. So, there is a great deal of
manipulation of the reader’s experience. In fact, this is something that we should forget
when we are reading the novel and this is the action of manipulation that takes place in

76
the novel. The novel starts in chapter 1 but we are manipulated to think that the novel
starts in chapter 8, so what have we read from chapter 1 to chapter 7?

The fact that he tries to read the physical features of his parents from the characters. It is
not only an act of humour, an act that is intended or designed to create that lack of
sympathy but it has to do some extent with a basic problem of Pip which is his reading
and interpreting abilities because Pip is unable to read and interpret reality. He cannot
read and he calls himself Pip, so in a sense whatever that happens about his identity, it is
something created by him and in most cases wrong because he often lacks any guidance
and any defined a pattern of identity when the paths of your life are less determined than
when you are born in a family with your parents being there not only giving you
education, values, principles but also some security. His life is a life without a definite
plot.

In the last two extracts, we can see how he is shaken. There is something that is
symbolic or metaphorical; Pip is an object which is upside down. Pip is manipulated by
Magwitch as Estella is manipulated against her will by Miss Havisham; parents/adults
give shape/manipulate children, they make children unhappy because all these plots
collapse or vanish. Pip is an object, an object of a plotting experience.

Let me go through some examples of what I have been explaining previously.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imposed sense of criminality

One interesting aspect of Pip’s imposed sense of criminality; the way in which he is
educated has to do with the attitude of many adults. A very brilliant illustration of this
situation is the scene of the dinner, all the family is together and starts commenting on
the sermon. Mr. Wopsle complains that the speech made by the priest lacked any clear
message and any clear educational purpose. He could imagine many ways of improving
the sermon making it a very serious warning against the corruption of moral behavior
and then he takes the example of the Pork. Then, he transforms the pork into a symbol
of how you can fall from a state of professional into something inferior. Very soon, Pip
has internalized the idea that every speech has a moral meaning “I knew he was going
to lug me in”. Then, Mrs. Hubble collaborates expressing the idea “mournful
presentiment that I should come to no good” and they said that all children are
“naterally wicious” and there is something intrinsically bad in young children. His
sister starts making the usual list of whole travel that she has given pattern him through
all the years as she can say that everything in his environment is conspiring/plotting to
make him guilty. He has a sensitive nature and he feels guilty about having helped the
convict, but this idea is reinforced by many commentaries about it. This is the
illustration of how he starts feeling sorry for the man when he looks at him and the way
that he is eating. There is something animal about the man but something that he can
understand in a moral sense that this man is experiencing hunger and cold and fear, so
he is eating like a dog. The fact that this man looks and eats like a dog is not something
against the man but something that makes Pip feels closer to the soul of this man.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

77
Imposed sense of criminality

The story which is told to him is the story of George Barnwell, a criminal, the typical
bad apprentice whose life was immoral, not hard working and he ends up being a
criminal.
To the point that there is a moment in the story in which his sister is attacked by a
villain, a villainous blacksmith called Dolge Orlick. Pip is so fascinated with the idea of
his unwickness that he even assumes that he has some sense of guilt in the attack that
his sister received “I was at first disposed to believe that I must have had some hand
in the attack upon my sister” “I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than any
one else” he has internalized that idea of guilt.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s guilt: love, betrayal & cowardice

Then, at some other moments that he was a coward and he acknowledges what he has
done just because of his fear of losing Joe. It is important than Joe is the only positive
figure in his memory about his childhood. Joe never feels bad about Pip not even when
he is rejected when Pip becomes a gentleman and Joe goes to visit him to London; but
Pip feels so embarrassed at the idea of anyone seeing him with this look class man and
he behaves in a very cold way towards him. And this is a crucial element in the portrait
of moral or spiritual degeneration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s (romantic) infatuation and (social) inferiority complex

[en este párrafo se explica lo que significa el color rojo y el color azul en la diapositiva
pero no le encuentro sentido, no le hagáis caso porque aunque no parezca, ahora se
habla de esta diapositiva por el ejemplo de abajo]

In red is illustrated what is announced to him that he is going to Satis house. He cannot
understand why he is sent there, there is no reason. At this moment, he only understands
that perhaps it is a good thing that he is going to enjoy himself but he cannot make
sense of that. So, he says “Why on earth am I going to play? And what on earth am
I going to play at? They are telling me to go to a place to play?” But he accepts that
it would be something good for him but he cannot understand why.
The blue sentences are in passive because he is representing himself as an object to be
sent to Satis house. It represents linguistically the lack of independent will in this action
because he is just an object transplanted from one place to Satis house without knowing
what he is going to do. Evidently, he feels insulted all the time at Satis house and Miss
Havisham is listened saying “Estella, take him down. Let him something to eat, and
let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip”. “I follow the candle down,
as I had followed the candle up”. He has not the mental ability to understand nothing,
he just understands that he does not like himself and that is a very cruel thing to do with
a child. He has been told that his appearance, manners and clothes are wrong, so he
feels this embarrassment about his own identity. So this is the beginning of that
inferiority complex that he develops and he stupidly associates with his infatuation for
Estella. So, both unrelated elements get mixed in his mind, at the same time that he
starts loving her and feeling attracted to her; he also starts feeling social inferior.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

78
Joe’s education

Joe’s education cannot help because he completely lacks education; he was just a tiny
and shy person, brought up in a family in which there was domestic violence of the
father against the mother. So, he has not developed any sense of authority over his wife.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s confusion (2)

One interesting aspect of that confusion is that when he claims that his aspiration is to
be a gentleman, Biddy understands very well that it has to do with his aspirations to
have access to Estella or have some rights over Estella. So, she asks him “Do you want
to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?” It is an interesting reflection if
he wants to be a gentleman, we should think that it is to love her or to have her but he
knows very well that there is not any sense of frenzy between them
[y lee]
“I don’t know” I moodily answered.
“Because, if it is to spite her”, Biddy pursued, “I should think – but you know best
– that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her
words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think – but you know best – she was
not worth gaining over”
Exactly what I myself had thought, many times … but how could I, a poor dazed
village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which the best and wishes of
men fall every day?

“A poor dazed village lad” refers to his inability to interpret and evaluate things, his
incompetence is inconsistent.
He is obsessed with Estella somehow and he does not know if it is love and if it is a
love oriented towards possessing, destroying but he feels that there is something to be
done with her. This idea that he acknowledges that he is not consistent represents the
awareness of Mr. Pirrip when talking about Pip, so it creates a distance between them
and distance is perceived many times.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s fortune and confusion & Pip’s confusion

Here, we have something different, the mistake that he makes when he interprets the
presence of the benefactor “My dream was out” Jaggers says that you will be brought
up as a gentleman in a world as a young fellow of great expectations. How automatic,
how unconscious, how deliberately quick the explanation of this mystery is “My dream
was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss Havisham was going
to make my fortune on a grand scale” He does not allow himself, suddenly he decides
that the explanation that fits his ambition is Miss Havisham, so there is nothing to do
although there is a very poor evidence for him to connect Miss Havisham with Mr.
Jaggers. It is true that Mr. Jaggers is Miss Havisham’s lawyer but it is also evident that
Mr. Jaggers may has many other customers and not only Miss Havisham. So, he
automatically interprets that Mr. Jaggers is acting on behalf of Miss Havisham. This
expresses the way he is manipulated, he cannot understand the motifs and he is told the
story of Miss Havisham hates men in general and would like to make all men suffer
because she was betrayed by one of them. So, why does he follow her? “I Love her
and lover her, love her! hundreds of times” What does she want to do? He is
accepting a deliberately case of alienation; he accepts an interpretation of a story that

79
has nothing to do with it and Miss Havisham is a lady to despise, to laugh at, to hate, to
fear. Miss Havisham becomes an object of gratitude; so education is interfering on him
because he has managed to repress his authentic ideas and notions about reality and he
has decided to accept.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s Snobbery: Distance and Alienation

Then, what follow here is a series of extracts in which we can see the spiritual distance
between Mr. Pirrip and Pip, in particular Mr. Pirrip spends a lot of time reflecting on his
behavior and expressing powerfully that he is a different sort of person now who has
more philosophical or skeptical but less romantic vision of things. For instance, when
Joe announces that he was coming to London, he says “Let me confess exactly” and he
confesses that he wanted to see him. And people who he did not like, like Bentley
Drummle. This is the problem of snobbering because snobbering betrays people into
forcing them into to do things that are clearly ridiculous; so if you do not like Bentley
Drummle, why do you think that Bentley Drummle’s opinion need to be considered
important? Well, I should not care about that man if I dislike him but Bentley Drummle
has something that the alienated Pip has accepted the idea that Bentley Drummle is a
young gentleman, he must be right. So, that is why he confesses later on “So,
throughout life, our worst weakness and meannesses are usually committed for the
sake of the people whom we most despise” Evidently, this philosophical reflection
could not have been made by Pip, it is a reflection made by Mr. Pirrip. Can you see the
distance? There is Pip the protagonist and also Mr. Pirrip speaking about himself.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s Snobbery: Distance and Alienation

The same happens here every time that he has to return to his home town. The natural
thing would be for him to sleep at Joe’s house; but then, he is all the time inventing
reasons and making excuses for sleeping at the local inn. Why? Simply because he does
not want people to think that he cannot afford sleeping at the local inn because he is a
gentleman. So, in a sense, he alienates from not only his family, his home. Again, Mr.
Pirrip’s reflection appears “All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-
swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself”. Para engañarse el peor que te
puede engañar eres tú, cuando tú mismo decides engañarte es que es un caso decisivo de
fraude consigo mismo.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s Snobbery

Then, earlier I have told you that Biddy is telling him things that are very valuable; she
has been showing Pip how inconsistent his behavior was. Later on, Herbert gives him
very precise information about how inconvenient and stupid is to fall in love with
Estella “I meant Estella. That girl’s hard and haughty and capricious to the last
degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the
male sex” If a friend of yours gives you this sort of advice, what would you do? To take
it and forget Estella but he cannot and not only that he snobs that while he
acknowledges the many virtues that Herbert Pocket possesses, there is something about
the natural way of behaving of Herbert that does not make him qualified easily to what
he understands that it has to be the behavior of a gentleman.
[y lee]

80
“There was a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was
something wonderfully hopeful about his general air and something that at the
same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich” Why he
cannot be successful or rich? Because he is a good person and to be successful and rich,
he has to be cold and cruel; this is a stupid contradictory or perhaps a very cynical moral
system that Pip has developed. So, it was just an impression, but an impression that has
to do with his snobbish behavior, he has not got money and his way is not like a
gentleman; so why not to think that he will never succeed in life?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s Snobbery: Distance and Alienation

Then, there are moments in which Mr. Pirrip is able to detect things that he was not able
to detect things at that time (earlier)
[y lee]
“As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to notice
their effect upon myself and those around me. Their influence on my own
character, I disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I knew very
well that it was not all good” He is acknowledging a very complicated mental
mechanism, he was aware of something but he was repressing the awareness of that
negative consequence on his behavior, something that he can explain clearly now but if
you ask Pip at that time (earlier), he would not be able to explain it. So, it explains how
there was a mental process.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pip’s Penitence

And finally, we get the phase of Pip’s penitence when Mr. Magwitch appears and he has
to admire everything that he has learnt and to learn back what he already knew at that
time that it is good to be kind at people and no matter what social class they are. At first,
his attitude is quite reluctant because he is still affected by that advice of snobbish
behavior. This man is talking to him in a loving way “how much I have missed you, I
love you, I have always been working hard to make you a gentleman” and he
comments “The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the
repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had
been some terrible beast” So, at the beginning, he is not willing to welcome him back,
he simply detest him.

But, with time, he learns to love him, he starts reflecting on his situation, he starts
realizing that all the interpretation of his life that he has been built was wrong. So, the
central paragraph is very important “Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a
mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a
convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical heart to
practice on when no other practice was at hand” And then, also, the fact that he had
deserted Joe, so Joe becomes a symbol of all the good world that he has abandoned just
to be a gentleman; and then, there was no reason for him to desert Joe.

Then, he starts remembering all this, there are moments in which he insults Estella for
the way in which she has been treating him calling her bad things but he has a sort of
benevolent attitude “O God bless you, God forgive you!” So, he says goodbye to her
and he decides that it is worthless.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

81
Pip’s Choice: Morality versus Economy

Here, it is the moment in which he realizes that he has to choose in a moral conflict, the
moral conflict is “should I help Magwitch?” or “should I try to keep away from
him?” At the end, the moral spiritual side returns or his alienation disappears and then
he claims “I will never stir from your side” said I, “When I am suffered to be near
you. Please God, I will be as true to you, as you have been to me” This is the
moment in which his innocence, the alienated Pip disappears and he obtains the
recovery of his moral integrity.
For the rest of the novel, Pip loses all his fortune but he has some education, he
manages to get into some company and he spends many years away from England. And
at the end of the novel, when he returns, he is mature, lonely, sad, depressed with life
and he comes across Estella in the street who is also lonely because she is a widow.
They start to ask each other about their lives. And evidently, if he had learnt the lesson,
he would say goodbye to her but after all Pip is a dreamer because the obsession for
Estella is still alive.

82
 UNIT 8
NEW REALITIES AND THE NOVEL.
INDUSTRIAL LIFE, SOCIAL CLASSES, WOMANHOOD, ETC.

- The commercial/professional aspects of writing

- Some intellectual debates that took place concerning

the effects of this expansion of the reading world in
society and the effects on culture

- The so-called new voices that emerged at the time,

particularly the working class’ voices, women’s
voices…

Slide 1: The Book Trade

A) Technical changes:
As J.S. Mill said, “this is a reading age” and as Anthony Trollope commented, they
become “a novel-reading people”. The idea that suddenly people started reading novels
and that novel publishing and reading became a powerful industry is only explained as a
consequence of the inspiration of some writers who suddenly decided that they had
found the right formula to arrest the interests and concerns of so many people. From a
materialistic and economic perspective, the novel and writing and publishing became
very prominent as a main form of entertainment during the Victorian period also
because they were the right means for it becoming a powerful and basically, a
very profitable industry. For instance, let us think about the changes that took place in
the publication and the printing of books. As part of the Industrial Revolution - steam
energy was first introduced in the textile industry but in the 1830s it was also gradually
absorbed or introduced in the printing trade so they developed and used the steam
energy in order to produce more and more books- this industrial publication took place
mainly in the 1850s and 60s. In fact, they even managed to import into England many
powerful machines such as high steam pressures that were developed in and brought
from America and this allowed people to publish more and more books and made them
cheaper. In fact, there was great pressure in England coming from America
because American first editions of books were three or four times bigger than the ones
published in England and the books were three or four times cheaper than they were in
England so the competition of the market was very big. In fact, during the Victorian
period, there were books being brought not only from America but also from Germany
– books printed in America and Germany intended to be sold in England because of the
extraordinary degree of technological advancement achieved by those two countries,
since the revolution did not only happened in England. One interesting consequences of
this is that writing and reading became more ephemeral, that is, the expansion of the
writing market was not only suddenly affected book reading but also, primarily, the
publication of periodicals. Another consequence of this was the idea of the reduced
gap between the first expensive editions of books and the cheap reprints; at the
beginning of the Victorian period, normally, people had to wait for about two or three
years for a cheap reprint of an special book to appear. This gap was closer now and

83
sometimes people could afford buying a cheap book in less than one year after the book
had been originally published in the expensive edition. Part of this development had not
to do with people’s demands or creativity but with a very simple legal measure: there
had been an agreement between all printers to keep prices artificially high. When the
idea of the resale price was abolished – that meant that they could not agree on this
issue – there started to be more and more competition between them. Publishers
published many copies of books and those that had not been sold were normally
distributed to book sellers after a Christmas dinner all the members of the profession
had every year and that tradition was kept almost until the end of the century. While
they were smoking their big cigars they were deciding where all the books could go and
normally, they would artificially keep them expensive not to lose money from it so there
was not really pressure for them to sell the books because they knew everything was
kept in the same hands. Another legal and economic factor that affected the expansion
of printing had to do with the so-called “Taxes of knowledge” – several stamps that
existed on books which were gradually reduced and finally abolished. This meant, for
instance, that at the beginning of the period (1840s) there were about 1700 different
periodicals –i.e. not newspapers but magazines, serials, etc. - and over 3600 in the year
1887. In 1859, 115 new magazines were founded/created (in only one year). It was not
because writers were producing much stuff but because there were publishers and
printers. An interesting evolution in this respect has to do with the titles of these
periodicals and how they had evolved. In most cases, the most influential and successful
periodicals of the Victorian period had been born and launched in the late years of the
Romantic period – years which were quite turbulent in terms of political pressure
because of the Independence War, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, etc. –so
they were clearly associated with political views. E.g. the ‘Quarterly Review’ and the
‘Edinburgh Magazine’ were clearly “Tory” whereas the ‘Edinburgh Review’ and the
‘National Review’ were “Whig”. There were other magazines such as the ‘Westminster
Review’ – that was utilitarian and radical when it was edited by J.S. Mill and later on
became liberal when it was edited by Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot herself). Thus, in
many cases they could even evolve depending on the editor, who was chosen by them to
lead them. The difference is that after 1850 or so, when there was called political and
economic instability in England many of these papers gradually moved to a more
neutral political possession and many of them started including fiction and literature
(essays, reviews and literary criticism) in them. Another movement which was relevant
in the development of all this was the new way network, for instance, WH Smith started
building stalls in every railway station and every London-based newspaper could
perfectly reach Bristol by 9.00 in the morning and a very far distance as Newcastle by
noon so they started publishing national newspapers that could reach the other part of
the country in one single day or in the morning of the following day; it was a revolution
for people and for the development of the influence of these periodicals.
However, not all books published at the time were fiction and the Victorian fiction was
not so extended that everyone was reading books concerned with fiction. In fact, in the
first half of the 18th century only 16% of the books were fiction and in the golden age
of the Victorian novel – when Dickens was at his climax- only 25% of the books
published in England were fiction or novels so the development of the English book
trade had not to do only with novels since people were writing and reading many other
things. Nevertheless, by the year 1880, about 380 new novels were appearing every year
(more or less one per day).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

84
Slide 2: The Book Trade

B) Demographic and economic changes:

So, why did this happen apart from the economic reasons? Evidently there were
significant demographic and economic changes. Basically, the people who could
afford buying and reading books belonged to the traditional middle-class, which
represented the 20% of the population at the time. These people earned between 100
and £300 a year and this included merchants, bankers, large employers and high
professions such as people involved in the law. To this readership there were added
many new middle-class professions like physicians, doctors, teachers and civil
servants, who were incorporated to that group. Moreover, male white
color workers increased from 300.000 in 1850 to 650.000 people only 30 years later;
they were new people who could afford buying and reading books so it meant an
extraordinary increase in the amount of that permissible readership group. However, not
only there were more people who could afford it but it is that the average income of
these social and professional groups rose by about 70% in 30 years so suddenly they
became more and more respectable and positioned. Then, the next step in the growth of
the reading market had to do with low-middle class and working class people, that is,
small shopkeepers, domestic servants or skilled workers. In the 1860s and 70s they also
incorporated into the reading market and this is shown also in the growth of literacy –
in 1840 about 67% of the men and 51% of women could read and 30 years later, 81% of
men and 73% of women could (it was an extraordinary increase given that in the case of
Spain we only get this figures during the 1950s-60s). So, there were more and more
people being able to read and buy but there was no proportion at all between the
extraordinary growth of people and the growth of readership and book production. The
population of England in the 19th century grew by about 40% while the amount of books
published grew by 400%. In order to see how extensive it was, in the years 1848-1850
they printed 4.500.000 of copies of the Bible. So, according to John Sutherland, a
scholar who has investigated about this entire question, the total amount of readers that
existed in England during the average Victorian year was about 3.000.000 people.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S3: The Book Trade

C) New forms of production and distribution:

Evidently, all this expansion had not all to do with writers but also with the role of
publishers who, in many cases were not the image of nowadays we have of a normal
literary publisher (someone interested in culture, being a close friend of their
writers, with a sort of spiritual alliance to them, etc.); they were powerful and money-
oriented people but not always highly cruel, in many cases they were interested in
making money and at the same time in helping their writers. In fact, in many cases the
success of many literary works and careers depended powerfully on the influence by
publishers; for instance, it was a publisher who gave Charles Dickens the opportunity to
become a professional fiction writer in the ‘Pickwick Papers’- before that, he was only
contributing to the critical sketches to certain newspapers and reports so he became well
known thanks to a publisher. It is also known that Charlotte Brontë’s career was very
carefully overseen by her publisher who protected her from public exposure in many
cases and advised her to be very careful with the things she published so she earned an
extraordinary reputation in spite the fact that there were many dangers involved in the
production of her works because in many cases her stories were very limited and there
was a dangerous political element in her novels so she was all the time trying to control

85
that reproducing and limiting these effects. Publishers also secured the access to the
profession of many writers by interfering in several decisions in the production of
writers; for instance, Elisabeth Gaskell was just the wife of a Manchester priest who
invited her to start writing and she wrote a story and she send the manuscript to her
publisher in London and it was entitled as “A Manchester Love story”. This man
realized that this woman could be a professional novelist and invited her to adapt some
things of her work and to make several changes and made that she could spend the rest
of her life devoted herself professionally to writing so the publisher played a very
important role in writer’s life. An interesting fact about the development of the printing
industry in England has to do with the fact that the publishers coincided with the raise
of the writers of their own generation so many publishers were contemporary with their
writers. Publishers were in their early 20s or 30s had inherited the jobs/friends of their
fathers and decided to introduce new ways of publishing novels, etc. so it is quite
peculiar that there are not great means in literary fiction in England from the 1820s to
the 1830s and this coincides with the fact that they were not great publishers in these
years. Why was the market completely reduced at the end of the Romantic period?
Basically because of the very famous demands or because of the most powerful
publishing house of England (or even Britain) at the time – ‘Constable
and Ballantyne’. It was a huge publishing house that published all the works by Walter
Scott; they were earning millions and millions since they were publishing lots and lots
of copies (they were very risky) and suddenly all this collapsed – this was a very serious
problem for W. Scott himself because he had invested everything on the firm and he
also went bankrupt because of that and he had his very huge house
in Scottland (Abbotsford) in which he had spent a lot of money so he had to sold it to
solve the financial problems he found himself. So, for many years no one could take
risks in producing books. Another fact that contributed to the reduced market of the
period was evidently the death of the two better selling writers of the period (Walter
Scott and Lord Byron) leaving the world without comedies and, to get things worse,
many people was afraid of the effects the Reform Act could have in England; in fact,
printers were thinking of closing their firms because they expected that after the Reform
Act all the country would collapse and that could lead to some sort of chaotic situation
for England – they are frightened because they do not know what is going to happen
next.

There was a group of publishers well-known at the time. They were in many cases very
aggressive/active and very influential because not only gave writers opportunities, they
also shaped and limited the freedom of many writers to produce their works. For
instance, Richard Bentley was very optimistic; he had a contract with Herman
Melville, the American author, who had been sold poorly after his big success Moby-
Dick. When Bentley accepted publishing one of Melville’s novels called Pierre or the
Ambiguities in England, Bentley accepted publishing it but with the condition of getting
most of the money and all the rights to have his work edited by one of his readers and
Melville had to accept having his work revised by the publishing house so that idea we
have nowadays of the integrity of the artistic project of the writer was far from the
situation of those writers who had to accept the obvious interference by their publishing
house. In contrast, John Blackwood was quite eccentric in that those making a huge
fortune with their books and he was interested in keeping or showing the idea that his
writers were the aristocracy of England as so he did a huge hall in Princess Street
(London) just for his writers to be able to assemble there and to meet there all together
to have public relations; every time one of his writers went to London s/he visited it. In

86
contrast, Macmillan were very posh; they were committed to university -Oxford and
Cambridge University- and so they did not publish novels because novel publishing was
not at all land of business for these publishers/publishing house so they decided that
they would publish books chosen to last for many years and this meant, for instance,
books dealing with religious ideas (e.g. the Church book) or books having to do with
learning (e.g. mathematics). Chapman & Hall, for instance, were very closely related
to the development and expansion of this writing because they invented the idea of the
Christmas Book, the idea of Christmas as special issue for many people to read about
and to enjoy. In 1843 they were publishing Dickens’ stuff and Dickens took the idea of
publishing one special Christmas issue every Christmas and he invited many writers to
contribute with short stories always with some Christmas ideals to favour all his
feelings. They also invented the novels divided into monthly
installments (fascículos) and then each installment was very cheap. They also
introduced the idea of issuering the complete works of some novelists, so after several
years their complete works could be re-issued. Sometimes even in installments form so
that people could afford buying them. They are famous because they were the ones that
helped Dickens in his way up in his career. But, as soon as Dickens got a name for
himself, he went to Bradbury & Evans who were the most industrial related printers.
In fact, they managed to get the works of both Dickens and Thackeray printed with this
firm at the same time they had 60% of the market under their power. In
contrast, paradoxically, Longman faced that they were too respectable to get involved
into the publication of novels – it was something completely irrelevant for them.
However, they published all the Waverly Novels by Walter Scott and perhaps they beat
a record – they paid £10.000 to Benjamin Disraeli for one single novel. Evidently, it
was more than the money that the novel could obtain in the market because Disraeli was
not a very good writer but there was a very important political reason based on the fact
that Disraeli was the Prime Minister so it was very important to pay him in order to get
some influence on him.
These were only the first division. There were lots and lots of houses and there were
also the penny dreadfuls – people producing the modern equivalent of the traditional
17th and 18th century brochures (a big sheet equivalent to our ‘A3’ that could be folded).
Most of them were sensationalist serial stories or dealt with crime (e.g. The Mysteries of
London) and they could have millions and millions of copies.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S4: The Book Trade

The different approaches to publication that existed at the time: the great new discovery
of the Victorian period is clearly the SERIAL PUBLICATION. Something that was
really launched and created the phenomenon of the English novel during the Victorian
period, that is, the rescue of the English novel after the collapse of the Constable was
not any publication in book form but rather, the discovery of the phenomenon of serial
publication. The main strategy would be to divide every novel into 20 installments
which were published in 19 weeks because the last issue was double. Normally, each
installment, for which people had to pay one shilling, contained 32 pages of text and a
couple of illustrations; the writer had to have meetings with the illustrator in order to
decide what two illustrations he had to make for each of these installments. It was
expected that the writer should finish every installment at a cliff-hanger, at a moment of
top tension for people to feel curious about the story and to make them buy the
following installment. For instance, Dickens had a typical strategy: every installment
would contain 3 chapters so when you read one of his novels, normally, every 3

87
chapters make the same amount of text; it was very regular. Also, you can easily check
which the topic in each of these installments was. Normally, as he had to write one of
these installments every month, he would just concentrate on writing it in the first two
weeks of the month – he would spend from the early morning up to 2.00 p.m. writing
his stuff – and then there was always time to send the manuscript to the printer and the
printer could send to the writer the ‘galley
proofs’ (las primeras pruebas de imprenta que se realizan para efectuar las oportunas correccion
es antes de la publicación) and this was one of the interesting reasons for it. This was
something that was available at the time because they had developed the old traditional
system of printing by time with a new method that could allow them to read and check
the text before it was definitely sent to the press. Thus, Dickens always sent it and he
also made some small alterations to correct some mistakes and sometimes that allowed
him to realize that he had made some ridiculous mistakes as in David Copperfield (he
was left short of more than a page so in a couple of days, he had to hurry and to write
some new stuff just to make sure he had filled the 32 pages that were required). If
that was demanding for him but it was worse later on when he started to publish novels
every week, as happened with Hard Times. Evidently, this was good because people
could afford buying it; the readership of this could reach 6.000.000 people in England.
Because of the fact that people would read these stories aloud for their family, millions
of people were following the same story at the same time. However, not all writers
could be successful in this line. Only those who clearly adapted to the logic of keeping
people’s interest high for a long period of time (a year and a half) were very talented
writers like Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer-Lytton or Wilkie Collins. They had the ability
to combine different moods, tones, topics and plots and made them very attractive. In
fact, Dickens advised Collins saying: “If you want to be a successful writer, make them
laugh, make them cry, make them wait.” That meant that in every installment there had
to be a little of comedy, drama and thriller; to make successful stories they had to
combine these three ingredients. Of course, some writers had a particular talent because
they were very imaginative (e.g. Dickens commented to Collins as he was
writing David Copperfield: “Am eschewing (avoiding) all sorts of things that present
themselves to my fancy – coming in such crowds!” – so the problem for Dickens when
he was writing was to reject and select out of the hundreds of ideas that were coming to
him all the time). In contrast, there were writers like George Eliot who were never able
to write things in that fashion; she only published one novel following this serial
publication (Middlemarch) and she wrote almost everything and she granted herself two
months for each issue instead of one month in order to be able to write carefully.
Elisabeth Gaskell was all the time advised by Dickens to make her chapters finish at a
point of tension but she confessed that she was unable to do it as she wanted every
chapter to finish as if it was the end of the story instead of as something that interrupted
in the middle.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S5: The Book Trade
 Magazine serialization
In these magazines the interesting thing is that there was not only fiction, every issue
from these magazines would contain from 1 to 3 novels being published simultaneously
but apart from this there were articles, reviews, essays, poems, and even articles
published in other magazines that could be borrowed in order to fill everything. In many
cases, all articles were unsigned (anonymous) and for instance, in the magazines
published by Dickens himself he appeared on the top of it as “the conductor” of the
magazine and he was contributing in many cases with as many as 4 or 5 articles every

88
month in addition to the novels he was publishing then and also with all the
correspondence he had with other writers and all the editing of articles written by other
people. In fact, he launched his weekly magazine Household Words (1850-59) when he
was in the middle of the publication of David Copperfield so his mind was always very
busy with lots of ideas. One interesting experience in this respect was the Cornhill
Magazine that lasted until 1975. It went down in sales for a period and they believed
they needed to so something spectacular and they paid a fortune to Thackeray to
become the editor of the magazine. Suddenly, he realized that what this
magazine needed in order to go up in sales again was to adopt a more serious, morally
respectable, conservative stands and he managed to make it sell 120.000 copies every
month. Evidently, Dickens was the most successful of all these writers because he had
three of them - at the same time that he was publishing his novels and many of them
appeared in these three magazines (e.g. Master Humphrey’s Clock was a very strange
experiment in which he was combining the production of a novel and at the same time
he had been selling stories so all the stories that appeared in the novel apparently were
part of the novel itself so it was not a magazine but rather, someone (Master Humphrey)
telling stories at the same time that he was involved in some problems and suddenly, in
Issue nº 4 or 5, he says “I’ll stop writing here” and then he became the protagonist of
the novel himself. Later on he was much more conventional in Household Words and
in All the Year Round. He introduced these magazines also in Christmas number so all
those Christmas carols and tales appeared in these magazines in an extra issue in
December and he managed to sell as many as 180.000 copies of each of these so it was
an extraordinary thing because people who had been buying it during the whole year
were saving money for these every Christmas.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S6: The Book Trade

BOOK FORM
The book form was the old traditional conservative way of publishing and in fact, it is
remarkable how conservative and stagnant this method was. They inherited the tradition
of publishing books in three volumes and the price of these volumes or books was kept
stable for over 70 years; there was no change in the price of these books. That is, in
1890s books were as expensive as they were at the time of Walter Scott so all this
introduction of new technology, all these cheap strategies, were not at all implemented
in the publication of books or novels in book form. It was kept more or less artificial
simply because it gave publishers a lot of stability and security. Publishers were happy
to make only small amount of copies of every new novel (from 500 to 1.000) since with
that edition they could afford paying a novelist about £250 for a novel and this was
enough for a novelist to live for a year. So they were given professional enough money.
Normally, it was financially good for them because by the time they got their novels
printed, they had already sold a pleasant 2/3 of the run since there were subscriptions
and there existed private circulating libraries so they did not have
to powerfully advertise novels to sell them to bookshops; they simply came to an
agreement with a private circulating library – e.g. “how many copies do you want?”.
Thus, the price of these books was about 35 shillings per volume; this meant at the time
more or less the weekly wage of a skilled worker - £400 per volume, (so they were very
expensive). However, they could afford this because if they only made 1.000 copies and
they knew that they would sell 600 to a circulating library and this library would
pay that amount, they were not running any risks at all. Of course, there was a problem:
in many cases they came to be in the hands of these circulating libraries, that is, at the

89
end these circulating libraries were the ones who could control or decide the price of the
novels because the printing house and no one else could sell the novels by then. For
instance, Charles Edward Mudie became a tycoon (magnate) of this sort of experience
of company. He had a huge shop in New Oxford Street (London), holding about
1.000.000 volumes. He claimed that he could buy about 120.000 books every year and
he could even ask the publishing houses for special discount prices – sometimes he got
discounts of about 60% of the original price of the book. People had to pay one guinea a
year to read books in libraries and then they could borrow one single volume at a time.
As normally novels were divided into three volumes, you could be borrowing the same
novel to three people at the same time (people were reading-borrowing-reading-
borrowing all the time). Mudie had about 75.000 subscribers to his library and WHS
Smith imitated him and they managed 50.000 subscribers so it meant a huge amount of
people having easy access to novels in this way. However, it is estimated that in the
1830s only about 50.000 people in all England could afford buying books so there was
no point in paying for editions of 10.000 books since it was most unlikely to sell them
and 1.000 was more than enough and reasonable. Part of the fall of this came about in
1850 when the Free Public Libraries were created and when all local councils
implanted them it meant the end of this system. Evidently, other methods that followed
were the already mentioned cheap reprints, the Yellow backs, the “Standard Novels”
(very thin paper, including their pocket editions).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S7: Democratization & Reticence

Effects after reading becoming a phenomenon for the masses on the production and
people’s ideas of literature and culture: The first idea is that new reading targets were
developed - instead of producing books only or basically for families or adults, more
and more books for children were written at the time so there were lots and lots of
stories (at first evangelical and later on more secular) oriented to adventures and young
readers. For instance, the ‘Nautical Stories’ of Frederick Marryat, a retired captain who
started writing stories about the sea and about young boys getting into ships and then
travelling all around the world. School-boy tales of children going to schools for boys
and even stories about the Wild West (e.g. the first one of the period and the most
famous “The Headless Horseman”, published in 1866). There were also stories for
girls (girls growing at home). Another very typical Victorian phenomenon is fantasy –
fantasy books for children and adults together. They also developed specialized printing
houses for women and the most revolutionary was “The Victoria Press” which was the
first attempt to create a publishing house only for women and they were quite socially
active because in fact, they discussed feminist issues to offer possibilities for women
who wanted to devote themselves professionally to it and they even launched a journal
only for women, which was quite revolutionary at the time even if it was closed after six
years. Another interesting effect of the expansion of writing is that reviewing became
a more respectable and ambitious profession and intellectual activity. In fact, “The
Expectator” became a very influential magazine that contained basically essays on the
ideas discussed on the novels of the time. Literary criticism was gradually taken more
and more seriously, for instance, one evolution of this phenomenon is that they started
signing the reviews –previously, all the reviews were anonymous-. “The Times” was
also very influential under the shape of another very famous critique of the time called
E.S. Dallas. In fact, even the analysis of the growth of language in England at the time
shows that more and more people were developing all these ideas; it has been estimated
that in the first ten years of the Victorian period, more than 2.000 words were

90
incorporated into the English language while in the previous century only 500 words
have been coined in a similar period – now more people produced and incorporated new
words into the language because in fact the amount of people speaking English grew
from 26.000.000 in 1800 to 126.000.000 in 1900 so it was an extraordinary amount of
new readers. But then the doubts of how to consider this and the problem of what to do
with all this new reading stuff emerged: “is all this new reading stuff good? Should we
congratulate because it has become very democratic (everyone has access to writing)?
The general tone of many opinions about this evolution and popularization of writing
was negative. In fact, the sentence by J.S. Mill “The world reads too much and too
quickly to read well” shows the phenomenon feared by many intellectuals of the time,
who said “yes, it is good that all these people can now read and are now reading but, do
they really understand what they are reading?”; this was the great problem – “are they
getting the right lessons and messages?”. Many people were skeptical about the effects
that all this could have; for instance, the word ‘to scan’ that at the time meant ‘to
analyze, to examine carefully’ came to their almost synonymous ‘to skim’, that is just
‘to get the general idea of something and then to move on to something else’ – there
was no time to absorb the message in its integrity. They were afraid of all these ideas of
the impossibility of grasping all the new material that they were authoring. Evidently,
some other aspects were denounced - for instance, many intellectuals were not happy
with the fact that writing became more and more evidently and primarily a profession or
a means of subsistence rather than a free intellectual exercise on the part of someone
who was independent. There were over 14.000 professional writers in London in 1888
(that was a huge community of writers, of professionals writing at the time) and it was
not the sort of thing that the idealized version of ‘the man of letters’ was offering
people. People complained that so many people were writing and that they were writing
so fast that the English language was being affected and that the grammar was
being squalid by speedy sentencing, that is, English novels’ sentence structure was
being simplified - the traditional complex structure of sentences was being replaced by a
new style that meant short sentences one after the other always being preceded in a
series as something linear, without moving back or forward in terms of ideas (they
presented one notion, then another notion and so on). They complained at authors like
Dickens who was in many cases deliberately linear in his writing particularly in
sentimental notions. All these had desertions and the idea that the essay became the
favourite genre at the time; the essay is not a treatise – in the 18th century people wrote
treatises (a more or less definite, encyclopedic statement about a topic) so it indicates
some detachment, some objectivity and some attempt to comprehend and to grasp one
phenomenon in its full variety of sides, dimensions, problems, etc.; a treatise is
ambitious, an essay is personal, fragmentary, just an attempt to grasp for one
limited prospective, it is provisional. In fact, in many cases, essays did not give the
reader the idea that notions have been processed and organized but rather the writer of
the essay was following a sort of conversational, easy to follow, linear, stream of
thought, thinking aloud, commenting on it and inviting the reader to follow this stream
of thought, which in many cases was only very suggestive but not leading anywhere that
had been apparently determined previously. That is why people complained, it meant a
simile of the corruption of the English mind or its full powers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

91
S8: Democratization & Reticence

There was the prejudice that all this thinking was debuting because it was adapting to
the more limited capacities of middle classes. Carlyle had said that there was a
connection between wide-scale printing and democracy; George Eliot had claimed that
the expansion of the education was more important than the extension of the franchise
(but there was a connection between both). Moreover, Matthew Arnold, who was an
inspector of education, claimed that the problem of democracy was how to find and
keep high ideals; if society was being let in the hands of middle classes and more and
more people of middle classes –people with lower ambitions, expectations and
education- how can we keep our high ideals? It is as if expansion meant loss of quality.
However, and quite paradoxically, people like M. Arnold still defended the idea that it
was inevitable that the middle classes should take over and become the leaders of the
nation - middle classes had to be intellectual, political leaders of the nation - but then,
according to them, what they must do was to improve the middle class, to be more
ambitious in educating them in order to give them the mental and moral capacities that
they (Arnold et al.) identified with ‘the traditional gentleman’ (the very well educated
aristocrat) – only with that higher moral standards of middle classes since the
aristocracy is very degenerated in moral respects. So, Arnold aspired to create a country
of well-educated, intellectual gentlemen, carving from middle classes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S9: DEMOCRATIZATION: what to expect from middle classes

Evidently, this ends could not be easily achieved. What Arnold said was:
“Our actual middle class has not yet, certainly, the fine culture, or the
living intelligence, which quickened great bodies of men at these epochs
(Ancient Greece, Italian Renaissance, Elizabethan England); but it has the forerunner,
the preparer, the indispensable initiator;”
Later on, he says that what can give English middle classes the capacity to be as
brilliant as Ancient Greeks, Italian Renaissance people and Elizabethan English people
is literature. In his opinion, literature will be the instrument to shape and refine people
into all these ideals. Will this movement go on and become fruitful? Will it conduct the
middle classes to the command of a higher culture and intelligence? Can we share or
achieve this when all this refinement is “widespread”? It is very doubtful. In a sense, he
feared the idea that you cannot create a huge body of intellectuals out of asocial class
simply because you think that the country needs this group. In fact, this is exactly what
he was commenting on – middle classes should be the ones to do it but the problem is
that we have to transform their prevalent, dominant, material interests into spiritual
ones; that is, the only problem with middle classes is that after all, they are not much
interested in values, principles, ideals, in making the country progress but rather, they
are limited by material aspirations (e.g. to have a bigger house, more money in the bank,
to enjoy themselves…). Hence, he felt deeply disappointed whit this idea.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S10: DEMOCRATIZATION, Literature & Education
This was the aspiration of all the people who promoted the Universal Education
Act in 1870, a measure that was intended, apparently, to transform every citizen of
England, particularly working and low class people, into embodying the capacity to
help themselves, to educate themselves and they were ambitious enough to obtain
necessary skills to promote themselves future. However, the idea was not only or
primarily intended to make them get promoted socially but to make them better

92
prepared for adopting rational moderate views about social issues; that is, “if I am afraid
that a factory worker will start a strike, will go down the factory, will become a radical,
how will I transform a potential radical into a moderate rational sensible person? By
teaching him how to read and write. Then, apparently, I expect him to start reading book
like Thomas Carlyle’s or Ruskin’s”. Unfortunately, things did not turned out like they
thought; millions of people were educated and learned how to read and write and that
led them to become fully developed individuals. Normally what they did was starting
reading tabloids, newspapers, getting the ‘penny dreadfuls’, being manipulated by those
sensationalist newspapers, become fascinated by terror stories, and to devote themselves
for gossiping. The idea of clan, of social regeneration for middle and lower classes did
not work. Evidently, criticism could not perform this role. It is interesting that in this
clan to create a society of educated individuals incorporated not only the idea that
criticism could make people sensible, rational, but also the idea that they had to include
(or they could for the first time in the history of the English syllabus) interviews and
subjects having to do with English literature; In most cases, children at school were only
asked to remember some passages of poetry by heart and perhaps to learn some
literary or cultural allusions but in general there was no attempt to make them full-
fledge developed readers of fiction. An interesting evolution of this project to
use literature as sort of element to develop middle classes and create a sense of national
cohesion came with the introduction of English literature at Universities. The first
university that introduced these studies of contemporary English literature was The
University of London in 1859 and it was about 15 years before professorships of
English literature were created at Oxford and Cambridge. Particularly, at those
universities professors were very reluctant to introduce serious studies of contemporary
English literature because the existent professors of humanities were all educated in
Germany and in the German ideas of historical linguistics so what was expected of a
scholar to know was Latin, Greek and many other disciplines and to be able to read
complex texts – why should a man be given a degree to study e.g. Shakespeare, if a man
is expected to read it every day at home?. So for them, it consisted in transforming
something that was the everyday practice of gentlemen into a separate subject as Walter
Pater said: “Why transform into a difficult exercise what is natural virtue?” That is,
every English man knows by heart Paradise Lost, why should a man go to university to
study it?
Evidently, the attempt was to create a discipline that would give middle classes the
illusion that they had obtained the necessary degree of qualification (mental and
professional) to get self-promoted. In fact, before English literature was incorporated
into English universities, there were lots of night schools or Sunday schools for
workers, in which contemporary (18th century in many cases) literature was
taught. There were also many schools for ladies – access was banned for them but now
it was possible again to do that sort of thing for them- but studying English literature did
not give much reputation to them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S11: RISE OF PROSE
Another aspect of this evolution has to do with the rise of prose. Another significant
phenomenon of the 19th century is that it is perhaps the last time in the history of
Western culture in which poetry still occupied a position of high reputation but at the
same time relatively high consumption; that is, The Romantics were the last generation
or movement in which poetry was still felt to be above of other forms of literary or
linguistic art.

93
Macaulay in 1825 clearly saw that it was a time of recession and decline for poetry and
that poetry would be replaced by prose and he made the assumption that technological
technical or intellectual progress automatically implied the demise or fall of poetry. In
what he was mistaken is in the idea that what we follow would be anti-fictional age of
prose. Macaulay thought that in the 19th century people would turn to prose abandoning
fiction; evidently, people turned into fiction so he did not get that idea right. In fact, the
death of poetry had to do with the physical death in the 18th century of so
many Romantic poets but also with the idea that poetry could not particularly
adequately deal with the new experiences and challenges that were taking place in the
period; the idea that perhaps if some Romantic poets had been allowed to live on and
witness what had happened to England as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution,
they could not have somehow been able to develop, transform, their ordinary
experiences into something closer to the life of many other people. Most of them died in
the 1820s and the only one who survived was William Wordsworth and he became a
sort of recluse in the Lake District (writing about flowers) and was not able to adapt to
what it is to live in the modern world. Thus, what was mostly thought was that the
emotional stands of Romantic poetry could no longer offer people’s dissatisfaction
concerning the interpretation of real life in the changed circumstances. So,
the novel developed as a sort of new great epic but there were still many people
complaining that after all it was an inferior form; as it was practiced it could not satisfy
any high intellectual demands. An instance of that is the commentary made about the
novels written by Anthony Trollope, in which the author complains that people are
realistic without offering true sentiments (sentiment as serious articulate reflection on
something). They were too moral so they could not process any sensational material and
they were not spiritual enough to accept reflections or rhapsodies about reality. So, in a
sense, the novel was very successful but because of the fact that the demands of people
were not really high in the intellectual/emotional/spiritual sense. In fact, there were
many people complaining that the typical form and format of fiction at the time –with
so much material, with so much text, consumed and produced very quickly- had the
effect of producing “passivity of the brain”; the mainly claimed idea was that when
one gets addicted to a continuous supply of stuff your mind does not get active into
processing all that but rather quite passive and in a half-slept way receiving
information but not processing it fully enough (you want more and more and you are
not able to do any mental operation about it). Thus, it was supported by many people
that all these serialized novels were creating that passivity of the brain.
Moreover, Evangelicals started complaining about the idea that fiction was after all an
immoral exercise that was producing wrong perceptions of life.
Perhaps the most serious accusation aimed at prose [the one from an old-fashioned
perspective] was the fact that it was an indiscriminate medium. In poetry, you write a
poem and normally there is some coherence in the approach to the topic, which is
limited, your attitude towards the topic is limited and it is coherent, everything seems to
collaborate to make it into something complement, which every part has sort of organic
relation with the rest. When you are writing a sonnet you have to be careful organizing
and narrating ideas. The problem with prose is that is kind of chaotic (there is no natural
structure in prose, there is not limited length of a chapter, there is not a limitation in the
topics, tones, techniques…). Thus, it was felt that there was something artistically
deficient in the very structure of prose, the idea that there are no limits. In the novel you
can start talking about one thing and then you move to another one, to introduce one
character and then to another different one, you can start with a tone of melodrama and
then to move into comedy and then to move into terror; there is nothing indicating that

94
you have to impose some external logic or coherence on that. So, from an old fashion
or traditional conception of art, prose, as it has no rules, as it is chaotic, it is deficient
and that was the idea felt and defended by more or less conventional minds. There is no
proportion, there is nothing indicating people when they have to stop talking about a
topic because they have enlarged the topic too much.
Then, as someone said, one of the problems of fiction is that sometimes you can be very
elevated and you can produce “gold” but this gold in many cases appears in the middle
of much “clay”. So, this formal imperfection of prose because it is not
predictable, because it is not following well-structured patterns was perceived as
negative. However, there were writers who did not think of it as a problem or as
a weakness but rather as something that they could fully exploit to pull defined scripts
in the reader’s mind (“Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait”). For
Dickens, it was perfectly acceptable in his novels to move from melodrama to suspense,
to comedy, then to tragedy again and it was not a mark of artistic poverty for this genre
but rather something that happened to make away with people’s experienced life and his
art and it was felt that if life was made of many different modes, attitudes and tones why
not writing like that? Fiction that does not follow any prescribed tone, mode or logic.
That is what Charles Kingsley commented: what is remarkable about modern art (the
art of prose) is that the author has freedom and the reader must enjoy
the fluctuations of level and direction; that is, when you are reading a novel it is like
someone’s listening to a musical composition – in his opinion there are low moments
and then acceleration of rhythm and you must enjoy all the tonalities. [This is the
modern point of view] and it is exactly what happens later on during the 20th century
when some authors decide to combine genres (e.g. a famous writer who combined in his
novels the thriller, detective stories with high drama). So this combination of literary
genres was a complete aberration for conventional critics, who defined that one can
write either a detective story or a spy story or a drama, not all things mixed. This is the
same old principle: artistic purity or not? Should we allow mixture or not? That was
exactly the same issue that was discussed in the Renaissance: Is tragicomedy tolerable
or should we have tragedy OR comedy, and not both? That has been always a running
debate throughout Western literature; to what extent literature combination, impurity,
hybridity is tolerable or acceptable.
The notion or the mood of Renaissance was present. There were many traditional users
and processors of culture that did not want or did not feel at all relief after culture was
turning to be something shared by so many because, particularly, it was felt by people
like Matthew Arnold the idea of to what extent the expansion and proliferation does not
also imply decay and degeneration. There was a time in which to be a man of letters was
to be a cultivated man, who was in control of all the culture available and could
communicate it to other people; someone who is very confident and could understand
and share his values, opinions, etc. Now more and more people started using it. It is
very accessible to people who are perhaps not able to process all that so there was a
general feeling that “culture is being lost”. This is an interesting phenomenon that is
important for us to understand the 19th century and the Victorian period. In the
Victorian period there was confidence that middle classes were taking over; and
Matthew Arnold felt that the only social class that was strong and energetic enough to
keep culture alive were middle classes. However, they grew more and more skeptical
about the possibility that middle and low classes –no matter how much education they
were given- could really make the light that would keep classical culture alive. This
commentary on middle classes [Slide 9] sounds encouraging or inviting middle classes
to become refined, cultivated people but he acknowledges that it is difficult and as the

95
century advanced, more and more intellectuals realized that it was a battle – the battle of
making refined intellectuals out of middle classes though their interest were much more
material in many cases. This is important for us to understand many things that
happened at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. It is
something that some scholars have described as ‘the parting of the ways’, that is, the
splitting of the ways of culture. They developed a
 high culture - they developed an specialized, elitist kind of ‘CULTURE’
that was intended for cultivated minorities that looked at themselves as a sort of
island, as if they were protecting traditional culture and learning (e.g. James
Joyce, known by everybody but not too many people is competent enough to
read and appreciate the heavy load of his CULTURE).
 And a common low culture - the culture of cinema, TV, novels (which
are sold by everyone) which belongs to ‘culture’; it meant the activities that are
shared by everyone.

At the end of the century, with democratization there was an inevitable collapse at least
of the cohesion of English culture. Before that, there were a ‘unified culture’. There
were things they shared; e.g. from the Queen to the last servant – they could make
sense, understand, appreciate, and like Charles Dickens. England evolved into a
‘degraded’, ‘degenerate’ (ironic) ‘culture’ (without capital letters) for consumption, for
industry and then another ‘high culture’.

This reticence on the part of the traditional orders of culture was also perceived in the
lamentation that existed concerning about the rise of prose, which gives you
‘freedom’ – prose is easier to write, everyone can do it, and everyone can call
her/himself a novelist since there are no cultural or linguistic requirements. However,
there had been a time in which in order to be a competent poet you needed a lot of
training (intellectual and cultural training) and it was lost. Suddenly, almost everyone
could become a writer. It was democratic but the formal demands had been released so
much that almost everyone could do it. Thus, it was more difficult to determine what
was to be a good writer, a cultivated person and what was just another one who just puts
letters together. This idea that prose is an indiscriminate medium could be feared by
people who had this reticent attitude. It was supposed to be dangerous, unlikeable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S12: NEW VOICES
The people who had been kept silent in the past and suddenly started appearing and
becoming prominent in the world of novel writing and production. Evidently, one
interesting social group that had some entrance into the world of culture at the time was
the working classes. There were many workers who attended either Sunday schools or
night schools for workers in order to improve their education; if they were ambitious
enough they were always rich factory owners or philanthropists creating societies in
order to help workers to go up in the social ladder. Thus, everyone could aspire to
devote himself after working in the factory/mine to obtain this education necessary for
social promotion. There was self-help education, many people created the conditions
for their own improvement.
The taste of these workers was not very elegant or elevated in traditional terms; the
traditional texts always enjoyed by the first workers entering into the world of culture
were the Bible, Shakespeare, Bunyan (the puritan writer) and Robinson Crusoe.
There was a tendency for working classes to imitate the superior classes (those above
them), only that, normally, access to the writers enjoyed by middle classes always took

96
about one generation delay. That is, the writers for the middle classes are only absorbed
by lower classes after 20 or 30 years so at the end of the 19th century, all the libraries or
workers institutes or, another institution that is very typical of the time, ‘the mechanics
institutes’ (sort of technical schools for mechanics, for people working at factories in
order to give them technical skills and expertise in order to become skilled workers and
professionals); so, in many towns in the north of England, there existed many of these
mechanics institutes, and many of these became later on polytechnic universities during
the 20th century so the origin of many universities in England is found in these
mechanics institutes. They normally had big libraries for anyone who wanted to get this
education. Then, people like Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin… were also read by workers in
the late 19th century and concerning poetry, the most influential text was Palgrave’s
Golden Treasury, an anthology of English verse –it contained the tradition of English
poetry and it was strongly criticized by many literary scholars of the 20th century
because it was very conventional. Thus, that anthology shaped the imagination of many
people.
Then, there are no full-fledged readers and novelists in England yet. The only evolution
or improvement in the treatment of workers or low classes in England during the
Victorian period has to do with the fact that, perhaps for the first time, there was
some sympathy for them; they were not treated as buffoons, as clowns to be enjoyed as
it happened in the traditional Renaissance drama (low class person being the joker,
being ridiculous). There was sympathy for them but there was not any mark of their
having inner intelligence life yet; there is no canonical novel in England in the
Victorian period in which there is a poor person who has some psychological depth, as
if they could not be able to think deeply or coherently, as if they could not articulate
their ideas. So, it was almost compulsory that the protagonist of English novels in this
period had to be, at least, middle class because they were supposed to be the ones
intelligent enough to be the protagonists of a novel so there was a very strong class
prejudice towards poor or working people. In fact, the first person close to the life
experience of low classes in England to write was Thomas Hardy because he came from
the south-west of England and his father was of a low origin, his mother was a servant
and although he acquired some sort of technical skills and he was something close to an
architect, he was sympathetic with low classes and in fact, there are some low-classes
characters in his novels. But the first English novelist to be truly working class was
D.H. Lawrence (we was the son of a coal miner). The paradox is that there were low
classes in the novels but the novels were all written by middle classes and they were the
ones who decided to give voice - but very low and poor voice – to these working and
low classes. Even in radical novels written by progressive Victorian writers these
writers tended to be always middle class people and the protagonist of their novels
tended to be another middle class person who has – because of the chances of life or
whatever- being faced with the problems of low life so they can speak about
experiences they had had. It was not only Dickens who could do that; there were novels
such as Alton Locke (Charles Kingsley) about a political radical working with workers
or Felix Holt, The Radical (George Eliot); novels about people who are working class.
There are in fact, some interesting facts Charles Dickens – friendly with the poor: his
grandparents in one side had been servants and he always kept it in secret, he never
acknowledged that his origin was that low because he felt embarrassed. Thus, the gap
between middle classes and low classes was very big and many middle class people
would never acknowledge that their origins were so low; there was some degree of
snobbery regarding this fact.

97
Another interesting tension that existed at the time and that partly coincided with
some social prejudice has to do with the tension between the so-called ‘provincial-
regional’ language/discourse as opposed to the ‘central-cosmopolitan’. In general, it
means that those elitist, cultivated people who had attended University, who came from
high-middle classes always defended a position that looked very much that the way the
center of England, the center of the Empire looks at everything and they are the ones
who know exactly what to do with things so when anyone coming from the periphery,
from any province or region, starts speaking about general or national affairs they would
answer something like: “YOU know nothing about these things, WE are the ones that
know”. With that there was some regional, local flavour about an author and when it
was not London, it was automatically dismissed. So there was a very strong prejudice in
England about this and even in language and the way of speaking they have always
been very accurate. [They know perfectly where you come from, if your social class or
group or the school you have attended is not good enough; there is always any element
in your pronunciation of English that tells them that “you are not one of them”]. This
was a very posh attitude.
For instance, all poets who used dialect were clearly disliked and dismissed by all
reviewers: [they are using dialect; poor people, they do not know the proper language;
or they are using that language because it expresses the cheap, normal, vulgar, low
and banal feelings that they only can aspire to possess or to control rather than the
capacity for intellectual control as people with an education have].
It was very interesting that while there were radical people trying to improve the
conditions of working classes, trying to defend the culture of regions and workers
(e.g. William Cobbett, who was all the time writing about the necessity to defeat and to
overcome the system; he even elaborated an English grammar to teach workers, to
improve their English, oriented towards them not because they had a poor language but
to qualify them to be more respectable ‘rivals’ of upper classes). However, all
these attempts by radical people were very easily dismissed by people like M.
Arnold [Arnold would say: “all these people who are talking about the virtues of
provincial-regional life, these provincial truths, the perception of life from all these
places is just an act of ‘philistinism’ – anti-intellectualism- since they are seen as
enemies of culture, enemies of refinement. Moreover, their views are characterized
by ‘narrowness’ because they cannot understand many things, they lack ‘urbanity’
and ‘the tone of the city’, they lack ‘measure’, ‘balance/patience’ and they have no
‘clarity of form’. In short, whatever came from someone not in the system was very
easily disqualified.
Someone who defended provincialism because he never abandoned this provincial
perspective was Thomas Hardy. He clearly criticized the dismissing attitude of Matthew
Arnold:
“Arnold is wrong about provincialism, if he means anything more than
a provincialism of style and manner in exposition. A certain provincialism of feeling is
invaluable. It is of the essence of individuality, and is largely made up of that
crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts are thought, deeds done”
[The three emphasized words share a quality: they are authentic, part of the self-]. What
he claimed is that when you have been born in a province and have awaked looking at
things you do not need education to teach you how to interpret reality; you have your
feelings, your enthusiasm and your individuality of approach to things whereas culture
tends to eliminate all the individuality – all distinction between people, if we are all
educated by reading the same books (written by Greek authors), after all we are not

98
really what we are but just the spiritual inheritors of these Greek authors. The idea is
that with this we become cultivated people but we lose individuality, our identity.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S13: NEW VOICES

The idea of feeling, individuality and enthusiasm is also important because when he
published the collected edition of his novels – all of them set not in London but in a
province, in Wessex (the area of the south-west of England) - he justified the idea that
writing/creating/making novels about this region did not necessarily make them
poor/restricted/limited or less ambitious. After all, he claims that the scene, the place
of a region gives you enough stuff for you to understand and grasp human nature – you
do not really need to travel to different cities or countries to claim that you understand
human nature, your experience of life in one single place can give you enough
experience to do it. Then he makes an interesting reflection:
“I considered that our magnificent heritage from the Greeks in
dramatic literature found sufficient room for a large proportion of its action in an extent
of their country not much larger than the half-dozen counties here reunited under the old
name of Wessex, that the domestic emotions have throbbed in Wessex nooks with
as much intensity as in the palaces of Europe”

So why do we think that the Greek tragedies are universal when Greek is as small as
Wessex? What reason do we have to think that they have grasped the essence of
mankind? Thomas Hardy is ridiculing the crime, which is in fact hypocritical. Arnold is
dismissing a novel written from the perspective of Wessex because it is not a cultivated
position.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S14: Remember Arnold on Greeks and Middle Classes

[The same quotation as in Slide 9] Arnold’s reference to Greece is not accidental, it is

not a coincidence. He had claimed that the Greek had achieved some degree of
intellectual perfection that he does not seem willing to acknowledge that people have
obtained in Wessex, or in Lincolnshire, or in the Midlands. He is ridiculing the idea that
in these places (Greece) they have achieved what the calls “fine culture” or “living
intelligence”, “high and commanding pitch of culture and intelligence”; this idea of
“perfection”, this “power to transform” themselves. There is a very heavy emphasis on
intellectual powers in this idea as if the necessary improvement of mankind always
comes from abandoning everything that is spiritual and only choosing everything that is
intellectual. The conflict comes as Matthew Arnold is thinking about intelligence
and culture whereas Thomas Hardy talks about feelings and enthusiasm and claims that
this is not inferior to the another one. This controversy also took place in the 1920s-30s-
40s between life and heart. People who wrote novels because they wanted to produce a
perfectly built literary artifact and people whose approach to novels was simply to
render life, to repeat life or to make people understand life; this controversy is in a sense
an expression of this conflict. However, this conflict between two cultural and
ideological systems was presented as purely regional, geographic: the north of London
vs. the north of the provinces.
At the same time there is another fact having to do with working classes and provincial-
regional conditions, which has to do with confidence. Most writers who had not had
the privileges of higher education always felt that their careers were very conditioned
from the very beginning; it was very difficult for anyone not having had access to

99
university to start getting published – first because they lacked references and friends
and secondly because it was very difficult for them to get into that since it was very
demanding. So, anyone trained at the university could easily and instantly start writing;
anyone lacking that had to wait in many cases or see that this possibility was away from
their reach. One interesting case of this was Anthony Trollope. He belonged to a rich
family - his mother was a writer (Frances Trollope) - and he was educated at one of the
most expensive and elitist schools of England (Harrow). Then, the family went bankrupt
and he could not go to university since his family decided not to invest money on him or
in his education because he was considered to be very slow and stupid –they considered
that the was not intelligent enough to go to university. Then, they found a work for him
at the post office and he spent the rest of his life working there. Only when he was 32
and he had a more or less dominant or rule position at this post office, he started writing
and he became a very successful writer; however, he had the problem of having to wait
very much until he could take that step on writing. If it was difficult for him, imagine
how difficult could it be for poor people, for workers or for women. In the case of
women, who could not go to universities, how could they feel confident
enough? E.g. Charlotte Brontë sent some copies of her first poems to one of the most
important poets of the time and they were rejected and destroyed by him. [Then,
imagine the reaction of this poet receiving poems from a woman from Yorkshire.] There
was a strong prejudice and that is why women decided to publish their novels using
male pseudonyms to escape from this accusation of being undervalued because of their
sex.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S15: WOMEN, lack of confidence and personal approach

Women clearly lacked confidence and they had a very peculiar way of developing their
ideas, their positions and their literary careers simply because they were, above all,
isolated. For men it was very easy to start producing and developing themselves; for
women it was very difficult. The main ideas are developed in this commentary:
“Male writers could study their craft in university or coffee house, group themselves
into movements or coteries,” (little literary circles) “search out predecessors for
guidance and patronage, collaborate or fight with their contemporaries. But women
through most of the 19th century were barred from the universities, isolated in their own
homes, chaperoned in travel,” (chaperoned = whenever they travelled, they had to go
with somebody else) “painfully restricted in friendship. Without it they studied with a
special closeness the works written by their own sex, and relied on a sense of easy,
almost rude familiarity with the women who wrote them.”

It is very interesting, first, that they had to produce and develop their own ideas of the
novels only based on their personal experience of other novels written by other women;
secondly, another important idea is that their reaction was more personal than
theoretical-social; that is, “I (dis)like what you say”. Thus they found interesting to read
the commentaries made by women writers about other women writers because there
is some ‘rude familiarity’ –they ended up in some cases accusing or insulting each
other, laughing at each other- , there is no ‘sisterhood’ but rather many discrepancies
between them simply because they had different views on what to do and what/how to
write, on what was adequate or what image of womanhood they wanted to transmit to
society.

100
S16: NEW VOICES: WOMEN

Jane Austen was the model of woman/female writing that was available to people in
the early Victorian period, she was the old model, most of times, to be imitated.
However, particularly, the Brontë sisters (Anne, Emily and Charlotte) felt very cold
about Jane Austen; they did not like her at all. As Charlotte Brontë said, “Jane Austen
is a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers”;
so she ridicules Austen as too polished. In contrast, Charlotte is like a wild flower from
the lawns of Yorkshire. Their approach to life is very different – Brontë is not going to
write something that is ‘beautiful’, ‘perfect’ and ‘nice’; she wants to write something
more ‘passionate’. Thus, she established her name in opposition to the tradition of Jane
Austen – a lady that had written novels that were very easily accepted by men because
it, at least at first surface, showed an image of women as quite conveniently silent,
restricted and moderate, never rebellious; it is very unlikely and difficult to imagine any
female character of Austen’s novels biting or scratching her cousin as Jane Eyre does.
The only thing they are expected to do in life is to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to marriage
proposal. Then, there were much more people like Charlotte Brontë that were more
‘militant’, that wanted to express more directly that women had rights and they wanted
them.
Charlotte Brontë preferred the model of writers like George Sand – the French writer
who was scandalizing all Europe by being dressed like a man and travelling around the
world. Indeed, in the 1830s, 12 of her novels were translated into English so there was a
new generation of women writers who were trying to import into England that kind of
‘feminist militant woman asking for a more active life’. Evidently, they could not go too
far in creating female ‘monsters’ – women that could not be socially acceptable – so
they tried to push the image of women in a direction that was the decided one but
without abandoning everything that people still identified with behaving as a lady or as
a woman. That is why they always aspired to create “heroines who could combine
strength and intelligence” but also to retain some aspects that were still considered
proper of women, “tenderness, tact and domestic expertise”; they had to be good wives
or housewives because it was still part of their occupations. However, as many of these
women were middle class ladies they did not need to be able to wash or to cook since
they had servants to do it; they had just to be managers of the household, to know what
to buy, what to cook, what to prepare… but not to do it. Moreover, they were aware of
the fact that they were opening some new ground for future development and they were
performing a new role.
Charlotte Brontë was automatically classified as a writer in opposition to Jane Austen –
whose ideals were related to rationality, reason, control, restrain- since Brontë was
romantic, volcanic, passionate, etc. Quite soon, they developed a rivalry or competition
between the model proposed by Brontë and the model proposed, for instance, by George
Eliot – who was automatically classified in opposition to Charlotte and as someone
following the Austen’s tradition – but it is quite unfair because although it is true that
she was less militant than Charlotte and that she was not trying to write novels in which
she is all the time claiming that she is a woman or that women are not given their rights,
etc., George Eliot had a more complex attitude towards these affairs. She made clear
that she was not in competition with men; she wanted to be a cultivated woman
developing her own possibilities and not struggling or waving ‘the flag of woman’. In
fact, she had some negative views on the writing of many other women (e.g. Silly novels
by lady novelists is a very hard George Eliot’s article in attacking the writing of many
other women) simply because she did not just please other women saying “go on with

101
that” but rather “you are a woman and you are stupid”. She does not want to create a
category of analyses that means “womanhood is good and manhood is bad”; she is
adopting a different attitude towards it.
There were other writers who were still more conservative than she was like Mrs.
Oliphant. She was a very anti-feminist female writer; she had very strong views against
the positions of these writers. She claimed that many women writers that
were feminist/ feministic and were very strong-mouthed simply because they were
single, they had not got married and they had not experience of life; their approach to
life was purely theoretical. According to Mrs. Oliphant, these ‘feminists’ spoke about
the conditions of womanhood and of their isolated positions while she had had lots of
children, she had experienced the reality of running a house and so she
claimed that quite proudly saying:
“I have had far more experience and, I think, a fuller conception of life. I
have learned to take perhaps more a man’s view of mortal affairs”

She is expressing that she is close to men’s views and that when you are a married
woman you cannot just think women need action –since women have a lot of action
since they are taking too many things. In fact, when many feminists of the time were
asking for more rights for women and the fact that women could be as active as men
were, Mrs. Oliphant was putting forward the traditional argument: “yes but, what do
you do with childbirth or childcare? It is something women cannot renounce”.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S17: Geraldine Jewsbury

It belongs to the generation of ‘aberrant actions’. During the 60s and 70s, many women
began to write sensation novels, in which there was plenty of violence, as well as many
excesses. This was a very exaggerated version of the traditional excesses of Gothic
Fiction in the 1790s. These are stories of violence, stories in which elements of
aggressive behaviour, particularly sexual, are particularly prominent.
This was only an intermediate phase for another third generation which arrived in the
last twenty years of the 19th century. That represented the properly feministic tradition,
the new generation in which they were exclusively denouncing the living conditions of
women; they were raising questions about what was called at the time ‘the woman
question’, namely how to solve the way in which women were at the margin of society,
the problem of education, how they should be given the right to vote, and others. As a
consequence, we have the suffragettes, and also attitudes in novels about sexual
freedom granted to women.
In the 1890s, a new genre appeared; the genre of ‘The New Women’. These were novels
about women who were freed from traditional attitudes. This is the third stage, but the
first generation is what we will focus on.
This is a generation which acknowledges, as can be noticed in Geraldine Jewsbury, the
development of womanhood, which was yet not recognised. It identifies the first
generation as women who cannot be happy with their role, and who have just started
claiming something about womanhood, but they have not achieved the degree that is
announced for the future. She claims that it is a sort of prophetic statement announcing
that more issues about women’s nature will be revised and reformulated in the
following years. For example, the inevitability of the role of child-caring and of giving
birth to children was something that started being revised at the time. They wonder
whether they should reveal about such biological factor, and whether nature should
revise it.

102
Issues like this were being revised at the time, especially by utilitarians, claiming that
social measures should be taken to optimise the benefits and comfort of people. Because
of this, the issue of giving birth was revised, and many considered something had to be
done to implement a revolution or revision of the gender-roles.
Mill made this claim at a social level, and he spoke about the emancipation of women.
There were women, like Charlotte Brontë, who did not feel pleased about it. In their
opinion, there was still something distinctive about women’s approach to life, such as
the prevalence of feeling, sentiment, maternal and protective instinct. In this first
generation, they are claiming more power to act; at the same time, they cannot get rid of
the natural duties which were traditionally ascribed to women. They felt they loved
more and more easily; they behaviour was different. John Ruskin stated that, if society
was getting corrupted, it was women that were doomed to make it have better feelings.

S18. GEORGE ELIOT

As a response to this feminist feeling, we can see the willingness of other authors to
minimise the importance of womanhood in their writings and behaviour. In this text,
George Eliot expresses that women educated, but they should use it in a sensible
manner, not just to make men realise that women can do it; if they can do it, they do it.
The expression of cultivation is not a political act, but a dignitary to women who are
naturally gifted with such cultivation. Woman should not use it to claim men taking
them seriously for being a woman and having cultivation, but simply because they are
cultivated. Eliot tries to minimise the gender obsession.
Eliot does not try to make evident that she can understand men, but men cannot
understand her, which is a sign of female delicacy. A cultivated woman will not try to
make a man look ridiculous when he realises she is more intelligent than him. This
opposes the idea of the 18th and 19th century of the pedantic woman claiming for her
rights. They had adopted a militant position concerning their rights, and had limited
their approach to life according to the gender matter. In Middlemarch, Eliot tries to
represent women in a way that do not call the readership’s attention just because they
are doing something and they are women. Many other women were, nevertheless, not in
favour of this attitude.
S19. NEW VOICES

The message that is always selected from Jane Eyre to emphasise the feminist message
in the novel is when she calls for a silent revolution, for a revolution in society because
they are women who feel severely constrained because they are only taught and given
chances for totally trivial activities.
She starts complaining after having spent a few months in the only company of Mrs.
Fairfax, a not very intelligent or interesting woman, and Adele in Thornfield. Then she
starts complaining about how bored the life of a governess is. This tension growing in
here is nonetheless solved by the sudden arrival of Mr. Rochester.
This man seems to occupy her mind and make her life much more interesting. It is
paradoxical; she is asking for more action, but the only action is having a man to be
seduced by and to interact with. Instead of leaving and looking for a different life, she
stays and waits for the action coming from a man.
Many people were offended by these commentaries. However, there are some more
interesting issues than this call for action, for instance, the idea of speaking, which is
very important in the novel. Jane has spent all her life wondering whether it is worth
speaking or not, and into how much trouble it would get her.

103
This is a very significant comment about the situation of women. Women are not
practically oppressed in life because they cannot do many things; rather, their being
denied speaking is more significant. Female issues are censored; they are not allowed to
speak freely. The main art of a lady is to decide when to speak and what to say that will
not be a source of embarrassment or problems for them.
This speaking-silence issue explains why the women issues have been kept out of the
written universe. The have been many novels about girls getting married, but very few
times have they been narrated as deep inner selves meditating about what relating to a
man means for their lives. This rarely appears in fiction; the concerns of these girls,
their feelings, their thoughts, are left aside. The worries of a woman who is unhappy
with her husband and fears about the effect her husband’s behaviour will have on their
child. Nonetheless, a man being richer, having more social power, will have greater
importance in growing up the child, and the woman must surrender to the authority of
the father. This is a clear example of the worries of a woman, and a woman speaking
about them. It is very innovative that novels contain this kind of concerns.
The interaction between practical and emotional demands is another important fact. The
heroines of the 1840s, as Jane Eyre, were socially and practically ambitious, but still
feminine. It is worth looking at how these elements were combined at the time.
S20. JANE EYRE AND SPEAKING: GATHESHEAD & LOWOOD

Gatheshead comments how girls are recommended to keep silent and only speak if they
are not going to offend anyone. However, when Jane is verbally abused, she claims
‘SPEAK I MUST’; the rebellion does not start with scratching, but at the very moment
she opens her mouth. She is aware of being breaking a law of feminine behaviour,
because she is speaking against a man.
This idea is expressed later on when she speaks about the pleasure she feels about her
first speaking; speaking is an act of liberation that comes previous to a physical attack.
She feels this gives her power, or that there is power inside her.
Lowood comments she is instructed in the art of being able to speak, how she would be
allowed to speak in her own defense. Mr. Brocklehurst would not allow children to
speak, but she is given some fair treatment.
S21. ROCHESTER, JANE, AND SPEAKING (1)

A more interesting situation, concerning the right to speak and what you are allowed to
say, takes place when she confronts Rochester. He is a dominant rich man, so he can
speak about everything, regardless of how these words affect anyone. He has the
position of social dominance that makes him feel confident to speak without even
thinking.
He starts speaking and expresses his superiority above her. She smiles, and he asks her
to speak, and Jane ‘sat and said nothing’. This shows how she is being rebellious in a
very polite and feminine way. She has to be very careful because she is young, she is a
woman, and she is working for him. Her staying still is that rebellion of the bothering
kind.
S22. ROCHESTER, JANE, AND SPEAKING (2)

Then, Jane decides to start speaking, but making very clear that she is only speaking
because she is paid by him. She has a very clear mind that, if he is paying her, perhaps
she has to do it. It is interesting to notice that she was paid 30 pounds a year, which is
almost in the limit of poverty. It was almost impossible to save money for the future.

104
S23. ROCHESTER, JANE, AND SPEAKING (3)

Rochester accuses Jane of not being able to speak freely because she has the so-called
‘Lowood constraint’, which is yet the ‘feminine constraint’; women are taught not to
speak so freely.
S24. JANE REPRESSING HERSELF

The only critical moment in the novel in which she is so excited that she has to speak is
in the moment when Mr. Rochester tells her he is going to leave Thornsfield and that
they must say goodbye because he is going to marry someone. He is provoking her,
hence this scene is full of expressions of her deliberate attempts to repress herself not to
speak for sentimental reasons
S25. SPEAKING TO ST JOHN RIVERS AT MOOR HOUSE

Then, she has evolved in a sense sufficiently in the fourth part of the novel, when she
stays with St. John Rivers to answer him. She shows, in general, an extreme degree of
docility towards him. There is a moment in which he speaks about a book and tells her
to study it and learn, and she does it for the only reason of having been told by the man.
Nonetheless, as she has gained confidence due to her economic independence, she starts
being able not to repress herself so much. She actually starts correcting St. John Rivers
here and there; her approach to him is much freer in this respect. Jane feels more and
more confident.
S26. VOICES OF WOMEN

Let us comment on the living and writing conditions of women. First, we were told that
marriage was the main goal for women; now, we have the temptation to think this to be
trivial, superficial, or ridiculous. This has to be corrected; getting married was a very
difficult solution, because there was a problem of numbers.
There were many more women than men, 1 million more in 1900. Moreover, 2/3 of the
women between 20 and 24 were single, and that was almost too late for them to get
married. When they reached 25 five years, they were spinsters. Also, families kept a
very paranoid attitude about showing their daughters in public, which made it even
more difficult; the reputation of a girl was sacred. They were not shown until they were
about 18 years old, and even then they had a very limited access to social life; they
could only attend some selected parties, and they had to be extremely careful not to talk
to too many people, otherwise people may start gossiping about them. This happened
because a woman who was suspicious of having gone too far with a man was, almost
automatically, a fallen woman.
Parents had to market their children very carefully and not exposing them too much.
Girls, then, had very limited time to be shown; only 2 or 3 years. Not only that, but also
they had to save money for them to be able to pay for the daughters to be married. It
was a very delicate situation for women, and also it was very difficult for a girl to find a
husband. However, it was also difficult for a man; middle-class men could afford living
comfortably when they were single, but married men were supposed to have big houses
with many servants, and it was difficult to keep a certain level of comfort in that
situation.
This meant they had to save for many years, and it was not strange to see men marrying
when they were around 35 years old. These went, evidently, to a market of girls of 20;
the age gap was huge, and sexual attraction was a problem then. It was very difficult for
boys and girls of the same age to get married. Moreover, it was not only a gap in age,

105
but also in likes and interests, and there was always a fear that it was just a matter of
convenience; girls knowing there were little chances of getting married, would marry
any rich man who would go for it.
In many cases, love is not presented as the main concern. In some cases, the interest was
not only economic, but also intellectual. For instance, in Middlemarch, the three girls
that get married do not do it for love, but because they think they can be helpful in the
professional careers of their husbands. This is an interesting idea; women wanted to feel
they were useful; they wanted professional action.
In many cases, it meant only making life easier for the professional aspirations of their
husbands. Dorothea Brooke, for instance, the protagonist of Middlemarch, marries an
old scholar simply because she feels he is so brilliant he is going to produce a
masterwork; she wants to help him to illuminate mankind, and she knows she can work
with him making life easier for him to devote to his work. Her professional achievement
is sacrificing her life to make his easier professionally.
At the level of education, it was a little trivial for middle-class girls. They would learn a
little of a language, a little music, a little drawing… and a little ability not to make
mistakes when talking to their husbands; also, some domestic labour. In fact, people
like John Ruskin claimed there was an essential difference between the minds of man
and woman. The mind of a man is imaginative and creative; it has energy to create and
invent. Nevertheless, the woman’s mind lacks this ability; it is for sweet ordering,
arranging, and decision.
There was not an idealised view of the women who managed to do it. This should be
asked to the fact that middle class women who would devote themselves to professional
writing were not doing it as a means to express themselves or to feel they were doing
something important, but rather out of pure necessity because their families had gone
bankrupt or their husbands had died.
George Eliot was one of them, and she claimed that ladies who could afford living
without writing should not write. Bear in mind that many women were working in the
fields, factories, and so on in England at the time; primarily, they did it in domestic
service. This domestic service was a very common job among non-educated low-class
girls, who would be sent to a house when they were around 12, and they would spend
the rest of their lives working as servants.
It is important to notice that, despite the great amount of servants there were in England
(around 13% of the women population), they did not exist in literature. It is almost
impossible to find novels written in the Victorian period in which the proper names of
servants are given. They are just mentioned as ‘a servant’; they are not given that degree
of individuality to transform them into individual; they are just some sort of anonymous
bodies in society.
Another aspect that was paid was much attention by feminist critics was how the sexual
dimension of Victorian women was treated by fiction at the time. An aspect at that time
was the avoidance of sex in the novels; it can always be imagined from issues of
bigamy, elopement, prostitution… but it is never referred to explicitly. Yet, wild men’s
affection to women could be narrated, idealised, beautified, but expressed. Women’s
issues related to sex, especially those about sexual desire, could not be expressed; it was
even said not to exist.
One interesting case is that of Bertha’s madness. Bertha Mason, the neglected mad wife
of Rochester, is said to be mad simply for being sexually active and for expressing her
sexual desire to her husband, something that Rochester rejected. In Jane Eyre there are
certain critical moments that are repeated throughout the novel. It has been identified
the appearance of different cycles of menstruation experienced by Bertha. Whenever

106
she gets her menstruation, she gets wild; her animal inner self is awakened. That idea
came from the medical science of the time; respectable doctors at the time claimed
women could not feel any sexual impulse because they had it regulated by menstruation,
so they were freed from it. God, in his infinite wisdom, had disposed it like that. If that
was what science claimed, imagine what literature said.
About writing, there was another typical problem for women that had to do with the
subordinate position they occupied. It is what feminist critics have identified as the
‘anxiety of authorship’. This means that, in a sense, in society, all discourses are created
by men, and all officially existing cannons of writing have already been elaborated by
men. Women lack the confidence to invent something radically new, so when they want
to express themselves, they are always writing following traditions that already existed.
They did not create a new genre that was completely feminine; they simply wrote their
own version of already existing genres. They could not get rid of the language of men,
which dominated culture. Women could only express their ideas modifying or
qualifying dominant views, expressing those in more encoded ways, favouring the
tension, allusion, and symbol in their novels.
The example in Jane Eyre is the presence of dreams, fantasy, and symbolic elements in
the novel, together with references to other works as if they were not able to create a
genre for themselves, but rather to imitate it. This is not because they were not able, but
because they did not feel confident enough. They could not be because it was still very
difficult for women to have professional access to novel publishing.
Only 20% of the books published were published by women, but they made 50% of the
published novelists. Despite seeming equality, it is not. 50% of the published authors
were women, but only 20% of the novels written by women were published, which
means many women were published only once or twice in their lives, while it was
perfectly possible for a man to have all his novels published. There were still more
women who submitted their manuscripts to publishing houses and had them rejected, so
it was very difficult for them to become professional novelists. They were normally
paid the same as men, but it was difficult for them to have professional careers because
of the critiques. Critics would consider women always wrote about the same stuff, and
they considered it inferior for being a woman’s writing about women’s affairs.
Nevertheless, if a woman broke those constraints she was thought to be unfeminine; she
was exploring something that should not be explored by women. However, there was a
revolution about this idea of the private life which was defended by ones and rejected
by others.
S27. MARTINEAU-DEERBROOK-SILENCE, LOVE AND MARRIAGE

This is from a novel written by one of the few independent feminine writers who wrote
at the time. She inherited a fortune and could afford living alone and dedicating to
writing. What she claims in this model Deerbrook is the fact that so many novels have
been written about young women getting married, but girls are actually holding in the
dark about love. There are not so many authentic novels about falling in love and being
in love, and discussing what it really means.
Some people claim the novels of Jane Austen a good example of that, but they offer just
the view of educated ladies who are normally clever, even too clever, for them to make
mistakes in the sentimental area of their lives. Nonetheless, girls were actually very
ignorant; it is hence claimed that novels should be written in a realistic fashion to teach
them about all the problems of being a woman.

107
S28. MIDDLEMARCH

This extract from Middlemarch reflects several traits in her personality. The character is
described as a commercial item. Furthermore, if she got married and had a son, she
would inherit her father’s state, worth about 3000 pounds a year. Therefore, Dorothea is
not just a girl to fall in love with and marry; she is the promise of a fortune, and many
will look at her not as a girl, but as a goal to reach; girls were just a means to transmit
family fortunes.
George Eliot is introducing elements to show that girls approach is not limited to these
material or sentimental affairs. In fact, the attitude she describes –Dorothea’s attitude to
life- is quite satirical or ironic; she makes the very serious mistake of thinking her life is
for helping others. She considers herself a kind of NGO intended to do charity. This is
something that prevents many men from marrying her.
S29. MIDDLEMARCH

However, she still keeps elements of observation of real life that are very difficult to
identify in novels by, for instance, Dickens. No matter how sensitive Dickens is, flirting
in Middlemarch evidences woman has been silently observing manners, and social and
human interaction. The development of a real relationship between these two people in
a social atmosphere is very skilful and precise; no one else is noticing.
S30. THE CHOICE OF SELF-DENIAL

What is characteristic about George Eliot is the choice of attitudes of passive

submission and self-denial. While Charlotte Brontë seems to ask for personal sense of
fulfilment or emancipation, which usually takes the shape of extra duty, Eliot does it the
other way around.
S31. EMANCIPATION OR EXTRA DUTY?

At the end of Jane Eyre, she claims constantly that she is independent and rich, her own
mistress; yet, ‘I will be your nurse’… she decides to take some extra duty over herself.
S32. ALTERNATIVES TO JANE

This is somehow a paradox about Brontë’s approach to feminine fulfilment, the idea
that a woman should be given the right to choose. Yet, when they choose, they would
still follow the right path in life, only that they will be granted the only pleasurable thing
she obtains from Mr. Rochester, a sense of intellectual equality and ability to interact
intellectually as equals.
Nevertheless, leaving this intellectual equality aside, an equality of behaviour is kept at
an individual setting. Mind that Jane and Rochester do not travel to London and live in
society, but live their utopic equality in isolation. This was far from being inviting for
future generations of feminist critics, and quite interestingly, Jane Eyre has been very
inspiring for 20th century feminists and women writers who have consciously rewritten
and exploited the case of Jane Eyre.
One significant contribution to the issue of being a woman has to do with the
relationship of the protagonist to Bertha Mason. It would create much tension and
discussion in the Victorian Period, which is very peculiar. When people read Jane Eyre,
they were only concerned with caring about professional life, about sexual integrity,
about not becoming a spinster… but no one seemed to be deeply worried about what
Rochester had done to Bertha Mason. This indicates that, perhaps, the feminist issue in

108
the Brontë period was only adapted to the limits of the aspirations of white middle-class
English ladies, not one in which racial abuse should be taken into account.
That’s why, in the 20th century, more people became interested in the figure of Bertha,
the one who had been neglected. There is a concern about to what extent Jane is a lady,
behaving as an English lady, and not caring about the rights of all women, provided that
these women are not her own race, her own religion, or have not her own origin.
That’s why Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso’s Sea is a retelling of the tory from the point of
view of Bertha Mason. It tells how a young girl is given to a man. The racial aspect is
important, as well as the aspect of sexual freedom for ladies in Jamaica is given
importance. They have a more natural attitude towards sex and the pleasures of the body.
Rochester is however very clumsy, and he cannot make sense of the relations amongst
people in the liberal atmosphere of Jamaica. The idea portrayed by Rhys is that
Rochester is only interested in getting her money.
Much more provocative is Doris Lessing. In the 70s she wrote a story in which she
retold the story of Jane Eyre; a girl seduced by a gentleman moves into his house, and
she discovers that he is keeping a mad wife in the basement. The story is much more
explicit from the point of view of sexual activity, and Doris Lessing offers a very
significant solution; the protagonist does not only liberate the mad wife, but they both
escape from the man’s house and take an apartment together. It is the sisterhood of
women, feeling a strong attachment to each other and abandoning, neglecting a man
who has been using and abusing them.
In contrast, Eliot defended a less vindictive role for women. We don’t know if this is for
personal or artistic reasons; in general, most of her heroines are painfully aware of how
life is crushing them, how they are crushed by social restraints. What they do in most of
these cases is renouncing to become active. It is not only something they have been
taught to accept in society, but something that is part of their sexual identity.
S33+34. SENSATION FICTION: MEN AND WOMEN

Second stage: In 186o there was a sort of revolution in the publishing market in England,
Wilkie Collins published The Woman in White: story (about two twins who are identical
but one of them escapes and is rescued by a man and taken because he wants her
fortune; idea of madness, a woman knotted in order to take her money) that
automatically started a frenzy of imitators and the most productive imitators of this
tradition were women belonging to the following generation. For instance, Mary
Braddon who got an extraordinary success with Lady Audley’s Secret: explores the sort
of release of what was acceptable in fiction concerning behaviour and presents very
typical aberrant actions, basically Lady Audley has married twice and she kills her 1st
husband and tries to kill the second, she also wants to burn down the hotel…, very
expectacular, a woman who behaves like a criminal. Another famous story also
including bigamy was East Lynne by Ellen Wood in which a woman is married to a
lawyer, but he is working so hard that he neglects her, she abandons him and elopes
with a rich aristocrat. She gets pregnant and he deserts her so what she does is to bear
the child they have and she has an accident in which her face gets disfigured so in order
to survive she returns to her old house and takes care of her original child living in the
house with her husband. The success of this genre can be explained as a very simple
consequence of people being fair with conventions of realism in a very similar to the
way Horace Walpole launched the genre of ‘the gothic’ – he claimed that there was so
much reason that people were looking for more excitement. Writers tried to find this
inventing exotic places and coming back in history. What is paradoxical about the
Victorian sensation novel is that all this excitement is combined with some degree of

109
domestic realism. They did not invent exotic places or did not travel to the aristocracy
of other countries but rather focused on typical middle-class life and they found all the
aberrant activities that could still exist in very conventional houses. That was a way of
expressing metaphorically that even in bourgeois respectable life there are lots of
aberrations and hypocritical behaviours – they were hiding aberrant behaviours and
crimes. After all, the way marriage was conducted at the time was an aberration of
economic interest in which people were somehow legally sold to other people. A novel
that could indicate this criminal behaviour of real society (which can be equated or
confused with gothic behaviour) could be Northanger Abbey (the mistake made the
protagonist about the father). The foolish exaggeration found in gothic excesses is a
very valid metaphor for many other criminal dysfunctional elements of behaviour
existing in real life so in real life there may be not those crimes of bigamy, family
secrets... but they exist – in fact the lives of people were based on that, people did
immoral things, abused, killed, etc. always for money = a metaphorical expression of
some behaviour that existed. It also expressed beautifully some fantasies and fears that
existed in the Victorian reading public. For instance the problems of the outsider
within– the protagonists of many Victorian sensation novels are respectable aristocratic
people with a position of security. There is a moment in their lives in which they
experience in a dramatic/painful way how someone who is the outsider (a servant, a
governess or a wife they have married) can be not only what they seem to be but people
who endanger their positions and lives. They in contrast oblige the insider who is the
member of society, to be at least temporally becoming an outsider, someone who is
spelled from society, example: the protagonists of No Name. In many other novels
someone makes friends with someone who betrays them and suddenly occupies his
position as in Armadale by W. Collins. In many novels we have the anxiety felt by
people about losing their position or meeting someone who threatened it. They may be
about some behaviour that may look as deviant but after all they are expressing a well-
known fear of society at the time. This genre was so easily practiced by women,
according to Mary Braddon, because women were masters in the art of secrecy and
mystery. They had to be kept silent for many years/generations so they had become
specialists in domestic issues and secrets and in these novels so they could imagine such
things happen.
S35. SENSATION FICTION: MEN AND WOMEN

There were facts that helped in the success of this genre. Part of this success was
because of the suspicions about the real life of the writers who produced all these things
–sensation novelists had sensational lives in many cases. For instance, W. Collins
(respectable novelist) was an addict to opium, in fact he took as a mistress a woman that
he had found escaping so the story of The Woman in the Attic is a real story that he had
experienced. At the same time that he was keeping a mistress he had another mistress
with whom he had two children so he had a double life – being a respectable writer and
having children and several mistresses. Charles Dickens also had a double hypocritical
face. Charles Reade also lived many years with a mistress and had a very turbulent life
and the same happened with many of the women writers, who had very peculiar and not
conventional lives. Another reason for the success of this genre had to do with the
prominence of gossip and a very valid form of journalist that was quite explicit and
sensational about all sort of crimes (e.g. The Tabloids).
People expected the journalist to explain the physical effects of the crimes so that is
why they came to call sensation novels ‘newspaper novels’. These novels imitated some
of the graphic descriptions that appeared in newspapers. Also, this looked very much

110
like the genre of the Newgate novel, novels about criminal lives. So it was a variant of
popular fiction dealing with crime, violence, and behaviour.
2nd Session
The three reasons why Jane Eyre’s rebellion is not complete
- Willing submission
- Providential solution
- Fantasy

Maybe a fourth aspect: sexual desire and attraction are not freely expressed. Jane Eyre
is seen as an ugly lady.

Victorian novelists decided to introduce heroines that were more active and powerful, as
well as more sexually attractive. They were fed up with ugly heroines imitating Jane
Eyre. In fact, Darwin himself claimed he only needed two qualities in a novel, namely a
happy ending, and a beautiful lady. Novels were considered as trivial.
In fact, the protagonists of many sensational novels of the 60s are so active that they are
sometimes criminals; their actions are, in many cases, very unfeminine; they could be
even crimes.
Walter, one of the most famous critics and historians of the period, insisted that the
genre was almost invented by women; men were said to be very irrelevant. This claim
came from her need of an intermediate step in the history of the evolution from Jane
Eyre’s partial respectability to the more theoretical feminist writing of the 80s and 90s;
hence, she decided to fill the gap with 20 years of women going crazy about their rights
in a way that was trivial, passionate, or even superficial before they obtained political
awareness that invited them to defend suffragism and political rights.
It is interesting to note that there is something true about this in this role attributed to
women in sensation novels that is neglected by other authors. For instance, in Bleak
House, one of the main characters is Lady Dedlock, an aristocrat who has a secret about
her past. She is married to a very rich aristocrat, but there is always the suspicion that
perhaps the clue to understand many things that happen in the novel is to be found in
her past, which is kept secret. Later on, it is known that the narrator is an illegitimate
daughter Lady Dedlock had before she got married to that aristocrat. This is explained
at the end, but not very much is made out of this scandal. All this, in the hands of
Michael Collins, would make a very thick novel, with all these mysteries; yet, Dickens
decided not to be sensational. He only mentioned it, and it is part of the story, but not of
the textual dimension.
Sensational novels, in a sense, repeated many of the qualities of the gothic novels
written in the 1790s. However, what makes them different is that, more often in these
novels, we have references not to the heart, but to the nerves. There is more emphasis
on the shocking effects that human passions are having on individuals. In Gothic Novels
written by women, there were many moments of horror, of shocking experiences, of
people getting hysterical and getting frightened by everything, and what causes all this
in these novels is supernatural. Yet, there is no trace of supernatural elements in
sensational novels; it is evident that women, or the plot of the story, have to do with
strong passions felt by individuals. There are no ghosts; everything is caused by the
essence of the relation between two people, much more realistically narrated.
It is interesting that these novels were called at the time electrical novels. Electricity had
become a powerful metaphor to indicate that something animal, irrational, passionate, or
bestial was being invoked.

111
Also, there is an attempt to explore these dimensions of human personality without
elevating them too much to the area of moral discussion. While people like George Eliot
would transform tiny conflict of the life of a person in an occasion for more reversion,
in these novels, this element tends to be neglected. Then the rest only confirms all this.
S37 SENSATION NOVELS AND THE EMANCIPATED DAUGHTERS OF
CHARLOTTE & GOTHIC

Another interesting thing for the analysis of this type of novels is that Victorian
morality tended to assume that the rule of poetic justice was compulsory and should
never be violated. Poetic justice means that the good guys are rewarded and the bad
guys are punished. Therefore, it should be there to make them acceptable and tolerable
for well thinking middle classes; if a novel is not teaching you anything valuable for life,
they it should be banned. It was a deal that was very easily accepted by Victorian
novelists; they would always transmit acceptable values in exchange of money. They
would never be too subversive.
This indicated that all excessive passions should be punished. However, many writers
felt very worried, even frightened when, in a novel, the expected final punishment for a
person who had been seduced into physical impulses was not carried out. It is an
interesting case how in many of these novels the villains were not punished.
This new generation reacted against some traditional roles assigned to Victorian
heroines of former generations. In many sensation novels, there are many characters
who represent the typical ideal girl who is passive, beautiful, and virtuous; there is, in
these novels, no pity towards them; they were the perfect victims, and they are pushed
into destruction. On the other hand, the protagonists were very unfeminine because they
became more active to defend their rights, their positions, and to survive. There is the
contrast between the protagonist, who behaves in a non-feminine way, but survives; and
the passive girl, who behaves in a right way and ends up bad.
Then, there were also instances of the woman who is actively using her charms to
destroy men. Quite paradoxically, there is the figure of the governess, but not Jane Eyre.
In most cases, Jane’s model of the governess is thought to be suspicious. The villain, in
many cases, was the governess, rather than the kind of woman living in unhappy
circumstances and needed to be sympathised. There was a critical and comic reversal of
the traditional values associated to it.
Finally, there were two technical problems identified by people. First, how, despite all
the appearance of realism in this novel, there the presence of madness in these novels
broke the rules. When some very active character is mad, they can do anything; hence, it
is very difficult to apply traditional conventions or reason and logic similarities to
reality. Therefore, the traditional realism of novels was broken by this; if you can invent
a woman who can be killing, seducing men, values are lost. If nothing is impossible,
then everything is acceptable and tolerable. That is why they were stretching the limits
of realism in this direction.
Evidently, another problem was that had to be faced is the relationship between
character and plot. These stories are so centred on getting the reader shocked into
accepting the new, sudden terms of action, with revelations of identities, that in most
cases they destroyed something that was growing carefully; the idea of having a more
serious, sensible, psychologically sound approach to a character. In these novels, plot is
so important and unexpected that the character is neglected. There are novels in which
the story arises naturally out of the characters, or there are novels in which they are only
marionettes; the slaves of the novel.

112
SLIDES MISSING:

38, 39 & 40 – i.e. LA ANTERIOR A EAST LYNE Y LAS DE EAST LYNE

41 – 48

S41. HARD TIMES, INDUSTRIAL NOVELS, AND POLITICS

START: ‘FOR THE Industrial novel…’

‘influenced at all by the Preston affairs’
S42. HARD TIMES, INDUSTRIAL NOVELS, AND POLITICS
S43. HARD TIMES, INDUSTRIAL NOVELS, AND POLITICS
‘THE REST is something you can read, because…’ START
S44. HARD TIMES
‘THEN, ANOTHER…. REVOLUTIONS WERE CONSIDERED BAD BY HIM…’
START
He feels he is worth something better’
S26 HARD TIMES, INDUSTRIAL NOVELS, AND POLITICS
WE GET TO THE CONCLUSION AND I AGRRE WITH ORWELL HERE…’
START

113