English summing-up - the victorian age

ENGLISH SUMMING-UP - THE VICTORIAN AGE

CHARLES DICKENS He was born in 1812. when he was ten, his family moved to London where he studied until 1824 when his father was sent to prison for debts. He was forced to go to work in a factory. The poverty of London's quarters, his traumatic childhood profoundly influenced his novel.

At 14 he went to work as a clerk in a legal office. Then he became a journalist. This job enabled him to meet large range of people and understand feelings and reactions of his readers. He also adopted a pen name of  Boz and wrote Sketches by Boz, short articles describing London people and scenes which proved immensely popular.

1836: The Pickwick Papers, characterized by a mixture of comic and picaresque.

He was conscious of political incompetence, social injustice, poverty and class conflicts of the Victorian Age:Oliver Twist; "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Martin Chuzzleweit" where he attacks cruelty in boarding schools; "Hard Times" based on the theme of Utilitarian philosophy.

1840: mature works "Bleak House", negative aspects of Victorian Age, like love of money and lack of disinterested affections.

Semi-autobiographical work: "David Copperfield".

Autobiographical work: "Great Expectations" whose theme was "growing up".

Oliver twist: written with keen social satire and realism. He's also good at mixing social criticism to lively portraits of universal characters combining the pathetic with the comic.

Settings of the novels: provincial towns, industrial settlements and typical sceneries of London.

Characters: eccentrics, vagabonds, criminals and orphans, lower and middle classes in general. Not Upper classes because they tend to fall in stereotypes.

Plots: very complex.

Style: humour, melodramatic and openly didactic passages.

He's comparable to Shakespeare for:

v    Creation of vivid and unforgettable characters;

v    Comic style;

v    Invention of dramatic, melodramatic and picaresque plots;

v    Social themes.

CHARLOTTE BRONTĖ She was born in 1816, she was the third of six children and the strongest of the sisters, even physically. Both her parents were of Celtic origin, which means for the children a background of fantastic story-telling and a belief in feeling and imagination over reason.

Mr  Brontė often discussed about poetry and literature with his children. In an environment where their imagination was continually stimulated by nature, they created a fantasy world.

Influence: the early death oh her two sisters, Emily and Anne, and the only male brother, a gifted painter, who became an alcoholic and opium eater.

Setting: the landscape where her family lived, the desolate Yorkshire moors.

Works: "Jane Eyre" written by Charlotte; "Wuthering Eights" by Emily and "Agnes Grey" by Anne.

Jane Eyre: it was a stir in its time because the heroine shows courage and determination which contrast with the typical conception of Victorian Age's female delicacy. Charlotte's passionate women are not slaves to love but they are ready to sacrifice it to their own notion of honour and duty.

Novel's best qualities: realistic observation, fine humour and intensity of feelings which recalls the Romantics.

Importance of nature: both as a setting and for its symbolic meaning.

EMILY BRONTĖ She's similar to her sister, but her plots are pervaded by Romantic themes mixed with Gothic tale's sense of mystery, rendered trough flashbacks, time shifts and the use of two narrators.

GEORGE ELIOT George Eliot is the pseudonym of Marie Ann Evans. She was born in Warwickshire and she studied in religion and philosophy. She believed in destiny: everything we do is predestined.

Setting: rural England

Themes: disillusion, failure, despair and partial fulfilment meet in a world which is "provincial" in the two senses of "far from the capital" and "ignorant of current ideas". Psychological depth, environment and moral choices.

Masterpiece: "The Mill on the Floss", that shows social and family constrictions work from an early age.

Plot: Already as a child Maggie shows a lively intelligence and a passionate nature, evident when she defends her brother Tom. The irony of the situation is when Mr Tulliver is looking for a school for his son, he has to admit that it's the girl to have brains in the family. This is bitter when set against Maggie's personal story in the rest of the novel and the social conventions of the time.

The contrast, in fact, is between intelligence and independence of a female and breaking social conventions.

Setting: rural Midlands

Feature: realism and irony, use of middle dialect and dialogue, clear and concise style, psychological realism different from Dickens' melodrama.

She was considered by her contemporaries inferior as Dickens but she was thought of as a great teacher of moral law, similar only to Wordsworth.