THE VICTORIAN WRITERS BETWEEN THE MIRROR AND THE PEN

economic, scientific, and social progress (the railway age, trade develops, colonial expansion, the Education Act of 1870, women colleges founded at Oxford and Cambridge, public libraries)

geographically and socially on the move

Darwin, The Origin of Species (1867) and the crisis of faith

Charles Dickens (1812-1870): The Pickwick Papers (1836), Oliver Twist (1837-38), Nicholas Nickleby   (1838-39), David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-53), etc.

Serial publication of novels

Middle-class readers

Fairy-tale pattern

Moral reform

Exploitation of children

Oliver Twist, ch. II

The bowls never wanted washing, the boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again, and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed. // Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months; at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadnt been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the body who slept next to him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. (p.35)

Realism, comedy, satire, sentimentalism

Humour

Narrative point of view:

David Copperfield, ch. XI: I was so young and childish, and so little qualified how could be otherwise?- to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that often , in going to Murdstone and Grinbys, of a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at the pastrycooks doors, and spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding. (p. 103)

Texts and comments available at https://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1836): Vanity Fair

Opposes Dickens: no clear line between vice and virtue

Life and illusions

Upstartism

Illustrations

Metatext

VANITY FAIR, ch. III:If Miss Rebecca Sharp had determined in her heart, upon making the conquest of this big beau, I dont think, ladies, we have any right to blame her; for though the task of husband-hunting is generally, and with becoming modesty, entrusted by young persons to their mammas, recollect that Miss Sharp had no kind parent to arrange this delicate matters for her, and that if she did not get a husband for herself, there was no one else in the wide world who would take the trouble off her hands. (p. 27)

Texts and comments available at https://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Thackeray.html

The Brontё Sisters:

Charlotte Brontё Jane Eyre

Anne Brontё : Agnes Grey (1847)

Emily Brontё Wuthering Heights

Contemporary opinions

Symmetrical structure

Orphan children

Narrators and listeners

The window image

A world of passion, violence and cruelty

Text available at https://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/9/16/frameset.html

George Eliot Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), etc.

Pantheism

Unselfishness

Disenchantment

Social determinism

Families and communities

Nature vs. culture

Interest in form: Notes on Form in Art (1868)- the novel as an organic whole

Thomas Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the DUrbervilles (1891), etc.

Real events vs. mythology

The Wessex countryside, Egdon Heath (The Return of the Native), Stonehenge

Religious cults, paganism, dreams, obsessions, frustrations

The end of Tess of the DUrbervilles, ch. LIII: The place was all doors and pillars, some connected above by continuous architraves.

A very Temple of the Winds, he said.

The next pillar was isolated; others composed a trilithon; // and it was soon obvious that they made up a forest of monoliths grouped upon the grassy expanse of the plain. The couple advanced further into this pavilion of the night till they stood in its midst.

It is Stonehenge! said Clare.

The heathen temple, you mean?

Yes. Older than the centuries; older than the DUrbervilles!

Non heroes, but archetypes: Gabriel Oak (Far from the Madding Crowd), Alec DUrbervilles, Tess DUrbervilles

Immanent Will

Text and comments available at https://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/26/56/frameset.html

Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray

Aestheticism: life follows art, art for arts sake, amorality of art

Three self-portraits: Lord Henry Wotton (aesthetic contemplation untroubled by conscience), Dorian Gray (cynical hedonism), and the painter Basil Hallward (conventional morality).

non-English writers: Henry Jamess new international themes and characters; Joseph Conrads colonial experience; James Joyce and an exile focussed on Irishness

reduced sociological interest, increased interest in philosophy, psychology, and experimentalism

fairy-tale world replaced by a chaotic, absurd world

reduced, static plots

characters: male (Mars, masculinity, war), non-heroic, instinctive and irrational; private identity, unique self, fluid identity, split personality, isolated, alienated, estranged

the city, the flaneur, and the dandy opposing the countryside, technique versus nature

experimentalism: the influence of Sternes Tristram Shandy

new novelistic techniques: teller/reflector characters in James, concentric narrations in Conrad, stream of consciousness technique in Joyce and Woolf, ludic attitudes, obsessive details, ambiguity, openness (Henry James, The Figure in the Carpet)

gap writer-reader, elitist attitude

covers a large range of movements: Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, Imagism, Vorticism, etc.

early and middle period - The Europeans, Washington Square, Confidence, The Portrait of a Lady

the period of dramatic work, less successful

late period - The Turn of the Screw, What Maisie Knew, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl

Importance of theory: Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints. // The successful application of any art is a delightful spectacle, but the theory, too, is interesting; and though there is a great deal of the latter without the former, I suspect there has never been a genuine success that has not had a latent core of conviction. Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere.

Fiction is life: The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life.

The novelists and painters: Their inspiration is the same, their process (allowing for the different quality of the vehicle) is the same, their success is the same. They may learn from each other, they may explain and sustain each other. Their cause is the same, and the honour of one is the honour of another. Peculiarities of manner, of execution, that correspond on either side, exist in each of them and contribute to their development.

Impressionism: A novel is in its broadest definition a personal impression of life; that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say. The tracing of a line to be followed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be filled out, is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very thing that we are most curious about.

First fact, then form: The form, it seems to me, is to be appreciated after the fact; then the author's choice has been made, his standard has been indicated; then we can follow lines and directions and compare tones. Then, in a word, we can enjoy one of the most charming of pleasures, we can estimate quality, we can apply the test of execution.

Freedom of execution: The execution belongs to the author alone; it is what is most personal to him, and we measure him by that. The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant--no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes.

The novel as an organism: A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like every other organism, and in proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts.

No distinction between novels and romances: There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, which must have cost many a smile to the intending romancer who was keen about his work. It appears to me as little to the point as the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and the romance- to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning, and I can as little imagine speaking of a novel of character as I can imagine speaking of a picture of character.

International writer, of American origin

Juxtaposition of Americanness and Europeanness, innocence and experience, purity and corruption,  politics and culture, history and modernity. The Portrait of a Lady: Isabel Archer, an American in Europe, is transformed from a poor relative into an independent woman. Falls victim of a selfish husband, Gilbert Osmond and wastes her life. The novel is her moral growth, initiation into the ways of the world, gradual self-understanding

THE AMBASSADORS

The novel describes the contrast between engagement and detachment, between moral commitment and moral relativism, between personal confrontation and personal diplomacy.

It is the story of Lewis Lambert Strether, who has traveled to Europe in the hope of bringing back to America the son of his friend, Mrs. Newsome. Strether is one Mrs. Newsomes ambassador and he supposes that if he brings back Chadwick, Mrs. Newsomes son, she will agree to marry him. Chad loves Madame de Vionnet and has greatly improved in Europe, a situation which complicates Strethers mission. He decides that his mission will be unselfish, and will be motivated only by trying to help others and advises Chad to stay in Paris.

slow and detailed plot, tactful and discreet characters, of remarkable moral sensibility, and faithful to their personal conscience

complex prose style, indirect and ambiguous dialogue, questions are never answered directly, conversation has vague implications and hidden meanings

teller characters vs. reflector characters

selective omniscience: third person narration filtered through the mind of the central character

Text and comments available at https://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway/

Of Polish origin, Josef Korzeniowski: He always spoke English imperfectly, but he wrote it not like a native, but like a native who was enabled miraculously to rediscover his own language as a mature man. It was lucky he did not get into the hands of a present-day language teacher, or he would have spoken it well, written it indifferently, and would never have been heard of again. (Barnard, 1989:152)

Career 1874-1896: the sea, he served on or commanded French, Belgian, and British ships. Stories of the sea: romantic, exotic, self-exploring,  the codes of the crew

Themes: honour, guilt, moral alienation, expiation, mans responsibility to himself, fidelity, brotherhood, nature

Impressionistic technique: Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus- All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words, of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage.

HEART OF DARKNESS: a story of greed, trickery, brutality, and enslavement in the Belgian Congo, but also in Victorian London. The last words of Kurtz: The horror! The horror! indicate it.

Marlow, the narrator-hero, vs. Kurtz, the colonizer

Kurtz: the half civilised, half mad, greedy, brutal colonizer, desirous to exterminate the Africans, who are enemies, criminals.

LORD JIM: the story of a captain discovering his own inner self

Marlow, the narrator, vs. Jim, the sailor

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He was spotlessly neat, appareled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as ship-chandlers water clerk he was very popular. (p.

Concentric story-telling, mysterious, full of shadows, unnerving (Cedric Watts, Introduction to the Penguin Books Edition, 1986) because of Jims ambiguous, subversive heroism, the multiple points of view, suspended interpretations, delayed decodings (the method of announcing effects without discussing the causes), the syntax of uncertainty ( the as-if technique, numerous conditionals, hypothetic sentences).

The omniscient, impartial narrator is replaced by a hesitating, confused, unreliable narrator, situated outside truth, alienated and lost by his incapacity to comprise in words the wholeness of life.

Descriptions of exotic nature, cosmic dimensions: sea, wind, stars, storms.

Musicality of style, equilibrium of sounds and colours.

Text and comments available at https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lordjim/

Joyces Irishness, father, Catholicism, provincialism as a disease, paralysis, Dublin as an archetypal city. Leaves Ireland in 1902, comes back, leaves again in 1904.

Experimentalism: Robert Barnard, A Short History of English Literature, 1989 (p. 159): a joker, a prankster, a linguistic reveller, a constructor of puzzles, and a parodist of genius. Mosaic of discourses: sermons, speeches, stories, quotations collected by Stephen in A Portrait. Terminator of the novel in Finnegans Wake : riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Indirect reading

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

Artistic theory: - the artist is a man apart, who should reject the opinions of the man in the street

the importance of epiphany: integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), claritas (radiance)

the artist should help the reader to share the apprehension of claritas by removing what is obscure and irrelevant.

ULYSSES: encyclopedic complexity, formlessness, obscurity

Chronotop: 6/16/1904 Bloomsday: 18 hours= 18 chapters, expanding the moment to a grand epic of humanity; space: the Joyce country, immense impressionistic panorama of a place

Intertext, myths

archetypes, characters in the round : Bloom, Stephen. Joyce about Bloom: I see him from all sides, and therefore he is all-round in the sense of your sculptors figure. But he is a complete man as well a good man.

Modern life, the city, history, art

Interior monologue: Leopold Bloom about writing a message on sand of the seashore.

Useless. Washed away. Tide comes here. Saw a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark mirror, breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and letters. O, those transparent! Besides they don't know. What is the meaning of that other

word. I called you naughty boy because I do not like.

AM. A.

No room. Let it go. (Ch. 13 Nausicaa)

Molly Bloom: I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the

rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and L thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. (Ch. 18, Penelope)

Text available at https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/ulysses.html and comments available at https://pers-www.wlv.ac.uk/~fa1871/joynote.html

MODERN FICTION (1919) old vs. new, impressionistic novels. Reading a book is like watching a painting, seeing nature in a new way.

MR. BENNETT AND MRS. BROWN (1924): notices a change in the human characteristics and relationships, a romantic reaction, more intuitive and poetic

A ROOM OF ONES OWN   (1929): feminist ideas

NOVELS: The Voyage Out (1915), Night and Day (1919), Jacobs Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), Orlando (1928)

Mrs. DALLOWAY

Title, this being Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Richard Dalloway

1 day: 13.06. 1923, age:52, remembers her youth. Threefold effect of time: the passing moments or hours, the voyage from youth to old age, historic time (related to nation-wide or world-wide events)

Septimus Warren Smith her double

Cubist simultaneity, collage, deep psychology, skywriting, Big Ben, tunnelling

Stream of consciousness

FID and its characteristics:

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayers men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morningfresh as if issued to children on a beach.

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, Musing among the vegetables?was that it?I prefer men to cauliflowerswas that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terracePeter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanishedhow strange it was!a few sayings like this about cabbages.

Cinematic techniques

Time /space shifts

Camera eye: exterior/interior shifts

Life is chaotic, fragmentary, disillusioning, but also intense joy. Human beings are part of an everchanging flow of existence

No chapter divisions, no separation, one stream.

Feminist cause: female experience, complementarity, androgyne

Text available at https://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91md/ and comments available at https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dalloway/