THE NOVEL OF VICTORIAN ORTHODOXY Below are lilted same of the major reasons for the spectacular

bourgeois novel. success of the Victorian

(1) The English novel originated as a middle-class genre

bourgeoisie.

and it was the logical reading matter for the triumphant 1!th-centur"

(#) (&)

$nburdened b" tradition or status the novel was fle%ible and hence adaptable to the portra"al of the multitude of changing

situations is Victorian life. Escapism had become a ps"chological necessit" to an era bedeviled b" chaotic 'ndustrialism.

(() )ealism was the ostensible justification for the conscious reader as escapism was the actual satisfier of his unconscious needs. *ust as +efoe had earlier beguiled the middle-class readers with the pretense of genuine reportage so the Victorian novelists appealed to their audience with the semblance of the real world. (,) The earnest Victorians sought and found in contemporar" novels instruction for living amid bewildering comple%it" and change. -ovelists made sense out of the enormous variet" of choices and e%periences.
(.* The novel assumed for the 1!th centur" the mission fulfilled in earlier eras b" the epic/ formulation of the 0m"th0 of the age. There was no 1penser or 2ilton to perform such a tas3 in verse for the Victorian age. The most ambitious attempt to do this in verse was Tenn"son4s somewhat pallid Idylls of the King, and an" casual novel reader can name a score of Victorian novels of far greater m"thma3ing power.

The outstanding characteristics of the bourgeois novel were/

(1) (#)
(cceptance of middle-class ethics and mores. The 0good0 characters conform to principles of bourgeois orthodo%" and are properl" rewarded. 1ocial orientation. The major human problem (rested b" the bourgeois novelists is the adjustment of the 'ndividual to his

societ".

&) Emphasis upon characters. The bourgeois novelists strove to produce fascinating

rounded characters who resembled people their

readers 3new or would li3e to 3now. 2ost characters were middle class in middle-class settings and with the t"pical middle-class preoccupation even in 0historical0 novels. Their comple%it" was almost wholl" emotional lower-class figures were subordinate usuall" treated patroni5ingl". $pper-class personages were viewed with a mhiure of env" and scorn.

(6) The hero. The central figure though demonstrating human wea3nesses
are errors of immature judgment which are corrected b" maturation.

is molded to the

bourgeois 'deal of the rational man of virtue. 7uman nature is believed to be fundamentall" good and lapses from the bourgeois code