The Victorian Novel, 1851-1867
Exhibitionism to Reform
Overview
The years from the Great Exhibition (1851) to the Second
Reform Bill (1867) were a period of enormous vitality in the English novel.
Major works by Dickens, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Trollope, George Eliot,
Gaskell, and others capitalized on the burgeoning of serial publication
and circulating libraries; on unprecedented growth of consumer capitalism
at home and imperial dominance abroad; on worshipful audiences ranging
from distinguished literary critics, to eminent leaders of society and
politics, to vast numbers of middle and lower class readers. The result
was a novel of confident power and narrative scope. By focusing on this
period, we are able to survey many of the major authors of Victorian fiction
while attending closely to a specific set of historical developments, class
relations, and gender issues.
Reading
We will read eight representative works of fiction: Dickens's
Bleak House (1852-53); Thackeray's Henry Esmond (1852); Charlotte
Bronte's Villette (1853); Gaskell's North and South (1854-55);
Collins's The Woman in White (1860); Braddon's Lady Audley's
Secret (1862); George Eliot's Felix Holt, The Radical (1866);
and Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset (1866-67). These
texts include industrial novels, sensation fiction, multiplot novels, fictional
autobiographies, historical fiction, and mysteries, demonstrating the enormous
formal variety hidden under the deceptive phrase "nineteenth-century
realism." In addition, students will present two oral reports,
one on a major critical book treating the fiction of this period, another
on an important intellectual document--e.g., Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire
of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859),
Smiles's Self-Help (1859), Mayhew's London Labour and the London
Poor (1861), Mill's Utilitarianism (1862), or Bagehot's The
English Constitution (1867).
Go
to Required Reading
Course
Calendar
Week 1 - (Tuesday, Jan 14, 1997): The Great Exhibition of
1851
| "1851 was a year of such excitement that
many young Victorians looked back on it with nostalgia for the rest of
their lives, and many old Georgians regarded it as the climax of English
history" (Asa Briggs). |
- Reading
- Charles Dickens, "The Great Exhibition and the Little
One" Household Words (1851) - (Graduate Division,
312 Benson)
- Karl Marx, "The Fetishism of Commodities and the
Secret Thereof," from Capital, vol. 1 (1867) - (Graduate
Division, 312 Benson)
- Susan Buck-Morss, excerpts from The Dialectics of
Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project - (Graduate
Division, 312 Benson)
- Tony Bennett, "The Exhibitionary Complex"
- (Graduate Division, 312 Benson)
- Thomas Richards, "The Great Exhibition of Things,"
ch. 1 of The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and
Spectacle, 1851-1914 - (Graduate Division, 312 Benson)
- Recommended Reading
- Asa Briggs, "The Crystal Palace and the Men of 1851,"
Victorian People
- Andrew Miller, "Spaces of Exchange: Interpreting
the Great Exhibition of 1851," ch. 2 of Novels Behind Glass: Commodity,
Culture, and Victorian Narrative (1995)
Week 2 - (Tuesday, Jan. 21, 1997): Dickens, Bleak House,
Parts I-IX
| "God send that we all meet in 1851 under
the shadow of some huge, newly-invented machine. I mean to exhibit four
three-volume novels--all failures--which I look upon as a great proof of
industry." (Anthony Trollope) |
- Secondary reading
- Jennifer Wicke, "The Dickens Advertiser," in
Advertising Fictions (Benson 312 and Reserve Room)
- Electronic versions of Bleak House
- E-texts (none available)
- Annotated hypertext
(Under construction in Virginia Tech online course, "Bleak
House and London")
- Resources on the Web (For general Victorian sites,
see the course Bibliography page)
Week 3 - (Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1997): Dickens, Bleak House,
Parts X-XIX
| "I have always had an instinctive feeling
against the Exhibition, of a faint inexplicable sort." (Charles
Dickens) |
- Secondary reading
- D. A. Miller, "Discipline in Different Voices: Bureaucracy,
Police, Family, and Bleak House," in The Novel and the Police
(Reserve Room)
- Oral Report: Lisa Barnes on Amanda Anderson, Tainted
Souls and Painted Faces: the Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture
(1993)
Week 4 - (Tuesday, Feb. 4, 1997): Thackeray, Henry
Esmond
- Oral Report: Laura Patterson on Judith R. Walkowitz,
City of Dreadful Night: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian
London (1992)
- Electronic versions of Henry Esmond
- Resources on the Web
- Critical articles on Thackeray (complete texts)
Week 5 - (Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1997): Thackeray and the Mid-Victorian
Literary World
- Reading
- Household Words (#90 - December 13, 1851) -
(Reserve room)
- Oral Report: Julie Schuetz on Nancy Armstrong, Desire
and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (1987)
- Recommended reading
- N. N. Feltes, "Equipoise and the Three-Decker: The
Production of Henry Esmond," ch. 2 of Modes of Production
of Victorian Novels - (Reserve room)
- Eve Sedgwick, "Adam Bede and Henry Esmond:
Homosocial Desire and the Historicity of the Female," ch. 8 of Between
Men
News: Christopher Lamping
Week 6 - (Tuesday, Feb. 18, 1997): Charlotte Brontë,
Villette
- Oral Report: Lara Newborn, Andrew H. Miller, Novels
Behind Glass: Commodity, Culture, and Victorian Narrative (1995)
- Electronic versions of Villette
- Resources on the Web
Week 7 - (Tuesday, Feb. 25, 1997): Villette and
Victorian Sexuality
- Oral Report: Kurt Koenigsberger on Harriet Martineau,
British Rule in India: A Historical Sketch (1857)
- Resources on the Web
News: Lara Newborn
Spring Break (March 1-9, 1997)
Week 8 - (Tuesday, Mar. 11, 1997): Gaskell, North and
South. First version of research paper due.
- Oral Report: Kin Cosner on Karl Marx, The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
- Recommended reading
- Deirdre David, Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian
Novels: North and South, Our Mutual Friend, Daniel Deronda
- Catherine Gallagher, "Family and Society in Hard
Times and North and South," ch. 7 of The Industrial
Reformation of English Fiction (Reserve Room)
- Judith Lowder Newton, ch. on North and South in
Women, Power and Subversion: Social Strategies in British Fiction, 1778-1860
- Hilary M. Schor, "North and South, Marriage,
and the Romance of a Common Language," ch. 4 of Scheherezade in
the Marketplace (Reserve room)
- Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, pp. 87-109
- Electronic versions of North and South
- E-text
(Maintained by Mitsuharu Matsuoka, Nagoya University, Japan.)
- Resources on the Web
- Critical articles on North and South (complete
texts)
Week 9 - (Tuesday, Mar. 18, 1997): George Eliot, Felix
Holt
- Recommended reading
- Catherine Gallagher, "The Politics of Culture and
the Debate over Representation in the 1860s," ch. 9 The Industrial
Reformation of English Fiction (Reserve Room)
- Oral Report: Monika Schramm on Charles Darwin, The
Origin of Species (1859)
- Electronic versions of Felix Holt
- E-text
(Constructed by Peter Batke, Princeton University)
Week 10 - (Tuesday, Mar. 25,
1997): George Eliot, Felix Holt
Week 11 - (Tuesday, Apr. 1, 1997): Collins, The Woman
in White
- Recommended reading
- D. A. Miller, "Cage aux folles: Sensation and Gender
in Wilkie Collin's The Woman in White," in The Novel and
the Police (Reserve Room)
- Oral Report: Christopher Lamping
- Electronic versions of The Woman in White
- E-text
(Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia - Recommended)
- E-text (Bibliomania)
- E-text
(Victorian Sensationalism Online - divided into the serial parts
[under construction])
- Resources on the Web
- Victorian
Sensationalism Online (Maintained by Andrew.Mactavish, University
of Alberta.)
- British
Sensation Fiction (Web-based hypertext on the connection between
sensation fiction and the mystery novel. Maintained by Michael E. Grost,
"a mystery fan who lives near Detroit, Michigan")
Collins
Bibliography
Week 12 - (Tuesday, Apr. 8, 1997): Braddon, Lady Audley's
Secret
- Secondary reading
- Electronic versions of Lady Audley's Secret
- E-text
(Victorian Sensationalism Online - divided into the serial parts[under
construction])
- Resources on the Web
Braddon
Bibliography
Week 13 - (Tuesday, Apr. 15, 1997): Trollope, The Last
Chronicle of Barset, vol. I
- Secondary reading
- Electronic versions of The Last Chronicle of Barset
- Resources on the Web
Trollope
Bibliography
Week 14 - (Tuesday, Apr. 22, 1997): Trollope, The Last
Chronicle of Barset, vol. II
Revised paper due: Tuesday, April 29, 4:00 p.m.
