ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

UNIT 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL AS A GENRE
The concept “novel” comes from ‘novela’ and ‘nouvell’. It has its origin in ‘novellus’ from
Latin and has the meaning of something new or current (happens right now and truth).

Origin of the genre:

- It has its beginning at the ancient Greece (Hellenistic period)

- ‘Theatre’ (Middle Ages) is not the same that ‘novel’ (18th century) in England
- Spain flowering of the genre is in the 16th and early 17th century
- At the same time: Shakespeare in England (Golden Age of drama and poetry)

Rise of the novel in England: 18th century

- ‘Novel’ is not the same that ‘prose’ (short story)

- Key words of this rise:
o Industrial Revolution
o American Independence
o French Revolution
o Age of Reason
o Enlightenment
o Neo-classical
o Encyclopaedia
- A lot of social, economic, political and philosophical changes and a lot of scientific
discovery happen at this period, which is very similar to the Renaissance. Also ‘satire’
appears.

Age of Reason vs. Romanticism:

- “The Mirror and the Lamp”. “The Mirror” would be the writer who reflects the reality
(objective) and “the Lamp” would be the poet like the centre of everything
- Age of Reason: writers reflects the truth, they are objective.
- Romanticism: poets like the centre of everything; they have their own perspective. They
are subjective.

REASONS BEHING THE RISE OF THE NOVEL IN ENGLAND

1) Sociological reasons

• Enclosure of fields and proliferation of factories.

• Population movement from rural to urban areas. An industrial revolution supposes the
introduction of machines which implies a change in population because rural people go
to the cities where they have more possibilities to survive. This exodus has its
consequences, for instance, a new middle class appears, and people work less due to
new machines…, so that they have more leisure time and the novel’s demand rises.

1
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

• Development of industry and increase of trade gives a new middle class (reading
audience). Now, people earn money negotiating instead of inheriting it like before
(Bourgeoisie, Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice).
• Improvements in the editing and printing processes; that is, books become cheaper,
affordable for the new middle class. They are published into scheming fascicles. At the
19th century, books are usually divided into three volumes, each one is divided into
several chapters.
• Rise of female readership.
• Reading: traditionally, popular activity among upper class women.
• 18th century: more leisure time for middle class women.
• Favourite genre: the novel because people identify themselves.
o Identification with the protagonist (wishes, psychological depths…)
o Portrait of different places (sometimes exotic) and characters

2) Literary reasons

• New interest in realism and novelty (something different: identification). Scientific

explorations and narratives about journeys and discoveries appear.
• Closer connection with the reader; some writers belong to the middle class. Publications
that answered the reader’s letters about love, philosophy, religion or science.
• Reaction against heroic romance
o Genre add ressed to an elitist readership (nobility, upper classes)
o Long narrative in prose, but with a very elevated language full of Latin and
French words.
o About distant places and times.

ROMANCE VS. NOVEL

Setting Idealised past and distant place Recent time, usually a closer location
Content Fiction, explicitly seen as unreal events Fiction but interest in realism.
Referents: history and journalism
Values Attention to chastity and virtue Possibility of including illegal actions
and forbidden passions
Readers Mobility, upper classes New middle class, especially women.

2
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

Antecedents of the English novel. Referents

The ballad. It was the main journalistic publication in the 16th century written in verse. Its aim
is to inform about wars, murders, natural or supernatural events. Criminal’s biographies (it
usually ends in bloody executions). There is an important emphasis on realism and novelty.

New books and pamphlets. It is the main journalistic publication in the 17th century written in
prose. It is the continuity of an ideological message.

Autobiographies and diaries. First person narrator appears in many novels to give appearance
of reality.

Travel and adventure books. Accounts of real journeys and fictional narrations (with
emphasis on the truth).

Main authors and texts

1. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

He began as a journalist, writing pamphlets. He was very interested in making us believe that
his stories were truth. Very precise with dates and details. He had a tendency to write in the first
person to make the effect that it is autobiographical and more likelihood that this happened. His
main works were Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722), a picaresque novel.

Robinson Crusoe was an immediate success and is one of the most famous stories in the world.
There are many versions and film adaptations. It is based on the real story of Selkirk, who was
on a desert island for many years.

The protagonist is Robinson Crusoe who suffers a shipwreck and he is the only one who
survives. He lives on a desert island for 28 years. It is a simple story, but with mythical qualities
(fable of survival, mirror of characteristic of Western civilisation, colonization where Europeans
submit other cultures and make them slaves…)

Robinson is presented as ‘homo economic’, a practical mal: he rescues several useful things
from the boat before it sinks. The author reflects the European man as a practical one but only
looks for a relation of submission and not friendship.

Moll Flanders is an English version of the picaresque novel, but the protagonist is a woman.
Moll is a woman who has been prostitute, thief, committed incest, and been to prison.
Comparing with the heroic romances the protagonist now is a criminal and not a model person
which everyone must follow. Later, she reforms and changes her life: happy ending. The novel
stress in the possibility of change even if you are a criminal.

It has a moral point of view about ways of living and an emphasis on economic survival: she
has to survive because everything depends on money. So for this, she has to robe and to be a
prostitute.

3
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

2. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)

He was very successful and popular in his own time. However, nowadays, he is only read by
scholars. He wrote epistolary novels (in the form of letters). Epistolary novels were very
important in the 18th and 19th centuries. It has not narrator voice, consists just in letters.

His main works:

- “Pamela” (1740)
o Typical heroine of the time: she is poor but a good woman. She had the prodigy
of virtue, she does not allow that someone seduces her (ethic-moral idea)
o Plot. Pamela works in the house of Mr. B. who tries to seduce her. She resists at
the beginning, but in the end, Mr. B. marries her.
o Capital letters represent the idea of realism.
o Message: when you ignore temptation, you receive a good reward, for instance:
finally, Pamela marries to Mr. B. (something very important for Pamela and her
future)
o Subtitle: Virtue rewarded.
o The ending was seen as too artificial.
o Several themes:
▪ Strong men and weak women.
▪ The power of sex.
▪ The social need for good behaviour. Pamela is a model of what women
must do.

- “Clarissa” (1747-1749)
o One of the longest novels in English (eight volumes, over a million of words)
o Darker story than Pamela: Clarissa Harlowe (wealthy lady) becomes involved
with Lovelace (handsome but not wealthy). They escape, Lovelace rapes
Clarissa. Clarissa dies and Lovelace is killed in a duel.
o Pamela is the opposite of Clarissa: what we should not do.
o Important aspect: Richardson’s attention to psychology.
▪ The interest is not just in the plot (as in Moll Flanders), but in the
psychological depth of the characters.
▪ Attention to Clarissa’s feelings, sentiments, mental state, psychological
pressure.

4
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

3. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

He began writing for the theatre: satirical. But when he notes the success of novel, he dedicated
to it. When he turned to the novel, he wrote in reaction against Richardson. Whereas Richardson
examined female ideas and circumstances, Fielding examined male points of view.

He made a parody of “Pamela”: Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews: Pamela’s brother (1742).
Both are servants. It is a satirical portrait. It is a reversal situation: in this case, Joseph is like
Pamela and he is being harassed by Shamela, his boss. It is the same that happens to Pamela,
who is being harassed by Mr. B.

Fielding considered himself an imitator of Cervantes. He called his novels “comic epics in
prose”; that is, we will follow a hero and his adventures. He is the main character. Epic is
usually serious but in this case we can find a comic epic.

- He follows his heroes through long, complicated epic journeys.

- Emphasis on the experiences that the heroes go through, and on how they form their
character.
- They are always from side to side, show us their ways of thinking, their personalities…
They also learn: journey represents the development of their knowledge.

He has a wide range of comic characters:

- Fielding helped to define the tradition of the English comic novel.

- He has the purpose of entertain more than a didactic purpose.

He uses the 3rd person narrator, sometimes intrusive (the narrator addresses to the readers and
make comments).

His main works (he shows interest in male characters and their surnames appear):

- Joseph Andrews (1742)

o The protagonist is Pamela’s supposed brother.
o There is a servant and his mistress tries to seduce him.
o During his comic adventures, Joseph comes to understand human nature better.
He learns a lot of things during these adventures.

- Tom Jones (1749)

o It focused on the adventures of Tom Jones, a founding (boy found in a rich
man’s property)
o Like Joseph Andrews, episodic structure (like Don Quixote)
o Both novels have a happy ending. That is, it is not necessary to be very virtuous
to have a happy ending.

5
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

4. Aphra Behn (1640-1689)

Women had been writing since the middle ages. During the 17th and 18th centuries, women were
the greatest part of the readership and there is an increase in the number of women writers
(mainly novelists). The tendency of this time was the anonymous works and the use of
pseudonyms. However, women writers were considered like something scandalous, because of
this they used male pseudonyms, for instance Jane Eyre, by Bronte sisters.

Aphra Behn is considered to be the first professional woman writer. “All women together ought
to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to
speak their minds”, by Virginia Woolf.

She wrote about thirty novels:

- Love letters between a Nobleman and his sister (1683). It is an epistolary novel.
- Oroonoko (1688). Her most famous novel. It is inspired by Behn’s visit to Surinam
(South America). The protagonist is the royal prince Oroonoko, who is captured and
sent as a slave to the English colony of Surinam. In this novel, she protests against slave
trade and the power of colonialism.

5. Mary Delarivier Manley (1663-1724)

Like Behn, she was seen as a controversial and scandalous woman. In her novels we can find
political satire. She used false names for real characters, to tell scandalous stories about political
and personal enemies. She saw the role of women in society from a liberal point of view.

Her novels have some characteristics:

- They show the struggle between both sexes.

- They are collections of stories rather than well-structured pots.
- “The secret history of Queen Zarah” (1706). It includes notes with every part to
explain the references to real-life characters.
- “The new Atalantis” (1709). It has a strong political focus and deals with controversial
themes like rape, incest and homosexuality.

6
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

ESSAY AND COMMENTARY

1. Academic style. You must use formal vocabulary, without contractions. Something
important is the use of connectors. One paragraph has to have at least two sentences.

ORGANIZATION OF THE ESSAY

- Importance of planning and scheduling

- Outline
- Structure of the academic essay: circular
o Introduction
▪ General statement
▪ Author. Main idea. The aim of your essay.
o Body (major section)
▪ It is very important the quotation. If you cannot do it, you should
paraphrase.
▪ It is essential to avoid summarize in your essay, it does not consist on
this.
o Conclusion (going back to the introduction)
▪ Its goal is to demonstrate the success of your essay.

THE COMMENTARY

1. Identification: author, title, period, and part of the novel the text comes from (volume 1,
2, 3, or beginning, body or ending)
2. Narrator (person, perspective) and characters (brief descriptions about them)
3. Theme(s) and relevance in relation to the novel as a whole.
4. Figures of speech, language, and any other significant aspect (metaphors, symbols…)
5. FINAL SENTENCE: this passage is very important because…

7
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

UNIT 2
THE ENGLISH NOVEL IN THE 19 TH CENTURY

Context

- British Empire
- Romanticism. This literary movement into Europe happens during the first part of the
nineteenth century and it is characterised by the romantic poetry.
- Queen Victoria and Victorianism (Victorian period in England).
- The Great Exhibition: Crystal Palace is a sign of richness. It was burnt.
- Charles Darwin and the crisis of faith.
- Heyday of the novel (Golden Age)
- Impressionism in pictures.
- Inventions: telegraph, telephone, electric light bulb, photography, motion picture
camera.

The Regency period

It corresponds to the period of George IV’s regency (1811-1820).

George III
George IV William IV Queen Victoria
(madness)

There are some terms within this period:

- Regency: pre-Victorian (from the end of 18th century to 1837 (Queen Victoria))
- Revolutionary period (French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars)
- Romanticism. A European movement which started in Germany and then spread to
England and the rest of Europe. It is difficult and complex to define because it has
particularities in each country and in each author.

Romantic Age (Romanticism) vs. Age of Reason (Enlightenment)

Romanticism puts special emphasis on:

- Imagination (vs. reason)

- Emotion, showing your feelings (vs. restraining your feelings)
- Rebellion: the Romantics do not conform to the established rules.
- Importance of the ante-hero (vs. glorification of the hero)

8
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

Romantic Age (Romanticism) Age of Reason (Enlightenment)

The hearts controls the head The head controls the heart

Reason and intellect are dangerous Imagination and feelings are dangerous

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow Poetry is the imitation of human life

manipulated by the author to instruct of
powerful feelings

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817)

She was born in the South of England, where she spent most of her life. She was daughter of a
clergyman. Belonging to a large family, she has a close relationship with her sister Cassandra.
Her life was not very exciting: she remained single, at home, and travelled a little. Austen was
fond of writing letters, and began writing very early.

Her novels have some characteristics:

- Influenced by Fanny Burney who made fashionable the “coming-out novel”

- She does not write openly about the Napoleonic atmosphere
- She focus on three or four families in a country village
- Interest in the moral, social and psychological behaviour of her characters.
- The protagonists of her novels are young heroines as they grow up and search for
personal happiness. Austen gives them choices and shows how and why they make the
choices. Her observation of people applies to human nature in general.
- She began writing letters.

Her main works are:

1. Sense and Sensibility (1811)

The sense is represented by Elinor (reason) and the sensibility, by Marianne (heart).
There is a contrast between both sisters: Elinor is self-controlled and Marianne is
emotional.

2. Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. Mansfield Park (1814). It deals with controversial issues like colonialism.
4. Emma (1816). The heroine is economically and emotionally independent.
5. Northanger Abbey (1818: posthumous). It is a parody of the Gothic novel.
6. Persuasion (1818: posthumous). It is basically a love story.

9
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

The Victorian Age

This period is associated with qualities identified with Queen Victoria herself:

- Moral responsibility.
- Domestic propriety.

It is a period of expansion and changes: England becomes the most powerful country.

- London is the main city with a modern urban economy.

- The effects of the industrialisation: increase in wealth, new developments (railways,
telegraph, photography…) and more social problems.
- The Colonial expansion (more than ¼ of the whole territory).
- The Great Exhibition (1851)
- Climax of Victorianism: 1890s (the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee). In 1876, Queen
Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India.
- Debates about religion: two sources
o The scientific attitude is applied to the study of the Bible.
o Discoveries in geology, astronomy, and biology.
▪ In geology (Charles Lyell): the history of the Earth is extended
backwards millions of years. Man is significant.
▪ Biology (evolution). Thanks to The Origin of Species, by Charles
Darwin, there is a reconsideration of the biblical concept of creation.

The Victorian Age as the Age of the Novel

- Victorian fiction is still in print and read by the general public.

- Both qualitative and quantitative greatness.
- Key year: 1847-8
o Thackeray, Vanity Fair.
o Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son.
o Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
o Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.
- Instalments or “three-deckers”. They are novels published in three volumes.
- The public was middle class woman.
- The main function of novels was to entertain and to teach. The narrator can give a
message to the rider. In Jane Eyre the narrator sometimes give comments.

10
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

The Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne) were very influenced by two main facts:

- Family situation
- Landscape of their home (moors: Yorkshire, north of England)

A) Family situation:

- Economic difficulties. They were sent to a boarding school, they worked as school
mistresses and governess (reflected in Jane Eyre).
- Early death of their mother and two eldest sisters; also difficulties with their brother
Branwell (heavy drinker).
- As a response to these problems they have a very powerful imagination: they “create”
the “Empire of Angria”.

B) Landscape:

- They spent a lot of time in the north of England, a remote isolated, harsh and gloomy
place. They spent most of their lives there but in the early 1840, Charlotte and Emily
spent some time in Brussels, where they learnt French and other accomplishments and
also training to be teachers.

They died very young (39, 30, 29 years old)

The first publication was poems by the three sisters, under the male pseudonym Currer Bell.

- Two unreliable narrators

- It was not very popular at the time: strange for the
Victorian taste
- It is very sophisticated and modern because of the
characteristics of 20th century.
Wuthering Heights, - It is a novel of passion.
Emily Brontë
- Central characters live out their passion in the windy,
rough countryside of Yorkshire.
- It is considerd to be very original
- The action moves backward and forward in time
- The perspective moves in and out of the characters' mind.

11
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)

Charles Dickens was very popular and famous writer in the Victorian period. He is one of the
best-known and most widely read of English writers nowadays.

We have two images of Dickens:

- Creator of the Christmas spirit (fire, domestic virtues, motherly women): A Christmas
Carol (1843)
- A great social critic: “Dickensian squalor”: Oliver Twist (1837-38)

An adjective was created from his name: “Dickensian”. What is the real meaning? Dickensian
can signify sentimentality, attentiveness to the social conditions, a cast of comically hyperbolic
characters, a reliance on plot contrivances, or even simply a book’s sheer length.

➢ Attention to children’s suffering + criticism of institutions

➢ Lower-middle class family
➢ He spent most of his life in London: great writer of the city
➢ Expectations of education, but…
o Work in a factory (humiliation)
o Short-hand writer at the House of Commons (contempt for politics)
➢ Journalist
➢ Novelist, short-story writer, editor, letter writer
➢ Wide range of writing: from comedy to social criticism, and from history to
journalism

Novels and main titles

- Published in monthly instalments

- Extremely popular and successful: public readings and performances

Main titles:

1. The Pickwick Papers (1836-7). His first success. It is about a gentleman’s club, with an
episodic structure.
2. Oliver Twist (1837-8). It focuses on Oliver’s suffering in a workhouse and the portrait
of the criminal life in London.
3. David Copperfield (1849). It is partly autobiographical. A very positive
Bildungsroman: happy ending (economic success and happy marriage).
4. Bleak House (1852-3). There is a combination between 3rd (in present) and 1st (in past)
person narrator. It is a criticism of the Chancery (legal institution).
5. Hard Times (1854). It shows the worst sides of the new industrial society. A very
pessimistic picture of the nation.
6. A Tale of Two Cities (1859). It sets in London and Paris and it is about the French
Revolution.

12
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

FINAL UNIT
20TH CENTURY
The period of the English novel in the twentieth century is divided into two parts:

- First half of the 20th century → Modernism

- Second half of the 20th century → Postmodernism

FIRST PART OF THE 20 TH CENTURY

These are the main influences on Modernist literature:

- The importance of intuition; we are moving away from the objective to the intuitive
perspective. There is also a challenge to established values: the writer has to rely on
his/her own intuition.
- The characters are not types or stereotypes: they have a highly individual personality.
- Time is seen in a very different way. It does not depend on external events, but on the
individual’s interior (this is the opposite to what we saw in the previous century, where
Bildungsroman exists). It is subjective: a continuous flow of your interior
consciousness. Multiple realities and points of view. It appears the concepts of flash-
backs and flash-forwards: constantly looking back and forth. Centrality of memory.
- Focus on consciousness. Influence of psychology and psychoanalysis: the working of
our minds. Centrality in the ‘inner life’: several simultaneous levels, crucial role of the
past and memory. Stream of consciousness technique: journey through the character’s
thoughts and feelings.

MODERNIST FICTION

According to David Lodge, it is possible to establish some characteristics about this fiction:

- It is experimental or innovative in its form. That is, the way in which novels are written
is new, different.
- They are concerned with consciousness; the subconscious workings of the human mind.
- There is a disruption of the traditional chronological structure and a special attention to
introspection, reflection, thoughts, feelings…
- As in Great Expectations, we can see an open/ambiguous ending.
- Since there is no narrative structure, the arrangement depends on images, motifs and
symbols.
- The narrator has changed to a no omniscient and reliable narrator.

13
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

SECOND PART OF THE 20 TH CENTURY

This part of the century corresponds to Postmodernism. Authors continue experimenting and
they go in depth in the intertextuality.

There are some key ideas about Postmodernism:

• Complex self-consciousness about the writing of history itself. They consider history
and literature as fiction, artificial: postmodernists realises that everything is a lie and
each author has his own truth.
• To understand the present depends on the understanding of the past. They are all the
time coming back to the past. Postmodernist writers say that it is impossible to
understand this world if we do not understand the past.
• The necessity of keeping past literatures alive. Nothing is original: all what is going to
be written is an echo of the past. So, there is no independent texts: any text is created
based on earlier texts. There is a weaving of allusions and quotations resonating with
other writers’ voices and echoes, what leads to intertextuality.

This term refers that the understanding of a text depends on the understanding of others. Within
the intertextuality, we find the most recurrent form in which authors represent it: rewriting.

- Its aim is a revision of canonical history and literature.

- The process of rewriting is to retell the history and literature from different points of
view.
- Its result is the creating of a new perspective and dialogues between the original and the
final texts.

14
ENGLISH LITERATURE: NOVEL

WIDE SARGASSO SEA (1966)

It was written by Jean Rhys (1890-1979) and it is a rewriting of Jane Eyre (a prequel).

The protagonist is Bertha Mason, “the other” dangerous outsider that has to be silenced.

Rhys’ goals in writing this novel:

- To explore what is behind the relationship of Mr. Rochester and Bertha in Jane Eyre.
- To portray the reality that is behind the prejudiced views of the colonial world in
canonical literature:
o Set in the West Indies, except for part three, which is in Thornfield.
o Use of Caribbean English and the portrait of the cultural world of the West
Indies Colonies.

The novel in told from two perspectives:

- Bertha’s first person account

o She describes her childhood, the beginning of her married life, the confinement
at Thornfield Hall.
- Her husband’s perspective (part two)
o He is never called Rochester; He emphasizes on the clash between the English
and the West Indian Cultures.

15