INTRODUCTION Victorianism is an impressive historical and cultural reality, defined by measures and attitudes wich opened the way

to modern economy, democracy and education. Victorian literature provides a model for what in each age is the simultaneous opposition to and assimilation of preceding modes of thinking, creating and existing. The pattern of Victorianism consists of a diversity of convergent and divergent tendencies. The age when it was regarded in terms of middle-class complacency and conventionalism and of reactions against that spirit is past. Victorianisn is the meeting-point of tradition and modernity and a point of reference for contemporary culture. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the classical models were for the preceding ages, Victorianism is for twentieth-century British literature and thinking. The literature of the age has been reorganized according to its main genres: the essay, the novel and poetry. The novel as the most comprehensive and dynamic literary form, and closest to the rapid changes in the Victorian age, has been given special attention. The intention has been to highlight the continuity between the ages, and to show that Victorian literature contains the fundamental elements for the elaboration of contemporary literary concepts and principles.1 A scientific paper about Victorianism involves a consideration of a diversity of views about a glorious epoch in English cultural history, and an analysis of the contradictory feelings that it has stirred in those concerned with its achievements and decline. Those who lived in the age of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901) were witnesses of an unprecedented material and scientific progress. But for some of them Victorianism was associated with cultural decline and anarchy of spirit. In the first decades of our century it came to denote traditionalism. An attempt to define and interpret Victorianism is doubtless difficult. An immense amount of information, often contradictory and even debatable, discourages one's attempt to give a final interpretation of the age. Lytton Strachey believed that the history of the Victorian age, would never be written: It would have been futile to hope to tell even a prcis of the truth about the Victorian age, for the shortest prcis must fill innumerable volumes.2 He compared his task to the lowering of a bucket into an ocean wich would bring up to the light of day, some characteristic specimen from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity.3 In the Victorian age England became highly industrialized and a modern economy was developed. The force of steam power was developed. The force of steam power was used for
1

Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom (editors), Victorian Prose and Poetry, London: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 3 2 Arthur Pollard (editor), The Victorians, London: Sphere Books Ltd, 1970, p. 25 3 Ibidem, p. 27

railways, printing presses and a merchant fleet which had no equal in the world. England invested in all continents and was the world 's banker. But too great and emphasis upon the material gains of the epoch, on utilitarianism and on the economic theories of the Manchester School, in no way explains the essence of the age. But one important thing is that age thought of itself as being an entity. Similitudes have been established with the Elisabeth age because of this sense of entity, the spirit of adventure and the magnitude of achievement. Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom believe that as we read Victorian literature we feel that no national epoch was ever so aware of its existence as this one, so filled with the sense of having a particular destiny, even of being charged with a unique mission.4 Victorianism denotes not only an epoch but also a cultural phenomenon whose significance transcends the limits ot the age. It might be defined by the complementary action of opposite tendencies: individualism and self-denial, material pursuits and idealization of existence, the influence of science ant the force of religion. With William Makepeace Thackeray's fiction the realism of the Victorian age gains in comic invention, scathing irony and subtle psychological observation, elements which compose an original, panoramic view of life. Thackeray is not only a judge of the way of the world, but a commentator of the literature of his time too, a defender of realism against romantic modes of expression. Thackeray steps into the text as a creator and commentator of his own work. He is aware that the reader as a recreator and critic of the same work might share with him the dilemmas of artistic creation. He bridges the gap between the once divine or secret act of creation and the reader's response to it, revealing the elements of genesis of his fictional work and his own condition as a writer. He strips reality of sham values, taking a stand against sentimentalism, cheap idealization of life, the vanities and follies of humanity. His commentary creates the intellectual atmosphere of his novels and links the past with the present, in an attempt to give a picture of mankind of all times, with its deceits springing from false values and imagination. Whether as a writer or a character in his own stories, Thackeray is a spectator of the world, an ironic comentator who sometimes becomes emotionally involved in the destinies of his characters. In no other case is the power and speculative quality of the omniscient narrator so obvious as in Tackeray's novel.

Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom (editors), p. 5