Page 188 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

Unit 24: The Nineteenth Century (Dickens, Hardy, Women Novelists)

organic plot, a plot in which every incident and character forms an integral part of the whole. Notes
Thackeray’s plots, though much better constructed than those of Dickens, are still loose and
theatrical. There is much superfluity even in Vanity Fair and much that is unconvincing and
artificial.

It’s Entertainment Value
Still, the Victorian novel makes interesting reading. The novelists may not construct a compact
plot, but they tell the story so well. They are so entertaining, that children still love to read and
enjoy a novel of Dickens or Thackeray. The plot may be improbable, but there is enough of
suspense, and the readers’ attention is not allowed to flag even for a single moment. They do not
like to give it up unfinished.

Its Panoramic Value

The Victorian novelists may miss the heights and depths of human passion, there may be no
probing of the human heart and soul, and no psycho-analysis as in the modern novel, but they cast
their nets very wide. Novels like Vanity Fair are not, like most modern novels, concentrated
wholly on the life and fortunes of a few principal characters: they also provide panoramas of
whole societies. Thus in Vanity Fair the action ranges from the city to the town, from London to
Brighton, from England to France, Brussels, and other countries of Europe. “

Did u know? A hundred different types and classes, persons and nationalities, jostle each
oilier across the shadow screen of our imagination.

Its Immense Variety

The Victorian novelist is a man of varied moods. His range of mood is as wide as his range of
subject. Just as he deals with all aspects of society, so also he renders human moods in all their
manifold variety. He is not a specialist in any one mood or temper. The novelists of the age cannot
be categorised. As David Cecil puts it, “They write equally for the train journey and for all time;
they crowd realism and fantasy, thrills and theories, knockabout farce and effects of pure aesthetic
beauty; check by jowl on the same page; they are Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Huxley and Mrs. Woolf,
Mrs. Christie and Mr. Woodhouse, all in one. A book like David Copperfield is a sort of vast
schoolboy hamper of fiction : with sweets and sandwiches, pots of jam with their greased paper
caps, cream and nuts and glossy apples, all packed together in a heterogenous deliciousness.”

Imaginative Rendering of Reality

Not only have the Victorian novelists width and range of subject and mood, not only are they
entertaining story-tellers, they have also creative imagination in ample measure. Their imagination
works on their personal experiences and transforms and transmutes them. Their renderings of the
real world are not photographs, but pictures, coloured by their individual idiosyncrasies vivid
and vital. Often the picture is fanciful and romantic. At other times, it sticks close to the facts of
actual existence, but these facts are always fired and coloured by the writer’s individuality. The act
of creation is always performed. Dickens is, “the romancer of London streets”, and Thackeray, too,
transports us to an entirely new world, call it Vanity Fair or Thackeray land, or what you will. His
creative imagination works on the selling of his story and transforms it.

Dramatic and Picturesque
This creative imagination is also seen at work on the incidents or the stories of the Victorian
writers. They linger long in the memory because they have been made dramatic and picturesque
by the imagination of the novelist. We get many such dramatic and picturesque scenes in Hardy.

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