The commonest form of fiction as a genre is the novel. Fiction comes from the Latin word fingere; in fact it depicts imaginary events and characters. However, even though its characters and actions are imaginary, they are in some sense representative of real life, since they bear an important resemblance to the real. The novel is written in prose, rather than verse, although a novel can include very poetic elements as far as its language is concerned. The novel is a narrative: in other words it is a telling, it has characters, actions, and a plot. Finally the novel involves an investigation of an issue of human significance whose complexity requires a certain length.

It was in the XVIII century that the novel as we know it nowadays established itself as an independent and successful genre, distinct from the prose fiction of the past.

The conditions that favoured the rise of the new genre were both social and cultural. Among them were:

. the growth in power — both economic and political — of the middle classes and their search for a cultural identity and their need to create for themselves a code of conventions, both social and literary, distinct from that of the still influential aristocracy;

. the contemporary rise of journalism — The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711) — which offered a dignified expression to the needs and aspirations of the emerging middle-classes.

. the sudden growth of the reading public and particularly women readers. The growth was due partly to the diffusion of newspapers, and partly to the increasing affluence of the middle class, which could now afford many and more expensive books;

. the growing demand for novels after the creation of circulating libraries. Their moderate subscription fees increased the number of readers, thus starting continuous cyclical process of supply and demand;

. the influence of Descartes' and Locke's philosophical realism which — in the second half of the previous century — had posited the superiority of the individual experience over tradition and stated that truth can be achieved by the individual through his senses.

All these conditions favoured the development of a narrative method which aimed at a realistic characterization of time, place and characters, and which met the demand of the middle-classes for a literary genre in which they could recognize their set of values and their view of the world.

If realism meant imitation of human life at its average, the first novels pretended to be authentic accounts of actual human experiences of individuals who had all the characteristics of their readers.

The 18th- century novelist was the spokesman of the middle classes; the novel was primarily concerned with everything that could affect social status and it was mainly directed to a bourgeois public.

So the plots which had traditionally formed the backbone of English literature for centuries — plots taken from history, legend, and mythology — were abandoned. The writer's primary aim was no longer to satisfy the standards of patrons and the literary elite, but to write in a simple way in order to be understood even by less well- educated readers. Since it was the bookseller and not the patron who rewarded the writer, speed and copiousness became the most important economic virtues.

The story was particularly appealing to the practical-minded tradesman, who was self-made and self-reliant. The writer aimed at realism. The subject of the novel was always the `bourgeois man' and his problems. He was a definite 'character' and the hero of the narrative; he was generally the mouthpiece of his author and the reader was expected to sympathise with him. All the characters struggled either for survival or social success

The fact that characters were given contemporary names and surnames was something new and served to reinforce the impression of realism. The writer was omnipresent and the narrator omniscient, and he never abandoned his characters.

A chronological sequence of events was generally adopted by the novelists. Characters seemed to be very much rooted in a temporal dimension and references were made to particular times of the year or of the day. Great attention was paid to the setting. In previous fiction the idea of place had been vague and fragmentary; but in the new novels, specific references to names of streets and towns, together with detailed descriptions of interiors, helped render the narrative even more realistic.

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THE SETTING

The setting is the place and the time of the story.

Place setting can be interior or exterior and it deals with the description of the landscape, interiors and objects. Time setting usually refers to the time of the day, the season, the year; but it is important to be aware of the context within which the action of a novel takes place, so social historical factors are also important.

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STORY – PLOT

A narrative text is made up of a sequence of events, the 'story, that are not always presented in chronological order. The author can combine them in different ways using flashbacks, anticipation of events or digressions, or by omitting details of the story. This original sequence of events is the 'plot'.

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NARRATIVE MODES

The author chooses the way to tell his story using dialogue, description or narration.

Usually these modes are interwoven according to the writer's aim.

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POINT OF VIEW

Suppose you are watching the initial scene of a film in which a room is the setting. The camera may either take a panoramic view (= wide angle = obiettivo grandangolare) of the room or can slowly approach a door (zoom in), get into the room, linger on some details of the furniture or of the walls and finally take a panoramic view of the whole room. The camera can be considered to represent the point of view in a novel.

In the case of the panoramic view of the room, the camera represents the omniscient narrator's point of view; in the second case it represents the point of view of a character who has a partial and gradual perception of what surrounds him/her.

The point of view is, therefore, the angle from which a story or an episode or any aspect of the fictional reality is presented and narrated. It can be fixed — in this case it is generally the narrator's point of view —, or it can shift from the narrator to a character or from one character to another.

It is essential to define the difference between the narrative voice and the point of view. Read the following examples:

The wind caught the houses with full force.

Paul heard the wind catching the houses with full force.

In both sentences the narrative voice is the same, but the point of view differs: the first statement seems to lack a precise point of view, but we may say the point of view adopted is that of an external narrator. In the second statement the point of view is Paul's since the narrator says what Paul hears.

The point of view does not simply refer to the description or perception of facts and events, but also to their interpretation. Read these examples:

Mrs Morel was a puritan.

Her husband thought Mrs Morel was a puritan.

Even in this case the narrative voice is the same, but the point of view differs: in the first sentence it is the narrator's (narrative voice and point of view coincide); in the second the point of view adopted belongs to the character of her husband.

To sum up:

. narrative voice and point of view do not always coincide;

. the narrative voice belongs to the person who is speaking, be it an internal or an external narrator;

. the point of view regards the person who, inside the story, sees the facts, thinks and judges;

. indeed the point of view may vary more often than the narrative voice.

. The point of view can be fixed and therefore restricted, or it can be shifting from the narrator's to the character's, or from one character's to another's, as often happens in modern fiction.

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CHARACTERS

The presentation of a character can be 'direct' (through the description which the writer

makes of his/her personality and appearance) or 'indirect' (when the reader has to infer the features of the character from his/her actions, reactions and behaviour). Depending on their role in the story there can be major and minor characters.

HOW CAN CHARACTERS BE APPREHENTED BY THE READER?

First of all, a character is constituted by a combination of physical characteristics like height, handsomeness etc. and like the way he/she dresses; of psychological features like vanity, generosity, arrogance, prejudice etc. and of social definition in terms of social status and of social or family relationships with the other characters.

Secondly, a character is sometimes given a name which focuses on one distinctive aspect of his/her personality. For example in Clarissa Harlowe the name "Lovelace", which sounds like "without love" or "unable to love", immediately identifies the character of the libertine seducer of Clarissa.

Thirdly, a character is given individuality through the speech and thoughts that the novelist attributes to him/her.

Finally a character performs a role in the structure of the plot. If he disappeared, the plot itself would be seriously impaired.

Characters and events are the essential elements of any story and their interaction forms the subiect matter of any fictional narrative. Their various combinations and the relative predominance which is assigned to them in turn creates the most remarkable differences between one novel and another. For example an adventure novel will privilege action (the events) and will not waste much attention on psychological characterization.

FLAT CHARACTERS AND ROUND CHARACTERS

A further distinction can be made between 'round' and 'flat' characters. The former change their personality as the narration develops and can even influence the plot; the latter do not change throughout the story and are the so-called 'stereotypes'.

Flat characters are like photographs: they can be easily recognised because they are always identical to themselves. They are characterised by one particular feature, either physical or psychological or linguistic, and they never change their behaviour or way of speaking, however the situation may change. They are not subject to evolution. They can be also called types and they represent the typical in human nature.

Round characters, on the other hand, are modified by events and in their turn modify events; they have a multiplicity of features that make them life-like; they grow and evolve in parallel with the progression of the story.

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Da Only Connect

C37 DANIEL DEFOE

C38-39-40 Robinson Crusoe

C47 Moll Flanders

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Da Only Connect

C60 SAMUEL RICHARDSON

C61 Pamela or Virtue Rewarded

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THE SHORT STORY

The term short story is generally applied to almost any kind of fictitious prose narrative briefer than a novel, capable of being read in one sitting, as Poe said.

This brief section analyses the features of the short story as a genre distinct from the novel. Although length is the obvious distinguishing feature which separates the novel from the short story, it is by no means the only one. Edgar Allan Poe, besides writing remarkable short stories, was the first theorist on the genre.

PARTICULAR FEATURES OF THE SHORT STORIES

The short story typically limits itself to a brief span of time, and rather than showing its characters developing and maturing, it shows them at some revealing moments of crisis, whether internal or external.

Since the setting is often simplified or circumscribed, much skill of the short-story writers has to be devoted to rendering atmosphere and situation convincingly. Very often they will use a key-note to elicit the reader's curiosity and interest.

Short stories rarely have complex plots; the focus is upon a particular episode or situation rather than a chain of events. The plot usually develops according to a regular pattern:

In the introduction the author usually presents the setting and the characters.

The key-note — usually an incident, a crisis or, as often occurs in Poe's tales, an animal or an object arouses the reader's interest and serves as a catalyst to the development of the story.

The climax often comes unexpected and has the function of creating surprise in the reader.

The conclusion of the story can vary: it can imply a change as regards the initial situation, the solution of the conflicts, the achievement of the character's aim, his/her failure or even death; it can re-establish the initial situation; it can be open, leaving the conflicts unresolved. In this case the story is meant to continue beyond the limits of fiction.

In about two centuries, the short story has developed into different forms and many famous writers have written collections of stories that represent an important step in their careers, such as James Joyce.

Illustration for The Murders in the Rue Morgue. by Guido Crepax, 1963.

The fantastic tales of Edgar Allan Poe have inspired illustrations in different artistic styles, including contemporary cartoons: in the sequence details from the tale are strikingly highlighted.

Crepax

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THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE

It is the period covered by the reign of Victoria (1832-1901).

The particular situation, which saw prosperity and progress on the one hand, and poverty, ugliness and injustice on the other, which opposed ethical conformism to corruption, moralism and philanthropy to money and capitalistic greediness, and which separated private life from public behaviour, is usually referred to as the "Victorian Compromise". However, it also aroused the concern of more and more theorists and reformers who tried to improve living conditions at all levels, including hospitals, schools and prisons.

The word Victorian has come to be used to describe a set of moral and sexual values. The Victorians were great moraliser, probably because they faced numerous problems on such a scale that they felt obliged to advocate certain values which offered solution or escape. As a rule the values they promoted reflected not the world as they saw it the harsh social reality around them, but the world as they would have like it to be.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The Victorians were proud of their welfare, of their good manners and of their middle-class values, and tended to ignore the problems which still afflicted England. There was, in fact, a part of society mainly the working class, among which misery and distress were still widespread. The new urban conditions, made worse by growth of slums, had created a lot of health problems. Whole families were often crowded in single rooms, where lack of hygiene occasionally led to cholera. Poverty, whether the result of bad luck or thoughtless behaviour, was considered a crime and penalized as such. Debtors, for example, were still punished with jail, and life in prison was appalling. Education, too, had its problems. Teachers were often incompetent and corporal punishment was still regularly applied to maintain discipline.

RESPECTABILITY

The idea of respectability distinguished the middle from the lower class. Respectability was a mixture of both morality and hypocrisy, severity and conformity to social standards. Manners underwent a deep change in this period. Under the influence of Queen Victoria herself, the age turned excessively puritanical. Sex became a taboo subject, and all the words with vaguely sexual or "indelicate" connotation were driven out of every day language, or replaced by euphemisms. Manners and speech were to be retrained and sober, so that "respectability" became the key word of Victorianism.

THE VICTORIAN FAMILY

The somewhat conventional morality the time found its best expression inside the family, where the father proved even more authoritarian than before and the mother was to be submissive and fruitful. Victorian families were usually very big and the Queen herself proved a very prolific mother, with nine children. Middle-class women in general were to adhere to a strict code of behaviour, which expected them to be frail and pure, confined within the family walls. Rules and restrictions involved men too, who were forbidden to gamble, swear or drink. Appearance being very important, middle-class people's clothes tended to be very formal even in the privacy of family life.

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THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

During the Victorian Age there was for the first time a communion of interests and opinions between writers and their readers. One reason for this close relationship was the enormous growth of the middle classes who, although consisting of many different strata where literacy had penetrated in a heterogeneous way, were avid consumers of literature. They borrowed books from circulating libraries and read the various periodicals, which the age abounded in. Moreover, Victorian writers often belonged to the middle class.

A great deal of Victorian literature was first published in this form: essays, verse and even novels made their first appearance in instalments in the pages of periodicals, which allowed the writer to feel he was in constant contact with his public. He was obliged to maintain the interest of his story at certain levels, because one boring instalment would cause the public not to buy that periodical anymore; moreover he could always alter the story, according to its success or failure.

Reviewers also had a strong influence on the reception of literary works and on the shaping of public opinion.

The Victorians showed a marked interest in prose, and the greatest literary achievement of the age is to be found in the novel, which soon became the most popular form of literature and the main form of entertainment. The spread of scientific knowledge made the novel realistic and analytical, the spread of democracy made it social and humanitarian, while the spirit of moral unrest made it inquisitive and critical.

During the 18th century, novels generally dealt with the adventures either of a social outcast or a more virtuous hero, but their episodic structure remained the same.

In the 1840s novelists felt they had a moral and social responsibility to fulfil: they aimed at reflecting the social changes that had been in progress for a long time, Such as the Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democracy and the growth of towns.

The novelists of the first part of the Victorian period depicted society as they saw it, and, with the exception of those sentiments which offended current morals, particularly sex, no side of it escaped their scrutiny. They were aware of the evils of their society, such as the terrible conditions of manual workers and the exploitation of children. However, their criticism was much less radical than that of contemporaryEuropean writers, like Balzac, Flaubert, Turgenev and Dostoevsky, because the historical conditions of Britain were quite different from those of France or Russia.

As the Victorian novelists conceived literature also as a vehicle to correct the vices and weaknesses of the age, didacticism is one of the main features of their work. The voice of the omniscient narrator provided a comment on the plot and erected a rigid barrier between 'right' and 'wrong', light and darkness. Retribution and punishment were dutifully administered in the final chapter, where the whole texture of events, adventures, incidents had to be explained and justified.

The setting chosen by most Victorian novelists was the city, which was the main symbol of the industrial civilisation as well as the expression of anonymous lives and lost identities. In their effort to portray the individual motives for human action and all that binds men and women to the community, Victorian writers concentrated on the creation of characters. From the characters of Dickens's novels, two lines of development arose: the former moved towards a deeper analysis of the character's inner life; the latter, typical of later novelists, was nearer to the European development of 'Naturalism', an almost scientific look at human behaviour, upon which the narrator no longer had power to comment.

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JANE AUSTEN: Life and works

Jane Austen was born in 1775 in a small village in the southwest of England where her father was rector of the church. The sixth of seven children, she spent her short, uneventful life within the circle of her very close, affectionate family, and her lifelong, inseparable companion was her sister Cassandra who, like Jane, never married.

She was educated at home by her father, and showed an interest in literature and writing very early. In 1811 she published Sense and Sensibility , in 1813 Pride and Prejudice and in 1815 Persuasion…

All her novels had been published anonymously; her identity was revealed by her brother Henry. Jane's fame, however, was already well established among her contemporaries.

Jane Austen owes much to the 18th-century novelists from whom she learned the subtleties of the ordinary events of life, like balls, walks, tea-parties and visits to friends and neighbours. She restricted her view to the world of the country gentry which she knew best: "three or four country families", she said, "is the very thing to work on".

The traditional values of these families such as property, decorum, money and marriage, provided the basis of the plots and settings of her novels. She writes about the oldest England, based on the possession of land, parks and country houses; in her stories people from different counties get married as a result of growing social mobility.

Austen's treatment of love

Austen had no place for great passions, her real concern was with people, and the analysis of character and conduct. She remained fully committed to the common sense and moral principles of the previous generation. Her work is very amusing and, at the same time, deals with the serious matters of love, marriage, gossip, flirts, seductions, adulteries and parenthood. The happy ending is a common element to her novels: they all end in the marriage of hero and heroine. What makes them interesting is the concentration on the steps through which the protagonists successfully reach this stage in their lives.

Romantic love gives Jane Austen a focus where individual values can achieve high definition, usually in conflict with the social code that encourages marriages for money and social standing. Her treatment of love and sexual attraction is in line with her general view that strong impulses and intensely emotional states should be regulated, controlled and brought to order by private reflection, not in favour of some abstract standard of reason but to fulfil a social obligation.

Sense and Sensibility

The novel is about two two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood.

On the death of Mr Henry Dashwood, his estate passes to Mr John Dashwood. His widow and his three daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, move to Barton Cottage in Devonshire at the invitation of a distant relative. There Marianne falls in love with Willoughby, an attractive young man who seems to share her romantic tastes. They display their affection openly until he suddenly leaves for London. Elinor, had become fond of Edward Ferrars, but his family opposes their engagement because Elinor is not wealthy. When Elinor and Marianne go to London, they find out that Willoughby is going to marry an heiress and that Edward has been secretly engaged to Miss Lucy Steel for five years. After a period of distress, marked by Marianne's serious illness, the two sisters finally settle down. Edward goes to Barton to declare that Lucy has broken their engagement and married his brother^. Robert. Elinor and Edward get married and Marianne eventually becomes the wife of Colonel Brandon, a family friend who has always admired Marianne.

The title

The title shows the writer's interest in the impulses that move people to think and behave in certain ways. Elinor's sense makes her cautious when managing her own affairs and helps her promote the happiness of her family and friends. Marianne adopts sensibility as a doctrine which inclines her to artistic enthusiasm, rather than to sober judgement, and finally exposes her to betrayal and sorrow.

Characters

Elinor's scrupolous inner life is the dominant medium of the novel. She represents the author's conscience and is never a target of irony. It is easy to mistake her sense for coldness. Actually, through her portrait Austen shows that the complete human personality needs certain qualities in balanced proportion. Sense and sensibility; reason and passion complement each other in her. Elinor controls her emotions and regulate her behaviour according to the conventions of society, she achieves strength and balance of character. Marianne, on the contrary, does not try to please other people, she refuses to conform. She is lively, sensitive, intelligent, but she is inclined to rely on first impressions. However, she gradually acquires sense and settles down by prudent middle-class marriage.

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Charles DICKENS: Life and works

Dickens was born in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, in 1812. He had an unhappy childhood, since his father went to prison for debt and he had to work in a factory at the age of twelve. These days of suffering were to inspire much of the content of his novels. When he realised that he had a talent for writing, he taught himself shorthand and became a journalist at the Parliament and Law Courts. He adopted the pen name ‘Boz’

and his Sketches by Boz, a collection of articles describing London people and scenes, was published in the "Monthly Magazine" in 1836. It was immediately followed by The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, published in instalments, which demonstrate his humour and satire. Dickens's success continued with the novels, Oliver Twist (1838), David Copper field (1849-50), Little Dorrit (1857), which drew on his own childhood, and his journalism. He exposed the exploited lives of children

in the slums and factories. Other novels include Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854) and Great Expectations (1860-61). These novels are set against the background of social issues, highlighting the conditions of the poor and the working class.

He was also the busy editor of magazines, "Household Words" and later "All The Year Round" which published not only his own work but the writings of other novelists. He spent his last years travelling round giving theatrical readings of his own work. He died in 1870 and was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

The plots of Dickens's novels

Dickens was first and foremost a storyteller. His novels were influenced by the Bible, fairy tales, fables and nursery rhymes, by the 18th-century novelists and essayists, and by Gothic novels. His plots are well-planned even if at times they sound a bit artificial, sentimental, and episodic. Certainly the conditions of publication in monthly or weeldy instalments discouraged unified plotting and created pressure on Dickens to conform to the public taste.

London was the setting of most of his novels: he knew and described it in realistic details. At first, Dickens created middle class characters, though often satirised. He gradually developed a more radical social view although he was not a revolutionary thinker. He was aware of the spiritual and material corruption under the impact of industrialism and he became increasingly critical of society. In his mature works Dickens succeeded in drawing popular attention to public abuses, evils and wrongs by juxtaposing terrible descriptions of London misery and crime with amusing sketches of the town.

Characters

Dickens created caricatures. He exaggerated and ridiculed the peculiar social characteristics of the middle, lower and lowest classes, using their own voices and dialogue. His female characters, were weak, and black and white. He was always on the side of the poor and the outcast, and shifted the social frontiers of the novel: the 18th-century realistic upper middle-class world was replaced by the one of the lower orders.

A didactic aim

Children are often the most important characters in Dickens's novels. By giving instances of good children and worthless parents or hypocritical adults he reverses, in fiction, the natural order of things, by making children the moral teachers instead of the taught, the examples instead of the imitators. The novelist's ability lay both in making his readers love his children, and putting them forward as models of the way people ought to behave to one another. This didactic stance was very effective, since the result was that the more educated, the wealthier classes throughout England acquired a knowledge of their poorer neighbours of which many were previously ignorant. Dickens's task was never to induce revolution, or even encourage discontent, but to get the common intelligence of the country, in all its different classes alike, to alleviate undeniable sufferings.

Style and reputation

For these purposes he employed the most effective language and accomplished the most graphic and powerful descriptions of life and character ever attempted by any novelist, by means of a careful choice of adjectives, repetitions of words and structures, juxtapositions of images and ideas, hyperbolic and ironic remarks.

Fictions of the City

To read Dickens is to encounter an urban writer whose work does not only rely on the city for the setting of plot and character, but rather situates London at the centre of his fictions: it is the generator of plot and the determining element of scene and setting. In describing this London, he makes it our living presence.

Dickens's representations of lower-class life echo those of journalists of his time.

Oliver Twist - Plot

Oliver Twist first appeared in instalments in 1837 and was later published as a book. The novel fictionalizes the economic insecurity and humiliation Dickens experienced when he was a boy.

The name Twist, though it is given to the protagonist by accident, represents the outrageous reversals of fortune that he will experience. Oliver Twist is a poor boy of unknown parents; he is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. He is later sold to an undertaker as an apprentice, but the cruelty and the unhappiness he experiences with his new master get him to run away to London. There he falls into the hands of a nasty gang of young pickpockets, who try to make a thief out of him, but the boy is helped by an old gentleman. Oliver is eventually kidnapped by the gang and forced to commit burglary; during the job he is shot and wounded. It is a middle-class family that adopts Oliver and shows kindness and affection towards him, at last. Investigations are made about who the boy is and it is discovered he has noble origins. The gang of pickpockets and Oliver's half-brother, who paid the thieves in order to ruin Oliver and have their father's property all for himself, are arrested in the end.

London's life

The most important setting of the novel is London, which is depicted at three different social levels. First, the parochial world of the workhouse is revealed. The inhabitants of this world, belonging to the lower-middle-class stratum of society, are calculating and insensible to the feelings of the poor. Second, the criminal world is described with pickpockets and murderers. Poverty drives them to crime and the weapon they use to achieve their end is violence. They live in dirty, squalid slums with fear and generally die a miserable death. Finally, the world of the Victorian middle-class is presented. In this world live respectable people who show a regard for moral values and believe in the principle of human dignity.

The world of the workhouse

Dickens attacked the social evils of his times such as poor houses, unjust courts, and the underworld. With the rise in the level of poverty, workhouses run by parishes sprang up all over England to give relief to the poor. However, the conditions prevailing in the workhouses were appalling. Their residents were subject to a host of hard regulations: labour was required, families were almost always separated, and rations of food and clothing were meagre. The idea upon which the workhouses were founded was that poverty was the consequence of laziness and that the dreadful conditions in the workhouse would inspire the poor to get better their own conditions. Yet the economic dislocation of the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for many to do so, and the workhouses did not provide any means for social or economic improvement. Furthermore, as Dickens points out, instead of alleviating the sufferings of the poor, the officials who ran workhouses, abused their rights as individuals and caused them further misery.

David Copperfield Plot

David Copperfield is David's narration in his maturity of the events and incidents through which he remembers his life. The protagonist's recollections can be divided into three main parts:

- his childhood and early youth, starting with his birth in Blunderstone and ending when he completes his time at Strong's school in Canterbury (chapters 1-18);

- his later youth and early manhood, from looking for a career to the death of his first wife, Dora;

- his maturity, starting from his mourning for Dora and ending with his marriage to Agnes Wickfield and happy life afterwards.

Born a posthumous child to an immature and ineffectual mother, Clara Copperfield, David starts life in a state of happiness with his mother and his nurse, Peggotty. This condition is destroyed by the arrival of his cruel stepfather, Mr Murdstone, and his sister Jane. Eventually they drive Clara to an early grave because of their terrible 'firmness'. David is, then sent away to Salem House, a school far from home; here he is tormented and brutalised by Mr Crealde, the harsh, cruel headmaster. After his mother's death, he is consigned to Murdstone and Grinsby's wine warehouse in London where he works, experiencing poverty, despair and loneliness. He lives with the family of Mr Micawber, whose continual financial difficulties lead to his eventual imprisonment for debt.

Running away from this fate, David decides to reach his aunt Betsey in Dover. In spite of her eccentricity, she makes him grow up and dismisses the Murdstones from their responsibility for him. David concludes his education and looks for a career in London, where he starts to work at first as Doctor Strong's secretary and then as a parliamentary reporter. Later he becomes a successful writer, but he makes a disastrous marriage with Dora Spenlow, loses his inheritance from Aunt Betsey and is betrayed by his closest friend.

It is only at the very end of the novel, after his first wife's death and his own symbolic death and rebirth, that he marries his predestined love, Agnes Wickfield, and lives happily ever after.

Narrative technique

David Copperfield is a Bildungsroman, that is a novel that follows the development of the hero from childhood into adulthood, through a troubled quest for identity. The emotional identification of Dickens with David is very strong; trivial clues, like the use of his own initials in reverse, are interwoven into a more straightforward identification of careers. David, like Dickens, is a parliamentary reporter who becomes a literary man. By speaking in thefirst person, the author enjoyed all the pleasures of sentimental reminiscence. The protagonist of the novel functions also as narrator and the book is built as a fictional autobiography. David is never offstage: all the events and characters are revealed through his presence and consciousness.

The characters of the novel are both realistic and romantic; they are exaggerated, like all Dickens's figures, and characterised by a particular psychological trait, which can be a particular way of speaking, of moving and behaving.

Main themes

The first chapters of David Copper-field introduce the main themes of the whole novel:

- the struggle of the weak in society: David is an orphan and a victim, he stands for the uncertainty, the loneliness and the terrible evanescence which characterised the life of those people who were not helped by a cruel, competitive society;

- the great importance given by the respectable Victorians to strict education based on hard and physical punishment;

- cruelty to children who were exploited by the adults;

- the bad living conditions of the poor who lived in slums;

- the importance of social status: after a hard childhood David succeeds in improving his social condition thanks to his determination and perseverance.

- friendship and love leading to marriage.

Is David a hero?

The first five paragraphs raise a central question which is whether we are to regard David as the hero of the novel. The answer is both yes and no. David is not a hero in the ordinary sense of the term, since he is not an example of integrity who either by brave actions or spiritual strength defeats the forces of evil. In fact, his lack of discipline, romanticism and self-deception

· lead him to disaster. However he can be called a hero because he learns, through experience and suffering, how to improve his character and his circumstances. Realism and enchantment

· The pervading atmosphere of the novel is a combination of realism and

· enchantment. There is an apparent realism in the people, places and events of the story, but those protagonists are also imbued with the magic of a fairy tale.

· The Murdstones enter the scene like ogres; they fade away like a nightmare. Even Betsey Trotwood is in the tradition of the fairy godmother, omnipotent, wilful and kind. She has no human need to conform (not reflexive) to reality. All her prejudices are treated as admirable. Peggotty's brother's house belongs to fairytale and so does the account of the death of her husband, Barkis, who suddenly disappears.

· Uriah Heep, Wickfield's clerk, is a villain, a strange, repellent, sinister creature, unable to smile. Uriah hates David because David is the embodiment of what he might have been; on the other hand, David's attraction to Uriah is the human attraction to evil. By distorting reality and fantasy, Dickens helps us grasp reality and sharpen our awareness and knowledge of the external world.

· Throughout the book, there is no real pressure of reality, no logic of cause and effect. David, employed in a wine warehouse, needs a kind relative, money and education. He finds them. David wishes to marry Dora against her father's consent; so Dora's father suddenly dies. Dora is the type of feather-brained beauty who is only tolerable when she is young, and David needs to escape to the safe arms of his good angel, Agnes. So Dora too dies. Difficulties and dangers disappear like mist; and their main function seems to give that quickened sense of joy and relief which follows their miraculous removal.

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Charlotte BRONTË – Life - Jane Eyre

Jane is a penniless orphan, brought up at Gateshead by her cold and hostile aunt, Mrs Reed. Jane is then sent to Lowood Institution, a very strict school, where girls are not given enough food and clothing. When she grows up she becomes a teacher there but finally she decides to accept a job as a governess at Thornfield Hall where she soon falls in love with Mr Rochester, its owner. Her stay at the Hall is disturbed by strange noises and frightening events.

The traditional 'Gothic' convention is used, but in a personal way, from childhood terrors to all those mysterious and threatening sights and sounds that reveal the presence of some malevolent force and that anticipate the tragedy at Thornfield.

With Charlotte’s limited knowledge of the world, it should come as no surprise that the plot of her first published novel, Jane Eyre, contains many parallels to her own life. Regardless of her intentions while writing Jane Eyre, it is clear that Charlotte Brontë drew heavily on her own identity and experiences in creating the character of Jane.

Jane Eyre’s childhood seems in some respects to have been modeled after Brontë’s. Like Charlotte herself, Jane’s father was “a poor clergyman” .

Jane’s parents both died when she was a baby; whereas Charlotte’s father outlived all his children, their mother died when Charlotte was five years old. After Mrs. Brontë’s death, her unmarried sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moved in with the family to care for the six Brontë children. The parallels between Aunt Branwell and Mrs. Reed continue into adulthood.

Some parts of Jane Eyre’s childhood were taken directly from Charlotte Brontë’s memories; no matter how extreme seem the conditions of Lowood, the school is, in fact, intentionally modeled after Charlotte’s own experiences at Cowan Bridge.

The relationship between Jane and her employer, Mr. Rochester, may have also been suggested by events in Charlotte’s own life. During her stay in Brussels, Charlotte apparently fell in love with M. Heger, who was first her teacher, and then her employer, as she accepted a teaching position at the school at the end of her studies there.

That Charlotte Brontë drew on her own limited life experiences in the creation of Jane Eyre is demonstrated by the many parallels between Charlotte’s life and her heroine’s. Jane evinces many of the characteristics of her creator, to the point that Jane Eyre is a portrait of Charlotte herself. It is clear that Charlotte Brontë put not only her heart and soul into her writing, but her very life.

After spending some time at her aunt's deathbed, Jane returns to Thornfield and Rochester proposes to her. She agrees to marry him, but two nights before the wedding she wakes up and sees a figure standing by her bed and her wedding veil torn into two pieces. The wedding is interrupted by Richard Mason who declares that Rochester is already married to his sister Bertha Mason, a mad woman he married in the West Indies and who lives on the upper floor of the house, looked after by Grace Poole. Rochester asks Jane to stay with him, but she leaves Thornfield and goes to live with her cousins at Moor House. There she meets St. John Rivers, a religious man who plans to become a missionary and proposes to her. Jane refuses and one night she hears Rochester's voice calling her; she returns to Thornfield Hall only to find out that the house has been destroyed by a fire caused by Bertha, who then threw herself downstairs and died. Mr Rochester lost an eye and a hand in the attempt to save his wife from the fire; he now lives in Ferndean. Jane visits him and agrees to marry him. He finally recovers his sight just when their first child is born.

Mode of narration

The novel shows the consequences of childhood experience in the fully-grown character, and draws largely upon the author's own experience at the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, and at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels, where Charlotte fell in love with Mr Heger but was not reciprocated.

The use of the heroine as narrator is mainly responsible for the peculiar unity of Jane Eyre. All is seen from the point of view of the central character, with whose experience the author has identified herself, and invited the engagement of every reader. Jane continually occupies the centre, never receding into the role of mere reflector or observer. She gains awareness not by long introspection but by a habit of keeping pace with her own experience.

The story is told in the first person and the popularity of Jane Eyre as a subject for feminist criticism has in large part been due to its employment of a female first-person narrator. The language is straightforward and develops differently according to the style and mood of each character. This emotional use of language conveys the author's concern with the nature of human relationships. There are also repeated motifs, symbols, and images: the workings of the supernatural, important dreams, patterns of light and dark, oppositions of warmth and cold.

A woman's standpoint

From the day of its appearance Jane Eyre has been credited with having added something new to the tradition of the English novel. The new quality is the voice of a woman who speaks with perfect frankness about herself; but Jane Eyre is also remarkable for its passion and intensity, which is usually taken as sufficient to counteract what critics regard as a sensational and poorly constructed plot.

The novel described passionate love from a woman's standpoint in a way that shocked many readers. The public preferred women to be presented with something of the unreality of romance; above all the heroine should be beautiful and rich. Jane Eyre is moderately plain, and this made her very real; moreover, she falls in love with a man both rich and married to a mad wife.

Each section of the novel represents a new phase in Jane's experience and development. The protagonist's character is developed very clearly: she is intense, imaginative, passionate, rebellious, independent yet always looking for warmth and affection. She undergoes many struggles such as the conflicts between spirit and flesh, duty and desire, denial and fulfilment. The novel also establishes the theme of the outsider, the free spirit fighting for recognition and self-respect in the face of rejection by a class-ridden and money-oriented society.

A new perspective on characters

Even Jane is portrayed so as to evoke new feelings. As a girl she is lonely, 'passionate', 'strange’ she experiences a nervous breakdown; she can be ‘reckless and feverish'; at Thornfield she is restless, given to 'bright visions'. However, she is also strong-willed and responsible for her own decisions, like the final one to be Rochester's wife, which she tells the reader directly: "Reader, I married him."

So the author leads away from conventional characterisation towards new insights of human reality. In Rochester the old lustful villain is seen in a new perspective: (…) the stereotyped seducer becomes a kind of lost nobleman of passion who is attracted by Jane's soul and personality rather than by physical appearance.

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings….knitting stockings….playing on the piano….It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.-Ch. 12

The Woman Question

The Victorian period lasted more than half a century. During this time England changed radically in almost all respects. One of these was the rising consciousness of women about their rights and potentials. For the first time in English history, women became conscious of their capabilities and their rights. Soon, the social awareness was transmitted to literature. It was during the Victorian era that a series of changes - social, political and moral - swept all over England. One of these concerned the issues of gender inequality in politics, economic life, education and social intercourse for women known as the ‘Woman Question’. Within a few years it gained momentum and became just as grave an issue as evolution or industrialization.

With the spread of education and the contribution of the printing press, which reduced the cost of books greatly, the nineteenth century became the great age of the English novel, partly because the novel was the vehicle best equipped to present a picture of life and this is the kind of picture of life the middle class reader wanted to read about. Literature became the mirror of society.

The only woman in the political arena at the time was Queen Victoria who considered women’s suffrage (although as a ‘crazy idea’). Thus for a long time women remained second class citizens from the political point of view, along with millions of working class men. They finally attained the right to vote in 1918.

In addition to parliamentary reforms the feminists worked hard to enlarge educational opportunities for women. In 1837 none of England’s universities was open to women. By the end of the reign of Queen Victoria, women could take degrees at twelve universities and could study without earning a degree at Oxford and Cambridge. But before that, education for women was available only in schools such as Lowood School in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

A large number of women remained unmarried because of the imbalance between the number of men and women in the Victorian population. Having few employment opportunities and due to bad working conditions, many of these women were driven to prostitution. The only employment option for a middle-class Victorian woman, to earn a living, was to be employed as a governess.

In this socio-literary background, female writers - like Jane Austen, the three Brontë sisters and many others - choose as their female protagonists, women who would represent their thoughts and attitudes and that prefer capability to beauty. Charlotte makes Jane intentionally unattractive and not much gifted. But from the very first moment we meet the sickly, unloved child we are attracted by her love of reading.

When Rochester, failing to marry Jane legally, proposes to her to become his mistress, she not only refuses but also resigns her position in his house and finds another situation. This capacity to take responsibility in adverse situations was one of the chief features which gained women the rights they wished for. She later marries him when he is physically and financially reduced by the accident which kills his wife. Many readers were shocked that Rochester, who tried to make Jane his mistress, should be rewarded by marrying her. Some readers were also shocked because Jane wanted to be regarded as a thinking and independent person rather than a weak female. But here we must consider the fact that Rochester’s love for Jane was genuine, as she was neither attractive, nor able to pay a dowry, nor eligible for a man in his position when he first proposed to her.

Charlotte Brontë and her sisters, in spite of living deep in the bleak and barren Yorkshire moors, surprised the world by the consciousness, expressed in their work, of the ‘Woman Question’. They have won a permanent place in English literature by dint of the power and intensity of their work.

The sisters used their masculine pseudonyms. Almost all female writers of the period thought it fit to assume disguises in presenting themselves to the world as novelists. Thus, their anonymity was never officially broken during their lifetime. An opportunity for women in the late Victorian period was a career as a novelist. Besides that, there was the advantage of maintaining anonymity which made writing an attractive option for women who wanted to achieve something without exposing themselves to the criticism of society.

In retrospect we find that many women writers emerged to achieve their rights and to be given an opportunity to come out of the shells of quiet submission enforced upon them and achieve something of their own.

The best way to pay tribute to the predecessors of so many women who enjoy freedom all over the world today, is to go forward maintaining those moral and social bindings which once helped the Victorian women to break out of male tyranny and yet earn their respect.

_Pic6

NB la versione read – print – ePub* del romanzo Jane Eyre si trova presso:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bronte/charlotte/

* leggere sempre le note relative al copyright

Fonti:

Spiazzi Tavelli Only Connect Zanichelli

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Cody, David. Charlotte Brontë: A Brief Biography. 27 Nov 2004. Hartwick College.
Evans, Barbara and Gareth Lloyd. The Scribner Companion to the Brontës. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. 1857. 27 Nov. 2004.
http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/EG-Charlotte.html
Everett, Glenn. A Charlotte Brontë Chronology. 27 Nov. 2004. University of Tennessee
at Martin. 1987. http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/brontetl.html.
Miller, Lucasta. The Brontë Myth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
Nestor, Pauline. Charlotte Brontë. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books, 1987.
Peters, Maureen. An Enigma of Brontës. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974.

Joan Douglas Peters Feminist Metafiction and the Evolution ofthe British Novel University of Florida

Daiches, David (1969), A Critical History of English Literature, London, Secker and Warburg,

Volume IV, p 1064- 1065-1066

The Norton Anthology of English Literature (1993), New York, W.W. Norton and Company

Inc; Volume 2, p 902

14. ibid, p 1595

Basu, Nitish Kumar (1998), Advanced Literary Essays, Calcutta, Presto Publishers, p 315

Traversi, Derek (1996), The Bronte Sisters and Wuthering Heights, The New Pelican Guide to

English Literature, Edited by Boris Ford, London, Penguin Group, Volume 6, p 250

World Book Encyclopedia (1996), Chicago, World Book Inc., Volume B, p 587

Handley, Graham (1987), Introduction, Wuthering Heights, London, Macmillan Education

Ltd., p xviii

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