A note on social Concern in Victorian Novel

 

ENGLISH COACHING CENTER

                            Based on JAC BSEB CBSE ICSE SKMU and TMBU

Paper viii

A note on social Concern in Victorian Novel

Jane Eyre, one of the most significant novels of the Victorian Era, provides reflections on the period and its society. This paper examines the changes and developments of Victorian England. It further deals with the literary situation and places Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre in its historical context. After a short summary, there follows an examination of the issues Jane Eyre revolts against. Her criticism against the then accepted gender roles and her liberal idea of womanhood indicate a strong female emancipation. Through an interpretation of certain passages, Jane’s demand for equality of gender becomes evident. Jane Eyre also reflects on Victorian morality and people’s idea of religion. The most important Christian conventions are presented illustrated by characters matching those different interpretations of Christianity. The then often valid severity in faith is against Jane’s idea of a good and loving God.

Charlotte Brontë’s celebrated novel is truly one of a kind. It portrays a young woman who speaks up against the injustice and mistreatment of many aspects given during the Victorian Era. This is not surprising, as the duration of Queen Victoria’s reign was a time of change and innovation. The Victorian period witnessed a great boost in its economy as well as alterations of its social structure: The Industrial Revolution stimulated globalisation as well as modern science. Then, the emergence of pre-feminism, with criticism focusing on reforming the then accepted gender roles. Christianity was also re-thought and liberalised. The list could, of course, go on for pages. The primary aim of this paper will be, however, to examine some of the changes and developments which are directly portrayed in Jane Eyre.

Compared to the Romantic Period during which the literally genre of poetry gained on significance, the Victorian Society set more store by prose, more specifically; the novel. There are several reasons to explain the novels’ vogue amongst the Victorians, but they all share a certain component: The Victorian Novel reflected the ever-present social and economic changes society had to undergo. The sheer complexity of sociological and economic transitions of the Victorian Age, made it impossible for anything but prose to reflect on these changes, by it being a longer form of literature enabling an author to provide a more detailed picture of their time. Moreover, novels mirrored the very issue of social existence during the 19th century. Authors of that time often expressed to have the urge to outpoint social evils, bring an industrial, fast moving society back to its morals. The catastrophic working-class conditions were written about, others specialised e.g. on pre-feminist and feminist writing, proposing the so- called Woman Question. This question consisted of a widespread debate about the place of women in society. Moreover, Victorian novels distinctly show evidence of how capitalism had made the middle class the most influential class of the Age. This middle-class was primarily responsible for publishing, and reading literature, hence that these topics reflected the middle-class’s perspective on society. It is altogether impossible to characterise the “typical” Victorian novel, as the Victorian Era lasted over 60 years, there can however be remarked that many of these works follow the literary genre of realism.⁹ Charlotte Brontë herself, phrased a desire to portray realism in the first chapter of her 1849 published novel Shirley by writing:

If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic––ay, even an Anglo-Catholic––might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week: it shall be cold lentiles and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs and no roast lamb.¹⁰

^{By Manoj Sir}