Evolution of Novels in 19th Century

Main answer
The rise of the novel through the 18th and 19th centuries coincides with major historical
developments—urbanization and democratization, industrialization and globalization to
name a few. These developments heighten conflicts between established elites and the
growing middle class. They also raise urgent questions of personal identity, social
responsibility, and moral virtue—the very sorts of questions that turn up in so many of the
greatest English novels. The novel provided compelling responses to such questions is
evident by its enormous and enduring popularity.
The evolution of the British Novel during the nineteenth century can be attributed to the
following causes:
a. Increased literacy
b. Rise of the middle classes following the industrial revolution
c. Spare time
d. Improvement in printing techniques and therefore access to books:
e. Lending libraries.
f. Market economy
The industrial revolution can be said, to have paved the way to the rise of middle-class and it
also created a demand for people’s desire for reading subjects related to their everyday
experiences.
The invention of traveling library also influenced the rise of English novels and via trade; it
was developed more than before. Women readers were considered a crucial factor in
providing readership. A better education for women was coincided with a period of greater
leisure for woman in middle and upper ranks. Both men and women were receptive to
literary form, which would open up to them recent and real worlds outside their own world.
Printing was another crucial factor that contributed to the rise of the English novel. It also
helped in creating a distinct space for the novels in the Market Economy. The sociology of
the novel is based very much upon a market relationship between author and reader,
mediated through publications, in contrast to earlier methods of financing publication or
supporting authors such as Patronage, or subscription. It also allowed authors to concentrate
on his writing rather than livelihood.
The first half of the 19th century was influenced by upheavals in the Romantic period. In a
period of rapid social and political change the novel became more and more important as a
detailed record and exploration of change. The industrialization provided jobs to the people
leading to Overcrowded industrial cities. This led to overcrowded housing, low wages, poor
diet, insecure employment and the dreaded effects of sickness and old age. The most
important authors of the time were Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott and Charles dickens.
Sir walter scott also posed serious questions in his novel ‘Waverly’ about the rapidly
changing society. He wrote about history,social changes, and about characters from all levels
of society. Another example can be taken from the novels of Charles dickens who portrayed
the working class and the poor, and dealt with poverty and revolt against injustice. Dickens
characters are defenseless orphans in a cruel world and his novels were used for social
reforms.
19th century England also witnessed novels produced by a number of feminist writers.
During the Victorian Age, the females were considered to be inferior to men and thus there
existed discrimination regarding the status of women in English society. Women wrote in
order to make a living, contribute to the literary world, and most importantly change British
society and fight for women’s rights. Some of the more popular female novelists of this time
include Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte , George Eliot. Novels from great author like Jane
Austen did not only entertain people but also idealized the character of women in society,
who were considered inferior to men. Austen’s portrayed her heroines as unique women
who try to stand up for themselves in a society which is an ideal of feminism. Middlemarch
by George Eliot can also be seen as an attack against the patriarchal society of 19th century
England. In Middlemarch George Eliot Gives a new voice and a change of perception to the
women of contemporary England.
The growth of the novel in this period prepared the way for the even larger growth of the
novel in the Victorian period. The Victorian Age is essentially the age of the novel or
fiction. Novelists of the time chose for their themes the specific contemporary problems of
the Victorian society caused by the predominance of industrialism and utilitarianism and
wrote about them sometimes as satirists, sometimes as humanists, sometimes as moralists. It
contained the large purpose of offering a picture and criticism of contemporary life. For
instance , William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is a satire on the moral and ethical
questions of the time. He sees clearly enough the seamy side of society: its littleness, its
meanness, its selfishness, its baseness, its false religionism, its secret impurities— in a word
which sums all up—its worldliness.
The novelists of the later Victorian era, depicted the tragedy of transition from the agrarian
way of life to the industrial order. Their focus shifted from the city with its industrialism and
utilitarianism to the village with its vision of destruction under the threat of the new
scientific rationalism and evolutionism, which started new ethics and human relations
inspired by the Darwinian concepts of “struggle for existence” and “survival of the
fittest”.Thus, The rise of Industrialization in the 19th century precipitated a trend toward
writing that depicted realism. Novels began to depict the characters who were not entirely
good or bad, rejecting the idealism and romanticism of the previous genre. One such
example can be taken from Emily Bronte’s representation of class-structure and its influence
of people in Wuthering heights. The importance of education in Victorian society is linked
to the social class structure, as Hindley's desire to deprive Heathcliff of an education is a
way for Hindley to keep Heathcliff in his place as an outsider. Heathcliff’s character
displays the hopelessness, misery and a troubled state of the people living in the
contemporary England.Realism thus evolved quickly into naturalism which portrayed
harsher circumstances and pessimistic characters rendered powerless by the forces of their
environment.
Naturalism was deeply implicit in the prose works of 19 th century England. It started as
a movement taking place from 1865 to 1900 that used detailed realism to suggest that social
conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human
character. Naturalistic writers were influenced by the evolution theory of Charles Darwin.
The increasing pessimism of the late Victorian era, fueled by the moral crisis following
Darwinism and the rise in social problems, made naturalism a strong influence on major
writers such as Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) in Tess of the D'Ubervilles (1891), Jude the
Obscure (1895) or Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) in Heart of Darkness (1899), and Lord Jim
(1900).Hardy and Conrad shared with the naturalists a sense of tragedy, a belief in the
uselessness of human free will, and a conviction that savagery lurked just beneath the veneer
of civilization.
The novel is realistic prose fiction in such a way that it can demonstrate its relation to real
life. The intellectual climate of the time is reflected in the wide range of issues, themes, and
settings which the novel was now beginning to encompass: high-class society contrasts with
the primitive; national concerns with regional; male points of view with female; present with
past, as more and more new subjects become the raw material for fiction. The novel,
therefore, developed as a piece of prose fiction that presented characters in real-life events
and situations.
.