RESTORATION

It is of great importance to understand the many changes that took place in the literature world during the 18th
century. First of all, drama took a new lease of life; prose fiction modulated into the novel; poets started to write about
heroic plays and works and turned to effects of clarity, balance and pointed wit (Grundy 200). Secondly, and to offer
a better context, this period is well known as the Age of Reason, because as a human feature, this faculty was
beginning to get praised and valued, a direct consequence of poets fearing its counterpart: unreason (Grundy 200).

Moving on, Drama was not the main genre within this period so we will not add anything further on this matter.
Tragedy, on the other hand, was more about passions which took a lifetime to fulfil, Love, Duty, leering gesture...
(Grundy 206). All these themes are of great help when trying to understand why heroes’ stories became part of
Tragedy in this period.

Before anything else, we need to discuss the genre that predominated the most: Comedy. Despite of the fact that it
was struggling with morality because of writers like John Gray and his friends, it was sentimentally improving. Poets
would usually attempt to conceptualize and represent heroes and heroines; heroes constantly sought sex and money
while heroines tried to find the opportunity to decide who their marriage partner was going to become. (Grundy 208).
Past social rules (such as men being pimps) were repelled by these young generations and, although their abilities
were questioned, their wit and self-knowledge was valued. Moreover, some plays were influenced by Thomas Hobbes
ideas (psychology based on competitive pursuit of power in the Restoration) as well as John Locke's ones (importance
of reason in the eighteenth century).

ROMANTICISM
Despite the measures taken, society began rioting and asking for change. Most of their influencers and inspirations
were philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. For instance, Kant was sort of a
transcendentalist: he thought that something must exist beyond the material world. However, he pointed out the
innate human capacity of moral reasoning, of making choices because they are the right ones to make, or because
they are dutiful (Ruston 23). Enlightenment philosophy did not outshine whatsoever, although John Locke insisted on
the importance of 'empiricism' and the idea that people were not born with innate ideas. We can appreciate this
perception in Frankestein (1818), by Mary Shelley (1797-1851) (Ruston 24). Lastly, Rosseau believed in the premise of
raising children by allowing them to take their own path, for he thought children were born good, and adults were the
ones who corrupted them. Therefore, his ideas encouraged Wollstonecraft to create her own viewpoints on women
rights, emphasising her notion of society as being the corruptor of female identities (Ruston 24).

VICTORIAN AGE
The most influential form of literary from this period was the novel fiction. Realism became the main mode, a path
that allowed to show society in rapid transition (Moran 80). In other words, reality is not static but in constant change,
giving it a hybrid nature (Moran 81): there is a surface 'reality' and there's also an 'elemental' truth of intense passion,
being this second nature what featured characters. From the mid-century, writers constructed 'reality' with a
panoramic view through complex plots, multiple viewpoints, etc. Nevertheless , from the 1860's it was seen as a
subjective construction (Moran 81).

Regarding Victorian characters, they were based on everyday lifestyle and experiences, they had problems of self-
formation and moral choices in relation to contemporary references of the Victorian period (Moran 78). The purpose
was to create a connection between readers and characters, hence why various writers used particular strategies to
accomplish so: dramatic scenes to provide excitement while also leaving mysteries for resolution in future moments
(Moran 79).

Along with it, and regarding the self-formation of the characters, writers’ attention focused on the characters'
psychological states (Moran 91), using the power of mental disturbance and unconscious impulse (Moran 92) to create
some kind of scary atmosphere, while mixing fantasy, science and social awareness altogether (Moran 91). We have
the Doppelgänger phenomena as an example, introduced by Stevenson (Moran 92). As a result of the creation of
suspenseful scenes, danger and survival can also be linked to different issues the reader may face: cruelty of vivisection,
the oppression of the working class and so on (Moran 93).