The Eighteenth Century England

The Rise of Bourgeois: The Rise of English Novel

A: The Eighteenth Century England
After the restoration of the kingdom in 1660, British society was under the firm authority of the
monarchy and aristocracy. People had experienced the commonwealth duration that impacted
a kind of transformation in their approach towards different domains of their life either
mentally or practically. They were in a perplexed and complex situation. Contradictory political
condition resulted in the form of social hierarchy and an aggression for status quo.        
 
However, Britain was also being transformed by the Industrial Revolution after 1688. There was
pursuit of luxuries and materialistic well being in the society. Capitalism drastically changed the
face of society and this transformation diverted the business and pastimes of the populace.  

In response to this paradoxical situation, a nation ruled by the old elite but dominated by
business and trade, authors experimented socially mixed combinations of tragedy, comedy, the
epic, pastoral, and satire. These classical genres generally failed to resolve the contradictions of
the social hierarchy. Moreover, these genres could not reflect the emerging realities of that
versatile commercial society and a broader, more socially mixed audience. That dissatisfaction
emerged and polished a new genre, fiction with purely English source as W. Long says, “We
have a certain pride in regarding it as England’s original contribution to the world of letters.” (p.
338). To understand this evolving interrelationship between social change and literary form, we
will discuss different considerable elements in this paper.

B: The Rise of Bourgeois

The political disturbance between 1642 and 1660 had a profound and lasting impact on how
writers and readers perceived the nation’s social hierarchy. The creation of a republic in 1649
not only eliminated the king but also temporarily raised a level of the middling sort, including
minor domestic traders, shopkeepers, and common army officers. It emerged positions of
unique power and influence. This system eliminated the House of Lords and subjected the
royalist nobility and gentry to abstraction, severe fines, and the ruinous exploitation of their
land. That ultimately gave rise to the bourgeois, the middle class. The main aspects in this
regard are as following:

1. Industrial Revolution
The industrial revolution can be said, paved the path to the rise of the middle-class and it also
created a demand for people’s desire for reading subjects related to their everyday
experiences. It caused a drastic change in the social set up and mind set of the society bringing
in a bulk of wealth, luxuries and materialistic supplements. Thus that mind set demanded focus
as well as importance that gave rise to another class in the society named bourgeois.
 2. Belief  in Social Hierarchy
Writers and readers of the eighteenth century were shaped by their daily experience of a
culture dominated by an almost unquestioned belief in social hierarchy. Our understanding of
this hierarchy, and its literary impact has however been hindered by theoretical obstacles and
historical simplifications. A now long line of scholars has argued that the conception of “social
class” is highly misleading when applied to a culture that conceived of itself through gradations
of “status” or “rank.” The rising economic power of the so-called middle class or bourgeoisie,
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itself a deeply divided and complex grouping, did not translate into a grab for power, or even a
disrespect for traditional ideas of political authority.
 
3. Power in the Hands of Commercial Ranks
Moreover, from the Restoration onwards, successful authors tended to write for a distinctly
plebeian group of City-based booksellers who regarded literature as a trade and who
sometimes became very rich from the “business of books”. Especially following the Glorious
Revolution in 1688, writers often subjected the traditional elite to scathing satire, contrasting
the decadence and greed of the present aristocracy with traditional ideals of genteel honor and
virtue. Nevertheless, writers equally denigrated the avarice and vulgarity of the rising financial
elite and seldom suggested that the commercial ranks should take power. Literary
representations of the old and new elite, inherited and newly made wealth, are generally
characterized by a controlled tension rather than confrontation, generating a series of higher
values of morality and national interest while implicitly underwriting the legitimacy of the
traditional social hierarchy. In this way, literature played an arguably significant role in
mediating the social and political tensions that exploded into revolution in France

.C: The Rise of English Novel

The literature of the 17  century flourished under the patronage of the upper classes. The
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18  century in England’s social history is characterized by the rise of the middle class. Because
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of tremendous growth in trade and commerce, the England merchant class was becoming
wealthy and wanted to get focus this newly rich class wanted to excel in the field of literature
also. This class was neglected by the high-born writers and their tastes and aspirations were
expressed by the novelists of the time. The Novel was, in fact, the product of middle class. With
the rise of middle class, hence, the rise of the novel was quite natural.
 
1. Rise of Middle Class
The England’s merchant class was becoming wealthy and this newly rich class wanted to
capture attention by others. This class was neglected by the high-born writers and their tastes
and aspirations were expressed by the novelists of the time. The Novel was, in fact, the product
of middle class for middle class as expressed by Thrall et al. “…the English novel as an
instrument portraying a middle-class society.” (p. 322). With the rise of middle class, hence, the
rise of the novel was quite natural. The novel, therefore, developed as a piece of prose fiction
that presented characters in real-life events and situations. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones are some of early English novels. The novel is realistic prose fiction
in such a way that it can demonstrate its relation to real life.
 2. Invention of Printing Press
Printing was another crucial factor that contributed to the rise of the English novel. The modern
novel was the child of the printing press, which alone can produce the vast numbers of copies
needed to satisfy literate publication up rise that they can afford.

3. Growth of Newspapers and Magazines

In the 18  century, the appearance of newspapers and magazines attracted a large number of
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readers from the middle class. These new readers had little interest in the romances and
the tragedies which had interested the upper class. Thus need for new type of literature rose
that would express the new ideas of the 18  century and this new type of literature was none
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but novel.

4. Rise of Realism
The 17 century literature was characterized by the spirit of realism and romantic features like
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enthusiasm, passion, imagination etc. All these characters declined in 18 century. The spirits of
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reason, intellect, correctness, satirizing etc were the main characteristics in this period. So were
the main aspects of English novel of the age. This force of intellect, reasoning and satirizing
provided readers with a perfect piece of entertainment along with touching the feelings of
readers deeply as Boyd declares a novel as, “A perfect freedom from every degree of immoral
tendency, together with the power of deeply interesting the feelings of the reader.” (p.143). 

5. Individualism
The social and intellectual currents of the age were linked for creating something new and
different. Those who carried out the action became individualized, they were interpreted in and
all their complexity and the social pressure on them were minutely detailed. When people
wanted to hear stories of those who are not too different from themselves, in a community
recognizably a kin to their own, then the novel was born. The Rise of Individualism was also
very significant in the emergence of the English novel. Ian Watt sees a typical of the novel that
it includes individualization of characters and the detailed presentation of the environment.
The novel is more associated with the town rather than to the village, and in some points, they
are alike, for example, both involve huge numbers of people leading interdependent lives,
influencing and relying upon one another.

6. Educated Women
In the 18  century, women of upper classes and the middle classes could partake in a few
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activities of men. Although they could not engage themselves in administration, politics,
hunting, drinking etc. hence, in their leisure time, they used to read novels.
The eighteenth-century great novels are semi anti-romance, or it was the first time that the
novel emerged and distributed widely and largely among its readers; reading public.  Moreover,
with the increase of the literacy, the demand on the reading material increased rapidly, among
well-to- do women, who were novel readers of the time.

Thus, theatre was not such feasible form of entertainment but novel was due to its large
audience and its spread all over the land in country-houses. In other words, middle was such an
important factor behind the growth of the novel as a new form of art.
Women readers were considered as a crucial factor in providing readership. A better education
for women was coincided with a period of a greater leisure for women in middle and upper
ranks. The greater leisure for women left a time space, which needed to be filled in. Men were
also educated and had an intension to see beyond the narrow local interests and profession to
an inspired motivation. Both men and women were receptive to literary forms, which would
open up to them recent and real worlds outside their own world.

7. Availability of Writers
Understanding the role of the literary artist in this complex and changing situation raises even
more formidable problems. As noted by Raymond Williams, the period after 1680 showed a
marked change in the social origins of authors, with more deriving from the middle ranks and
fewer from the aristocracy and upper-gentry (1961: 234). Swift, Gay, Haywood, Richardson,
Johnson, and Goldsmith came from very modest backgrounds while other writers such as Pope,
Fielding, and Burney claimed roughly genteel status without great wealth or an automatic claim
to recognition. 

8. Market Opportunities
A market economy was the third factor. 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. A market economy increases the relative freedom and isolation of the writer and
decreases his immediate dependence upon particular individuals, groups or interests.

9. Prohibition on Theatre
The decline of drama also contributed to the rise of the novel in the 18  century. In the
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18  century, drama lost its fame that it had in the Elizabethan Age. It did not remain an
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influential literary form. Hence some other had to take its place and its place was filled by the
English novel after 1740 A.D. Thus the decline of drama led to the rise of the English novel. The
Licensing Act of 1737 imposed a stifling political censorship on the English theatre. It was a
great age of prose. (p. 313) Thrall et al.

D: Conclusion
The success of the novel, on the other hand, owed less to its promotion of “middle-class”
values, which had not yet taken a distinctive form, than to its inherent flexibility and ability to
mediate a complex and changing social order.  The implicit argument of this essay has been that
“social class” counts very much in the examination of literature between 1660 and 1800,
despite the decline of Marxist criticism. A renewed form of literary criticism sensitive to issues
of social hierarchy cannot, however, rely on the old concept of “class conflict” between an old
aristocracy and a rising bourgeoisie. Rather, eighteenth-century society generally sought
stability by maintaining old political structures in the face of economic change and in fearful
memory of social upheaval during the Civil War and Interregnum. Literary evolution during this
era was highly sensitive to these changes but also to the desire for stability. Harmonizing these
opposite forces was not, however, easily accommodated within existing literary genres.
Although the eighteenth century was an era of extraordinary experimentation within the
traditional genres of drama and poetry, these older models increasingly receded in the face of
the commercial tide of the novel. The novel was in turn distinguished less by its “middle-class”
attitudes than by its inherent flexibility to explore society without rules dictated by the inherent
laws of genre. Generally conservative from its outset, disagreeing about the nature of elite
authority rather than its preeminence, the novel seemed uniquely positioned to harmonize
rather than exacerbate social difference.