Discuss the Victorian novel focusing on its salient features.

Victorian novel focusing on its salient features

The Victorian Period abounds in the variety of literary forms. It is one of the fruitful periods in the history of English literature. Novel is a recent literary form flourished full to the brim in this period. It is distinguished separately for its special features. The Victorian novel continues to be largely in the tradition of Fielding. Its plot is generally loose and ill- constructed. Its main outline seems to be similar. The story consists of a large variety of characters and incidents clustering round the figure of the hero. These characters and incidents are connected together rather loosely by an intrigue. The story ends with the ringing of wedding bells and discuss on victorian  novel focusing on its salient features. 

The Victorian novel is an extraordinary mixture of sentiment, melodrama and lifeless characters. The novelists may not construct a compact plot.But They tell the story so well. They are so entertaining that children still love to read and enjoy a novel of Dickens or Thackeray. They give us comprehensive pictures of contemporary life. David Copperfield and Vanity Fair are concentrated wholly on the life and fortunes of a few principal characters. They also provide panoramas of whole societies. In the Victorian novel, "A  hundred different types and classes, persons and nationalities, jostle each other across the shadow screen of our imagination." A Victorian novelist is a man of varied moods. His range of mood is as wide as his range of subject. He deals with all aspects of society. So he renders human moods in all their manifold variety. He is not a specialist in any one mood or temper. Generally, we are unable to categorize the Victorian novels and novelists. David Copperfield of Charles Dickens seems to be a story of vast schoolboys. His Great Expectations is another novel dealing with the treatment of childhood.

The Victorian novelists are entertaining story-tellers. They have also creative imagination in ample measure. Their imagination works on their personal experience and transforms and transmutes them. They are often fantastic and romantic. They generally believe in fate or destiny. In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Hardy represents himself as a fatalist. The Return of the Native also deals with the same subject. The role of nature and her treatment in these novels are noteworthy. Actually, the creative imagination of the Victorian novelists works on the setting of their story and transform it.The creative imagination is also seen in their humour. Each of them is a humorist. Each is a humorist in a style of his own. They have created a number of immortal figures of fun, each comic in his own different way. There are hundreds of fine jokes and witty remarks spread all the Victorian novel. In Great Expectations, Dickens wants to show that Pip wants to be a gentleman. So Pip who is an orphan goes to London to become a gentleman. The most important expression of this creative imagination is to be seen in characterization. "The Victorians are all able to make their characters live." Their characters may not always be real. There may be much in them that is improbable and false. But they are amazingly and indomitably alive. They are wonderfully energetic and vital. They are all individuals living their own existence and lingering long in our memory. A Victorian novel has a crowded canvas. It is crowded with living and breathing individuals. The Victorian novel lacks uniformity. It is extremely unequal. It is an extra-ordinary mixture of strength andweakness. It is technically faulty. This is so because it is still in its infancy. It is still considered as a light entertainment. It does not seem to be a serious work of art. This artistic weakness also arises for other reasons. The great Victorian novels were not published in book-form. But they were published as serial stories in magazines and periodicals. They show a definite decline from the earlier English novel. Because free and uninhabited treatment of the animal side of life is frowned upon. Only a partial one-sided view of life is presented. For these reasons, the Victorian novelists cannot be ranked with the very greatest writers of the genre. Yet they have greatness in them. They have their imperfection. Their plots are improbable and melodramatic. Their endings are conventional and their construction is loose. They do not have any high artistic standards. But their merits also are many. They are very entertaining. They can capture and hold the attention. They have creative imagination and have the incomparable gift of humour.